Blind Reef

by Peter Tonkin

  Nahom was thrown back against the undamaged rear door, which burst open and allowed him to spew out on to the rough red grit. On his way out he smacked the back of his head on the doorframe, so that when he hit the ground he was deeply unconscious. He rolled away across the sand as though all his bones had been shattered, leaving a good deal of skin behind, and he ended up on his face, lacerated arms akimbo and his legs spread. The door which had swung wide swung shut again, the noise of its closing lost in the general thunder of the near-disaster just before the motor died. Then there was just the shuddering rumble of the car’s chassis bottoming on dune after dune.

  Tariq finally brought the Fiat to a stop in a cloud of coarse red dust. He and Ali sat silently for a while, waiting for their pulses to slow, their hands to stop shaking, their breathing to return to normal. The sand grains whispered against the windscreen and the roof as they settled. ‘Allah smiled on us today for certain, blessings and peace be upon him,’ observed Ali as he reluctantly released his death grip on the Holy Qur’an.

  ‘He did,’ agreed Tariq, feelingly. ‘What do you think, Nahom?’ And he turned round to look back at his passenger.

  But the back seat was empty.

  ‘Ali,’ said Tariq, his voice quiet with puzzlement at yet another near-miraculous occurrence amongst so many, ‘Nahom’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ Ali began to turn, only to discover that whiplash had stiffened his neck and shoulders.

  ‘He may have been thrown out through the window,’ Tariq continued dreamily. ‘It’s broken. And there’s a lot of blood …’

  ‘What?’ Ali swung right round at last. His eyes seemed to bulge as they swept across the glass-strewn shambles of the blood-soaked back seat. ‘Besmillah!’ he whispered. ‘What has happened?’ He tore his door open and staggered out on to the sand. Stumbling on shaking legs, he followed the tyre tracks back towards the road. And there, a good ten metres from the tarmac, lay Nahom. Ali could tell at a glance that he was dead. He had worked for some time as a hospital orderly and counted himself as well qualified as many of the doctors. He certainly believed he knew death when he saw it. Perhaps Tariq was right, he thought. Perhaps Nahom had come out through the window. Certainly, he was covered in glass. His clothes were torn and his skin caked with red grit, through which blood was oozing listlessly. Lifelessly. The back of his head had a huge welt across it that was crusted with congealing blood. And, Ali realized with a sickening lurch, it was also leaking grey-pink brain matter. He sank to his knees beside the unmoving body, thinking that he had never seen so much blood in all his life. The still air stank of it, and beneath the metallic stench was another one that was almost like cheese. Ali realized that the cheese smell was probably Nahom’s brains. His stomach heaved again.

  ‘Wald il qahbaa!’ said Tariq, coming up behind him. ‘Son of a bitch, that is one dead bala’a il a’air.’

  ‘He won’t be the only dead cocksucker when we get to Nekhel empty-handed!’ snarled Ali.

  ‘It’s not him we needed anyway,’ observed Tariq. ‘Just the cards he stole. You know the PIN and all.’

  ‘Shit! You’re right!’ said Ali, his voice rising with revelation. ‘We can still complete the mission. Though there’s no way we can risk the security point at El Tor with the back seat looking like that. They’re not so picky at Nekhel; we’ll catch up with the others and an ATM there. And maybe get a piece of that hot bitch, his sister, for our good work, eh?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said Tariq. ‘You think there’s a chance?’

  ‘We might have to join a queue, especially if she’s as hot as she’s supposed to be.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ said Tariq. ‘Be an easier ride if she’s broken in first. Nice and smooth – and no fighting back. Where are the cards?’

  ‘They’re in his back pocket.’

  ‘Which looks to be the only bit of him not covered in blood and brains. And flies,’ observed Tariq, looking at the creatures which were already swarming over Nahom’s body. ‘Where do they come from? It’s a mystery.’

  As Tariq was discussing philosophy and flies, Ali was reaching into Nahom’s back pocket, and pulling the cards free with shaking hands. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now let’s just pray that Allah will allow the engine to start and the Fiat will get us safely to Nekhel.’

  ‘Think we ought to bury him?’ asked Tariq.

  ‘With what? We don’t have a shovel, even if we had the time or the inclination. And think about it. As things stand it looks like an accident. A traffic accident. If we bury him then it’ll look like a crime scene. No, let’s get in the car and get on our way as quickly as we can.’

  ‘What did we hit, though?’ wondered Tariq. ‘Should we go and check?’

  ‘He said something about a goat,’ answered Ali.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tariq. ‘That’s what he said! Goat!’ He shook his head in simple wonder. The pair of them looked across the empty roadway but, like Nahom, the goat was sprawled invisibly behind a low roadside dune, well out of sight.

  After a moment, Ali turned back to look at the battered Fiat and was violently sick on the sand. As he straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, a shadow flitted across the ground beside him and he looked up to see the first vulture circling, its arrival as mysterious as that of the flies.

  Major Ibrahim glared at Sergeant Sabet with such naked rage in his dark eyes that the usually imperturbable young woman blenched. Had her habitually charming and patient boss’s all-too-obvious anger been directed at her, she would have felt positively faint. But fortunately it was aimed at someone much further away than the young woman seated on the far side of his immaculate desk in the gathering dusk of his east-facing office. Much higher in the air. And flying westwards, seemingly oblivious to the outrage he had caused.

  ‘What did this imbecile think he was doing?’ Ibrahim demanded, his voice shaking, the fine nostrils of his narrow, aquiline nose flaring, his pencil-thin moustache bristling.

  Sabet opened her mouth to answer, too disorientated to realize that the question was rhetorical.

  ‘I sent him out to scout for them. To report to me if he got wind of them. Not to open fire on them and herd them along the route they were probably planning on taking in any case! And what is the end result of all this grandstanding?’ The tip of his tongue brushed over his finely chiselled lips, collecting a little saliva released by the vehemence of his anger.

  Again, Sabet drew breath to answer.

  But again, he prevented her, his frown thunderous, his long, elegant finger pointing directly at her. ‘He’s heading back to Borg-el-Arab airfield in Alexandria where he will no doubt report job well done to some other city-bred moron of a commander there who has no idea of what is really needed down here on the Sinai and what has actually been done to our investigation. And they’ll just put him back on traffic watch or crowd control and leave us high and dry!’

  ‘They wouldn’t use an Apache for traffic duties, would they?’ asked Sabet, sidetracked. Fortunately he didn’t seem to hear her.

  ‘There’s no point in trying to get to the Wilderness of Sin now, of course,’ he raged on. ‘The traffickers will have gone up through the Forest of Pillars expecting to be met at the northern edge of the gebel by trucks that can get up and down across the el-Tib plateau, and they’ll be in Nekhel before dhuhr – midday prayers!’ He closed his long eyes as if mentally following the one section of the smuggling route that was at least to a certain extent predicable, given that the section of desert the trucks could traverse was several hundred kilometres wide. Sabet noticed for the first time in their lengthy association how long and thick his eyelashes were.

  Ibrahim stood, unable to contain his outrage. He began to pace from side to side of the room, from one window to another. The thick-piled hornets shifted as he approached, as though they too could sense his fury. But he did not stop talking. ‘It’s too late to get a unit up to Nekhel now. Even if I could get something organi
zed, we’d have to drive all night and get there sometime in the small hours between the fajr and sunrise prayers. That’s if we got a police convoy through into the Northern Zone without rousing any hostility, or alerting anyone capable of warning the smugglers to change their route or go into hiding as we approach. In any case, by the time we got there they’ll all be in innocent-looking untraceable trucks and ready to head out for Taba or Rafa depending on which way their victims are being smuggled across the border! The best I can do is alert my opposite number up there, Captain Fawzi, and hope he can get some news of them before they pass through.’

  ‘It depends on which border they’re heading for, too,’ added Sabet.

  ‘You’re right.’ He nodded, pausing in his pacing. ‘They could be going into Gaza from Rafa, into Israel from any point between Taba and Rafa. Or into Jordan after another short boat ride from Taba, or into Saudi after a slightly longer one. Bismillah, they could even take them north of Rafa to El Arish on the Mediterranean coast and try for Turkey, Greece or Italy!’

  ‘We could try to get the army to close the road east of Nekhel if you don’t think Captain Fawzi will be able to stop them in Nekhel itself,’ suggested Sabet, shifting in her chair, wondering whether she too should be pacing the room like a leopard in a cage that was too small to contain it. ‘The North Sinai is their jurisdiction.’

  ‘They’re too busy mopping up the consequences of the last confrontation between Gaza and Jerusalem, tracking the locations of the sixteen Jihadist camps that are supposed to be hidden somewhere out there, trying to release the seven police officers kidnapped last month from our most recent attempt to close that road – and attempting to discover who has blown up the gas line to Israel again! Not to mention the likelihood of soldiers manning roadblocks turning themselves into sitting targets for Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, and anyone else ISIS, al-Qaeda or Hamas is running up there, just as our police and security people have done in the recent past. More than thirty dead in the last suicide car-bombing!’

  Sabet opened her mouth to protest at this all-too-depressing list.

  But Ibrahim continued, unaware. ‘I’ve been on to the army liaison people, and we’d get no help from them. And you can see their point. Why worry about a few dozen illegal immigrants when they have something close to a border war going on? In the middle of a desert that keeps moving like a slow-motion ocean, complete with thirty metre dunes tens of kilometres long with a rate of travel you can measure in kilometres per hour. No reliable oases. Quicksand. Snakes and scorpions …’

  Sabet closed her mouth and sat back, looking up at the frowning man. She had never seen Ibrahim this depressed before. Or this insensitive. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis terrorists had claimed responsibility for the improvised explosive device that had killed her husband, police Captain Husani, and left her widowed and childless five years earlier, the year before she joined the force in his place. Since which time she had been without a man, in spite of the very proper offer made by Husani’s younger brother to take her as his second wife and look after her. An offer she had rejected with, perhaps, more forceful language than was absolutely necessary. And the price of her rudeness had been loneliness. With a frisson of shock, she realized she had never looked at Ibrahim as a man before. As a lean, hawk-faced, dark-haired, very desirable man. ‘It is late, Major,’ she observed gently. ‘If, as you say, there is nothing to be done, then perhaps you should go home.’

  He looked at his watch and his eyebrows rose in surprise when he saw what time it was. ‘So should you,’ he said, turning to face her, his eyes still distant, his gaze distracted by his own thoughts. ‘It is almost time for maghrib, and I note that you have had nothing to eat today.’

  ‘At home I have a fattah of lamb with rice ready to be heated,’ she said. ‘I shall be glad to see it, I must admit. But what about you, sir?’

  Ibrahim’s distracted gaze slowly focused on her, for the question marked a new level of intimacy in their formally professional relationship. Sabet knew as well as everyone else in the El Benouk station that Major Ibrahim’s existence was as close as his religion allowed to the monastic lifestyle favoured by ancient Christians at St Catherine’s Monastery. He had no family other than the force. He had no parents living; no wife or child. Some joked that he had no home other than the El Benouk station. And that he digested nothing but old case files. Which at least explained his long, lean body – if not the breadth of his shoulders or the depth of his chest.

  ‘As you may know, I live at the top of Ras Um Sid,’ he said, surprising her with the familiarity and the revelation. ‘I reserve a table at the restaurant called Sadiki up there. Their baba ghanoush is particularly good because they cook the aubergines on an open fire for an especially smoky taste. A bowl of that with a plate of bread is usually more than enough for me. But their salads are also excellent.’

  Sabet looked in something akin to awe at a man who apparently subsisted on little more than bread and aubergine dip. At least it explained the body that hardly filled his perfectly pressed uniform, she thought. And then, irreverently, she began to wonder precisely where on Ras Um Sid he laid his darkly handsome head. A memory stirred. Somewhere on El Fanar, was it? Husani had been dead five years. How much loneliness was one woman supposed to put up with? She shook herself, suddenly, shocked that her thoughts had drifted into such dangerous areas.

  She opened her mouth to say something – she had no idea what – but she was prevented by a firm official knock at the door.

  ‘Aji,’ he called – come.

  The door opened and the sergeant manning the reception desk this shift came in. ‘There is a phone call,’ he said. ‘It has come through to the central switchboard but I thought you would want to know about it immediately.’

  ‘N’aam?’ snapped Ibrahim. Yes?

  ‘It is from Captain Mariner,’ explained the sergeant. ‘He says he has found the escaped prisoner Nahom Selassie and will be bringing him in at once. There was some kind of a traffic accident on the road to El Tor, apparently, and the prisoner Selassie was left for dead at the side of the road. He will take him directly to the hospital. They will be there in an hour or so.’

  Ibrahim’s eyes rolled upwards. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will wait and meet him there.’

  The brown eyes swept round to Sergeant Sabet. ‘I will have to forego my baba ghanoush, by the look of things,’ he said. He would have added more, but she forestalled him, driven by motivations too deep for her to fathom into a suggestion that was somewhere between impertinence and unprofessional conduct.

  ‘Then I will forego my fattah. But we need not be at the hospital for an hour. Is there a restaurant nearby where we might get something to eat?’

  He looked at her for a moment and she was suddenly breathless with fear that she had stepped over some line that should never be crossed with him. But then he gave a fleeting smile. ‘There is the Columbus,’ he said. ‘Their fish tagine is excellent. But we will have to share a private booth, I’m afraid – or both of our reputations will be ruined.’ Then he stopped and froze for a moment, as he thought the matter through. ‘Better still,’ he decided. ‘I will call them and have them deliver the food here. That way our reputations will remain inviolate.’

  ‘And when we have eaten,’ she added, ‘we will be conveniently placed to drive down to the hospital and see whether the cat-like Nahom Selassie has used up all of his lives at last.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked Mahmood. ‘He certainly looks dead. They clearly thought so …’ He gestured to the vultures they had scared off with their arrival, which now circled as low in the sky as they dared, keeping their beady eyes on the blood-soaked body.

  ‘Looks can be deceiving,’ answered Richard, waving the clouds of swarming flies away as he knelt over the prostrate figure. ‘They certainly are in this case. He’s bruised and battered and that’s a nasty welt on the back of his head. But almost none of the blood is his, as far as I can see – and those are not his brains either because his
skull is as solid as a bowling ball. His pulse is strong and his eyes react to light when I pull the lids back.’

  ‘Mister Richard!’ came Saiid’s voice from the far side of the carriageway, borne across the empty road on the evening breeze. ‘There’s a dead goat here. They must have hit it.’

  ‘What does its head look like?’ called Richard.

  ‘Smashed open,’ answered Saiid.

  ‘Brains?’ he demanded.

  ‘Gone,’ Saiid confirmed.

  ‘The times have been,’ said Richard, speaking to himself, ironically misquoting Macbeth once more, ‘that when the brains were out the goat would die … ’ He rolled Nahom on to his back and pulled his torso up into a sitting position. ‘But now they rise again …’ He held his hand out and Ahmed passed him a bottle of cold water from the Defender’s icebox. Richard let it trickle over Nahom’s battered face and head. The eyes flickered. The young man sucked in a massive breath and came back to consciousness like a reanimated corpse.

  ‘You’re going to have to find some way of getting around Sinai, Nahom,’ said Richard cheerfully, ‘other than in ambulances …’

  Nahom’s eyes slowly focused on him. ‘There was goat …’ he mumbled.

  ‘We know,’ Richard assured him. ‘You seem to be covered in a good deal of its blood and most of its brains.’ He hesitated. ‘Though I have to say, this particular bloody goat seems to have been much brainier than the average.’