Djibouti

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THEY WATCHED THE SKIFF heading back to Eyl, a boatload of pirates holding their shoulders. Dara was out on deck now with Helene; Billy stood at the bow watching Xavier sweep broken glass into the sea, talking to him.

Dara saying Billy surprised her; he was so cool the way he pulled it off, putting the rifle in Kwame's hands.

"I never know who he's gonna be," Helene said. "Sometimes he's Sterling Hayden with his precious bodily fluids."

"Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove," Dara said. "I thought it was a terrific picture when I first saw it. It's still good, but you can see everybody playing their parts."

"Ones they don't usually play," Helene said. "They're having fun and don't care if you know it. It's easy to fake things."

"What does he know about Aphrodite?"

"Everything. Like there are only five ports in the United States that take that kind of ship. I looked it up for him. You have to sit out in the water a long time before they let you tie up. Then you have to hook up lines to take the gas off the ship to wherever they store it. Any leaks out and hits the ground you're fucked."

"He's waiting for the gas ship," Dara said, "to get its release, and then what, follow it? Kwame said it's going to the U.S."

"He keeps watching it through his glasses," Helene said, "telling the ship to move out, goddamn it. When Billy wants to do something and has to wait, he drives you crazy."

"Well, you're not going around the world," Dara said, "unless the gas ship does."

"I've been thinking," Helene said, "if we actually follow the ship, are we going home? But I don't want to put any hope in it."

Dara said, "Or think of it blowing up a city in the U.S."

"Right. But I don't know-Billy's always changing his mind."

Dara said, "Where are the ports in the U.S.?"

"Boston. Near there," Helene said. "Two more on the East Coast in Maryland and Georgia, and one in the Gulf, near Lake Charles."

"Louisiana," Dara said, "not far from New Orleans." THEY SAW BILLY TURN to look at them from the bow and Helene said, "He wants to know why you're interested in the gas ship."

"I guess the same reason he is," Dara said, and watched Billy pause to say something to Xavier.

"He wants to see the pictures of the two guys," Helene said, "you took at the party."

"I got them on the ship too," Dara said.

Billy came over to them now and Helene said, "She'll show you the pictures if you want."

Billy said, "The two wogs?"

"I think one's African American," Dara said. "I got him at the party blowing smoke at me."

"I bet anything it's Jama Raisuli," Billy said. "Don't move, I'll be right back," and left them, stepped over to Pegaso and went below.

"He'll get his Arab pictures," Helene said, "so you can pick out the two guys."

"How's it going otherwise?"

"I drink, I smoke."

"And listen," Dara said. "What's he want to do about the gas ship?"

"I told you, he wants to follow it."

"But what's his game? Find out where the ship's going, and then what?"

"I'm not sure," Helene said, "you'll have to ask him."

Billy came back with a stack of 8 x 10 photographs he began to lay out on the roof of the wheelhouse.

"From what I remember of them at the party I'd say it's…this guy," laying down a shot of Jama, white teeth showing in his beard, hair to his shoulders, "and this guy I call Mr. Bones, Qasim al Salah."

"You're right," Dara said, "Jama and Qasim."

"All those wogs look alike," Billy said, "but Qasim's got that bony look you tend to remember. And the scar across his chin, like somebody cut him one time. Always wears those gray kid gloves. This colored guy who turned wog, Jama Raisuli, has a familiar name but I can't seem to place him."

"Sean Connery," Dara said, "played an Arab chieftain named Raisuli in The Wind and the Lion. He rides off with Candy Bergen bitching at him. I have the DVD. Brian Keith plays Teddy Roosevelt."

"Billy has it too," Helene said.

"I do, don't I?" Billy said, looking at Dara now. "You keep on amazing me, a young lady who doesn't use her head just to grow lovely hair. Yeah, Connery playing an Arab with his Scotch accent, he still made us believe he was a Mohammedan. Now this colored guy we think turned Arab on us, saw the movie and borrowed the name Raisuli. Could've been in prison, took up with radical Islamists and their Wahhabi ways. Using violence for a cause turns him on, gives him an excuse to use guns and explosives." Billy paused. "Besides being a hard-ass, does this kid have a sense of humor? Using a name was Sean Connery's in the desert movie? Or did somebody give it to him? They let me board the gas ship I might've found out."

"He isn't on the ship now," Dara said. "Idris and Harry grabbed him, and the other one, Qasim, and right now are on their way to Djibouti. Five SUVs, black ones, with armed guards. They'll be there in two days."

"They don't run into a warlord," Billy said, "with SAMs."

"The chances are," Dara said, "Idris will know the warlord and give him a Toyota."

Billy looked out at the gas ship. "Those two al Qaedas can be replaced in a day, put two other guys aboard. Where's the Aphrodite suppose to be heading? I'd like to know that."

"A port in the U.S.," Dara said.

"Maybe," Billy said, staring at the gas ship. "Run into it and those five tanks blow up. The ship's so obviously a bomb it must be a decoy. Bin Laden knows we'll see it that way. So he does use the ship as a bomb. Well, it is or it isn't. The only way to find out is keep it in sight. Trail her till I have to call the navy or sink her myself."

Dara said, "You're not worried about the two al Qaedas?"

"If Harry and Idris have them, they're looking to get that Rewards for Justice handout. Only State will hem and haw, want proof of who they've got. The Gold Dust Twins will lose what patience they started with and refuse to give 'em up till they see some green. State in the meantime's keeping an eye on the Twins. They have local police poking through this rat's nest looking for the two Qaedas. After a while the Twins say fuck it, take the two out in the desert and shoot them."

Dara said, "If the State Department takes too long, the Twins lose patience, why wouldn't they let the Qaeda guys go?"

"Because, my dear, for the rest of their lives Jama and Qasim would be gunning for them. The Twins know that."

Xavier said, "Jama and Qasim might even get away, escape from the Twins."

"What do we care?" Billy said. "They won't be coming after us. They're unemployed Mohammedan terrorists. If State wants them, they'll go after them. But I can tell you right now, whatever happens, the Twins won't make a dime on this deal. Even if State agrees to question the two al Qaedas and they find out, Jesus Christ, these guys are terrorists, I can't imagine them paying a reward."

"What if I help Idris and Harry?" Dara said. "I identify Jama and Qasim, tell State what I know about them."

"They'll believe you," Billy said, "before they make a deal with these two Mohammedans. That is, once they look you up, see you haven't been arrested for demonstrating left-wing causes." Billy said, "Have you?"

"What Dara's sayin," Xavier said, "she wants to head off another 9/11."

"I do too," Billy said, "the reason I'm gonna tail the gas ship. Listen, the feds could refuse to take it seriously because the Twins piss them off. Remember, we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one-track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third-world country. So they sit on this till the Twins go away. If they're lucky they pick up the Mohammedans."

Billy thought of something else.

"Or what if the Twins we find out are working for bin Laden? They fake the Rewards program out of six mil and it's used to buy rusted-out freighters they load with explosives. Greek commandos stopped a ship that had seven hundred tons of TNT aboard, and eight thousand detonators."

Billy stopped again.

"The question is, are Jama and Qasim willing to spend the rest of their lives, twenty-three hours a day, in a federal prison cell? Qasim al Salah's a live wire-I don't know about Jama-but Qasim's been setting off explosions since the early eighties. Who's watching him, Somali pirates? I'll bet he ducks out."

"Before that happens," Dara said, "I'll get the Twins in to see the Diplomatic Security people."

Billy said, "I'll bet you ten bucks you don't."