Title: Red Sea Project
Authors: Andrzej Mol, Miroslaw Jablonski
(fragment)
Bromsky is the pilot of a small airplane belonging to an international syndicate searching for oil in Egypt. With his wife and his son – who have just arrived for their holidays – he lives at the oil exploration camp near Bahari, in the central part of the country.
In his off hours he takes his family to the seashore. Bromsky is a keen skindiver and is anxious to instill in his son his fascination with the underwater world.
The family’s leisure is unexpectedly interrupted by an event which generates a whole series of tragic occurrences. One evening, during a routine inspection of the airplane, Bromsky is terrorized by a white man who forces him to fly to Sinai. The assailant, called “Dutch”, transports with him a metal box, and most evidently is being chased by somebody – this is probably the reason why he decides to abduct the aircraft.
Dutch is not talkative; after several hours of flight he gives the order to land. It is night, a stormy wind is blowing. Since the point of landing is in an unknown area, Bromsky gets one wing caught on a rocky ledge; the airplane is damaged and drops down into the sea. Dutch perishes and Bromsky miraculously manages to get out from the cabin of the aircraft as it sinks ever more rapidly. Unconscious, he is washed ashore.
After some time, a group of native smugglers finds Bromsky and, after a journey lasting several hours, leaves him at the entrance of a local hospital in a small Arabic town.
While the doctors are struggling to save Bromsky’s life, somebody murders his wife and son in Bahari. As it will turn out later, the assassins, suspecting that Bromsky had acted in collusion with Dutch, tried to locate him through his wife.
The inquest into the murder of Bromsky’s family is discontinued, since it is impossible to identify the perpetrators. Bromsky himself – still unconscious – is taken to Canada.
There he undergoes a difficult operation and a long-lasting convalescence, which restores him to physical health. Gradually, he also learns about the death of his family. His despair after their loss and the fruitless inquest in Egypt drive him to a total nervous breakdown. He begins to drink and becomes increasingly unfit for normal life. He spends his days wandering aimlessly about the town, sleeping anywhere and never visiting his home.
Within a short time, there occur two events which bring him out of his stupor; one evening he is attacked in a side street and brutally beaten by some men who want to find out where the aircraft conveying the mysterious box had crashed. Fortunately, the driver of a passing car “accidentally” drags Bromsky inside. The rescuer, a prepossessing, absent-minded man, introduces himself as Idrys Harim, a press reporter from Cairo, who having been assigned to report on the murder case of Bromsky’s family, decides to seek him out in Canada. Harim, who only wants to learn a few details from the past, unintentionally suggests to Bromsky that he should return to Egypt to find the assassins himself, thus avenging his family and ridding himself of the nightmare that haunts him. Harim is so taken up with persuading Bromsky to talk that he does not notice when the latter gets out of the car. Having freed himself from the loquacious journalist, Bromsky gets more drunk than usual, and in this state meets his parents-in-law in the street who take him home. Here, in a heap of things sent after him from Egypt, he finds a tape recorder – his son’s toy – which had been switched on just before the tragic event in Bahari. The recording of birthday wishes for Bromsky is interrupted by sounds of a struggle, screams and shots. The nightmares of the past reappear – only now Bromsky reaches a turning-point and a craving for revenge awakens within him. He decides to return to Egypt.
Some time later Bromsky proceeds to Sinai under a disguised name. He hires a rickety Toyota truck, scuba equipment and, moving from place to place, begins to search for the sunken airplane. His quest is unsuccessful because he does not remember much – the shock caused by the crash wiped from his memory the details of the accident from a year ago.
One day Bromsky’s car gets damaged. Some young people passing by in a Land Rover offer their help and haul him to Dahab, to the nearest mechanic. During the drive Bromsky meets Anis – a beautiful girl, who together with her companions, participates in a scuba-diving course. Anis is the daughter of an Egyptian and a Frenchwoman. She lives with her mother in Paris and has come to Egypt at the request of her father, a Cairo attorney, who has got her a post as an interpreter at the French Embassy. It seems that, besides her love of adventure, Anis has come to Egypt to get into closer contact with her father and to experience at first hand the culture of the nation from which she is partly descended.
Before Dahab the water in the Land Rover’s cooler begins to boil and the whole company drives to the nearby water reservoirs. In the crowd of people assembled there – tourists and natives – Bromsky is recognized by two men, who a year ago found him unconscious on the seashore and carried him to the hospital. The Arabs start a conversation with Bromsky and specify approximately the spot where they had found him a year ago.
The next day Bromsky finds his way to the place – a secluded gulf, difficult in access, surrounded by steep cliffs. At the bottom of the gulf, just outside the limit of safe diving, rests the airplane, stuck in a coral reef. Bromsky swims inside and finds the mysterious box, as well as a skeleton, from the neck of which he takes off a golden amulet with a little piece of crumbled malachite – he thinks that it may help him in some way to identify Dutch. Bromsky brings the box ashore. Opening it he finds… black ceramic cats. He falls into a rage and starts breaking them – then it turns out that they contain small aluminium cylinders and, inside these, brown vials. Bromsky does not know what this is, but he hides the box in an underwater cave anticipating that the load, on account of which his family had been murdered, may become a valuable trump card or even save his own life.
After this discovery Bromsky installs himself in Dahab. He rents a bungalow in the diver’s centre and mingles with the colourful crowd of tourists from all over the world. He makes his first move – he anonymously phones the police and the press revealing the place where the airplane had sunk a year ago. He knows that, sooner or later, those really interested will appear.
The recovery of the airplane causes great commotion in Dahab. The police get Dutch’s skeleton out of the airplane, many amateur divers visit the wreck, and the press again begins to speculate upon the cause of the tragedy in Bahari. Only Bromsky pretends not to be interested in the affair. He meets Anis for the second time; now it seems that this churlish and unapproachable man, his face marked with the legacy of many ordeals, is arousing an increasing interest in Anis.
As it might have been expected, Idrys Harim arrives in Dahab and, anticipating a sensation, awaits the events to come; yet he behaves discreetly without any intrusion. Bromsky does not know what to think of him because Harim seems to know much more than he lets on.
The next day a certain Tazik drives into Dahab in a shabby Cadillac and recognizes Bromsky as the man he is seeking by the golden amulet ostentatiously worn around his neck.
It is quite clear that Tazik had known Dutch and now will demand the return of the box. Instead, Bromsky wants to learn who his family’s murderers are – he knows he can impose conditions because as long as the box is well hidden, he is out of danger. Tazik feigns ignorance of the matter but suggests they meet again the following day in the presence of his boss.
The rendezvous takes place at daybreak in a secluded spot by the seashore, but Tazik arrives alone. Bromsky’s disappointment, however, does not last long; Tazik produces a gun and it is clear out that the box will no longer safeguard Bromsky’s life. Tazik even seems satisfied that the box will probably never be found and he intends to kill Bromsky. He also leads Bromsky to understand that he was one of the assassins of his wife and son. A rabid fury helps Bromsky muster his strength – he springs at Tazik. Their dramatic fight over a precipice turns into a spectacular car chase; at the climax, Tazik tumbles down from the precipice together with his car into the sea and perishes.
[...]