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
