The Tears of Dark Water (40 page)

In time, Longfellow opened the door again and let Megan in. She greeted Ismail with a smile and took a seat across from him. “I met with your uncle,” she began and Ismail clenched his jaw, steeling himself against the guilt. “He told me about the Shabaab attack on your school. It makes sense of a lot of things. He also told me the most extraordinary news.” She paused, examining him through empathetic eyes. “Your mother is alive. She’s in a refugee camp in Kenya.”

Ismail was unprepared for the emotions that overcame him, the tears that clouded his eyes, and the trembling that seized his hands. On the night he absconded from the Shabaab, running from the heartbreak of Yusuf’s death, Mahamoud had told him of Khadija’s visit and the advice he had given her to flee to Kenya and call him when she got there. He had never heard from her again. Logic suggested the reason—she never made it out.

“How can that be?” Ismail asked in a near whisper.

“Her family helped her,” Megan replied and passed along the details Farah had shared.

Ismail’s mind raced:
Why didn’t she call Mahamoud when she got to Dadaab? He promised to look for news of us.
In a flash he intuited the answer: Because Mahamoud was Habar Gidir and she was Abgal—rival clans whose twenty-year struggle for control of Mogadishu had turned the once proud city into a bombed-out vestige of civilization. After Adan was assassinated, her family had told her not to trust Mahamoud, and she had gone along with them because she was afraid.

Megan reached out and touched his hand. “Farah gave me her number. I spoke to her this morning. She would love to hear from you.”

Ismail’s humiliation knew no bounds. “You told her I’m here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Megan said. “She loves you.”

He stared at the table, riven by indecision. Words came to him from the past—the charge Khadija had given him when the Shabaab infiltrated Medina and began to threaten Adan: “If anything ever happens, don’t let Yasmin and Yusuf out of your sight. You are the eldest. They are your responsibility.” He had gone to the ends of the earth to honor her request, but he had failed.

“Here is her number,” Megan said, sliding a piece of paper across the table. “I put money in your account. You can call her whenever you want.”

He looked at the number and then pushed the paper away. “Not yet,” he said.

“Why?” Megan asked, her bewilderment plain.

He shook his head, focusing on the wall.
I don’t want to explain.

After a long pause, Megan took the paper back. “You do what you want, but I’m going to meet her. I need to hear her story.”

He said nothing for a long moment, wrestling with his shame. Then he spoke the only words that mattered: “When you see her, please tell her that I’m sorry.”

Megan

Dadaab, Kenya

February 9, 2012

The dusty airstrip was shimmering in the desert heat when Megan stepped off the plane. The blast of hot air hit her like a wave, causing her skin to tingle and her forehead to bead with sweat. It was only nine in the morning, but already the temperature in the Kenyan border town of Dadaab had passed ninety degrees. The contrast with Minneapolis was surreal. Only one week ago she had stood like an icicle in frozen air that seemed to have blown straight from the North Pole.

She followed a motley crew of humanitarian workers across the tarmac to a gravel lot filled with white SUVs emblazoned with the logo of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. They waited there for a flatbed truck to deliver their luggage from the World Food Programme plane that had flown them in from Nairobi. When the truck arrived, Megan grabbed her suitcase and bundled into an SUV with a trio of aid workers—Europeans, by the sound of it—for the ride to the UN compound.

For the first time since she took Ismail’s case, she felt like she was starting to understand—not everything by any means, but some things, the context that gave birth to the tragedy. The threadbare tale the young Somali had told the FBI on the
Truman
was a canard. The Western media had embraced it uncritically because it reinforced their bias against Muslims and paranoia about terrorism. But they had it exactly backwards. Ismail wasn’t a follower of the Shabaab; he was their victim.

She had sensed the fallacy from the beginning. In their initial meeting, she had given him a test, asking him to describe the Parkers. He was taciturn at first, but she urged him on with gentle questions and got him talking. She paid close attention to his mannerisms, cataloguing facial expressions, body language, and inflection, and detected none of the pathologies of a cold-blooded killer. He talked about Daniel and Quentin with respect bordering on affection, recounting Quentin’s facility for Somali words, Daniel’s glossy photo album, and the music Quentin had played over the sailboat’s stereo system using his iPhone. Afterward, she wrote in her notepad:
Paul was right. He’s not who he says he is. But then who is he? And why is he putting on a masquerade?

The enigma was bewitching. As the weeks had passed and the government had divulged more details about the shooting, Megan found herself enthralled by the case, puzzling over it at all hours of the day and night, often at the expense of her paying clients. Ismail had confessed to pulling the trigger, but he refused to tell her why. He had reinforced, not contradicted, his crew’s allegations about the Shabaab, but he made no attempt to behave like a jihadist. There was only one explanation that made any sense: he was playing a high-stakes poker game with an objective she had yet to identify.

She looked out the window as the SUV entered Dadaab—a haphazard warren of dirt roads, decrepit dwellings, and ramshackle shops. Everyone she knew had warned her against making the trip, everyone except Paul, who understood the reasons behind her near-fanatical devotion to her death penalty clients. She had called him before she booked the ticket. He hadn’t admitted it directly, but she knew that the kidnapping of the American aid workers was the reason he left Colorado before the New Year. He had given her two pieces of advice: “Make sure you vet your security team, and watch your back in the camps. If anything doesn’t feel right, get the hell out of there.”

She studied the faces of the locals. Most were ethnic Somalis—the men wearing Western shirts and pants and the women wrapped in colorful
abaya
s and headscarves that left only their faces, hands, and feet exposed. They regarded the UN vehicle with wary eyes. From the research she had done, she wasn’t surprised. In the past century, the Somalis had seen their land carved up by Britain, France, and Italy, parceled out in peace treaties to Ethiopia and Kenya, invaded by the Ethiopians—with American support—and used as a battleground in the proxy war between the United States and al-Qaeda. Even when the international community offered aid, it often came with geopolitical strings attached. It was little wonder the average Somali had a jaded view of the West.

After a few minutes, the SUV arrived at a security gate flanked by fortified concrete walls and manned by stern-faced guards with machine guns. The guards checked their IDs and let them through the gate. When they entered the compound, Megan realized that the walls were only the first of many barriers erected to keep the militants at bay. Inside the gate was a vast network of smaller compounds, each with its own fencing, security gates, and armed sentries.

When they reached the UNHCR compound, a guard escorted Megan and her companions on foot to a final checkpoint—a security post with a metal detector.

At last, she entered the compound and saw a Kenyan man standing in the sun beside a hedge of rainbow-colored bougainvillea. “Ms. Derrick,” he said in accented English. “I am Peter Mburu with External Relations. Welcome to Dadaab.”

“This place is a fortress,” she replied, shaking his hand.

He smiled easily. “It is unfortunate but necessary. There are 400,000 Somalis in our camps. Most are refugees. A few are not. We don’t take chances.” He gestured toward a bungalow with flowering plants all around. “Come. Let’s talk about your mission.”

He led her into an office with a fan blowing at full power. He sat down at a desk and she took a seat across from him. “I looked over your security arrangements. Your fixer, Baraka, is trustworthy, but I don’t know the drivers he hired. Are you sure you want to go to the camp? If you can spare another day or two, perhaps we can arrange for Khadija to meet you here.”

Megan shook her head. “She’s expecting me today. Besides, I have hearings in the U.S. next week. Baraka told me not to worry. He’s going to come along.”

Peter shrugged. “When is he bringing the vehicles?”

“Ten o’clock,” she replied.

Peter checked his watch. “Good. We have enough time for your security briefing.”

When the time came, Megan walked with Peter to the car park and waited for Baraka to arrive. Standing there in the scorching heat, her collar stained with sweat, she felt a tremor of apprehension about the journey she was about to make. The Dagahaley refugee camp was the northernmost outpost in Dadaab, a forty-minute drive from town and only fifty-five miles from the Somali border. According to Baraka—a Kenyan fixer recommended by a journalist friend in Nairobi—they would travel in two light trucks with an armed escort of four police officers. But his assurances only went so far. The drivers and officers were strangers to her, and she was paying them a pittance—by American standards at least. Even if they were honest, she found it hard to believe they would risk their lives for her.

A few minutes later, a pair of Toyota Hilux pickups pulled into the lot with two Somalis behind the wheel and three Kenyans in military fatigues crammed into one of the extra cabs. The lead driver climbed out and smiled at her through crooked teeth.

Megan narrowed her eyes. “Where is Baraka? He said he would be here.”

“No problem, no problem,” the man said. “Baraka busy. I am Omar. I work with him. We go?”

Her eyes flashed. “That’s not good enough.” She took out her iPhone and called the fixer. “Omar is here,” she said when he answered. “Where are you?”

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Baraka said. “Something came up. Omar will take care of you.”

“You promised to come,” she retorted. “You also promised me four officers. I see only three.”

“The other one wasn’t available,” Baraka replied smoothly. “Don’t worry. You will be okay.”

She almost said, “This is my life you’re talking about,” but she knew it was futile. She had been to Africa half a dozen times—to Cape Town and Victoria Falls with Simon and with Paul, years ago, to climb Kilimanjaro. When it came to making plans, nothing ever happened the way it was supposed to. She looked at Omar. His teeth reminded her of Stonehenge. She couldn’t tell if he was grinning at her because he was friendly or nervous. She hesitated a moment longer but never considered backing out. She had learned long ago that fear was a choice she didn’t have to make.
Sometimes you have to live on the edge
, she thought, gripping the strap of her rucksack.
The fall is far, but the view is much better.

“Fine then,” she told Baraka. “If anything happens, it will be your fault.” She ended the call and faced Omar. “I want the other truck to lead and you to stay close behind.”

“No problem, no problem,” said the Somali.

She turned to Peter who was staring at her with concern. “I’ll text you my brother’s phone number,” she said. “If there’s an emergency, give him a call. He’ll know what to do.”

They departed the compound by the side gate and left Dadaab behind. The road to the camps was nothing more than a dirt track into the desert, badly rutted and choked with dust. The view out the windshield reminded Megan of a watercolor painting—the sky washed out by the feverish heat, the earth pale and red like an old scar. She saw a few hardy trees in the distance, their crowns peeking above the horizon, but the rest of the vegetation was low-lying scrub, gray-green against the featureless backdrop of dirt, rock, and termite mounds.

She watched the lead truck as they bounced along, trailing a cloud of dust. Her iPhone was in her hand, the text message to Peter already sent and another prepared, this to Paul in case Omar turned on her. Her senses were on hyper-alert, taking note of the driver’s every movement, every variation in the landscape, every smudge on the horizon that might be the plume of an intercepting vehicle.

As time passed, the gap between the lead truck and theirs slowly widened. She told Omar to speed up, emphasizing her wish with her hands. A few seconds later, he turned the wheel and took a spur road, accelerating over the uneven ground until the shocks of the truck were overwhelmed by the jarring and juddering.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, at the lead truck vanished into the scrub.

“This faster,” he replied, grinning at her.

She clenched her teeth. Baraka had explained the rationale behind the convoy—the lead truck was supposed to sweep the road for explosive devices and scout for an ambush while her truck followed in its path. Omar’s improvisation had put her in danger, but she could do nothing about it. She sat back and forced herself to relax, remembering something Grandpa Chuck had told her before she and Paul climbed Mount McKinley:
No matter what happens, always keep your wits about you. The things that scare us most in life almost never come true.