The Pharaoh Key

12

DESPITE HAVING BEEN paid off and dismissed, Asim was waiting for them the next morning before dawn, as the calls of the muezzin echoed through loudspeakers placed around the town. “I help!” he cried as they came out of the hotel with their duffels. He grabbed Garza’s and swung it onto his skinny shoulders, then set off at a fast pace, ignoring Garza’s protests as they followed. The duffel was bigger than he was.

When they came to the waterfront, Gideon stopped dead when he saw the lone vessel that was docked across the asphalt quay.

“Oh my God,” said Garza, halting next to him. “We’re not going to ride on that?”

Gideon turned to Asim. “Is that the ferry?”

“Yes, sir.”

A huge mass of people, punctuated by honking cars, braying donkeys, men with live goats slung over their shoulders, a teenager driving a yoked pair of water buffalo, a man with a cart heaped with watermelons, were all crowding forward in a chaotic mass onto the open deck of the ferry. The ship had once been painted white with a red stripe at the waterline, but it was now so streaked with rust and peeling paint it looked like a derelict that had barely survived the apocalypse. Two smokestacks belched black diesel smoke, which mounted into the air, spreading a pall. The wheezy chattering of the ship’s engines throbbed in the air. At the far end of the ferry a small bridge rose from the deck, constructed of rusted steel. Gideon could see the captain and a couple of crew moving about.

“It looks like Charon’s boat to Hades,” said Garza.

“You sure this is the only way to Shalateen?” Gideon asked dubiously.

“It was either this or rent a car and drive five hundred miles on a terrible road known for bandits, kidnappings, and the occasional terrorist beheading, where if you break down you might die of thirst or heatstroke before help arrived.”

Asim was looking at them anxiously. “I show you on boat?”

“Fine.”

Asim proceeded to push through the crowd, using Garza’s duffel as a kind of bolster, swinging his shoulders this way and that, nudging people out of the way and shouting in Arabic. The tactic was remarkably effective, and they soon boarded via a broad boat ramp onto a deck sticky with spilled oil and animal dung.

The ferry gave two blasts of its whistle, signaling imminent departure. Asim had boarded with them and showed no sign of leaving.

“You can’t come with us,” Gideon said.

“Why not? I guide!”

“We don’t want a guide.” Gideon fished in his wallet.

“You’re paying him again?” Garza asked.

Gideon pulled out a hundred-pound note but held it back. “Here, this is yours—but only if you get off the ship.”

The whistles boomed again and the last stragglers were fighting to get on. The ferry was packed alarmingly tight.

“I guide you!” the boy said insistently.

“No!” Gideon waved the bill above him like bait. “You have to get off. Now.”

“I stay with you!”

“What about your parents? Your family?”

Asim went suddenly silent. Gideon reached in his wallet and took out another hundred, holding the two bills just out of his reach. “Asim? You can’t go with us. It isn’t safe. Here—take this and get off the ship.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Garza shaking his head.

“Okay, sir.”

Gideon lowered his hand and with reluctance Asim took the money, shoved it into a ragged pocket, then turned, shuffling halfheartedly and ineffectually against the flow.

“If you don’t make it off the ship, I take back the money!” Gideon warned.

Hearing this, the boy darted into the surging crowd and disappeared. A few minutes later Gideon saw him again, wandering disconsolately across the now empty pier, hands in his pockets, kicking pebbles with his flip-flops.

“Now, there’s a kid with talent,” said Garza. “He didn’t have to pinch the money out of your wallet. He got you to give it to him.”

“What the hell, he’s probably an orphan. He needs the money a lot more than we do.”

“Yeah, sure. That was the sweetest con I’ve ever seen.” Garza snickered.

Gideon shook his head. Garza was really starting to drive him crazy.

Shouting, the crew cast off the rotten hawsers, and with a great coughing roar the ferry’s engines revved up. The water churned alongside as the boat inched away from the pier, the deck vibrating with the effort. Slowly, agonizingly, the ferry pulled into the Red Sea, showering soot down on them.

“Isn’t there a place with shade or something?” Gideon asked, peering here and there.

But there wasn’t. They were all crowded onto a single, barge-like deck—cars, trucks, people, carts, and animals mixed together in the blazing sun, with no shade and no place to sit. Gideon was reminded of a car ferry he’d once taken to Nantucket, only larger, far more decrepit, and ten times as crowded. The other passengers seemed cheerful enough and were settling down on boxes, bales of cotton, and ancient pieces of luggage, many setting up umbrellas and crude pole-and-burlap awnings, breaking out food and conversing over the braying of donkeys and the occasional bellowing of a water buffalo.

“We should have bought some umbrellas,” said Gideon, sitting on his duffel.

“Where are the lifeboats?” Garza asked, looking around.

Gideon gave a laugh. “Lifeboats? Are you serious? What I want to know is, where’s the damn head?”

“I think it’s over there,” said Garza, “behind that curtain. Where all the people are waiting. Looks like you just kind of squat out over the water.”

“Charming.”

Away from shore, the ferry turned southward and settled into cruising speed. Gideon squinted into the sun, looking at the passing shore, and then gazed at the water moving along the gunwales. “I’d say we’re making about ten knots at the most. How far to Shalateen?”

“Two hundred and fifty nautical miles,” said Garza in a clipped voice. He seemed uncharacteristically on edge.

“This trip is going to take forever. I’m already getting a headache from the sun. I think I’ll put on my headcloth.”

Gideon took the ten-foot piece of cloth from his duffel and started wrapping it around his head, tucking the end inside his mop of unruly brown hair. He tried once, and again, then a third time, but it kept unraveling. He cursed and pretty soon had attracted the attention of the surrounding people.

“Help?” a teenage boy offered.

“Hell, yes. I mean, please.”

The cheerful youth unwrapped his own imma, then swiftly wrapped it back up, then repeated more slowly. “You see?”

“Okay, my turn.” Gideon managed to do it, with a few corrections. The boy helped tuck it in firmly. “Thank you.”

The boy pointed to Garza. “Friend need help?”

“Friend not need help,” said Garza sourly. “Friend going to die in sun.”

“Sun bad.” A chorus of advice and warnings to Garza were proffered in Arabic and broken English by concerned neighbors, along with much gesturing. A man offered him an umbrella.

“Thank you!” said Gideon, seeing that Garza was about to decline. He pulled out his wallet but was met with a firm refusal. The man’s neighbor urged a second one on them, gesturing and speaking in Arabic, again refusing all compensation. Garza grudgingly accepted it.

“How long till we reach Shalateen?” Gideon asked the young man with broken English.

The boy squinted, held up two fingers. “Two day.”

Garza swore. “No lifeboats, no life vests, and at least five hundred people on board, not to mention animals and cars. What if the boat sinks?”

“Nothing like traveling with an optimist.”

The wind shifted and another light shower of soot from the diesel stacks dusted over them.

“Did you bring any food and water?” Gideon asked, suddenly apprehensive. “Or are we going to die of thirst as well as sunstroke?”

Garza reached down and unzipped his duffel, pulling out a plastic bag filled with food. “Help yourself.”

“I’m impressed. When did you buy this?”

“While you were napping after dinner. I had a feeling we might not want to eat the haute cuisine served in the ferry cafeteria.”

Gideon rummaged through the bag and took out a banana, chips, and a Fanta. He braced the umbrella and settled on his duffel with his makeshift lunch. “This isn’t so bad, really,” he said.

He wasn’t sure who he was trying to reassure more—Garza or himself.

The ancient ferry shuddered and smoked as they crawled southward. In time, the scattered towns gave way to an empty shore of vacant beaches and flat coral reefs, behind which rose the dark mountains of the great Eastern Desert of Egypt. It was the most desolate and fearful coastline Gideon had ever seen. As the heat of the day reached its peak, the ferry subsided into somnolence, no one stirring. It was hot but not brutally so—this was late March, after all—and a warm steady breeze blew across the open deck. Like the others, Gideon fell into a doze mostly as a way to make the time pass. He woke toward sunset, when everyone else began stirring, chattering, and breaking out dinners from burlap sacks and greasy cardboard boxes.

The sun hung low over the sea horizon, a crimson ball that cast a bloody light over the water. It set so fast it almost seemed to fall into the sea, plunging the world into an orange gloaming.

Garza sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Dinner?” Gideon asked.

Garza rummaged in the bag and extracted some meat pastries, cheese, dates, and two bottles of warm Fanta, and they sat on their duffels eating and watching the sky darken into green and purple, as clear and empty as infinity itself.

“I must compliment you on your planning,” said Gideon, his mouth half full of pastry. “This is tasty.”

“If I’d known we’d be on a boat like this, I think I would’ve risked renting that car.”

“It’ll be over in another day and a half.”

Garza shook his head as he looked around. “This ferry is a bloody disaster waiting to happen.”

Their fellow passengers began to haul out battery-powered lights and Coleman lanterns, which glowed as the twilight deepened, lending the deck a festive air. The smell of spices and food wafted past. The stars winked in the deep sky above: a few at first, and then more and more, until a vast dome of stars arched over them, bisected by the Milky Way.

Gideon was amazed at how quickly the air cooled once the sun had set. After a noisy dinnertime, the ship quieted down again as one by one the passengers settled in for the night. The various lights went out and voices dropped to a murmur. Gideon rested his head against the soft end of his duffel and closed his eyes.