Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (26 page)

 
          
“Because
I’m trying to explain men like Zuwayy and al-Khan to you, Sekhmet,” Baris said.
“Your husband died because he was strong in his heart, but perhaps not strong
enough in his mind. He believed in something he could never, ever have. Now
it’s time for you to choose what you want, Sekhmet. Choose.”

 
          
TRIPOLI
,
UNITED
KINGDOM
OF
LIBYA
 
A SHORT TIME LATER

 
          
“Yes,
I said Susan Salaam. She’s
alive!
”
Khalid al-Khan hissed in the cellular phone. “I thought I was seeing a ghost
when she walked out on stage! And she’s crazy! She actually attacked and
seriously wounded some of my men—nearly killed them with a
walking cane!
”

 
          
“A
walking cane, eh?” Jadallah Zuwayy of Libya chuckled. He was relaxing in his
office, flipping through reports and paperwork with several of his advisers. “I
think you need to hire better bodyguards, my friend.”

 
          
“She’s
accusing
me
of trying to kill her!”

 
          
“Calm
yourself, Ulama. Let her rant and beat up on your bodyguards—it makes her look
all the more unstable.”

           
“Unstable?
She's running for president of Egypt,
Highness!”

           
Zuwayy froze, then sat bolt upright
in his chair. “Running for president? How is that possible, Khalid? She’s not
an Egyptian! She’s not even a naturalized Egyptian citizen!”

 
          
“The
law allows it,” Khan said. “The law actually says that she assumes the office
of her husband if he dies in office—the law was amended in this case to allow
her to run for the office.”

 
          
“How
in the world can you allow that to happen? What kind of lawmakers do you have
out there?”

 
          
“She
is immensely popular here, Highness,” Khan said. “Even after being hit by that
explosion, she is still beautiful”

 
          
“You
Egyptians sound like the Italians sometimes— beauty is enough to become a great
politician, eh?”

 
          
“This
is not a joke, Highness,” Khan said. “The polls already show Salaam twenty
points ahead, and she has not raised one penny or made one speech yet!”

 
          
“All
right, all right,” Zuwayy responded. “Listen to me, Khalid. Most of this fight
is yours—Libya cannot become involved in Egyptian elections. You command
considerable power in Egypt, especially in the outlying areas and with
conservatives. Use that power. Rally your supporters. You also hold a high
position, both in government and in your citizen’s personal and spiritual
lives—use that power as well. Don’t just beat Salaam
—destroy
her. You can do it, Khalid. If necessary, get some secular
advisers and help them design a campaign for you—don’t rely on a bunch of
clerics to fight a battle in an arena they know nothing about.” Zuwayy paused
for a few moments; then: “I may be able to help stir some things up in other
areas, Khalid. But it is your fight. Fight to win.”

 
          
Zuwayy
cut off the call by angrily throwing the receiver back on its hook. He shook
his head, deep in thought. “Khan is such a weakling, it’s amazing he’s even
strong enough to venture outside his own bedroom by himself, let alone run for
public office,” he said to no one in particular. “Whining and bleating like a
lost sheep because the wife of his political adversary is still
breathing—deplorable.” But he ordered his aide to dismiss his other advisers
and staffers with a wave of his hand.

 
          
When
his office was cleared, he looked at his military chief of staff, General Tahir
Fazani, and his Secretary of Arab Unity, Juma Mahmud Hijazi. “What if the
lovely Mrs. Salaam does win the election?” he asked.

 
          
“Khan
will retain his post as chief justice of the Supreme Judiciary,” Hijazi said.
“He’s almost as powerful as the president. Little will change.”

 
          
“Salaam
will certainly want to form even closer relations with the West than her
husband,” Fazani said. “That means more foreign military presence, more
military ties, more foreign investment. Libya will be squeezed out of any development
deals.” He glanced at Hijazi, then added, “So will our secret benefactor.”

 
          
“I
am still opposed to making any more deals with Kazakov, Jadallah,” Hijazi said.
The two men in Zuwayy’s office were fellow officers in the Libyan military who
helped Zuwayy overthrow Qadhafi to take over the government—they were two of
the few in all of Libya who could call Zuwayy by his real name, and still only
in private. “The man’s in protective custody by the World Court, for God’s
sake. This could all be an elaborate ruse to implicate us. Remember, he’s
ratted out half the organized-crime leaders in Europe in just the past year.
Maybe we’re next.”

 
          
“I
still say, let’s take all the weapons Kazakov can put into our hands,” Fazani
said, “and blast the Egyptian military to hell right now. They may have
American weapons, but they don’t have any more power or support than they ever
had. We have historic claims to the Salimah oil fields—let’s just move in, wipe
out the Western and ignorant Turkish roustabouts, and take over the entire
Libyan Desert region of Egypt. We can lay claim to everything west of thirty
east longitude and everything south of twenty-five degrees latitude, and I
think we can hold it easily. Our forces in Sudan already have the region
surrounded—it would be easy. We can pump oil and send it to Libya for six
months, maybe a year, before the West starts to threaten retaliation. Then we
keep the proceeds, destroy the wells, and get out.”

 
          
“It
won’t work, Tahir,” Zuwayy said. “What if we do occupy those fields? No one
will buy one drop of oil we pump after we invade Egypt.”

 
          
“There
is always a market for crude, Jadallah,” Fazani said. “If nothing else, we
threaten to dump it on the world market if no one buys it at market price.
Dozens of nations, including the West, will buy it at cut-rate prices just for
the chance to store it and resell it at higher prices later, and the OPEC
countries will buy it just to prop up oil prices. Once we make peace with
Egypt
, pay some measly reparations, and maybe
even take our cut of the profits and move to
South America
or
Southeast Asia
, the West will be happy to deal with us
again—they’ll make a deal with Satan himself to get at all the oil we’ll pump
from Salimah.”

 
          
“You
tired of running the Libyan military, Tahir?” Zuwayy asked with a smile.

 
          
“Jadallah,
I give you all the credit in the world for engineering this scam,” Fazani said.
“It was a stroke of pure genius, coming up with the whole Sanusi thing. Most of
the folks in Libya and a good portion of the world bought it. But we’re not in
it to rule the damned country—we’re in it for the money, remember? Libya pumps
five billion dollars’ worth of oil out of the desert a year. If we can siphon
off even ten percent for ourselves, we’ll be set up for the rest of our lives.
Why do we want to stick around after that?”

 
          
“Because
if we can take the Salimah oil fields, we can take twice as much,” Zuwayy said.

 
          
“I’m
all for that, Jadallah,” Fazani said, “but I’d be just as happy splitting a
five-hundred-million-dollar take. I can’t water-ski behind more than one
megayacht anyway. Besides, how much of those billion dollars do we need to
split with Kazakov? He’s got a reputation for killing off all his partners. I’d
rather get out while we’re still alive to enjoy the money.”

 
          
“Don’t
worry about it,” Zuwayy said. “We’ve got our escape plan ready to go—that’s the
mistake Qadhafi made, believing he really was some big-shot Arab desert
chieftain. If we need to implement the escape plan, we won’t hesitate. Until
then, we press on with our plans.”

SUPREME JUDICIARY,
CAIRO
,
EGYPT
 
THAT SAME TIME

           
“‘Defeat her’—easy for you to say,”
Ulama Khalid al- Khan murmured. He hung up the phone and held his head in his
hands. “How do you defeat a ghost? Scare her away?”

           
“Sir?” Major Amr Abu Gheit, Khan’s
bodyguard and chief of the Supreme Judiciary security forces, asked. He waited
for a few moments, then asked, “Can I get something for you, sir?”

 
          
“Nothing,”
Khan responded. “Nothing—except perhaps Salaam’s head.”

 
          
“I
can get that for you, sir,” Gheit said with an evil smile. “Just give me
immunity from prosecution, and I’ll do it tonight.”

 
          
“Tempting,
but not quite yet,” Khan said. “What are the pretty Mrs. Salaam’s whereabouts,
anyway?”

 
          
“Last
report had Mrs. Salaam and General Baris in National Democratic Party
headquarters, meeting with district political chairmen and major supporters to
organize her election campaign,” Gheit reported, reading from a notebook. “We
have a list of those supporters. Wiretaps, surveillance, and financial investigations
can begin on all of them as soon as you wish.”

 
          
“Very
well. Get them moving,” Khan said. “And if you can’t find the information you
need, invent it.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Gheit said. He continued glancing at the report. “This is interesting,
sir: It is reported from interviews with the flight crew that Mrs. Salaam had
flown in to the People’s Assembly meeting from Mersa Matruh military base in
the west.”

 
          
“Mersa
Matruh? What was she doing there?”

 
          
“It
is apparently where she evacuated to after the assassination, sir,” Gheit said.
He read on, shaking his head as he did so. “There is no mention of it in here.”

 
          
“Mention
of what? What are you muttering about, Major?”

 
          
“There
was some sort of emergency at Mersa Matruh days ago—the base commander, Vice
Marshal Ouda, reported that there was some sort of incident, a mutiny or some
other violent action, aboard one of his ships,” Gheit replied.

 
          
“Major,
that does not concern me,” Khan said.

 
          
“If
I may, sir, I will contact Vice Marshal Ouda and see if he has anything to
report on Salaam or Baris’s presence there,” Gheit said. Khan dismissed him
with a wave of his hand, and he departed, leaving Khan wringing his hands and
shaking his head at his desk. But Gheit excitedly returned several minutes
later. “Holiness ... !”

 
          
“What
is it now, Major?”

 
          
“I
have Vice Marshal Ouda on the line,” Gheit said. “He has something incredible
to report. Salaam and Baris were indeed there—and so were some unidentified
foreign commandos. Salaam and Baris spoke to them, after which they offered the
use of base facilities and other assistance.”

 
          
“What?”
Khan exclaimed. “What commandos?
Who were they?”

 
          
“It
is not known, sir—but Ouda thinks they are Americans.”

 
          
“American commandos are on one of our
bases?”
Khan exploded. “Who authorized this? Why wasn’t I notified? Why
wasn’t anyone in
Cairo
notified?”

 
          
“General
Baris ordered Ouda not to report it,” Gheit replied. “Baris is still national
security adviser and Ouda’s superior officer.”