From the plane’s cruising altitude over the barren mountains of the Sinai, it was just barely possible to make out the two splayed prongs of the Red Sea curving along the horizon to right and left. The one to their right was the Gulf of Suez, visibly congested with shipping even from this distance, the air above it stained with their sooty exhaust. A good many of those huge container ships were, she knew, bound to or from Maasvlakte, the only port capable of accommodating them. The one to the left was the Gulf of Aqaba, running up the Sinai’s eastern shore, separating Egypt from Saudi Arabia along much of its length. It was less busy because it was a dead end. The Israelis and the Jordanians had footholds at its northern terminus and used it as a shipping outlet to the Red Sea and points east.