SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Tall and angular, with close-set eyes, a nose that dominated his long face, a ratty beard that obscured his chin, and a white turban wound atop his head, Ahmed heard it all the time: he looked like a young Osama bin Laden.
He took it as a compliment. Many of the people who said it were admirers of bin Laden, even if they’d be careful around whom they’d admit that. They’d considered bin Laden a brave leader, even if they hadn’t agreed with his ultimate tactics. Nothing wrong with being compared to someone like that.
Also, bin Laden had enjoyed the company of many wives. Ahmed wouldn’t mind that part a bit. He didn’t even have one.
He leaned back at his desk. People often thought men like Ahmed didn’t have desks, that they spent their lives out crawling around in the sand like some oversized scarab beetle. But no, he had a desk and an office. It was a large office, with plenty of room for a television that he kept tuned to Al Jazeera and for the prayer mat that he reverently unrolled five times daily and turned in the direction of Mecca.
The room was located in a building that was older than Ahmed’s great-great-grandfather, within a walled compound that had been in Ahmed’s family for many generations before that.
It did not look like much now, he knew. Long ago, Ahmed’s family owned all the land around it, giving the compound the look of an estate. But slowly, through the generations, his forefathers had sliced off one piece of land after another, until only a handful of acres were left. The area, which had once been rural, had slowly been developed until now it was a densely packed residential neighborhood. The compound was fronted by a narrow street that carried its share of traffic. Unremarkable houses, far younger than the one Ahmed sat in, ringed it on all sides.
Had any of his neighbors been asked, they would have said that Ahmed was a quiet businessman who mostly kept to himself.
They might have said they found the razor wire atop those walls to be a bit excessive, not that Ahmed was particularly interested in their opinions on the subject. They certainly wouldn’t have known about the fully automatic rifles he kept at the ready. Or the men he hired to wield them. Or the things he asked those men to do with them. The guns would not have been in keeping with his businessman persona.
That was part of what the walls helped hide. Ahmed loved those walls for that reason and for others. The walls were what turned his house into a sanctuary. They had protected his great-great-grandfather and all the men in his family who had come since. Whatever havoc was going on in the world around him, the compound — its buildings and its land — could be protected.
And there had long been havoc here. This part of the world was called the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization. Many, many generations before, Ahmed’s ancestors had been among the first humans to form sedentary agricultural settlements, domesticate animals, and cultivate grains. They made calendars by tracking the waxing and waning of the moon, learned to predict the floods of the mighty rivers, built trenches to irrigate their crops, made the land into something valuable.
And then they started fighting over it — and had been doing so ever since.
Ahmed’s family had gotten out of the farming business long ago. There were better ways to make money. The land and climate had changed much. The Fertile Crescent was not as fertile as it had once been.
And yet still people fought over it. They fought because of religion, because the old maps had different lines on them than the current maps did, because new factions took over governments and used their power to make life miserable for old factions.
Ahmed was no mere bystander in these battles, of course. Far from it. War. Chaos. Confusion. These things were all good for Ahmed. If people in this part of the world ever stopped beating their plowshares into swords, it might be trouble for Ahmed. He was one with the sword-bearers. The peace that do-gooders kept thinking they could bring to the Middle East did not interest Ahmed in the slightest.
There was a knock at his door.
“Come in,” Ahmed said at the start of a conversation that would take place in Arabic, both men’s native tongue.
A young man with a long beard and a turban that matched Ahmed’s entered the room. “We have the promethium secured,” he said.
“Excellent. It is shielded, yes? I don’t want my men getting sick from radiation poisoning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much did it end up being?”
“Three hundred and eighty-two pounds,” he said.
Ahmed’s eyes went wide. “You’re sure? That’s more than I was anticipating.”
“I saw it register on the scale myself.”
“And it is pure, yes? As pure as the other shipments?”
“Absolutely.”
Ahmed smiled and leaned back. “Three hundred and eighty-two pounds of pure promethium. Praise be to Allah. The best yet. This will be good for us all.”
“Praise be to Allah,” the man replied.
“You may go now.”
The young man complied with the order. Ahmed picked up the phone. There was much to be done.