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“Here.” White, windowless containers with sprawling antennas formed a little lunar base on the gravel, their air conditioners clattering in the heat. On a pole hung a limp Swedish flag.
They stepped into the cool of a small meeting room. Mickels closed the door to the hallway, shutting out the sound of office work.
“Water?” he asked, opening a refrigerator. Along the walls stood plastic crates of bottled water, stacked as tall as a man. Grip caught the bottle that was thrown to him. Mickels pointed to a chair, and Grip sat down. He tried to quench his thirst while he listened.
The MP was well prepared, starting right in with a PowerPoint and sketches on a big flip chart. It had been just forty-eight hours since the shot was fired. And with cool sincerity, Mickels concluded that the situation was totally fucked up. Grip soon realized that Mickels probably wasn’t the ship captain’s favorite. He was a little too thorough and outspoken to be liked by a manager. Grip let the information wash over him, not bothering to take notes. The way everything flickers at the moment of takeoff.
Six Swedes had been out on the firing range. They belonged to a MovCon unit. Their job was to keep a steady flow of equipment and supplies arriving from around the world, so that the war against the pirates could roll along without interruption: ammunition, fuel, bottled water, Band-Aids, DVDs, and sunscreen. Mostly, they handled air transports to and from Djibouti, the loading and unloading, sorting and checking off. They were led by Lieutenant Per-Erik Slunga, who now lay with rigor mortis and a hole through his head.
For help, MovCon relied on a handful of local Djiboutian staffers. They were the ones who’d been at the shooting range. No—of course no one else had any inkling that the group had planned an outing to a shooting range, far beyond where they could be seen or heard. The escapade had apparently been Per-Erik’s own idea, an attempt to do some bonding and team building. Socializing over a thousand 5.56 cartridges. There wasn’t a rule book on the planet covering that kind of insanity.
It was all the lieutenant’s idea, the dead man’s idea, his five subordinates said afterward. Good, that was something concrete to hold on to, Grip thought. Forty-eight hours since it happened, forty-seven hours for them to talk among themselves.
Mickels had prepared personnel files for Grip. Six folders, each showing the solemn face of a person in uniform, inside a plastic cover.
“What’s the group doing now?” Grip asked.
“Same job, same place, only now with their sergeant as boss. The planes keep coming and going, you know. They still need to be loaded and unloaded for the war against the pirates. Nothing stops.”
Grip looked at the sketch on the flip chart showing who stood where when the shot hit: a circle for a Swede, a black dot for a Djiboutian. Some were shown up by the targets on the embankment, others thirty meters in back. A dotted line was drawn from two circles that stood close together on the shooting range, a black one and a white one, leading to Per-Erik Slunga’s position.
“Everyone in the group agrees, that’s where the shot came from.”
“Uh-huh,” said Grip.
As if to underscore his fairness, Mickels said, “I’ve spoken to each one individually, and also in groups.”
“The Swedes?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And the locals? The Djiboutians?”
“Difficult, only once through an interpreter.”
Grip nodded, then asked, “So whose finger was on the trigger?”
Mickels pointed to the black circle where the line began. “It was Abdoul Ghermat’s.”
“And he was standing next to?”
“Milan Radovanović, who witnessed it.”
“What does Abdoul say himself?”
“He denies it.”
“And the other locals?”
“You have to understand … I don’t have a police force here, it’s only me. I heard them only once in a group, right after it happened, with the interpreter. Couldn’t get a coherent story out of them, it was all just a mess.”
“Were they high?”
Mickels hesitated. “Everyone, except maybe Mr. Nazir, the foreman, was high on khat. They were high when it happened, high every day before and every day after. But I didn’t mention the khat in my report.” Grip just looked quietly at him, waiting for what would come next. “The captain wanted it that way.” Grip kept silent. “We don’t talk about the local workers being high on the job. It’s impossible to apply Swedish rules. They are, after all, employed by us.”
“So the captain has already read and approved your report?”
“He wanted it that way.”
“You mean, so everything would be neatly sewn up before I arrived?”
Mickels didn’t answer but was clearly embarrassed.
“Per-Erik Slunga’s body has barely cooled down,” Grip went on, and then he added, “Did the captain change much in your report?”
“He cut a few small things.” The ruddy military police officer’s cheeks flamed with indignation.
Grip kept pushing. “Like the khat?”
“Yes, like the khat.”
“Anything else?”
Mickels’s gaze said that was as far as he’d go. “The report is accurate as written.”
“Certainly,” Grip said curtly. And he made a sad mental note: he’d already lost his chance at an unfiltered first impression. Mickels had been too talkative from the start. Grip swore at himself, blaming the heat and thirst; he’d stepped off the plane and wasn’t on his game. And Mickels had quickly drawn a convincing mental image: Swedish soldiers, Djiboutians, a shooting range, weapons, khat, and a deadly dotted line on a flip chart. It would be hard to erase that picture and see something different. An almost endless desert, a few men, and a shot. It was so beautiful in its simplicity that it almost seemed staged. What had been going on, and what had taken place beyond the frame? He was being strung along, and even worse, the report was already finished.
Grip didn’t distrust Mickels but realized that he was, after all, being loyal to his boss. There’d be no free lunch for Grip—he was dealing with someone who only allowed himself to see a narrow slice of reality. Grip would have to get past that.
“And this Abdoul …?” Grip continued.
“Abdoul Ghermat, what about him?”
“Where is he now?”
“The Djiboutians took him. The police, that is. He’s being held at the main station here in town.”
“Arrested?”
“Something like that.”
“Suspected of murder?”
“Not by me.”
Grip was annoyed. “Come on, this isn’t exactly a trivial incident. Why?”
“The Djiboutian authorities want to stay on our good side. Once we’d reached a clear conclusion, the captain of the ship called up the local police chief. He was informed about the incident and who took part. And then I assume the local chief wanted to look decisive, and he arrested Ghermat.”
“Once you’d reached a clear conclusion, you said. So what actually happened?”
Mickels looked blankly at Grip. “It’s obvious.”
“Is it?”
“A stray bullet. Fucking