contact. Otherwise there’s no point in keeping them.’
I nodded, and threw down some more Danish. ‘You’re sure they’re not anywhere in that box of tricks?’
‘Just a sec. Maybe I can work out which group took them. You said it was towards the end of last week?’
He logged onto a website, and I watched him enter his password. The page opened up on the Anti-piracy Environment Awareness Chart. It wasn’t a chart at all, more a collection of big break-out boxes, with Google maps, pie charts and bar graphs. He expanded the page to show me something.
‘Depending on the time of year, some areas are more swamped with pirate activity than others. These people are fishermen. They know the winds and tides. They know the sea. They know when they can go out there safely. They know when they can’t — well, the successful ones do. Look.’ He pointed at the screen. The Monthly Piracy Risk showed a satellite picture for each month of the year, and then dots where the attacks had taken place.
‘See the difference between March and June?’
The Gulf of Aden in June had just a few dots on it, and the same past the Horn of Africa and out into the Indian Ocean. But March was a different story. The area was almost black with dots, as was the whole area east, north and south.
‘It’s because of the north-eastern monsoon. That comes down from India and Arabia, normally about December to March. The swell is only about two or three metres, so those small craft can use the wind to negotiate it, get clear of the coast and go out there looking for a mother-ship. If they strike lucky, they might hit what they want to hijack straight away.
‘But June and October are when the south-west monsoon comes in. We’re talking thirty-knot winds and swells of ten metres. That’s the same size as the Japanese tsunami, Nick. They haven’t a hope of making it out to sea without capsizing.’
‘So piracy is seasonal?’
‘Yes. And because we can predict winds and tides, we can have a good idea of where and when they’re going to strike.’
I looked at the pictures. The yellow dots on the Google Earth map showed the 44 per cent of ships that had been approached. The green ones showed that only 18 per cent of those were actually attacked. They must have decided the others were too big or too fast, or maybe painted grey, with big guns. A bar chart showed activity by days of the week. I pointed to Friday and Saturday. ‘Hardly anything happening there. These lads like their weekends, like everyone else.’
He chuckled politely. ‘The British Navy takes the lead on anti-piracy at the moment. They use this to try and predict where the strikes might happen, so they can concentrate their resources. As I said, there’s a lot of sea out there. If they don’t get out a mayday, nobody knows what’s happening.
‘But what we do is put on an overlay that shows the information we’re gaining from dealing with the clans and the kidnappers, to see which groups are active, who’s done the lifting. So let’s have a look at what’s been going on around the Seychelles.’
Every time there was a dot, there was now an overlay and a number between 1 and 19 that represented different groups. The numbers were random in all the areas for March. It looked like a free-for-all.
‘Sorry, Nick. Sometimes the clans designate areas for their own. But it’s open season out there in March. Prime time. If only the yacht crew had had access to information like this, they’d have known where to steer clear of. It’s stupid going into those areas at the best of times. What was going on?’
‘I haven’t got a clue.’ I sat back in the chair. He could see the worry on my face.
‘Someone, somewhere, will know. If they’re alive, the Somalis will have contacted somebody.’ He pursed his lips. ‘You know these three, don’t you?’
‘Yeah. One’s a guy who used to be in B Squadron. The other is the widow of a dead mate. The child’s from her new marriage.’
I got to my feet and picked up my black parka. I needn’t have brought it with me. It was a lot warmer in London than where I’d come from.
‘Tell you what, mate, as soon as this is over, and Anna’s back, why not come over for a week?’
He stood up, and we shook hands again. ‘Any help you need, Nick, you know where I am.’
‘One more thing. Al-Shabab — they still active?’
He nodded. ‘Don’t even think about it. Go find your contact.’
I sat back down and couldn’t do anything
Al-Shabab, the hard-line Islamist movement, was Somalia’s Taliban, even down to the suicide bombing and severed heads. They’d been bolstered by experienced fighters from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now controlled most of the southern part of the country. If those fuckers discovered my three were high value, they’d be coming to lift them from the clans. Tracy, Stefan and BB would die in captivity, or be executed, because … Well, just because.
Jules was looking for something. ‘The Gents. You know where?’
‘Yes, mate.’ I pointed. ‘Let me have a look at that chart again, will you?’
He got it online and headed left of the counter.
4
The Green Dragon on Broad Street felt like it had been around as long as Hereford had been. It was the kind of ye olde tourist hotel where the Rotary Club met every Friday and Saga coach tours stopped for scones and tea.
The TV wasn’t tuned in to RT, so I sat on the big flowery eiderdown and tapped Anna’s number on the iPhone screen instead. It was a lot earlier than I normally called her, but I was going to have a pretty full day. I needed to catch up with Crazy Dave and then trawl the bars for Jan.
I’d already tried the last address I had for her, a flat in a three-storey pebble-dashed housing association joint on the Ross Road at the edge of town. She’d taken it over from her mum years ago. It was almost opposite where the old Regiment camp used to be. In her early husband-hunting years, she must have thought it gave her pole position. There’d been no one at home, and I wasn’t about to start knocking on doors to find out. Not yet, anyway. It was Friday. Unless she’d changed the habit of a lifetime, she’d be out on the town sooner or later.
The phone only rang a couple of times before she picked up.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Better than yesterday. Where are you?’ She was inside this time. I could hear Arabic TV in the background and no gunfire.
‘Back in the UK, in Hereford. You OK to talk?’
‘You took the job?’
‘Maybe.’ I explained. ‘I’m banking on BB keeping them alive long enough for me to find out where they are. Any luck with Frank?’
‘All I can tell you is that he was originally called Vepkhiat Avdgiridze. He’s not Ukrainian. He’s Georgian, from South Ossetia. It’s been fighting for independence for decades.’
‘I know. I was there a year or two before Putin went in.’
North Ossetia was part of Russia, but South Ossetia had always been disputed territory. Most South Ossetians carried Russian passports and wanted to break away from Tbilisi. They had declared it a republic in 1990 and the Georgian government had sent in tanks. A series of wars followed, until the Russians finally invaded ‘to protect their citizens’ in 2008. Well, that was one of the versions. Since then, it had been recognized as an independent republic by Venezuela and a handful of other countries that sucked up to Moscow, but the Georgian government still saw it as occupied territory.
‘Where does Frank fit in?’
‘He finances the South Ossetian independence movement. He helps them attack Tbilisi in any way they can.
