Djibouti Read online

  They stepped aboard, moved from the deck to the wheelhouse to go below, from the galley to the head and a double mattress wedged into the bow. Behind her Xavier said, “That’s yours. I got a nine-foot hammock gonna hang from the foremast to the wheelhouse, while you sweatin below.”

  “Or I put the mattress under the hammock and stare at your butt till I fall asleep.”

  “You can take the hammock you want,” Xavier said.

  “We’ll work it out,” Dara said. “We’ve got a fridge, a shower…kind of a bunk in the galley. We get aboard we’ll find places that suit us. How much wine did you get?”

  “Five cases of red we don’t have to chill.”

  “What if we have company?”

  “Muslims don’t drink, but I’ll get us another case.”

  “Store them in the head, we’ll look like that German U-boat, Das Boot. This one have a name?”

  “Buster.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “They call it Buster 30, goin by its length, but chubby. The tank’s topped off. Saab marine diesel below, but only fifty-six horsepower at twenty-eight hundred rpms, and that’s it. We gonna be out cruisin the gulf at six knots. The boat manager called this a power cruiser.”

  “How much?”

  “Man said he wanted two thousand a week, eight for the month. I showed him your piece with the write-ups and pictures. This a Frenchman leases us the boat. I tell him ordinarily the transportation is loaned to us no charge, since we show his company name in the film. I tell him he can even be standin by the sign says DJIBOUTI MARINE DESIGNS—LUXURY ON THE WATER. I tell the man, ‘But you not the Salvation Army, you in business, so I’m payin you,’ and put a wad of forty hundred-dollar bills in his hand. Now he’s holdin the money, can feel it. He says, ‘All right.’ Says, ‘Okay. You come back here in four weeks.’”

  Dara said, “I have to put him in the film?”

  “The man’s savin you four grand. Course you put him in the film.”

  She paused, in the galley again. “Who cooks?”

  “I take the helm and keep track of where we at, you do the fish.”

  “Are we forgetting anything?”

  “The food serviceman’s seein about gettin me a gun.”

  Dara stared at him, not saying a word.

  It got Xavier to smile. “I do whatever you tell me. Still, situations can rise up you never been in before. We out there among the bad boys with AKs and weapons fire rockets. They drinkin, chewin khat, so they feelin good they go hijack a ship. I said to one of ’em I’m talkin to in a club last night, ‘You always high you out to sea?’ The man say, ‘If we not drunk, what are we doin in a skiff and think we can seize an oil tanker?’ They on the sauce gettin millions for their ransom notes. It’s funny long as they don’t have eyes for Buster.”

  Xavier would drop Dara off at the Kempinski and come back to see the stores put aboard. Get Buster loaded, ready to leave in the morning, 0600. This time, driving past the sailboat, there was no sign of anyone aboard.

  “Mercedes came and picked ’em up,” Xavier said. “You didn’t see it? Billy Wynn has a man drives ’em around, he don’t have to mess with traffic. He has a driver, you have me, and a suite at the hotel, price of a deluxe room, ’cause you a famous American filmmaker.”

  “Do I have to shoot the hotel?”

  “It won’t hurt you. Use Billy you need a model. I bet a dollar he’s waitin for you.”

  “With his girlfriend?”

  “I can’t speak for Helene, but I know he’s dyin to meet you. I told him what we up to.”

  AT THE DESK SHE said, “Dara Barr. I have a reservation,” and turned to look at the Kempinski Palace’s five-star Arabian lobby, the fountain outside the entrance, while the desk clerk pressed keys and stared at the screen. Dara told him to look for it under Xavier LeBo, and the Somali’s face brightened.

  “Yes, of course, Mr. LeBo. You must be his companion.”

  “I’m his boss,” Dara said. “We don’t bunk together.” She was given the card to open the door and was told her luggage would follow immediately.

  The room was nice, sort of French, a settee and a couple of chairs with arms, a carafe of what looked like sherry on the glass table. Dara got a bottle of ice-cold water from the bar compartment and drank it looking out at the swimming pool that seemed to extend into the sea. She saw one, no, two women in lounge chairs, but not together, lying in the African sun and Dara thought, Not today. Check on the cameras before you do anything. She called the desk to say she was still waiting for her luggage. Got “Yes, madam, immediately,” and went in the bathroom to wash her hands and fool with her hair for a few minutes, trying to give it some life. The phone rang.

  She said, “Yes?” expecting it to be the desk clerk.

  “Miss Barr, this is Billy Wynn. I met your cameraman, Xavier LeBo? We got along great talkin about seafarin…I had seen you on YouTube being interviewed and showing clips from your films—I couldn’t believe you’re here. The only one of yours I’ve seen the whole thing of is Katrina. I downloaded it and watched it last night. Dara, you nailed that hurricane. Thirty thousand people in New Orleans taken off their roofs?” Telling this with an East Texas sound, not much, but Dara heard it, Billy Wynn delivering his lines in no particular hurry, serious, sure of himself, a playboy—if that was still the word—taking his girlfriend for a ride around the world in his two-million-dollar sailboat.

  What he said was, “If you’re not too tired, why don’t we meet downstairs for a drink?”

  “I don’t have my luggage,” Dara said. “I’ve been waiting, I called the desk…”

  “If I don’t have it in your room,” Billy said, “in five minutes, I’ll owe you a bottle of champagne.”

  Dara set out two champagne flutes from the bar cabinet and went back to the bathroom to wake up her hair, rubbed it for a while with a towel, gave up and tied a bandana around her natural blond hair, leaving the ends curling out. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Now she slipped on her sunglasses.

  That was better.

  But why bother if his girlfriend’s with him?

  And thought, Why not?

  He came to the suite with the bottle of champagne and a bellman pushing a luggage rack. Billy Wynn said, “Damn, but I’m a couple minutes late,” and held up the champagne.

  “I put the glasses out for you,” Dara said, not bothering to watch his reaction. She dug a ring of keys from her jeans and turned to the bellman. “You can leave the trunk and cases here on the floor. The hanging bag goes in the bedroom.” She went down on one knee to open the locker and got to her feet as she raised the lid and looked down at her cameras and battery packs snugged in foam inserts. She said, “It’s all there.”

  Billy looked over as he opened the champagne: a tall guy with a noticeable belly hanging over his low-slung white shorts.

  “You worried it wouldn’t be?”

  His hair was kind of a mess, long and uncombed, but seemed to go with his rich-beachcomber look.

  “I don’t worry about it,” Dara said. “You met Xavier? He brought a camera and the rest of the equipment.”

  “I asked him”—Billy coming over to hand Dara a glass of champagne—“‘What’re your people, Watusis?’ I’m six foot and have to look up at him.” Billy said, “Why don’t we sit down while we visit?”

  He paid the bellman and came over to take a chair, Dara already on the settee, an ashtray on the end table next to her. Now she lifted a pack of Virginia Slims from her shirt pocket and lighted one and offered the pack to Billy Wynn.

  He shook his head. “I smoke cigars.”

  “It doesn’t bother Helene?” Dara stepping right in.

  “I only smoke ’em at sea.” He grinned at her. “You been talking to Xavier, haven’t you?”

  “He mentioned you had your girlfriend along.”

  “And if she likes sailing as much as I do, it could mean we’re compatible. We take it from there.”

&
nbsp; “Were you ever married?”

  “Almost, a couple of times.”

  “They got seasick?”

  He was grinning at her again.

  “Let me explain it to you. I spend a good half the year at sea, sailing all over the world. Do I want to leave my good-looking wife at home for that long if she doesn’t care to sail? Helene says okay, she’ll give it a try.”

  “What does she do?”

  “You mean does she work? Helene’s a fashion model. I met her in Paris, she’s working a show for one of the houses. I’d watch her come down the runway with her bored-model look, red hair afire, her swarm of freckles subdued…She’d glance in my direction, sitting a couple rows back, and smile.”

  “She knew who you were.”

  “No. She told me after, she pretends to see people she knows and gives them a quick smile. Show she’s not aloof.”

  Dara hesitated. She said, “If you’re out in your boat half the year…”

  “You want to know do I work. My family’s had oil leases in Oklahoma for a hundred years. It was my granddad put us in the shipping business, oil tankers going back and forth between Nigeria and East Texas. This trip, I’m looking into doing business with the Saudis, see how they’re dealing with the pirates”—grinning now—“and I find out you’re making a pirate movie, a documentary, the real stuff. Xavier said you’re gonna sail out to the gulf and talk to ’em, get interviews.”

  “I hope to.”

  “You think the Somali government’s behind them?”

  “I doubt it,” Dara said. “It’s been almost twenty years since they’ve had a government, one that works. The Islamists in Somalia, the straight-arrow Muslims, say they’re against piracy, but who knows.”

  “They’re all Muslims,” Billy Wynn said.

  “Some more than others,” Dara said. “You know the Somalis hijacked a Saudi tanker.”

  “Months ago, the Sirius Star,” Billy said. “The last I heard they’re still trying to work out a ransom. I was wondering,” he said now, “if it might be an outfit like al Qaeda financing the pirates. Where’d these fishermen get their guns, AK-47s, RPGs…? I’ve heard they come from Yemen. The government selling weapons is making money while the people go hungry.” He said, “Well, the UN’s taking serious action, finally. You’ll see warships out’n that Gulf of Aden but, man, it’s a mean piece of water.”

  Dara listened, sipping her champagne and smoking her cigarette.

  “They catch some of the pirates,” Billy said, “what do they do with them? Kenya will take some, throw ’em in prison. But whose laws have they broken? Who tries them?”

  “I don’t know,” Dara said.

  He turned on his grin.

  “But you can sure get people to talk in your movies. I admire that.”

  “You like documentaries?”

  “I do. Good ones always reveal the truth,” Billy said. “I can’t wait to hear what the pirates tell you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  YOU WENT TO A fashion show in Paris to look for a girlfriend,” Dara said. “Is that right?”

  “I remember what one it was, Chanel. The guy who runs the house wears the stiff collar and shades? He was there, came out at the end.”

  Billy the Kid started to grin.

  “I was there to look over the girls. See if I might pick one out. They tend to be skinny, but that’s okay, they all in pretty good shape.”

  “Ask her if she wants to go sailing?”

  “Not right away. I see a girl for forty-eight hours. In two days you find out all you need to know. She acts intelligent, but she’s busting her ass to pick the right words, uses I when she means me, and reads the wrong books, if she reads. I don’t want to sound heartless, but we’ll be doing a lot of reading aboard, talking about books. I ask if she’s ever shared a tiny flat with another girl and thrown things at her. Nine out of ten say, ‘No, but I sure wanted to.’”

  “She fails the test?”

  “Becomes a forty-eighter. I start with looks, get that out of the way. Then brains and personality. I’ll be with this girl a good four months in fairly tight quarters. Now if she’s funny and smart, that’s a combination made in heaven.”

  “Helene’s funny?”

  “Helene’s the goods.”

  DARA TOLD XAVIER SHE wanted to have dinner out of the hotel. She’d looked up the Blue Nile on rue d’Éthiopie, a five-star restaurant and it sounded just right.

  Xavier said, “Who gave it the five stars, the owner? You want to have a girl wash your right hand? Pours water over your fingers and catches it in a bowl? Then you take a towel off her arm? What if you left-handed?”

  “We’re going,” Dara said.

  “You want the girl shovin some kind of stew on your Ethiopian flatbread? They call it injera, so you know what the girl’s tellin you. Or maybe you go for the sega wat, the diced lamb all cut up. These fine women make a show of servin us. Say no to the Queen of Sheba salad. We don’t eat salad in Djibouti. Or get out of the Blue Nile in less than three hours. We be finishin off three different wines at one-fifty a bottle, and that’s house wine.”

  “We’re not going,” Dara said.

  They went out for the evening with no plan other than meet Billy and Helene later at a club, Dara planning to shoot Djibouti nightlife. Prowl around with her hand on the camera in her bag. Billy had asked them to dinner, but Dara said they’d be working most of the evening. See you later on. He’d told Xavier the name of the club. She would love to find out what he was up to, the generous rich guy interested in her work; once in a while with a hint of East Texas country boy looking for Saudi crude. After a few glasses of wine she might ask him, “Billy, what are you up to out here in your sailboat? What’s your game?” He’d laugh at her and she wouldn’t have time to get him to talk. This evening she was sneak-shooting Djibouti. She wouldn’t mind using it as the title of her documentary. Djibouti. She loved saying it.

  XAVIER TOOK HER TO the Chez Chalumeau restaurant on the rue de Paris. They sat down at the table and Dara put on her sunglasses wondering why it was so bright in here. Xavier said, “So you can see what they put in front of you. They cook French mostly. The side dishes could be Arab, but good here. Go with the lamb, you won’t get in trouble.”

  Dara said to her menu, “Which one’s fish?”

  “Their tuna they call a Somali name. They got shark, the fin, octopus they fix in its ink, oysters. The crabs are good if they fresh. Or they can fry up some squid’s tasty.” Xavier said, “Remember, we gonna be eatin fish all the next month.”

  They ordered lamb, no salad, and a bottle of red. Xavier ordered another bottle as the floor show came on: four Somali girls shaking their bums to a drum and a guy singing or making sounds, the four dressed in long pink pongee gowns with panels, scarves they swished around their hips as they kept their bums rolling, spinning, bumping…Dara said, “The Blue Nile doesn’t have cooch dancers, does it?”

  “I don’t believe they have.”

  “I want to know how they do it.”

  “Practice,” Xavier said. “We get out on the boat, I’ll beat on something and you try and get your ass up to Somali speed.”

  THEY FOLLOWED THE RUE de Paris to the Place Ménélik to sit at a street café. “Have a cup of coffee and watch Djibouti nightlife,” Xavier said. “Cup of coffee and sip some cognac. Watch the tourists cuttin up. Off a cruise ship come down through the Suez. They sayin, ‘Ain’t Africa fun?’ They could be in Marseilles doin the same thing.” Dara busy working her camcorder over Ménélik Square. “You gettin the Foreign Legionnaires. French boys never seen anything like these slim black chicks givin ’em eyes. Got epaulets on their shoulders, with fringe, and a sash around their waist. Man, this is where to get stationed, if you can stand the heat. Go in the clubs, see the girls rubbin against the boys. You notice they don’t wear that flap off the back of their kepis no more, like Beau Geste? You gettin the action?” Dara was shooting with the camera in plain sight. “What you
don’t see, too many American military hangin out. They been warned about the girls. You see some sailors, some Shore Patrol. Look over there. Keep ’em from bringin home any kind of African dose,” Xavier said. “Café Las Vegas, run by a Corsican. That’s where we meetin Billy and the model.”

  BILLY SAID, “I CAN’T believe we’re in a French joint on the rue de Paris and they don’t have Perrier-Jouët, Blanc de Blanc ’99?”

  Xavier said, “I can’t either. Let’s go talk to the man, see if he has something like it. I never had a beverage cost nine hundred dollars a bottle.”

  They left Dara and Helene alone at the table, Dara’s blond hair washed and fluffed out, Helene’s red hair—no stylist in sight—tied back. She said to Dara, “I can feel my face shining.”

  Dara said, “You look good.” She hadn’t spoken more than a few words to Helene with Billy Wynn at the table. Now she said, “I can’t imagine sailing all the way around the world,” and waited.

  Helene said, “You mean on a boat or with Billy?”

  The girls by themselves now, Billy and Xavier checking the wine list at the bar.

  Helene said, “I’m actually going to powder my nose,” and got up from the table. After a moment Dara got up and followed her into the restroom.

  “I’ll see what I can fix,” Dara said.

  Helene was at a mirror brushing something on her cheeks. Dara moved in to look at herself in part of the mirror and Helene edged over a few inches. Dara took out her lipstick.

  “I don’t use any unless it’s some kind of occasion.” She looked at Helene in the mirror. “You have a wonderful tan. It brings out your freckles. Makes you look like a kid.”

  “I’m thirty-four. Billy thinks I’m in my twenties and I let him.”

  Now Helene was staring at Dara’s reflection.

  “You know what I keep thinking about, constantly? Going out on that fucking boat again.”