“Now shut up and listen. Your primary objective is the Salimah oil fields in Egypt, not to obliterate Cairo or Tel Aviv. Your job is to keep on moving your troops to Sudan, keep their readiness high, and keep on putting pressure on the Egyptian forces opposing yours without starting a shooting conflict yourself. If they are stupid enough to attack, you can simply walk in and wipe them up. Until then, I will continue to push the Central African Petroleum Partners to accept Libya and Metyorgaz as a partner, help develop some of your oil resources, and break the embargo on oil exports from Libya to Europe.”

“I do not understand,” Zuwayy said, hopelessly confused. “Why don’t we just go in, invade Egypt, and take the oil fields ourselves? No one will oppose us.”

“You idiot, everyone will oppose us,” Kazakov said. “No one will intervene, but we will be drowning in oil because no one will buy what we are pumping, not even on the black market. Besides, if you invade, Central African Petroleum Partners will pull out, and neither you nor I have the money right now to build a thousand-kilometer-long pipeline across the Sahara Desert. We want the pipeline in place and operating before we take over.”

“In the meantime, you sit safe and sound in hiding while American commandos destroy my military base,” Zuwayy cried. “What am I supposed to do—hold my breath until the poison gas dissipates?”

Kazakov thought for a moment while he watched the former Russian army major Vasilyeva move as she straightened up his desk. She was like a tiger stepping soundlessly through the jungle hunting its prey, every movement graceful and with complete economy. She sensed him looking at her, turned her head to him, smiled, then turned her body so he could see her breasts, squeezing them together with her arms the way he liked to do.

He suddenly realized he had spent too much time with this Libyan popinjay.

“I don’t give a shit what you do,” Kazakov said. “Someone just invaded your country—it seems like the perfect time to do just about anything you wish to do. Use your armed forces, track those commandos down—you know they’re not going to walk out of the damned desert, so track their aircraft down—and then destroy whatever base they came from with everything you’ve got. You’ll be totally justified in whatever action you take—and you might even earn a bit of respect from your enemies. Now, stop bothering me—and you place those missiles where I tell you to place them, or the next biochem warhead you hear about will be falling on your head.” He slammed the phone down so hard, his teacup rattled in its saucer.