Submergence by Ledgard J. M

Author:Ledgard, J. M. [Ledgard, J. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781446496831
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-07-20T20:00:00+00:00

He had tracked the family of a senior al-Qaeda commander in Africa to an island off Madagascar. The terrorist’s mother lived in a neighbourhood on the slopes of a volcano above the island’s capital. It was a steep walk up from the town. The air grew thin, there were showers of hail. The massif rose lividly above the shacks. Smoking lines of lava ran down it and were glowing welts at night.

The terrorist was near the top of the FBI’s most wanted list. There was a $5 million bounty on his head. He was elusive: the New York Times reported him dead on the day of a State of the Union address. The missile was not even close. He moved between Somalia and Kenya on foot, on donkey, in lorries and on dhows. According to the FBI, he was a bomb maker, an expert in urban warfare, a computer hacker, a forger, and a master of disguise who spoke many languages. The bureau could not accept that it was easy to buy a new identity in Kenya and move up and down the Swahili coast and that several languages were spoken there. His information indicated the terrorist was running scared. He thought of the man as an untrained hunter who had wounded an animal and then did not know what to do. He knew he was hidden in Somalia, in rooms where the television played all day, shaping him in new and unexpected ways.

The mother’s neighbourhood was filled with music and interspersed with Jurassic-looking trees. Volcanic ash fell on its corrugated iron roofs, lava flowed around it. The people were a Creole particular to that island, descended from runaway slaves and pirates who had landed there. She ran a kiosk a few steps back from the street. It was the kind of shack where most of the world goes each day to buy its milk, tomatoes and sundries. She sat on a stool outside, watching the passers-by. She wore a blue dress and crescent moon earrings. She was not veiled. She looked like she was about to pluck a goose, hands on knees, legs set wide apart. He climbed the steps and asked for a drink. She knew immediately why he was there. He followed her into the shack. She pulled a Coke bottle from a bucket of iced water and opened it for him.

‘I’ll give you nothing,’ she said, refusing to look him in the eye. ‘We paid for his education and not a sou did we get. He didn’t even turn up for his father’s funeral.’

She minded very much being found. He could not remember whether her voice had been rough, or not, only that she had struck him like a character in a fairytale – a cottager in a forest – not someone in a shack on the side of a tropical volcano.

He had zigzagged down to the town, pushing away large moths that brushed his face and stumbled into a courtyard where old men were slapping down dominoes on a wooden table under a swaying streetlight.

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