87

DOHA, QATAR —13 DECEMBER

Hamdi Yaşar sat on his balcony, enjoying the sun coming up over the Gulf.

The temperature was a comfortable seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, and there was a gentle breeze coming from the east. Yaşar’s wife and children were still sleeping. Normally, he’d already be in the Al-Sawt studios by now. But he found himself fielding too many calls from Abu Nakba and his inner circle to take all of them at the office. For much of the night he’d been briefing his superiors on the latest details. Now he was tired but perhaps more peaceful and content than he’d ever felt in his life. It was happening, all of it, and he was at the vortex, and he could hardly believe the good fortune Allah had bestowed upon him.

Yaşar missed the hustle and bustle and oriental mystique of Istanbul, the city of his youth. He longed to move his family back home to Turkey, and he sensed the time to make that shift was rapidly approaching. President Mustafa had been dropping none-too-subtle hints that as useful as it was for Yaşar to serve Abu Nakba and help build Kairos from an unknown entity into the world’s most fearsome terrorist organization, perhaps it was time for him to come work for the next sultan and actually help build the Caliphate. Yaşar could think of nothing better. That was his dream. He had been made compelling offers by the emir of Qatar, by the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, even —albeit indirectly —by the Kremlin. Men of wealth and power, men he greatly respected, not only saw but valued and coveted his skills, his connections, and the strategic guidance he quietly gave them all under the cover of being a senior producer for one of the Arab world’s leading satellite news networks. But Mustafa was the man he respected most, and to serve as the Turkish president’s consigliere, particularly at such a time as this, was as intriguing as it was intoxicating.

Yaşar sipped a chilled glass of pulpy orange juice he had just squeezed himself and marveled at the commanding view of Doha before him. He loved the newness of it all. Qatar itself hadn’t even been born as an independent nation-state until 1971. The capital as a city dated back to the 1820s, but even by the 1920s it was little more than a scattering of mud-and-brick homes. The discovery of oil, of course, had changed everything. The Arab oil embargo against the Americans changed it even more. As the price of oil had soared, so had Qatar’s wealth, and people streamed in from all over the region and all over the globe to make their fortunes.

By the fifties, the sleepy city’s population had swelled to fourteen thousand. By the seventies, it had mushroomed to more than eighty thousand. Today, Doha was home to more than a million people. With more people came more construction. With such little land, the population couldn’t spread out, so it shot upward. Out of the sands rose spectacular towers of steel and glass. All of it was impressive, a testament to man’s engineering genius.

Yet none of it was enough to hold Hamdi Yaşar. When his operation in Jerusalem triumphed, he would be in a position to demand almost anything of the Turkish leader. Perhaps consigliere would not be enough, he mused. Why should he not be the nation’s second in command, effectively the crown prince and thus the sultan’s heir apparent?

His satellite phone rang. Yaşar set down his crystal glass and picked up the phone from the table beside him.

“It’s me,” said al-Qassab.

“Trouble?” Yaşar asked.

“Not really.”

“Then what? I thought we’d agreed not to talk unless there was an emergency.”

“There is a topic we’ve not discussed, and I need your advice.”

“What’s that?”

“The crew,” al-Qassab replied. “How shall I compensate them when they are finished with their work?”

Yaşar considered the question carefully. Kairos’s director of operations could only be referring to one person —Dr. Ali Haqqani. And he could only be asking one question. Was he supposed to kill Haqqani now that the man had finished operating on Hussam Mashrawi? Once the surgeon made sure Mashrawi was healthy enough to carry out his mission four days hence, would he be expendable? Or was al-Qassab supposed to help Haqqani slip safely out of Israel to perform future surgeries for Kairos?

“We did discuss it, thoroughly, in fact, when we were in Rome,” Yaşar said, trying to contain his irritation.

“I’m not convinced we were thorough enough.”

It was now clear what al-Qassab was recommending: taking out the good doctor either because he had not performed his duties satisfactorily or because al-Qassab was not convinced he could actually get the man out of Israel after all.

Either way, Yaşar decided, it wasn’t his problem. He’d recruited al-Qassab to make such tactical decisions. Now was not the moment to second-guess his instincts. “It’s your call, my friend,” Yaşar replied. “Just make absolutely sure that whatever you start, you finish.”