The Moses Legacy

Chapter 63

It had taken three days on camels instead of the eight hours on a bus that it had taken Sarit, but when Daniel and Gabrielle arrived in Taba in the early morning of their fourth day of travel, the dawn was breaking over the Gulf of Aqaba.

Daniel had wanted them to make their way to a hotel right away, but Gabrielle had told him that there was no point. Nothing would be open and in any case, she wanted to watch the sun rise over the sea. So after they took off their Bedouin robes and changed into Western clothes, he indulged her whim and stood there next to her, while she ooed and aahed, gushing like a lovesick schoolgirl. Daniel realized, with some regret, that the love was for the view, not for his presence.

Ahead of them and far to the right was Eilat where construction work seemed to be forever in progress, building new hotels to accommodate the ever growing tourist industry. In some ways it spoiled the view to see cranes and cement mixers and bulldozers in the distance.

The bulldozer kept coming… It wouldn’t stop…

Move! Don’t just stand there!

He can’t see you!

He can’t see you.

Get out of the way!

Stop!!!! Please!!!!

She’s just a ‘Gaby? Are you okay?’

‘Wha… what?’

‘You’re shivering.’

He took off his light jacket and put it round her, noticing as he did so that she was not shivering. She was trembling.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently.

‘Nothing… I was… remembering…’

He looked at her, trying to figure out if she wanted to say more.

‘Remembering what?’ he asked, making sure his tone did not sound too pushy.

‘Nothing.’

He took that as his cue to drop the matter, at least for now. In any case, they had more important things to do than reminisce about personal matters.

Realizing that it was still too early to implement his plan, their first port of call was a hotel restaurant, where they had breakfast, explaining that they were not guests there, but didn’t like their own hotel’s food and wanted to try this one. Sixty Egyptian pounds covered the cost for the two of them and they drew it out for as long as they could, realizing that they had nowhere else to go just yet.

Incredibly, the shops in the hotel arcade were open by eight o’clock, enabling them to buy swimwear, and a snorkel for Gabrielle. She explained to Daniel that it would make her seem more like a tourist, and he approved of her logic, buying a straw hat for himself to add to the camouflage. After changing into their new gear in the beachside toilets, to make sure they looked the part, the third stop was the marina. Hiring a boat meant they had to show their passports. But it was only to verify their ID, there was no attempt to check their names against a list of wanted criminals. The only hair-raising moment was when they were asked for a credit card for a deposit. They were told that they could pay for the boat hire by cash, but a credit or debit card would have to be scanned for a security deposit. No money would be taken off the card, they were assured, unless they failed to return the boat within twenty-four hours.

Gabrielle handed over her card, on the assumption that if the police had tried to set up alerts for tracing them via card transactions, they would have needed the co-operation of the authorities in the countries where they lived. And Austria, which had until recently allowed anonymous pass-book accounts at banks, was probably a little bit more bureaucratic than the UK, so it would have been that much harder to set up such a trace in her case. In the event, the scan went through with no obvious alarms being set off, and minutes later they were climbing into the boat and casting off from the jetty.

The boat was a fast little mover, with an inboard motor, and once out of the marina and into the open waters of the Gulf, they lost no time in heading straight for Eilat. The area they were covering was not large. From the shores of Taba it was possible to see Eilat and Aqaba. As they neared Israeli territorial waters, they noticed an Egyptian navy boat speeding out towards them and trying to signal them. It was clear that they were not seen as a threat, merely as careless tourists. But Daniel knew that this would change if he failed to comply. Compliance, however, was the last thing on his mind. Instead, he opened up the throttle and headed full tilt for Israeli waters.

It was at that moment that his actions aroused the attention of the Israeli navy. This was because he was heading towards them and both countries were more on the lookout for terrorist incursions than for escapees. Neither country had closed borders to the world and criminals trying to escape from one to the other was therefore not a common or everyday threat. But terrorism was something else – both sides had to be constantly on the lookout for that – and a powerboat speeding from one to the territorial waters of the other was a warning sign that something dangerous was about to happen.

So it came as no surprise to Daniel when he saw an Israeli Super Dvora Mk III-class patrol boat in the distance speeding to intercept him, closely followed by a helicopter rising into the sky above Eilat in the distance.

Neither of these things concerned him. What worried him instead was the fact that the machine gun on the Israeli boat was manned and the gun was trained squarely at him. A man on the boat standing next to the gunner was standing with a megaphone, shouting a warning in English. Daniel couldn’t hear the words above the sound of his own engine, but he knew perfectly well what he was being told. They wanted him to cut the engine and/or turn back.

But he couldn’t be sure that they were yet in Israeli waters. A quick backward glance told him that the Egyptian navy patrol boat was still on his tail. He knew that they wouldn’t be safe against being returned to Egypt until they made it to the Israeli side.

He tried calling out, ‘We’re British!’ in the hope that these magic words would calm them down. But before he could say anything more, the shooting started.