He had already been online from his private room, set aside for him in the sand-blasted fortress in the hills behind Garacad, which was the headquarters of al-Afrit. He knew there were factors such as age and condition of the freighter, perishability of the cargo and loss of future likely earnings to be computed.
But he had done all that and had decided on a starting figure of twenty-five million dollars. He knew he would probably settle on four million, maybe five if the Swede was in a hurry.
“Mr. Gareth, let me propose we begin tomorrow morning. Say, nine o’clock London time? That will be midday here. I shall by then be back in my office onshore.”
“Very well, my friend. I shall be here to take your call.”
It would be a satellite call by computer. There would be no question of using Skype. Facial expressions can give too much away.
“There is one last thing before we break for the day. Do I have your assurance that the crew, including the Filipinos, will be detained safely onboard and not molested in any way?”
No other Somali heard this, for those on the Malmö were out of earshot of the bridge and could not speak English anyway. But Abdi caught the meaning.
By and large, the Somali warlords and clan chiefs treated their captives humanely, but there were one or two notable exceptions. Al-Afrit was one, and the worst, a vicious old brute with a reputation.
At a personal level, Abdi would work for al-Afrit, and his fee would be twenty percent. His labors as hostage negotiator for pirates were making him a wealthy man much younger than usual. But he did not have to like his principal and he did not. He despised him. But he did not have a corps of bodyguards around him.
“I am confident that all the crew will remain onboard and be well treated,” he intoned, then ended the call. He just prayed he was right.
The amber eyes gazed at the young prisoner for a dozen seconds. Silence reigned in the room. Opal could sense the educated Somali, who had let him into the courtyard, and two Pakistani bodyguards behind him. When the voice came, it was surprisingly gentle and in Arabic.
“What is your name?”
Opal gave it.
“Is that a Somali name?”
Behind him, the Somali shook his head. The Pakistanis did not understand.
“No, Sheikh, I am from Ethiopia.”
“That is a mainly nasrani country. Are you a Christian?”
“Thanks be to Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate. No, no, Sheikh, I am not. I am from the Ogaden, just over the border. We are all Muslims and much persecuted for it.”
The face with the amber eyes nodded approvingly.
“And why did you come to Somalia?”
“There were rumors in my village that recruiters from the Ethiopian army were coming to press-gang our people into the army to fight in the invasion of Somalia. I escaped and came here to join my fellow brothers in Allah.”
“You came from Kismayo to Marka last night? Why?”
“I am looking for work, Sheikh. I have a job as tally clerk at the fish dock, but I hoped for something better in Marka.”
“And how did you come by these papers?”
Opal told his rehearsed story. He had been motoring through the night to avoid the blinding heat and sandstorms of the day. He noted his petrol was low and stopped to fill up from his spare jerrycan. This was, by chance, on a concrete bridge over a dry wadi.
He heard a faint cry. He thought it might be the wind in the high trees that stand near there, but then he heard it again. It seemed to come from below the bridge.
He climbed down the bank into the wadi and found a pickup truck, badly crashed. It seemed to have come off the bridge and dived into the wadi bank. There was a man at the wheel, but terribly injured.
“I tried to help him, Sheikh, but there was nothing I could do. My motor bicycle would never carry two, and I could not bring him up the bank. I pulled him out of the cab in case it caught fire. But he was dying, inshallah.”
The dying man had begged him, as a brother, to take his satchel and deliver it to Marka. He described the compound: near the street market, down from the Italian roundabout, a timber double door with a latched door for the lookout.
“I held him while he died, Sheikh, but I could not save him.”
The robed figure considered this for some while, then turned to look through the papers that had come from the satchel.
“Did you open the satchel?”
“No, Sheikh, it was not of my business.”
The amber eyes looked thoughtful.
“There was money in the satchel. Perhaps we have an honest man. What do you think, Jamma?”
The Somali smirked. The Preacher let out a torrent of Urdu at the Pakistanis. They moved forward and seized Opal.
“My men will return to that spot. They will examine the wreck, which must surely still be there. And the body of my servant. If you have lied, you will surely wish you had never come here. Meanwhile, you will stay and wait for their return.”
He was imprisoned again, but not in the decrepit shed in the yard from which an agile man might escape in the night. He was taken to a cellar with a sand floor and locked in. He was there for two days and a night. It was pitch-dark. He was given a plastic bottle of water, which he sipped sparingly in the blackness. When he was let out and brought upstairs, his eyes puckered and blinked furiously in the sunlight from the shutters. He was taken to the Preacher again.
The robed figure held something in his right hand, which he turned over and over in his fingers. His amber eyes moved to his prisoner and settled on the frightened Opal.
“It seems you were right, my young friend,” he said in Arabic. “My servant had indeed crashed his truck into the bank of the wadi and died there. The cause”—he held up the object in his fingers—“this nail. My people found it in the tire. You spoke the truth.”
He rose and crossed the room to stand in front of the young Ethiopian, looking down at him speculatively.
“How is it you speak Arabic?”
“I studied in my spare time, sir. I wanted the better to read and understand our Holy Koran.”
“Any other language?”
“A little English, sir.”
“And how did you come by that?”
“There was a school near my village. It was run by a missionary from England.”
The Preacher went dangerously quiet.
“A nasrani. An infidel. A kuffar. And from him you also learned to love the West?”
“No, sir. Just the opposite. It taught me to hate them for the centuries of misery they have inflicted on our people and to study only the words and the life of our prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace.”
The Preacher considered this and smiled at last.
“So we have a young man”—he was clearly speaking to his Somali secretary—“who is honest enough not to take money, compassionate enough to fulfill the wish of a dying man and wishes to serve only the Prophet. And who speaks Somali, Arabic and some English. What do you think, Jamma?”
The secretary fell into the trap. Seeking to please, he agreed their discovery was fortunate indeed. But the Preacher had a problem. He had lost his computer expert, and the man who brought him his downloaded messages from London, while never revealing that he himself was in Marka, not Kismayo. Only Jamma could replace him in Kismayo; the rest were not computer literate.
That left him short a secretary but facing a young man who was literate, spoke three languages apart from his Ogaden dialect and sought work.