LITMIR.BIZ

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      None of that was important. When their mission was complete, they would all be the same—martyrs to the sacred cause of Islam. And they would be together in heaven, surrounded by beautiful virgins, enjoying all the rewards they would earn by dying. Nothing else mattered.

      “What is your name?” the sheikh asked.

      “Hamed al-Bashar.”

      The sheikh half-turned and pointed a bony finger at one of the villagers, a stocky, middle-aged man who was a minor official, one of the party that had greeted Sheikh ibn Khahir and escorted him here to this mud-walled compound on the edge of the settlement where the training had taken place.

      “Do you see that man?”

      “I see him,” Hamed said.

      “He is a traitor. The American CIA pays him to betray us.”

      The villager’s eyes widened in surprise and horror. He began to shake his head, whether in denial of the accusation or shock at being found out, Hamed could not have said.

      And it didn’t matter, because the sheikh had said it and it must be so. One of the sheikh’s bony hands came out from under the robes holding a jambiya knife.

      “Deal with the traitor, Hamed al-Bashar.” As the sheikh spoke, he held out the knife.

      Hamed didn’t hesitate. He took the knife and walked toward the accused villager, who began to back away in terror. The man’s nerve broke and he turned to run.

      He had no chance against the younger, faster, stronger Hamed, who caught him from behind after only a few steps and looped an arm around his neck. Hamed jerked back on the man’s head, exposing his throat. The knife flashed in the sunlight as it bit into the tight-drawn flesh. Hamed drew the blade across the man’s throat in one deep, strong slash. A crimson fountain of blood spurted into the air and splashed across the sand. The man’s body spasmed in Hamed’s tight grip.

      The sheikh barked a further command, and the knife grated on bone as the blade struck again, going deeper this time. The man’s arms and legs flailed, but no one stepped forward to assist Hamed in the task he had been given by the sheikh. Hamed knew how to do this—in theory—but he had never had to put that knowledge into practice before.

      Severing the spine posed some difficulties, but the rest of it was easy. Within a few moments the headless body toppled onto the sand and continued to pump blood from the grisly hole where the traitor’s head had been attached. Hamed held that head up by the hair as the sheikh nodded approvingly. The men of the village cried out and fired their rifles into the air. Hamed’s heart pounded in fierce joy at knowing that he had carried out Allah’s will and eliminated a tool of the infidels.

      How much more joyful would it be when he performed his holy mission and entered paradise knowing that he had helped to kill not just a single traitor, but rather thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of those minions of Satan, those hated Americans, delivering unto them their richly deserved punishment for supporting the Israelis, those filthy Jewish interlopers.

      O happy day that would be, Hamed thought as he looked at the contorted face of the blood-dripping head he dangled from his hand.

      Middle Eastern Crisis Worsens

      WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV. 15, 02:51 PM US/EASTERN, ASSOCIATED PRESS. After months of intense, behind-the-scenes negotiations, the agreement-in-principle between Israel and Iran regarding the development of nuclear weapons by Iran has collapsed. This agreement, which was brokered by representatives of the United States, would have opened Iranian nuclear facilities to United Nations inspectors in an effort to bolster Iranian claims that they are not manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. The recent rise to power by more fundamentalist politicians in Iran evidently fueled the collapse of the talks, although a spokesman for the Iranian government insists that there was never any such agreement to start with.

      In Washington, the President issued a statement saying that this is only a temporary setback in the ongoing diplomatic process, and that she remains confident a peaceful solution to this crisis that threatens the stability of the Middle East will be found.

BOOK ONE

      CHAPTER 1

      The President said, “Those goddamn camel-jockeys never had any intention of holding up their part of the bargain.”

      “Don’t let the press hear you using an ethnic slur like that,” her husband said with a grin. “After all, you represent the party of tolerance and diversity.”

      She fixed him with the familiar steely-eyed glare he had seen so many times during their thirty-plus years of marriage. At first, he’d been scared shitless whenever she looked at him like that, because it was in those moments that he had been able to look into her and see her for what she really was.

      Over the years, though, he had come to realize that maintaining the façade of a happy marriage was too important to her plans for her to ever direct the full force of her rage at him. All he had to do to remain safe was to exercise just the least bit of restraint and discretion. She had skated by on the edge of enough scandals, both personal and political, that she couldn’t afford to let any sort of “accident” befall him, as had happened to others who had gotten in her way.

      Besides, he truly did love her, despite knowing that to her, he was mostly just a useful prop. So when they were alone like this, in the upstairs quarters of the White House, he made it a habit to speak as plainly with her as he could. He wanted to help.

      “You’re right,” he went on. “They were lyin’ to you from the get-go, just stringin’ you along with empty promises so you’d keep the Israelis off their back for a while longer.”

      She nodded. “Yes, but I believed them at first. I mean, why wouldn’t I? They had no reason to fear U.N. inspections. Pulling the wool over the eyes of the United Nations is no great trick. Even a cheap thug like Saddam Hussein was able to do it for years. They never did figure out what he was up to.”

      “Don’t let anybody hear you say that either,” her husband advised, and he wasn’t smiling now. “Everybody knows that Bush lied and Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction. You don’t want to go lettin’ people think that the conventional wisdom might not be true.”

      She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “All they had to do was hide the real stuff and put on a dog-and-pony show for the inspectors. Then we would have had a good excuse for going along with whatever the U.N. said, and without our backing the Israelis would have had to accept it, too.”

      “Maybe you don’t know the Israelis quite as well as you think you do.”

      “What do you mean by that?” she snapped.

      “I mean that when those folks feel like they’ve been backed into a corner, they’re liable to do almost anything.”

      The President shook her head. “They won’t attack Iran. My God, they’re already surrounded by enemies who want them dead as it is.”

      “Then they don’t have a hell of a lot to lose, now do they?” her husband said softly.

      That shook her for a second; he could tell by the way she looked. She truly believed that every setback was only temporary, that in the end everything would work out the way she wanted it to because she was smarter than everybody else. Smarter, and more decent and moral, and anyone who disagreed with her was evil or stupid or both, and therefore destined to lose. Maybe she was right—he hoped she was—but he feared that the rest of the world might not cooperate.

      She resumed the pacing that had sent her back and forth across the luxuriously appointed bedroom a dozen times so far during their conversation. “Why now?” she asked. “Everything was looking good. All the Iranians had to do was play along for a while. The whole situation would have cooled down, so that next year would be nice and peaceful leading up to the election. Why throw a wrench in the works right now?”

      “Maybe they were

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