“I have four men outside, just in case,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. The Scorpion thought he had seen one trench-coated B movie too many.
“I saw them. So would anyone,” the Scorpion shrugged. Macready might well have used skyrockets to announce the rendezvous, he thought irritably.
“We don’t want another Doha. You made a lot of noise. It wasn’t easy hushing it up,” Macready said, scooping up a mound of techina with a piece of pita bread. A drop of techina landed on his jacket lapel. For a moment he stared at it as if a visitor’s dog had just left an unwelcome offering on his best rug.
“Well, at least they didn’t use embassy cars this time,” the Scorpion said, hoping Macready would stop pushing it. When this was over, he swore never to work with the bastard again.
“Why here? I don’t like it. Too public,” Macready said, looking uneasily around the restaurant.
The crowd was exclusively male. Although most wore western clothes they sat on cushions at tables that were giant brass trays set low under the arched ceiling. Goat-skin hangings along the walls gave a tent-like intimacy to the dark room, lit by electric candles which added to the atmosphere of a Beduin encampment. Ceiling fans churned slowly through clouds of expensive cigar and cigarette smoke. A small Egyptian orchestra sawed monotonously away at an endless ballad which somehow managed to combine Arabic quarter tones with an occasional melodic foray into Be-bop-a-lula-she’s-my-baby. All around them, whispered conversations at darkened tables underscored the music.
Everyone in Riyadh knew about Hamid’s, the Scorpion thought. It was an information market located near the remains of the old mud wall in the seedier part of Riyadh. Hamid’s had become a local institution. The royal family kept it open despite occasional puritanical rumblings from the ulama because the young royal bucks would have staged an open revolt if anyone tried to close it. The copious bribes paid by Hamid didn’t hurt either, or the fact that Hamid served the best shawirma and mahshee east of Suez. It was said that on any given day more money was traded over dinner talk at Hamid’s than on the New York Stock Exchange.
“How’s the air-conditioning business, George?” the Scorpion asked. He sipped an iced Sehha water and tried to contain his impatience. Macready’s face colored and he looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Like a fugue, the expression offered a counterpoint to his life. The Scorpion felt like throwing something in his face. Instead, he ate another mezza and leaned forward.
“I chose this place because there’s a back way Hamid lets me use. After all, we don’t want another shoot-em-up at the OK Corral, do we?” the Scorpion said.
Macready nodded. A bit of techina clung to his moustache, the white giving him the odd appearance of a harelip. He began to stuff the mezza into his mouth, snatching greedily at the plate like a starving child.
“Your assignment’s been changed. Forget the girl. Concentrate on stopping the hit,” Macready said, his mouth full.
The Scorpion smiled. “I thought that might occur to Washington. Tell Harris the price is one million dollars in advance, tax-free; paid into my Swiss account,” he said, and was rewarded by seeing Macready almost choke.
“Are you crazy?” Macready managed to gasp.
“Not crazy enough to do it without being well paid in advance,” the Scorpion shrugged.
Just the thought of so much money stiffened Macready’s backbone. He dipped his fingers in scented rosewater and wiped his face and hands on a napkin that hadn’t been too rigorously laundered.
“That’s a lot of money,” he said thoughtfully, as if trying to figure out how he could get a piece of it.
“Just report the price accurately to Harris. Don’t get cute, George,” the Scorpion said.
“That’s still a lot of money,” Macready said slowly.
The Scorpion gave a Middle-Eastern shrug, as if to say ma’alesh. “What’s Arabia worth these days?” he asked.
Macready nodded. He cleared his throat, a sure sign he wanted to get down to business. He looked around suspiciously, then stared at his ashtray as if it were bugged.
“Any idea when the ‘incident’ is supposed to occur? None of our sources has come up with anything,” Macready said.
“Not yet, but you can feel it coming. There are a lot of Royal Army soldiers around Riyadh.”
“That’s already been reported,” Macready said. He leaned forward and half-covered his mouth with the cigarette as he spoke. “They’re getting very nervous in Washington. Very. The Russian connection seems very plausible since they found out Nuruddin once knew Philby and Maclean and that crowd at Cambridge. And they think the westerner in the photo is a Cuban. The idea that somebody might cut off the oil has them in a panic.”
“Then they won’t quibble on the price.”
“You’ve got to come up with something—and fast,” Macready added. His left eyelid began to twitch. From another table came the sound of harsh laughter and Macready almost winced. It was hard to remember what he was like in Saigon. Well, they had all changed since then, the Scorpion thought.
“It’s not so easy. It could happen anywhere. A deranged gunman at a public majlis, in a mosque, a few drops of cyanide in his coffee, a remotely detonated mine under his car. Anywhere. How do you protect a man from the members of his own family—the people he trusts most?” the Scorpion said irritably.
“Washington wants all the stops pulled out on this one. Too bad they’re stuck with me,” Macready said bitterly. His face was lined with failure, as if etched by acid.
“I agree, but then we all have to make do, don’t we?” the Scorpion said.
Macready’s head snapped back. His eyes were two pinpoints of candlelight. The Scorpion felt better now that their mutual dislike was out in the open. Maybe hate would motivate the son-of-a-bitch. Then Macready blinked as if he couldn’t sustain even hate.
Macready looked hangdog again. His face sagged like an old beagle. That way, he was too much of a danger. The only thing the Scorpion had left to motivate him with was fear.
“Don’t go all mushy on me, George. I like it better when you hate me. I’m alone out there with you tying one arm behind my back and I can’t afford it any more. You know too much, so either you’re in or out and I mean permanently out.
“Now, has Riyadh station come up with anything new on Abdul Sa’ad? Anything at all?”
Macready shook his head. Then he looked up startled, as the applause sounded again. The club darkened. Fatima was about to do another number. As the whining quarter tones began, Macready muttered, “Only that his eunuch is in town on some business or other. He’s staying at Abdul Sa’ad’s new condo on King Abd al Aziz Road.”
“Perhaps I should pay him a visit,” the Scorpion said.
“He’s well guarded.”
The Scorpion just smiled. It made Macready shiver. In the spotlight, Fatima was rotating her hips in a way that few vertebrates could match. The tempo began to build. Macready wiped his face and made ready to leave. He left a wad of riyals on the tray.
“Come on, I’ll show you the back way,” the Scorpion said. He timed their exit to Fatima’s routine. No one noticed the two shadows make their way between the tables towards the men’s toilet. All eyes were glued on the dancer quivering in her grand finale. They started down a dimly lit corridor, the throb of the drum masking their footsteps. About halfway the Scorpion yanked Macready into what appeared to be a broom closet. They went through an old curtain which concealed a dark foul-smelling passage that led to the brightly lit kitchen.
Hamid was swearing amiably at his perspiring cooks and waiters who bustled about clanging dishes and sweating over steaming pots. The fat proprietor caught the Scorpion’s eye, but said nothing except to look significantly over at the television blasting unwatched in the corner.
The TV announcer was a dark young man with a moustache so thin he must’ve measured it with a micrometer. Something he said froze the Scorpion in his tracks. Macready almost bum
ped into him, but the Scorpion just stared at the screen, which showed a rerun of the King’s Camel Race from last year. The race had drawn over four thousand contestants. This year, it was expected to draw more than six thousand riders and half a million spectators. The prize, the announcer declared, his eyes gleaming, was a purse of fifty thousand riyals and a solid gold khanjar dagger to be presented to the winner by His Majesty, King Salim himself.
What the Palestinian had said flashed in the Scorpion’s mind. The hit was supposed to be “public—a demonstration.”
It was perfect, the Scorpion thought. The King’s Camel Race, where the king was honor-bound to show up whether he heard about a plot or not and where the eyes of all Arabia would be glued. The race was the Arabian version of the Kentucky Derby, the Superbowl, the World Series, the Masters and Wimbledon all rolled into one.
The king would be there, all right. Not to mention the crowds, thousands of riders and camels, a vast course in the open desert; an impossible security problem for the royal palace guards. The Scorpion shook his head in admiration as he led Macready to the kitchen’s back door. It was a beauty.
“What was that all about?” Macready said irritably, stumbling over a tin in a back alley behind the restaurant. Suddenly a steel hand grabbed his lapel and pulled him close.
“Shut up and listen,” the Scorpion hissed. “I have a hunch about the hit. If I’m right it’s going to be in three days.”
“Are you sure?” Macready whispered, his eyes reflecting a distant yellow streetlight around which swarmed squadrons of flying insects.
“Not yet. It’s just an idea. If it checks out, I’ll call you with confirmation at the usual time and place. Tell them to keep the embassy line open. And I want the money now, George.”
“I’ll try. It’s a lot of money,” Macready said.
“Tell them,” the Scorpion began, then froze. The dead Arab’s Magnum was in his hand even before Macready could blink. He had seen a shadow detach itself from the darkness across the street.
Macready suddenly heaved a long sigh, like the sound of air escaping from a balloon. “It’s all right. He’s one of ours,” he said in a shaky voice.
The Scorpion nodded. “Time’s running out, you said.”
“For both of us. Anything else?” Macready asked.
“Yeah. Braithwaite is working both sides of the street.”
For a moment, neither said anything. Macready dug at the rubbish in the alley with the tip of his shoe. “Why’d you wait so long? Do you want to see him get away?” Although he was trying to control it, the Scorpion could hear him grinding his teeth.
“Yes. That’s what I want, George.”
“You shit!” Macready hissed.
“That’s right, George. When you work in a sewer you don’t come out smelling like after-shave. You’ve got the data. All I had to do was betray an old friend.”
“What was Braithwaite to you?” Macready asked.
“Minor detail, George. He saved my life in the desert. Come to think of it,” the Scorpion smiled, “that all started because of Saud family politics, too.”
For the briefest instant the Scorpion looked very young as he remembered. Then he turned away and was gone. His receding footsteps were swallowed in the darkness. At the corner, insects spattered the yellow streetlamp, tiny kamikazis hurling themselves at the light.
Arabia, 1962
“BUT WHY DOES A NEW KING have to be chosen from one of the surviving sons of Abd al Aziz and not the eldest son of Saud who is still king? Neither urf nor sharia law have such a requirement,” Nick asked.
They were camped for the night in a depression on the leeward side of a sand dune in the heart of the vast Nefud desert. The two youths were on their way back from their mission to the Rualla and Awazim sheikhs, where it was agreed that they would join the Mutayr in backing the ulama scholars and the emirs of the Sudairi family in deposing Kind Saud and placing Faisal on the throne. Youssef smiled, his teeth gleaming in the light from the river of stars above.
“That is some western trick of the Saud family. The Sauds make themselves kings and say we are a country and the West believes them. But we are Bedu. We submit to none save Allah and those who prove themselves as leaders. The king has forgotten this.”
“Western tricks!” Nick asked mockingly, but he was uncomfortable. He felt guilty because lately he had been thinking more and more about his lost past. Where did he truly belong? he wondered.
They laid down in their clothes to sleep. Just before dropping off, Nick noticed a faint ripple in the winking of the stars, as if the air was a guitar string which had been plucked. He felt a vague uneasiness. He sensed the coming of a sandstorm. God help them if it caught them before they reached the well at Wadi er Rumna, he thought.
If it had been an ordinary sandstorm they might have found the well. But it was no ordinary storm. For five days the wind had raged. The air was filled with stinging particles of sand driven by the wind, lancing into their skin like millions of needles. It was impossible to see. By day a vast ochreous cloud surrounded them, shutting out the light. By night, the wind howled on and everything was darkness. The stars could not be seen and the air was a heavy black mass of stinging grains, which swallowed them whole, voraciously flaying their flesh. It was like the end of the world.
Nick’s heart fluttered. It was like a supreme test of which Sheikh Zaid spoke and he remembered the terrible prophecy of the Holy Koran:
When the sun shall be darkened,
when the stars shall be thrown down,
when the mountains shall be set moving,
when the seas shall be set boiling,
when the heavens shall be stripped off,
when Hell shall be set blazing,
when Paradise shall be brought nigh,
then shall every soul know what it has done.
The two youths lay snuggled against their kneeling camels under a tent formed by their bishts half-buried in the sand. During the first day they chattered, for conversation is as natural as breathing for an Arab; but at last they ran out of things to say and each of them was alone with his thoughts. The grinding rumble of the wind thundered in their ears.
Nick’s mind wandered. He thought of the politics and the changes that the West had brought to Arabia. Was that part of Allah’s plan? He wondered where his kismet would lead him. Was he of the West or the East? He gazed for days at the particles of sand clinging to his hand. Their crystalline structure fascinated him. It reminded him of the arabesques on the walls of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.
How different the concept of the arabesque was from western notions of art, he thought. He remembered the museums his father had shown him in Europe, where they stopped during their trip to Arabia. Western artists made pictures that were pallid representations of nature, he thought contemptuously. They were fascinated by the human figure, as if man was the measure of all things and God was some giant ape in the sky!
The arabesque was infinitely more profound, he thought. The arabesque was more than an abstract design. It was a complex pattern of geometric shapes which reflected not nature as it is perceived by man, but its underlying crystalline pattern. The arabesque is repetitive, symmetrical and yet it has a rhythm which draws the eye ever onward to infinity, for no arabesque pattern ever truly ends. The arabesque is an intuitive expression of the infinite, which is God’s nature.
When the storm finally died away, they dug themselves out of the sand and stumbled into the sunlight, rubbing their eyes in disbelief. The wind had changed the patterns in the sand, moved the dunes hundreds of paces and obliterated any tracks. There were no landmarks to guide them to the well, which was probably filled with sand anyway. The camels needed water badly and they had barely enough for themselves. They spent three days in a futile search for the well.
After the third day, Youssef’s camel died and they doubled up on Nick’s thelul. They gave up searching for the well and struck out towards the east, hoping to find
Buraida. The heat was relentless, even for these young Bedu. Their throats grew parched and their lips began to crack and blister. Nick’s tongue began to swell and a foul taste never left his mouth. He tried to swallow but it was impossible. He had no more saliva left.
Seven days after the sandstorm, Nick’s camel collapsed and died. The once splendid mugathir lay on her side, her legs rigid, her mouth caked with dried green slime. She had carried the two youths until the last cell in her body had been depleted of its moisture. Towards the end they had tried every trick to keep her going, even pouring handfuls of precious water from their last goat skin into her nostrils. She had been a good thelul, Nick thought. Only the best theluls went on till they dropped. But with her death, their last hope had died as well. Now they were lost in a vast rocky slope without a landmark to the end of the horizon. The slope was strewn with black stones worn smooth by the wind as far as could be seen. The two young men looked at each other for a brief moment, seeing the hopelessness reflected in each other’s eyes.
“Inshallah, it is the will of Allah,” Youssef shrugged.
Without a word Nick slung the depleted water skin, wrinkled like an old prune, around his neck and began to walk towards the horizon. Youssef scrambled to his feet and followed. The burning sun was directly overhead. They cast no shadows as they walked. The sky was a vast metal plate, blue-white with heat. They had no plan; they were in Allah’s fiery hands. Like the thelul, they would march until they died.
The endless day wore on. As their shadows lengthened far ahead of them, Youssef began to gag, his body wrenched with terrible dry heaves. After each episode, Youssef would smile apologetically at Nick and they would plod on.
At night they shivered uncontrollably under the icy stars, their bodies too dehydrated to maintain their internal temperature against the cold. At dawn, they shared the last of their water. Then Youssef collapsed during the salat. He lay quivering on the hard ground, unable to stand. Desperation in his eyes, he begged Nick to leave him.
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