"Why do my people run without leave from their Precious Leader?"
"Perhaps because they have read the same histories as I," suggested the defense minister.
"What histories?" demanded Maddas Hinsein through tight teeth. The palace was shaking now. It was designed to withstand a direct missile hit. It took a lot to make such an edifice tremble. Yet he barely heard his defense minister's words of explanation.
"The ones that tell of how after the people of Abominadad surrendered, they were all put to the sword. The Tigris ran red on that evil day."
"Never mind the people!" Maddas shouted, seeing for the first time a line of horses coming out of the desert. They looked small, the riders astride them low and squat, their wide faces as hard and unfeeling as rank upon rank of hammered bronze gongs. "Tell me of the caliph's fate!"
"Caliph al-Musta'sim was allowed to live for seventeen days, while Abominadad was sacked and burned." Tears welled up in the defense minister's jewellike eyes.
Maddas Hinsein turned, his face sagging. His eyes implored an unspoken question.
"The caliph!" Maddas roared. "What of the caliph, you ignorant dog?"
"Then they sewed him in a bag and trampled him to death under the hooves of their horses," replied the weeping defense minister. "May I die now?"
"No, you may not die!" thundered Maddas Hinsein, drawing himself up. "You are an Arab. Arabs do not lay down their lives before an enemy. Where is your courage?"
The defense minister obediently pointed to the dark wet stain on the former royal rug of the Kurani emir.
"It is there, Precious Leader," he said simply.
"There is a way out of this predicament," Maddas shouted, pacing the rug. "There is always a way. I need only think of it."
"It is too late. The thunder of Mongol doom is upon us. And our best forces are bogged down in Kuran."
Maddas Hinsein's deep brown eyes acquired a crafty light. He snapped his fingers, bringing a broad grin to his sober face.
"Contact the Americans," he said quickly. "Inform them I wish to enter into an alliance. They may have all my oil in return for protection from these bandits."
The defense minister shook his head doubtfully. "The Americans know your true colors, Precious Leader. They know how you break your promises for the sake of the moment."
"Phone Tel Aviv, then. The Zionist Entity will be happy to learn that I now regard them with respect and affection."
"That I would not do if I were the caliph of old Abominadad and it was my only hope to escape the sewn bag of death."
"Then contact the hated Kurds!" Maddas thundered. "They are almost as savage as Mongols. Perhaps they will hurl themselves into the teeth of these animals, and both armies will be wiped out!"
"How will I do that?" the defense minister asked plaintively. "The Kurds have no telephones, no radios, and no cities. They have been practically gassed out of existence."
"What traitor did that?" roared Maddas Hinsein.
"You did."
Maddas drew his scraggly black eyebrows together like burnt caterpillars mating. He fingered his mustache worriedly. It was true. He had gassed the Kurds. In all the excitement, he had almost forgotten.
"There must be some ally that will succor me," he muttered, pacing the rug. "The Russians have nuclear weapons. Whose side are they on this week?"
"I do not think even they know," the defense minister admitted truthfully.
"Where is the PLO? After all I have done for them."
"Their leadership has been decimated by your own assassins, Precious Leader."
"What of the Grand Mullahs of Islam? They will not allow a fellow Moslem leader to perish at the hands of unbelievers."
"They have declared you an enemy of God and decreed that for your crimes against Islam, you be killed and your hands cut off."
"Oh."
And out the window, rank upon rank of Mongol horsemen drew near, the pounding of their multitudinous hooves raising a black cloud that had blocked out the very moon and cast a pall over even the unquenchable spirits of President Maddas Hinsein.
He wondered if he too would end up like King Nebuchadnezzar, cast out into the hostile desert, eating tufts of dry scrub grass with the oxen and other dumb brutes.
Then, remembering the fate of Caliph al-Musta'sim, he realized the answer to that question.
Only if he were lucky.
Chapter 42
President Maddas Hinsein fingered the wallboard control that caused the six-thousand-pound steel door to roll closed behind him.
He descended into the multilevel bunker under the Palace of Sorrows that had been made by German engineers to withstand a direct hit from everything from an H-bomb to laser cutting beams, content that no matter what happened to his unimportant populace, he would emerge alive at the end of it.
And if alive, he would be ultimately victorious.
Maddas swaggered through the maze of passages to a duplicate of his office above. All that it lacked was the Kurani emir's excellent rug.
But at least it would have the wonderful Korean sword, which Maddas personally carried, wrapped in heavy burlap to protect his fingers from the wickedly sharp blade.
He placed this on his great desk while he removed the knit khaki jersey that he had worn when he had executed the final member of his cabinet, the defense minister whose name he had already forgotten. It was stiff with blood and smeared with coagulated brain matter.
From a drawer in the desk he drew forth a long funereal black garment-a spare abayuh. Pulling this over his head, he allowed the fine fabric to settle down over his thick hips, which wiggled sinuously. He drew a veil over his sad brown face.
"Ahhh," sighed the Scimitar of the Arabs as the comforting fabric soothed his troubled soul. Wearing the veil was his most secret vice, kept from even his late wife. It was a relic of the days he had escaped to Egypt disguised as a woman, after the failure of a youthful coup. The abayuh proved to be a tension reliever more excellent than torturing Kurds.
He slipped a CD into a Blaupunkt deck. The strains of "Salome's Seven Veils" rolled over his shrouded form like waves of bedouin glory.
Throwing his hands up in the air, he began throwing his hips about, fingers snapping in syncopation.
"Mad Ass, Mad Ass," he sang in a low baritone. "I am the most crazy-assed Arab of all time."
The dry clearing of a throat caused his eyes to go wide behind his veil. In a long wall mirror he caught a reflective glimpse of a wispy presence in white.
Maddas Hinsein wheeled.
Standing in the doorway, hands tucked in the sleeves of a pale kimono, was a tiny Oriental man who looked as old as the Prophet himself.
"What are you doing here?" Maddas demanded, yanking off his veil. It did not matter that the man had discovered him in an abayuh. They were entombed together in the bunker. The old man would not live to reveal the secrets of Maddas.
"I am Chiun," he said quietly. "I entered with you."
"I entered alone."
"Did not your shadow follow you in?" asked the old one.
"Of course. But what has that to do with you?"
"I am your shadow," said the old Oriental, padding forward on silent white sandals. He might have been a little yellow ghost in a shroud of bone. His eyes were unreadable slits.
"Who are you really, old one?" Maddas demanded, slipping one hand into a gap in the folds of his black garment. It closed about his ivory-handled revolver.
"I am Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju."
"That title means nothing to me," Maddas spat.
The little wisp of a man stopped not six feet away from the Scimitar of the Arabs.
"I am he who trained the assassin who fell into your power," he said without emotion.
"The American?"
"His name was Remo. And he was the greatest pupil a Master of Sinanju could ever have."