Dara said, "Next, an open-air barbecue where the restaurant is preparing meals for the hijacked crews. Goat, on a spit."
"Goat wouldn't be bad," Xavier said, "they called it something else."
The screen showed Eyl from the beach and streets of flat, tin-roof structures, some framed from scrap lumber, doors open to show the entire store, and rubble in all the streets, a junkyard, houses rebuilt over crumbling remains; but a human feeling in the colors, a cement house painted yellow, another blue. The camera moved up a street of hovels and beyond, to homes among palm trees.
"The upper end," Dara said, "Idris Mohammed's digs, a tan brick California bungalow that goes on and on, with a patio. The sound of the generators must drive him nuts."
"The man has enough power," Xavier said, "to light New Orleans. Look at the big TV dish up there."
"Idris said, 'Shake a leg with your shooting so you have time to come to my home, please.' He always says please."
"You sound like him," Xavier said. "You gonna shoot the man in his house?"
"You are," Dara said, handing Xavier her cotton bag. "Get the cars in the drive, a Mercedes and a Bentley-Harry must be here-four, no five Toyotas, all of them black." A SOMALI WITH AN AK slung from his shoulder stood close to the open doorway. He stared at Xavier. Then at Dara. Then at Xavier again, looking up at him as he stepped aside.
Watching the picture on the screen, Dara said, "Remember this guy?"
"Everybody starin at us like we movie stars."
They watched Dara enter the house, the camera holding on her as Xavier followed to sweep the room in a pan, close to dark in here, low-watt bulbs in the ceiling fixtures. Daylight from the open doorway helped.
"I shot those blue walls tryin to make out the pictures hangin there. I think they were bare-naked ladies, but it was hard to tell."
"I thought they were landscapes," Dara said. IDRIS AND HARRY BAKAR were watching an Al Jazeera newscast on the flat screen across the room, the boys having a scotch, smoking cigarettes and sucking khat, the bottle, the bouquet and a bowl of ice on the stone coffee table between them. They knew Dara was in the room.
Dara knew it.
But they stood up to watch the news for several moments before Idris muted the Arabic words with the remote and came for Dara grinning, telling her she made him so happy to see her, took hold of her and kissed both cheeks. He said, "Look who I have, your travel companion, Harry Bakar."
Harry was grinning too. He took her hands but kissed only one cheek. He smelled of cologne.
In the suite watching the computer screen she said to Xavier, "The big grins. Was it the news or were they glad to see me?"
"I think it was the herb."
"Did you talk to Harry much?"
"Just enough to think he's okay."
"We have to work on the audio, try to clean it up."
"I can bring it up. But for now…" Xavier reached over and turned off the sound.
"I liked Harry's kaffiyeh," Dara said, "the way he does desert wear, draped over his hair and around his shoulders, a casual British look with the bush jacket."
"Has that way about him."
"You think he puts it on?"
"Takes it to the edge any more he's over the line."
Dara said, "'Call me Harry, if you will.'"
"You got him down, Mr. Harry Baker from Oxford."
"I said to him, 'Isn't it pleasant to relax with a scotch while you make a pitch to end piracy?'"
On the screen Harry was smiling. So was Idris. Idris glancing at Harry.
"I had the feeling," Dara said, "there was something between them they were dying to tell me. But Harry surprised me, started talking about a new president of Somalia, elected by the legislature meeting in Djibouti."
"Get into all that, you gonna lose your audience."
"I know, but I want to quote Harry saying the new president will bring peace, once the foreign fishing companies leave the gulf. I said, 'That's the stipulation? You'll have pirates until the fishing boats go home?' He said, 'Unfortunately, yes.'"
Xavier said, "What you want with that?"
"Show how the Somalis see it. Their only way to make a buck is hijacking ships."
"Or they starve? Come on, you gonna tell your moviegoers that?"
She said after a moment, "You don't think it'll work."
"Not the way you pitchin it. Do it straight. Make a picture about guys committin armed robbery at sea. What's wrong with that? They fun-lovin 'cause they found a way to get rich, but they still criminals…only with some class."
"Change the tone," Dara said.
"The one you have in your head. Shoot what you see, not what you want to see."
"I know what I'm doing, but I sound dumb."
"You are dumb," Xavier said, "and you know better." "YOU MIGHT'VE NOTICED," DARA said, "the two buddies making remarks to each other in Arabic, then raising their eyebrows, interested in what I'm gonna say. 'Did you know we have an aircraft carrier in the gulf?' 'Really? When did it arrive?' I tell them, 'Yesterday, the nuclear-powered Dwight D. Eisenhower.' Harry goes, 'Good show.' Idris says, 'You need a giant ship with jet planes to chase my little skiffs?'
"I said to Idris, 'Is there an Islamic group like al Shabaab behind pirate activities?'
"Idris said, 'Al Shabaab, are you kidding me? They're children playing like it's olden times. They're very serious.' I told Idris I've heard hijacking has cost the owners much more than thirty million. He said, 'Yes, perhaps as much as forty million. More coming in as we speak.' I said to Harry, 'Is that right, according to your estimates?' Harry said, 'He might be a bit low.'"
Dara said she asked Harry while Idris was out of the room how they met. He said he heard Idris might be interested in a sporting rifle he had for sale. "Over a few drinks we agreed on the price." Harry smiled. "And from that meeting on we're mates."
Dara said, "I'm not sure why, maybe because we were in the Middle East, I asked him, 'How many rifles did you sell Idris?' Harry stared at me rather deadpan before he said, 'Four hundred.' He said, 'Uzis I promoted off a chap in Tel Aviv,' giving his tone a hint of cockney, like Michael Caine, and kept staring at me until I smiled." Dara said, "You know why he told me? He wanted me to know he's half British but is still part of the Arab world. I said, 'And now you're promoting a solution to end piracy?' Harry said, 'You might call it that, yes.'"
"You ever ask Idris what he did with the Uzis?"
"I'm guessing he found buyers in Somalia. Warlords always need guns." Dara watched the screen. "This is where Harry's saying to Idris, 'Will you please tell her.'"
"I remember," Xavier said, "both watchin TV and grinnin when we come in. Now I shoot Idris changin the channel from Al Jazeera to CNN and we see a container ship flyin the Stars and Stripes. The Maersk Alabama, the first American ship, captain and crew, taken by the Somalis."
"The first American ship boarded," Dara said, watching the screen, "in more than two hundred years."
"This crew wouldn't stand for it," Xavier said. "Took the ship back and ran off the pirates. Only they had the captain a hostage by then."
"He gave himself up," Dara said, "so they wouldn't harm the crew. Richard Phillips, fifty-three, from Underhill, Vermont. They put him in the Alabama's deluxe lifeboat, tried to slip off to Somalia three hundred miles away and ran out of gas. Here's the lifeboat."
One like the Alabama's was on the screen now: an enclosed twenty-eight-foot orange fiberglass boat designed for thirty-four passengers with food and water for ten days.
"No toilet," Dara said. "It doesn't look big enough for that many people. The Bainbridge, the destroyer on the scene, tied onto the lifeboat to keep it from drifting off. Talks began now by satellite phone, between clan elders in the pirates' home port and I think navy brass and a hostage negotiator from the FBI. The elders wanted two million for Captain Phillips. The navy wanted the four pirates to surrender and stand trial, the only agreement they'd consider. The pirate spokesmen said if you don't pay the ransom or try to rescue the captain, this will end in disaster. Words to that effect. The navy took it as a threat to Captain Phillips's life."