by Peter Tonkin
Tsibekti’s own headdress had been torn wide so that one or two coils of hair lay exposed. This in itself constituted an assault that was very close to rape, given where she was – in a public place surrounded by strange men who were not of her family. Abruptly the video picture panned down and zoomed in, showing the young woman’s rumpled and torn travelling jilbab as it did so. Tsibekti’s fingers were spread like spiders’ legs across a rough, pink rock. A heavy-bladed knife was resting on the first joint of the little finger on her right hand.
The rest of the scene was almost timeless – apart from the way it had been recorded. The mountains, the tent and the camel, the men in their robes and headdresses, the woman in her travelling clothes, could all have come from long-past centuries. The knife, however, was anything but old fashioned. It was a black-bladed heavy-looking Bowie knife with SURVIVOR etched into the blade above the blood runnel and just beneath the saw-toothed spine. It was very modern indeed, with the black blade alone nearly half a metre – eighteen inches – in length – a weapon as capable of chopping off Tsibekti’s head as it was of cutting off her little finger. In a way, it was more terrifyingly threatening than a gun would have been.
Richard didn’t need to understand the words the distraught young woman was saying to get the message. Nahom switched the phone off. There was a short silence, then he began to speak again. This time, as she translated, Sabet’s voice was soft and understanding. And Ibrahim asked no more questions, content to let the boy tell his terrible tale in his own way.
‘Of course, our parents are distraught. They blame themselves for allowing Tsibekti to undertake such a dangerous journey, though they were assured by Bisrat that it was safe, that thousands of people had got through successfully in the past. But of course they could not abandon their daughter. And I could not allow anything to happen to my twin sister. Therefore, I have been given every nakfa, Egyptian pound and US dollar the family can beg or borrow and I have come north through Massawa into the Red Sea and on to the Sinai to rescue her. I carry with me only the phone I need to stay in contact with the men who are holding my sister somewhere in the mountains of the interior so that they can direct me to where they are and the money I need to buy her freedom from them and bring her home again. That is why I am here, what I am doing and why I have a belt that only contains money and a phone.’
‘You know you have been running risks that are nearly insane, even for a soldier trained under National Service who knows how to behave in extremes of temperature such as the Sinai shares with the lowlands of Eritrea?’ said Ibrahim, and Sabet now reflected the gentle tone in which he spoke the words. ‘To believe you can find one woman lost in the middle of sixty thousand square kilometres of mountain and desert, even with directions on your phone. Sixty thousand square kilometres. That is half the size of your entire homeland of Eritrea. To go into the interior alone and unprotected. Without even a weapon of any kind. If you had found these men they certainly would have killed you. I do not think you have any concept of how dangerous these criminals are, the lengths to which they will go to protect the secrecy of their movements and their absolute control over the items and people they are smuggling. They would certainly simply have taken your money and still have done whatever they wanted with your sister.’
‘But what else can I do?’ whispered Nahom. ‘She has begged us to rescue her!’
‘Leave it to us,’ said Ibrahim decisively. ‘We will search the interior and we will find your sister. We have the experience, the expertise and the equipment. They will not kill us – and if they try, we will kill them instead. You have seen the weapons my men carry. We have many more and we can call on the army for everything from helicopters to tanks – especially if they are foolish enough to try and smuggle her through the red zone in North Sinai.’
Sergeant Sabet continued speaking on her own behalf after Ibrahim stopped, then she translated what she said to Nahom for Richard’s benefit. ‘You have been very lucky. You were told not to contact the authorities but chance has made the authorities contact you. This is very fortunate. As you recover, we will search. And when you are well enough, we will take you up to our main police station on El Benouk Road, where you will be reunited with your sister, both of you safe and sound. And we will be able to send you both home again, inshallah, with no harm done.’
Ibrahim added something and Sabet translated, ‘As long as you are careful not to break any more of our laws in the meantime.’
‘What laws has he broken?’ demanded Robin as Richard finished telling her what Ibrahim’s interview with Nahom had revealed. It was half an hour after the conclusion of the interview, when the three of them had left Nahom gasping into his respirator, so overcome that he hadn’t even had the strength to protest when Ibrahim swept the money belt and its contents, including the phone, into his briefcase.
Sasha had not been called to pick Richard up. He had ridden home in Ibrahim’s SUV as Villa Shahrazad was on the way to El Benouk. The major made further use of this act of courtesy by talking matters through with Richard and insisting very forcefully that his involvement with Nahom and his sister should go no further than paying for the poor man’s hospital bills if he felt the urge to do so. It seemed clear to both Ibrahim and Sabet that Nahom wanted Richard, the man to whom he owed his life, to replace him in the search for the kidnapped woman. Exercising more Chinese logic, Richard suspected they might be correct. After all, time was of the essence and even Nahom would have to admit that he was not strong enough to go out into the desert again for a while. Richard had remained calculatedly non-committal, and by the time he was dropped at the Villa Shahrazad an air of tension between the visitor and the authorities had returned.
Now, ensconced securely in the cool, shady dining room, Richard finished peeling a hard-boiled egg and turned his attention to a big, ripe tomato. ‘Attempting to enter the country illegally,’ he said. ‘Let’s start there.’
‘But he didn’t actually do so, did he?’ countered Robin, pouring a cup of strong, black coffee and sliding it towards him through the remnants of her own breakfast. ‘I mean, we brought him in – him and the others who made it to Sharm.’
‘Good point. And I think Ibrahim recognizes that. But Nahom is an illegal alien as far as the authorities are concerned. And he did escape from police custody, damaging hospital property as he did so.’ He sipped his coffee, buttered a piece of toast and began to pile boiled egg and sliced tomato on it.
Robin passed the salt and pepper amenably enough to show that this morning’s angry words were all forgotten. ‘They won’t charge him with anything so petty, surely?’
‘No,’ he answered, taking a bite and chewing deliberately before he completed his thought. ‘I don’t suppose they will.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘But Ibrahim clearly doesn’t want any more shenanigans like running off alone into the desert, no matter how strong his motive may be.’
‘But you think they’re going to pull out all the stops looking for this poor Tsibekti girl?’
‘She’s another illegal alien, of course. And she did enter the country illegally. But I think that’s by the by as far as Ibrahim’s concerned. He’ll be going after the smugglers because they have broken an enormous number of Egyptian laws, and if he rescues her that will be all to the good. It’s not going to be his primary aim, though, because there’s another element I’m pretty sure Ibrahim noticed, though Sabet might not have done. And I’m not sure Nahom would have noticed it, even after his National Service training.’
‘What’s that?’
Richard reached for the salt cellar and ground a couple of turns on to the top of his egg and tomato. ‘The camel,’ he said.
‘The camel? The one in the video clip? What’s so strange about a camel in the middle of the Sinai?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that it was carrying something that was sticking out of a sling they had rigged across its back. It looked to me like the business end of a QW1 Vanguard shoulder-launched missile system. It�
��s the kind of thing that used to be smuggled into Palestine before the Israelis closed the tunnels between Rafa and Gaza in 2014.’
‘So you don’t think they’re just smuggling people?’
‘No. They’re smuggling weapons as well. Even if it wasn’t a Vanguard, I’m pretty certain that it was some kind of MANPAD system. We saw enough of them when we got caught up in that situation in Africa – the kidnapping of those orphan girls by the Army of Christ the Infant. I mean, I know well enough what the damn things look like. God knows what else is packed on to that camel – and any others they have with them. Drugs, maybe. Anything there’s a ready market for, I suppose.’
‘These are not nice people, lover.’
‘No, they’re not. I wonder how we can find out more about them.’
‘Why would you want to do that? You’re not thinking of going up against them yourself, are you?’
‘No, I’m not,’ he said with more certainty than he felt. ‘I’d be even further out of my depth than Nahom; certainly if I tried to go in there unsupported – without a guide and supplies. And wheels. Preferably attached to a very robust Land Rover. Still and all, I’d be fascinated to know what really goes on in the interior.’
‘Where would you start looking?’ she asked, intrigued in spite of herself.
‘There’s no place like home. I bet Sasha and Sharl know a thing or two about what goes on in the secret alleys and back rooms of Sharm. And if they don’t know what goes on out in the desert then I’ll bet they know someone who does.’
‘You going to ask them? Straight out? Just like that?’
‘Not both at once. One at a time, maybe …’
As soon as he finished breakfast, Richard and Robin went to Sasha’s office, which was on the north side of the villa, beside the main entrance to the building. Its windows overlooked beautifully maintained lawns and flower beds which sat astride a long drive leading in from Al Kahazzan road, past a tall but sadly ineffectual security gate. Sasha welcomed them into his domain with his usual courtesy and no sooner had they sat down than he was offering them cold drinks. Sensitive to the customs and tradition that demanded all guests be offered refreshments, they accepted gratefully.
As soon as they were settled, Richard plunged into the topic which had brought them here in the first place. Sasha heard him out courteously, and then answered regretfully, ‘I’m afraid I know nothing that could be of help to you in this matter, Mister Richard. Of course, you must ask Sharl if that is your wish, but were I in your position, wishing to learn what you wish to learn, I would ask Captain Husan. Such is his reputation that most of the house boys believe he spent much of his youth as a smuggler in any case, though on the sea rather than in the interior. And of contraband rather than of weapons or people. However, if he does not know what you want to learn himself, I am sure he will know someone who does.’
Richard was still kicking himself for not starting out with Husan when, after tea and cakes in the kitchen, Sharl repeated almost word for word what Sasha had said in his office.
‘We might not have learned anything new from our chat with Sharl the chef,’ said Robin as they headed past the infinity pool towards the balcony and the lift to the beach, the private marina, Katerina and her ex-smuggler captain, ‘but it was worth it just for those cakes!’
‘Keeping you fat and happy is my main mission in life,’ said Richard.
She thumped him on the shoulder, but it was more of a love-pat than a serious assault. Things were looking up at last, he thought.
Like Sasha and Sharl, Husan offered them refreshments as soon as they were seated in Katerina’s main cabin. Glasses of blood-red chilled karakadey hibiscus juice. Robin particularly loved it, for it was the icy, sweeter, more intense cousin of the hibiscus tea that had replaced Earl Grey in her affections while she was in Egypt. She even liked the way it put a kind of lipstick effect on her mouth and turned her tongue bright ruby.
‘Now,’ rumbled Husan when they were all settled, ‘what is it you require of me? Are we to start scuba diving again? Shall I call Ahmed?’
‘Thank you, no,’ answered Richard. ‘This time we want to ask your advice about something entirely different.’
‘Something to do with the land rather than the sea,’ added Robin. ‘Is there any more of this delicious drink?’
Half an hour later, after a very detailed discussion indeed, Husan sat back, thoughtfully tapping the side of his empty glass with the nail of his right index finger, his eyes veiled. ‘One condition,’ he said at last.
‘What condition?’ asked Richard.
‘Swear to me that you are not thinking of going after these smugglers yourself. Even though there is a young woman in terrible danger and even though your life has become entwined with that of her brother. It would be death to pursue these people with anything less than the army that Major Ibrahim plans to call upon. Swear to me that you are not considering doing this foolish thing.’
‘Very well. If you insist, then I swear,’ said Richard.
Husan nodded once, his mind made up. ‘Very well. Then I have just the man who will be able to give all the details you could ever wish to know about the smugglers, their practices and their secret pathways. It is my cousin, Saiid. I will try and make a rendezvous with him tonight in the Old Market.’
Five of them entered the Old Market just before midnight. Richard and Robin with their guide, Husan, were also followed by Mahmud and Ahmed. As soon as they passed under the great square archway with its imposing pharaonic figures apparently stolen from the pyramids and the tombs of the kings, they were swept into the heaving bustle that made the place so timelessly attractive, so edgily exciting, so redolent with that heady promise of risks an inch or two outside their comfort zone. Richard had known the old souk in Manama on Bahrain Island in the past – a souk which had existed there for centuries – and he would have been hard put to tell the difference, even though the Old Market in Sharm was less than fifty years old. Husan, Mahmood and Ahmed insisted on accompanying Richard and Robin, not because they feared any danger, but apparently because they too enjoyed the heaving excitement of the tourist-packed streets and alleys, alive with vendors calling passers-by into their shops, stalls, bazaars and restaurants. And the way the contents of the shops and stalls overflowed exuberantly on to the pavements, the dazzling colours brightened by a fairyland of lanterns which added their smoky aroma to the overwhelming odour of the place.
The market itself was squashed hard up against a low pink granite cliff whose leading edge was scored with steps and pathways, caverns hollowed into restaurants, all illuminated, like the market streets, with an amazing array of electric lights and glowing lanterns. Halfway up this cliff was a restaurant whose nether regions reached right back into the living rock. And it was here, Husan said, that Saiid would be waiting to talk to them. But they had to get through the market to reach the cliff and the restaurant halfway up it.
Richard and Robin had been here before, and as seasoned travellers were more than capable of holding their own against the most insistent of salesmen. Richard’s only polished and perfect phrase in Arabic was La aa shukran, which roughly translated as I don’t want it, thank you. The only real precaution that they had taken was that Robin was responsible for carrying the credit and debit cards. Richard had left his wallet undisturbed in the drawer where he had shoved it after transferring it out of the towelling dressing gown when he had settled up with the hospital. Robin’s cards were in her purse, safely zipped into the handbag she carried tightly under her arm. But with the three local men surrounding them, there was no trouble at all. The salesmen in their checked shirts and jeans, their open keffiyas and dishdasha robes, their sandals, flip-flops and Nike trainers, looked at the tight little unit hurrying past and stepped back silently. The only thing that slowed their progress, in fact, was the way in which both Richard and Robin were entranced by shop after shop, stall after stall.
The Manama Souk on Bahrain Island had had special
ist areas, Richard recalled – the street of the goldsmiths, the street of the pearl sellers, the street of jewels. Areas specializing in rugs, clothing, leather goods, foodstuffs, herbs and spices. Each had their own particular look and smell. From the heady fragrance of the Street of Herbs and Spices to the eye-watering odour of the vats filled with animal hides and camel urine on the Street of the Tanners. He could see no particular order here, however, and discern no particular patterns of odour. Shops bright with fragrant, citrus-smelling fruit and everything from piles of melons to pyramids of pomegranates stood cheek by jowl with blood-redolent butchers in whose windows hung sections of halal lamb, beef, chicken, camel and, for all he knew, horse. Beneath these lay bright platters of liver, kidney, heart, tongue … ‘What,’ whispered Robin. ‘No sheeps’ heads? No eyeballs?’
Ahmed leaned forward as she slowed. ‘Sheeps’ heads inside,’ he said. ‘You wish to buy one?’
By the time Robin explained she was not serious, they had reached a particularly fragrant fish shop. Richard lingered hungrily outside the window, looking at a range of fish he had last seen on their scuba dives all laid out on beds of crushed ice. He liked his fish suppers but they had both been warned by Husan that they should eat little at dinnertime because Saiid wished to entertain them as well as giving them the benefit of his wisdom. There were solid, steely-sided tuna, both whole and in steaks laid out among multicoloured unicorn and squirrel fish. Firm, silver-scaled trevallys, red-finned wrasse, fat copper sea bream, grey and green eels. There were flat-faced, blue-sided parrotfish which Richard thought were inedible; napoleonfish with bulging golden foreheads. And, he was particularly glad to see, several big bellicose titan triggerfish almost rhomboid in shape, all multicoloured with hard, sharp beaks rather than mouths. There were squid, cuttlefish, octopi, prawns, shrimps, grey-green lobsters. And oysters. Barrels and kegs of oysters, which put him in mind of his plans for bedtime now that Robin was in a more amenable frame of mind.