“So El Hassan is succeeding?”

“Fantastically. He was, the other day, recognized the head of state of all North Africa, by India. Who’ll follow her example, God only knows.”

“India? Why?”

“Because she’s smart enough to jump on the bandwagon. North Africa is poor in textiles. United, the market would consist of tens of millions. India is desperate to export her cotton textiles.”

Paul Kosloff took in a deep breath.

He said, “So it looks as though El Hassan might make it. Where do I come in?”

His superior looked him straight in the eye. “You’ve been called the Cold War’s Lawrence of Arabia. You’re our most dependable field man in these cloak-and-dagger affairs. We want El Hassan stopped by fair means or foul.”

Paul Kosloff looked at him cynically. “So who are you going to send in to try the fair means?”

II

SEAN RYAN

Sean Eugene Ryan awoke from no deep dream of peace. His mouth tasted as though rats had chosen it for a latrine.

He took a long moment to orientate himself, groaned a hungover groan, and stared up at the peeling ceiling. The room he inhabited was the smallest, the cruddiest, the most poorly furnished, in the third-rate hotel he called home. There were other things he called it as well. Sean Ryan had arrived at the end of the line.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and discovered that he had removed jacket and shoes but otherwise had slept in his clothes.