Impossible Odds

men—pirates! Crazy! Stupid crazy! They want $45 million U.S. for you!”
    “What?” I cried out. “Forty-five million? Do they even know how much that is?”
    “No! Stupid crazy! That’s why I say they crazy! Unreasonable!”
    “Jabreel, please listen. Listen: This is not possible. Impossible, Jabreel. We are aid workers. None of us have money. No money, Jabreel!”
    “They say NGO pay for you.”
    It’s odd how pidgin English comes naturally, almost without thinking, when someone speaks it to you. I guess it’s just the desire to communicate without cluttering speech with too many qualifiers.
    “Jabreel, you say crazy? You’re right: crazy! Not $45 million for us, not 45 million Somali shillings! Nobody pay so much for two aid workers. We only have family! Private money. Small family money, Jabreel.”
    “Yes, yes! I tell them: You make crazy demands, you get nothing. But they only pirates! No brains!”
    “Okay, Jabreel. Please, now. Please listen. If you want money—”
    “Not me. Not for me. I not pirate. I have NGO here. Very important! I only want to help! I tell them the most they get maybe $900,000. Less than one million. Not like big ships full of oil.” He snorted at the idea of big ships full of oil.
    At last, here was someone who seemed to have a reasonable appreciation for the realities of the situation. I couldn’t evaluate his inflated claims about himself or how they applied to the task of negotiating ransom demands. At least his sense of money was better than the drug-fueled fantasies entertained by the others.
    After darkness fell, the Chairman himself finally arrived, and the camp got active. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, balding, with thin facial hair and a mustache. He addressed the men in a quiet, hoarse voice. Jabreel took his orders from the Chairman along with the others, and when the Chairman decided the time was right he muttered something to Jabreel, who simply said to us, “Phone call.”
    Phone call! At last, it was time for our “proof of life” call, basicto every ransom scheme. I think my adrenaline spiked even higher at that than it did at Poul’s mock execution, because that little episode was quickly over and done with, before fear could set in. But the prospect of a phone call indicated some sort of action, at least. Action meant a chance to get this thing worked out and get ourselves out of there. I felt like E.T. about to phone home.
    At that point, five days seemed like an eternity to wait in the company of these wasted marauders before letting people know we were alive, but I knew that kidnap victims at sea have waited far longer. Some spent months in the hold of a captured ship before anyone at home was contacted. Some were never heard from at all.
    Therefore, under the realities of our new situation, this was what “luck” felt like. “Luck” was now the chance to bathe in a hole without getting raped and then make a call home, so a fortune could be demanded for your return. “Luck” was meeting a man who claimed to understand that $45 million was too much but who thought $900,000 sounded about right. Here in this place on the other side of the looking glass, we were having ourselves a lucky day.
    He and the other men piled us into a silver Helux Surf, a typical type of SUV there, and drove for a few minutes until they were able to locate a decent cell signal. They gave us cell phones and indicated it was time to make our first contact with home. I immediately tried Erik’s number in Hargeisa, but it was disconnected—which was very strange under the circumstances. I explained to Jabreel that Erik must be in Nairobi and something was wrong with that number. Next I tried my father’s number in the United States and to my utter consternation that one also had a recorded message: disconnected! Could it just be the network? Are we getting a bad signal out here? I knew better than that, since I’d seen the men place other calls without a problem, but once again I found myself grasping at straws.
    The strangeness of the moment was amplified another notchwhen Jabreel announced that he had a number to call “for” us. I watched him dial, and the country code looked like Kenya. With the phone on its speaker setting, I heard a man answer and identify himself as “Mohammed.”
    “Mohammed?” That made no sense at all to me. I had no idea who this Mohammed was or who he actually worked for. In my confusion I wondered if he