Interesting, Crocker thought as they entered the port area, this time with a chance to look around a little more. He hadn’t expected to be mesmerized but was, by a deep purplish gray sky festooned with lights from ships, booms, loading elevators, and Panamax cranes of all sizes. The effect was otherworldly. Significant in a way he couldn’t grasp.
During the day this was one of the busiest harbors in the world—a long natural channel protected by a thin finger of land with elaborate wharves east and west. At this hour, half past eleven, the port was eerily calm. Gently lapping water with Sufi music playing somewhere in the background. The fire from some sort of refinery burned in the distance, projecting a golden glow along the horizon, which made the water appear even lighter than the sky.
He’d heard that neighboring Afghanistan was the country with the highest percentage of fecal matter in the air. Judging from the quality of what he was breathing, Pakistan couldn’t be far behind.
After an exchange of cell-phone calls, Crocker learned that Davis, Ritchie, and Mancini had arrived ahead of them and were haggling with officials at the Karachi Port Trust.
They ran. Five minutes later, out of breath, he and Akil entered a regal colonial-style building that reminded the SEAL leader a little of the U.S. Capitol. They were directed to an office on the second floor where they found Davis nose to nose with a Pakistani official.
“What’s going on?”
The two men were approximately the same height, but otherwise were very different.
Davis was broad-shouldered and blond, with blue eyes; the Pakistani, dark-skinned and frail, with a brush of black-silver hair and turned-up mustache. He introduced himself as Ayud Nasiri, the assistant port safety manager.
“He’s stonewalling us, boss.”
Ayud Nasiri to Davis: “You’re a very rude man.”
Crocker summoned all his diplomatic charm. “We’re American officials,” he explained, “on a mission for the king of Norway.”
Nasiri responded in a high-pitched voice. “I keep telling your man here that I’m not allowed to release any passenger lists without the approval of the port facility security officer, and that individual won’t be available until later in the morning. It’s nothing personal, of course.”
“But, you see, Mr. Nasiri, this is an emergency. A girl’s life is in imminent danger.”
“It seems that everything is an emergency these days, my good sir.”
A good-natured fellow with a ready smile, Nasiri was also stubborn. He clearly did things by the book and wasn’t about to make an exception, even after Crocker called Mikael Klausen in Oslo, who managed to get the Norwegian deputy foreign minister to talk to him.
“The PFSO will arrive in several hours,” the assistant port safety manager said with a sly grin. “He’s usually prompt, at nine o’clock. I’m sure you’ll find him to be a very good fellow.”
It was a polite go-fuck-yourself.
“Now what?” Davis asked.
That’s when Mancini and Ritchie returned from the port’s passenger terminal, looking fit and rested. They told Crocker they’d shown everyone they could find a photo of Malie Tingvoll.
“Any luck?”
“Negative, boss.”
Crocker and Akil were irritable and tired, having traveled all day to get to Karachi. Crocker’s lower back ached from the long flight. He’d broken it in two places during a HAHO jump (high altitude–high opening) a year before.
The crackers and tea in glasses Nasiri ordered an aide to serve didn’t help.
Mancini, who liked to focus on details, drew a quick sketch of the port—seventeen vessel berths on the east wharf, thirteen on the west. Each wharf held a large container terminal. The west pier also accommodated three oil berths, two ship repair jetties, a shipyard, and an engineering facility. In addition there was a large harbor adjacent to the western wharf that contained thousands of smaller fishing vessels.
“What do we do now?” Ritchie asked, his longish, straight black hair setting off his Cherokee cheekbones.
“We wait.”
They sat on a rough wooden bench and watched the clock on the opposite wall tick slowly past one-fifty-five to two.
Crocker asked Akil to go inside and ask Nasiri if they could see a list of vessels that had recently left the port. He referred him to the traffic manager’s office on the first floor. The lone official on duty there, a tall, thin man with large hooded eyes and thick lips, announced that the office was closed to visitors until 8 a.m. When Akil tried to reason with him, he waved him away and tried to close the door. Akil managed to wedge his foot inside and claimed he was from the U.S. consulate. When that didn’t work, he offered the night traffic manager forty dollars for the names of all vessels that had left the port in the past several days.