Part 18 (1/2)

”There,” Mustafa said, nodding ahead to the lights that were twinkling against the darkness of the sea. ”Sabratah.”

Chapter Thirty-Two.

SABRATAH WAS A SMALL TOWN that had been founded two thousand years earlier as a trading post, serving as a port for products that had been transported north from the African hinterland. It had been an important Roman outpost, and Milton saw traces of the architecture from the period as they pa.s.sed through the outskirts.

”You like history?” Mustafa said. Milton didn't answer, but Mustafa-who was obviously talking because he was nervous-continued anyway. ”There is a Roman theatre here. Very impressive. Villas and temples, too. Tourists used to come here to see them. No one comes now. It is not safe.”

They drove down to the seafront. As they drew closer, Milton started to see signs of activity. Men gathered on street corners, shopkeepers began their preparations for the day, stallholders in the marketplace wheeled their carts into place.

Mustafa turned off the road and parked in a vacant lot that overlooked the harbour.

Milton looked out through the windscreen. There were boats docked below, but it was the busy activity around one of the vessels that told of the new direction that its entrepreneurial residents had taken. One of the boats was the centre of a busy scrum of activity. It was at the end of a long jetty, a mooring line tethered to a concrete bollard. It didn't look particularly impressive. It was made of wood, perhaps fifteen metres from bow to stern, with a structure in the middle. Men were aboard it, checking the equipment. One man had removed the inspection hatch and was examining the engine. Other men were on the dock, guarding the way ahead. They were armed with automatic rifles.

Mustafa switched off the engine and sat quietly for a moment.

”Are you sure you want to do this?”

”What do we need to do?” Milton said.

”There will be a bus. Pa.s.sengers are kept in houses nearby overnight. They will be brought to the boat and then loaded onto it.”

”Do I need anything? A ticket?”

”There are no tickets. This is not like taking a train. You just need to be in the group when they are put on the boat.”

”How do we do that?”

”I have spoken to one of the guards. I have given him half of the money you gave me. We will join the group with him.”

”And then?”

”He will try to help you, but you will be on your own.”

”That's not very rea.s.suring.” Milton turned and fixed Mustafa in his dead-eyed gaze. ”You said you could get me aboard.”

Mustafa put up his hands in supplication. ”It is the best I can do. Do you have more money?”

”Some,” Milton said.

”If anyone stops you, offer them money. Fifty dollars. No more. It will make them forget any questions that they might have.”

”That'll be enough?”

”If you give them more, they will think you are rich. Then they will try to take more. No-give them fifty and they will let you go.”

”What about Ali?”

Mustafa frowned with anxiety. ”If he is there, try not to let him see your face.” He took a deep breath and opened the door. ”Come on,” he said. ”We must get to the boat. It leaves soon.”

A SET of steep stone steps descended the hill down to the harbour. Mustafa led the way with Milton close behind. They were halfway to the bottom when a bus rumbled into view, pa.s.sing around a bend in the cliff. Mustafa stopped and pointed, but Milton had already seen it. The bus was moving slowly, the engine backfiring as it struggled on. It was too far away for Milton to make out very much in the way of detail, but he could see that every spare seat must have been taken together with the s.p.a.ces in the aisle. One man, holding an AK-47 aloft, was stood on the sill of the door, hanging on with one hand. The bus slowed as it reached the harbour and the horn sounded.

A second bus appeared around the bend in the cliff, and then a third. They were both as full as the first.

”We must hurry,” Mustafa said.

They set off again, descending the steps a little more quickly.

The second and third buses pulled up next to the first. Men with AKs gathered in front of the vehicles, conversing with one another as the pa.s.sengers were kept inside. Milton could see the men and women more clearly now. He saw dozens of black faces looking out of the windows. As they drew nearer, he started to pick out the faces of children, and then babies in the arms of their mothers.

The men appeared to reach a decision and, with a curt shout, the doors of the buses were opened. The pa.s.sengers were ordered to disembark, directed into the s.p.a.ce that had been formed between the vehicles.

Milton noticed Mustafa was heading towards one of the guards. The man was at the edge of the group, away from his colleagues, marshalling the least-observed edge of the fast-growing crowd. Mustafa gave a low whistle and the guard turned in their direction. The two men exchanged discreet nods of acknowledgement.

”Now,” Mustafa said.

Milton overtook Mustafa and hurried to the guard. The man had a scar from his eyebrow down to the corner of his mouth in the shape of a sickle, the edges of the wound twisting as he chewed a wad of gum. He sneered at Milton, c.o.c.king an eyebrow, and then took a half turn to face the throng of pa.s.sengers. That was Milton's invitation to join the crowd. Without a word, he stepped past the guard, not looking at him as he pa.s.sed.

He pressed into the crowd. There must have been two hundred of them there, and the third bus had not yet started to empty out. The crowd was dense, and Milton was able to hide in the middle of it. He glanced around and saw the faces of the men and women who were waiting to board the boat. There was no talk, just the shuffling of feet and the occasional barked instruction from the guards. Milton made his way to the centre of the crowd. There were some fairer-skinned pa.s.sengers, the lighter tans and browns of those from north Africa, but most of the others were black, and none of them was as white as he was.

One of the guards raised his voice and barked out an order: ”Get on boat!” The man spoke in broken English. There were a lot of different nationalities here; perhaps English was the most commonly understood.

Milton was jostled by the people behind him as the crowd was shepherded away from the buses to the concrete promenade that encircled the harbour. The guards followed them, penning them in tightly and then funnelling them onto the wooden jetty. The sound of their feet changed: the slap of shoes on concrete was joined by the shuffle of shoes across wood. The narrowing of the jetty was a bottleneck that slowed their onward progress, but the guards kept them moving.

There were two guards at the end of the jetty, adjacent to the middle of the boat. They, too, had AK-47s and the pa.s.sengers were embarking between them.

They were going to get a good look at Milton's white face.

He reached into his jacket pocket for his money, felt for the edge of a note, and pulled it away from the others.

One of the guards was distracted as a man struggled to help his heavily pregnant partner cross the gap between the jetty and the boat and, for a moment, Milton thought he was going to get across without interrogation. But as he waited behind a man with two young boys, the other guard glanced across at him and then performed a quick double take.

”You,” he said. ”Come here.”

The man reached into the queue, grabbed Milton by the elbow and pulled him to the other side of the jetty. Milton looked at him. He was no more than a boy, barely out of his teens. The AK looked big in his hands. Milton would have been able to disarm him in an instant; he could have taken the gun away from him and tossed him into the water, but that would get him nowhere. There were too many guards. He was trapped on the jetty, with nowhere to go but the sea below.

He would have to play this out as best he could.