Faisal bin Selim smiled tolerantly. He too was a smuggler, but rather more dignified than these vagabonds of the Gulf whom he could hear in the distance.
‘And when I have brought you to Arabia, my friend, what will you do?’ he asked quietly. The Omani deck hand was at the bow, handline over the side, trying for a fine fish for breakfast. He had joined the other two for evening prayers. Now was the hour of pleasant conversation.
‘I do not know,’ admitted the Afghan. ‘I know only that I am a dead man in my own country; Pakistan is closed to me for they are running-dogs of the Yankees. I hope to find other True Believers and ask to fight with them.’
‘Fight? But there is no fighting in the United Arab Emirates. They too are wholly allied to the West. The interior is Saudi Arabia, where you will be found immediately and sent back. So . . .’
The Afghan shrugged.
‘I ask only to serve Allah. I have lived my life. I will leave my fate in His care.’
‘And you say you are prepared to die for Him,’ said the courtly Qatari.
Mike Martin thought back to his boyhood and his prep school in Baghdad. Most of the pupils were Iraqi boys but they were the sons of the cream of society and their fathers were keen that they would speak perfect English and rise to rule great corporations dealing with London and New York. The curriculum was in English, and that included the learning of traditional English poetry.
Martin had always had one favourite: the story of how Horatius of Rome defended the last bridge before the invading army of the House of Tarquin as the Romans hacked down the bridge behind him. There was a verse the boys used to chant together:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his Gods?
‘If I can die shahid, in the service of His jihad, of course,’ he replied.
The dhow master considered for a while and changed the subject.
‘You are wearing the clothes of Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘You will be spotted in minutes. Wait.’
He went below and came back with a freshly laundered dishdash, the white cotton robe that falls from shoulders to ankles in unbroken line.
‘Change,’ he ordered. ‘Drop the shalwar kameez and the Talib turban over the side.’
When Martin was changed Bin Selim handed him a new headdress, the red-flecked keffiyeh of a Gulf Arab and the black cord circlet to hold it in place.
‘Better,’ said the old man when his guest had completed the transformation. ‘You will pass for a Gulf Arab, save when you speak. But there is a colony of Afghans in the area of Jeddah. They have been in Saudi Arabia for generations, but they speak like you. Say that is where you come from, and strangers will believe you. Now let us sleep. We rise at dawn for the last day of cruising.’
The Predator saw them weigh anchor and leave the islands, sailing gently round the rocky tip of Al-Ghanam and turning south-west down the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
There are seven in the UAE but only the names of the biggest and richest – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah – spring to mind. The other four are much smaller, much poorer and almost anonymous. Two of these, Ajman and Umm-al-Qaiwain, are cheek by jowl alongside Dubai, whose oil riches have made it the most developed of the seven. Fujairah alone lies on the other side of the peninsula, facing east on to the Gulf of Oman. The seventh is Ras-al-Khaimah.
Ras-al-Khaimah lies on the same coast as Dubai but far up along the shore towards the Strait of Hormuz. It is dirt poor and ultra-traditional. For that reason it has eagerly accepted the gifts of Saudi Arabia, including heavily financed mosques and schools – but all teaching Wahhabism. Ras-al-K, as westerners know it, is the local home of fundamentalism and sympathy for Al-Qaeda and jihad. On the port side of the slowly cruising dhow, it would be the first to be reached. This occurred at sundown.
‘You have no papers,’ said the captain to his guest, ‘and I cannot provide them. No matter, they have always been a western impertinence. More important is money. Take these.’
He thrust a wad of UAE dirhams into Martin’s hand. They were cruising in the fading light past the town, a mile away on the shore. The first lights began to flicker among the buildings.
‘I will put you ashore further down the coast,’ said Bin Selim. ‘You will find the coast road and walk back. I know a small guest house in the Old Town. It is cheap, clean and discreet. Take lodgings there. Do not go out. You will be safe and, inshallah, I may have friends who can help you.’
It was fully dark when Martin saw the lights of the hotel and the Rasha slipped towards the shore. Bin Selim knew it well: the converted Hamra Fort, which had a beach club for its foreign guests, and the club had a jetty. After dark it would be abandoned.
‘He’s leaving the dhow,’ said a voice in the ops room at Edzell air base. Despite the darkness, the thermal imager of the Predator at twenty thousand feet saw the agile figure leap from the dhow to the jetty, and the trader reverse her engine and pull back to the deeper water and the sea.