work. The warlords, the clan leaders, bunged them in a couple of boats and sent them out to mug whatever they found coming from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden. As one of the choke-points for world shipping, it offered easy pickings.
Piracy grew into an industry. As Rudy had discovered, gangs now roved across thousands of square miles, as far east as the Seychelles, south to Tanzania, and north to the Arabian Sea and Oman. The turf was divided up. The waters of the Gulf of Aden might as well be the streets of Mogadishu.
A typical cell of a dozen or so men goes out into the open sea in two or three skiffs, small, cockroach- infested wood or fibreglass fishing boats, for three or four weeks at a time, taking only a couple of outboards. All other available space is filled with grappling irons, ladders, knives, assault rifles, RPGs and
There’s nothing to cook with. They catch fish, which they eat raw. The plan is always to find and take over a larger vessel, then live on it and use it as a mother-ship. Which was what must have happened with the skiffs that captured the
Why hadn’t they taken the crew as well? They were white, but maybe they were seen as fellow workers of the sea. Somali pirates had some rules. They didn’t attack all shipping. They left the Indian vessels that brought expensive goodies and food from the east, mainly because the clan warlords liked to buy the stuff with the proceeds of their crimes. If the supply dried up, the warlords wouldn’t be best pleased.
But the fact was, these pirates attacked anything of value that floated: oil tankers, freighters, cruise ships, private yachts, they’d have a go at anything. I found it quite funny that a dozen Somali fishermen could fuck global shipping magnates about, holding them, their crews and world trade hostage. I’d have laughed into my brew if it hadn’t been for Tracy and the boy.
Back on dry land, Somalia was still in shit state. The Americans had tried to intervene in 1993 when the warlords were hijacking food aid. They’d got hammered. Nobody had tried since. The clans were now at war with each other, and Islamic militants had gatecrashed the party for a slice of the action. There was no functioning government, or even a judicial system, just chaos and disorder. Small wonder a job as a pirate seemed such a fantastic opportunity to the average Somali. I’d have been having a go at it if I was up Shit Creek.
The economic impact of piracy was actually quite small as things stood, compared with the volume of international trade. Less than one per cent of the vessels in the Gulf of Aden had been approached by pirates, let alone attacked, and most of those were only shipping garden gnomes from China. But the statistics didn’t tell the full horror of what awaited victims like Tracy and Stefan.
And in the bigger picture, the nightmare scenario for Britain was that if one of the two liquid-gas ships we needed to dock here every day got lifted, we’d lose a major part of the energy supply that kept our power stations humming. If baby incubators couldn’t function and the lights went out, the government might find that uprisings weren’t confined to the Middle East.
Even the front-line pirates got fucked over. They received less than 30 per cent of the take. The bulk of the proceeds had to be handed over to the clan warlords, and those who had to be paid for the hostages’ food and board. There were also investors. Some were Somalis. Buying shares in piracy was better than going to sea. Easier money and conditions. But some were from international criminal syndicates based in the Gulf States, with links into Europe and London.
In fact, the whole thing was a fuck-up, with everyone taking a cut some way or another. There were a lot of noses in the piracy trough.
3
I’d just started on my third Danish when Julian arrived, immaculate as ever. Today he was in a black Crombie coat over a white shirt and tie. I pointed down at the extra mug to tell him that he didn’t have to go and line up, and the Danishes that were left were his. Not that he was going to eat any. They were far too unhealthy.
Jules had done really well for himself since resigning from MI5 last year. He’d gone through his moral car- wash, resigned, and come out the other side without turning his back on the good guys. He was now in the K&R business, negotiating ransoms for insurance syndicates, and trying to make sure that no one got kidnapped in the first place.
I stood up and received a soft palm and a warm smile.
‘Nick …’ He still sounded guarded. ‘How are you?’
‘Not bad, mate. Not bad.’
He took off his coat to reveal a black suit and double-cuffed shirt with simple silver stud cufflinks. He sorted his Crombie out over the back of his chair, making sure it wasn’t dangling in the crumbs on the floor.
‘What’s been happening, Nick?’
The frothing machines hissed behind us as people ordered their double skinny this, that and the other.
‘Same old, same old. But I might be doing a K&R job. I need you to see if they’ve been pinged or not.’
‘How many?’
‘Only three.’
I explained the who, what and where.
‘So the attack was five days ago?’
‘I don’t even know if they’re still alive.’
He fished into a big pocket that looked like it had been specially sewn into his coat, pulled out an iPad and sparked it up.
‘How are things in the K&R world?’
His fingers played about on the screen. ‘Business is good. I’ve stopped working for a percentage of the premium saved. I can normally get them out in about three months, so it’s better just to take a set three grand a day.’
‘In that case, you can pay for these.’ I offered him the plate of Danishes but he shook his head. I dunked one in my coffee.
‘Still busy in South America, Central America, Mexico. Africa is still good, and of course Somalia’s top trumps.’ He finished tapping away. ‘Not a thing, Nick. They don’t show up anywhere.’ He looked up. ‘Do you know who’s holding them? If they’re with a clan? Has anyone been approached about a deal?’
‘Nothing. The BG should be keeping their real identities quiet.’
‘That’s good. But somebody somewhere must have been approached.’
He turned the iPad so both of us could see the readout. ‘As far as we know, twenty-nine vessels held and six hundred and eighty-one hostages.’
The list was divided into countries, age groups and occupations. ‘There’s a lot of sea out there. Maybe they didn’t make it back to the coast.’
That got me worried. ‘Do you think they’ll have been zapped?’
‘Unlikely. They’re merchandise. But that’s not to say the BG didn’t put up a fight and the three of them were killed — or they may have sunk. Those fishing skiffs they use aren’t exactly on the Lloyd’s Register.’
‘What about the four Americans?’
‘That was a total mess. The Somalis went to negotiate with the US Navy. The US Navy didn’t believe them. They held them instead. Their friends on the captured boat thought they were being stitched up, so they killed the Americans.
‘In general, if they’ve got them, they still won’t kill them. Only when they stop being worth money do you have to get worried. If they don’t have outside investors, they’d have to take a loan from their clan warlord to keep and feed the hostages. They might be using your three to pay off debts they owe the clan. Who knows? It’s complicated out there.
‘But if they are alive, even if they’ve been sold on, someone would start to negotiate, someone would make
