“You’ve managed to thrive for centuries without an army.”

The General bared his teeth at me. They were blackened by betel nut. “Times have changed,” he said. “Now our enemies are envious of our king, of the wealth he will bring us. They will attack to get it, and we will be powerless against them. Our defense system consists entirely of two secondhand .20 millimeter guns from World War II that the British left here, so you know how worthless they are.”

He turned to Abdul and unleashed a torrent of words in his tribal argot. The sheik smiled. “He wants to know,” Abdul translated, “why you’re so oppositional to affairs that don’t concern you. He wants to impress on you the fact that we stand at the threshold of world power, and no power in the world exists without an army. He also hopes that two hundred and fifty syphilitic salamanders grow in your belly.” Abdul yawned. “All this talk is beginning to bore the bejesus out of us,” he said.

“Would you welcome a candid opinion?”

Abdul said, “Not particularly.”

Qazwini’s fusion of strut and vinegar had touched a nerve of resistance in me. Now Abdul’s curt incivility had inflamed it to flashpoint.

“In that case,” I heard myself saying, “what the fuck am I doing here?”

Qazwini gasped. An inky driblet of betel juice bubbled from his mouth and leaked down his chin. Abdul favored me with a fierce, granitic stare. His fine face was coarsely altered, resembling itself as a bad photograph might, but for only a moment. Then the ferocity and the stoniness vanished, as if a soft hand had passed over them, and the features relaxed and he was handsome again, gazing calmly at me, restoring harmony.

“You must try to understand the General,” he said.

That, I thought, would be like trying to understand the daydreams of a rhinoceros.

“It’s an embarrassment to him that despite all the pips on his shoulders he doesn’t have even a platoon to command, just a sorry, shredded scrap of a constabulary.”

“With all due respect to the General,” I nodded deferentially in his direction, “I don’t believe he could train an army.”

“We’ll get advisors from the best land force on earth. We want you to draft a letter—that’s why we asked you here—to the Israeli Defense Minister, requesting an instructor to organize our military.”

“Who will pick up the tab?”

“We’re sure Grady would respond, to protect his investment.”

“But—”

Abdul cut me short. “We have reasoned together. We intend to proceed with our plans,” he said, “with or without you. It’ll take a while to get rolling, so you’ll have a little time to decide. We can’t make you do what we ask,” he added soothingly, “we can only make you wish you had.”