114

 

THE SUPER-YACHT, ZEPHYR, 9:50 A.M.

The Sheikh turned to Ali. Of all his security team, he was closest to Ali. He saw the same fire in the younger man’s eyes, the same vision, the same yearning, the same disgust with the West and its incontinent excess, its neo-colonialist trampling over sacred lands. Ali was far more than mere brawn. He had a brain and a heart, and he had spirit. He had the Hilmun yaruddu bihi jahl aljahil of his desert-dwelling Bedu ancestors—a commanding forebearance and serenity in the face of ignorance and adversity.

“Life never ceases to surprise me,” murmured the Sheikh. “That, as you will have gathered, was Gwen Boudain. She wants to come here! To talk to me.”

“Or to kill you?” posed Ali with a delicate raising of one eyebrow.

“Here, on the yacht, with protection all around me?” countered the Sheikh.

“She, and/or Dan Jacobsen, killed four men, one of whom they killed with their bare hands,” replied Ali, his voice unnaturally calm.

The Sheikh looked away, not through delicacy or pity. In his eyes there was only calculation. He looked back.

“You go with the pilot to pick her up at Falcon. Frisk her before she gets on the copter.”

Ali nodded. He moved to go, paused as the Sheikh laid a hand on his arm.

“Then, when Gwen Boudain has told me whatever she has to tell me, if indeed she does have anything to say and this whole thing is not a ruse to come and attempt to kill me, we will kill her.”

Ali thought of his murdered friends.

Sheikh Ali eyed him, read his thoughts.

“You will be avenged, Ali. We will all be avenged in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. Nine-eleven succeeded way beyond all the greatest expectations of Sheikh Osama. They never thought the iron girders would melt. They never thought the towers would collapse. When we unleash ARk Storm there’ll be the death toll, but beyond that, who knows? The storm might just be the final blow for the bankrupt state of California. It is after all the eighth biggest economy in the world,” he added, as if debating some arcane point at an academic conference. “If it were devastated, it could tip the Great Satan into a depression.” He smiled. “And Gwen Boudain and the Zeus model will have helped!” He squeezed Ali’s arm. His dark eyes were hard.

“An eye for an eye. The justice of the desert will be ours.”