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feeding him, but it all seemed so simple, the slightest question met by a perfectly reasonable answer. What did he want? He didn’t want to feel stupid, but he did now, because he had nothing else to go on.

      Before Grip answered, the captain, who seemed uncomfortable with the tone, cut in. “Everyone under my command has received an explicit order from me to cooperate with your police investigation. Your inquiry, that is.”

      “And you think you need to give an order,” Grip said, “for that to happen, I mean?” Now he was being rude, and he knew it.

      Silence.

      “When do you head back out to sea?” Grip asked instead.

      “Two days from now.” It was the first officer, stepping in once again. He held Grip in his gaze. “MovCon will be busy transporting matériel to the ship until then, but of course you can question anyone, anytime. I think Mickels has given you background on who they are and how they work.”

      “He has.”

      “And what about the Djiboutians?”

      “Only that the local police have arrested the man accused of firing the shot.”

      “What goes on there is completely beyond our control,” said the captain.

      “And where can I find the rest of the Africans?” Grip asked.

      “I spoke with Sergeant Hansson, who took over the unit after Slunga,” said the first officer. “Apparently, most of the locals quit after this incident, and I’m afraid they’ll be difficult to track down.”

      “It is what it is. But the Swedes are all back at work?”

      “Of course.”

      “Well then, I’ll want to question them tomorrow, the whole gang at once.”

      “Question them? You mean you already have suspicions?”

      “Journalists interview, and police question, that’s all.”

      The first officer shrugged.

      “We …” The captain sounded conciliatory. “We’re thinking of holding a small dinner tomorrow, here on board, and we’d like you to come. At seven, that was the idea.”

      “Dinner, thank you. And I guess MovCon is busy during the day, so I’ll meet with them at five. That should leave them enough time to do what they need to.”

      “Think jacket.”

      Grip didn’t understand.

      “For dinner tomorrow. If that works.”

      Grip, who hadn’t changed since he landed, stood there without a tie, looking rumpled. What was this about, he wondered, some sort of game, giving him a dress code?

      “Jacket, of course,” Grip replied with a nod. “And my questioning?”

      “I’ll take it up with Mickels,” replied the first officer.

      Then there was silence again.

      “For me, there’s just one detail left before I call it a day,” Grip said. “Where am I staying?”

      “Hm,” said the first officer, taking a moment to remember. “The Sheraton was completely booked, so it must be the Kempinski. A night there costs a bloody fortune, but that’s what’s available, from what I understand.”

      “The Kempinski?”

      “The best Djibouti has to offer.”

      Grip had done his homework. The Kempinski. Not just the best in Djibouti, but possibly the best anywhere in Africa. Did they want to smoke him out, get him to stay as short a time as possible, fearing what some police chief would say about his travel expenses?

      “That will be perfect.” The navy men were apparently accustomed to a different kind of boss.

      “Until seven o’clock, tomorrow, then,” said the captain. Time to go.

      “The quartermaster will drive you to your hotel,” said the first officer, glancing at the clock. “He’s out running an errand in town. It shouldn’t be long. You can wait for him in the officers’ mess.”

      Grip hadn’t taken more than one step toward the door before the first officer noticed his hesitation. He had no idea how to get out. The maze had won.

      “I’ll call someone on watch to show you the way.”

       12

      Grip had managed to get to bed before midnight but soon woke up again, freezing. Several times, he wrestled with the hotel’s air-conditioning controls, increasingly annoyed. Finally, as the clock by his bed turned to four, he gave up and took a sleeping pill. Most of the morning disappeared in its haze. The rest of the day, he kept to himself. Read the report and the personnel files, pondered, planned, called Mickels and then a few others. Made sure both suits that had been lying in his suitcase got pressed. Easily arranged, at the Kempinski.

      The hotel stood alone on a peninsula north of downtown. Its palm groves and lush gardens were enclosed by sand-colored walls, which cut straight lines through the barren landscape. On the inside was abundance, for a select few; on the outside, patches of stubby grass and plastic bottles spinning in the sea breeze. But there was no barbed wire, and no shards of glass poking up, not like on the walls in the wealthy residential neighborhoods. Someone had been thoughtful. The impression was meant to be inviting; people were meant to see an oasis. And for those who knew exactly which credit card to flash, it truly was a place out of One Thousand and One Nights.

      Opinions differed as to whether it was a sheikh or the Chinese who owned this twenty-first-century take on a fairy-tale palace. Did it matter? What mattered was that the Swiss hoteliers pulling the strings behind the scenes knew exactly whom to hire. The local middle-class daughters worked the reception desk, smiling shyly and adorably, having wasted years studying languages at foreign universities so they could serve Germans wanting to park closer to the main door and Chinese wanting massage appointments at the spa. The Filipino maids managed to do the impossible, keeping every horizontal surface free from dust without being visible themselves, and making sure not to miss all the nooks and arabesques. This was fabulous Islamic architecture, the Alhambra reimagined: geometric patterns covered the tiles and lanterns, while the colonnades and ornately carved wooden panels created a kind of labyrinth. It was rare to have an unobstructed view, and generally many things were not to be fully seen but only imagined at the Kempinski.

      There was a French pâtisserie, and in the evenings, the Egyptian singers in the Lebanese dance bands, who smiled down from the posters, did their best imitations of Umm Kulthum at one of the hotel bars. Everyone was supposed to feel at home, yet at the same time get a whiff of something foreign, even exotic. Like the fact that the outdoor pool was chilled. This was one of the first things the hotel told its guests, so they’d understand that the hotel had thought of everything.

      That afternoon, Grip slowly swam laps, cutting through the fog that lingered from the previous night. The pool was lined in deep blue mosaics, and its chilled water felt pleasant in the shimmering heat. He showered in his room and put on his freshly pressed linen suit. The tie seemed like overkill, but he had that dinner to go to. Earlier in the day, he’d arranged for a rental car, and at lunch, Mickels had stopped by with entry cards for both the port and the French base. Now, he could move around.

      Grip left the car in the shade of some containers on the dock and walked the last hundred meters to the warship’s gangway. He’d said he wanted to meet the MovCon unit at five o’clock; now it was quarter past. They were soldiers, so they were sitting where they’d been told to, looking at the clock.

      The group was waiting in a small mess hall for the ship’s crew. It looked like the common room of a dorm, with its shelves of battered DVDs, game consoles, and computer games. Five pairs of soldiers’ eyes told him he was

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