Scorpion by Andrew Kaplan

Author:Andrew Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

Al Aramah

ABDUL SA’AD IRRITABLY TOSSED the report aside. The Russian plan was nonsense. Idiots! Sending more Palestinians after the Scorpion was like sending an army of men with butterfly nets to capture the wind. The Scorpion was a true Bedu. He could disappear among the desert tribes at will. And should he choose to return to the Mutayr, it would take an army to get at him.

This was a dangerous development, now when everything was poised. A faint breath of desert wind rustled the palm fronds high above him. It whispered of jihad and in his mind’s eye he saw the desert tremble under the tank treads as the armies of Allah surged across the East in holy war, flags unfurled in the wind.

To calm his mind he sat cross-legged, Bedu-style, on the mossy banks of his pond and contemplated the goldfish gracefully flitting in the cool green depths like sparks of living sunlight. He liked looking at them. They reminded him of women: beautiful, but without souls; useful only for ornaments.

When he had been younger he had allowed his harim women to frolic with him in the grass. He felt himself harden as the memories teased him. Later, when that grew boring, he used the naked women as footstools, resting his feet on their soft buttocks as they knelt before him; or as living statues frozen in erotic poses, sweat beading their exquisite skin as they struggled to remain immobile.

But that was before he had heard Allah’s call and knew that he was the Chosen One. Although, even as the Prophet, he still enjoyed the delights of women, he no longer defiled himself by entering them. Now he preferred to enjoy his garden in solitude.

That was something those Russian kulaks would never understand. They thought to use him, to make him their puppet. But they understood nothing of kismet, of the wave of destiny sweeping across the world under the flowing green banner of Islam. The Arab world was awakening after a sleep of centuries to a new dream.

To be king was nothing. He would be caliph, even sultan! Except for the weapons the West was so good at making, the House of Islam would be purified. Then nothing would resist their armies. What had happened in Iran was nothing. Merely the puff of hot wind which presages the sandstorm yet to come.

As for the Russians, they could be bought with rubles as easily as the West had been corrupted by petrodollars.

He knew it was inevitable that his brother Salim would catch wind of a plot, so he had sent a Palestinian fanatic to assassinate him at a public majlis and then made sure that the Palestinian was caught and killed by his own zealous Royal Army guards. Salim now trusted him more than ever. The king had been reassured enough to indicate that the ceremony would go forward as scheduled.

Only the Scorpion remained as a problem, he mused, stroking his beard. If you want to destroy a scorpion, you don’t chase after him and stick your finger down into his sand burrow.

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