The Night Ferry

book. I should be frightened. Instead I feel a curious calmness. My only phone call has been to home—checking to make sure that Samira made it safely.

The car pulls off the road into a driveway and stops in a rear courtyard.

I step out and see the driver’s face for the first time across the vehicle’s glistening roof. It’s not Brendan Pearl. I didn’t expect it to be. Shawcroft isn’t foolish enough to be seen with a known killer.

A woman dressed in a French peasant skirt and oversize sweater appears at Shawcroft’s side. Her hair is pinned back so tightly it raises her eyebrows.

“This is Delia,” he says. “She runs one of my charities.”

I shake a smooth dry hand.

Delia leads us through double doors and up a narrow staircase. There are posters on the walls with confronting images of hunger and neglect. Among them is a photograph of an African child with a distended stomach and begging bowl eyes. In the bottom corner there is a logo, a clock with letters instead of numbers spelling out O.R.P.H.A.N.W.A.T.C.H.!

Reaching behind me, I slide the gun into its holster.

We arrive at an office with desks and filing cabinets. A computer screen, dark and asleep, is silhouetted against the window. Shawcroft turns to Delia: “Is it open?”

She nods.

I follow him into a second room, which is fitted out as a small home theater with a screen and a projector. There are more posters on the walls, along with newspaper clippings, some dog-eared, torn or frayed at the edges. A small girl in a dirty white dress peers at the camera; a young boy with his arms folded eyes me defiantly. There are other images, dozens of them, papering the walls beneath display lights that have turned them into tragic works of art.

“These are the ones we could save,” he says, his pale priestly hands clasped before him.

The wall panels are concertinaed. He expands them, revealing yet more photographs.

“Remember the orphans from the Asian tsunami? Nobody knows their true number but some estimates put it at 20,000. Homeless. Destitute. Traumatized. Families were queuing up to adopt them; governments were besieged with offers; but almost every one of them was refused.”

His gaze slides over me. “Shall I tell you what happened to the tsunami orphans? In Sri Lanka the Tamil Tigers recruited them as soldiers, boys as young as seven. In India greedy relatives fought over the children because of the relief money being offered by the government and abandoned them once the money was paid.

“In Indonesia the authorities refused adoption to any couple who weren’t Muslim. Troops dragged 300 orphans from a rescue flight because it was organized by a Christian charity. They were left with nowhere to go and nothing to eat. Even countries like Thailand and India that allow foreign adoptions suddenly closed their borders— spooked by unconfirmed stories of orphans being trafficked out of the country by gangs of pedophiles. It was ridiculous. If someone robs a bank you don’t shut down the international banking system. You catch the robber. You prosecute them. Unfortunately, each time a child is trafficked they want to shut down the international adoption system, making things worse for millions of orphans.

“People don’t understand the sheer scale of this problem. Two million children are forced into prostitution every year—a million of them in Asia. And more children are orphaned every week in Africa than were orphaned by the Asian tsunami. There are thirteen million in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

“The so-called experts say children shouldn’t be treated as commodities. Why not? Isn’t it better to be treated as a commodity than to be treated like a dog? Hungry. Cold. Living in squalor. Sold into slavery. Raped. They say it shouldn’t be about money. What else is it going to be about? How else are we going to save them?”

“You think the end justifies the means.”

“I think it should be a factor.”

“You can’t treat people like a resource.”

“Of course I can. Economists do it all the time. I’m a pragmatist.”

“You’re a monster.”

“At least I give a damn. The world needs people like me. Realists. Men of action. What do you do? Sponsor a child in Burundi or pledge to Comic Relief. You try to save one, while ten thousand others starve.”

“And what’s the alternative?”

“Sacrifice one and save ten thousand.”

“Who chooses?”

“Pardon?”

“Who chooses the one you’re going to sacrifice?”

“I choose. I don’t ask others to do it for me.”

I hate him then. For all his dark charm and elegant intensity, Shawcroft is a bully and a zealot. I prefer Brendan Pearl’s motives. At least he doesn’t try to justify his killings.

“What happens if the odds change?” I ask. “Would you sacrifice five lives to save five hundred? What about ten lives to save eleven?”

“Let’s ask the people, shall we?” he replies sarcastically. “I get eleven votes. You only get ten. I win.”

Fleetingly, unnervingly, I understand what he’s saying but cannot accept a world that is so brutally black and white. Murder, rape and torture are the apparatus of terrorists, not of civilized societies. If we become like them, what hope do we have?

Shawcroft thinks he’s a moral man, a charitable man, a saintly man, but he’s not. He’s been corrupted. He has become part of the problem instead of the solution—trafficking women, selling babies, exploiting the vulnerable.

“Nothing gives you the right to choose,” I tell him.

“I accepted the role.”

“You think you’re God!”

“Yes. And do you know why? Because someone has to be. Bleeding hearts like you only pay lip service to the poor and destitute. You wear colored bands on your wrists and claim that you want to make poverty history. How?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Yes it is.”

“Where are the twins?”

“Being loved.”

“Where?”

“Where they belong.”

The pistol is resting against the small of my back, warm as blood. My fingers close around it. In a single motion I swing it toward him, pressing the muzzle against his forehead.

I expect to see fear. Instead he blinks at me sadly. “This is like a war, Alisha. I know we use that term too readily, but sometimes it is justified and some wars are just. The war on poverty. The war on hunger. Even pacifists cannot be opposed to wars such as these. Innocent people get hurt in conflict. Your friend was a casualty.”

“You sacrificed her.”

“To protect others.”

“Yourself.”

My finger tightens on the trigger. Another half pound of pressure and it’s over. He is watching me along the barrel—still not frightened. For a brief moment I think he’s prepared to die, having said his piece and made his peace.

He doesn’t close his eyes. He knows I can’t do it. Without him I might never find the twins.

8

A large portrait above the fireplace shows a patrician man in legal robes with a horsehair wig that looks surprisingly like a shih tzu resting on his forearm. He gazes sternly down at a polished table that is surrounded by