Svetlov nodded. Check and mate, he thought, watching Suvarov develop a sudden intense interest in his fingernails. Fyedorenko had recovered beautifully.

As for this Scorpion, Svetlov mused, he was as good as dead.

Doha

Doha

SOMETHING IN THE PATTERN didn’t fit. It was like one of those puzzles where you have to find the images of animals hidden in the illustrated foliage.

Macready was right on time, carrying a copy of the Gulf Times folded under his left arm to signal a clear approach. He should have been able to just walk up and join him at the Juice House bar, but still the Scorpion held back. Everything was just as it should be, but there was danger hidden somewhere. The animal in the foliage. He carefully and methodically checked the rendezvous again.

Shiny Buicks and Cadillacs were parked outside the row of Juice Houses, each painted a different color of the rainbow. The cars were filled with young Qataris in jeans and punk T-shirts, sullenly sipping the milky juice made of fruit, sugar, powdered milk and ice pulverized in a blender, to which some of the bolder blades added a shot of illicit gin. Their eyes smoldered dangerously, yet futilely, in this womanless world, money burning in their pockets and no place to spend it.

Cars roared along the Corniche, skimming through the shimmering Gulf heat like brightly painted water bugs. Dhows and yachts crowded the distant harbor, their reflections perfectly mirrored in the clear still water. The mud huts which used to cluster along the quays were gone. Instead, white concrete and cinder-block buildings lined the waterfront. The rectangular National Monetary Agency Building, its glass turned to gold in the late afternoon sun, towered over the shops and cafés along the Corniche. Offshore, the oil rigs which had changed everything dotted the horizon like steel islands. Only the rancid mud smell from the fishing quays and El Khalij, the clear green Gulf itself, were as the Scorpion remembered them.

Macready sat at the bar of the Sphinx Juice House, meticulously chewing a deep-fried Palace bread roll. His every movement was deliberate and slow, almost ritualized, as if to slice time into smaller chunks of boredom. He stared without seeing at the big yellow sign that gave the Juice House its name. The lopsided face of the Sphinx on the sign looked like an unhappy beagle, as if it had been painted by a faintly disturbed first-grader.

Macready sighed and took another slow bite. That had changed, the Scorpion thought. He remembered Macready’s restlessness in Saigon, his foot always tapping, his eyes always darting about as if wanting to dash around the next corner. He had put on a lot of weight, too. His lightweight linen suit stretched in tight folds across his sagging belly. Maybe it was the hurt look in Macready’s eyes that made him nervous, the Scorpion thought.