In fact, they would continue to act in his name. If they followed Virlomi’s plans, if her insane invasion went forward, then Alai would know they were with her.

When they were in the air—having waited for ordinary permission from the controllers—Ivan’s man came back and stood diffidently two meters away.

“My Caliph, if I may ask?”

Alai nodded.

“How did he die?”

“He was busy shooting the guards surrounding me. He got two of them before they cut him down. I used his weapon to kill the others. Including Alamandar. Do you know how far the conspiracy went?”

“No sir,” said the man. “We only knew that you would be killed on the airplane to Damascus.”

“And this airplane? Where is it taking me?”

“It has a very long range, sir,” said the man. “Where will you feel safe?”

Petra’s mother was tending the babies while Petra and Bean oversaw the last preparations for the opening of hostilities. Peter’s message had been terse: How busy can you keep the Turks, while watching out for Russians in the rear?

Turks and Russians allies, or potentially so. What game was Alai playing? Was Vlad in it? Trust Peter not to share any more information than he thought he had to—which was invariably less than other people actually needed.

Still, she and Bean had been spending every spare moment working out ways, using limited, undertrained, and underequipped Armenian forces to cause maximum disruption.

A raid on the most highly visible Turkish target, Istanbul, would enrage them without accomplishing anything.

Blocking the Dardanelles would be a harsh blow against all the Turks, but there was no way to project that much force from Armenia to the western shore of the Black Sea, and maintain it.

Oh, for the days when oil was strategically important! Back then, the Russian, Azerbaijani, and Persian wells in the Caspian would have been a prime target for disruption.

But now the wells had all been dismantled, and the Caspian was mostly used as a source of water, which was desalinated and pumped over to irrigate fields around the Aral Sea, with the runoff being used to replenish that once-dying lake. And to strike at the water pipeline would impoverish poor farmers without affecting the enemy’s ability to wage war.

The plan they finally came up with was simple enough, once you bought the concept. “There’s no way to strike the Turks directly,” said Bean. “Nothing is centralized. So we’ll strike Iran. It’s highly urbanized, the big cities are all in the northwest, and there’ll be an immediate demand for Iranian troops to come home from India to fight us. The Turks will be under pressure to help, and when they launch a very badly planned attack against Armenia, we’ll be waiting.”

“What makes you think it will be badly planned?” Petra asked.

“Because Alai isn’t running the show on the Muslim side.”

“When did this happen?”

“If Alai were in control,” said Bean, “he wouldn’t let Virlomi do what she’s doing in India. It’s too stupid and it will kill too many men. So…somehow he’s lost control. And if that’s the case, the Muslim enemy we’re facing is incompetent and fanatic. They’re acting out of anger and panic, with poor planning.”