the lowest hanging branch and managed to swing himself up into the tree. The ten-foot lizard was racing through the gardens at over forty miles an hour with its jaws open. Ali screamed and started climbing desperately for the top branches, his leather shoes making it difficult to find purchase.
The fruit? Where was the fruit?
Saddam was at the base of the tree now, his foreclaws making huge gashing swipes at the bark. He looked up at his hated prey, for that’s what Ali could see in the watery yellow eyes, hate, let out a bellowing roar, and started upwards, climbing swiftly and easily.
Ali was snatching handfuls of leaves and berries, shoving everything down his throat, choking it all down, chewing desperately on the fruit, swallowing the bitter juice, waiting for darkness. He felt Saddam’s hot breath on his bare ankles and screamed when the dragon bit off his left foot in one quick bite. Then Saddam started on his other leg.
It wasn’t just the sound of screaming coming from the top of one of the poison garden trees that brought the few guests not already massing down at the beach pavilion to their windows. It was the horrible sound of cracking bones. Snay sat back in his rocker, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Why you kill him?” Tippu rumbled from the shadows.
“He was due. And he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.”
“Heh-heh. Lak Saddam.”
“Tippu,” Snay said after a long moment, “Would you get a couple of fellows and fetch Saddam? I think he’s quite finished with Ali for the time being.” Snay knew Saddam’s eating habits. He would take an appetizer from a soft portion of the victim, wait for the blood poison to take effect, then return to the main course when he was hungry again. Meanwhile, what was left of Ali would remain in the treetops, ropy strings of flesh draped in the higher branches.
Tippu clapped his hands smartly and two young native boys appeared out of the bush. One had a high- powered rifle loaded with tranquilizing rounds, the other a thickly meshed steel net. The African descended the steps heavily, took the rifle from the boy, and the trio disappeared into the garden.
“Sire?” the receptionist said as Snay passed the front desk on his way up to the main ballroom to check on the arrangements. “So sorry to disturb you. There is an urgent telephone call for His Excellency. I’ll put it through to the telephone room, sir.”
“Pasha,” the voice said. It was Lily, calling on a secure line. Bin Wazir sat on the small chair and pulled the folding door closed after him. A small table lamp with a red shade was illuminated. He lit a cigarette. His nerves were thrumming.
“Yes, dear girl. I’ve been waiting for word. All is well?”
“The mission was—a complete success, sire.”
“We have him? We have Ambassador Kelly?”
“Yes, sire. We have him. He is at this very moment en route to the Blue Palace. The plane left Gatwick ten minutes ago.”
“And, the world-famous movie star?”
“Another flower grows in Paradise.”
Snay entered the hotel’s grand ballroom. The sea of red tables was just as he had ordered. The centerpieces consisted of many small flags, all emblazoned with the official emblem of the Emir’s jihad, a raised sword dripping blood. Row upon row of larger versions of the red flag were mounted high on all four walls of the room. The effect was all he hoped it would be. A room bedecked with the colors and symbols of blood and vengeance.
“Ah, sire,” the small dark man with steel spectacles said, rushing forward from the projection room. “You are here for the tech check. All is in readiness, sir.”
“Good, good, Seti,” he replied, his eyes sweeping the room, relishing the moment to come. “Could you put up the first three slides?”
“It shall be done!” Seti said, and rushed back into the projection booth. The large wall behind the podium from which Snay bin Wazir would address the audience contained a concealed theater-sized screen. Snay bin Wazir merely had to press a button on the podium’s remote to reveal the screen. He climbed the few steps up to the stage and strode across to the podium and lit up another of his yellow Baghdaddies.
“First slide,” he said, puffing into the microphone.
“Coming up,” Seti’s voice replied over the speaker system.
Snay turned and faced the screen, pressing a button on the remote in his hand. The wall disappeared. A slide came up.
“TRAVEL IN A NEW WORLD”
A trace of a smile played about bin Wazir’s lips. He took a secret delight in his own wit and irony. New world, indeed, he thought. “Next,” brought up a new slide: An old picture of the Emir on horseback, with sword raised in righteous anger. He could hear the swelling applause that would soon fill the room. “Next.”
A detailed map of the United States of America, some fifty feet across. All the major airports, railroads, and highways were clearly designated. National parks and monuments were starred, as were famous tourist attractions. The Alamo in Texas. Mount Vernon. Williamsburg, Virginia. A vast shopping mecca called the Mall of America. There were also two sets of black mouse ears. One near the coast of southern California and one in the dead center of the state of Florida. Another nice touch, he thought.
Black flags marked America’s one hundred most populous cities. Number one, New York City, with well over eight million in the 2000 census. At number fifty, Wichita City, Kansas, with roughly 350,000. Last on the list, Irving City, Texas, with 191,615 souls. The combined population of the top hundred was well over one hundred million. On the black flag pinpointing each designated city was a symbol. It was the familiar circular yellow and black spoked wheel of the trefoil; the international warning for radiation.
Snay bin Wazir clasped his hands together as an indescribable shiver of pleasure rushed over him. Such a state of bliss must surely have a name. Yes.
Paradise.
He called for the next slide.
It was a carefully illustrated diagram. A step-by-step guide to the final assembly of a nuclear device that one hundred of the lucky attendees would find waiting for them at safe houses located at their designated destinations within America’s most populous cities. Each plutonium device, designed by Dr. I.V. Soong, the Emir’s chief weapons expert, contained the explosive power of the weapons used to destroy Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The two-kiloton bomb was almost exactly the size and shape of an American football.
The Indian scientist Soong was a brilliant graduate of Cal Tech who had given his bomb an American nickname no one understood. Still, the infamous name had stuck among the female attendees, all veterans of terrorist training camps throughout the world, all highly trained in the development and deployment of the most sophisticated small radioactive explosive device on the face of the earth.
The Pigskin.
Snay smiled and a single red spotlight picked out his gleaming canines, the pointed teeth between the incisors and the first bicuspids.
Every dog has his day, the man said to himself, crossing the stage.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
London
ALEXANDER HAWKE AND AMBROSE CONGREVE ARRIVED AT the world-famous black door at precisely eleven o’clock in the morning. Hawke had been to a number of state dinners and meetings at No. 10 Downing, but it was a first visit for Ambrose Congreve. The worldly detective had feigned nonchalance all morning, but his best
