"Where's our man going?" Rafi asked, looking out the grimy side window of the car. Farther out on the water they could see pleasure boats and the occasional brightly painted fishing trawler riding easily over the moderate waves. The sea was benign as a postcard photo, rolling calmly onto the beach in peaceful tumbling waves.
"Who knows?" Holliday said. "We keep on going the way we're going, we'll wind up at the Suez Canal."
"Suez?" Faraj said, turning around in his seat with his ever-present smile. "No. No. No Suez! Abu Qir, Abu Qir!"
"Abu Qir?" Rafi said. "I seem to remember there's some sort of Roman ruins underwater there. Not much in the way of smuggling opportunities."
"Horatio Nelson. Kiss me Hardy! Boom, boom, Napoleon!" Faraj said enthusiastically.
"What's he going on about now?" Rafi said.
"This kid knows his history," said Holliday, impressed. "Aboukir was where Nelson fought the Battle of the Nile and destroyed the French fleet, August first, 1798. Abu Qir is why the Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum, not the Louvre."
"I'm an archaeologist, not a historian," said Rafi.
"You're just embarrassed because old Faraj here showed you up."
"Yes, well," said Rafi primly, "I can actually read the Rosetta Stone. Can you?"
"Touche," Holliday said and laughed.
"Nelson was at Abu Qir two hundred years ago. What's there now?" Rafi asked.
"As I recall it's the home of the Egyptian navy, or a big part of it at least. A few frigates and a lot of fast patrol boats, Russian and Chinese mostly." Holliday shrugged. "I think the Alexandria fishing fleet docks there as well."
"Why would this Abu Ibrahim fellow want to be around the Egyptian navy?" Rafi asked. "The Israeli navy spends half its time chasing smugglers. You'd think Ibrahim would want to be anywhere else but where the navy hung out."
"Who knows?" Holliday shrugged. "Maybe he's enlisted sailors to smuggle for him."
Abu Qir was effectively the eastern suburbs of Alexandria, a "village" of old Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer hotels along the water and the original, cramped town of tumbledown stucco-sided buildings crammed in between the old and the new. On the other side of the railway lines that split Abu Qir down the middle were the relatively modern naval base on the peninsula, the old fishing harbor beside it and at the south-eastern end of town the huge, ultramodern campus of the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport.
Behind the fishing harbor was a large barren area of waste ground known as Lord's Land. A single broad roadway, lined with more deteriorating slab concrete apartment blocks and old rusting sheet-metal warehouses, led down to the fishing harbor and the sea.
To the left a crumbling concrete quay ran past a yard filled with piles of steel pipe and stacks of oil drums. To the right was a line of rusting warehouses and a haphazard clustered school of small trawlers and other workboats at anchor or drawn up on the mudflats at the east side of the harbor. The air was thick with the stink of the tidal ooze and rotting fish. It was almost midday and the waterfront had a bleak, abandoned look.
The Citroen drove directly to the docks and parked on the quay opposite an ancient wooden-hulled tugboat moored with heavy lines fore and aft. Once upon a time the ship had been black and red with a white superstructure. Now it was simply filthy, dark with accumulated grime. Faraj parked the taxi behind a screening skip loaded with what looked like bags of fertilizer. The wooden nameplate above the wheelhouse door of the tug was in Arabic script.
"Khamsin," said Faraj. He pursed his lips and made a whooshing noise.
"A Khamsin is a wind from the Sahara," offered Rafi. "I think that's the boat's name."
"Wind, yes," Faraj said, nodding happily.
The trunk of the Citroen popped open and the man in the white shirt got out of the car. He went to the trunk of the big sedan and lifted out an old-fashioned briefcase. He crossed the quay to a gangplank leading to the tug and stepped across it quickly. He dropped down onto the deck, walked aft to the companionway ladder and climbed up to the wheelhouse. It didn't look as though there was anyone else on board. The man opened the wheelhouse door and disappeared inside. Two minutes later he reappeared without the briefcase, climbed down the companionway ladder and went back across the gangplank to the Citroen. He got in, started the engine and drove off, heading farther along the quay.
"Follow?" Faraj asked.
Holliday turned to Rafi.
"Well?"
"I'd love to see what's in that briefcase," said Rafi.
"Me too," Holliday said.
"Follow?" Faraj asked again.
Holliday shook his head.
"Wait," he instructed.
"I wait. Certainly, excellent," their young driver said as he nodded. He picked up the newspaper from the seat beside him, leaned back and dropped the paper across his face. Holliday and Rafi climbed out of the taxi and crossed the pier to the tugboat gangplank.
"What if there's somebody else on board?" Rafi asked.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," answered Holliday. "But first we cross the gangplank."
They crossed the gap between the pier and the tugboat, oily water lapping sluggishly below them. They reached the main deck and paused, listening for any sounds from behind the bulkhead doors directly in front of them. There were three doors and three portholes, the portholes covered by so much grime that they were almost opaque. There was a companionway stair leading to the deck below and the steps leading up to the wheelhouse. Both the deckhouse and the wheelhouse-bridge above it were made of wood, probably mahogany or teak, covered by so many coats of white paint the planking was almost invisible. The filth laid over the paint had turned everything a greasy gray color. A heavily overpainted cast iron builder's medallion read Neafie, Levy amp; Co. Philadelphia-1906.
"This thing is more than a hundred years old," said Rafi, staring at the oval plate bolted to the deckhouse.
"They built to last back then," said Holliday. "A thousand storms, a couple of world wars. The British were still occupying Egypt when she was built."
Rafi was peering through one of the grimy portholes.
"Looks like the galley," he said. "Nobody there."
Holliday nodded and turned toward the companionway leading up to the wheelhouse. Rafi followed close behind him. They both turned and looked toward the dock. Still deserted. A noon-time siesta in the heat of the day. The sun blazed down and Holliday felt sweat running down in itchy streams under his shirt. The man in the Citroen had looked cool. The Citroen, unlike Faraj's taxi, was almost undoubtedly air-conditioned.
They reached the wheelhouse and stepped inside. The interior was almost primitive. There were slatted wooden scuppers on the floor to let water drain, an amateurish welded aluminum dashboard with a few engine controls and a six-spoked mahogany and brass wheel that looked as though it might have been the original. There was a simple engine room telegraph attached to the right-hand bulkhead marked Full, Half, Slow and Stop. A tall iron braking handle came up from the floor to the right of the ship's wheel. There was a marine radio bolted to a bracket in the roof above the front windscreen, a black plastic compass in a glycerin float, a modern GPS unit and an echo sounder. For a hundred-foot-long vessel it was definitely seat-of-the-pants navigation.
"Whoever drives this bus is either very good at his job or he's insane," said Holliday.
"Or both," commented Rafi. There was a single bulkhead door at the rear of the wheelhouse. It was unlocked. Holliday and Rafi stepped through into a combination chart room and captain's cabin. The briefcase was sitting on a small table beside a porthole. Holliday snapped the latch and pulled it open. It was filled with nautical charts and nothing else.