“Find out... find out..

“Find out what, Highness?”

“Find out where the prisoners that were captured off the vessels sunk in the Mediterranean are,” Zuwayy gasped, blood flowing from his mouth and shattered nose. “Find them all, alive or dead; round them up, and get them ready to move out of the country. Truck them... no, bus them ... no, fly them ... oh hell, just get them out of my country immediately! I don’t want one hair on their heads touched. Contact that peacock Khan in Egypt and tell him to get ready to pick up those prisoners.”

“Prisoners? Khan? Who did this to you, sir .. . ?”

“Just do it,” Zuwayy cried, spitting blood. Mekkawi helped him up. “Do it now!” Zuwayy found a liquor bottle, poured, and downed a glass, his hands shaking uncontrollably.

AKRANES, ICELAND
 A SHORT TIME LATER

“What in hell is going on out there, Zuwayy?” Pavel Kazakov asked angrily on the secure phone. This time, Kazakov put the call on the speakerphone, so his aide Ivana Vasilyeva could hear how the great “king” of Libya bleated and whined like a sheep being led to slaughter. Kazakov knew how Vasilyeva, a former commando and trained intelligence officer in the Russian army, hated weak men— Jadallah Zuwayy, the man who claimed to be a descendant of Arab kings, would infuriate her. “Why are you calling me now?”

“Hey, Kazakov, this was your idea to begin with!” Jadallah Zuwayy retorted. “This is your fault!”

“My fault?”

“It was your suggestion to retaliate against the commandos that attacked Samah,” Zuwayy said. “That’s what I did. They somehow found out where I was, broke into my sanctuary, and threatened to kill me! He smashed my nose! He threatened to kill me, my entire family, break into my computers, and destroy my military bases.”

“They sound like extremely powerful, efficient, and well-informed commandos,” Kazakov commented dryly. I could use an entire battalion of them, he said to himself. Something that Zuwayy said nagged at his brain.. . . “Or your soldiers need more security training.”

“How could he have found out where I was? That information is top secret!”

“Zuwayy, the entire world knows about your pleasure palace in Jaghbub,” Kazakov said. “They know that it is the entrance to your escape route if there is ever a coup against you; they know it is where you bring young girls for whatever perverted pleasure you get out of screwing children. Besides, Jaghbub is less than forty kilometers from the Egyptian border—any good special-operations team can get in and out of the area in mere hours. You ought to try a security back-trace on yourself some time, Zuwayy—you might be surprised to learn some of the things anyone can find out about you if they tried.”

“This is outrageous!”