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listened. That made him terribly feared, but feared in the way a guided missile was feared.
    Amirah      ah, thought Gault, now she was something entirely different. If the Fighter was the missile, then the Princess—for that was what her name meant—was the hand at the controls. Well      she shared those controls with Gault. By his estimation it was the most effective, harmonious, and potentially lucrative collaboration since Hannibal met an elephant handler. Probably more so.
    The tent flap whipped open and the Fighter strode inside. He never simply walked anywhere—he had the same swagger as Fidel Castro, moving through space as if he wanted to bruise the air molecules and teach them their place. It always reminded Gault of the character of the Roman general Miles Gloriosus from the old Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum . Gloriosus’s opening line, bellowed from offstage, was: “Stand aside everyone      I take large steps.” Sometimes Gault had to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from smiling when El Mujahid strode into the room.
    The Fighter snatched up the water bottle and poured himself a glass, sloshing half of it on the table, and threw it back. Gault wondered at what point affectation had given way to true personality trait.
    “The teams are leaving now,” the Fighter said as he dragged over a chair and threw himself into it. The cheap seat creaked under his bulk, but he ignored it. He was a handsome man with unusual looks for someone of Yemen birth. His eyes were a pale brown, almost gold, and his skin, though tanned by the blistering sun, was not as dark as many of his countrymen. Over the last eighteen months Gault had arranged for highly skilled cosmetic surgeons to do some touch-up work on the Fighter, including resizing his ears, a comprehensive dye job on his hair—head to feet—tonal changes to his vocal chords, and some bone smoothing on his brow and chin. They were all small operations but the total effect was that El Mujahid looked even more like a European. Like a Brit. Give him a modern haircut, lose the fierce mustache, and put him in an Armani suit, Gault considered, and he could pass for northern Italian or even Welsh. The anomaly of the Fighter’s complexion, and his ability to speak an uninflected English with a hint of a British accent, factored heavily in Gault’s plans for the man, and Gault had paid good money to make sure that under the right circumstances the Fighter would make a believable non-Arab. He’d even provided a series of audiotapes to allow the Fighter to practice speaking with an American accent.
    Gault looked at his watch—a Tourneau Presidio Arabesque 36 that he’d taken from a former colleague who had no further need for checking the time of day. “As always, my friend, you are precise to the minute.”
    “The Koran says that—” But that was all Gault heard. El Mujahid loved his long-winded scripture quotations and as soon as the big man was in gear Gault tuned him out. He sometimes forced himself to mentally say “yada yada yada” to drown out the doctrine. That worked well, and he had himself trained to start paying attention again when the Fighter wrapped it up with his trademark closer: “Allah is the only God and I am his wrath on Earth!”
    Grandiose, but catchy. Gault liked the “wrath” part. Wrath was useful.
    “Very apt,” he said of the unheard scripture. “Your men should be praised for their devotion to the cause and to the will of Allah.”
    Gault was a lapsed Presbyterian. Not completely atheist—he believed some kind of god existed somewhere; he just didn’t think the human race had the Divine All on speed dial      and whatever calls they did make were certainly not being returned. To Gault religion was something to be factored in to any equation. Only a fool dismissed its power or ignored its useful potential; and only a suicidal fool allowed even a hint of disingenuousness to