This morning I took my first star sight, calculated my first position. You have been teaching me how to use the sextant, how to navigate by the stars. You say I need to know how to do it, in case you cannot.
Looking up into the infinite, seeing order in seeming chaos, I find myself regaining a measure of faith. In what, exactly, I am not yet sure. Perhaps, as I watch you go about your tasks on our little home, securing the sails, working the tiller, rigging the self-steering (all these terms I am only just starting learn!), it is faith in you. In us. In our ability to make a life for ourselves, on our own terms. To take all that we have seen and learned, and forge it into something new, something lasting and true.
Eleven days ago, we found Flame among the mangroves, where you had left her. Seeing this little boat for the first time, there in her hiding place, was like glimpsing part of your life without me. And now that I am here, I marvel that after everything I have done and said, you came for me, as true and constant as the compass that guides us.
As the days have passed, we have had time to talk. You have recounted to me the events on Zanzibar, your flight across East Africa, the terrible ambush in Sudan the day Jean-Marie was killed. I, too, have shared some of what I have been through.
Yesterday, for the first time, Eugène laughed and smiled at me. He is getting better. Each day I feel him coming closer to me, remembering, or perhaps just building new trust in me. The resilience of children is amazing.
Before we left Mombasa, at your urging, I called Inspector Marchand in Paris. To say she was surprised to hear from me is a gross understatement. I told her that Eugène was in my arms. That my husband was dead, killed in Egypt only a few days before. She asked if I was coming back to clear my name. I told her I had no intention of returning. Then she wished me good luck. It was very human of her.
I also called Hope. She is strong and seems to be managing alone. The baby is due soon. I told her we were safe, but that we would be disappearing for a while. I could hear her crying. I know she wishes she could be with us. Somehow that would seem right. Her son is yours. Her new baby is Jean-Marie’s. We all love each other. That will have to be enough, for now.
From Mombasa I posted everything we have on Yusuf’s case to my editor at AFP in Paris. The parcel I sent contained the data dossier, the Kemetic’s diary with my transcriptions, and the memory card from his camera with most of the photographs. He may do with it as he wishes. The Directorate have now been informed, via my friend, of the death of Fatimah Salawi at Luxor, and the fact that Hamid Al-Farouk, a French citizen, was almost certainly the militant who called himself ‘The Lion’. I told him to tell them not to try to find me. That I needed time, and peace.
I try not to speculate on Hamid’s motives, on what led him to do what he did. We can never really know another person, what drives them. Perhaps he simply lost faith in the law, in the concept of justice as he’d practised it. It is clear to me now that Hamid knew that the Consortium would come after him. And so he decided to pre-empt them, fake his own death, and take the fight to them. Whether it was his idea or hers, I will never know. But the thought that he would sacrifice me to achieve this, make me out to be a murderer, hurts me more deeply than I can express. I cannot help wondering: if I had not been late coming home that day, would they have killed me? Had they argued, perhaps? She wanting to kill me, he opting for framing me. Did he anticipate, perhaps, that the Consortium would come after me, too, and devised the framing to protect me from its assassins? He would have known that, behind bars, I would be safe. Is that perhaps what he meant when he said he had done it for me? I must resign myself to the fact that I will never know.
The degree to which Fatimah Salawi influenced Hamid I can only guess. Love is a powerful thing. So is hate. I know that I will find it within myself to forgive him one day. I doubt the families of the Luxor victims ever will.
It is clear to me now that once the Consortium had determined to eliminate Hamid, the direction of events was set. Knowing my association with you, and our role in exposing Operation COAST, the AB and the Consortium decided, together, that it was time to get rid of us both. We are dangerous.
Last night we sat in the cockpit together. It was cold. Your put your arms around me and pointed up to a small cluster of stars. Those, you said, are the Pleiades, the daughters of Pleione, the seven sisters. At first, I saw only five stars. But then you gave me the binoculars and I realised that there were nine. You named them each. The parents, Atlas and Pleione, hand in hand, so close together that to my naked eye they had been one. And then the seven daughters: Alcyone, the brightest, Merope, Electra, and Maia, and the three smaller stars I had not seen at first: Cleano, Taygeta and Stereope, the smallest. In any monolith there are cracks – places where the light shines through.
After leaving the estuary where you had hidden Flame, we set sail for Zanzibar’s northernmost island, Pemba. We visited the daughter of the woman Manheim murdered. Zuz is living with her grandmother and great-aunt now, in this most remote place. We stayed three nights only, long enough to provision for our voyage.
Zuz’s mother must have been very beautiful. I could see from the way she looked at you, Claymore, that she is in love with you, in her own adolescent way. It made me smile to see the two of you together – you fatherly and stern, she mature beyond her years, twisting you this way and that. The two of you work on different planes, and yet there is a bond there, a deep respect. You told me about Grace and Joseph.
Flame is small but sturdy. The weather has been fine, and the winds fair. Nights, you sleep in the cockpit, allowing Eugène and me the forward berth.
The ocean is beautiful, so powerful. There is peace here in the endless blue horizons, the shifting of weather and clouds, the deep currents. We are making steady progress north along the coast. There is something deeply satisfying about watching the daily position fixes as they move across the map. Soon we will start east across the Arabian Sea, as the north-east monsoon builds. I have always wanted to see India.
As each day goes by, I can see something growing in you, my love. You are healing, physically. Your ear is fully mended, the wound in your side also. You are tanned and strong. Your hair is bleached by sun and salt. You smile at me from the cockpit, standing with the tiller under your arm. There is, for the first time since I have known you, no pain in your eyes, no deep, lurking terror. It is as if something has left you, a shadow of some kind – a dark umbra; and in its place I can see glimpses of something you may have been once, traces of a boyish innocence.
Last night, for the first time in years, we made love. Eugène was asleep in the forward cabin. Stars filled the sky to bursting. The ocean surged beneath us. The air was so pure in our lungs. I cannot describe it. I love you. And for the first time, I am sure that you love me.
And yet in my happiness, I think of all of those we have left behind – some dead, others locked in a hell of their own making, others surviving as best as they can, trying to stay sane in an insane world. You say that we have done our fighting, you and I. That it is time to live for ourselves now. Life is fleeting. I do not know how long this can continue, but right now, I do not ever want it to end.