corridor was empty and, indeed, it was the hour of the evening when affluent visitors to Bahrain were out in the cafes and the hidden casinos. He sidestepped down the left wall to Room 201, careful of every footstep. He listened; there was no sound. He knocked quietly.
'Odkhuloo,' said the voice in quiet Arabic, addressing not one, but more than one to enter.
Strange—wrong, thought Evan as he reached for the doorknob. Why the plural, why more than one? He turned the knob, spun back into the wall, and kicked the door open with his right foot.
Silence, as if the room were an empty cave, the eerie voice a disembodied recording. Gripping hard the unfamiliar, unwanted but necessary weapon, Kendrick slipped around the frame and went inside… Oh, God! What he saw made him freeze in horror! Azra was slumped against the wall, a knife embedded in his neck, his eyes wide in death, blood still dripping in rivulets down over his chest.
'Your friend, the pig, is dead,' said the quiet voice behind him.
Evan whipped around to face a young man as bloodied as Azra. The wounded killer leaned against the wall, barely able to stand, and in his hands was an Uzi machine pistol. 'Who are you?' whispered Kendrick. 'What the hell have you done?' he added, now shouting.
The man limped rapidly to the door and closed it, the weapon remaining on Evan. 'I killed a man who would kill my people as swiftly as he could find them, who would have killed me.'
'Good Christ, you're Israeli!'
'You're the American.'
'Why did you do it? What are you doing here?'
'It's not my choice.'
'That's no answer!'
'My orders are to give no answers.'
'You had to kill him?' cried Kendrick, turning and wincing at the sight of the dead, mutilated Palestinian.
'To use his words, “Why not?” They slaughter our children in school playgrounds, blow up planes and buses filled with our citizens, execute our innocent athletes in Munich, shoot old men in the head simply because all are Jews. They crawl up on beaches and murder our young, our brothers and sisters—why? Because we are Jews living finally on an infinitesimal strip of arid, wild land that we tamed. We! Not others.'
'He never had the chance—'
'Spare me, American! I know what's coming and it fills me with disgust. At the last it's the same as it has always been. Underneath, in whispers, the world still wants to blame the Jew. After everything that's been done to us, we're still the irksome troublemakers. Well, hear this, you interfering amateur, we don't want your comments or your guilt or your pity. We only want what belongs to us! We've marched out of the camps and the ovens and the gas chambers to claim what is ours.'
'Goddamn you!' roared Evan, gesturing angrily at the bleeding corpse of the terrorist. 'You sound like him! Like him! When will you all stop?’
'What difference does it make to you? Go back to your safe condominium and your fancy country club, American. Leave us alone. Go back where you belong.'
Whether it was the repeated words he had heard barely an hour ago over the phone, or the sudden images of cascading blocks of concrete crashing down on seventy-eight screaming, helpless loved ones, or the realization that the hated Mahdi was slipping away from him, he would never know. All he knew at that moment was that he hurled himself at the startled, wounded Israeli, tears of fury rolling down his cheeks. 'You arrogant bastard!' he screamed, ripping the Uzi out of the young man's grip and throwing it across the room, hammering the weakened commando against the wall. 'What right do you have telling me what to do or where to go? We watch you people kill each other and blow yourselves and everything else up in the name of blind credos! We spend lives and money, and exhaust brains and energy trying to instil a little reason, but no, none of you will move an inch! Maybe we should leave you alone and let you massacre each other, let the zealots hack each other to death, just so somebody's left who'll make some sense!' Suddenly, Kendrick broke away and raced across the room, picking up the Uzi. He returned to the Israeli, the weapon ominously levelled at the commando. 'Who are you and why are you here?'
