‘Looking back, I’m not proud of what I did,’ continued Evan in the dim light of the campfire and the flitting desert moon. ‘But I rationalized it because of what had happened. I just had to get out of this part of the world, and so I walked away from the business, walked away from the fight Manny said we must confront. I told him his imagination was working overtime, that he was giving credence to irresponsible—and often drunken—goons. I remember so clearly what he said to me. “Could my wildest imaginings,” he said, “or even less conceivably theirs, come up with a Mahdi? Those killers did it to us—he did it!” Manny was right then and he’s right now. The embassy is stormed, homicidal lunatics kill innocent people, and the ultimate statement is made. “Stay away, Western Boy. You come over here, you’ll be another corpse thrown out of a window.” Can’t you see, Ahmat? There is a Mahdi and he’s systematically squeezing everyone else out through sheer, manipulative terror.’
‘I can see that you’re convinced,’ replied the young sultan skeptically.
‘So are others here in Masqat. They just don’t understand. They can’t find a pattern, or an explanation, but they’re so frightened they refused to meet with me. Me, an old friend of many years, a man they worked with and trusted.’
‘Terror breeds anxiety. What would you expect? Also, there’s something else. You’re an American disguised as an Arab. That in itself must frighten them.’
‘They didn’t know what I was wearing or what I looked like. I was a voice over the telephone.’
‘An American voice. Even more frightening.’
‘A Western boy?’
‘There are many Westerners here. But the United States government, understandably, has ordered all Americans out, and prohibited all incoming American commercial flights. Your friends ask themselves how you got here. And why. With lunatics roaming the streets, perhaps they, also understandably, don’t care to involve themselves in the embassy crisis.’
‘They don’t. Because children have been killed—the children of men who did want to involve themselves.’
Ahmat stood rigidly in place, his dark eyes bewildered, angry again. ‘There’s been crime, yes, and the police do what they can, but I’ve heard nothing about this—about children being killed.’
‘It’s true. A daughter was raped, her face disfigured; a son was murdered, his throat slit.’
‘Goddamn you, if you’re lying! I may be helpless where the embassy is concerned but not outside! Who were they? Give me names!’
‘None were given to me, not the real ones. I wasn’t to be told.’
‘But Mustapha had to do the telling. There was no one else.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’ll tell me, you can bet your ass on that!’
‘Then you see now, don’t you?’ Kendrick was close to pleading. ‘The pattern, I mean. It’s there, Ahmat. An underground network is being formed. This Mahdi and his people are using terrorists to drive out all current and potential competition. They want total control; they want all the money funnelled to them.’
The young sultan delayed his reply, then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Evan, I can’t accept that because they wouldn’t dare try it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the computers would pick up a pattern of payments to a central hub of the network, that’s why. How do you think Cornfeld and Vesco got caught? Somewhere there has to be linkage, a convergence.’
‘You’re way ahead of me.’
‘Because you’re way behind in computer analyses,’ retorted Ahmat. ‘You can have a hundred thousand dispersals for twenty thousand separate projects, and whereas before it would have taken months, even years, to find the hidden linkages between, say, five hundred corporations, dummy and otherwise, those disks can do it in a couple of hours.’
‘Very enlightening,’ said Kendrick, ‘but you’re forgetting something.’
‘What?’
‘Finding those linkages would take place after the fact, after all those “dispersals” were made. By then the network’s in place, and the fox has got one hell of a lot of chickens. If you’ll excuse a couple of mixed metaphors, not too many people will be interested in setting traps or sending out hounds under the circumstances. Who could care? The trains are running on time and no one’s blowing them up. Of course, there’s also a new kind of government around now that has its own set of rules, and if you and your ministers don’t happen to like them, you might just be replaced. But again, who cares? The sun comes up every morning and people have jobs to go to.’
‘You make it sound almost attractive.’
‘Oh, it always is in the beginning. Mussolini did get those damned trains on schedule, and the Third Reich certainly revitalized industry.’
‘I see your point, except you’re saying that it’s the reverse here. An industrial monopoly could move into a void and take over my government because it represents stability and growth.’
‘Two points for the sultan,’ agreed Evan. ‘He gets another jewel for his harem.’
‘Tell my wife about it. She’s a presbyterian from New Bedford, Massachusetts.’
‘How did you get away with that?’
‘My father died and she’s got a hell of a sense of humour.’
‘Again, I can’t follow you.’
‘Some other time. Let’s suppose you’re right, and this is a shakedown cruise to see if their tactics can take the weather. Washington wants us to keep talking while you people come up with a plan that obviously combines some kind of penetration followed by a Delta Force. But let’s face it, America and its allies are hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough because any strategy that depends on force could be disastrous. They’ve called in every nut leader in the Middle East and short of making Arafat mayor of New York City, they’ll deal with anyone, holier-than-thou statements notwithstanding. What’s your idea?’
‘The same as what you say those computers of yours could do in a couple of years from now when it’d be too late. Trace the source of what’s being sent into the embassy. Not food or medical supplies, but ammunition and weapons… and somewhere among those items the instructions that someone’s sending inside. In other words, find this manipulator who calls himself the Mahdi and rip him out.’
The T-shirted sultan looked at Evan in the flickering light. ‘You’re aware that much of the “Western press have speculated that I, myself, might be behind this. That I somehow resent the Western influence spreading throughout the country. Otherwise, they say, “Why doesn’t he do something?”‘
‘I’m aware of it, but like the State Department, I think it’s nonsense. No one with half a brain gives any credence to those speculations.’
‘Your State Department,’ said Ahmat reflectively, his eyes still on Kendrick. ‘You know, they came to me in 1979 when Tehran blew up. I was a student then, and I don’t know what those two guys expected to find, but whatever it was, it wasn’t me. Probably some Bedouin in a long flowing aba, sitting cross-legged and smoking a hashish water pipe. Maybe if I’d dressed the part, they would have taken me seriously.’
‘You’ve lost me again.’
‘Oh, sorry. You see, once they realized that neither my father nor the family could do anything, that we had no real connection with the fundamentalist movements, they were exasperated. One of them almost begged me, saying that I appeared to be a reasonable Arab—meaning that my English was fluent, if tainted by early British schooling—and what would I do if I were running things in Washington. What they meant here was what advice would I offer, if my advice were sought… Goddamn it, I was right!’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I remember exactly. I said… “What you should have done in the beginning. It could be too late now, but you might still pull it off.” I told them to put together the most efficient insurgency force they could mount and send it—not to Tehran but to Qum —Khomeini’s backwoods headquarters in the north. Send ex-SAVAK agents in first; those bastards would figure out a way to do it if the firepower and compensation were guaranteed. “Take Khomeini in Qum,” I told them. “Take the illiterate mullahs around him and get them all out alive, then parade them on world television.” He’d be the ultimate bargaining chip, and those hairy fanatics that are his court would serve to point up how ridiculous they all are. A deal could have been made.’
Evan studied the angry young man. ‘It might have worked,’ he said softly, ‘but what if Khomeini had decided to stand-to and fast as a martyr?’
‘He wouldn’t have, believe me. He would have settled; there would have been a compromise, offered by others, of course, but designed by him. He has no desire to go so quickly to that heaven he extols, or to opt for that martyrdom he uses to send twelve-year-old kids into minefields.’
‘Why are you so sure?’ asked Kendrick, himself unsure.
‘I met that half-wit in Paris—that’s not to justify Pahlevi or his SAVAK or his plundering relatives, I couldn’t do that—but Khomeini’s a senile zealot who wants to believe in his own immortality and will do anything to further it. I heard him tell a group of fawning imbeciles that instead of two or three, he had twenty, perhaps thirty, even forty sons. “I have spread my seed and I will continue to spread it,” he claimed. “It is Allah’s will that my seed reach far and wide.” Bullshit! He’s a dribbling, dirty old man and a classic case for a funny-farm. Can you imagine? Populating this sick world with little Ayatollahs? I told your people that once they had him, to catch him on video tape with his guard down, sermonizing to his hick high-priests—one-way mirror stuff, that kind of thing. His holy persona would have collapsed in a global wave of laughter.’