Chapter Twelve
M athias returned from picking up their newly reissued import license to find Elise and Vicente perched atop two crates in the warehouse, playing cards.
“You’re very bad at this,” Vicente was saying as Elise handed him a fold of bills.
“One more round. I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
“Back to work!” Mathias barked as he walked past them on his way to the office. “I don’t pay you two to sit around.”
Vicente scrambled to his feet and pocketed the cards and his hard-won cash. Elise followed Mathias into the office and watched as he withdrew a folder from the filing cabinet and slipped the license inside.
“All sorted, then?” she asked.
It had proven more difficult than he’d anticipated—and far more expensive.
He’d spent days cleaning up the mess with the trade office, which had demanded he provide six months’ worth of customs-and-clearance records to remove the hold they’d placed on the company.
Apparently, someone had reported them on suspicion of importing restricted goods. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
“Don’t encourage him,” Mathias said, changing the subject. “He doesn’t need any more excuses to slack off.”
“Ah, but if he’s good at his job, then who would you take your frustration out on?” Elise said smugly.
Mathias cocked his head. “You.” The phone on his desk rang, and he picked it up.
“Mathias.”
“Heylen.”
“You’re playing hard to get,” the Belgian said.
Mathias eased into his chair. “The wife after a matching coffee table?”
Elise shot him a conspiratorial look and moved over to her desk, clearly listening.
Heylen chuckled into the receiver. “I just had a guy in here who was the former Minister of Energy and Mobility for the Austrian government.”
“And…?”
“I asked him what he’d do if a high-ticket shipment couldn’t get clearance to dock.”
The man was so transparent. Mathias was almost enjoying toying with him. “Is this your idea of a riddle?”
“He thought we could leave it out at sea and wait for the slow churn of bureaucracy.”
Hell, I’ll bite. “So, in all his time in government, he didn’t have a single contact capable of greasing a few wheels?”
Heylen let out a triumphant laugh. “I need you, Mathias. The new business—we’ll split it down the middle. I front the cash, you run the show.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”
“Prove me wrong, then.”
“Take care, Heylen,” he said and hung up.
From her desk, Elise gave him a sly smile and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “I have questions. Come for a smoke?”
Mathias sighed. Better to squash the curiosity before it gets the best of her.
The clouds darkened in the sky overhead as he and Elise stood by the staff entrance, smoking. The muggy air clung to his skin, and Mathias felt a drop of rain graze his temple. He predicted it would be bucketing down within the hour.
“He called yesterday, too, while you were out.” Elise brought her cigarette to her lips.
“What happened to passing on messages?”
“I don’t remember secretary being part of the job description.”
Mathias gave a dispassionate grunt.
“What’s this about, then? Are you planning some sort of joint venture?” she asked.
He’d looked into the company Heylen had acquired. It was a family-owned operation run by a fellow Belgian businessman. While Heylen had only purchased it to limit competition with JFH Logistics, the business made a tidy profit and was a decent-sized player in its own right.
“Let’s make this clear—I’m not working for Heylen.”
“But if he’s asking for you specifically, you must have done something to impress him.”
Mathias tapped his ash. Partnering with Heylen would give him access to an entirely new tier of contacts. He’d be rubbing shoulders with the cream of Europe’s corporate world. It was less a steppingstone than a springboard.
“That’s not it,” Mathias said. “He just can’t stand for someone to tell him no.”
Elise raised a skeptical eyebrow but wisely kept her thoughts to herself. She parted her lips to exhale a demure curl of smoke. “Did you hear about what happened at the beach? You know, before I moved here, I had no idea about any of it. I’m sure it was in the news. I was just so self-absorbed.”
“Was?”
Elise shot him a look. “God, humans have made such a mess of things, haven’t we?” She gave a woeful shake of her head. “I don’t know how Rayan does it—seeing all the misery at the camp. It’s so sad.”
Mathias eyed her shrewdly. Rayan had a high tolerance for misery, built up like a muscle. “Well, the world’s a sad fucking place.”
There was a crunch of tires, and they both glanced over as an unmarked delivery van turned into the parking lot and pulled up alongside the warehouse.
Elise frowned. “I didn’t know we were expecting a delivery today. Were you waiting on something?”
The driver got out, hoisted a small wooden crate from the back of the van, and placed it on the ground by the roller doors.
Mathias and Elise dealt with enough shipments, many valued at six figures or more, that their delivery people knew to never leave one sitting outside.
Mathias watched as the driver returned to the van and drove back out onto the road.
He tossed his cigarette to the ground and walked over to crate, Elise at his heels.
As he got closer, he could smell the fetid stink of decaying flesh.
“Don’t touch it,” he instructed Elise sharply. She recoiled and placed a hand over her nose.
His name was inscribed in large black letters on the top of the crate. He retrieved the folding knife from his pocket and extracted the blade, then used it to jimmy off the lid. A foulness filled the air, and Elise shrank back in horror.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
A severed pig’s head stared up at them, mouth open and eyes a cloudy black. The crate was lined with a sheet of plastic to prevent the ooze leaking from the pig’s neck from soaking through the bottom. A knife had been crudely shoved into the front of the animal’s skull.
“Amateurs,” Mathias muttered.
He would have drawn blood by now. Either Marsela was handling him with kid gloves, or she had another agenda. Regardless, he couldn’t get a read on her intentions, which was unusual—and dangerous.
“This is about the drugs, isn’t it?” Elise said, her eyes wide behind her glasses. “What are we going to do?”
“You’re going to go inside and get Vicente to take care of this. Have him toss it in the dumpster out back,” Mathias replied evenly.
His appraiser hovered beside him, unmoving.
“Go on, Dumont.”
She started then turned and headed quickly back into the warehouse. Mathias flicked the knife closed and stowed it. Then he dropped the lid back on the crate, concealing its rank contents.
The next time Rayan went to visit Farhan, he brought a bag filled with food, clothing, and small gifts for the children. They’d found themselves irreversibly connected by the events of their meeting, and he felt a growing responsibility for the family’s future.
When he arrived at their tent, Farhan had just made tea on a portable kerosene stove and invited Rayan to join him. Rayan unloaded his bag of treasures onto the mat in the middle of the tent, and the girls gathered around, their shyness forgotten as he distributed sweets and colored markers.
“Is this for me, amo ?” Zahra asked, reaching for a package of rainbow hair clips.
Rayan nodded, and she gave him a wide smile.
While the girls used the markers to draw on a flattened cardboard box, Farhan poured tea into two dented metal mugs and handed one to Rayan.
The tea was weak but hot, and Rayan appreciated the effort taken to prepare it.
Tasks that only required the simple flick of a switch at home—washing clothes, heating water—involved an elaborate undertaking of time and resources at the camp.
Rayan had worked with volunteers afraid to eat the food or drink the water here, turning down a resident’s request to share bread or tea, unaware of the slight their refusal amounted to.
Farhan sat across from Rayan on the mat and gestured at the pile of items he’d brought. “This is very kind.”
“If there’s anything else you need, you can come and find me at the service office.”
“Thank you, Rayan. We have plenty.”
For a man whose life had been reduced to so little, it was jarring to hear him refer to what he had as plenty.
“Ayari—it’s not a common last name,” Farhan said after a moment, and he raised his chin curiously. “Back home in Aleppo, I have a friend from Beirut. He speaks in a similar way. Is that where you’re from?”
“Canada, actually.”
Farhan’s face lit up. “Ah, I have a cousin in Canada. Which part?”
“Quebec.”
“I don’t know much about Quebec. But I hear Canada’s a beautiful place. Very cold, though.”
Rayan smiled. “It can get very cold. Do you also have family in the UK?”
“My wife has an uncle there. We weren’t sure that would be enough to qualify for residency, but it was the only hope we had. Of course, now I don’t know if I would’ve made the same choice.”
He stared into his tea, and they fell silent. The girls chattered in the background, a harmony of voices amid the sounds filtering through the thin canvas walls that separated them from the Jungle.
“You’re not Lebanese, then?” Farhan asked.
“My mother was.”
Farhan nodded, and an unspoken understanding passed between them. “When did she die?”
“When I was a child.”
Farhan looked down at his youngest daughter, who had climbed onto his lap and was using a tiny pink comb to brush the hair on a plastic doll. “So, they will be all right?” As he spoke, his voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “They will be all right even without their mother?”
Rayan couldn’t make any promises. All he knew, from his own experience, was that children were resilient. “They’re strong girls.”
“They are,” Farhan agreed.
“What was her name?” a voice piped up behind him.
Rayan glanced over to see that Zahra had stopped her playing and was looking at him as though she’d been listening the whole time.
“Samira.”
“Our mama’s Navine.” She stabbed the toe of her sandal into the mat. “Do you still think about her?”
“Always.”
“Was she nice?”
“Very. She loved to read me stories. What about your mother? What was she like?”
“Beautiful,” Zahra said proudly. “She taught me how to draw.”
“She would doodle in the girls’ school workbooks,” Farhan recalled quietly. “Write little notes in the margins, reminding them to study hard.”
Rayan looked at the two children. Amina was the spitting image of her father, but Zahra’s high nose and broad forehead must have come from her mother.
Farhan repositioned Amina on his lap. “The man who saved them from the water—is he a friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Will you thank him for me?”
Rayan hesitated. “He might not be overly receptive to your thanks.”
“That’s the mark of a decent man—someone who does things without chasing acclaim.”
A smile tugged at Rayan’s lips. So I’m not the only one who sees it. “I’ll be sure to pass the message on.”
“Thank you. I’ll feel better knowing you have.”
“Of course.” Rayan finished his tea.
Farhan lifted the pot off the stove to refill their cups. “What brought you here from Canada, Rayan?”
Rayan took the hot mug into his hands and turned it absently. “A change of circumstance.”
“Good or bad?” Farhan asked, his eyes crinkling.
Rayan weighed the complexity of the question. “Both,” he said finally. “How about you?”
Farhan’s face grew serious. “Only bad. We would’ve stayed if we could. The girls loved their teachers and spending time with their jadda . But they closed the research center because of the fighting, and I lost my job. We were hungry more often than we weren’t. That’s no way for children to live.”
“You’re right. It isn’t.”
“There was too much violence, too much danger. We knew people who’d gotten out, and we decided we would too.
” He gave a sigh. “But who can say what we should have done? Leaving or staying, what would have happened either way? Maybe she would still be here, or maybe none of us would.” He blinked quickly and looked away.
“The research center,” Rayan said, careful to change the subject. “What line of work are you in?”
“I’m an agricultural scientist. We researched the development of sustainable crops in the world’s dry areas.”
“That’s a rather specialized field.”
“It is. I know more than any normal person should about soil and rocks.”
They both laughed, and Amina squirmed on her father’s lap. Farhan’s expression once again turned pensive. “I just hope they will remember their mother, where they came from, who they are. I don’t want them to lose everything.”
“They won’t forget her.” Rayan shook his head, surprised by the conviction in his voice.
Amina lifted the doll in her hands to press it against her father’s face.
Farhan moved the doll to one side and planted a kiss on the little girl’s cheek. “I hope you’re right.”