"Not while you watchin him. The newspeople want to see your footage?"
"I didn't offer. I shot them with the flip."
"They get angry with you?"
"They had no idea I was filming them."
"I mean not showin your footage?"
"They stopped asking. I didn't say a word about al Qaeda. I went to sleep on the plane."
Xavier said, "You get to Djibouti, now you have all kind of security on you." Xavier waited, watching Dara raise her glass to take a sip. He said, "You got your mind on the Gold Dust Twins, al Qaedas, CIA people…You know, you never once ask how me and Buster did our time at sea? Alone, so to speak."
Dara placed her glass on the desk and turned in her chair to face Xavier, waiting. She said, "I did, I asked how'd it go. If you missed me."
Xavier shook his head. "Unh-unh. I'm sittin here so I musta made the trip okay."
She thought of saying she didn't want to fly off and leave him. But she did, dying to get off this cute fucking boat. She said, "I knew you'd make it." He was silent now. Hurt? She said, "Xavier, tell me what happened?"
"Nothin. I tied on to old 66 and got towed to Djibouti. How you think I made it in two days?"
"But I'm out of touch by then." Dara finished her cognac. "The plane lands in Djibouti and I'm met by a quiet young guy from the embassy, the car waiting on the strip, a Lincoln."
"Made you feel important."
"It did, at first. The young guy-I forgot his name, Patrick something-said he was CIA station chief there. I thought he'd start in, ask how I happened to know about terrorists. You know what he said?"
"How was the flight?"
"He said, 'Is it hot enough for you?'"
"He's settin you up. Start slow, then blindside you."
"I think he expected me to start running off at the mouth, but I didn't. I said, 'I'm used to it by now.' Neither of us said another word on the way. No, he said something about the embassy being air-cooled for your comfort. Didn't they use to say that about movie theaters?"
"Before you were born."
"It was the only mention of where we were going."
"You musta known you weren't goin to the hotel."
"You're right, he didn't ask where I was staying. We approached the embassy, local police hanging around in front, passed through the gate and got out at the entrance. The marine post, the first one, was just inside. The marine took my passport and entered what he needed to know and handed it to the CIA station chief. The marine wanted to look in my bag but Patrick said, 'Ms. Barr's with me,' and took it off my shoulder. Now we're in the inner lobby-the whole place done in that harmless government decor. I was thinking they could get-what was her name, Billy's yacht decorator? Anne Bonfiglio. See if she could add a 'look' with a bit more life to it. The next marine stepped away from his desk to hand me a visitor's ID badge. Red with a big V in white and the words ESCORT REQUIRED. You believe it?"
Xavier said, "They got you now."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE CIA STATION CHIEF brought Dara by elevator to the third floor and along a hallway of what must be executive offices to the one at the end, double doors open to a view of the gulf at dusk in the windows and a woman in a beige suit coming toward her smiling, telling Dara, "I can't believe I'm actually meeting you. I love Women of Bosnia, the way you shot the men lurking about, watching like hyenas, waiting…Were you afraid filming those guys?"
"At times, yeah, they made me nervous."
"Dara, I'm hoping I can help you. I'm Suzanne Schmidt, regional security officer." She took Dara's hand and held on to it. "I love the way you do your hair."
"I don't really do it," Dara said.
"It shows your independence. I should have mine cut and quit getting my roots done every month. I blow it dry and by midday in this humidity and I have to go out…? My pageboy begins to go limp." She brought Dara into her office, the CIA man and her bag no longer with them.
"Dara, I've loved all of your documentaries," Suzanne said, "but Women of Bosnia is my favorite-the way you kept your eye on the men without ever featuring them, and yet we know what they're about, especially what they did to the women. My favorite character is Amelia. You tell her story after the men had repeatedly raped her."
"Months later," Dara said.
"Amelia explains in simple words, 'Because I am Muslim.' She feels indelibly soiled. 'Because I am Muslim.' What the conflict was all about, really. Her husband leaves and she thinks of throwing herself in front of a train."
It was a tram, a streetcar, but Dara didn't interrupt.
"The men eye you with speculation. Can we do what we want to this American alone in our country, making herself a nuisance? They're not sure if we'll come to your aid. Americans sometimes put themselves in a fix we're unable to resolve."
"I'm not in a fix," Dara said.
"Well, Amelia certainly was," Suzanne said. "In the depths of her despair thinking of killing herself. But she's the mother of a two-year-old boy and her husband has abandoned them. Amelia's in quite a fix, isn't she?"
"She finally took off her hajab," Dara said, "brightened her hair to quite a blaze of red, remember? And managed to get on with her life."
"I thought it was more a shade of henna," Suzanne said. "Anyway," she said, "more to the point, I'd like to show you what we've been up to." THEY SAT IN BROWN-LEATHER swivel chairs somewhat grouped around a coffee table where a laptop computer sat waiting. Suzanne turned it to face them and took the chair next to Dara's.
"So, for the past month you've been filming Somalis hijacking merchant ships. A departure from what you normally set out to document. More like the real thing?"
"They're all the real thing. Katrina was my one departure," Dara said, "from what I normally shoot. I seem to be attracted to men I feel acting against their nature, showing off, getting together as thugs in Whites Only, the one about white supremacists. Or Somali fishermen enjoying themselves as pirates, and making a lot of money. But now piracy is attracting commercial interest, Hollywood," Dara said. "Several movies about pirates are in preproduction right now. Or, if you're interested and can afford it, you can rent a yacht for five thousand a day, seven-fifty for each AK-47 you think you'll need, and ten bucks for a hundred rounds of ammo. You slip along the coast toward Mogadishu hoping to attract pirates. But once the shooting starts, they'll put an RPG through your hull and you're sunk."
"It's a Russian enterprise," Suzanne said, "operating right here in Djibouti. Entrepreneurs, you might call them, looking for a quick buck."
"RPGs will put the Russians out of business," Dara said, "and the Somalis, once they begin taking lives."
"You sympathize with them?" Suzanne said. "The poor Somalis trying to make a living?"
"I did," Dara said, "until I saw a skiff flying a 'Kill Americans' banner. Since then I've been losing interest in their cause."
"You like the idea of putting yourself in danger."
"I've never been shot at," Dara said. "I've been yelled at, cursed in different languages. Jebo te Bog, govno jedno."
"What does that mean?"
"May God fuck you, you piece of shit."
"It sounds as though you have the accent down," Suzanne said. "Do you always learn the language?"
"Never more than a few words."
"I understand you met a number of pirates in Eyl. One of them threw a party for you?"
"They were celebrating something else."
"But socializing with them-it must take nerve."
"At the time we had nothing against each other," Dara said. "One of them bought his mates new wingtips at Tricker's in London, two hundred dollars a pair."
"Really."
"They're generous, and usually fun-loving."
"Until some cleric or Imam of the radical Shabaab," Suzanne said, "begins lopping off a hand and a foot of each pirate they seize. You know the Shabaab are Wahhabi Islamists, the same sect as al Qaeda."
"They'd be cutting off the hand that feeds them," Dara said. "The Shabaab are on the take." She said, "Are we getting close to it now?"