sides, and then all three of them entered the mosque and performed their daily ritual. Ordinarily, all would have felt purified by their devotions as they walked back out to the garden. But not this time. Only long practice in the concealment of emotions prevented overt displays of tension, but even that told much to all three, and especially to the one.
'Thank you for receiving us,' Prince Ali bin Sheik said first of all. He didn't add that it had taken long enough.
'I am pleased to welcome you in peace,' Daryaei replied. 'It is well that we should pray together.' He led them to a table prepared by his security people, where coffee was served, the strong, bitter brew favored in the Middle East. 'The blessings of God on this meeting, my friends. How may I be of service?'
'We are here to discuss recent developments,' the Royal Prince observed after a sip. His eyes locked in on Daryaei. His Kuwaiti colleague, Mohammed Adman Sabah, his country's foreign minister, remained quiet for the moment.
'What do you wish to know?' Daryaei asked.
'Your intentions,' Ali replied bluntly.
The spiritual head of the United Islamic Republic sighed. 'There is much work to be done. All the years of war and suffering, all the lives lost to so many causes, the destruction to so much. Even this mosque' — he gestured to the obvious need for repairs —'is a symbol of it all, don't you think?'
'There has been much cause for sorrow,' Ali agreed.
'My intentions? To restore. These unhappy people have been through so much. Such sacrifices—and for what? The secular ambitions of a godless man. The injustice of it all cried out to Allah, and Allah answered the cries. And now, perhaps, we can be one prosperous and godly people.' The again hung unspoken on the end of the statement.
'That is the task of years,' the Kuwaiti observed.
'Certainly it is,' Daryaei agreed. 'But now with the embargo lifted, we have sufficient resources to see to the task, and the will to see it done. There will be a new beginning here.'
'In peace,' Ali added.
'Certainly in peace,' Daryaei agreed serioasly.
'May we be of assistance? One of the Pillars of our Faith is charity, after all,' Foreign Minister Sabah observed.
A gracious nod. 'Your kindness is noted with gratitude, Mohammed Adman. It is well that we should be guided by our Faith rather than worldly influences that have so sadly swept over this region in recent years, but for the moment, as you can see, the task is so vast that we can scarcely begin to determine what things need to be done, and in what order. Perhaps at a later time we might discuss that again.'
It wasn't quite a flat rejection of aid, but close. The UIR wasn't interested in doing business, just as Prince Ali had feared.
'At the next meeting of OPEC,' Ali offered, 'we can discuss the rearrangement of production quotas so that you can share more fairly in the revenue we collect from our clients.'
'That would indeed be useful,' Daryaei agreed. 'We do not ask for all that much. A minor adjustment,' he allowed.
'Then on that we are agreed?' Sabah asked.
'Certainly. That is a technical issue which we can delegate to our respective functionaries.'
Both visitors nodded, noting to themselves that the allocation of oil production quotas was the most rancorous of issues. If every country produced too much, then the world price would fall, and all would suffer. On the other hand, if production were overly restricted, the price would rise, damaging the economies of their client states, which would then reduce demand and revenues with it. The proper balance—hard to strike, like all economic issues— was the yearly subject of high-level diplomatic missions, each with its own economic model, no two ever the same, and considerable discord within the mainly Muslim association. This was going far too easily.
'Is there a message you wish to convey to our governments?' Sabah asked next.
'We desire only peace, peace so that we can accomplish our tasks of restoring our societies into one, as Allah intends it to be. There is nothing for you to fear from us.'
'SO WHAT DO you think?' Another training rotation was completed. Present at the final review of operations were some very senior Israeli officers, at least one of whom was a senior spook.
Colonel Sean Magruder was a cavalryman, but in a real sense every senior officer was an intelligence consumer, and willing to shop at any source. 'I think the Saudis are very nervous, along with all their neighbors.'
'And you?' Magruder asked. He'd unconsciously adopted the informal and direct mode of address common in the country, especially its military. Avi ben Jakob, still titularly a military officer—he was wearing a uniform now— was deputy chief of the Mossad. He wondered how far he could go, but with his job title, that was really for him to decide.
'We are not pleased at all by the development.'
'Historically,' Colonel Magruder observed, 'Israel has had a working relationship with Iran, even after the Shah fell. That goes all the way back to the Persian Empire. I believe your festival of Purim results from that period. Israeli air force pilots flew missions for the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and—'
'We had a large number of Jews then in Iran, and that was intended to get them out,' Jakob said quickly.
'And the arms-for-hostages mess that Reagan got into went through here, probably your agency,' Magruder added, just to show that he, too, was a player in the game
'You are well informed.'
'That's my job, part of it anyway. Sir, I am not making value judgments here. Getting your people out of Iran back then was, as we say at home, business, and all countries have to do business. I'm just asking what you think of the UIR.'
'We think Daryaei is the most dangerous man in the world.'
Magruder thought of the eyes-only brief he'd had earlier in the day about the Iranian troop movements into Iraq. 'I agree.'
He'd come to like the Israelis. That hadn't always been true. For years, the United States Army had cordially disliked the Jewish state, along with the other branches of the service, mainly because of the corporate arrogance adopted by the small nation's senior military officers. But the IDF had learned humility in Lebanon, and learned to respect American arms as observers in the Persian Gulf War—after literally months of telling American officers that they needed advice on how to fight first the air war and then the ground war, they'd quickly taken to asking, politely, to look over some of the American plans because there might be some few minor things worthy of a little study.
The descent of the Buffalo Cav into the Negev had changed things some more. America's tragedy in Vietnam had broken another type of arrogance, and from that had grown a new type of professionalism. Under Marion Diggs, first CO of the reborn 10th United States Cavalry, quite a few harsh lessons had been handed out, and while Magruder was continuing that tradition, the Israeli troopers were learning, just as Americans had done at Fort Irwin. After the initial screams and near fistfights, common sense had broken out. Even Benny Eitan, commander of the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade, had rallied from the first set of drubbings to finish his training rotation with a pair of break-evens, and come away thanking his American hosts for the lessons—and promising to kick their asses when he returned the next year. In the central computer in the local Star Wars building, a complex mathematical model said that the performance of the Israeli army had improved by fully forty percent in just a few years, and now that they again had something to be arrogant about, the Israeli officers were showing disarming humility and an almost ruthless desire to learn—ever signs of truly professional soldiers.
And now one of their head spooks wasn't talking about how his forces could handle anything the Islamic world might throw at his country. That was worth a contact report to Washington, Magruder thought.
THE BUSINESS JET once «lost» in the Mediterranean could no longer leave the country. Even using it to ferry the Iraqi generals to Sudan had been a mistake, but a necessary one, and perhaps the odd covert mission was all right as well, but for the most part it had become Daryaei's personal transport, and a useful one, for his time was short, and his new country large. Within two hours of seeing his Sunni visitors off, he was back in Tehran.
'So?'
