“Why doesn’t he just ask him?” the Scorpion said and the three men laughed loudly enough to attract attention from the next table where an Iraqi businessman had been bragging about the new Japanese TV he had bought for his son’s Pontiac Firebird, and shooting his cuffs so that no one could miss his gold Piaget watch. The joke, of course, was that Arabic was a language of implications and ambiguities and truth could only be approached obliquely. In intelligence matters, it was even worse. In their world, no one ever said anything straight out. The Scorpion remembered a classic line religiously recited to all the CTP recruits at the Farm: “Complete paranoids would make good agents if they weren’t so trusting.”

“Very good … why not just ask him?” al-Amir snickered.

“You see … it’s more than just the blonde. P-p-pepper on a hen’s belly … that’s all that is,” Braithwaite said, his false teeth clicking like a geiger counter. Like most old desert rats, he had more than a touch of the Puritan in him. That’s why when Lowell Thomas had once asked T. E. Lawrence why he liked the desert, Lawrence had replied: “Because it’s clean.”

“Not for her,” the Scorpion said. Braithwaite looked at him blankly, his face ridged with seams like a radial tire. The British SIS must have been really desperate to bring the old retread out, the Scorpion thought. He hadn’t been in Bahrain two hours and the needle was already in the red zone.

“I suppose not,” Braithwaite said at last. When he picked up his glass again, his hand was shaking. He quickly put the glass down and pulled the offending hand out of sight.

“What about the girl?” the Scorpion asked. Al-Amir sighed and fingered his beads.

“T-t-tummy friction, that’s all … rub, rub … pepper on a hen’s belly,” Braithwaite shrugged, trying to smile like a man of the world. Something was frightening him all right, the Scorpion decided.

“Nuruddin,” al-Amir said, dropping the name like an Alka Seltzer tablet into water, then he sat back waiting for it to fizz.

“Big man … import-export … knows everyone. His daughter is married to Sheikh al-Khatifa’s nephew,” Braithwaite said, rubbing his thumb against his fingers in the universal sign for money.

The Scorpion nodded grimly. So that’s what happened to the girl, he thought. Import-export was the classic cover in ports like Bahrain for illegal smuggling. Except that with his money and connections, this Nuruddin probably could have taken her off the plane with a brass band playing. No wonder Braithwaite was scared.