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  The body was then placed behind the wheel of a rented car, whose backdated papers would prove the ambassador had rented it the day he disappeared. The car was rammed into a soft barrier at sixty-two miles an hour-enough to put the ambassador's bloodless face through the windshield and create convincing scars.

  The body was then extracted and cured in a water tank until the soft tissues turned puffy and gray from immersion. When the stomach became bloated from expanding intestinal gases to the equivalent of a third-trimester pregnancy, Ambassador Turqi Abaatira was pronounced "processed."

  The car was then transported by car carrier to a sheltered section of Boiling Air Force Base and pushed into the river.

  The CIA agent whose responsibility it was to "process" the ambassador's body watched the bubbles rising from the sinking car. When the last bubble blurped to the surface, he found a pay phone, where he made a call to the D.C. police.

  The police, unaware that they had been set up to add credence to the story, dutifully investigated. Divers were sent in. A wrecker was called. And the body was extracted by paramedics who took one look at the puffy wormlike face and fingers and pronounced the body deceased.

  The same medical examiner who had pronounced the ambassador dead of strangulation two days later went through the motions of a new autopsy. This time he certified the cause of death as drowning.

  He didn't question the procedure. He understood the sensitivity that usually surrounded a diplomat's death, and had done this before.

  More important, he had a son stationed in Hamidi Arabia whom he would like to see rotated back to the States alive when his tour was up.

  Ambassador Abaatira's body, along with the falsified autopsy report, was released to a tearful Iraiti embassy staff. Word was cabled to Abominadad.

  A long silence followed.

  When instructions finally came back from the Iraiti Foreign Ministry, they were terse: "SEND BODY HOME."

  Since the national airline of Irait was forbidden to overfly every country except Libya and Cuba, the body had to be flown to Havana, where an Air Irait civilian plane ferried Ambassador Turqi Abaatira on his last voyage.

  At Langley, the CIA congratulated themselves on a cover-up well done.

  At Maddas International Airport, Kimberly Baynes, wearing an all-concealing black abayuh, waited patiently for the body to arrive. She mingled with the tearful family of the ambassador, out of sight of President Maddas Hinsein and his escort, indistinguishable from the other women beneath her black veil. A national day of mourning had been announced. Flags drooped at half-mast all over the airport.

  The plane touched down. The women threw back their heads and gave vent to mournful ululations of grief.

  Unseen, Kimberly Baynes slipped from the passengers' waiting area to the cargo-receiving terminal.

  In her black native costume, she lurked in the shadows as the polished mahogany coffin was hoisted onto a toiling conveyor belt and carried down to waiting baggage handlers.

  The handlers lugged the coffin to a waiting baggage truck.

  Five minutes passed while the driver of the truck finished a cup of bitter chicory coffee-the only kind available in sanction-strangled Irait.

  In those five minutes, Kimberly Baynes slipped up to the coffin and unlatched the lid. Lifting it with both hands, she held it aloft while a second pair reached through slits in the abayuh to twist a long yellow silk rumal around the dead ambassador's puffy, discolored neck.

  She pulled it tight.

  No, tighter, a voice from deep within her urged. The same voice that had guided her through her days in Irait, imparting secrets and hidden knowledge and even teaching her Arabic in a way she could not understand.

  "But he's dead. O mistress," Kimberly whispered.

  His soul is not dead. Make it scream.

  Kimberly threw herself into it. She pulled the rumal tighter and tighter with relish. The ambassdor's mouth actually fell open. With two fingers, she reached in and pulled out his long, discolored tongue. It looked like a short black tie hanging down his chin.

  As a last gesture, she plucked his eyelids up. They had been sealed shut with spirit gum.

  The Iraiti ambassador's fixed eyes held the same expression of horror that they had when Kimberly last saw him.

  "It is done," Kimberly said, sealing the lid.

  Excellent, my vessel. The tyrant Maddas cannot ignore this provocation.

  "I am glad you approve, my lady."

  I do. The tongue was a nice touch too.

  Chapter 41

  The Army Corps of Engineers had already unloaded their earth-moving equipment when the army helicopter deposited Harold Smith in the fenced-off desert outside of Palm Springs, California.

  A balding young lieutenant was running a Geiger counter around a crater that resembled a fused sinkhole of blackened glass, getting only a desultory clicking for his trouble.

  "I am Colonel Smith," Harold Smith said, adjusting the collar of the old khaki uniform that had hung in his attic.

  "Lieutenant Latham," the young man said, shutting off the machine and returning Smith's handshake. "Background radiation is normal, sir."

  "I understood that. Are you ready to begin excavation?"

  "We've been waiting for your arrival."

  "MAC flights are hard to come by these days. Since Kuran."

  "Tell me about it. Let me show you the size of the nut we have to crack."

  They walked across the brittle glass. It gave under their feet with a crunching like a shattered but intact windshield of safety glass. Where the heavy equipment was, uniformed engineers clustered around a huge cap of concrete half-smothered by windblown sand. It resembled an ugly gray plug. Soldiers were sweeping the flat surface free of sand.

  "I say we dynamite the sucker," Lieutenant Latham suggested. "Shaped demo charges should lift this stuff clean off."

  "You will not use dynamite," Harold Smith said tightly.

  The huddle of engineers turned at the sharp sound of Smith's voice.

  "I'm the demolition expert," one said. "You must be Colonel Smith."

  "I am, and you will use jackhammers."

  "Begging your pardon, Colonel. But we're looking at a two-hundred-foot tube in which maybe ten tons of concrete has been poured. It will take forever to jackhammer it all loose."

  "We do not have forever, and you will extract the concrete with jackhammers."

  The no-nonsense tone of the colonel's voice settled the matter. That, and his credentials. The army team thought Smith had been sent there by the Pentagon. The Pentagon thought he was on loan from the CIA. The CIA had been instructed by the White House to go along with the cover story.

  "Okay," the lieutenant called out. "You heard the colonel. Let's unload those jackhammers."

  They set to work. It was dawn. By evening, under Smith's expert guidance, they had made mounds of chunky concrete and opened a broken hole into the great well.

  Smith approached. He was in his shirtsleeves, having aided in the lugging of concrete. His joints ached.

  "What the hell is this thing anyway?" Lieutenant Latham wondered as he wiped smeared sweat off his face.

  "The developer called it a Condome," Smith said, looking down an exposed flight of stairs.

  "Excuse me, sir?"

  "A Condome," Smith repeated. "A kind of underground condominium. It was intended to open up the desert to condominium development. In effect we are standing on a high-rise apartment building sunk into the sand."

  "Sounds goofy to me."

  "The accidental detonation of a neutron bomb ended the project," Smith said.

  "That I read about." The lieutenant looked down. "Do you mean to say, Colonel, that these steps lead twenty-eight floors underground?"

  Smith nodded. "I will go first," he said.

  Accepting a flashlight, Smith went down. It was like walking into a cave with stairs. After descending two flights, it became no different than walking down the fire stairs of a skyscraper during
a blackout. The undesertlike humidity was oppressive, but it was cool. Cool, Smith thought mordantly, as a tomb.

  Spraying his flashlight beam in all directions, Lieutenant Latham piped up behind Smith.

  "Is what we're looking for classified?" he asked.

  "Specifically, yes. Generally, no."

  Latham had to think about that a minute.

  "Generally speaking, Colonel, will we know it when we see it? I mean, what should we be looking for?"

  "A corpse."

  "Oh." The lieutenant's tone implied: I don't like this.

  Down and down they went, until the air was close and suffocating. The fire doors, when they had descended five floors, were impossible to open. The concrete had flooded deep. The air thickened with moisture content. Men began coughing. The echoes were comfortless.

  Seven floors down, it was like breathing pond scum. Each floor below that was worse. They were able to work the doors open starting ten floors down. Then the search began in earnest through a manmade labyrinth of empty rooms and foul air.

  Each successive floor gave up nothing larger than the occasional dead scorpion.

  Finally, midway down the twentieth floor below ground, the cracked concrete stairs disappeared into tea-colored standing water.

  "I guess this is as far as we go," Lieutenant Latham muttered. "Sorry, Colonel."

  Harold Smith stood regarding the standing water, his flashlight darting this way and that.

  "Divers," he whispered.

  "What?"

  Smith's white-haired head snapped around. His voice was charged with urgency. "I want a naval recovery team brought to this site."

  "We can do that," Lieutenant Latham said. "Take some doing, but it's possible."

  "Now!" Smith snapped.

  "What's the rush? If your dead guy's down there, he's been dead a long time."

  "Instantly," Smith repeated.

  And to a man, the engineering team turned and marched double-time back up the long flights of stairs to the breathable air of the surface.

  Smith remained, staring into the water.

  "Yes," he said slowly. "This is where he would have gone when the neutron bomb detonated. Water is a perfect shield against radiation. Yes."

  Smith returned to the surface, where he dug his briefcase from the waiting helicopter. Sheltered from the others, who were working a mobile radio, he logged onto the CURE computers back at Folcroft.

  The situation was deteriorating, he saw from the early reports.

  The body of Ambassador Abaatira had arrived in Abominadad. Under the glare of TV cameras, President Maddas Hinsein had thrown open the casket. And had immediately thrown up at the sight of the bloated dead face with its blackened tongue and bright yellow ligature tied so tightly about the throat that the term "pencil-necked geek" fitted Ambassador Abaatira to a T.

  The TV transmission had gone dead. Only silence, brooding and portentous, had come out of Abominadad ever since.

  Meanwhile, a "peace offering" had been shipped to Nehmad, where the sheik himself had opened the long ornate box to find his only son, Abdul Fareem, strangled, his bloated body desecrated by a yellow silk scarf that seemed to have caused his liverlike tongue to disgorge in death.

  Although the sheik had made a public pronouncement that his worthless son was better off dead, he was privately calling for a strike against Abominadad. Washington was resisting. War was near-nearer than it had been at any time.

  And the master plan of Kali became clear to Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  "She's trying to egg both sides into conflict," he said.

  A cold lump of something indescribable settled into his sour stomach.

  It was pure, unadulterated fear.

  Chapter 42

  "You know what you must do." Kimberly Baynes said in a breathy voice.

  "I do not know what more I can do." Maddas Hinsein insisted sullenly. "I have done all you asked me. I have attacked the front lines. There is no reply. The U.S. does not want war. I have sent the fat prince's body to his father, the sheik. He makes light of this provocation. The Hamidis do not want war. I do not want war. I have Kuran. I need only wait out the sanctions and I will have won. There."

  Defiantly he folded his thick arms. His lips compressed until they were swallowed by his gathering mustache. They lay on a bed of nails in the private torture chamber of Maddas Hinsein, where no one would bother them. They had laid plywood over the nails.

  "They dared return your beloved ambassador with the American symbol around his throat," Kimberly said. "You can't ignore that."

  "There are other ambassadors," Maddas growled. "Ambassadors are more expendable than soldiers."

  "You must answer this provocation."

  "How?"

  "I think you know what you must do."

  "Yes, I know," he said, suddenly sitting up. "Let us have sex. True sex. We have not had sex together yet. Just spankings."

  Kimberly turned away. "I am the bride of Shiva. I mate only with Shiva."

  "Who is this Shiva?" Maddas Hinsein demanded roughly.

  "A great being known as the Triple World Ender because he is ordained to dance heaven, hell, and earth into nothingness under his remorseless feet."

  "I believe only in Maddas Hinsein and Allah. In that order. Sometimes in the Prophet Mohammed, when it suits me. Did I tell you he came to me in a dream?"

  Interest lighted Kimberly's fair face. "What did he say?"

  "He said I had screwed up. His exact words. That is why I do not always believe in the Prophet. The true Mohammed would never speak such words to the Scimitar of the Arabs."

  "What do I do with you?" Kimberly Baynes asked, running her multiple hands through Maddas Hinsein's coarse hair.

  Ask him what will happen if the Americans succeed in assassinating him.

  "You know the Americans have sent agents to harm you, Precious One," Kimberly prompted. "Do you not fear the consequences? You say they do not want war. Could that be because they expect to unhorse you through skulduggery?"

  Maddas glowered. "It will do them no good."

  "No?"

  "My defense minister has instructions in case of my death. Deadfall commands, they are called. If I fall in battle, he is to launch an all-out attack on Hamidi Arabia and Israel."

  Kimberly's violet eyes brightened like twin novae.

  "You are willing to go to war dead," she pressed, "why not alive, so you may enjoy the fruits of victory?"

  "Because I may be a crazy ass, but I am one smart Arab. I know the Americans will reduce all of Irait to cold, sifting ashes if I launch war." He shook his head. "No, not now. In a few years, when we have nukes, I can do what I will. I must survive until then."

  Tell him he cannot survive until that day. His generals are plotting against him.

  "I hear it whispered in the souks that your generals are plotting against you," Kimberly said. "They saw you vomit into the coffin of your ambassador, and took it as a sign of weakness. All of Abominadad is buzzing that you are chary of war."

  "Let them buzz. Flies buzz too. I do not listen to flies either. My subjects will fall into line the moment I order them to. They know, as does the entire world, what a crazy ass I am."

  Tell him they denigrate him with each hour.

  "They denigrate you with each passing hour."

  Maddas sat up, frowning. "They do?"

  Tell him that they call him Kebir Gamoose.

  "They are calling you Kebir Gamoose."

  "Big Water Buffalo! They call me that?"

  "They say you are a spineless hulk masquerading as an Arab."

  Good touch.

  "I will not stand for it!" Maddas Hinsein shouted, shaking a fist. "I will have every man, woman, child, and general in Irait executed for this!"

  "Then who will do your fighting for you?"

  "I have all the Arabs of Kuran as my new subjects. They will be loyal for I have liberated them from Western corruption.

  "No, you know what you must do.
" "And what is that?" asked Maddas Hinsein sullenly, as he sank back into his bed, his arms crossing again.

  Kimberly Baynes smiled. She toyed with a lock of his coarse brown hair, thinking how much like the fur of a water buffalo it was.

  "You must publicly execute Don Cooder and Reverend Juniper Jackman in retaliation," she said flatly.

  "I must?"

  "You must. For if no one wants war, no one will attack you over a mere newsman and a failed presidential candidate."

  "It would be good for my polls," Maddas Hinsein said slowly.

  "Your people will respect you again."

  "As they should," Maddas said firmly.

  "Your generals will not seek your head."

  "My head belongs on my shoulders," Maddas shouted, "where it should be-housing the keen brain that will unite all of Araby!"

  "Your path is clear, then."

  "Yes, I will do this."

  Kimberly laid her blond head on Maddas Hinsein's shoulders. It needed support anyway. "You are truly the Scimitar of the Arabs, Precious One."

  The big gamoose is putty in your hands, my vessel.

  "I know."

  "What is that, my sugar date?" Maddas murmured.

  Kimberly smiled sweetly.

  "Nothing. Just talking to myself."

  Chapter 43

  The water roiled and bubbled. Harold Smith could discern the rust flecks swirling in the water lapping at the foot of the stairs like a disturbed subterranean sea. They made him think of glinting specks of blood.

  The bubbling grew agitated and a diver's mask broke the surface. A rubberized hand reached up to throw the mask back and pluck the mouthpiece from the navy diver's teeth. He spit twice before speaking.

  "Nothing, Colonel. If there's a body down here, we can't find it."

  "Are you certain?" Smith asked hoarsely.

  The diver climbed to the lowest dry step. He stood up, shaking water off his wet suit like a sleek greyhound.

  "There are eight floors underwater. A lot of territory to cover, but no body that I can find."

  Smith's prim mouth compressed.

  "I can't accept that."

  "Sir, we'll keep looking if you order it, but I can assure you that every room has been searched. Twice."

  Smith considered. "Step out of your wet suit."