LITMIR.BIZ

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the sun deck, and all looked in order.

      About half of the Windsor Castle’s passengers had gone ashore, and those who had remained were sipping cocktails, splashing in the pool, or slowly giving themselves skin cancer in the roasting sun.

      It was a mid-range boat, so they were mostly families and a few pensioners – the bulk of them British with a few Americans, Canadians and Europeans thrown in.

      A young woman waylaid him as he walked by, and Abandonato stopped to crouch down by her sun lounger.

      She was a Londoner, he thought, and not unattractive, and she was flirting furiously; her husband was taken up with their toddler, and either didn’t notice or was used to it.

      ‘So how do I go about getting an invitation for dinner at the Captain’s table?’ the young woman was saying, looking at him over her sunglasses.

      ‘It’s a big mystery,’ said Abandonato, smiling. He was a handsome man, and he knew it, but he seemed to exert a particularly hypnotic effect on English women which he had never really understood. ‘The maître d’ has his ways, but I’m afraid I leave it to him.’

      ‘Well, tell him Becky in 414 on deck four would like to come,’ she said, with a conspiratorial grin. ‘Just me, my husband will be busy with our daughter.’

      ‘Oi, oi,’ said the husband, distractedly.

      ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Abandonato, standing up. ‘Everything else is okay for you?’

      ‘Wonderful,’ said Becky, looking him up and down. ‘The view especially.’

      Carlo Abandonato chuckled and walked on, heading to the elevator.

      He’d travel a deck down, to two of the ship’s three restaurants, to make sure the lunch service was going well.

      After that, he’d book himself off for an hour, go back to his cabin, and call his wife via the sat-link.

      Then back to the bridge, go through the departure checks ready for 17:00hrs, when they were due to weigh anchor and be on their way.

      He smiled to himself as the elevator doors closed and he started sinking.

      There were worse jobs in the world.

11.

      EIGHTY FEET BENEATH him, below the waterline, in the belly of the Windsor Castle, Farouk Ebrahim stood in the humming, throbbing engine room of the huge ship, looked at the wall clock, and spoke to the first engineer.

      ‘Excuse me, boss,’ he said, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Is okay if I go toilet?’

      The first engineer – an experienced ex-Royal Navy man called Phil Clarke – glanced at Ebrahim over his clipboard.

      ‘Again, Farouk?’ he said. ‘That must be the fifth time today.’

      ‘Sorry, boss,’ said the young Filipino motorman, putting the rag into the pocket of his red overalls. ‘I have a problem in my stomach.’

      Clarke scratched his head. There wasn’t much doing – the engines were only running to generate power – and Farouk seemed like a good kid.

      Not long on the crew, but eager to learn, and well aware of his place in the scheme of things.

      ‘Okay,’ said Clarke. ‘But don’t take all day, yeah?’

      Ebrahim nodded and hurried from the engine room, and up and out to the tender station on deck three.

      He squeezed himself out of sight in between two of the boats and leaned on the rail, breathing deep in the sea air.

      He still couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get hired, and how lax was the security. His interview for the Windsor Castle – a ship carrying five hundred Westerners, each paying a king’s ransom to float around half-naked, eating, and drowning themselves in alcohol – had taken no more than half an hour, and only five per cent of bags were screened coming aboard.

      You could get anything on.

      Especially if you knew the guy doing the screening.

      Perhaps it was not surprising that half the crew were alternately getting high on cocaine, or mellowing out on hashish.

      Or that he and a few fellow travellers had managed to slip through the net.

      He looked out at the Mediterranean, shimmering in the heat haze.

      He was from a long line of Mindanao fishermen, and the chances were that, at this exact moment, seven or eight thousand miles away, his father was chugging back towards the twinkling early evening lights of the harbour at General Santos City to offload his day’s catch.

      Saltwater ran through Farouk Ebrahim’s veins, and the sea looked particularly beautiful today – so beautiful that he could have cried.

      And, in fact, he did.

      The tears came with a rush, as a sudden melancholia broke over him.

      But they’d warned him to expect this, and as quickly as the tears had come they were gone.

      He wiped his cheeks dry with the backs of his greasy hands and pulled himself together.

      In another life, he would perhaps have joined his father and his uncle in their little wooden, three-man pump boat – would have spent his days pottering around the Sarangani Bay looking for mackerel and anchovies, and maybe a few bigeye scad, to sell at the bustling market.

      He’d have got married, raised a family, lived as his ancestors had lived for generations, more or less.

      But Allah had had other plans for him, and if He called then you answered.

      Still, the calm, electric-blue sea… he could almost taste its fresh salt, feel its ancient and mystical powers cleansing his body and soul.

      For a fleeting moment, he actually thought about jumping overboard.

      But then, in his mind’s eye, he saw the pride on his father’s face, and it lent steel to his spine.

      He would not let anyone down.

12.

      SIXTY KILOMETRES BACK down the coast, in the luxurious, cream leather lounge on the lower deck of the Lucky Lady, Argun Shishani had his mobile phone to his ear once again.

      He made two calls.

      The first was to a Yemeni security guard on the MS Windsor Castle, who quickly passed on the message to a pair of Moroccan waiters.

      The second was to a young Mindanaoan in greasy red overalls on the same ship.

      When Farouk Ebrahim finished taking that second call, he looked down at the phone in his hand and thought for a moment.

       Perhaps a quick call, to his mother, to tell her that he loved her, and was thinking of her?

      But he quickly cast the notion from his mind – he did not want to cloud his mind with unnecessary emotions, and, more importantly, he did not want what he was about to do to come back to his family.

      His trainers had warned him repeatedly of the fearsome reach and expertise of the Western intelligence agencies, and he knew that, in the coming days, every call made to and from the Windsor Castle on this voyage would be followed up and analysed.

      So, instead, he took a final, longing look at the sea – was it his imagination, or were the waves getting up a little? – and whispered a quick prayer before throwing the mobile overboard into the eternal depths.

      His last connection with the material world – the world of men, the world he despised – was gone: now there could be no turning back.

      Ebrahim

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