He could see them clearly through the binoculars. Prince Abdul Sa’ad and Nuruddin, whom Braithwaite had described to him, and several others were politely drinking coffee from a copper pot gleaming in the firelight. They were engaged in intense conversation and he’d have traded his Swiss account for a bug that would let him hear what they were saying. But he was too far away. No sound reached him on the faint sea breeze which carried only the salt tang of the sea, smoke from the kilns and the medicinal scent of the eucalyptus trees from the direction of the beach reclamation project. In the distance he could make out the shadowy forms of a small herd of wild camels grazing among the mounds. There was a vast sense of desolation, of endless vistas of sand and ancient tombs. It was as if Bahrain was the center of the desert, instead of a sandy dagger-shaped island barely ten miles wide and twice as long.

He considered moving closer, but that was too dangerous, even with the cover provided by the black bisht he wore over western clothes. The area was heavily patrolled by armed tribesmen and it hadn’t been easy to slip through. The fact that they felt they needed armed guards instead of retainers disturbed him. Were the guards there to protect them from prying eyes, or from each other, he wondered. Then too, he pondered why they hadn’t had the meeting in Nuruddin’s house, or some other private place. That bothered him. They had gone to far too much trouble if what they were doing was merely business, or even criminal. Their connections made them virtually immune from any charges, he reflected. So it could only be political.

He pulled the Nikon F3 camera with the special 1.2 lens from his robe and began to snap photos of the men around the campfire. He took his time and made sure of telephoto close-ups of all of them. One of them wore a lightweight suit and looked like a Latin, which seemed wildly preposterous. Another wore the shirtlike fuuta of a Yemeni, a boomerang-shaped jambiyya dagger at his waist. His cheek bulged like a chipmunk with a wad of khat leaves. What the hell would a Saudi prince be doing with a Latin and a social inferior like a Yemeni? he wondered. Well, he would send the film to Macready and maybe George could ID them. The important thing was that he had verified a close link between Abdul Sa’ad and Nuruddin. Assuming—and that’s a hell of an assumption, habibi—that Nuruddin had sold the girl to Abdul Sa’ad, who liked his blondes, he could try to pick up the trail in Riyadh.