‘This is desert country,’ said Kendrick in Arabic. ‘Why are there so many turns?’
‘There are many off-shoot roads, sir,’ answered the officer from the back seat. ‘A straight lane in these sands would mark them too clearly.’
Royal security, thought Evan without comment.
They took an ‘off-shoot road’ after twenty-five minutes of speeding due west. Several miles beyond, a campfire glowed on the right. As they drew near, Kendrick saw a platoon of uniformed guards circling the fire, facing out, all points of the compass covered; the dark silhouettes of two military trucks loomed in the distance. The car stopped; the officer leaped out and opened the door for the American.
‘Precede me, sir,’ he said in English.
‘Certainly,’ replied Evan, trying to spot the young sultan in the light of the fire. There was no sign of him, nor of anyone not in uniform. Evan tried to recall the face of the boy-man he had met over four years ago, the student who had come home to Oman during a Christmas or a spring break, he could not remember which, only that the son of the sultan was an amiable young man, as knowledgeable as—he was enthusiastic about American sports. But that was all Evan could recall; no face came to him, only the name, Ahmat, which Mustapha had confirmed. Three soldiers in front of him gave way; they walked through the protective ring.
‘You will permit me, sir?’ said a second officer, suddenly standing in front of Kendrick.
‘Permit you what?’
‘It is customary under these circumstances to search all visitors.’
‘Go ahead.’
The soldier swiftly and efficiently probed the robes of the aba, raising the right sleeve above the area where Evan had spread the skin-darkening gel. Seeing the white flesh, the officer held the cloth in place and stared at Kendrick. ‘You have papers with you, ya Shaikh!
‘No papers. No identification.’
‘I see.’ The soldier dropped the sleeve. ‘You have no weapons, either.’
‘Of course not.’
‘That is for you to claim and for us to determine, sir.’ The officer snapped out a thin, black device from his belt, no larger than a pack of cigarettes. He pressed what looked like a red or orange button. ‘You will wait here, please.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Evan, glancing at the guards, their rifles poised.
‘No, you are not, ya Shaikh,’ agreed the soldier, striding back towards the fire.
Kendrick looked at the English-speaking officer who had accompanied him in the back seat from Masqat. ‘They take no chances, do they?’ he said aimlessly.
The will of almighty Allah, sir,’ replied the soldier. The sultan is our light, our sun. You are Aurobbi, a white man. Would you not protect your lineage to the heavens?’
‘If I thought he could guarantee my admittance, I certainly would.’
‘He is a good man, ya Shaikh. Young, perhaps, but wise in many ways. We have come to learn that.’
‘He is coming here, then?’
‘He has arrived, sir.’
The bass-toned roar of a big powerful car broke the crackling intrusion of the campfire. The vehicle with tinted windows swerved in front of the ring of guards and came to an abrupt stop. Before the driver could emerge, the rear door opened and the sultan stepped out. He was in the robes of his royal office, but with the door still open he proceeded to remove them, throwing his aba into the car, the ghotra headdress remaining on his head. He walked through the circle of his Royal Guard, a slender, muscular man of medium height and broad shoulders. Except for the ghotra, his clothes were Western. His slacks were a tan gabardine, and over his chest was a T-shirt with a cartoon figure wearing a three-cornered American revolutionary hat bursting out of an American football. Underneath, the legend read: New England Patriots.
‘It’s been a long time, Evan Kendrick, ya Shaikh,’ said the young man in a slightly British accent, smiling and extending his hand. ‘I like your costume, but it’s not exactly Brooks Brothers, is it?’
‘Neither is yours unless the Brothers Brooks are into T-shirts.’ They shook hands. Kendrick could feel the sultan’s strength. ‘Thank you for seeing me, Ahmat… Forgive me—I should say Your Royal Highness. My apologies.’
‘You knew me as Ahmat, and I knew you as Shaikh, sir. Must I still call you “sir”?’
‘That’d be inappropriate, I think.’
‘Good. We understand each other.’
‘You look different from what I remember,’ said Evan.
‘I was forced to grow up swiftly—not by choice. From student to teacher, without the proper qualifications, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re respected, I’ve heard that.’
‘The office does it, not the man. I must learn to fill the office. Come on, let’s talk—away from here.’ The sultan, Ahmat, took Kendrick’s arm and started through his circle of guards only to be stopped by the officer who had searched Evan.
‘Your Highness!’ cried the soldier. ‘Your safety is our lives! Please remain within the cordon.’
‘And be a target by the light of the fire?’
‘We surround you, sir, and the men will continuously sidestep around the circle. The ground is flat.’
‘Instead, point your weapons beyond the shadows, sahbee,’ said Ahmat, calling the soldier his friend. ‘We’ll only be a few metres away.’
‘With pain in our hearts, Your Highness.’
‘It will pass.’ Ahmat ushered Kendrick through the cordon. ‘My countrymen are given to trivial melodramatics.’
‘It’s not so trivial if they’re willing to make a moving ring and take a bullet meant for you.’
‘It’s nothing special, Evan, and, frankly, I don’t know all the men in those bodies. What we may have to say to each other could be for our ears only.’
‘I didn’t realize…” Kendrick looked at the young sultan of Oman as they walked into the darkness. ‘Your own guards?’
‘Anything’s possible during this madness. You can study the eyes of a professional soldier but you can’t see the resentments or the temptations behind them. Here, this is far enough.’ Both men stopped in the sand.
‘The madness,’ said Evan flatly in the dim light of the fire and the intermittent moonlight. ‘Let’s talk about it.’
‘That’s why you’re here, of course.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Kendrick said.
‘What the hell do you want me to do! cried Ahmat in a harsh whisper. ‘Whatever move I make, another hostage could get shot and one more bullet-riddled body thrown out of a window!’ The young sultan shook his head. ‘Now, I know you and my father worked well together—you and I discussed a few projects at a couple of dinner parties, but I don’t expect you to remember.’
‘I remember,’ broke in Kendrick. ‘You were home from Harvard, your second year in graduate school, I think. You were always on your father’s left, the position of inheritance.’
‘Thanks a bunch, Evan. I could have had a terrific job at E. F. Hutton.’
‘You have a terrific job here.’
‘I know that,’ said Ahmat, his whispered voice again rising. ‘And that’s why I have to make sure I do it right. Certainly I can call back the army from the Yemen border and take the embassy by blowing it apart—and in doing so I guarantee the deaths of two hundred and thirty-six Americans. I can see your headlines now. Arab sultan kills, et cetera, et cetera. Arab. The Knesset in Jerusalem has a field day! No way, pal. I’m no hair-trigger cowboy who risks innocent lives and somehow in the confusion gets labelled anti-Semitic in your press. God in Heaven! Washington and Israel seem to have forgotten that we’re all Semites, and not all Arabs are Palestinians and not all Palestinians are terrorists! And I won’t give those pontificating, arrogant Israeli bastards another reason to send their American F-14s to kill more Arabs just as innocent as your hostages! Do you read me, Evan Shaikh?’
‘I read you,’ said Kendrick. ‘Now will you cool off and listen to me?’
The agitated young sultan exhaled audibly, nodding his head. ‘Of course I’ll listen to you, but listening isn’t agreeing to a damn thing.’
‘All right.’ Evan paused, his eyes intense, wanting to be understood despite the strange, obscure information he was about to impart. ‘You’ve heard of the Mahdi?’
‘Khartoum, the 1880s.’
‘No. Bahrain, the 1980s.’
‘What?’
Kendrick repeated the story he had told Frank Swann at the State Department. The story of an unknown, obsessed financier who called himself the Mahdi, and whose purpose was to drive out the Westerner from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, keeping the immense wealth of industrial expansion in Arab hands—specifically his hands. How this same man who had spread his gospel of Islamic purity throughout the fanatic fringes had formed a network, a silent cartel of scores, perhaps hundreds, of hidden companies and corporations all linked together under the umbrella of his own concealed organization. Evan then described how his old Israeli architect, Emmanuel Weingrass, had perceived the outlines of this extraordinary economic conspiracy, initially by way of threats levelled against the Kendrick Group—threats he had countered with his own outrageous warnings of retribution—and how the more Manny learned, the more he was convinced that the conspiracy was real and growing and had to be exposed.