often hourly, occurrence in that compound. You must be all one flesh colour, and certainly no canvas belt filled with money.'
'You'll hold it for me?'
'Certainly.'
'Back to this Bahrudi, please,' said Kendrick, applying the skin-darkening gel to his thighs and lower regions as the Omani physician did the same to his arms, chest and back. 'Why didn't El-Baz tell me?'
'Ahmat's instructions. He thought you might object so he wished to explain it to you himself.'
'I spoke to him less than an hour ago. He didn't say anything except he wanted to talk about this Bahrudi, that's all.'
'You were also in a great hurry and he had much to organize in order to bring about your so-called capture.
Therefore he left the explanation to me. Lift your arm up higher, please.'
'What's the explanation?' asked Evan, less angry now.
'Quite simply, if you were taken by the terrorists you'd have a fall-back position, at least for a while, with luck providing enough time to help you—if help was at all possible.'
'What fall-back position?'
'You'd be considered one of them. Until they learned otherwise.'
'Bahrudi's dead—’
'His corpse is in the hands of the KGB,' added the doctor instantly, overriding Kendrick's words. 'The Komitet is notoriously indecisive, afraid of embarrassment.'
'El-Baz mentioned something about that.'
'If anyone in Masqat would know, it is El-Baz.'
'So if Bahrudi is accepted here in Oman, if I'm accepted as this Bahrudi, I might have some leverage. If the Soviets don't blow the whistle and tell what they know.'
'They will exhaustively examine the whistle before bringing it near their lips. They can't be certain; they will fear a trap, a trap of embarrassment, of course, and wait for developments. Your other arm, please. Lift it straight up, please.'
'Question,' said Evan, firmly. 'If Amal Bahrudi supposedly went through your immigration, why wasn't he picked up? You've got one hell of a security force out there these days.'
'How many John Smiths are there in your country, ya Shaikh'
'So?'
'Bahrudi is a fairly common Arabic name, more so perhaps in Cairo than Riyadh but nevertheless not unusual. Amal is the equivalent of your “Joe” or “Bill” or, of course, “John”.'
'Still, El-Baz entered him in the immigration computers. Flags would leap up—’
'And rapidly return to their recesses,' broke in the Omani, 'the officials satisfied by observation and harsh, if routine, questioning.'
'Because there's no scar on my neck?' asked Evan quickly.
'One of the police in the Al Kabir made a point of a scar across my neck—Bahrudi's neck.'
'That is information I know nothing about, but I suppose it's possible; you have no such scar. But there are more fundamental reasons.'
'Such as?'
'A terrorist does not announce his arrival in a foreign land, much less a troubled one. He uses false papers. That's what the authorities look for, not the coincidence of one John W. Booth, a pharmacist from Philadelphia, who was cursed with the same name as the assassin from Ford's theatre.'
'You're pretty well versed in things American, aren't you?'
'Johns Hopkins Medical School, Mr. Bahrudi. Courtesy of our sultan's father who found a Bedouin child eager for more than a wandering tribal existence.'
'How did that happen?'
