The Pharaoh Key, page 7
As if on cue, he saw the captain exiting the companionway at deck level, moving in haste, followed by his crew. He watched as they scurried to a hatch that led, most likely, to the lower mechanical deck. They undogged it and disappeared, leaving it open. Going to work on the engine, perhaps, Gideon thought grimly, or to seal the bulkheads. It must be worse than it seemed. If the scow actually sank, they needed to come up with a plan to deal with that—now, before mob panic set in.
“We must be a couple of miles offshore,” he said to Garza. “Not too bad a swim, considering the water is warm and there don’t seem to be any currents or tides.”
“Right,” said Garza, voice tight.
“Of course, there might be sharks.”
“Sharks.”
Gideon took a deep breath. “Look, Manuel. The obvious thing is to swim away from the boat before it goes down, get clear. Then we swim westward until we reach shore. Just keep the North Star on your right.”
“On your right,” Garza repeated mechanically.
Gideon suddenly had a suspicion. The captain and crew weren’t going below to fix the engine. The captain would leave the bridge for one reason only: to abandon ship. He and the crew were probably headed for a lifeboat—the damn cowards.
He grabbed Garza by the arm. “Follow me.”
They pushed through the crowd, which was now fully aroused, milling around and shouting up at the bridge in confused and angry voices. More people were instinctually pressing toward the high side of the sinking boat.
They arrived at the open hatch and descended into diesel-stinking dimness. A few caged bulbs illuminated the companionway to the lower deck. They continued following the passage until they heard voices echoing from ahead. In the lead, Gideon slowed and approached a partly open bulkhead door, which he stopped to peer through. The captain and crew were at a boarding platform in the lower part of the hull, open to the calm sea. They were arguing over a small Zodiac hung on davits next to the platform. Seawater was already slopping into the boarding hatch as the vessel settled in the water. The argument was escalating, and in moments it broke out into a fight. There was the flash of steel, a scream of agony, and the captain fell. The crew swung the davits out and lowered the Zodiac into the water, then surged into it, now fighting against the overcrowding; another man was stabbed and fell overboard, then two more were beaten off and left on the platform as the engine roared to life and the Zodiac shot out into the dark sea.
The water was now pouring in through the open boarding hatch. On the ferry deck above, Gideon could hear serious panic taking hold: muffled screaming, a thunder of running feet, the ululations of women.
“We can’t go back up,” Gideon said. “We’ve got to jump into the sea from here and swim for shore.”
He turned to Garza. The man’s face was pale. “No,” he said.
“No what?” Gideon yelled. “We’ve got no choice!”
“No.” The engineer backed away.
Gideon stared at him. “In a minute, maybe less, we’re going to be trapped down here!”
Garza continued to back down the passageway, a look of something like horror on his face. Gideon stared. He had never seen Garza so unmanned. Even in the most frightening moments they had spent together, the man had kept a cool head. Now he seemed to have lost it completely.
“You can’t swim,” said Gideon, simply.
Garza finally managed to nod.
Gideon’s mind raced. The man can’t swim? This messed up everything. “Okay. Okay. We go back on deck. Find something that floats. And launch ourselves on it.”
Garza managed to croak his agreement. The water was now swirling down the passageway at ankle level and rising quickly. With a great shuddering boom the second engine blew, and immediately afterward the lights went out.
“Just stay with me.” Gideon turned and they retreated down the passageway, feeling their way along the walls, up the companionway, and back out the deck hatch.
The scene that greeted them was one of heartbreaking pandemonium. The deck was now tilting at a steeper angle, and various carts, some with struggling donkeys still in harness, were rolling down the sloping surface, dragging the bellowing animals with them. One cart hit the railing and flipped over, throwing both donkey and cart into the sea. The poor animal screamed as it drowned. People had pressed themselves against the higher gunwales of the ferry, clutching at the railing, crying and wailing and reaching beseechingly toward the now empty bridge. Gideon could just see, headed westward, the running lights of the Zodiac vanishing into the murk.
The boat was dead in the water and sinking fast. Water rose over the port gunwales and began creeping up the deck. The tilt grew worse. And now a car began to move, and then another, sliding down the wooden deck and coming to rest against the rail. A large truck suddenly broke free, skidding sideways; it hit the railing with such force that it tore right through with a screech of steel. More trucks and lorries began rumbling down, bashing through the railing into the sea and sinking with a frenzy of bubbles. Screams rose as people caught in their paths were crushed or swept overboard. Flashlights and lanterns bobbed as panicky cries mounted upward from the darkened deck, the shrill screams of mothers punctuated by the wailing of babies—it was a scene out of hell itself. All these people, thought Gideon—they’re going to drown.
He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. The canting ferry felt like it might slide under at any moment; they had to quickly get well clear of the suction and imminent maelstrom of thrashing, drowning people, who would drag any nearby swimmer down with them. It felt heartless, but there was nothing left for them to do now but save themselves.
What could they use as a float? Lumber. He remembered a cart piled with boards that he’d seen loaded on board earlier. He cast about and spied it, jammed up against the port rail with other broken carts. The donkey pulling it, still harnessed, was lying, drowned, in the deepening water.
The lumber was stacked in tied bundles on the overloaded cart. The water was up to its hubs.
“Come on!” He pulled Garza down the deck toward the wagon.
“No—not into the water!”
“Get your ass moving!” He yanked at Garza, hauling him down the sloping deck. Everyone else had gone to the high side, leaving the flooding end free.
Gideon waded through the swelling water, grabbed the wagon wheel, and hauled himself into the cart. Garza followed gingerly, clearly struggling to master his anxiety. The hemp ropes holding the entire load had ruptured, but the individual bundles of wood were still tied and, he hoped, would be able to float like a sort of paddleboard. Gideon braced himself and grabbed a bundle, heaving it overboard, and then another and another. After a moment, Garza followed his lead. The bundles splashed into the sea, but since the boat had ceased moving they didn’t drift away.
“Let’s throw them all overboard!” yelled Gideon. He grabbed another and heaved it. “Manuel, get the women and children! They can float on these!”
Garza stared.
“We’re going to save some lives here! Get going!”
Comprehension dawned on the engineer’s face. He hustled off and a moment later returned leading a stream of women and their children, more following behind and soon generating a stampede. Gideon continued to flip bundles of wood overboard until the entire cartload was bobbing in the calm water next to the sinking boat.
Gideon leapt down from the remains of the cart. “Manuel, listen to me: get in the water and climb onto one of those. Do it now. Paddle away from the boat. Head west. We’ll meet up on shore.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to help these others. And then I’ll swim.”
“I’m going to help, too.”
“You can’t fucking swim!”
“I can do something!”
Mothers were screaming, clutching their babies and little ones. To Gideon’s amazement, the men did not press forward in panic—they were letting the women and children go first. It was a death sentence for all who couldn’t swim: a heartbreaking display of self-sacrifice.
Gideon seized a small child. “Go,” he said to the mother. “Into the water.” He jabbed his finger. “I hand you child.”
Someone who understood English yelled at her in Arabic and she slipped into the water, her arm wrapped around a floating bundle of boards. He passed the child to her. “Next!”
Garza and Gideon worked together, helping the mothers onto the bundles of lumber and then handing over the children. Soon all twenty or so bundles had women and children clinging to or riding atop them.
“Manuel, climb onto that last bundle!” Gideon yelled.
“No—women and children first.”
“Son of a bitch, the whole point of this was to get you on a raft!”
“You see any other men getting on?”
This sudden and unexpected display of heroism confounded Gideon. He wondered how the man—clearly terrified of the ocean—had managed to stay sane during the long and dangerous voyages of the Rolvaag and the Batavia…or, for that matter, how he’d kept his secret from Glinn.
Garza helped several girls onto the last bundle of wood and shoved it away from the railing with his foot. Every bundle was now full of people: perhaps fifty or sixty women and children were clinging to the lumber, drifting in a slow pack away from the boat.
The ferry suddenly lurched, a tremor passing over the deck. All at once it rolled sickeningly and people at the higher sections came tumbling down, screaming, hitting the water and thrashing about. Garza was abruptly thrown into the water and Gideon dove in after him, swimming around and calling his name. But the man didn’t surface. Gideon looked around and then realized he had to get some distance from the boat or he’d be sucked under.
With a great roar of air lurching up from below, the ferry slid sideways. Gideon swam as hard as he could away from the boat, away from the screams and heartrending cries—and then, with a great turmoil of water, the prow of the ferry swung straight up into the air, people flung from it into the water on all sides—and the vessel began sliding straight down with a gigantic, horrible slurp and a boiling eruption of bubbles…and was gone.
Gideon treaded water, clothes weighing him down, observing the scene from a distance. The cries did not last long. Almost nobody, it seemed, could swim. Garza was gone, and the flotilla of women and children on the bundles of lumber had drifted off into the darkness of night. There was nothing more he could do. He looked up, found the North Star, and began to swim through the warm water, slowly and steadily, keeping the star on his right, heading for the unknown shore.
14
THE WATER WAS warm and calm, and Gideon saw no sign of sharks. He kept up a slow pace, alternating among breaststroke, backstroke, and an easy crawl, careful not to tire himself out, moving with a current that was already taking him toward shore. After a while, he could see the mountains of the Eastern Desert rising in the west, their outline blotting out the stars, and an hour later he could make out the sound of light surf on a beach. Soon his feet touched sand and he stood up and waded to shore.
He dragged himself up the strand, exhausted. The moon had set, but the starlight was bright enough to cast a faint illumination over the landscape. It was a desolate place: a long, empty beach that curved like a scimitar between low reefs extending into the sea. The water was calm, the gentle waves hissing up the sand. There was no sign of life—not a bush or blade of grass—just sand and rock.
He coughed and spat out the salty taste in his mouth. The image of Garza going down in the dark water overwhelmed him. He couldn’t think about that—somehow, somehow, he told himself, Garza must have survived. How could a man like Garza die: his companion on many missions, a man who had survived again and again, a cat with nine lives? When the ship went down, the deck was covered with items that would have been left floating, from bales of hay to luggage and other things he could cling to. If Garza had managed to claw his way back to the surface, Gideon told himself, surely he would have found something…
Then he remembered the way the doomed ship had slipped so quickly beneath the surface; the boiling eruption of bubbles; the desperate shadows of drowning people calling out for help…
He staggered up the beach, peering into the darkness. “Manuel!” he called. “Manuel!” He saw something rolling in the surf and ran toward it, splashing through the water. A body. He grasped it by the clothing and turned it over—an elderly man, obviously drowned. A little farther on he saw other bodies turning gently in the surf.
“Manuel!”
He stumbled toward them, trying to see their faces in the dim light, turning them over—men, women, and a child. All were drowned. None were Garza.
He continued up the beach to the end, where a jagged reef stuck out into the water. All the bodies seemed concentrated in the one place. He turned and jogged back.
“Manuel!” he screamed, voice hoarse.
He passed the place where he had dragged himself out of the water, and continued south along the beach. Nothing. No survivors, no more bodies.
Exhausted, he could go no farther. He sank to his knees in the sand, gasping for breath. It seemed nobody had made it to shore alive from the disaster, at least not in this area.
He dragged himself beyond the wet sand and lay back, staring up at the stars: a castaway on an unknown shore. After a while he collected his thoughts and recovered his breath. He remembered his money belt and felt his waist, relieved to find it still there, packed with about twenty thousand Egyptian pounds and his passport. But that was all. He had no food and no water, and the rest of their money had gone down with the ferry. It was, he figured, about two in the morning. When the sun rose, the extreme heat and lack of water would become a problem. He would do well to travel at night. He could not afford to rest much longer.
Still he lay there awhile longer, gathering his willpower, and then heaved himself to his feet, swaying momentarily. His mind slowly cleared. If memory served, Manuel’s map had indicated that a road ran along the coastline southward to the town of Shalateen, the last vestige of civilization before the frontier of the Hala’ib Triangle.
He began to walk inland, hoping to intersect the road, the salt water in his clothes drying quickly. The air was almost chilly and he shivered, thinking that he’d better enjoy the cold while it lasted. The ground was flat and sandy, the distant mountains a serrated absence of stars. To his relief, in about a mile he hit the road: a single-lane strip of asphalt running straight as an arrow from north to south.
He paused on the roadway, thinking. If the ferry sank at around one in the morning, they would have traveled about two hundred miles, going at roughly ten knots. That meant Shalateen was another eighty miles to the south, more or less. Too far to walk. But then, he reasoned, he had no other choice but to try.
He headed south, walking down the center of the road. Images crowded into his mind: of the sinking; of Garza being thrown into the water and going under; of all the helpless, screaming, drowning people. That last gesture of Garza’s, making the ultimate sacrifice to save others—and the old grouch had done it instinctively, without even thinking twice. It made his own struggles with a terminal disease, his months of existential angst, feel foolish; trivial; self-centered.
Well, all that was over now. The expedition was finished. There was no way he could continue on his own. What he needed was to push away these heavy thoughts and focus on getting to Shalateen alive. Then he could go back to his cabin in the Jemez Mountains and live out his last few weeks in the place he loved most—to hell with the Phaistos location.
After he’d spent three hours walking, the sky began to lighten in the east. It spread across the sea horizon in a brightening pink band, and soon afterward a yellow sun boiled up over the water, casting an oven-like heat into his face. It was amazing how quickly the temperature passed through the comfort zone to unbearable heat. He had lost his head covering, and the sun as it rose quickly began to feel as if it were pressing down on his head like hot iron, turning the salt in his hair to bitter dust. The mountains rising on his right looked black and as sharp as needles.
The road ran across the sandy coastal plains, absorbing the heat of the sun and radiating it back in shimmering patterns. No cars came, and in the areas where sand had blown across the road there were no tire tracks. It looked like nothing had passed down the road in days.
Around what seemed like noon, Gideon began to feel light-headed. The shore lay about a mile off, and he realized that to stave off heatstroke he should make use of the water. He veered off the road and walked to the shore, arriving at an area of flat reefs and a beach of orange sand. He waded into the water, soaking his clothes and dunking his head, feeling the instant relief of the cool water even if it did little to assuage his rising thirst. As he began walking back toward the road, he heard a distant sound. A car? He began to run. To the north, he could see what looked like two decrepit buses lumbering down the highway, belching diesel smoke.
“Hey!” he cried, stumbling forward. “I’m here! Hey! Wait!” He waved his arms and shouted, running as fast as he could, but the two vehicles passed in the distance and soon dwindled into black dots on the southern horizon.
He reached the road and stood there, cursing at the vanishing buses. Now he bitterly regretted leaving the roadway. But at least this meant the road was traveled—albeit infrequently.
He trudged on. The dip in the water had temporarily assuaged his thirst, but it returned quickly. There was no shade anywhere, and he realized it was dangerous to keep walking—it would only increase his need for water. He sat down on a rock by the side of the highway and waited. Hours passed while the blazing sun inched across the sky and began to descend toward the jagged mountains. And then, in the northern distance, Gideon saw the wavering, uncertain image of what looked like a car at the vanishing point of the road. He stood up. It was a vehicle—in fact, several of them. They materialized into a jeep and two olive-drab army vehicles barreling down the roadway at high speed. He rushed to the middle of the road and waved his arms and began shouting as they approached.
