lower his binoculars from the east. Yusuf spoke to the black top of his head.
“Eat. I’m going to tell Deg Deg we’re moving.”
Suleiman had elbows on his knees, steadying the glasses. “Wait.”
Yusuf licked his fingers. “Why? What do you see?”
“I can’t be certain. Dolphins. We have luck coming. Good or bad, I can’t tell. But luck.”
“We have night coming. We need to go.”
“Sit.”
Yusuf wanted to raise his own binoculars, but he left this to Suleiman, who seemed to be trying to conjure the freighter.
Long ago Yusuf had learned to trust Suleiman’s instincts. His older cousin studied the ways of spirits and animals and their signs. Dolphins were indeed an omen of change approaching, like clouds. There was magic on the earth, a strangeness outside man’s world. Suleiman could put his finger on it. But this was not magic; this was the sea, where nature ruled alone. The two of them were searching for one ship out of a passing hundred on a wide water, on the word of an Islamist who’d threatened them, a man not of their clan. Their best chance now was to hurry to Bab-el-Mandeb, arrive at noon tomorrow, and wait there. Even then they couldn’t be sure their target wouldn’t pass them in the night, or that it hadn’t already come through here and they’d simply missed it.
Yusuf lowered his weight again to the crate. He set the cold dinner plate across his lap. He thought of Hoodo across his lap instead, warmer than this goat and curd, surer than this goose chase for al-Shabaab.
Without pulling his eyes from the glasses, Suleiman asked, “Do you remember what you said before we took our first ship? Seven years ago?”
Yusuf swallowed tea. He gazed toward the stern, where the crew smoked along the rails or watched the setting sun. Some toyed with the cat. Inside the wheelhouse, Deg Deg needed a decision. Instead, Suleiman wanted a memory.
Yusuf tamped down his impatience. He spoke to the side of Suleiman’s narrow face.
“Of course.”
“Tell me now.”
“I said that you and I would die on the same day.”
Suleiman nodded behind the glasses. Twenty minutes earlier, a convoy had passed the dhow, plowing to Bab-el-Mandeb. The eight vessels, European and Asian, guarded by a German war cruiser, had not yet sailed out of sight. Yusuf eyed the fading ships and their trail of smudges in the air.
Suleiman lowered the binoculars. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I said that out of loyalty. It was not a prediction.”
“Do you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
Suleiman handed Yusuf the binoculars. He aimed a hand due east, at a white sliver alone on the blue rim of the world.
“I believe it may be this day, cousin.”
Yusuf bore down through the lenses. Quickly he found the ship. Even seven or eight miles out, in the slanting light of the failing sun, he read the tall, pale letters writ across the blue hull: CMA CGM.
A French ship, moving west on her own.
Not a single container stood on deck below her three cranes. She skipped high over the water, the brown skirt of her bottom paint visible. She sailed where, when, and how Sheik Robow had said she would.
Her name: Valnea.
Chapter 10
CMA CGN Valnea
Gulf of Aden
The engineer Nikita wiggled a big toe.
He could not shift his strapped-down head to see. He groped for LB on the stool beside him.
“Vot edo da! Did you see? Look! Look, Sergeant! Is moving?”
LB confirmed the toe did flinch.
“I am not cripple! Gospodi! Sergeant, I am not cripple!”
Nikita spread both arms to celebrate in a hug. LB hung back; the man would not stop shouting. On the next bed, the cadet groaned, waking to find pain. To quiet the engineer, LB bent over him for a quick embrace but could not wrap his arms around the board or the cot. Nikita clamped him tight, pounding the back of LB’s rib cage. He sobbed, “Spasibo, bolshoe spasibo.”
LB wriggled loose. “Okay, okay. That’s great.” He patted Nikita on the chest. “Let’s keep it down; the kid needs to sleep.”
“Da, da,” the engineer panted, sniffing back tears. “But this is good, yes?”
“It’s a good sign. The anti-inflams are working. You still might have a break in your spine, but it doesn’t look like paralysis. We’ll know more in Djibouti. And you’re staying on that board till we get there.”
“Of course, of course.” Nikita kept his voice from climbing again. “Go. Find Grisha. I will wiggle for him.”
LB checked the cadet’s bandages for moistness. He headed for the door.