'For what I'm going to do.'
'Think about what you're doing,' said the doctor softly, watching Evan draw up the loose-fitting prison trousers with the elastic waistband. 'Ahmat is torn, for we might learn a great deal by your sacrifice—but you must understand, it could well be your sacrifice. He wants you to know that.'
I'm no fool, either.' Kendrick put on the grey prison shirt and slipped into the hard leather sandals common to Arab jails. 'If I feel threatened, I'll yell for help.'
'You do and they'll be on you like crazed animals. You wouldn't survive ten seconds; no one could reach you in time.'
'All right, a code.' Evan buttoned the coarse shirt while looking around the police laboratory; his eyes fell on several X-rays suspended on a string. 'If your people monitoring the taps hear me say that films were smuggled out of the embassy, move in and get me out. Understood?'
'“Films smuggled out of the embassy—”'
'That's it. I won't say it, or shout it, unless I think they're closing in on me… Now, let the word go inside. Tell the guards to taunt the prisoners. Amal Bahrudi, leader of the Islamic terrorists in East Europe, has been captured here in Oman. Your bright young sultan's strategy for my temporary protection can make a big leap forward. It's my passport into their rotten world.'
'It was not designed for that.'
'But it's damn convenient, isn't it? Almost as though Ahmat had it in mind before I did. Come to think of it, he might have. Why not?'
'That's ridiculous!' protested the doctor, both palms raised towards Evan. 'Listen to me. We can all theorize and postulate as much as we like, but we cannot guarantee. That compound is guarded by soldiers and we cannot see into the soul of each man. Suppose there are sympathizers? Look at the streets. Crazed animals awaiting the next execution, wagering bets! America is not loved by every citizen in an aba or conscript in uniform; there are too many stories, too much talk of anti-Arab bias over there.'
'Ahmat said the same thing about his own garrison here in Masqat. Only he called it looking into their eyes.'
'The eyes hold the secrets of the soul, ya Shaikh, and the sultan was right. We live in constant fear of weakness and betrayal here within. These soldiers are young, impressionable, quick to make judgments about real or imagined insults. Suppose, just suppose, the KGB decides to send in a message to further destabilize the situation. “Amal Bahrudi is dead, the man claiming to be him is an impostor!” There would be no time for codes or cries for help. And the manner of your death should not be contemplated lightly.'
'Ahmat should have thought of that—’
'Unfair!' cried Faisal. 'You ascribe to him things he never dreamed of! The Bahrudi alias was to be used only as a diversionary tactic in the last extremity, not for anything else! The fact that ordinary citizens could publicly state that they witnessed the capture of a terrorist, even to the point of naming him, would create confusion, that was the strategy. Confusion, bewilderment, indecision. If only to delay your execution for a few hours—whatever time might be used to extricate you, a single individual—that was Ahmat's intention. Not infiltration.'
Evan leaned against the table, his arms folded, studying the Omani. 'Then I don't understand, and I mean that, Doctor. I'm not looking for demons, but I think there's a lapse in your explanation.'
'What is it?'
'If finding me the name of a terrorist—an unaccounted-for, dead terrorist—was to be my fall-back position, as you called it—'
'Your temporary protection, as you so rightfully called it,' interrupted Faisal.
'Then suppose—just suppose—I hadn't been around to act in that little melodrama on the Al Kabir tonight?'
'You were never meant to,' replied the doctor calmly. 'You simply moved up the schedule. It was to take place not at midnight but in the early morning hours, just before the prayers, near the mosque of Khor. The word of Bahrudi's capture would have spread through the markets like the news of a shipment of cheap contraband on the waterfront. Another would have posed as the impostor you are. That was the plan, nothing else.'
'Then, as the lawyers would say, there's a convenient convergence of objectives, rearranged in time and purpose so as to
