Jadallah’s Voyage
Raa Atoll, Maldives
November 2002
The sound of the skiff’s engine sputtering caused him to spew forth a string of profanity. Jadallah had been too focused on fleeing to think about the inevitable eventuality that had arrived. His boat was out of gas. Its prow settled back into the clear indigo water. The young man allowed himself to flop into the bottom of the boat’s hull. His back hit the skiff’s fiberglass shell as if the motion were an acceptance of his situation.
So this is it. I’m officially a criminal and a fugitive. Thanks a lot, Dad. He flung his sunburned arms over the top of his head, allowing them to bang against one of the skiff’s seating boards. His head flopped to the left, where a waterproof plastic bag contained a flashlight, in addition to the only two things he’d been able to salvage when the coast guard boarded the speedboat he’d been on: his cell phone and a military-grade laptop that contained the records of his father’s now officially defunct heroin smuggling operation.
He opened the bag and extracted the phone. The Maldivian youth decided to risk turning it on, even though the authorities might be able to track the signal. Jadallah was out of options. The young man – about eighteen years of age – sighed, looking at the monochromatic screen. There was no service. Surrendering wasn’t even an option; Jadallah was on his own. He put the phone back in the bag and zipped it shut.
The young man looked up at the sky. He imagined that he looked horrible after almost an entire day spent in the sun. He’d been asleep below deck when the coast guard attacked. Once he realized what was happening, there hadn’t been enough time to grab anything more than the laptop, phone and drybag before bolting for the skiff. As he powered the boat away, the last thing he saw was his father and the rest of the four-man crew in handcuffs, being led onto a single coast guard cutter.
He’d felt no malice or angst. Jadallah had already given in to the inevitable. He’d expected something like this to happen since his father made him begin doing runs for the operation, immediately after completing his O Levels. The young man thought he would have ended up on the Dhoonidhoo Prison Island before this, but, he never considered that he’d get away only to end up in the middle of the ocean wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. The youth looked around the skiff. The laptop, phone, and flashlight were all he had. No weapons. No food or fresh water. He shut his eyes and knocked the back of his head against the skiff’s hull a few times.
Jadallah remained that way for an interminable period. The amount of illumination provided by the searing afternoon sun suddenly decreased. He was pleased to find that a light breeze had come up. It provided some relief to his aching skin. The wind grew stronger. Jadallah sat up. He opened his eyes to see a quickly approaching squall line on the horizon. The young man swore. This appeared to be more than just the regularly scheduled afternoon monsoon.
He watched the approaching storm. The sky grew darker and the water much choppier. Some of the waves crested over the skiff’s low sides. The bottom of the boat began to fill with water. Cupping his hands, Jadallah attempted to bail it out as quickly as he could. The storm slowly crept toward him as if preparing to deal a coup de grâce.
At once it was upon him. Rain came pouring down in sheets, made to fall almost horizontally by driving wind. The storm knocked the skiff about. Jadallah kept bailing with his hands. It was a losing battle, but at least one he was losing slowly enough to keep the vessel from going under immediately. That would be the end. Like many residents of the Maldives, Jadallah could not swim.
The Maldivian youth panted; he kept bailing as fast as he could. Pelted by wind and rain, the skiff continued to be tossed about. The boat sunk slightly lower in the water with each passing wave. As Jadallah moved his hands over the side of the vessel’s hull yet another time, he noticed an outline of something, despite the reduced visibility in the storm.
It was an island. The storm was pushing him towards it. Jadallah kept bailing with a renewed furiousness. The skiff came closer to the island. His brown eyes could discern that it was little more than a sandbar with a small grove of palm trees. He continued bailing.
The skiff had almost reached land when Jadallah’s efforts proved too little. A wave crested over the vessel’s bow, causing it to tip downward sharply, burying it under the water. The resulting force pitched Jadallah out of the skiff as the rest of his craft went under. He flailed for a few seconds in the liquid before his feet hit upon the sandy bottom of the seabed. He stood, the water only being about waist height this close to the beach. The driving wind and rain continued to pound him. A parcel floated in front of where Jadallah stood, trying to catch his breath. It was the waterproof bag with the phone, laptop, and flashlight inside.
The young man grabbed a hold of it. He sloshed through choppy waves to the beach and collapsed on his knees once he reached the edge of the water. All he wanted to do was find shelter from the harsh conditions before falling into what he hoped would be a mercifully dreamless stupor. He got up and trudged toward the palm tree grove, noticing that the fronds all bent away from him due to the strong winds. He entered the copse but quickly found it did little to provide any meaningful shelter.
Placing one shaky leg in front of the other, he headed toward where the palm trees gave way to denser mangroves. Jadallah pushed his way through them onto a short muddy beach. His mouth dropped open at what he saw.
The hulk of a two-masted clipper ship sat beached with its bow in the sand. The rest of its six-deck hull protruded into a small sheltered cove that provided both seclusion and some protection from the elements. Jadallah had no idea how long the ship must have been there, but it looked antiquated, as if it had been built more than a century ago.
The marooned youth started towards where its anchor chain met shallow water near the beach. He threw the waterproof bag onto the lower of the ship’s two outer decks. The young man grabbed hold of the anchor chain and proceeded to shimmy up its thick links until he reached the rotting wooden railing that surrounded the first outer deck. Jadallah hauled himself aboard.
He remained there on his hands and knees for a moment. His limbs shook with exertion. Slowly, Jadallah rose, picking up the bag as he did so. He moved along the deck towards the stern. The ship’s timbers creaked slightly in the wind as he walked in the dim illumination of the evening storm. His brown-eyes searched for any sort of hatchway.
The youth saw the open entryway as he neared the stern, its hatch apparently having rotted off the hinges. Blackness beckoned from inside. Jadallah paced towards it. Whatever was beyond, it offered protection from the wind and rain. He placed his left hand on the hatch’s frame, and then advanced his left foot into the abyss beyond.
An abrupt movement from within caused him to stumble back. The young Maldivian fell to the deck. He let out a curse in his native Dhivehi. He sighed, seeing what emerged from the vessel’s hull: two seagulls, which had taken refuge just inside. The youth repeated his curse in a quieter tone.
He stood, bracing himself against the hatch’s frame before entering. Jadallah made his way down a crude wooden ladder. Each of the rungs creaked as if it might break when he placed his bare feet on them. He reached the first interior deck. It was practically too dark to see, but his eyes could make out the remains of a large, open space cluttered by what looked to be some sort of rigging. Navigating more by touch than by sight, Jadallah slid his feet along the mildewed decking towards where he figured one of the space’s walls might be. His foot connected with something that felt like a pile of old rope or sail canvas. He dropped the bag and allowed his knees to give way; his body collapsed into it.
The wind continued to howl outside as Jadallah shut his eyes, too exhausted to give a thought to tomorrow.
***
Jadallah wasn’t sure what awakened him from a fitful slumber, but he couldn’t help the feeling that something near him had moved. It was still night; the storm had passed. The stars and a full moon dimly illuminated the space in which he found himself. Clearly intended as a common sleeping area for the crew, a few decaying hammocks still hung from the ceiling. They swung slightly in the stillness the storm had left behind, as if waiting for their users to return. Most of the deck’s floor was strewn with a jumble of rope and sail material. Whoever had brought the ship here had apparently used the space to store the vessel’s rigging. Most of it had succumbed to mildew or the nibbling of various rodents over however long it had lain there.
The young Maldivian moved his head slowly, as if waiting for some unknown force to come at him from the shadows. There was nothing concretely threatening about the scene, but the stillness unsettled him, as if he were walking on someone’s grave.
It’s nothing. Just some creaky derelict abandoned here during the British times, he told himself, turning back to the pile of mildewed sail material that he’d collapsed into the evening before. He took two steps back at what he saw next to it.
The waterproof bag, which contained his cell phone, flashlight, and the laptop, was open. Jadallah was certain it had been closed when he dropped it onto the decking the night before. He looked around. Total stillness.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” he called, not knowing whether to feel terrified or slightly silly.
Silence.
Slowly, Jadallah moved toward the opened drybag. He looked inside. His mouth opened slightly in an abrupt rush of terror.
The laptop was missing.
Jadallah took a few steps back from the bag, breathing through his mouth in shallow bursts. His brown eyes darted nervously around the shadow-filled space.
“Hello? Whoever you are, I know you’re here. What did you do with my computer?”
The echo of his own voice greeted him. Again silence.
Crouching, Jadallah moved back towards the drybag. He reached in and extracted his cell phone. There was still no service. He sighed, reaching into the bag again and taking out the flashlight. The Maldivian youth flipped it on. He was unarmed, but had to find the laptop. The evidence on it was too incriminating.
He shined the light around the dimly lit space. Complete stillness. Nothing to indicate anything else had been touched or manipulated recently.
The young man swung the flashlight in an arc. It fell upon yet another ladder near the stern. Its hatch appeared to lead to another level below deck. He approached it cautiously, stopping before the opening in the deck’s floor. Only blackness was visible below. He took a deep breath and then shined the light down the hole in one sudden motion, as if he expected something to leap out of it.
He stood like that for a few moments, breathing rapidly. Nothing happened. The flashlight illuminated a portion of the deck directly below. It appeared more mildewed than the decking he was on. The creaks of the ladder’s rungs sounded particularly loud as he stepped on them in the silence of night. Jadallah reached the next deck and used his flashlight to illuminate the space.
Small covered openings in the outer hull and fittings on the floor indicated it must once have served as a cannon deck. However, it was almost completely empty; the cannon had been removed. There was no place anyone could hide. The Maldivian youth spied another ladder leading downward.
He took it, repeating the same process he had with the ladder above. Below he found the same thing: another cannon deck, denuded of its armaments. From the size of the ship, Jadallah knew there could only be one more deck below him. Whoever he was on this ship with had to be down there. The young man approached the final ladder. After confirming no threat awaited him immediately below, he shimmied down it as quickly as he could, hoping to be ready for anything that came at him.
Nothing did.
Except for a few ballast stones, the hold was empty. Jadallah furrowed his brow. Whoever had taken his laptop clearly didn’t want to be found. Where could they be hiding? Why are they even here? He momentarily considered whether the person in question could have absconded onto the island, but the young man had seen most of it yesterday evening. He dismissed the idea. Where else would they have to go? They’ve got to be here. But where?
Just then, his light fell across a hatch in the floor of the hold. It appeared out of place with the rest of the vessel’s rusting fittings, looking to be of a more industrially produced design. There couldn’t be much more of a ship below this level; the young Maldivian could only guess at where it led. But he felt reasonably sure of one thing. That’s where they’ve got to be hiding.
Stepping as quietly as he could, Jadallah approached the metal cover. He placed his hands on the circular handle of its locking mechanism. The metal made an agonized groaning sound as the bolts retracted. He crouched behind the hatch’s hinges as he lifted the lid upwards, hoping to use it as cover from whatever came out of the space below.
Only silence greeted him.
After a few seconds, he peeked past the lid over the hatch’s edge. His mouth dropped into a perfect O.
He was staring down into an immense, dimly lit arena. In its center sat an ornately carved, cube-shaped object. The space’s edges were so far away that they seemed ill-defined in the shadows.
“What the…?”
Jadallah’s sentence morphed into a wordless scream. A rusty butcher’s knife sailed past him, centimeters from his left shoulder. He looked up, dropping the flashlight. Its beam fell upward upon an East Asian-looking teenage girl dressed completely in black with a cape. Her eyes locked on him; she lowered her chin, grinning like a predator sizing up its prey.
The girl’s figure began to advance toward him.
Jadallah ran.
His breathing came in short bursts as he climbed the three ladders above him. The work was slow; without the flashlight, he had to feel more than see his way up to the top. Every time he looked back, he could see the figure, who’d picked up the light, walking deliberately behind him. When he again reached the crew quarters, Jadallah paused, still breathing raggedly. He waited as the girl’s head and torso ascended the ladder after him. The Maldivian ran towards her, prepared to use the only defense he had. He raised his foot to kick her in the head.
The girl reached up, seeming to move in a blur. She grabbed a hold of his leg in mid-arc. Her arm jerked his leg toward her, causing Jadallah to lose his balance. He fell to the deck. The young man’s assailant continued ascending the ladder as if his attack had never occurred.
Jadallah got up, his right leg aching where she’d grabbed it. He stumbled to the final ladder – the one that led to the open deck. Cresting it, he turned to run towards the bow. Just as he began to do so, the figure launched herself out of the hatch behind him. She now stood to block the side decks that led bow-ward. She flashed the same predatory smile and advanced toward him in the moonlight.
The marooned young man could hear his breath pounding in his ears. The only place he could go was towards the stern railing. He backed towards it. The girl followed.
The railing came up against his backside. There was nowhere left to go but down into the water. His assailant continued to close the distance slowly. She reached out for his neck. Jadallah attempted to jerk his head away. He felt the railing break. Then he was falling.
Jadallah entered the water face first. It took him only a second to realize that he couldn’t tell which way was up. He flailed, thrashing in the hope of finding something solid he could cling to. There was nothing. The water was too deep to stand in. Eventually, he felt his head break into air. Jadallah gasped, but his flailing brought him under again just as he had done so. He took in a lungful of water.
He choked on it, but there was no way he could exhale. His thrashing became weaker. The youth’s brown eyes looked up through the water. The girl’s figure leapt.
Then it was upon him; his world became blackness.
***
Jadallah awoke with a start. He sat up abruptly, gasping for air. For a moment his mind was too filled with the sensation of not being able to breathe for him to recall where he was. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. His chest heaved, and he let out a breath in relief at finally being awake. The brown-eyed youth looked around.
Through the hatch he’d entered the evening before, Jadallah could see that it appeared to be about midmorning. He turned to look at the rigging-cluttered crew quarters that he’d barely been able to see last night. It all came back to him in a flash.
The coast guard cutter. The storm. This mysterious ship I’m stranded on. The….
The young Maldivian jumped up from the sail. He looked down at the drybag, which still sat where he had dropped it the night before.
It was closed. Slowly, he crouched and unfastened its zipper. His cell phone, flashlight, and laptop sat intact inside. He allowed himself to fall back to the deck. Jadallah rested his hands by his sides. He stared at the pants of his now soiled boxer shorts, allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief. It looked as if the most bizarre part of his memories over the past twenty-four hours really had been a dream.
“Oh, good, you’re up.”
“Waah?”
Jadallah’s head snapped up to see the silhouette of the girl from what he’d just decided was a dream standing in the in the exterior hatchway. He skittered away from her on his hands and feet, back over the sail canvas he’d been sleeping on. She descended the ladder slowly, one of her hands behind her. The marooned young man kept skittering until he felt the back of his head knock against something hard – one of the hull’s support struts.
“Ow!”
He reached back to rub the bump that was quickly forming on his head, letting forth a few curses in Dhivehi.
She smirked, taking another step towards him and removing her arm from behind her back. He jumped in fearful anticipation.
“Here. Have something to eat.”
Jadallah stared at the sliced up coconut, which the East Asian-looking girl offered him in a crude wooden bowl.
“Come on, I’ve decided not to kill you.”
She spoke the words as if they were meant to be a genuine encouragement.
A few meaningless sounds came out of Jadallah’s throat before he was able to form words.
“Decided? Kill?” He shook his head. “What?”
“That’s right. And while you were asleep, I decided to get you some breakfast.”
The head shaking continued. “Breakfast? You tried to murder me last night!”
“Well, more incapacitate, really. And I also saved you from drowning. I merely needed to check on some things before I decided what to do with you. Now that I have, I’m fine with what you saw in the cargo hold.” She emphasized the bowl in her hand. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. Well, not much, anyway.”
Jadallah looked at her dubiously.
“Sorry. I haven’t been around people much, lately. That last bit didn’t help, did it?”
Jadallah hesitated for a moment longer. He reached out and took the bowl from her, using his right hand to devour its contents.
The girl regarded him pensively as he ate.
“So, you’re Jadallah…Jadallah? Jadallah….” She repeated the name to herself a couple of times, in an almost singsong rhythm. “That’s going to be a mouthful every time I want to get your attention.”
The marooned young man stopped eating.
“You know my name?”
“Of course I know your name.” The girl laughed. “Who do you think borrowed your laptop last night? Like I said, I had to check up on you a bit. That seemed like the best place to start.”
“O-kay?” Jadallah said, mentally appending the words this isn’t weird at all to his response. He went back to eating. “Can we back up a few steps? Who are you and how did you end up on this boat? How did you just appear in the cargo hold last night…?”
The girl’s demeanor darkened completely as he spoke the words. Her face turned into a mask of blind anger. She rushed towards the Maldivian, causing him to start. The East Asian girl brought her features centimeters from his. Her brown eyes stared coldly at him; her tone carried a menacing quality.
“Let’s get a few things straight right now. You are never to ask me how I came to be here or who I am. If there is something I want you to know about me, you will know it. Nor are you ever to enter my quarters.” The girl pointed to a door behind the ladder that led outside. Jadallah had not noticed it before. “And as for my ‘appearing’ in the cargo hold? You should have your eyes checked.”
She stood back. Whoever this girl was, Jadallah now noticed that despite her full-length black jumpsuit, she had a pleasing build. Her left hand moved to finger a piece of chainmail cord that disappeared down her suit’s high neckline. The cape he’d seen her wearing last night was gone.
“Okay. Sorry.” His next question carried a sardonic undertone. “Am I at least allowed to know what your name is?”
The girl, who looked about sixteen or seventeen, hesitated for a moment.
“Zhang Tien En.”
“Tenen.” He struggled to pronounce the Mandarin given name. “That’s even more of a mouthful than mine was for you.”
She shrugged, smiling a lighter version of the one she’d offered him the previous night. “Well then, we’ll just have to come up with some different ones. If you agree to my plans for us, that would be completely fitting.”
“‘Plans for us?’ What are you talking about? We’re two teenagers in a cove on a deserted island. What in the name of Allah do you think we’re going to do together?”
“Um….” The girl smirked at him, and there was a moment of silence on the crew deck before her smile changed into one that betrayed genuine, if mischievous, enjoyment. “Actually, there’s something I want to do to you first.”
Despite the sheer terror he’d been in only moments ago, Jadallah laughed out loud. He stopped as fast as he could.
“No. Seriously. What?”
She turned and ascended the ladder that lead to the outer deck. The girl looked over her shoulder.
“If you learn how to swim, I won’t have to go through the trouble of rescuing you next time you fall in the water. I’m going to teach you.”
Jadallah hesitated, not understanding half of what this mysterious girl was talking about.
“Hold on. If you’ve seen what’s in the laptop, you’ve probably guessed I’m a stranded fugitive. What I need is to get out of here, and you want to teach me how to swim?”
The girl looked over her shoulder for a second time. She fixed him with a delicious smile.
“What else are we going to do? Besides, I’ve already got you in your underwear.”
She walked towards the bow.
The marooned young man looked down at his boxer shorts then, shaking his head with an ironic sigh, followed.
***
Jadallah stood on the beach next to the ship’s bow. He extended his arms in front of his torso, palms clasped together.
“Now, I want you to move your arms like this.”
Tien En stood next to him in a similar position. She moved her arms away from each other until they were out at her sides, then she bent them at the elbows until her palms came together again near her chest. The girl pushed her hands away from her chest until they returned to the position in which they’d started.
Jadallah copied her as she demonstrated.
“Like this?” he asked.
“Good. See? It’s not that hard.”
He rolled his eyes slightly.
“I feel ridiculous.”
“You spent last night getting chased around by in your underwear by a girl, and it’s now that you feel ridiculous?”
“Again with the underwear. What are you, five?”
The East Asian leaned over; she brought one of her arms out as she demonstrated, smacking her student on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble.
“What the hell was that for?”
“I told you. Never ask about me.”
“It was a joke.”
“Keep going.”
Jadallah did as told.
The girl moved to stand in front of him. After a beat, she kept talking.
“So, what are you planning to do after we’re done here?” she asked in a quiet tone, looking him directly in the eyes.
He shied away from her piercing gaze, continuing to move his arms.
“I don’t know. I could head to the nearest inhabited island. But I’m a fugitive. The best option I have left could be to turn myself in.”
“It also might be a little difficult. Assuming you do decide to give up and return to civilization, how are you going to get there?”
Jadallah thought for a moment.
“I could try to make a fire on the beach where I landed. See if I could alert any passing boats.”
“How are you going to chop down the wood?”
The Maldivian fugitive furrowed his brow. Then he sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Now are you starting to see why I suggested you learn how to swim?”
“You don’t seriously expect me to swim back.”
“Not quite. Think a bit more about what you saw in the hold last night. Let’s move on.”
Jadallah stopped practicing the movement Tien En had shown him and followed her to the water’s edge. She continued into the clear blue liquid in her full-length jumpsuit. He followed, moving alongside her.
“You’re really going in like that?”
The girl gave him a harsh shove on the back. Jadallah splashed face-first into the waist-deep water; he flailed about for a few seconds before trying the hand motion the girl had shown him. His chest began to move slowly, though his feet still dragged on the cove’s bed.
“What was that for?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Jadallah sighed, then started. He felt two arms wrap around his torso from behind. They pulled him backwards so that his feet rested off the ground. Even with his body partially out of the water, the girl seemed to do so with practically no exertion.
“Now kick.”
“That’s it? Just ‘kick’?”
“Pretty much.”
He did as she instructed; what the girl had said earlier came back to him. She’s fine with me knowing about the huge space I saw beneath the cargo hold last night. But it’s as if she’s afraid talking about her personal history would interfere with…something.
“You want something from me,” he blurted. “That’s why you’re doing this.”
The girl snorted.
“What I mean is, I’ve been so preoccupied with you, I still haven’t asked about whatever I saw in the cargo hold. What was that space anyway? There’s no way it can be part of the ship. And what does it have to do with teaching me to swim?”
“Not ‘part of’ and nothing directly. What you saw down there is our ticket out of here.”
“Ticket out of here? What are you talking about?”
He kept kicking as he listened to the girl’s slightly accented voice offer what, to his mind, was a preposterous explanation.
“The cube-shaped object in the center of that arena creates an extra-dimensional space, which among other things, ‘hooks’ into whatever is on top of it. When that thing is set on a certain course, the cube-shaped object bends space around it. Currently, the thing hooked to it is the ship. Launch it and we’d be faster than anything on the high seas.”
Now it was Jadallah’s turn to snort. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Then I’ll show you.”
“So, let’s say I believe you. What do you want with me?”
The East Asian girl responded in a matter-of-fact manner.
“I saw what was on your laptop. You’ve got contacts in black markets all over the region. If we took out some funds from them, we would be able to fix up the ship. Modernize it and make a proper business.”
“Doing what?”
“Let’s just say procuring stuff people want, inconspicuously.”
“You want us to become mercenaries.”
“Well, you’ve already done drug runner, so you might as well add that to the list.”
“How can I trust you?”
Suddenly, she removed her arms from around his waist. Jadallah found himself floating in the water. He flailed for a moment before turning over and applying the two techniques the girl had taught him. The young man began to propel himself in the shallow water. His teacher swam beside him. She offered him a hungry smile.
“If I wanted you dead, you’d be that way already. Instead, I helped you learn something helpful to both of us; you don’t really have another option.”
Jadallah found himself surprised, not only that he’d learned to swim so quickly, but also at his sudden turn of fate. Most of what she’d said sounded beyond the realm of possibility. He was also sure that the girl who called herself Tien En had something to hide. But when he thought about his situation, what did he have to lose?
He turned to look at her as he swam.
“Fine, you show me all of that space folding stuff is real. And I’m in.”
She smiled as if having just scored a personal victory and swam back towards the shore.
“Like I said, Jadallah. I’ll show you.”
***
Jadallah stood toward the back of the ship’s uppermost deck. Tien En stood next to him, behind the helm. It was now late afternoon. They’d spent most of the day gathering what native provisions could be found on the island, then pulled up the ship’s anchor. The sun could be seen behind their backs.
The girl grabbed hold of one of the wheel’s dowels with an almost imperious air. Jadallah furrowed his brow at her, still somewhat skeptical.
“That’s it? What about all the rigging and stuff?”
“We don’t need it; it’s shot to hell anyway.”
“I still can’t believe that huge space in the hold exists, let alone that it can….”
The girl spun the wheel hard over. The ship began to turn on its axis. Jadallah’s mouth dropped open. He turned to look at the one with whom he had just co-founded the outfit.
“This… this is incredible!”
The girl smiled almost hungrily. She spun the wheel back around, bringing the ship on course for the cove’s mouth. The vessel sped past it. It moved so fast that Jadallah almost had to brace himself against the wind its movement generated.
“Believe it, Jad. Let’s start this thing.” She yelled over at him, her wavy black hair fluttering behind her.
He looked at her, screwing up his face.
“Jad?”
“That’s what I’ve decided to start calling you.”
“It sounds even worse than my full name.”
The girl smirked, hands still on the wheel. “Yep, and it’s shorter too. I’m not about to start calling you ‘Allah.’” She paused for a moment, almost looking pensive. “And since you’re having trouble with my Chinese name, call me Jennifer. My ship has finally come in.”
“Jennifer? That’s just as long as my name.”
The girl shrugged, as if that were someone else’s problem.
“Fine, then. Jenn. I’m going with Jenn.”
“Whatever, Jad. So, tell me, where should I point this thing?”
“Head west. Then north. We’ll head along the coast until we’re near Gwadar. One of my contacts there should cut us a loan. That should be our first priority.”
Jenn turned the wheel ever so slightly; the ship sailed towards the setting sun. The light clouds in the sky before them took on a reddish tinge. The one now known as Jad stepped beside her.
She smirked again.
“Actually, the first thing I’m going to do is go shopping.”
The Maldivian let out a visceral groan.
“Like it or not, Jad. No one’s going to give you a loan in your underwear.”
Smiling in spite of himself, he brought his head to rest in his left palm. He and his mysterious co-founder sailed off into the sunset. Each bound on a quest they had no idea was already in play.