In Cold Blood by Mark Dawson Page A

bar itself was fashioned within the corrugated tin walls, a long plank of wood suspended on two piles of bricks with a collection of bottles arranged on another shelf behind it. Beatrix approached and ordered a beer. The bartender handed her a lukewarm bottle of Tusker Premium and she paid for it with five dollars.
    “Anything else?” he asked her when he noticed that she was looking at him.
    “You might be able to help me,” she said. “I’m looking for a guide.”
    “A guide for what?”
    “I need to get into Somalia.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “Unofficially.”
    “Why would you want to do something like that?”
    “I’m a journalist,” she explained. “I’m writing a story about the jihadists.”
    “Then you’re crazy.”
    She smiled patiently at him. “I need to be over there to write what I need to write and I won’t be able to explain myself if I have to cross at a checkpoint. They won’t let me in.”
    “For which you should be grateful. You know what it is like over there, yes? No place for a lady.”
    “Can you help me?”
    “I can’t,” he said, and turned away.
    She stayed at the bar and sipped the beer. The bartender looked over at her now and again and she made sure to hold his gaze.
    After ten minutes she finished her beer and, when he was looking in her direction, she tapped her finger on it.
    “Yes?” he said.
    “Another.”
    He nodded and popped the top of a second bottle. She paid him again.
    “I know you can help me,” she said.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “There’s a hundred dollars in it for you.”
    She slid a note across the bar.
    He paused.
    “Come on. It’s my funeral, right?”
    “You want a smuggler.”
    She kept her hand across the note. “I suppose I do. You know any?”
    “In a place like this? Of course, I know many.”
    “So you can help.”
    “Yes.”
    She had expected the need to grease a palm or two and it was going to be necessary here. He might be spinning her a line, but what choice did she have? She was a fish out of water. She lifted her hand.
    He folded and pocketed the bill. “Wait at the bar. The man I am thinking of usually arrives at ten.”
    “Fine,” she said.
    She drank the second beer, grateful for the moisture in her dry throat, and was about to start a third when she noticed the bartender speaking to a newcomer at the other side of the bar. They looked over at her and she held their eyes.
    The newcomer came across and stood before her.
    “My name is Bashir,” he said.
    “Beatrix.”
    She looked at him: average height, a mouthful of yellowing teeth, hair that was as black as pitch. He was dressed in Levis and a pair of cowboy boots, ostentatiously expensive in a bar where everyone else was dressed in dirty t-shirts, shorts and flip flops.
    “My friend tells me you want to get into Somalia.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you are a journalist?”
    “That’s right,” she said impatiently. “Can you help me?”
    “It is a dangerous thing you ask.”
    “That’s why I’ll pay you a thousand dollars. Can you do it?”
    “I can. You are lucky, madam. I am from the Boni tribe. My forefathers were hunter-gatherers on the border. They knew the land very well. They would whistle to the birds who would guide them to wild honey in the acacia trees.”
    She flicked a hand at his prosperous dress. “I’m guessing you’re not much into the honey business.”
    He laughed. “Indeed not. I am a trader. I take mangos from Somalia and sell them in Kenya and then I take bottled water from Kenya and sell it in Somalia. I do this again and again. Taxes and bribes are common at the border and I try to keep my expenses to a minimum. So, yes, I am very familiar with crossing. Where do you mean to go?”
    “Barawe.”
    He whistled through his teeth. “That will not be cheap. Barawe is a very dangerous place. The jihadists control it. A thousand dollars will not be enough.”
    “How much?”
    “Five thousand. All