The night over the Red Sea was bright, and the low city buildings in the distance could be faintly seen vanishing into the drifting pale-blue mist. Moonlight fell on the sea surface, then reflected onto the fishing rod. Deathstroke rested a hand on the railing beside the deck, swaying the little beer left in the can, while Schiller sat in the cabin studying a map.
Of course, they had not come here voluntarily. It was just that traveling overland was no longer possible. All of Hurghada was under tight lockdown, the army searching door to door, every outsider becoming a target of high suspicion. And the Egyptian police were even more like the notorious vultures, arriving at the first whiff of trouble, making trouble where there was none so they could extort whatever they could. Under those circumstances, driving north was extremely difficult.
So they could only once again seek the ocean's shelter and return to the Red Sea, which had taken no small amount of effort. Before Hurghada's harbor was sealed off, the two of them had still managed to get hold of a small yacht used to take tourists out for sea fishing, and so they were able to set off once more on the journey to Cairo.
As he fished at night, Deathstroke thought back on what Schiller had said. This was not voluntary either, really, but Schiller seemed to have attached some kind of magic power to his words. Not only had they been extremely penetrating the first time he heard them, their echo lingered, always reverberating in his mind.
Deathstroke could not believe it was made up. Precisely because he was an old man past fifty, with extremely rich life experience, he had seen all kinds of people, and many of them fit Schiller's description.