ARAB by Jim Ingraham Page B

importance only through the power of Faisal Ibrahim, Bashir reminded himself. And Faisal is in England with a dying heart. When Faisal is dead, it is I who will give the orders. I have the brain and the skill. Faisal must know that. Who else will he name as his successor? Who else can remove the taint of the past from his organization, disband it and make the company a legitimate dealer in military ordnance? The first thing I’ll do when I take charge is decide the fate of this donkey.
    A man in jeans and sweatshirt was waiting for them down the sidewalk, holding open the back door of a green Pontiac sedan.
    “Get in,” Diab said, pushing Bashir into the car, getting in beside him, making the car sag.
    The car reeked of sweat. Didn’t the man ever bathe? “What’s this about?” Bashir said, despising the fear that had invaded his voice.
    “Faisal is home.”
    “Faisal? Here? In Cairo?”
    “With big plans for you.” Diab said, laughing. “Big plans.”
    The driver, the man who had obviously followed him from Gezira, was watching Bashir in the rear-view mirror. He too was laughing. How had he known Bashir would be at that restaurant with Esmat Bindari? Had he just happened to see him there? But why follow him?
    “He just got back?”
    “He’s been here for weeks,” Diab said.
    And nobody told me? Why wasn’t I told? Had Faisal become enfeebled by his illness? Had a message been sent to me but not delivered? Has someone been lying to him about me?
    Riding through the crowded streets of Cairo, Bashir sat in silence at the car window, telling himself he had done nothing to offend Faisal Ibrahim that couldn’t easily be rectified or at least explained. He told himself he had no reason to be afraid. Faisal was an intelligent man. He knew the times had changed. He knew it was no longer wise to deal with insurgents. And who else in his organization can manage the transformation?
    But with a word Faisal could destroy him. His organization could close every gateway to the future. Without an organization Bashir’s plans would collapse. Arms dealing requires solid contacts, and Bashir didn’t have the resources to create his own.
    So for now at least I must become a suck-up, as the Americans say, a role that disgusted him. He had spent a childhood begging people for handouts, despising himself, despising his life.
    He leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Do you have a tissue?” he asked, wanting to wipe his fingers, although now it wasn’t only his hands that felt unclean. Riding in this car next to this filthy man, his very soul felt unclean. The first thing he would do at Faisal’s place was take a shower, lather himself in warm suds and feel the filth drain off his body.
    “A what?” the driver said, glancing at the mirror.
    Bashir leaned back. “Never mind.” The idiot probably blew his nose on his nightshirt.
    Faisal’s safehouse was at the end of a narrow alley in a village in the suburbs west of Cairo. It was a large white house fronted by a small garden, a house that probably had once belonged to a village leader. Two men were sitting on wide steps at the entrance playing cards. On a hot Egyptian day in summer, at the edge of the desert, only an idiot would sit on a stone slab in the sun unless he had been ordered to do so.
    As Diab led Bashir up the steps, he told the men to cross the driveway and sit under a tree.
    “We were ordered to—”
    “I am your general. Do what I say.”
    The men looked at each other, shrugged, gathered up their cards and walked toward the large shaded area under the tree.
    “You have a kind heart, Diab,” Bashir said.
    “Only for men who are loyal.”
    Meaning?
    But Bashir would not ask. It would not be dignified to ask. He was not a soldier. He had never been part of Faisal’s now defunct military band of thieves. He operated at a higher level. He would learn what he had to learn directly from Faisal Ibrahim, whom he considered socially inferior but