Webster knew that Prince Khalid counted on those facts. The drain on the finances and the workload of the military would leave the borders of both those countries weak. If the arrivals hadn’t been Shia, or presumably Shia, neither Pakistan nor India would have tolerated the forced expulsion flooding into their countries. And the refugees would continue to come like locust plagues. Those countries would be torn apart by Shia within their own borders who wanted to protect the new arrivals, as well as Sunni predators who would see the refugee camps as easy targets in which to hunt their enemies. Some attacks there had already started.

‘If you’re looking at the same thing I am,’ President Michael Waggoner growled, ‘then I think we’re looking at the seeds of a Middle Eastern war the like of which we’ve never seen.’

Although most people wouldn’t have recognized the tension in the president’s voice, Webster had known the man for years. Waggoner was as close to losing his cool as Webster had ever heard.

‘I’m looking at it,’ Webster said. ‘On the television and in the streets here.’

Waggoner cursed, another thing he rarely did. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you were there in the middle of it, Elliott. Sending you there might not have been the best idea after all. I’m worried about you too.’

‘I know, Mike. It’s a tough time for all of us.’

‘Are you all right? If you think you or your people are in danger, just say the word. I’ve got a Marine special OPS HRT waiting on board an aircraft carrier nearby. The colonel says he and his teams can be there in twenty minutes or less to get you out.’

‘There’s no need to do that yet,’ Webster said. ‘We’re safe enough here at the moment. If we do pull out, it could be taken as a sign of weakness. We don’t want that hanging over us.’

‘I know. I keep telling myself that.’ The president sighed tiredly. ‘I just don’t know how this situation went south so quickly.’

‘Our presence here didn’t have anything to do with that,’ Webster lied. ‘Prince Khalid already had an agenda. This whole time, the Middle East was only two heartbeats away from this kind of madness. Those two heartbeats have been silenced.’

‘Does Khalid really think he can get away with this without any repercussions?’

‘Prince Khalid’s in a powerful position. He’s not addicted to wealth and power like his father and brother. He’s looking to avenge his mother, his father, his brother and the rest of his family who were killed. He doesn’t care about repercussions. He wants to prove his manhood to the world. And he doesn’t think anyone can stop him. More than that, no one will stop him. Not everyone, perhaps no one, can afford to stop buying the oil Saudi Arabia has to sell.’

‘He’s insane is what he is.’

‘Crazy like a fox, maybe.’

Below in the street, a few quick flurries of flashing lights drew Webster’s attention. He recognized the muzzle flashes at once and knew that another battle or massacre had begun.

‘I thought you had a handle on this guy,’ Waggoner said.

‘With his father in place, I did. I’d hoped some of that goodwill might rub off on the son eventually. But he’s young and convinced of his own rightness in the world. We can both remember being that young, Mike.’

‘I know.’

‘His brother was much more manageable.’

‘Just our luck that we end up with the wrong son in power.’

It wasn’t luck, Webster thought. Everything is going according to plan.

At least, everything was going almost according to plan. The situation in Istanbul was more than a little troublesome. Webster had expected Eckart to report success there. He hadn’t, and things were still loose regarding the whereabouts of the scroll. That was troubling, but Webster had full confidence that the scroll would soon be his.

On the television, Saudi Arabian tanks rolled through the streets and scattered pedestrians in all directions. A man darted out in front of a tank. He held a Molotov cocktail in one hand. Hardly pausing, he lobbed the bottle and it shattered against the tank’s armoured skirt. Flames licked over the metal and drove the commanding officer back inside. Then a machine gun opened up on deck and.50-calibre rounds hammered the man to the ground. Before the body stopped twitching, the tank ran him down. When the tank passed, nothing recognizable as human remained.

‘I’m getting a lot of pressure here at home,’ Waggoner said. ‘A lot of American corporations are concerned about having their assets privatized over there. They’re thinking that the Saudis are going to be drilling wells with their equipment, then selling it to China or India. Needless to say, that doesn’t make anyone here happy.’

‘That’s going to happen,’ Webster said. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it if Khalid wants to do that. Unless they’re willing to pay the oil prices here, which I’m betting will be raised in the near future.’

‘They’re going to be less enthusiastic about paying inflated oil prices there when it’s been pumped through equipment they financed or built and claims they’ve located.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe it’s time to let Prince Khalid know that we can play hardball too.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘As you pointed out, we’ve got a Marine expeditionary force and the US Navy not far from here. It could be time for us to flex a little muscle.’

Waggoner was silent for a short time. ‘I’m not entirely satisfied that we’re there yet.’

‘I understand, but the longer we wait, the harder this is going to be to get control of.’

‘I know, I know.’ Waggoner sucked in a deep breath and expelled it. ‘Do we know if a Shia assassination team is even behind the attack?’

‘No. The prince insists that it was a Shia cell.’

‘No one had eyes on those people?’

‘No. Prince Khalid has found a trail that leads back to Shia extremists.’

‘Are they extremists?’

Webster approached the desk where his laptop lay open. ‘According to the CIA, they are.’ He glanced at the faces displayed on the screen.

Eckart and his men had found the ‘Shia terrorists’ nearly a month ago. They had actually been Shia businessmen operating in Financial City. During their surveillance, Eckart had sent pictures to Webster, who in turn had paid a computer hacker to insert the images into files at Langley. Overnight, they had become terrorists, but that hadn’t been revealed until the night they had killed the Saudi king and his firstborn son.

‘We knew about these people?’ Waggoner demanded.

‘We did, Mike, but we didn’t know they were going to do this.’

‘Or do it so well.’

‘No, we didn’t.’ Webster sipped his whiskey. It was bourbon mash from Tennessee and he took it straight. The fiery liquid burned the back of his throat.

‘If we could find these guys, prove it was them, do you think the prince would be satisfied with his pound of flesh?’

Webster watched the violence scroll across the television. More news, much of it directly linked to the fighting in Saudi Arabia, scrolled across the bottom in ticker-tape fashion. The death toll mounted almost every minute. Back on one of the new stations, a reporter on the ground covering an armed conflict was shot down. The cameraman got it all, then took off running for cover. Judging from the tumultuous way the camera flipped through the air and landed so suddenly, Webster didn’t think the cameraman made it.

‘It’s not just about Prince Khalid and his father,’ Webster said. ‘Not any more. Even if we could calm the prince down, do you think the Shia would back off at this point?’

‘No. But maybe we could open up peace talks.’

‘Because those have worked so well the past.’ Webster let the sarcasm sound in his voice.

‘We’ve got to do something. If the situation in the Middle East gets torn completely to shreds, the United States might not be able to withstand the economic repercussions.’