Harris’ face flushed. He looked at the Scorpion as if that was a remark he was storing away for repayment. Then he smiled bravely, like a heroine in a soap opera. He still needed the Scorpion. “How are you going to get away when all the action starts?” Harris asked.
“Why Bob, I didn’t know you cared?”
“I don’t. This is business. The embassy can’t be involved in any way,” Harris said, gathering up the cards.
“Good. For a second I thought I was going to have to listen to some of your less credible inventions.”
“Well,” Harris said, looking at his watch as if he had somewhere to go. Then he smiled to show how patient he was.
“I’ll try to fade in with the Mutayr in the desert. I’ll contact you,” the Scorpion said.
“Anything else?” Harris asked, rising briskly to his feet.
“Yeah. It feels wrong. It’s too straightforward. There’s a nasty surprise waiting somewhere, but I don’t know what,” the Scorpion admitted.
“It’s just your devious mind. Abdul Sa’ad’s nastier than he is clever. All you have to do is make sure you hit the right target,” Harris said, aiming his index finger like a gun at the Scorpion.
The Scorpion stood up and pulled his veil back across his face. “The next time you point something at someone, Bob, I suggest you make it more threatening than a finger,” he remarked. The two men faced each other, hatred naked in their eyes.
“If you miss the assassin, don’t bother to come home, Scorpion,” Harris said hoarsely.
“There’s no going home for any of us, Bob. Haven’t you learned that yet?” the Scorpion replied and headed for the tent flap.
“Forget about Macready. It can’t be that important,” Harris called after him.
The Scorpion stepped outside and blinked in the bright sunlight. So now it was all up to him, he thought.
A single shot with an ancient musket, which was all that the security-conscious Royal Guardsmen allowed any contestant to carry. And he had the CM rocket pistol taped to the small of his back for the rescue attempt for Kelly. One on one. Kill or be killed. Things reduced for a single moment to utter simplicity.
Except he couldn’t forget about Macready and how fishy it all smelled. Because it was obvious who Macready must have seen, that caused timid George to make a U-turn and start barreling down the Corniche towards the airport. The one member of the opposition George could have personally recognized. And all because he, the Scorpion, had made a fundamental mistake.
Braithwaite was back in the game.
The Race
THE AIR SHIMMERED in the heat, so that the thousands of camels gathered near the starting line looked as if they were wading in water to their knees. The noise of the rumbling camels, the riders and attendants shouting instructions, and the screaming crowds made ordinary conversation impossible. Youssef, tightening the last cinch on Basbusa, had to shout to be heard by the Scorpion standing beside him.
“Can you see him?” Youssef shouted.
The Scorpion shook his head. Together they walked around the camel, checking each tie and rope for tightness. With the Scorpion holding the camel’s head still, Youssef unslung a water skin and poured water into her nostrils to calm and refresh her. The Scorpion had to yank hard on the head-rope to control her. The smell of so many camels excited her.
An announcement came over the loudspeakers telling the riders to mount. The babble of voices rose in anticipation. The camels grumbled and roared as riders began to mount. One camel nearby rose up and began bucking wildly, tore away from its handlers and began running desperately out on to the course. Riderless, she raced across the level plain to the raucous cheers of the onlookers.
Youssef plucked at the Scorpion’s sleeve and looked towards the stands. The Scorpion followed Youssef’s glance, searching among the riders. He understood without words that Youssef had been signaled by his brother Faisal, who had been stationed with binoculars on top of a Toyota truck cab, parked behind the crowd.
At first the Scorpion missed him, then a tingle of electricity coursed through his body as he recognized Bandar, wearing the red-checked kaffiyeh and uniform of a Royal Army captain. Bandar swung himself into the saddle atop a magnificent brown camel, which the Scorpion assumed was the famous Bashum. Even after all these years, the Scorpion recognized him instantly. In memory, the features and gestures had blurred. But seeing his enemy in the flesh, there was no mistaking him.
Like the Scorpion, Bandar also wore an ancient musket slung across his back. Except that the Scorpion was willing to bet that the guts of the musket weren’t ancient at all, and that like the Scorpion’s musket, it was loaded and ready to fire.
Ever since the eunuch had confirmed that Bandar would be the assassin, the Scorpion had operated on the hunch that it would happen just that way. A planted bomb under the royal reviewing stand would have been found beforehand by one of the king’s own security people. A car bomb was too uncertain. Besides, the Royal Guardsmen were all Bedu, excellent shots and likely to be able to shoot a driver before he came close enough. And even if he did and the bomb exploded, it was too messy. It might miss King Salim and it might get Prince Abdul Sa’ad.
The possibility of a number of Saudi soldiers suddenly turning their automatic weapons on the king had to be dismissed, not because it was impossible, but because in the Byzantine atmosphere of the royal court, with intrigue and counterplot as a daily occurrence, there was little likelihood of Abdul Sa’ad training a group of soldiers to kill the king, not one of whom would betray the plot.
That left the single assassin with a high-powered rifle approach. The classic method and most difficult to stop. Again, the approach and the getaway were the key problems. The added factor was Bandar himself. Both his skill as a marksman, and his vanity in that skill, had to be taken into account. And so, the assassination method had suggested itself to the Scorpion with breathtaking simplicity.
As Bandar raced past the royal reviewing stand at the finish line, he would unsling his presumably decorative—but actually deadly—musket and fire at the king before any of the guards could react. The getaway would be equally simple. Bandar would just sweep past on his camel and continue racing to a getaway vehicle, army helicopter, or whatever Abdul Sa’ad had arranged, before anyone could mount a pursuit.
The Scorpion’s own plan to stop the assassination was equally simple. He had to wait till the attempt was already under way, so that it would be too late to put some alternative backup plan into effect. He would have to shoot Bandar at precisely the right instant. Too late and the king would be dead. Too soon and he himself would surely be shot down by the king’s security forces mistaking him for an assassin and Abdul Sa’ad might yet go to a back-up method. So he would have to shoot Bandar just before Bandar himself was to fire.
The only difficulty he faced was the same one Bandar faced, the trickiness of an accurate shot while riding a camel at full gallop.
Youssef slipped under the camel’s belly and stood next to the Scorpion.
“Ya, beloved; beware the Ruallai with the thin moustache. Muhammed of Heikul was seen speaking to him,” Youssef whispered, indicating a rider with the kind of pencil-thin moustache popular in 1930s high comedies and wearing the black-and-white robe of a Rualla noble.
The Scorpion nodded. “Be sure that our father Zaid and the others leave as soon as the race starts. There may be much shooting and many may die,” he said.
“Of a certainty. We will all meet at the encampment south of Hofuf, Inshallah,” Youssef replied. He kept patting the camel’s side. His hands were like birds, never still. His eyes were soft and he avoided looking at the Scorpion.
“What is it?” the Scorpion asked softly.
“Last night … driving the Toyooti in the wadi …” Youssef began, hesitating. “It was … I was …”
“I know. It is the same for all,” the Scorpion said and swung himself up into the saddle. He felt constricted by the special mesh fabric wrapped ti
ghtly around his chest and he wondered for the hundredth time whether it was worth it. All around, riders were moving towards the starting line. With a tap of the whip and crooning “Grrr” from deep in his throat, he made Basbusa rise in slow jerky stages, like a mechanical creature.
“Go with God,” cried Youssef and turned to leave.
“And upon thee, the blessings of God,” the Scorpion murmured, almost to himself.
Basbusa began pulling to the left and the Scorpion shortened the rein, wheeling her in a circle and then stopping her. He pulled her head close and whispered curses like endearments into her ear, breathing the sharp camel smell of her. The air was white with dust as thousands of camels began to rise and gather in clusters near the starting line. There was no order, no course boundaries and, once the race started, no rules. There was only an approximation of a starting line. The finish line was the line of sight from King Salim some fourteen miles away.
As he reined Basbusa in close to the hindquarters of several other camels already crowding the starting area the Scorpion turned to glance over at Bandar. The camels around them skipped skittishly, growled and tried to bite each other. Just then Bandar looked towards him and their eyes met. It was as if a bolt of lightning crackled between them. They knew each other utterly in that instant and that only one of them would survive the race.
The Scorpion could see a curse come to Bandar’s lips. He smiled coldly in response, but his stomach felt like a volcano about to erupt. Bandar sneered, then turned and kicked Bashum into a lead starting position. Out of the corner of his eye, the Scorpion noticed the moustached Ruallai edge into position behind him. His back prickled, his spine tensed so tightly for an inevitable bullet that he had to force himself to relax.
What other surprises did Abdul Sa’ad have in store for him besides the Ruallai, he wondered.
The Scorpion fastened on a face veil and was not surprised to see Bandar, like most of the riders, follow suit.
The air was misty with fine white dust kicked up by thousands of camels. Pressing forward on every side were contestants from almost every tribe on the peninsula: the white-and-black-clad Rualla from Wadi Sirhan, the dark-garbed Anayzah from the great Nafud desert, from the Najd, the Harb and the Shammar, and the Rashidis, ancient enemies of the House of Saud, and the dog-eyed Hutaym who look no man in the eye, the Huwaytat who roam the Red Sea coast near Aqaba and bow to no man, the Utaybah out of the mountains of the Jabal Tuwaiq, who measure their words as if they were pieces of gold, and from the Hejaz, the Bali, Juhaynah and the tribes of the holy places, the Al Jahadilah and the Quraysh, tribe of the Prophet himself, who wear the green silk of the Sharif, the soft men of the Ghamid and the Rijal al ma Munjaha, from the green hills of Asir, and the hard tribesmen of the Empty Quarter, the Qahtan, Yam, al Rashid, the Al Murrah, they of the great soft-footed camels who can cross the endless sands of the Rub al Khali, and from the Hasa and the Gulf, where the oil comes from, the Mutayr, the Awazim, the Bani Khalid and the Bani Hajir, and those of the lesser tribes. It was a vast panoply of riders out of a distant age and at the sight of them the women, veiled and kept to the back, began to trill the eerie cries to frighten off the evil zars of the desert and a guard unfurled the pennant of Saud bearing a sword and the words of the shahadah, “There is no God but God and Muhammed is his prophet.” It was a sight to stir the heart, one few westerners had ever seen, the Scorpion thought, and he felt his own pulse quicken.
At the sounding of the starting gun, thousands of camels surged forward over the yellow plains kicking up sprays of sand as they galloped on. A roar exploded from half a million throats as the riders swept forward in a vast wave, as if a great tribal raid or jihad had been launched.
With a cry of hatatatat and a slash of the whip, the Scorpion urged the camel forward. Basbusa gathered herself together, then seemed to leap into a furious gallop. Basbusa’s stride was very jerky and the Scorpion had to hang on desperately, leaning far forward over her outstretched neck to guide her into a smoother pace. Excited riders around him jostled against her flanks, then pulled away as space began to open up between the camels. Basbusa tried to veer left, but the Scorpion guided her into a gap between two fierce Huwaytat riders, furiously whipping their light-colored theluls on. Now, he was comfortably situated in the middle of the pack. As Basbusa settled into a smooth motion which, with her long stride, enabled her to start gaining on the other camels, the Scorpion was able to look around for Bandar.
A chill passed through him. He couldn’t locate Bandar. He should have been ahead and off to the left and fairly easy to spot in his army uniform, but he was nowhere in sight. The Scorpion twisted left and right, but he saw only other riders and in the far distance, screaming crowds, partially obscured by the fine white dust which filled the air as the camels pounded across the sands. To the right and behind him, he spotted the moustached Ruallai trying to cut obliquely behind another rider and angle towards him. But where was Bandar?
The Scorpion pulled back on the reins and Basbusa obediently began to slow down. With whoops of delight, the two Huwaytat riders surged past him. Others followed. The Scorpion half stood, balancing only on the balls of his feet and Basbusa bobbed beneath him, desperately scanning the course. Bandar had somehow disappeared.
Then he glanced back over his shoulder and spotted the veiled Bandar far behind him. Incredibly, it appeared that he was just mounting up. He must have dismounted for some reason just before the starting gun. But why? What was he up to, the Scorpion wondered.
But there was no time to think about it. Bashum, Bandar’s magnificent brown camel, was already galloping in that high-prancing almost mincing gait characteristic of the best racing camels and gaining rapidly on the early stragglers. Bandar was leaning forward, riding well, his red-checked headcloth fluttering behind him in the breeze. He was moving off towards the left sideline near the crowds. If he stayed close to the sidelines, it would give him easy shooting distance to the king, perhaps twenty yards at most. Even a mediocre Bedu marksman could hardly miss at that range—and Bandar was a world-class shot, the Scorpion mused grimly.
All around him as far as the eye could see, thousands of camels pounded ahead, the drumming of their feet on the hard-packed sand making the earth tremble with an oddly muffled sound, like rain.
He gave Basbusa a little more slack, allowing her to stretch her neck out and add an inch or two to her stride; letting her step up the pace but still saving her, because it was a long race and he didn’t know how much effort he’d need from her. He felt her rocking under him, planting her feet just so, as if she knew exactly what she had to do. She started to overtake a small grouping of soft-soled Nafud camels ridden by Anayzah tribesmen in their blue-black bishts. She was galloping easily with plenty of reserve left, when he noticed Bandar sweeping ahead along the sideline.
Bandar’s head was down and he was flailing Bashum with his whip. The big brown camel was beautiful as he struck out with those long legs that seemed to go on forever, moving as if the other camels were standing still and holding so level and smooth that it gave the Scorpion a hollow feeling just watching him. Bashum looked as if he were prancing on parade with enough left to do it all day and yet he was passing camels one after another.
The crowd was delirious, calling “Bashum, Bashum” and the Scorpion suddenly felt his insides turn to water. He was in a race and if he didn’t do something in a hurry, Bandar would be too far ahead to head off.
He started to angle Basbusa towards the sideline for a run at Bashum, who was already a good twenty meters ahead. As he raised his whip to urge Basbusa on, he felt it jerked out of his hand. As he whirled towards the right, some instinct caused him to duck, saving his life as a bullet whizzed by his ear.
The moustached Ruallai had come up behind him to within a yard and had used his own whip to yank the Scorpion’s away. He was aiming a pistol, the barrel covered by the bulbous snout of a silencer, at the Scorpion’s head.
The Scorpion had barely an in
stant left. Only luck had saved him. There was only one thing he could do. Any distance between them would be fatal, he thought. He swerved Basbusa into the path of the Ruallai’s she-camel.
As the two camels collided, the Scorpion heard the popping of another shot. He couldn’t look. The impact had jarred his balance and he clung to the pommel for all he was worth. He heard a loud grunt somewhere ahead of him and was vaguely aware that a rider had gone down. An inhuman screaming gave him the sickening realization that the downed rider was being trampled by the on-rushing camels, even as he himself desperately struggled not to fall off Basbusa. The collision had broken her stride and she was bucking badly to stay up. The other she-camel had stumbled, and in so doing had saved his life by spoiling the Ruallai’s aim. The Ruallai had been forced to hang on with his whip in order to stay up.
That gave the Scorpion what he knew would be the only chance he would ever have. As the Ruallai drew abreast on his bucking she-camel and started to level the pistol, the Scorpion pulled his khanjar from his sheath and flung the blade across his body, as though throwing a frisbee. The blade flashed for an instant in the sun like a strobe, before burying itself in the Ruallai’s neck. The gun wavered as the Ruallai’s eyes turned red and empty and then it fell from the trembling hand. A bright red arc of blood spurted from the Ruallai’s neck even before he went down. As he slumped off the camel, his head began to flop to one side. The neck muscles on that side had been severed.
The Scorpion’s sleeve was splattered with the Ruallai’s blood; so close had they come. With a savage yank on the rein, he pulled Basbusa into a steadier gait and away from the now-riderless she-camel, who was running aimlessly across the line of oncoming riders, dragging the dead Ruallai behind her, his foot caught in a stirrup.
The Scorpion raised himself as high as he could and urgently scanned ahead for Bandar. He groaned inwardly when he spotted Bandar flying along the sideline; a good hundred meters ahead and gaining.
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