Like the Scorpion, Bandar also wore an ancient musket slung across his back. Except that the Scorpion was willing to bet that the guts of the musket weren’t ancient at all, and that like the Scorpion’s musket, it was loaded and ready to fire.

Ever since the eunuch had confirmed that Bandar would be the assassin, the Scorpion had operated on the hunch that it would happen just that way. A planted bomb under the royal reviewing stand would have been found beforehand by one of the king’s own security people. A car bomb was too uncertain. Besides, the Royal Guardsmen were all Bedu, excellent shots and likely to be able to shoot a driver before he came close enough. And even if he did and the bomb exploded, it was too messy. It might miss King Salim and it might get Prince Abdul Sa’ad.

The possibility of a number of Saudi soldiers suddenly turning their automatic weapons on the king had to be dismissed, not because it was impossible, but because in the Byzantine atmosphere of the royal court, with intrigue and counterplot as a daily occurrence, there was little likelihood of Abdul Sa’ad training a group of soldiers to kill the king, not one of whom would betray the plot.

That left the single assassin with a high-powered rifle approach. The classic method and most difficult to stop. Again, the approach and the getaway were the key problems. The added factor was Bandar himself. Both his skill as a marksman, and his vanity in that skill, had to be taken into account. And so, the assassination method had suggested itself to the Scorpion with breathtaking simplicity.

As Bandar raced past the royal reviewing stand at the finish line, he would unsling his presumably decorative—but actually deadly—musket and fire at the king before any of the guards could react. The getaway would be equally simple. Bandar would just sweep past on his camel and continue racing to a getaway vehicle, army helicopter, or whatever Abdul Sa’ad had arranged, before anyone could mount a pursuit.

The Scorpion’s own plan to stop the assassination was equally simple. He had to wait till the attempt was already under way, so that it would be too late to put some alternative backup plan into effect. He would have to shoot Bandar at precisely the right instant. Too late and the king would be dead. Too soon and he himself would surely be shot down by the king’s security forces mistaking him for an assassin and Abdul Sa’ad might yet go to a back-up method. So he would have to shoot Bandar just before Bandar himself was to fire.

The only difficulty he faced was the same one Bandar faced, the trickiness of an accurate shot while riding a camel at full gallop.

Youssef slipped under the camel’s belly and stood next to the Scorpion.