"And why exactly are we going there?" Rafi asked.
"If we put down at one of the big airports someone will almost certainly ask questions," answered Tidyman. "If Alhazred or Ayoub or whatever his name is does come after us, we'll be harder to find. It's closer to Kelibia than anywhere else."
"Kelibia?"
"A little coastal town on the Cape Bon peninsula, the other side of the Bay of Tunis," said Tidyman. "A dusty little place with hardly any tourists. There's an old fort but that's about it. It's where they ship the women out. It's where the Khamsin docks."
"Get us there," said Rafi.
An hour's flying brought them to Matfur, a small village at the foot of a bleak, treeless hill surrounded by a pancake-flat plain of smallholdings. In the waning moonlight Tidyman found the lake bed without any difficulty and put the plane down in a perfect three- point landing on the long-abandoned airfield, now little more than a slightly raised track through dry, cracked mud. He taxied the plane around, bringing it into the wind, then switched off the engines. The propellers clattered and whined to a stop and for the first time since they'd taken off from the desert camp in Libya there was silence.
"Now what?" Holliday asked.
"Now we steal a car," said Tidyman. "And get ourselves to the coast."
19
As things turned out, they didn't steal a car. They bought a truck, a World War II-vintage Austin Champ left behind in 1943 and pressed into service on a chicken farm owned by a man named Mahmoud. The truck and five gallons of gas were purchased for fifty dollars American and the ignition key for the Cessna Skymaster they'd left behind on the old airfield. Mahmoud also threw in an early breakfast of freshly slaughtered, plucked and baked chicken with a side dish of couscous and several pots of strong coffee.
For a few extra American dollars Mahmoud also let them have their pick from his meager wardrobe of Western-style clothes, managing to outfit Rafi and Holliday in well-worn collarless shirts and floppy, outsized trousers that seemed to have been made for someone who had been both short as well as enormously fat. By daybreak, after a revolting and appetite-suppressing tour of Mahmoud's farm and directions to the coast, they were on their way.
The trip in the old truck took less than two hours but Holliday was sure the stink of chicken guano would be with him forever.
Tidyman's brief description of the town of Kelibia was entirely accurate. A large fort dating back to the Roman occupation dominated the dusty whitewashed town from a steep hill, and that was about it except for the stink of fish, which immediately began fighting the acid reek of chicken droppings for dominance in their nostrils.
Most of the town seemed to have grown from an intersection of two major roads spreading out in a thoughtless tangle of narrow side streets that had grown over the passing years like a plaster and whitewash virus with no plan or direction. The real focus of the town beyond the obvious power of the vacant fortress was the harbor with its fleet of fishing trawlers and feluccas. According to Tidyman Kelibia was not one of the sanitized Zones Touristique, which might have accounted for the litter on the streets and the putrid, filthy water in the harbor. The boats, of all sizes and most needing a coat of paint, were moored four or five deep in a helter-skelter mess that defied any logic or order.
They eventually found the immigration capitanerie and harbor master's office in a small building beside an enormous concrete-roofed open-air fish market right on the waterfront. The office was a cupboard with a desk, a chair, a grimy window and stacks of papers on top of ancient green filing cases. The room smelled of stale tobacco and rotting wood.
The harbor master's name was Habib Mokaden, a squat little man who wore his pants up to his armpits and had a magnificent head of silver curly hair topped off with a bright green fez. His pouched face was covered with a sandpapery stubble of gray bristles and he smoked endless Mars brand cigarettes, tapping them out of a bright red package and popping them in the exact center of his fat and wet-lipped mouth. He spoke tolerable English.
"I am aware of this vessel, yes," he said and nodded when Tidyman asked about the Khamsin. Holliday didn't quite believe it considering the mess of shipping in the harbor, most of the boats nameless.
"Why do you remember it?" he asked.
"You do not think this harbor master knows every boat large and small that comes into his port every day and every night?" Mokaden asked, his eyes narrowing. "Hosni Thabet's green felucca, Akimi's dinghy with the yellow stripe and the rusty portside hole, Fathi Bensilmane's sardine trawler with the holy words from the Qu'ran on his stack. Zoubir Ben Younes and the dinghy that smells so foully? I know each and every one. They are my children, effendi, my friends, my pets."
"Why do you remember this one in particular?" Holliday insisted.
"This boat arrives here once every month or so. It stays a week, then goes. During that week the captain spends his days drinking coffee and playing chess at the Cafe de Borj up on the hill. He stays at the Mamounia, where my sister is a cook, which is how I know this. This time he stayed longer than a week because one of his engines had been damaged and he had lost his engineer of long standing. He waited for parts to come but they did not so he only left this morning and still with only one engine and still no engineer. He left very early and in a great hurry, I am sad to say."
"He left this morning?!" Rafi said.
"This is what I say, effendi. This morning, with the sun. Even before the fishermen."
"Where was he going?" Tidyman asked.
"I was not there for him to tell me," Moukaden said with a shrug. He tugged at his belt to bring his pants up a little higher on his great mound of a belly. "I would expect he was going to his home port."
"Which is?" Tidyman asked.
"Calvi, in Corsica," said Moukaden.
"How fast could he go with only one engine?" Holliday asked.
"Five, perhaps six knots," answered the harbor master.
"So we could catch him," said Rafi.
"Why would you want to do such a thing?" Moukaden said, startled by the idea, his eyes widening. "It is an act of piracy."
"He has something that belongs to us," said Holliday. "And we want it back."
"Then he is a thief," said Moukaden thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Tidyman. Rafi was about to add something but a look from Tidyman kept him silent.
"A thief," said the harbor master again.
"Yes," said Tidyman a second time.
"Who should be apprehended," said Moukaden.
"Indeed," said Tidyman agreeably.
"And to apprehend this thief you would need a boat," mused the harbor master.
"Quite so," answered Tidyman.
"A fast boat," said the harbor master.
"Yes," put in Holliday, seeing which way this was going. "A very fast boat."
"I know of such a boat," said Moukaden.
"I thought you might," Tidyman said and smiled.
"It belongs to my cousin Moustafa. He uses it to… move things from place to place."
"Ah." Tidyman nodded.
"It might be costly," warned the harbor master. "The boat is very near to my cousin's heart."
"Do you take Visa?" Holliday asked.
"Certainly." Moukaden nodded happily, pulling up his pants again. "American Express as well." His smile widened and he reached for the old-fashioned dial telephone on his cluttered desk. "I will make a call, yes?"
"You do that," said Holliday.
Moustafa lived a few miles farther up the coast at a tiny beachfront community called Hammam Lekses. His ride turned out to be the marine version of the old Austin Champ they'd bargained for at the chicken farm. In this case it was a seventy-foot Motoscafo Armato Silurante, or MAS boat, the Italian version of the British torpedo boat and the German E-boat.