It felt all wrong, but he didn’t know where the problem was. Everything was too straightforward, too convenient. The girl, the assassination attempt and his enemy, Bandar, all here in one place. And the eunuch dead and the ambushes a failure, so Abdul Sa’ad knew he was here and that he knew about the coup, yet did nothing, leaving Bandar and the girl in the open for him to get at them. The path to the target was straight ahead, the gate left open and inviting. It was all there, but where was the mistake? What was it Macready had learned that made it essential to eliminate him, the Scorpion wondered.

“Forget Macready. The whole ball game depends on you being able to stop the hit,” Harris snapped.

“Where was Macready hit? How’d it happen?” the Scorpion insisted. There was a key there somewhere. There had to be. He owed Macready that much, remembering George and his Vietnamese girl inviting him over for lemon chicken dinner at their little apartment around the corner from the Caravelle. All of them high on 33-beer and Buddha grass and singing “FTA.” Fuck the Army, celebrating because George had managed to postpone getting DEROS’d back to the States so he could stay with—what was her name, anyway?—and in the distance they could hear the soft thumping of Delta Tango rounds fired into the bush, but so far away it could have been the beat of a rock band.

“What difference does it make? Listen—” Harris said, waving his hand as if to brush away a fly.

Suddenly, the Scorpion grabbed Harris by his ascot and lifted him off the ground. “It makes a difference to me. Where was George when the bomb went off, goddamit?” he demanded.

“In his—car—the Corniche—it exploded—a grenade tossed in the window—motorcycle—no ID,” Harris managed to gasp.

“Which way was the car headed? North or south?”

“I don’t know! South! … Jesus,” Harris shouted.

The Scorpion shoved Harris back into the chair. Harris winced and rubbed his neck reproachfully. But the Scorpion ignored him, for a moment staring blankly at the tent wall.

“Jeez, if I’d known it was that important …” Harris began.

“South … back towards the airport. But he had just come from the airport. He’d just returned from Riyadh. And he left no message, right?” the Scorpion asked, looking at Harris.

Harris nodded slowly. Comprehension dawned in his eyes. The Scorpion was obviously onto something.

“That meant he wasn’t about to take a flight out, or he would have signaled. He had to—he was my case officer. He wouldn’t have just gone off. Not with the whole damn Indian Ocean fleet, the RDF and the Marines waiting somewhere offshore.

“And it wasn’t to send a signal either. He’d have gone either to the embassy or the safe house for that, even if security had been breached,” the Scorpion said.