“How long?” Laila asked.
“In an hour,” Ambra said. “We’ll be eating figs.”
“Ex abundanti cautela.”
“An abundance of caution,” Ambra translated. “I took Latin, too. We’ll be careful.”
“We must become shadows in a pitch-dark night. No one can know we have come and gone.”
“The darker the better, I know.”
“If it’s too bright, we can’t surface.” If the man and woman in the tiny sub had made it to the surface, authorities might be searching for them.
Ambra tightened her lips. “So we stay down here eating pickled cabbage? You’re jumping at shadows. How could anyone know to look for us?”
“Even so.”
“Our risk assessment should be based on a consensus,” Ambra said. “Not fiat.”
“That wasn’t the agreement. A ship needs a captain.”
“Does it?” Ambra straightened her blue uniform. “Isn’t that the kind of hierarchy we’re trying to escape?”
Jenna looked over from her station as helmsman. Had the crew talked about this among themselves?
Laila drew herself up to her full height, several centimeters taller than Ambra, although Ambra weighed more than she did. “I am captain. We all signed the oath. You, too.” She was glad Nahal had thought to force each woman to sign a blood oath to serve Laila directly. Nahal thought like a chess master, several moves ahead.
Ambra, too, must have remembered the candlelit room where she’d so eagerly pledged herself, because she turned back to her charts, shoulders stiff with pride. Laila had promised to take them away from their lives, and she had. Once she was certain the prince was dead, they could vote about what to do next — travel the seas with the submarine, or go their separate ways.
She wondered if Ambra’s opinions were held by the rest of the crew, but she didn’t want to force the issue and have to face them down. It would be over soon enough. She stood quietly on the bridge as they sped toward the rendezvous point.
“Here, Captain,” said Ambra. “Dark enough?”
Laila strode over to the periscope, pulled down the handles, and looked through the eyepieces. They’d surfaced to periscope height, eighteen meters, a few minutes before, but she’d been restraining herself from looking until now.
The Shining Pearl rode proudly in the water. She was a long boat, more than sixty meters, with sleek lines and sides white as pearls. She’d been owned by an American real estate tycoon before Aunt Bibi, and no luxury had been spared. Laila’s heart jumped, as it always did when she saw the ship. Since she was a little girl, that familiar shape had meant freedom.
Lights gleamed from the yacht’s windows. Bibi had turned them down, but not off, as Nahal had told her. Per the instructions Nahal had sent out weeks before, Bibi’s yacht slowed. She was expecting them.
The sonar revealed no ships for miles around. They matched pace with the slowing yacht.
“May I see, Captain?” Ambra used the world Captain in a tone Laila could describe only as insolent, but she couldn’t chastise her without seeming petty.
Instead, she took one last glance and stepped back. Ambra had to maneuver around her to look, but they’d gotten used to the close quarters, so she barely noticed.
“It looks clear.”
“I see fifteen men lined up on the bottom deck,” Ambra said. “They’re backlit by the windows, so I can’t see if they’re armed.”
“Aunt Bibi wouldn’t put out armed men to greet us.” Laila was outraged.
“She’s not my aunt.” Ambra swiveled the periscope, taking in the entire length of the ship.
Not too long ago, Ambra had been advocating less caution, and now she was being paranoid. She just wanted an argument, but Laila wasn’t going to be baited.
“What’s the usual crew complement?” Ambra asked.
“Thirty. Each loyal to my aunt.”
“Doesn’t make them loyal to me.”
“Do you want your figs, or don’t you?” She tried to lighten the mood.
“They don’t look like soldiers,” Ambra conceded.
“It’s not like we have a choice. We need food. And news.”
Ambra didn’t step back from the periscope.
Laila checked her watch. Astronomical twilight was over. They’d reached the darkest part of the night. “Prepare to surface and come alongside the Pearl.”
Women scrambled to obey, even Ambra.
Laila looked back through the periscope. “Take us up.”
The figures on deck caught sight of them, and a round woman in a flowing green dress waved from the port side. Aunt Bibi.
The sub maneuvered next to the yacht. Laila was first up the sail. Being captain had its privileges, and she needed to start insisting on them. Once topside, she took a deep breath and let it out. It smelled fresh and clean, a relief after the close, cabbage-scented air inside the sub. It felt wonderful to be outside in the cool night air, with the sky above stretching out to the stars.
Many of Aunt Bibi’s crew were women. She often said that, since men controlled the Navy, women could control her boat. Her captain had a rigorous training program for new recruits, and they performed well. For the first time, she wondered how Aunt Bibi dealt with discipline problems.
The seas were relatively flat, but it was still tricky. Both vessels dipped up and down. Anyone who fell between the vessels could be crushed to death.
Aunt Bibi’s crew had tied fenders to the side to keep the sub from scraping the yacht. Her crew helped to tie the sub to the yacht, then lowered a gangplank between the two vessels. Rope railings ran along both sides.
Laila took hold of the wet ropes and walked across the bobbing surface to her aunt.
Bibi swept her into a hard embrace, enveloping Laila in her spicy signature scent. Her perfume was custom-designed in Egypt, and she smelled like safety. Laila leaned into her and felt herself relax.
“You look so beautiful,” Aunt Bibi said. “Hair like a pixie.”
“We can’t stay long.” Her voice caught.
“You could,” Aunt Bibi said. “Of course you could.”
They had to be gone long before the sun rose, in case they might be caught by satellite photos. Nahal had developed the protocol during their planning, and Laila believed in caution more than ever. “I wish we could.”
“My crew will start loading your supplies.” Aunt Bibi gestured to the row of retainers standing patiently behind her.
“My crew will do it. No one comes aboard my vessel but my own crew.”
Aunt Bibi raised an eyebrow theatrically. “You don’t trust my crew?”
“Ambra will come with me. Everyone else will load supplies.”
“I hope you let them off duty to eat.” Aunt Bibi put her arm through Laila’s. “We’ve prepared a feast.”
Laila’s stomach growled, and Aunt Bibi laughed.
“I think you will be pleased,” she said.
An hour later, Laila had eaten so much she could barely move. Ambra had come and gone. The other women were rotating through the polished wooden dining room in groups. Some women loaded supplies, others stowed them, and the remainder got to eat. If she hadn’t eaten so much herself, she never would have thought they could put away so much food.
Aunt Bibi had hidden treasures in with the food and diesel fuel she’d requested, and Laila knew they looked forward to seeing what gifts awaited.
But first she needed the Internet. Aunt Bibi had a satellite connection. She held Nahal’s laptop under her arm. Nahal herself was still on the sub, recovering from the gunshot wound she’d sustained when they first took the submarine. Nahal had forced Laila to memorize the procedure for activating layers of virtual private networks to cover her tracks before she logged on to the dark web. Nahal’s enthusiasm for the dark web and the hacker culture had always been a mystery to Laila. In college, she had always teased Nahal that her idols were shadowy hackers instead of film stars and musicians. But she couldn’t deny the usefulness of Nahal’s obsessions now.