Blind Reef

by Peter Tonkin

  The young man, having watched all this with incredible, agonized intensity, collapsed back on to the gurney and put his left arm over his eyes. The gesture was so defeated and hopeless that Richard, still in Santa mode, got up once more and crossed to stand beside him. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gently, as though speaking to his own son. ‘We’ll get through this. You’ll be OK.’

  The painfully thin forearm came off the emaciated face. The huge eyes gazed up at him, their pupils so dark as to seem almost black. Their whites jaundiced and veined. The sculpted lips parted, revealing uneven teeth stained from a lifetime chewing khat. ‘Nahom,’ he said. His voice was thin and weak, yet somehow almost steely and determined.

  Richard thought he sounded so goddamned young. ‘Eh?’ he enquired.

  The left hand rested like a spider on his chest. ‘Nahom,’ he said again.

  Richard caught on at last. He pointed to himself, his index finger extended by the clip on its tip. ‘Richard,’ he said.

  ‘Ree-kard.’

  ‘Close enough, Nahom, old thing,’ he said.

  The black spider pressed on the vest draped over that cavernous, skeletal chest. ‘Nahom,’ he said again.

  ‘Nice to meet you—’

  ‘You making new friends?’ interrupted Robin’s voice, a little croakily.

  ‘Yup. Seems the chap Ahmed and I rescued is called Nahom. I don’t know what your new friend’s called yet …’

  ‘How’re you feeling?’

  ‘Hundred per cent, actually. Tip-top. Tickety-boo.’

  ‘You and Bertie Wooster.’

  ‘Very funny. What about you?’

  ‘Surprisingly fit, all things considered. D’you think I’ll set off all sorts of alarms if I pull this stuff off my hand?’

  ‘Might alert someone, I suppose.’

  ‘Which could be a good thing. Any idea what they told us about lavatory facilities in this thing?’

  ‘No. That is, no one mentioned anything about—’

  Dr Adel stirred. ‘There is a toilet available for urgent use,’ he said drowsily. ‘But it is not what one would call private.’

  ‘So I’d have to rely on four men and a husband closing their eyes and ears. I think I’ll hold it, thank you very much.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the doctor amenably. ‘Under the circumstances, I’ll check everyone and see whether we can equalize the pressure earlier than planned.’

  They were out of the hyperbaric chamber just after eight. While Robin went to check the plumbing, Richard went to a phone zone and called Anastasia’s villa, making contact with Sasha, the housekeeper, who agreed to send a car for them at once and bring Richard’s wallet so that he could settle the hospital’s immediate and longer-term financial demands.

  Then Richard oversaw the movement of Nahom and his companion into the secure ward with the other six. Although Major Ibrahim’s men were conspicuously on guard at the door, there was little sense of threat or incarceration in the bright room, which didn’t even have security netting on the windows, perhaps because all that was visible through them was the four-lane highway and, beyond that, a grove of scraggy palm trees and then the desert. It was hardly breakfast time, thought Richard grimly, and it was already as bright as burning magnesium out there – thirty degrees Celsius or so, in the shade. If you could find any shade.

  He turned back and caught the attention of a ward orderly. ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, sir.’ The man was faintly surprised to be asked.

  ‘I am sure the food in this fine hospital is of the highest standard—’

  ‘Of course it is, sir—’

  ‘But it will still be hospital food, if you understand me. Is it possible to make special arrangements for these men, and for their guards if needs be …’

  ‘Well, I am sure that something could be arranged, should it prove necessary.’

  ‘Send any bills to me, Captain Richard Mariner, at the Villa Shahrazad.’

  ‘Ah. Mademoiselle Asov’s villa.’

  ‘You know Mademoiselle Asov?’

  ‘I’m sure everyone in Sharm knows her – or knows of her. And everyone knows of the Villa Shahrazad.’

  Richard nodded once. ‘Good. But that doesn’t cover the hospital charges. Can you show me to the finance office?’

  ‘Of course.’ The orderly showed him to the hospital’s finance office, where Ahmed was waiting with his wallet, and lingered while he made the necessary arrangements. The office was as ultra-modern as the rest of the hospital, and Richard was careful to make sure he was not overlooked by the security cameras as he keyed in his PIN number. But he failed to notice the one slightly old-fashioned element of the place – a convex mirror high in the corner behind his back, which, as it happened, gave a perfect view of what his fingers were doing.

  Five minutes later, Richard, Robin and Ahmed were walking across the forecourt to the air-conditioned white Mercedes S-Class saloon which was Anastasia’s Sharm el-Sheikh run around. If they were at all embarrassed by the fact that they were all still dressed in towelling robes, they did not show it. ‘I am looking forward to the biggest breakfast Sharl the chef can rustle up for us,’ Richard announced, pushing his wallet deep into the right-hand pocket of the towelling robe. ‘Something really epic.’

  As he spoke, Robin slipped a wifely arm round his waist. ‘My God!’ she said, shocked. ‘No big breakfasts for you, sailor! In fact, I think a bit of a diet is called for. From the feel of things down round your tummy, you’ve put on about ten pounds in weight since we arrived out here!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Richard. ‘About that …’

  THREE

  Sharm

  Nahom’s money belt lay on the dining table amid the remains of the largest breakfast that Sharl the chef had prepared in five years. Eggs cooked in every manner possible, tomatoes, chicken and beef frankfurter sausages, beans – baked or boiled. Freshly baked bread and toast made from yesterday’s batch. Croissants and a range of conserves. Cold meats of every sort and preparation that did not include anything haram or unlawful. A dazzling array of fruit, from mangoes and melons, to oranges, tiny sweet bananas and dates. Coffee, a bewildering variety of teas and hot chocolate. And – tempting Robin almost beyond endurance – a range of confections largely fashioned from millefeuille, coconut threads, sponge cake, almonds and honey.

  Robin looked down at the belt lying like a black snake in the middle of the colourful leftovers then, her eyebrows raised quizzically, she looked around Ahmed, Husan and Mahmood. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. The conversation had been going back and forth since the first piles of pancakes and omelettes had arrived. Richard, Robin and Ahmed had used the brief time Sharl had taken with his initial preparations to change into day clothes. And in Richard and Robin’s case, replace their dive computers with the Rolexes Mahmood had brought up with their clothes from Katerina. Husan and Mahmood were still in the clothes they were wearing last night.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the captain, speaking for all of them. ‘Mister Richard?’

  Richard was standing nursing a steaming cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain high roast Arabica at the huge French windows. He was slow to answer, entranced by the view that encompassed a broad, flagged sun-filled balcony ending in a mock-classical porphyry balustrade, topped with terracotta jardinières, reaching from side to side along the edge of a cliff overlooking the private anchorage a couple of hundred feet below, the private beach beside it and the whole panorama of the ink-blue bay and rose-red headland beyond. He turned back with some reluctance to the matter in hand. ‘I think we keep it safe but leave it sealed,’ he said decisively. ‘When Nahom gave it to me it seemed clear enough he didn’t want Major Ibrahim finding it, opening it, interfering with it or confiscating it. I guess the same would go for us.’

  ‘But what do you think is in it?’ Robin persisted.

  ‘Money. ID of some kind, maybe. What would you need if you’re being smuggled somewhere?’

 
; Captain Husan stood up. Like Richard, he was a man of action and thought best on his feet. He eased his belt and settled his jeans on his hips. Then he paced across to the French windows to look down on his tiny white command hundreds of feet below, his flip-flops slapping the dining room’s marble floor. His wiry frame topped Richard’s shoulder – just exceeding Robin’s five foot eight. His hair was a virile cluster of tight-curling black waves, gleaming with pomade. His square, determined chin was cleft in the middle. His expression, even when wrestling with a problem that was as much practical and legal as it was moral and ethical, was cheerfully good-natured. He enjoyed something of a reputation as a smuggler himself – just the kind of man a slightly shady Russian oligarch would want in charge of a superfast cruiser, thought Robin. And certainly the man most likely to know what someone being smuggled across the waters around the Sinai would need.

  ‘Currency,’ he said. ‘Probably US dollars. Almost as good as gold and nowhere near as heavy. Ten thousand is the going rate, as far as I know. ID if he’s being smuggled somewhere to work. Two sorts. Genuine papers for use in emergencies and fake for use when he gets where he’s going, unless he’s part of a chain that guarantees to supply ID on arrival. But that’s not likely – that kind of chain is usually run to get girls and boys into the sex trade. Contact names and addresses for when he gets wherever he’s going. Probably written by his contact in the language they use at his destination. You’d be surprised how many people turn up at the Israeli border only speaking some kind of Somalian Arabic, asking for directions to somewhere in Jerusalem.’

  ‘Sounds logical,’ said Richard.

  ‘Convincing,’ agreed Robin. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘And I suppose there’s a chance he’ll have some kind of cell phone,’ Husan continued. ‘Depends whether he’s going where he’s going just as a loner or whether there have been others from his tribe, village or family who have already gone through and/or others waiting at home to follow him.’

  ‘Is that usual?’ asked Robin. ‘Whole families trying to get through one after another?’

  ‘It’s been known,’ answered Husan. ‘These people are desperate, almost always because of circumstances they can’t control. They aren’t stupid or helpless or hopeless. They are, by and large in my experience, fearless, intelligent, ruthless, highly motivated and astonishingly adaptable. If they could take the planning, guts and determination they put into trying to get a new life and put it all into any kind of legitimate commercial exercise, half of them would be millionaires. So, if one of them finds a route out that works for them, they’ll try and get the message back so other people can follow them.’

  ‘But, to get back to the original point,’ said Richard, putting his coffee cup down on the laden table beside the blood-red dregs of Robin’s Hibiscus tea. ‘What’s the best thing we can do with Nahom’s belt until we find out what’s going to happen to him?’

  ‘We know what’s going to happen to him,’ said Ahmed. ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Captain Husan? Whether his papers are genuine or fake, whether he has them to hand or says he lost them in the wreck, it won’t make much difference, I’m afraid. They’ll either find out where he came from and send him back there or they’ll keep him here and put him in a prison or a camp.’

  ‘Like the Sudanese they used to hold in Al-Qanater Prison.’ Husan nodded. ‘Abu Zaabal Prison and Shebeen Al-Kom. There are plenty of places. If he’s stuck here he could apply for refugee status. Egypt is signed up to both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the OAU Refugee Convention.’

  ‘But that’s not too likely, is it?’ Mahmood observed. ‘He wasn’t crossing the Gulf as a refugee. He was being smuggled. Unless he’s actually one of the smugglers, of course. Either way, he’s an illegal immigrant no matter how you look at it.’

  ‘What can we do to help him?’ wondered Robin.

  ‘Legally? Nothing,’ answered Husan. ‘You can visit him in hospital. Try to find out what his plans were. What they are now – if he wants to tell you. And if he speaks enough English to communicate – I guess you don’t speak any East African languages. If he’s Sudanese, for instance, he could speak any one of fifteen separate languages independently of the three different types of Arabic. How is your Arabic, by the way?’

  ‘Not good,’ admitted Richard.

  ‘Better hope he’s from Eritrea then. At least English is one of their national languages – along with Italian, Arabic and some local tribal dialects. Then, if you can manage to understand each other, you will have to decide whether you want to help him with whatever he’s planning to do now. Whether you want to help him badly enough to start breaking the law yourselves.’

  ‘This is hardly legal, Captain Mariner,’ observed Major Ibrahim. ‘And I can scarcely imagine how you have arranged it in the time you’ve had.’

  Richard tried to read the officer’s tone as the pair of them looked at the trolley full of food which had been brought from one of the restaurants at the nearby Jaz Mirabel hotel to the door of the secure ward, only to be held there like a terrorist suspect, under the guns of the guards. A waiter, in immaculate white with the hotel’s logo on his breast, stood listening with lively interest, apparently following the discussion and every now and then flicking a more nervous glance towards the guards and their Heckler & Koch MP5s.

  ‘I shall allow it through this once,’ continued Ibrahim smoothly, ‘on the assumption that there are no metal files or wire-cutters in those delicious-looking loaves of bread – or that the pile of hardboiled eggs there does not conceal a weapon of any kind. And that whatever lies beneath this dome does not double as a map of an escape route.’ He raised the dome in question to reveal a pile of pancakes dripping with honey. ‘But suggesting that my guards can share in this bounty comes very close to being bribery.’

  ‘And,’ added Dr Zabr, whose tone was unmistakably offended, ‘while I can only applaud your good intentions, you may want to consider one or two facts, Captain Mariner. First, the hospital’s kitchens are second to none and our dietary experts not only feed our patients but use the food as an element of their treatment. Furthermore, it may not have occurred to you but at least part of what is wrong with these young men is that they are severely malnourished. Rich food as represented by those honey cakes, for instance, might very well make them violently sick.’

  There was no mistaking the amusement in Major Ibrahim’s tone now. ‘It is always our good deeds that get us into trouble is it not, Captain? Doctor Zabr, allow me to suggest that you select those elements of this wonderful feast that are least likely to complicate the treatment of the men in this ward – the dishes of melon, say, the grapes and the dates. Perhaps an egg or two and a loaf of bread. Some coffee, perhaps; and is that hot chocolate? Then anything which might be unsuitable here will, I am sure, find an appropriate place amongst the meals prepared by your dietary experts for patients elsewhere in the hospital.’

  Five minutes later the Jaz Mirabel waiter wheeled a depleted trolley into the ward with Richard at one shoulder and Major Ibrahim at the other. While the ward nurses checked the preferences of the eight patients in the twelve-bed ward and began to carry the food and drink over to their beds, Richard and the major continued their conversation.

  ‘What is your primary purpose in this visit, Captain?’

  ‘Of course, I want to see how the patients are progressing …’

  ‘An understandable urge. There is, is there not, a bond that forms between rescuer and rescued? Much like that I have observed between guard and prisoner.’

  ‘Indeed. And, of course, I wish to find out what I owe the hospital and settle the debt so far …’

  ‘Perhaps when Doctor Zabr is a little calmer … Though in fact it will be the finance department you will need to speak to in the end, after the good doctors have completed their recording of the treatment so far, the costs incurred to date and made an estimation of what will be needed in the future – which is one of the aspects I am here to check on, of course. T
he eight men in this ward …’ he glanced around the gaunt, wide-eyed faces with their bulging cheeks and working jaws, ‘… will, in due course, be joining the four I am currently holding in my own secure facilities. But I need to know how soon I can begin the transfers to El Benouk. Talking of which, I am looking forward to having a less informal chat with you, Mrs Mariner and the crew of the vessel involved in last night’s rescue. And that, finally, is the other aspect of my visit. I need to check with the doctors which of these men is strong enough to be interviewed, and when I can go about starting those interviews.’

  ‘You can’t wait until you have them up at your police station on El Benouk Road?’

  ‘Alas, no. Captain Mohammed and I find ourselves in an interesting situation, you see. All of the men he has interviewed in Hurgada and all of the men I have interviewed here so far assure us that they are helpless victims of a ruthless confidence trick. They are all innocent Eritreans, who in all good faith have paid local men there quite large sums of money to bring them to Egypt where legal employment has already been secured for them. Or so they claim to have been assured. And there was, apparently, detailed and convincing documentation to prove what they had been told. Unfortunately – and this is as true for the men in Hurgada as well as for my four up at El Benouk Road – they lost all of their paperwork, IDs and money in the wreck. They all maintain this story in the face of the patent facts that there is no such employment and that, even if there was, this is not the way to go about securing it. And finally, as we seem to have rescued everyone except one unfortunate victim of shark attack, logic dictates that at least some of the men we have in Hurgada and here must be the people smugglers who set this all up in the first place.’