'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.
'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
