Saad had instructed Mousavi and Kamal to use the draft box for their shared email account when they needed to communicate with him. This morning the box was empty, but that was fine. Although he wanted inside information from both men, he had a busy schedule. Sometimes it was hard to keep his overall mission from interfering with his everyday work. A message from either man too often distracted him for the rest of the day.

Rolling back from his desk, he walked across the tiled marble floor to the full-length windows that made up the walls of his office. He was on the 28th floor of the Al Asmakh Tower, which was not the penthouse of the building, nor was it in the city’s tallest skyscraper, although he could have easily afforded either. Saad had chosen this location for the headquarters of his company, ASEnergy, because among a bizarrely futuristic skyline, the Al Asmakh was a retro-looking throwback.

Inspired by the American Empire State Building, its art deco design came right out of the early twentieth century. Well before the high-rise opened its doors, Saad had purchased rights to the 26th, 27th, and 28th floors, and now, three years into his occupancy, he couldn’t be more pleased. When it came to boats, he wanted cutting edge. When it came to office space, a little artsy aesthetic was a nice change.

He looked out toward West Bay. His view of the water was only slightly obstructed by the Burj Doha Tower. Although similar in height, the two structures couldn’t have been more different. While Saad’s building looked to the past, the cylindrical Doha Tower appeared to have been transported from a futuristic science fiction novel. In his opinion, it was fortunate that the Al Asmakh didn’t fit the overall aesthetic of the Doha skyline, a city he thought was trying too hard to be modern.

At the far reaches of the bay, almost out to the open waters of the Persian Gulf, he could see the Cafala Bahr where it was moored. Only five days of meeting with the board and entertaining potential clients left before he could step aboard one of his tenders, which would shuttle him out to Ibn Tamiyyah, his boat’s true name. Then it would be off to the Malay Peninsula for the next month.

As he watched his yacht rocking in the water, his mind returned to the meeting he’d had last month with Mousavi and Kamal. His business, both the energy work in public and the freedom-fighting work in private, was all about relationships. He was a people person, and he drew other people to himself. Over the years he’d become a good judge of character. He knew whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t. From the first meeting he could tell who had the skills to get the job done and who would flounder.