Amr Diab, the Justin Timberlake of the Arab world, was blaring over the radio.
I want you to feel my happiness, be at my place and feel the happiness to live with your loved one, not someone else.
This night, baby, is the night of our lives, this night is the night of my life!
The music was giving Abdulaziz a headache. Allah protect me, he thought, turning off the Land Cruiser’s radio. It was bad enough that his teenage daughters liked Justin Timberlake, but now Arab culture was imitating the irritating rat. Pop culture was America’s true weapon.
That, and casual cruelty, the prince thought.
He was speeding along at a hundred kilometers an hour, surrounded by the flat and empty Saudi Arabian desert. There wasn’t another soul in any direction, all the way to the horizon. He rolled down the window and breathed deeply, his white robe and red-checkered head scarf flapping in the wind. He loved the desert because it was unforgiving.
Sitting next to him was Princeling Abdulaziz, or “Zeez” for short. Among all his companions, Zeez was a favorite. They understood one another, despite their many differences.
“Zeez, how are you feeling today?”
The bird said nothing in return. It sat motionless on the custom-built bird bar Abdulaziz had installed between the Land Cruiser’s front leather seats, despite the strong wind through the open window. Abdulaziz smiled at the dignity. Zeez was a saker falcon, a species favored by Saudi royals for generations and known for its speed and power. The falcon could spot prey kilometers away and fly at over a hundred kilometers per hour, nearly doubling that when diving on prey. Watching it obliterate its quarry brought inner light to Abdulaziz. He had bought the falcon illegally in Dubai for a mere $10,000; the bird would have been worth it to the prince at ten times the price.
“Zeez, you are the light of my eyes. You are magnificent,” Abdulaziz cooed, stroking the bird’s feathered breast. The hawk jerked its head left then right. It could see nothing with its hood on, but it let out a screech of anticipation.
“There, there, Zeez, have patience,” Abdulaziz said.
The back of the Land Rover was stacked high with rectangular bird cages holding pigeons, each named after one of Abdulaziz’s enemies: Ahmad, Abdullah, Nassar, El Amin, Muhammad, Mohammad, Nejem, Tawfeek, Mahmoud Ali, and Khalid.
Khalid, he thought. The man’s very existence was an offense.
Brad Winters had reported Farhan’s death in a firefight in Iraq less than two hours ago. If not for the video, Abdulaziz might not have believed him. Winters wasn’t a trustworthy man; at this level, nobody was. He had recognized the Wahhabi from the video, though, the same man who had killed the majordomo. True, he didn’t see the killing blow, but the prince was happy for that. He had watched a hundred men die, a few by his own hand, but he didn’t want to see his last son murdered. It was like watching everything he had spent his life building collapse.
No, it wasn’t like that. It was deeper. It was true, grinding pain. He would never see his son again, he would have no heir, and the only thing he would have to bury, according to Winters, was a few fingers and teeth.
The Land Cruiser glided to a stop. “Are you ready, my precious?” the prince asked the falcon, as he stepped out and took a big breath of sweet desert air.
Out here, nothing mattered. No e-mails, conference calls, annoying subordinates, moronic superiors, crises, or stress. Out here, nothing could touch him: no heartbreak or betrayal. Winters would fix things. The prince knew that. The nuke was gone, and the evidence would never point back to him, the General Intelligence Directorate, or the Western-leaning side of the royal family he served.
But Winters could never fix what truly mattered, and Abdulaziz was just beginning to feel the pain of that.
The hawk screeched again, wondering at the delay and sensing the feast to come. The eternal struggle: animal versus animal, man versus time. In a country flush with money and opulence, falconry was a bulwark against the tide. Hawking offered communion with the prince’s Bedouin heritage, and the long line of tough desert nomads who had made him.
“Yes, yes, my moon,” he said, as Zeez fidgeted on his glove. The hawk was beautiful in the desert light. Its chest was white, with streaks of brown. The top feathers were brown, with white highlights, a camouflage worthy of the Louvre.
“Let us get your first quarry,” Abdulaziz said, pulling a pigeon from one of the cages. “You shall be named . . . Khalid, the first to perish.”
He threw the pigeon overhand, like a baseball. The bird fluttered and squawked, flying upward. Lovingly, he stroked the saker’s breast then removed its hood, and its head rapidly dipped up and down as it scanned the horizon. It locked onto the ascending pigeon and started flapping, its talons still tied to Abdulaziz’s glove.
“Show Khalid his fate,” he said as he let the hawk go. It shot straight up like a rocket, soaring well above the pigeon. It locked on to its target, then dove with claws outstretched. But Khalid showed moxie and dodged at the last second. The hawk banked hard. The saker had the speed of a jet with the agility of a helicopter. The pigeon was wily, though, and plummeted toward the ground. Zeez followed. Both accelerated to full speed, straight toward the desert floor. The pigeon flattened out, rear tail feathers flared to control its extreme velocity. Zeez extended his talons for the kill. Khalid saw the shadow from above, and jerked left, but Zeez anticipated the ruse this time, and hit the pigeon like a missile. Pigeon down.
“Tear him, Zeez,” Abdulaziz said, letting go of his binoculars. The violence was brutal yet beautiful, but it offered only partial relief. He climbed into the Land Cruiser and sped to the saker, so that he could watch it disembowel its prey. White and gray feathers blew into the desert wind as the hawk’s beak tore into the body. Abdulaziz stood and admired.
Ten more pigeons, all named Khalid, met the same fate. Zeez stopped eating after the fourth bird, choosing instead to kill and eviscerate. That was what made Zeez a special bird, why he was worth $10,000, and why he had earned the Abdulaziz family name. This raptor was intelligent enough to cherish the pleasures of victory.
The phone rang. He answered it. “Yes.”
He listened without expression, occasionally nodding.
“Good,” he said at last.
The plan was in motion. It would not take long. Winters and men like him could plan and scheme. They were useful. They would set the evidence right, if anyone looked. But that wasn’t Abdulaziz’s preferred method. You didn’t give a man like Prince Khalid room to maneuver. They were too dangerous for that. You ended it, then sorted out the details later.
He grabbed the last pigeon, a very special, ugly bird. “Fly, Khalid,” he yelled as he hurled the pigeon as hard as he could.
The raptor was on it before it had a chance to unfurl its wings, diving from above and hurling the helpless pigeon to the ground. The bird was gutted before it hit the sand.