The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [102]
As the negotiations drew to a close, the pirates started to plan their getaway. Two or three weeks before the ransom was delivered, the supply boats began to bring sets of new combat fatigues and matching boots, which the pirates subsequently used to disguise themselves as Puntland soldiers upon leaving the ship.8
By satellite phone, the Victoria’s owners had kept Captain Tinu and Mihai closely apprised of the status of the ongoing negotiations, and, as a result, the two knew a week in advance when the ransom was to be delivered. When the big day arrived, every leader, attacker, and holder in the pirate operation turned up on the Victoria, including, as Levenescu testified, Computer himself; Mihai counted a total of thirty-two individuals, including the gang’s accountant. They all waited with anticipation for a small eight-seater aircraft en route from Kenya, loaded from the vaults of a Nairobi bank.
When the plane was sighted, the crew was told to assemble on the main deck in plain view. Mihai observed that the plane was carrying “military men” (most likely private security forces), and guessed that a representative of the shipping company was also aboard. When, after two fly-bys, the plane’s occupants were satisfied that all crew members were alive and accounted for, they released a parachuting bundle containing the ransom money. So strong were the monsoon winds, said Mihai, that the pirates had to chase the package in one of their supply boats after it landed dozens of metres away.
Once retrieved, the ransom was brought on deck and meticulously divided according to a pre-arranged formula. “The accountant had a laptop,” said Mihai. “On it was an Excel table with the name of each pirate.” Of the $1.8 million ransom, “The man who threatened to kill us received $150,000,” Levenescu had told me earlier, almost certainly describing Mohamed Abdi, the head attacker. “The cook got $20,000.”
After five or six hours, twenty-two pirates had received and counted their money and departed for the shore, leaving ten on board to oversee the lengthy preparations to ready the main engine after its long period of disuse. Twenty-four hours later, at exactly quarter past five on the morning of July 18—the time was etched in Mihai’s memory—the last pirate left the deck of the Victoria.
* * *
For the Chief, the worst part of the experience was unquestionably the night on the bridge when he came closest to death. But he soon grew accustomed to living under the Damoclean sword of such threats. “At one point they sent the Germans an email,” he said. “It read: ‘If you don’t send us the money we’ll start randomly executing the crew, starting with the Captain.’ ”
I asked if he thought that the pirates would ever have carried out their threat.
“No,” he replied. “It was just a tactic to push the owners into paying.”
I pressed, “What makes you so sure?”
“Because if they had killed us, they wouldn’t have gotten any money,” came the matter-of-fact response.
Besides mass executions, the pirates also threatened to transport the crew onto land and scuttle the Victoria, a threat that Mihai did not view as credible. “I don’t believe they would have done it,” he said. “But who knows? They were unpredictable.”
And if the shipping company had refused to pay?
“They wouldn’t have let the ship go,” he said. “But they might have released us, maybe after five or six months. Maybe.”
As with Levenescu, Somalia was now on the Chief’s personal travel ban list, as I discovered when I asked if he would ever accept a berth on another vessel transiting through Somali waters.
“No!” he exclaimed, shaking his head and chuckling. “Maybe I’d run into the pirates again—they’d say, ‘Chief! You’re back! You must like it so much here!’ ” Once again, my translator and I found ourselves laughing aloud at his infectious levity. Going into these interviews, I had been nervous that I would encounter mute and traumatized wrecks; never would I have expected the Chief’s carefree attitude towards his experience.
The half-hour Mihai had originally