off the lights. 'I know this road very well. I know every road in Masqat and Matrah very, very well. Even the unpassable ones to the east and to the south. But I must say, Effendi, I do not understand.'
'Quite simple, my boy. If our busy little whore didn't head down to whatever and whomever she intended to reach, someone else will come up here—before the light does, I expect, which won't be too long now.'
'The sky brightens quickly, sir.'
'Quite so.' MacDonald placed his pistol on top of the dashboard, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a short pair of binoculars with bulging, thickly coated lenses. He brought them to his eyes and scanned the area ahead.
'It is still too dark to see, Effendi,' said the driver.
'Not for these little dears,' explained the Englishman as they approached another curve in the dim moonlight. 'Black out the entire sky and I'll count you the number of those stubby trees a thousand metres away.' They rounded the sharp curve, the driver squinting and braking the large car. The road was now straight and flat, disappearing into the darkness ahead.
'Another two kilometers and we reach the descent into the Jabal Sham, sir. I will have to go very slowly as there are many turns, many rocks—’
'Good Christ!' roared MacDonald, peering through the infrared binoculars. 'Get off the road! Quickly!'
'What, sir?'
'Do as I say! Cut your engine!'
'Sir?'
'Turn it off! Coast as far as you can into the sand grass!'
The driver swung the car to the right, lurching over the hard, rutted ground, gripping the wheel and spinning it repeatedly to avoid the scattered squat trees barely seen in the night light. Seventy-odd feet into the grass the car came to a jolting stop; an unseen, gnarled tree close to the ground had been caught in the undercarriage.
'Sir…?'
'Be quiet whispered the obese Englishman, replacing the binoculars in his pocket and reaching for his weapon above the dashboard. With his free hand he grabbed the door handle, then abruptly stopped. 'Do the lights go on when the door is opened?' he asked.
'Yes, sir,' answered the driver, pointing to the roof of the car. 'The overhead light, sir.'
MacDonald smashed the barrel of his pistol up into the glass of the ceiling light. 'I'm going outside,' he said, again whispering. 'Stay here, stay still and stay the hell away from the damned horn, If I hear a sound you're a dead man, do you understand me?'
'Clearly, sir. In case of emergency, however, may I ask why?'
'There are men on the road up ahead—I couldn't say whether three or four; they were just specks—but they're coming this way and they're running.' Silently, the Englishman opened the door and rapidly, uncomfortably, climbed out. Staying as close to the ground as possible, he made his way swiftly across the sand grass to within twenty feet of the road. In his dark suit and black silk shirt, he lowered his bulk beside the stub of a dwarfed tree, put his weapon to the right of the twisted trunk and took the infrared binoculars out of his pocket. He trained them on the road, in the path of the approaching figures. Suddenly they were there.
Blue! It was Azra. Without his beard but unmistakable! The junior member of the council, brother of Zaya Yateem, the only set of brains on that council. And the man on his left… MacDonald could not recall the name but he had studied the photographs as though they were his passage to infinite wealth—which they were—and he knew it was he. A Jewish name, an older man, a terrorist for nearly twenty years… Yosef? Yes, Yosef! Trained in the Libyan forces after fleeing the Golan Heights… But the man on Azra's left was puzzling; because of his appearance the Englishman felt he should know him. Focusing the infrared lenses on the bouncing, rushing face, MacDonald was perplexed. The running man was nearly as old as Yosef, and the few people in the embassy over thirty years of age were generally there for a reason known to Bahrain; the remainder were imbeciles and hot-heads—fundamentalist zealots easily manipulated. Then MacDonald noticed what he should have seen at first: The three men
