The village came into view, but there was no marquees with WELCOME TO AL-ASMAT on one side and THANK YOU FOR VISITING on the other. Probably because they didn’t have visitors. The place was nothing more than a few dozen buildings, squares and rectangles that looked as if they were growing out of the hardpan earth. Most were clearly homes, smooth-sided mud-brick dwellings cooked to impervious perfection, the sweat of artisan masons baked in for centuries.
Antonelli guided through a series of turns while Davis manhandled the moody truck, grinding through gears and fighting the heavy steering wheel. The road disappeared completely, and they began to crunch over a path of dirt and stone. At the edge of the village was a small souk where a dozen men and women were engaged in buying and selling. It was a market that had probably been here since the pharaohs. Merchants and smugglers and pirates, arriving by camel and sailing dhow.
She pointed to one of the village’s biggest structures, and said, “Turn right, stop there.”
Davis did both.
The big machine settled and seemed to groan with relief when he set the parking brake and killed the engine. When Davis opened the door and clambered down, the Red Sea was thirty steps in front of him. But there was no trade wind or refreshing ocean breeze. The heat was still suffocating, perhaps heavier now, and the smell of fish hung on the viscous, saline air.
A group of people came out of the big building to greet Antonelli. The young man who’d been suffering in the truck’s bed began to shout wildly. He climbed down and got the kind of hugs you only got from family. Now Davis understood. Arriving with battle scars, riding shotgun on a tall pile of goodwill — the kid must look like a conquering hero. In a way, he was.
Antonelli took a few hearty embraces as well. She had indeed been here before. After all the happiness ran its course, she walked over to Davis.
“I explained that you’ve come to help. I’ll introduce you later.”
“Okay.”
No time was wasted. A group of men and boys began to pull boxes from the truck. Davis jumped in and lent a hand, because it was the kind of job that didn’t need a common language. Twenty minutes later, everything was on the ground and the sorting began.
Antonelli came over, and said, “They will take care of the rest. To show the village’s appreciation, a meal is being prepared for us.”
“Great,” he said. “This being a fugitive has given me a heck of an appetite.”
He followed Antonelli into a courtyard. There was a perimeter wall draped in fishing nets, and big conch shells were lined up on the rim getting bleached by the sun. At the base of the wall was a tall stack of wooden traps — crab or lobster, he guessed — and rows of filleted fish had been hung out to dry on a rack near the house.
An old woman with deeply wrinkled skin was sweeping the steps at the home’s entrance. She exchanged a greeting with Antonelli and stepped aside to let them pass. Davis gave her a polite nod, and she responded with the kind of wry, knowing smile that only seventy-year-old women can get away with. There was no door, only a pulled back curtain, and the first room they entered was a kitchen. Pots and utensils were hanging on hooks, the kind of thing you saw back home as a decorative accent. These specimens, however, were well used, dented and worn. Davis could see heat coming from an oven built into the wall, and next to it a stolid matron, gray hair and an outdoor face, was standing at a wooden counter doing something to a fish. They passed right through the house and ended up in another courtyard, this one looking out over the sea. There were two potted palm trees and a canvas tarp for shade. A table for two was being set by a young woman. When she saw them coming she held out an arm elegantly. She could have been the maître d’ at the Savoy.
Antonelli hesitated, and it took Davis a moment to shift gears. He’d spent the last four days cracking heads and looking for charred metal, so the shift in deportment put him off balance. Finally catching the hint, he swept past Antonelli and pulled a chair back for her. She slid in.
Davis took the opposing seat, and said, “Does this mean we get the rest of the night off?”
“I think we have earned it.”
The maître d’ became a waitress and asked something of Antonelli, who nodded vigorously. The woman moved at a languid pace. She’d never have kept a job at a diner in the States, never have made it serving milkshakes on roller skates. But here, in what was probably the closest thing to a restaurant in al-Asmat, she was perfect.
“I hope you asked for something to drink,” he said. “I’m pretty thirsty.”
“The desert has its way.”
“Is there a menu?” he asked.
“No, there is only the chef’s special, but I have never been disappointed.”
“So how long are you planning to stay here?” he asked.
“I leave for Port Sudan in three days. Until then, my work is here. There are people who have been waiting months for primary-care issues.”
“And I raise a stink when I have to wait thirty minutes for an office visit.”
Antonelli smiled. “Yes, we do take these things for granted.”
Davis surveyed the beach. What he saw wasn’t a powder-white strand from a tourist brochure, but rather tan desert that disappeared in a scalloped profile at the water’s edge. Gentle waves collapsed on themselves submissively a few feet from shore. Davis knew a little about the Red Sea. It was a narrow body of water, so there was no reach for the wind to build and carry swells. Today there was no wind to begin with. He also knew that the Red Sea was unusually saline, narrow openings at either end, and hot desert air sucking out moisture like an invisible sponge. He was surprised there was any water at all.
“And you?” she asked. “Will you come to Port Sudan with me?”
“No. I still have an investigation to complete.”
“In al-Asmat?”
“Maybe. If an airplane did go down, it was close to here.” He pointed on a diagonal across the coastline. “Twenty miles that way.”
“You can find this airplane in the sea?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I can try. Actually, you might be able to help with that.”
“How?”
“You speak Arabic. I’d like you to ask around, see if anything strange has washed ashore or been picked up at sea. When an airplane goes down in the water, something always floats.”
“All right, I will ask.”
The maître’d-slash-waitress came back with a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and two mismatched glasses on an old, corroded steel tray. She set it down, and Antonelli went to work on the cork.
“Alcohol?” he remarked. “Isn’t this a fundamentalist Muslim country?”
“I’m Italian,” she said.
Davis could have thought for a hundred years and not come up with a better reply.
Antonelli made quick work of the cork and poured two generous servings. She said, “To the people of Sudan. May they be happy and well.” She raised her glass.
“To the people of Sudan,” he repeated.
They both took the required sip, and when her glass came down Davis found himself looking at her lips. They were broad and full, with a tendency to stay just slightly apart. Like an invitation.
“So, Contessa, I really don’t know much about you. Is there a count?”
“If there was, you would be calling me Countess.”
He grinned, said nothing.
“But yes, there is. Only, not for much longer. He left me.”
Davis thought, What an idiot. He said, “I’m sorry,” because that was the polite thing to say. Even if he wasn’t.
“He is a brilliant surgeon, cardio-thoracic,” she said. “Handsome, wealthy, charismatic. Line up a hundred men and ask any woman which they would marry, my husband would always be the first pick.”