When it comes to business, the Americans are children compared to Arabs, the Scorpion thought and nodded at Braithwaite, who had motioned for him to come over. Braithwaite was sitting with a Bahraini in a white thaub and kaffiyeh, who sipped coffee and calmly fingered his prayer beads.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr.—” Braithwaite called.

“Shaw,” the Scorpion said quickly, supplying the name on the passport Harris had given him. In all the world, Braithwaite was the only man outside the Company who knew his real name and the last thing the Scorpion wanted was to hear it pronounced in a public place.

“Ah yes, Shaw,” Braithwaite smiled wickedly, his red alcoholic’s face breaking into a spider’s web of seams and wrinkles.

Braithwaite was tall and thin, his dark eyes beginning to blear with age, yet still retaining a keen, if sardonic, intelligence. He was wearing a loud yellow sportshirt from God knows where, open at the neck to reveal a scrawny gray tuft of chest hair, like a half-plucked chicken breast. He looked like one of those windy old farts who inhabit retirement homes and golf-club bars, but in fact, he was the last of the old British Arabists. His reminiscences were filled with names like C. M. Doughty, Wilfred Thesiger, T. E. Lawrence, John Glubb Pasha and Philby. “Old St. John Philby, not that young snake, Kim,” Braithwaite would stipulate. Once, when the Scorpion was still a boy living with the Mutayr, he had gone with Youssef on his first camel trek in the Nefud desert. They had become lost trying to find Wadi er Rumna and it was Braithwaite who rode out from Buraida and found them down to the last drops in their water bags.

“Sit down lad, sit down. It’s been … ages … simply ages since we d-d-dipped a beak, eh?” Braithwaite said.

“It’s been a while,” the Scorpion admitted. Braithwaite hadn’t changed. The old stutter was still there. As for the Bahraini, he had the smell of cop about him, as unmistakable as the scent of aftershave lotion, and the Scorpion was instantly on guard.

“Sorry … Shaw, this is Jassim al-Amir,” Braithwaite said.

“Salaam aleikem,” al-Amir murmured with a nod.

“Aleikem es-Salaam,” the Scorpion replied.

“Heard you were over in Vietnam,” Braithwaite said.

“Ancient history,” the Scorpion replied.

“How was it?” al-Amir asked, his eyes bright with curiosity. Say what you will, there was something about a war in an exotic place that fascinated men who had to get it second hand, the Scorpion mused.

“It just was,” the Scorpion shrugged. What was there to say?

“Not like the old d-d-days in the Ikhwan, eh?” Braithwaite said, rubbing his hands as he prepared to launch into one of those long reminiscences of tribal warfare that would end with the story of how he had convinced King Abd al Aziz to allow SOCAL into Arabia and never saw a penny of it.