The Killing Ground

As she handed it to him, she saw the maker’s label inside and it said Armani, and she thought it was the most beautiful jacket she’d ever seen and suited him completely.

“Be ready for anything, boys,” he said. “Some bad bastards here, I think. Remember your blood, Rashid, before anything else.”

“As one, cousin, we are with you,” Khazid said, and they started forward, Hussein with Jasmine on one arm and Sara on the other.

THE SIX MEN by the pool watched them approach, cradling their rifles, wearing black robes and black-and-white head scarves. The leader, tall and bearded, waited, the whip dangling from his right hand.

“And who have we here?” he demanded.

“Who asks?” Hussein asked, and moved to the right where a pole protruded from a wooden fence, and sat on it.

“Mind your ma

He turned and slashed the priest across the shoulders again, and Sara cried out, “No.”

“Learn your place, girl. He is only a Christian.”

“And I am Christian, too,” she said in Arabic. “Would you lash me?”

She ran at him, and he grabbed her wrist and laughed. “To do so would give me great pleasure.” He flung her to the ground and raised the whip, and Hussein’s hand fastened on the Colt.25 in the ankle holster and he drew it and fired, catching ben Levi between the eyes, the hollow-point cartridge propelling him backward into the pool and blowing away the back of his skull.

In virtually the same moment, one of the men opposite started to raise his rifle and Hassim shot him just with his AK. There was dead silence. Hussein gestured, the Colt still in his hand.

“On this occasion, I allow you to live,” he told the rest of ben Levi’s men. “So take your dead and go. Go now.”

Hurriedly, they collected their horses, tied the bodies of the two dead men over the saddles of two mares and mounted. They waited for a moment and Hussein spoke.

“I am Hussein Rashid. I am the Hammer of God. I welcome any man of the ben Levi tribe who seeks satisfaction.”

Which they did not, and left. Jasmine was trembling, but Sara was strangely calm. “I’ll see to the priest,” she said and went to him.

The satellite phone sounded, but there was heavy static. The Broker shouted, “It’s me. Is the static clearing?”

“I’m here.”

“They’re sending a helicopter. Is everything okay?”

“A minor problem. It’s been taken care of.”

“Good. We’ll be needing you soon, Hussein. There’s work to be done, you know that. Osama himself was inquiring about you when we last spoke. He sends you his blessing.”

“Tell him I thank him. Good-bye for now.”

By the pool, Sara and Jasmine tended the priest, Sara washing his back carefully with a cloth from the house.

“Are you truly a Christian, child?” he asked.

“My mother is English, my father Rashid. I am baptized.”

“And yet you wear the clothes of a Muslim woman.”

Hussein and his men sat smoking and listening, and heard her say, “In the whole of the Koran, there are only two mothers of prophets. The first, the mother of Mohammed, whose name be praised, and the second Mary, the mother of the prophet Jesus. There is good in all things. I think this is true of the Bible and the Koran.”

“So young and yet so wise.” He counted his beads and started to pray.

She stood up and went and sat on the ground beside Hussein, and the others stood up out of respect and moved away.

“I didn’t know,” she said in English. “About you.”

“Of course you didn’t. You weren’t meant to.”

“I thought I knew you. Now I see I never knew you at all. The Hammer of God.” She shook her head, repeating it in Arabic. “The servants would speak of you and sometimes you were mentioned in newspapers. Strange.” She shook her head again. “I read the news to improve my Arabic and didn’t realize I was sometimes reading about you and your doings.” She changed to Arabic. “The great warrior. Never your face on television, but when you spoke on radio, you always described yourself as the Hammer of God in English. Even the young children learned it that way, some of the T-shirts also were printed with the English phrase. Why did you allow this?”

“Personal arrogance-to mock my enemies. In the English papers, the wording would be rather different. Not great warrior, but terrorist, I think.”

“Yes, it’s amazing how much it’s a matter of the words one chooses.”

“How wise,” he said. “Such wisdom in one so young.” In the distance, a sound emerged, the unmistakable stutter of a helicopter. “So, another stage on our journey.” He pulled her up. “Say good-bye to the good father and we’ll be on our way.”

THE PORT OF HAZAR was small, with white buildings and narrow alleys, the vivid blue of the sea contrasting with the whiteness of the buildings. The harbor was well used, with coastal shipping of various kinds, fishing vessels, old-fashioned dhows and motor cruisers.

They came in from the sea in a half-circle, and about a mile out from the town Sara noticed a big dhow, very ancient from the look of it.

Sara said, “That looks interesting.”

Hussein said, “It is. It’s really being used as a diving platform. They call it the Sultan. Some years ago, marine archaeologists discovered the wreck of a freighter about ninety feet down that had been sunk by a U-boat in the Second World War. When they dived on it, they discovered Phoenician pottery from about two hundred B.C. The freighter’s been sitting on a much more interesting wreck.”

“Are they doing anything about it?”

“The Hazar government? They couldn’t care less. A few years ago, a professor from Cambridge University got a license to dive it. He came back occasionally, but he never had any money to speak of. As I recall, he used local divers and treated it like a holiday.”

“It sounds lovely. Have you ever dived?”

“Oh, yes, many times when I was younger. It’s a different world down there.”

They swung in across the town, circling the airfield complex to the left and beyond, and then they drifted to the right to what looked like a small village above a tiny port, and on the hillside above it was an extensive villa, obviously old and standing in gardens and terracing of great beauty.

“And this is the pride of the Rashid family. The great house that has stood here for three hundred years. This is Kafkar.”

The helicopter swung down toward a landing pad, and there were people waiting there, many people, all in traditional dress, and standing alone in front of them was a very old man in a white linen suit, a Bedouin burnoose on his head. From the look of him, he had once been a man of great power, but he was leaning on a stick now.

As the engine stopped, Hussein said, “Your great-uncle, Jemal. You go first.”

He opened the door, sent out the steps and she went down. There was silence. Then the old man beckoned to her. “Sara-come to me, child.”

She started forward and the crowd broke into spontaneous applause.

LATER THEY SAT on a wide terrace above the garden, palm trees and exotic plants on every side. The sound of water was everywhere as it cha

Jemal said, “The ben Levi business is nothing. Ali was a bandit of low repute. There’ll be no question of an honor killing in revenge. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t,” Hussein said. “They needed a lesson, these people.”