He leant in towards me, the eyes now able to fix on mine. ‘Stefan will be part of my family. My wife’s name is Lyubova. It means “love”. She has much of it. She has had to, Nick. I have not always been a good husband. Some of the women, Lyubova has known about — but she has always loved me.’
He pointed a finger at me. ‘She knows nothing of Stefan. But she will, very soon. I will tell her everything. I believe she will embrace my son as her own. I hope she will forgive me. I hope that I may become the husband she has always deserved. So maybe something good has already come out of this.’ He sat back. ‘But enough, Nick. What about you — what do you want? What do you need?’
I sat back too, taking the last of the water down my throat. ‘I think Joe the pilot needs a new aircraft. He’s got more holes in it than my socks.’
Frank looked down and saw the state of my feet. He laughed.
He put his hands up. ‘Of course, that will all be taken care of. But you, Nick — what do you want more than anything in the world?’
That was an easy question to answer.
‘Frank, I want a lift to Benghazi.’
His eyes widened. He laughed again, a deep, warm, sonorous laugh. This was the real Frank, and I liked him.
PART EIGHT
1
The muslim without Borders convoy of six white Mercedes Sprinter vans passed through yet another Free Benghazi checkpoint on the outskirts of the war-scarred city. With all the 12.7-mounted technicals and AKs and RPGs, it could almost have been Mogadishu — except that these Africans were Arabs.
After he’d laughed himself out, Frank had ordered the G6 to fly to Sallun, the Egyptian border-crossing. Near the Mediterranean, it was about ninety miles from Tobruk. The small airport that greeted me there looked exactly like Camp Hope in Aceh Province six years ago. The only difference was that transport planes could land a lot closer.
Aircraft disgorged humanitarian supplies 24/7. Lots of people ran around looking very busy in khaki waistcoats and cargoes with a huge number of pockets full of very important stuff. The white Toyota 4?4s had already turned up with their big antennas and NGO and MONGO stickers.
The G6 looked totally out of place as it taxied to a standstill. Even the happy-clappy crowd who’d just arrived to convert the Libyans and Egyptians to Christianity stopped and stared, as if Obama had turned up to take a personal look. The locals just watched suspiciously. They needed to make sure it hadn’t come to help Gaddafi’s family do a runner.
When I emerged in a pair of Frank’s centre-creased jeans and a green and yellow checked shirt they all looked very let down. Frank knew how to make a billion or ten. He also knew how to dress like a knob.
Getting into Libya was a piece of piss, mainly because nobody wanted to. There were no officials on the Libyan side of the crossing. It was getting out that would be the problem: the Egyptian side was heavily policed. Sub-Saharan migrant workers waited for days in makeshift camps to do so, drinking bottled water and eating bread doled out by the agencies. Every one of them carried at least one large market bag with that tight tartan weave, tied up with string. Some even had TVs wrapped in cardboard. These lads had worked hard to buy that shit, so it was coming with them.
And even when they finally got across, it was only to step into yet another camp. Where would you go? There was fuck-all for miles in any direction apart from some Roman wells and a Second World War Commonwealth cemetery.
At least those who’d made it this far were getting fed until somebody, somewhere, somehow, got them home. It wasn’t like the Egyptians didn’t have problems of their own. They’d just had their own Arab Spring and were still trying to sort their shit out.
The Bangladeshis faced the worst hardships. There were thousands of them, and they were thousands of miles from home.
Militias controlled the main drag along the coast, and the eastern part of the country — or so rumour had it. Whatever, they looked ecstatic to see our convoy coming through. They knew we were on our way to help their brothers.
Wahid Kandawalla, the young Pakistani guy in command of the line of vehicles, was negotiating the war zone for the fifth time in ten days, bringing supplies to the hospital. His fresh face full of goodwill, he sat in the right-hand seat, still trying to grow his beard like a good Muslim.
He glanced into the rear of the van from time to time to check I was OK. I was. I’d made myself reasonably comfortable, lying on the boxes of dressings and surgical sterilization kits. I was also completely fucked. The rocking of the vehicle, the darkness and the heat had me asleep in no time at all.
And now I was just lying there relaxing. I had no control over what was happening. I couldn’t do anything about it. So: whenever there’s a lull in the battle, get your head down. You never know the next time you’re going to get the chance to sleep.
I’d thrown Awaale’s mobile away at Sallun. I wasn’t fucking him off: it was just that these ‘meet up again’ things never really work. Events had brought us together for a moment, but that was all it had been. Besides, Awaale wasn’t going back to Minneapolis for a while. He’d be too busy taking over the clan, brassing up Lucky Justice, and standing his ground against AS fighters coming from the south. That was if he stayed alive long enough. Piracy was a dangerous business on both sides of the deal.
Everything Kandy had in the way of information about what was happening on the ground was a product of the rumour mill. Rumour had it that defecting Gaddafi troops had ransacked Benghazi’s main police barracks, looting tons of weapons and ammunition. That meant the local militia had been rearmed and resupplied and could take on anything Gaddafi threw at them from the west.
There were rumours, too, that Turkey would soon be sending its navy to defend the route between Benghazi port and Crete, and their troops to take over the airport to secure humanitarian sea and air corridors.
Kandy did have one fact. Turkey already had five warships and one submarine off the coast. They were stopping Gaddafi’s navy laying mines to deny the port.
Kandy received a fresh batch of rumours at every checkpoint. The militias had just been told that the French and British fast jets had mounted raids on the oil town on Ajdabiya. Gaddafi’s forces had been hammered. The town had been retaken. Further west, however, the fighting went on.
Another low-flying rumour was that Gaddafi had offered $100,000 to anyone willing to fight for him, payable on victory. That rumour was met with the militia head-shed telling all the rebels that if they defected they would be classed as traitors and shot as soon as hostilities were over. That was the problem with this type of war. It was fast-moving, and communications were poor. There was still no signal on my iPhone, and no one really knew what the fuck was going on.
2
The dark streets of Free Benghazi were littered with the hulks of tanks that had been totalled by French and British fast jets. They were already covered with graffiti. A lot of it was in English, for external consumption. One message read:
