Nagib felt some remorse for being unfaithful to his beloved Alia, but then thought that they would never see each other again and mumbled that a man has to do what a man has to do. The three of them spent the next day relaxing in the sun, but as the evening came the two girls apologized to him and said that they were invited to a small party by a couple of English youths that had promised to bring an ample supply of booze. Nagib felt some relief considering that his age was almost the same as their combined age, and in any case was worried about the near future and the trip to Jordan.
The frustration of the CIA agents that had been posted close to the Pakistani embassy grew from day to day. There was no sign of Nagib or of Munir or whatever he called himself and sitting for hours in a café, a public bench or a parked car took its toll. The mosquitoes were particularly vicious, and unlike most members of the species that were active only after sunset, the brand that rightfully earned the name "Nile Tigers" due to their miniature dark stripes, were bloodthirsty 24/7. They were very small and agile and presented an unbearable nuisance. An outside observer may have been amused to see two grown men waving their hands and occasionally even striking their own face in a futile attempt to wipe out the little torturers.
The Mossad agents that were aware of the Americans and kept their distance fared no better. They complained bitterly about the assignment but obeyed their orders and kept an eye on the Pakistani embassy. Mossad knew that the "cultural attaché" was in fact the mission head of the Pakistani intelligence services in Egypt and watched him but didn't discern anything irregular in his behavior. There was no point in following him around the clock, something that would require a lot of effort with little potential gain.
Alia's 18 hours flight from Islamabad to Mexico City was long but uneventful, except her excitement when she discovered that the shortest route was over the northern pole. She used her Pakistani passport to enter Mexico, spent a couple of nights in Mexico City and then made her way by public transportation to the border city of Ciudad Juarez. She preferred the anonymity of the 26 hours bus ride over the one and half hour flight, assuming correctly that whoever tried to trace her movements would find it practically impossible to follow her trail.
While living in New Mexico she had travelled to Ciudad Juarez a few times to get a taste of lively Mexico. Some people jokingly regarded the Mexican city of Juarez and the Texas city of El-Paso as twin cities separated by the Rio Grande, but no one in his right mind would ever think of them as identical twins. Juarez at one time was considered as the murder capital of the world as the rivalry between the drug cartels and the police and between themselves led to the indiscriminate murder of gang members, policemen and mainly innocent bystanders. She stayed at a small hotel near the center of the city and within less than a day, with some help from the man at the front desk, arranged a meeting with a shady representative of one of the organizations that smuggled people into the United States. He was surprised that she couldn't speak Spanish and that her English was with an American accent and didn't seem to believe her story about an estranged husband who was haunting her, but as long as cash was involved he didn't ask too many questions. He told her that the next group would be crossing the border the following night and that she could join it for a reasonable fee. She said she needed to get to Tucson, Arizona and he said that would double the price as there were several roadblocks on all the highways leading from the border area into the United States and she agreed to pay the additional fees.
Nagib's boat trip from Nuweiba's small port in Egypt to the large port of Aqaba in Jordan was delightful. The mountains on both sides of this narrow strip of the Red Sea and the clear blue waters combined with the breeze created by the motion of the catamaran allowed Nagib to relax for a few hours. From the boat he could clearly see the two cities on the northern shores of the Red Sea, Jordanian Aqaba in the east and on the west shore Eilat in Israel. They were so close together and almost touching. Each had a large number of big hotels and it was almost impossible to believe that they belonged to different countries. He thought of the night he spent with the two German girls and wondered if he would ever be able to share this foretaste of paradise with Alia. For a moment he even reflected if his betrayal of her and of his adopted country were turning him into a multidimensional renegade.
He disembarked in Aqaba and after showing his Pakistani passport was admitted into Jordan without any problem. As a former Palestinian he knew that it would be easier to find support for his plans in the slums and refugee camps near Amman than in the prosperous city of Aqaba. He checked the bus schedule and saw that the buses from Aqaba to Amman ran with a very high frequency, more than twice an hour during most of the day, so just walked over to the central bus station and boarded the first bus to Amman.
The bus ride took about five hours, mostly through sparsely inhabited desert areas although part of the ride was through spectacular mountains. Nagib dozed off and was awoken from his dreams when the bus came to a stop in the noisy and bustling central bus station of Amman. It was late evening and Nagib found a cheap hotel near the station. He was hungry so he left the room and in a narrow alleyway found a falafel stand that was still open. He bought himself a super size falafel sandwich wrapped in fresh pita bread and smeared with spicy sauce. After one bite and a sniff of the heady aroma he was transported in his mind to the time he was a youth in the mountain village near Hebron and the emotions were so powerful that he almost burst out crying. He realized that he hadn't had a good falafel sandwich since he left Palestine more than a decade earlier. In the morning he headed to the Amman New Camp that was one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan.