"By marriage," the president had said.

Bobby Jack sat on the edge of the back train • platform and looked at his watch. It was 10 a.m. He finished his last can of beer and decided he would give these goddamn Arabs exactly five minutes before he left to get a refill.

He didn't need Arabs and he didn't like the way they looked or talked or dressed or smelled. And he didn't need their money. He had money of his own. He had the old shoe factory where business was never better and he had a lot of other money besides.

At 10:04 A.M., just as he was rising to his feet, he heard the rumble of a train far down the track. He looked toward the north and saw the engine, pulling a single car, come over the slight rise and down the long incline that led into the bucolic town of Hills, its brakes squeaking and hissing air as it slowed down. Inside the building that doubled as passenger terminal and control center, an engineer pressed an automatic switch that turned a section

11

of track so it would deflect the train off onto a siding. The train pulled into the siding and shivered to a halt.

Bobby Jack continued to sit on the train platform. After a few minutes, three men in Arab robes stepped out onto the rear of the railroad car, saw him, and came down the steps.

They carefully crossed the double sets of tracks and came up to him.

"I am Mustafa Kaffir," one man said. He was a big man with dark skin and the nose of an eagle. "And these are—"

"Don't bother," Bobby Jack said. He remained sitting. "I'm awful with names and besides all Ay-rab names sound alike."

Kaffir coughed slightly and said, "They too are representatives of the Free People's Government of Libya."

"Sure, swell," said Bobby Jack. "Where may we talk?" Kaffir asked. His deepset eyes glanced left and right. His thin lips were closed tightly as if he found the small Southern village of Hills somehow distasteful.