Webster stood to one side of the polarized balcony window and let the loose folds of the drapes conceal him. Beyond the glass, under the night sky, the city spread in neat squares, some of them lighted and some of them not. Power hadn’t been connected to all the new areas. Webster had turned the lights out behind him; he was more comfortable in the darkness. He held the sat-phone close to his ear as he spoke. Out in the streets, armed forces patrolled in heavy numbers. Tanks as well as soldiers moved constantly.
On the other side of the room, the muted television showed smuggled footage from Saudi Arabia on WNN News. FOX, CNN and MSNBC also carried much of the same footage. A lot of it came from Vicky’s people.
Prince Khalid had made good on his promise to remove the enemies of his country. Within minutes after speaking to Webster, special teams had hit the streets and begun sweeping Shia, suspected Shia and Shia sympathizers from the cities. That also meant rousting out many American and European businessmen. It also meant that anyone who had a taint of Shia about them got the boot. A religious purge had started and the repercussions were building in strength. Webster felt the power of it around him, like a roaring dark tide. It wouldn’t be calmed and he looked forward to watching it feed.
Many of those persecuted people had fought, not wanting to relinquish their businesses or their wealth. Several of those people, in fact – Webster suspected – most of those people had been killed outright. Others received rough handling or worse as they were loaded onto trucks and taken to train stations where they were herded like cattle onto boxcars. From there they were deported to India and Pakistan. Having dealt with problems of displaced people before, neither India nor Pakistan welcomed the Shia refugees. The displaced people would create a huge drain on the economies of both countries, as well as tying up manpower to keep the inevitable refugee camps manageable.
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?’