Costas was in the back seat, leaning over and holding the keffiyeh scarf that he had been attempting to wrap around his head in Arab fashion, but which was being blown off by the hot wind coming through the open windows. The car was being driven by Ibrahim al-Khalil, a former Sudanese naval officer who was now IMU’s representative in Sudan. Ibrahim normally led an ongoing project searching for ancient wrecks along the Red Sea coast of Sudan, but had been called in at short notice to liaise with Jack for the Nile dive they had planned for today. He was one of IMU’s best divers, and Jack would trust him with his life underwater; that, and the stress for Ibrahim of working in the pirate-infested waters off eastern Sudan, allowed Jack to forgive him the adrenalin burst that clearly took over when he got behind the wheel of a car, even though they had no deadline and less than twenty kilometres to go. Not for the first time in over thirty years as a marine archaeologist, Jack felt less safe travelling to the dive site than he ever did underwater.
