Stuck: A Secrets and Lies prequel by Booth, Ainsley (e books for reading .TXT) 📕

Trade winds shook the palms and takamaka trees; wavelets slapped the side of the hull. The crew listened to music on the wheelhouse stereo. ‘One papaya coconut, under the sun, come along, come along,’ went the insistent lyrics and tinny Caribbean backing. ‘We can fly away!’ But fly away to where and to what? This was the safest place on earth right now, with plenty of sea room between them and civilisation.

On the last day of the cruise, Hispaniola set sail on a long beam reach towards Kenya, a thousand miles to the west. The crew pressed a lot of canvas: main, course, maintop, topsail, topgallant, foresail, staysail, inner and outer jib, and a flying jib set high on the forestay. Block and tackle creaked as Hispaniola began to heel. Paul’s spirits lifted. Free of the channel, they rode into a longer swell and, when all the sails were trimmed, it was as though sea and wind, hull and rig, were singing one harmonious note. Paul hauled out his camera and began photographing. The brig cleaved into the steady breeze, just like one of the square-riggers or dhows that had plied these waters for hundreds of years.

Paul scaled the ratlines and sat on the topsail yardarm. Far below, the crew looked like insects. Oh, to spy a cumbersome Portuguese galleon, fresh out of Goa and packed with riches! Hispaniola would run her down in no time and have her gold in their hold with hardly a musket shot fired.

The image of an aeroplane swooping towards a building intruded into Paul’s vision and his piratical fantasies quickly lost their lustre. He climbed back down the ratlines to the deck.

The following afternoon, Paul sat in Mahé Airport awaiting his flight back to Johannesburg. A television set tuned to CNN in the departure hall ran continuous footage of jets scuttling skyscrapers — slow-motion images of aircraft ploughing into façades. A fireball, then people throwing themselves from windows, tiny specks against the perfect autumn blue. One moment, they were furiously alive. The next, they were shattered bodies on a pavement. Buildings fell in upon themselves, tall grey ships sinking into clouds of their own making. A wall of ash billowed through streets in a storm of incinerated concrete and glass. Paul felt a shortness of breath and a dull ache in his stomach.

Those sitting around him had already had three days to process the images. It was his first exposure. He watched people in white masks walking through the moonscape of lower Manhattan, the makeshift shrines of flowers and candles, the homemade posters of the missing on walls and lampposts. A firebombed mosque, Arab Americans keeping their children indoors, rumblings from the Middle East.

Paul needed to speak to Hannah. He found a payphone, but didn’t have much change. At least he’d be able to hear her voice, briefly. After two rings she picked up.

‘Hannah, it’s me.’

She was barely awake. It was early morning in New York.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘How’s the family?’

‘Yeah, we’re all okay. Badly shaken, but okay. No one was downtown, thank God.’

‘I’ve been thinking about you non-stop,’ he said. ‘If only you could have been here —’

‘Things have been bad, Paul.’

‘Do you want me to come to New York? I can book a ticket when I get back to Joburg and be with you in a couple of days.’

There was silence at the other end of the line.

‘Hannah? What’s wrong?’

‘I… We… Paul, we can’t go on like this,’ she said in a flat tone.

‘What? Just like that? We haven’t seen each other in months, Hannah. It’s distance, not us —’

‘I’m really sorry, Paul. I’ve made my decision. We haven’t been good for each other for a long time. And now this … and everything.’

‘I can spend more time in New York.’ There was desperation in his voice. ‘You can spend more time in Joburg. We can talk about something more permanent, like me moving there.’

‘No, Paul, it’s not going to work.’

‘Is there someone else?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t ask.’

‘Hannah, is there someone else?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

There was a long pause. The line went dead. He’d run out of rupees. Paul banged the phone box with the palm of his hand, then leant his forehead against the cool metal. There were no tears, just numbness. In the background, he could hear his flight being called.

CHAPTER 2

It was a fortnight since 9/11 and Paul had spent much of the time brooding over the breakup. At least things on the work front were looking bright. The day Paul returned from the Seychelles, he’d received a call from Johan Visagie at Africa Moon Films.

‘The documentary is gonna be part of a series on African civilisations,’ said Johan when Paul went for a meeting in his Rosebank office. The man was only partially visible behind a bushy beard, cloud of cigarette smoke and chaotic desk. ‘It’s about the Swahili coast, for National Geographic. I’m gonna need you to go to Kenya.’

Paul was delighted. Although he’d worked on many wildlife documentaries, he preferred the cultural and historical assignments, with research he could sink his teeth into. He’d studied history as an undergraduate at Wits University in Johannesburg, and a film on Swahili culture was right up his street.

‘We’ll show how Africa had this full-on maritime culture long before Europeans rocked up. Our doccie will prove that the Indian Ocean was like this centre of civilisation. And today’s Swahili people inherit that history. Am I going too fast?’

Paul was scribbling on his notepad. He shook his mop of blond hair without looking up. Johan described how the Swahili had built palaces and mosques, sailed across the ocean and traded with Asia for centuries before Vasco da Gama arrived on the coast.

‘See what you can dig up. Mostly, I want us to