‘Yes, Effendi. Karim arrived a while before you did and gave everything a thorough check. Then he went to scout ahead. He, um, seemed to be rather in a hurry.’
‘Indeed?’ The grin on my face widened. ‘What a pity. I’m so looking forward to seeing him again.’
Mr Ambrose shot me a dark look. ‘Good. Tell Youssef to start arming the men. Then return to your post. You and Hakim are to guard the ship until our return.’
‘Yes, Effendi!’
As I watched, packages that even through their wrappings looked suspiciously rifle-shaped were distributed among the men. There were other packages, too, more curiously shaped and much larger. More men joined us, strolling towards us out of alleys as if they were just sailors come to chat with their friends at the harbour. I didn’t believe it for a minute. These men were handed weapons, too, casually, unconsciously, as if nothing interesting at all was happening here. Soon, our number had swelled to over sixty, and I would be very much surprised if outside the city there were not more reinforcements waiting for us.
‘So…’ Holding the hem of my thobe up, I approached Mr Ambrose. ‘Now you might as well tell me. You said you still don’t know where the bandits are exactly. What is this mysterious master plan of yours to find them?’
He shrugged. ‘Simple. We take the same route as all my caravans did…’
‘And then?’
‘Then we’ll let ourselves be ambushed.’ Grabbing his camel’s reins, he started to pull the reluctant animal down the street. ‘Let’s go! We haven’t got all day.’
Hot and Sweaty
‘What do you mean, we’ll let ourselves be ambushed?’
It was the seventy-third time I had asked that question since we had set out from the ship - or maybe the seventy-fourth? I hadn’t kept an exact count. I was too busy being furious at not getting an answer.
He shrugged. ‘I mean exactly what I said. We’ll let ourselves be ambushed.’
‘But… but you can’t mean for us to simply run into the bandit’s trap!’
‘Can’t I?’
‘You have to have some kind of plan!’
‘I do, do I?’
‘Yes! You’re going to let them come close enough so they can’t escape and then launch your attack first, aren’t you?’
‘Actually, no. The bandits will completely surround and disarm us. Then they will proceed to emptying our saddlebags and cutting our camels’ throats.’
‘And ours next, if I’m not mistaken!’
He shrugged again. ‘If they’re not prevented from doing so by some miraculous intervention… Yes.’
I stared at him suspiciously. His face was just a tiny little bit too calm, too stony, too unemotional. There was something going on in that cold, calculating brain of his, gears ticking away at lightning speed.
‘You have a plan!’ I accused him again.
‘Interesting. How do you know that? I cannot remember mentioning it to you.’
‘Gah! The devil take you!’ Hastening my stride, I marched forward to walk beside Youssef instead of the insufferable
man behind me.
We crossed the city quickly. Soon we reached the edge of Alexandria, and in front of us stretched a seemingly endless landscape of green-brown grain and reed, interspersed here and there with the sparkle of lake water.
‘A surprisingly green sort of desert,’ I commented.
Youssef shook his head. ‘We’re nowhere near the desert yet. We have to traverse the whole of the Nile Delta first.’
‘Why did we land in Alexandria then, and not somewhere farther east?’