The Sensory Deception (19 page)

He started to ask who they were, but Gaynes cut him off.

“Three to port,” Gaynes yelled. He turned to the computer monitor and clicked the mouse. “Prepare to go hard alee—I want ninety degrees in ten seconds!”

Farley focused on one of the oncoming boats, a broad-sided fiberglass skiff, the sort of vessel used by sport fishermen but with none of the frills—no canopy, no seats—just four men holding on as their boat careened through the sea. They had to be going fifty knots. The boat launched up each swell, took flight, and then splashed into the trough that followed. None of the men wore a life jacket.

“Your friends?” Farley asked.

Laughing, Gaynes replied, “You better hope so.” He grabbed the intercom microphone, flipped a switch, and broadcast
throughout his ship: “All hands to stations—one to port, one to stern, and one to bow.” He set the mike back in its rack and took a walkie-talkie. As he stepped to the stairs, he patted Farley’s shoulder and said, “Come on, and bring the binocs with you.”

On the port deck, Farley saw Tahir leaning in the shadows against a bulkhead. Farley couldn’t see Chopper but understood that he would be on the starboard side monitoring the sperm whale pod.

The three boats slowed, and as one went to the bow and another to the stern of the
Cetacean Avenger
, the central boat raised a light blue flag. Gaynes spoke into the radio. “Relax stations.” The command was repeated across the ship a second later, and two men threw ropes and dropped a ladder down the side of the ship.

To Farley, Gaynes said, “You’re gonna love this guy.”

“I am Sayyid Hassan.” He spoke with the crisp English accent of a BBC news anchor. He was shorter than Farley but built like a fullback, at least 250 pounds distributed evenly from tree-trunk thighs to hulk chest to twelve-gauge biceps and a neck so thick you couldn’t distinguish it from his shoulders. He had the piercing black eyes that Farley could only think of as the defining characteristics of a natural-born African chief. The phrase “badass motherfucker” came to mind, too.

Still, all that immediate physical intimidation was incongruous with his next words: “Is the kettle on? I’d fancy a cup of tea.”

Sayyid Hassan was accompanied by three wiry men in colorful turbans, none of whom spoke English. Tahir would later inform Farley that they had been speaking Somali.

Gaynes led them to the galley. The chief barked commands at his entourage and they scattered about the deck. Farley followed
him and Gaynes through the narrow inner corridors to the galley, the smell of baked goods growing stronger as they approached. In the mess, a table extending from the bulkhead was covered with a tablecloth. Sayyid stood at a bench opposite a porthole. Farley followed his lead, apparently waiting for Captain Gaynes to sit. Sayyid closed his eyes and mumbled to himself before sitting. As Farley lowered himself to the bench opposite Sayyid, he saw Tahir in the kitchen adjoining the mess. Tahir raised both hands in a motion signifying “Who is this man?”

“Sy,” Gaynes said, “Farley Rutherford is interested in studying your whales.”

The man, radiating authority, looked Farley up and down. “Perhaps, if my people are compensated. They are large fish. Fifty thousand euros.”

Farley said, “We don’t have access to that much money. I couldn’t even come up with a thousand.”

“Don’t be like the others. Don’t expect to receive value without providing value in return. Don’t offend me.”

“We won’t hurt the whale. We’re going to attach some equipment that will provide a great deal of information about its behavior.”

“Will you make money with this information?”

“Maybe.”

Sy looked at Gaynes and asked, “You told him nothing?”

Gaynes said, “That’s right.”

“You are a civilized man,” Sy said, turning back to Farley. “Let me explain my situation so that you understand how this tariff will be spent. Two thousand people depend on me for food and shelter in a country with no government. Most are women and children. The men who follow me have fought in many wars. They are aggressive, hungry, and violent, and they pray five times each day. We have a saying in my camp—” He paused and
furrowed his brow. “I should say, my community? my village? my ‘piracy’? No. That is, my kingdom. Yes, we have a saying in my kingdom: All old men are dead.”

A sailor brought a steaming bone china teapot with three small cups and poured dark English tea. Tahir followed with a plate of scones and butter.

Sy drank his tea and ate a scone. As he poured his second cup, he said, “Farley Rutherford, American entrepreneur.” Then, in a poor American accent, “Out to make a fortune in ecology.” He laughed at his own humor. “And I am a pirate.” He stopped laughing. “There are several ways for you to address my fee. You are a creative man. I am also a creative man. It will behoove you to, um, consider how you can most effectively benefit my people, my…my kingdom. It would be best to provide this now. If you need time to sort it out, you may pay me later, but you must understand that I will not permit you to leave until my people are compensated for your use of our resources.”

As the words “I will not permit you to leave” echoed in his mind, Farley tried to appear relaxed by continuing to spread butter on a scone. He looked up at Gaynes, who stared at him, smiling as though it were all a big joke. Farley couldn’t hold back a sigh as he reached for the jam jar. He didn’t think Gaynes would be so nonchalant if he were delivering Farley to an actual kidnapper. What’s more, this man, Sayyid Hassan, while possessing a huge ego, carried a large weight of responsibility. Farley sipped his tea and bit into the scone. He saw Tahir hovering in the passage between the galley and mess.

Farley trusted his ability to judge character, and only one conclusion made any sense. This man, this pirate, was troubled and needed help. That statement, “I will not permit you to leave,” had to be a plea, not a threat.

Farley said, “Truth is, I’m not much of an entrepreneur. And”—Farley looked deep into Sy’s eyes—“I suspect you’re not much of a pirate.”

“In the West, people like you call people like me pirates.” Sy drank from his cup. As he swallowed, he seemed to make a decision because he then leaned forward, elbows on the table, and looked up at Farley. “My parents were executives in the Somali Democratic Republic—the last government of Somalia, a dictatorship really. My father was President Siad Barre’s chief bureaucrat. I was educated at Imperial College London. I did first degree honors in mechanical engineering. I returned in 1992 to a state with no order.

“Mechanical engineering was a brilliant choice. My community—I apologize; I may be a king in practice, but I am not one in philosophy—my community, or, as your people would say, my refugee camp, has clean water from wells that I dug. We have shelter and we manage to eat with some regularity. As we are short a government, guarding the coast falls upon me. My people were once fishermen, but European, Japanese, Indian, and American fisheries removed the stock a decade past. When a poaching vessel enters our waters, I levy fines. That I must collect these fines by boarding ships and holding hostages makes me a ‘pirate.’ Did you notice a Norwegian ship on the horizon, sailing away as you approached? The captain had no desire to pay the tariff; he left without bothering my fish.

“The member states of the European Union consider my land a dumping ground. And not for mere rubbish. No, they prefer to dump toxic waste—medical waste, lead, mercury, arsenic, gallium, perhaps even radioactives.” He broke into deep-throated laughter. “It may come to pass someday that my coast will be mined for these elements, they are so common. When I tax these poachers, I am called a pirate; when I fine barges for dumping
on the land of my people, I am called a pirate; when I protect my people and my land by escorting these ships away from my coast, I am called a pirate. Then they bring warships to my coast to ‘protect’ us from pirates. The warships prevent me from collecting my tariff while permitting garbage barges to dump their shit on my land and let poachers steal my fish.”

Farley began to realize that the cost of recording Moby-Dick had gone up. A wisp of an idea drifted to mind. He dipped a scone in his tea and listened.

Sy rambled on: “It’s quite simple, then. There are three types of Somali pirates. First, there are those who merit the title ‘pirate’—criminals, mercenaries, thieves, and kidnappers. Second, the Al-Shabaab Islamic fundamentalists, who fund their various jihads through a practice of kidnapping and ransom collection. On this note, I would point out that Somalia has practiced Islam longer than any other country—longer even than the Arabs—but like everything in Africa, we have no provenance. My Muslim brothers, the Shiites and the Sunni, are my enemies because my people are insufficiently intolerant. Perhaps were I a better king, I would control my people’s thoughts, prevent them from enjoying music and, among those who can read, literature. As we have so few men, our women acquire roles that certain interpretations of the Qur’an, those unburdened by an understanding of history, deem blasphemous. I have women medics, women teachers, and women farmers.” He shook his head as though trying to shake unpleasant thoughts out of his mind. “I am a feminist Muslim.” He laughed.

“We are the third type of pirate. Simple people living decent lives. We are devout; we follow the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad, may peace be upon him. Where we differ with the others is that we study the actual text, and his words teach us how to build the spiritual community that we have formed. We have
a library and a museum, the only ones I know of in Somalia. We also have a prison, which are not at all uncommon in Somalia.

“Right, Farley Rutherford, American entrepreneur, I am a pirate, a terrorist, and a king. And none by choice. So I ask, what are you doing in my water, and in exchange for my largesse, how will you help my people?”

“Let me explain why I’m here,” Farley said, “and then we’ll figure out how I can help.”

Having finished his tea, Gaynes stood, said that the ship needed its captain, and left the room. Both Sy and Farley stood as he left and then sat down again. A second pot of tea and another tray of scones was delivered. Farley invited Tahir to sit next to him.

Farley told his story in detail, from attaching video equipment to bears and birds to the Moby-Dick application. He explained the concept of sensory saturation and concluded by saying, “The effect is astounding. Nearly everyone who experiences the reality of endangered animals emerges with a changed perspective. We can do this for you, too. A pirate VR experience can alter the way the West perceives Somalia. The net result will be to bring a stop to the destruction of your water and coast.”

“You Americans always have such big dreams,” Sy said. “When you needn’t fight for a place to sleep each night, dreaming is easy.”

“We have the equipment.” Farley sensed that he shouldn’t go into detail before talking to Ringo and Gloria.

Tahir interrupted the pause. “How do you protect your people?”

Sy stood and loomed over Tahir. Then Tahir stood. The men were the same height. Farley waited.

Tahir said, “You have Kalashnikovs? You arm women? Do you have trained forces? Do you use martyrs?”

Sy said nothing.

“I apologize,
atdhar
, for asking. We are not unskilled, though we are unarmed,” Tahir said.

“Coming here unarmed is unwise,” Sy said.

“But you survive. You have resources.”

“We have resources.”

Finally, Farley stood and said, “We have the most powerful weapons known to man: cameras and transmitters. We can tell your story. When people around the world understand, conditions are likely to change. Would that suffice as payment?”

“Commerce involves value. If you provide value, it will suffice. I would also accept dollars or euros.”

W
orking through the mathematics of sonar, Ringo’s mind bounced back and forth between Moby-Dick and his all-time favorite superhero.

Matt Murdock’s eyes had been fried by a radioactive rock. Ringo loved how radioactive substances served as the catch-all mechanism for how superheroes both lost their mundane abilities and developed their super abilities. The radioactivity that had blinded Daredevil also intensified his other senses and gave him superpowers. Chief among these was that Daredevil had sonar.