'From what I've been told,' said Ben-Ami calmly, 'none of that is true. This American risks his life without help from his own people, without the prospect of future rewards if he lives. As our friend here tells us, he does what he's doing for a reason not very much different from yours. To right a terrible wrong that was done to him, to his family, as it were.'
'To hell with him! That was a family, not a people! I say we go to the embassy!'
'I say you don't,' said the officer, placing his pistol slowly on the table. 'You are now under the command of the Mossad and you will follow our orders.'
'Pigs!' screamed Yaakov. 'You're pigs, all of you!'
'Ever so,' said Ben-Ami. 'All of us.'
10:48 am. Oman time. The controlled press conference was over. The reporters and television crews were securing their notebooks and equipment, prepared to be ushered out through the embassy halls to the outside gates, patrolled by a hundred young men and veiled women marching back and forth with weapons at ready-fire. Inside the conference hall, however, a fat man broke through the guards with unctuous words and approached the table where Zaya Yateem sat. Rifles at his head, he spoke.
'I come from the Mahdi,' he whispered, 'who pays every shilling you owe.'
'You too? The emergency in Bahrain must be serious indeed.'
'I beg your pardon—’
'He's been searched?' asked Zaya of the guards, who nodded. 'Let him go.'
'Thank you, madame—what emergency in Bahrain?'
'Obviously we don't know. One of our own is going there tonight to be told and will return to us with the news.'
MacDonald stared into the eyes above the veil, a sharp hollow pain forming in his enormous chest. What was happening? Why was Bahrain going around him? What decisions had been made that excluded him? Why? What had the filthy Arab whore done? 'Madame,' continued the Englishman slowly, his words measured, 'The emergency in Bahrain is a new development, whereas I am concerned with another question equally serious. Our benefactor would like clarified—immediately clarified—the presence of the woman Khalehla here in Masqat.'
'Khalehla? There's no woman named Khalehla among us here, but then names are meaningless, aren't they?'
'Not here, not inside here, but outside and in contact with your people—your own brother, in fact.'
'My brother?'
'Precisely. Three escaped prisoners raced to meet her on the road to Jabal Sham, to meet with the enemy!'
'What are you saying?'
'I'm not saying, madame, I'm demanding. We are demanding an explanation. The Mahdi insists on it most emphatically.'
'I have no idea what you're talking about! It is true three prisoners escaped, one of them my brother along with Yosef and our benefactor's other emissary, a man named Bahrudi from East Berlin.'
'East—Madame, you're too quick for me.'
'If you're really from the Mahdi, I'm astonished you're not aware of him.' Yateem stopped, her penetrating large eyes roaming over MacDonald's face. 'On the other hand, you could be from anyone, anywhere.'
'While in Masqat I am the Mahdi's only voice! Call Bahrain and hear it for yourself, madame.'
'You know perfectly well such calls are not permitted.' Zaya snapped her fingers for the guards; they rushed to the table. 'Take this man and bring him to the council room. Then wake my brother and Yosef and find Amal Bahrudi. Another conference is called for. Now!'
The clothes Evan chose for himself were a blend of the terrorist dress code: unpressed khaki trousers, a soiled American-style field jacket and a dark shirt open to mid-chest.
Except for his age and his eyes, he was similar in appearance to the majority of the fanatic punks who had captured the embassy.
