family. He could quite easily approve of Zhilev’s actions and tell him to push on and destroy those who had killed him and left his family without a father. But it did not matter what Vladimir would have thought. He was not always right about everything. It was Zhilev’s choice to avenge Vladimir’s death, and this was the way he was going to do it.
Zhilev turned the key and ignited the engine. He put the photo away, took up his GPS to check the bearing and adjusted the wheel.
Zhilev’s arrival at Port Fu’ad and his first contact with an Arab since working with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation more than fifteen years earlier reinvigorated his contempt and hatred for the race, and, combined with the inconsolable grief for his brother’s death at their hands, only served to fuel him further. As he arrived at the entrance to the canal, a pilot boat, crewed by the pilot and his assistant, sped out to meet him. Zhilev slowed to nearly a stop as they approached, expecting to receive information about port fees, agents and where to get his boat measured for the canal transit fees. But the first demand the pilot shouted at him was the singular word ‘cigarettes’. Zhilev did not have any cigarettes and informed them of the fact as best he could in English, the most common language between them although neither of them spoke it well. Zhilev was not prepared for the pilot’s reaction to his apparent refusal to provide any baksheesh. The man threw his throttle forward and rammed the small fishing boat while at the same time shouting what were no doubt obscenities in Arabic. But neither was the pilot prepared for the fury he unleashed from the giant Russian as a result of his attack. The blood rushed to Zhilev’s head, filling him with violence. He ran to the front of his boat, found an old shackle and launched it with such force it crashed through a window in the pilot’s bridge, bounced off his control console and almost took out his assistant. If the pilot had been stupid enough to repeat his attack, Zhilev would not have been able to stop himself leaping aboard and smashing the pilot’s and his assistant’s skulls together. But the pilot must have sensed something of that order was probable from the hairy, bedraggled and enraged monster he had awoken and elected to back smartly away and depart altogether. All he dared offer in reply was another volley of abuse as he accelerated away.
Zhilev chastised himself, aware that his response had been a senseless one. Had he indeed boarded the boat he would probably have had to end up killing both men and sinking the boat, something he might have gotten away with since there was no other vessel close by, but had he been seen it would have meant the end of his mission. As it was, he still had to make port and run the risk of having to deal with the pilot on land.
The visit went smoothly. The man who measured his boat for the transit fees also asked for cigarettes and was content to receive ten US dollars instead. Zhilev resented paying that much but decided it was wiser not to cause any more trouble and keep as low a profile as possible.
Early the next morning he caught the south-bound convoy and spent the following night at the halfway point of Ismailia where he stayed aboard in the yacht club’s marina. He ate from the ample supply of rations he had bought from the small grocery shop on Kastellorizo, practically emptying it of its tinned goods which he ate without heating, and ventured ashore only to refill his water containers.
On the evening of the second day of passage down the canal, he left Port Suez and headed into the Gulf of Suez where he moored for the night prior to cutting across the Red Sea and into the Gulf of Aqaba. The journey along the monotonous, mainly rocky eastern coast of Egypt had been uneventful. The only points of interest were the occasional clusters of barbed wire and dilapidated signs in Arabic and phonetic English warning against coming ashore.
That was yesterday and now the lights from the city of Aqaba, Jordan’s most south-western town and only seaport, were to the north and less than a mile away. A short distance to the west of those lights, separated by a narrow dark area, was the even more