“Look, I just want to go back to Essaouira.” Mike’s voice was sounding desperate.
“Don’t worry, we will make sure that Kella and Meddur’s pickup get back to the harbour. Some of us will drive it back to Essaouira now.”
“I don’t want to stay here.” She was now frantic.
“Are you scared of being alone? We will bring in someone to keep you company.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
They had taken Mike’s phone, so she never knew that Leonard was trying to contact her. He was annoyed that it was turned off. Didn’t she realise he was up against the wall and facing serious heat from the President downwards, as well as from the secret services of Canada, Australia and the UK? Something was brewing, and no one was sure what. Her phone had been turned off for nearly an hour. He checked the time in Morocco and thought this was strange. Wasn’t it a couple of hours after her meeting? If she had made contact in Essaouira, she would have let him know straight away and not turn her phone off.
He called in Tom, who was an extremely useful assistant, from a nearby office. Tom’s stammer meant that he usually took longer to acknowledge an instruction than to carry it out. “Tom!”
Leonard had decided some time ago not to wait for him to speak as he entered the room. Instead, he just delivered his request.
“Tom.” He wrote out Mike’s number on a pad and handed it across. “Check this phone’s locations over the last twelve hours and tell me where it was when it was turned off.” He paused. “ASAP.” He pronounced it ‘A-SAP’. “And I’m not calling you a sap, just in case HR is listening.”
Mike was also up against a wall, not that Leonard was aware. She had been left alone for half an hour, in which time she had tried to free her tied and chained wrists as well as manoeuvring herself as far away from the bucket as possible. It stank more than Chips, which was a barely conceivable thought. She heard him barking occasionally nearby and had visions of him leaping through the window opening, chewing through her ties and sitting in the passenger seat on the journey back to the harbour car park. Unfortunately, none of this happened, and a melancholy began to set in.
In the main farmhouse, one of the Berbers was discussing the situation in Hassānīya, a version of Arabic that was the common language between the three of them. The video with the American, Ramon Ramirez, had been filmed exactly as planned and would be broadcast tomorrow morning at Friday prayers. Was it worth filming the Canadian woman? Possibly, possibly not. They debated this over mint tea and some sweet biscuits. They came down on the side that it was. The more pressure on the G20, the better. It was agreed that the man in the shiny suit and the older of the two Berbers would film the interview that evening while the other men drove the pickup back to Essaouira with Kella. They had already called Meddur, and he was thrilled at the thought that he would get his dog back.
“Take the woman’s phone with you. Turn it on when you get to the harbour and give it to the first driver taking fish to Marrakech. Tell him not to use it or answer it for twenty-four hours. He can do what he likes with it after that.” The man in the shiny suit was called Toumi and he wanted there to be a false trail at least until Saturday. He was sitting at the kitchen table where he was writing a short speech for his female hostage to read out on the video. Naturally suspicious, Toumi couldn’t work out who she really was. He would find out later when the filming was over, but until then, he did not want her to appear beaten up. In truth, it didn’t matter who Ramon Ramirez or the woman worked for. He and his fellow Sahrawis weren’t interested in any potential ransom money; there would be too many risks attached. What they wanted was the world’s media and, specifically, social media to understand their cause and the Americans’ role in backing Morocco. Then, on Friday the bombing would take out the world leaders at the G20, and the US, UK and the others would truly wake up – or possibly not.
Toumi wanted to get the message across that the Sahrawis didn’t want Morocco or Algeria interfering in their country. He was grateful for the help Algeria had given the Polisario, which had fought to get an independent Sahrawi nation, but things had evolved and now Morocco was a front for the US while Algeria was a front for Russia. He didn’t want his nation to become a political football. They should be independent and, through the phosphates, would be financially independent – or indeed, wealthy.
The proposed PEGASUS scheme was the last straw. It would take the phosphates out across Algeria and into Europe. It had to be stopped. He was completely unaware of the irony that his arch-enemy, the Moroccans, did not want PEGASUS either because they wanted to control the production of phosphates, which was the reason that the country’s operatives were currently trying to stop it.
He picked up his piece of paper and walked across to the sheds. Together with his friend, he carried the unconscious man they knew as Ramon Ramirez into a different room and made sure he was secure; his reluctance to record the video had been regrettable. They walked back through to the room where the woman was chained to the wall.
“Are you CIA?” Toumi asked.
“Do I look like I’m CIA?” Mike was trying to push back against the inevitable. She moved her head against her raised hand, which was held by the chain, and pulled off her wig. “I’m a Canadian backpacking around your country.”
“This is not my country,” Toumi said firmly and slowly.
Damn, she thought.
“We are Sahrawi … not that it matters to you or your president.”
“Canada has a prime minister not a president,” she corrected him.
He shrugged and continued staring at her bald head. Her shock tactics had fallen on deaf ears.
“I came here for the Marathon des Sables; my name is Josie – check it out if you want.”
“Why did you steal Meddur’s pickup? Don’t tell me you were entering the Paris-Dakar rally, because it stopped years ago.”
His English was good – too good. It made her pause. “Where did you learn your English?” She thought she should try to build a relationship.
“At university … in Vancouver.”
Double damn! she thought to herself.
Despite his normal facial expressions, there was a deadness behind his eyes, but she persevered: “What did you read?”
“Geology, like your friend Ramon,” he added. The rhythm of his voice emphasised his sub-Saharan roots.
She didn’t comment, but she tried to read something, anything, in his expression. Despite not having read the manuals, she knew instinctively not to reveal anything unless pressed. She had grown up 400 miles from the Canadian border and was therefore quite capable of pretending to be Canadian, having been there many times. Her accent was pretty much Canadian to anyone not from North America. What she took away from this – albeit bald-headed with her wig on the floor while chained to a wall and next to a slop bucket – was that she had been right (although ‘right’ may have benefitted from some definition). Randy was coming to Essaouira for a meeting with Toumi and Aksil. Clearly, he had been compromised, possibly by being suckered into some gas/oil/phosphates discussion, thinking he was talking to mainstream Moroccans or Algerians.
“We are going to video you while you read this statement.” He waved a piece of paper. “If you mess about or try to add some words or other meanings, I will leave you in a room with Gwafa, after which you will talk, so do not fight; it is useless … and it will hurt.” He emphasised the last four words, displaying emotion in his eyes for the first time.
She must have also displayed some venom in her eyes because Toumi stopped moving and bent down closer to her. “Ramon finally recorded a nice video for us, but this was only after Gwafa spoke very, very nicely to him – I think that’s the right expression. Well, after all that excitement, Ramon is now asleep – I think that’s the right word. I’ll let you know if Ramon ever wakes up.”
I’m not cut out for field work, she heard over and over again in her head.
She began to read the piece of paper that was being held in front of her:
My name is Josie; I work for the CIA.
I would like to read a statement.
I was captured while supporting Morocco’s illegal claim over the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, known in the US as Western Sahara.
On 10th December 2020, Donald Trump supported the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco.
