Audrey... I'm at a loss. What is there that I could possibly say to make it better?
She's still crying. Her hands have clutched the steering wheel, like it was the one thing that she had to hold on not to drown.
This all was too much for her to handle.
I have no idea how we got into this situation, but judging from the main sail that got dropped suddenly and lay at the hull, I guess she stopped quickly when she saw that there was somebody in the water. Maybe she thought it was just one guy… maybe her heart was so big and so open that she didn't think about the consequences for one second.
The whole morning, she had enjoyed sailing. The boat was banking from one side to the other while sailing and suddenly she must have dropped the halyard to stop. Also, the boom is dangling loosely. I want to fix it, but I don't want to touch anything with those bloody hands.
I put the gun away and climb down to the swimming platform to wash my hands in the water before I touch anything.
As I turn back, I can see Audrey's back. The sobs shake her skinny body. She's burying her face in her left hand while her right hand is still at the helm. From time to time she looks up, wipes the tears away and checks the GPS for shoals and the water in front of us.
I slowly approach her from behind. Audrey.
She sniffs. What, she brusquely answers.
I don't know what to say.
She finally turns around and looks into my eyes. There's a strange glance in her eyes. Anger. Disbelief. Hopelessness. Is it hate, too? I can't tell.
I'd so much want to take her into my arms but I can't. These guys' blood is still on my shirt and I don't want her to touch it.
I'm sorry, I breathe. I'm sorry you had to see this.
She answers nothing and just turns to the front again.
Maybe now is not the time to deal with it. Maybe we're both not ready. I should let it go. My veins are still filled with adrenaline. I feel my pulse still racing. She's probably not so much better. We need time for all the emotions to settle down before we can think clearly.
Anyway, there's work to do. Since the halyard was just dropped along with the sail the boom is loose. I tighten the lines at the boom break to keep it from jibing accidentally. The sail needs to be fixed. If a gust of wind hits us from the side, it'll blow the sail into the water or do something even worse. In one of the storage boxes at the stern there's an additional line. I fix it to the gooseneck and tie the sail to the boom somehow. This is totally not how you should do it, but it'll fix the problem for now. This can be tomorrow's problem.
At least the boat is safe now. Time to take care of the next problem.
I get a bucket and start cleaning away the blood that is on the swimming platform, the railing and all the other spots where I saw blood stains. As one of the first steps I take off the bloody shirt and soak it in the salt water. The blood will never fully come out of the white fabric. It's better just to throw it overboard. I have a few more shirts downstairs.
It takes forever to get rid of all the blood. I scrub like a maniac. Like scrubbing away the blood would make undone what happened here, half an hour ago. It doesn't.
Audrey says nothing, throughout the whole time. Her view follows me. I can feel her eyes on me. What the hell is she thinking? The same as I am? That I'm sorry for what I've done? That I'm wondering if I could have acted differently? Should we have taken at least a few of them on board? What for? Which ones? Where to bring them?
This is the most risky area of the Mediterranean sea. The coast guard is patrolling the area quite regularly. They're not interested in tourists like us. But they'll get suspicious right away if there are possible migrants on a boat.
No, there's no chance we could have taken these guys aboard. We couldn't have saved any one of them.
Our ship's name is written on the life rings and on the life raft we're carrying. If I had thrown these things out, coast guard would have sooner or later found out that we were in the area an didn't help.
We need to keep a low profile. Stay under the radar. Don't do anything that could blow our cover. We're two Australian tourists on a long summer vacation. A married couple, who have rented a boat to go diving.
Again, I throw a bucket of bloody water overboard. After half an hour of cleaning, the water itsn't even red any more. The first buckets were much different.
I'm glad Audrey is at the helm and I do the cleaning. I wouldn't want her to get in touch with these guys' blood. HIV rates in Africa are tremendously high. There was the blood of five different people on this boat – at least.
I head downstairs to get some disinfectant. I need to be sure everything is gone. Looking into the mirror, I see that there are some traces of blood at my forehead. Wash them off. Wash your hair. Now.
With a bottle of disinfectant and wearing a fresh T-shirt I climb back up.
Audrey has stopped crying, at some point. Our views meet just for a second, but there's no smile, no word, nothing. It sends cold shivers down my back and ties my stomach into a knot.
I disinfect all the spots from which I've already cleaned the blood away. Am I paranoid? A germaphobe? Damn it, that was a bloody murder, nothing else. I can't clean away all the traces but I'll do as much as I can. If ever somebody came along to search the boat with an UV light, they'd find it in the tiny gaps that nobody can clean.
At least it looks clean now. That's all I wanted.
Audrey is still wordlessly steering the boat. I bring the bottle back down. The pot of chili that I've warmed for us as a lunch is still in that crate where I put it. We both totally forgot. It's cold again. But I'm not hungry. I guess Audrey neither.
I fear climbing up the stairs again. This time I won't have anything that I can distract me with. No work that'll make it easy not to talk about all that happened.
Slowly I take the first step.
This time, Audrey isn't acting as distant as she did before. Her eyes already found mine and she portends me to come up to her.
She hands me the binoculars. There's a strange ship, she says, pointing to the front, eleven o clock.
I have a look. Damn it.
That's border control. EU.
What?
European Union border control. They're called Frontex.
I put the binoculars down. Audrey looks afraid. Her day is getting from bad to worse.
I refrain from saying something like "I knew this would happen" but exactly this was one of my reasons not to take anyone on board.
What's gonna happen?, she asks me. Her voice is shaky.
Nothing bad, don't worry. They're just looking for migrants and drugs.
Drugs?! She almost shrieks.
I turn around and take her by her shoulders. Don't worry. I've been trough this twice. It won't be a problem.
Her eyes are ripped open widely. I pull her closer to whisper into her ear they're in the keel, below water line, on the outside. Their dog won't find them. They'll check our passports, chase a dog through the boat and then they'll leave.
Her face is only a few inches away. Her knees are almost about to give in.
Everything will be alright, I tell her again, brushing a few strands out of her face, we're just an Australian couple who have rented a boat to travel the Mediterranean Sea. We're on our way to go diving south of Malta.
What if they don't believe? I don't have an Australian accent.
Don't worry. They're mostly Polish, French and Hungarian guys on these boats. They couldn't tell a Scot from a Canadian.
That she's worrying about accents at least tells me that she's not numbed by her fear. I'm so proud of her. She has the strength to go through with our plans.
But there's still a lot to coordinate.
I take the gun and throw it overboard. It's too risky to have it on board, especially after a few people have been shot with it. If they confiscate it and ever find one of their bodies…
I take off the T-shirt and pull on a shirt with long sleeves to cover my bruised and scarred arms. Audrey has to go downstairs to warm up our chili again, even though we're both not hungry. Our passports are in a cabinet downstairs. The diving equipment is in one of the rooms at the stern of the boat. We need to be credible.
The boat comes closer. I'm at the helm now. Of course they come towards us. As far as I can look around, there's no other ship visible on the horizon.
Their patrol boat is way bigger than ours. As they swing by and come to our side, I can see the difference. I grab the fenders from their storage and hang them from one side of the boat.
Finally, an officer climbs down to me.
At the first time he opens his mouth, I hear his heavy Slavic accent. This guy won't be able to tell if we're Australian or not. He asks for our passports and he asks us if there is anybody else on the boat. I decline and ask Audrey to bring our passports upstairs.
She comes, the passports in one hand, in the other the pot with the warmed up and steaming chili.
Clumsily she hands the passports over to the officer and apologizes for bringing the chili. She tells me that it has already fallen off the stove once today when the boat banked. Her Australian accent isn't perfect, but very convincing. I know here pulse is racing. There must be adrenaline all over in her system, but she's perfectly handling the situation.
The officer has a look into the cabin and hands us the passports back. I know that he's not really allowed to do anything, because we're in international waters. He asks if we're okay with the ship being searched by a dog. Of course, go ahead, I tell him. A second officer comes down, and a German shepherd that they lead down into the cabin. I have an eye on them. They won't find anything. Mehmet and they guys know what they're doing. They'd never transport the drugs above the water line. Border controls are just too frequent in this area.
There's a big red spot on the otherwise grey carpet, right in front of the stove. Must be Chili. I turn over to Audrey and she winks a little. I'm sorry for the mess, she silently tells me, I even tried scrubbing it away with some disinfectant but it didn't really work.
There are no words for how much I love you, Audrey. The whole ship has been reeking of disinfectant and cleanser after my cleanup orgy. Though I didn't even tell her to, she had thought of a plausible explanation for it, threw some of the Chili on the floor and made a perfect cover story.
The officer leading the dog makes a big step not to tap into the big wet spot on the carpet. After a few minutes he comes back up. His dog found nothing.
The officers say a friendly goodbye and wish us a good journey.
As quickly as the spectacle had started, it's already over again. They loosen the ropes. The officer tells me that we should start the engine and drive away. Probably it's better if the smaller ship goes away first. I have no idea. But it's the same procedure like last time. Thank god it's been a few years ago since I last got into one of their checks.
Rocking heavily, the engine brings our boat away from theirs. Audrey takes the helm again and I go take the fenders in. When I'm done, the Frontex boat has also moved on. They're going away from us, quite fast.
Audrey and I wordlessly stare at each other. There's a thousand things in my head which I'd like to say but it's just not the right moment. I'm caught somewhere between apologizing and saying 'I told you so'. Damn it, I was angry at her at first, for having stopped the boat. How could I ever be angry at her, for having such a good heart? That's exactly why I love you, Audrey.
I guess she's not feeling so much differently.
In the end, I just take that pot of Chili, put it down at the floor and take her into my arms. We are so lucky. Two times already today, we've been at the verge of everything going bad. These guys could have killed us. The Frontex officers… if one of them had recognized Audrey, or gotten suspicious about our passports, this could have been the end of our journey.
I bury my face in her neck and close my eyes. We made it.
She's doing the same. One of her hands is on my back, the other one still on the helm. Even though none of us is looking out where we're going. Doesn't matter. There's nothing around us in a 50 mile radius. We're alone again. As beautiful as it is, this is a lonely and hostile environment.
Jack she says.
I don't wanna open my eyes. What is it?
Thank you.
You shouldn't thank me for that, Audrey. I've killed people, innocent people. It was self defense, it was an us-or-them situation, but in the end, they were innocent young people, migrants whose boat has sunk.
I'm a murderer. You shouldn't thank me for that, Audrey.
I don't know what to answer, so I say nothing. There's a big lump in my throat.
I make her turn to the front again and tightly hug her from behind. Both her hands are at the helm. When I close my eyes, I can see that guy on the swimming platform. His eyes. His courage. He thought he could make it. That I'd not shoot. His blood. The horror in Audrey's eyes, as I killed an unarmed young man just a few feet next to her.
Keep your eyes open, damn it.
It'll follow me anyway, anywhere, anytime, no matter where I am or what I'll be doing.
I've killed them. They were unarmed.
Nobody should thank me for that.
.
.
.