The Watchman

Fifty-One

‘Move,’ I said, and urged the others to follow me. Madar was ready to go but Pryce wanted to argue. She grabbed my arm and held on.

‘We should wait for Doug. He could be in trouble.’

I shook off her hand. ‘If he is, there’s nothing we can do to help him. If he’s in the clear he’ll find us. If we stay here and they get past him, they’ll be all over us inside thirty minutes.’

I didn’t wait for her to agree, but set off after Madar. Pryce followed, but she wasn’t a happy trooper.

We covered about half a click, heading over a rise in the terrain and through a clump of bushes and rocks. It was a natural fault in the landscape, and had thrown up debris like giant molehills. Madar had eyes like a cat and avoided the worst of them, so I told Pryce to follow him closely while I dropped back a few metres to cover our backs.

We eventually reached another line of trees where I called another halt. I was worried about Tober. If he’d been caught, we were a good man down and vulnerable. I couldn’t see Musa giving up too easily on his plans, and if he thought we were close enough to catch he’d come after us for as long as it took. There was a lot of empty space here, and he probably knew that the chances of his men being compromised in Kenyan territory were fairly low, especially with the army stretched thin chasing down al-Shabaab fighters.

I dialled Piet’s number and heard it buzzing at the other end. Four times, six times, then he answered.

‘What did you do, man — start that war?’ He sounded remarkably cheerful, letting go of a chuckle through an early-morning throat. ‘Where are you?’

It had been clear since hearing of Musa’s planned execution that the one person to get out of here was Angela Pryce. She was his most valued trophy, whereas Tober was a soldier, a victim of his job. And Piet could only carry one passenger at a time. I told him where we were and he replied that he was ten minutes away, where he’d been camping out waiting for a call.

‘What about you?’ he queried. ‘And the muscle. Is he there, too?’

‘He’s coming up behind, plus one other — a boy. He helped us out.’

‘Christ, man, you should’ve warned me — I’d have arranged a combi and a picnic basket.’ He coughed and said, ‘Sunrise is about twenty minutes off. I can’t take off in the dark, but once I’m up, I’ll spot you if you’re out in the open. Just try not to draw too much of a welcome party, right?’

He cut the connection and I put the phone away and checked my weapon. Pryce was doing the same, closely watched by Madar. I don’t think he’d ever seen a white woman up close before — and certainly not one who knew how to handle an AK-47.

I left them to it. The more Pryce was occupied, the less time she’d have to dwell on what had happened or to pepper me with questions I was in no position to answer.

I hadn’t gone into it much with Vale about what to do if I did come face to face with his two people. The plan was to stay remote and unseen, and come out of the shadows only if they got into trouble. This part had been unforeseen, and was something I would have to ask him.

A few minutes later I heard a brief whistle coming out of the gloom.

Tober.

I told Pryce to stay put. ‘Piet’s on his way in. If I’m not back by the time he arrives, don’t wait. Get on board and tell Madar to make his way back to the coast and find a boat out. He’ll know what to do.’ I wasn’t going far, but if this turned out to be Musa’s men playing cute, I had to intercept them before they got too close.

I worked my way back until I reached a spread of open ground, and stopped on the near side, checking out the lay of the land. It wasn’t clear enough to see far, but anyone stepping across it would show up. Then I caught a movement directly in front of me, about a hundred metres out.

It was Tober. He was walking easily enough, his rifle slung over his shoulder as if he was on a Sunday afternoon stroll.

I whistled and he raised a hand and broke into a trot to join me.

‘They coming?’ I asked him.

He grinned. ‘They were. I discouraged them.’ He hefted the AK and said, ‘These things may look like shit but they work fine. Ironic, giving them back their own ammunition.’

I nodded and we set off to join Pryce and Madar.

As soon as we arrived back at their position and Pryce had made sure Tober was OK, she was all over me with questions. I batted away each query with vague responses until Tober sensed I wasn’t going to play ball and chipped in with the only question really worth asking.

‘What’s the plan?’ He’d been scanning the horizon as dawn filtered through the sparse trees. Like me, he’d come to the same conclusion based on long experience: it wasn’t much in the way of cover, but the one advantage we had was that we could see anyone coming from a long way off. ‘Do we have backup on the way?’

I nodded towards the west. ‘He’s on his way in now.’

He did a double take. ‘He? One man?’

‘It’s all I could arrange at short notice.’ I went on to explain that the transport was a microlight and if things got sticky he, Madar and I would have to find another way out. His eyebrows went walkabout, but I could see he understood.

Pryce wasn’t so easy to convince.

‘That’s crazy. I’m not leaving Doug here. We came in together and that’s how we’ll leave. Anyway, you could call the embassy in Mombasa on your phone. The SIS liaison there will arrange a pickup.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’ I didn’t need to explain to her how most countries were sensitive about cross-border incursions, and that she and Tober were effectively operating in Kenyan territory without the authorities knowing about their presence. But I said, ‘With the Kenyans having trouble with extremists in southern Somalia right now, if they find out you’ve been here without their say-so — and talking to al-Shabaab — they’ll probably lock you up out of spite and forget where they put the key.’

‘Our embassy won’t let them do that.’

I recalled the man with the camera at Malindi airport. ‘Maybe not. But it won’t end there and you know it. Do you want to take a chance on having your photos spread all over the world’s media by tonight?’

They were both staring at me now, and I had their full attention. I guessed that they had been so bound up in the proposed ‘negotiations’ to free hostages, and convinced by their bosses that everything was above board, neither of them had been suspicious about what Musa’s real intentions might have been, nor that there had been no real thoughts given to an exit strategy.

‘Musa’s hard-core al-Shabaab,’ I continued. ‘If he can’t get you back, he’ll do what he can to make trouble for SIS. He’ll blow your cover far and wide. I don’t know about you, but I’m guessing your bosses won’t want that.’

‘But he wanted to talk,’ Pryce insisted hotly. ‘You’ve gone and blown that right out of the water!’

‘There weren’t going to be any talks,’ I said bluntly. ‘It was a ploy by Musa to get you here. And you weren’t meant to be going home again, either. Ever.’