The Scorpion would have recognized Bandar anywhere, even after all these years. Bandar’s bad eye was white as a statue’s; it had no iris, no center. His moustache was ragged and he needed a shave. He would always need a shave. His lower lip had a hungry droop to it, as if he had swallowed something dark and squashy. He looked at the Scorpion with a kind of triumphant hatred. If a spider had a face, it would have an expression like Bandar’s as it prepared to devour a fly.

The others in the limo weren’t that pretty either. One of Abdul Sa’ad’s soldiers, a man with an ugly harelip, sat next to the driver, who glanced with frank curiosity at the Scorpion in the rear-view mirror. After all, it is always interesting to observe the face of a man about to die.

Braithwaite, on the other hand, was positively beaming. He seemed a lot younger. Then the Scorpion realized that Braithwaite had dyed his hair jet black. It made him look like one of those aging Lotharios at singles bars trying to charm sweet young things with hints of convertibles and condominiums and trips to places with palm trees on the brochures.

The Scorpion glanced out of the window. The sun was high and there were no shadows cast by the distant Jabal Tuwaiq. The yellow desert was empty and still. A telephone line ran alongside the road. The line drooped in long valleys between the widely separated metal telephone poles. He watched the wire rising and falling like the sea as they rode along.

“So it was a snatch, not a hit,” the Scorpion said, the metallic taste of failure in his throat somehow more bitter than the knowledge that he was about to die. They just wanted to do it where it would be more convenient.

“Q-q-quite. The assassination was a r-r-red herring all along,” Braithwaite cheerfully agreed.

“Oh Ralph, what you did for love,” the Scorpion sighed.

Braithwaite smiled.

“Is this Amair?” the Scorpion asked, glancing sideways at the sullen-faced Shiite with the Walther.

“All in g-g-good t-time, you rogue,” Braithwaite smiled, batting his eyelashes like an ingénue.

“Just out of curiosity, who did I kill?” the Scorpion asked.

“No one important. Just one of Abdul Sa’ad’s men who had no idea what he was volunteering for,” Braithwaite replied, airily gesturing as if to brush aside a cobweb.

“We switched at the start of the race. That’s why we were off so late. The prince said you would not suspect and he was right. Where is your sting now, O Scorpion?” Bandar mocked in a harsh guttural voice. His smile revealed brown and broken teeth, like stained and tilted gravestones in an old church cemetery.

“You’re still the same charmer you always were, Bandar,” the Scorpion observed mildly.

Bandar’s face tightened like a fist. He slapped the Scorpion viciously across the lips.