Wadi Rum, the Libyan Desert, 1600 GMT (1700 Local)

Colonel Hassan al-Baruni stood alone in front of his dark brown Berber tent, watching the Soviet Ambassador’s Zil limousine heading north on the dirt track toward the Tripoli highway, trailing a long plume of fine dust. Baruni wrung his hands and shook his head, then began to walk along the edge of the dry wadi. His elite guards watched him from the middle distance. He noticed that two armed female guards began to follow as he walked, while the rest remained around the three parked vehicles: two BTR-60 troop carriers and a Soviet-built ZSU-23-4, an ugly tracked vehicle with four 23mm automatic antiaircraft cannons mounted on a boxy turret on top.

It is good that they watch, thought Baruni, good that they are loyal.

Ambassador Timkin had been unusually blunt. He had smiled as he always did, but his shiny little eyes had reinforced the message of his words. Moscow viewed the events at Uqba ben Nafi with the gravest concern. Neither Moscow nor its esteemed ally, the Libyan Jamahiriya, could be seen to be giving direct support to terrorist acts. Moscow suggested most strongly that Baruni take all possible steps to end the crisis and to take control of the hostages away from the Abu Salaam faction without further delay.

Baruni had agreed to try, though he did not voice his own serious misgivings about the limits of his influence over Abu Salaam. The Russian’s second “suggestion” was perhaps more helpful, though certainly more ominous. Moscow “suggested” that the Soviet advisory team be given a direct role in “organizing” Libyan forces for the defense of Uqba ben Nafi against an assault from the American Sixth Fleet, to ensure, Ambassador Timkin insisted smoothly, that Soviet equipment was used to the best advantage.

They are threatening me! Baruni raged inwardly. The clear implication was that if he refused either “request,” Soviet advisers would distance themselves from him during the hostage problem and would perhaps soon withdraw their support entirely. Baruni knew that more than half his tanks and armored vehicles were presently garaged because of lack of trained Libyans to run or maintain them, and all but his oldest aircraft were flown and maintained by Russians or Cubans or North Koreans. Clearly the whole arsenal would deteriorate rapidly without direct and continuous Soviet support. Baruni wished blackly that Abu Salaam, his once-brilliant protégé, had never returned to Libya.

But now I must go to him, he thought, reason with him, even beg him to let me have those hostages!

Baruni turned and strode back toward the tent and the vehicles. He tilted his head back and smiled his handsome smile. Imitating a gesture he had seen his tank commanders use, he twirled his finger in the horizontal plane, signaling his vehicles to crank up. He was gratified to hear the vehicles cough and roar to life and to see his guards salute smartly as he climbed aboard the lead BTR.