Warren Murphy: The Last Monarch

Fortunately, it seemed that, at least for now, everyone was experiencing the same disarray. Smith dreaded the moment that someone realized the real opportunity was not in the Mideast, but elsewhere in the world. Many nations were so eager to race for the pot of gold they saw in the Mediterranean they were leaving their own territorial waters nearly undefended. It was a blind feeding frenzy, the likes of which the modern world had never before seen.

Smith watched it all from his Folcroft office, helpless to do anything about it.

Hopefully, Remo was nowhere near the bomb when it went off. If he had survived the blast, he was somewhere in the area. Even though he had failed to stop the bomb, there was still the matter of retrieving the former President.

At this point, Smith would have liked more than anything to send CURE's enforcement arm after whoever had set off the neutrino bomb. It appeared to be Nossur Aruch and his PIO. Bryce Babcock was not alone in this; that much was certain. But there was no way to contact Remo in the field. If he found the President, Remo might just bring the former chief executive back without going after the PIO leader.

In the end, the villain in this might get away. Smith would have to satisfy himself with the fact that having the former commander in chief returned to American soil might be the only resolution to this dire situation.

And the tinderbox that was the Middle East would have to decide its own fate.

As he worried over this inescapable conclusion, Smith's computer emitted a sudden electronic beep. Typing rapidly, he brought up the latest information the CURE mainframes had culled for him.

Behind his rimless glasses, his gray eyes scanned the newest lines of text.

Spain was now in on the act. The European country was sending several naval vessels to the Mideast. At present, the data on the latest nation to join the growing tide of warships was incomplete. Intelligence sources had yet to determine how much weaponry the Spanish State was shipping to the region.

Smith dumped this latest report in with the others and backed out of the system. Before shutting off his computer, he disabled the automated beep that alerted him to incoming information concerning the region. It had been sounding almost nonstop since the detonation of the neutrino bomb.

Smith was only one man. There was nothing he could do from his Folcroft office that would remedy this crisis.

Even Remo and Chiun, with all their abilities, would be unable to stop the situation from playing out in whatever manner was destined.

One way or another, it was already over.

With this thought in mind, Smith got up from his computer and climbed wearily from behind his desk. With both hands, he rubbed his aching lower back.

The Folcroft cafeteria had received a shipment an hour before. He had heard the truck back in behind the building.

The cafeteria director was supposed to have gotten in some of the prune-whip yogurt he enjoyed. Smith left his office in search of his guilty little pleasure. The only one in his dour life.

Chapter 34

The army had grown from a handful of ragtag PIO soldiers to a mighty force of shouting, triumphant Palestinians. By the time they passed through the Ghor depression through which the Jordan River flowed to the north of the Dead Sea, they were five hundred strong.

Horses panted and frothed, propelled by frantic kicks from jubilant Arabs. They screamed the war whoops of their ancestors as they passed the border of Israel into Jordan. Two meaningless names. Both nations would soon be one. Along with many others.

At the front of the army, Bryce Babcock struggled to stay in his saddle. The horse between his legs pounded forward in spite of its rider's limited equestrian skills.

Beside the interior secretary, the former President of the United States rode into the encroaching night, his body moving in perfect rhythm with the animal beneath him.

And, on his magnificent sleek black steed at the head of the victorious pack-sweat glistening off its muscled rump, hoofs digging half moons in the clayish earth-Nossur Aruch was a conquering god. They had sensed his purpose, these sons of Palestine who followed him. Gone were the feelings of mistrust from the past few dark years. Gone, too, was the anger. The hatred. He was power; he was the future. And they were his.

To lead.

To govern over.

To send to their deaths if he so commanded. He was their caliph. Their sultan. Their king. Nossur Aruch was finally, at this late point in his life, the monarch he had always hoped to be.

He had tossed away his pathetic disguise in Hebron. There was no longer a need. He wore his white-and-black-checkered kaffiyeh proudly once more. Many others in his band wore the same headdress. The new mane of power in the Mideast. Symbol of a dynasty that would last longer than the pyramids themselves.

Although he had declared himself president-in-exile of Palestine years before, he was not actually of the region. He was Jordanian, born to Palestinian parents. The land of his forebears was east of the Jordan. It was to this spot this haven-that Aruch and his army now rode.

The day was growing short. Night was sweeping in upon them, brushing the last of the white-hot desert day from the sky by the time they reached the oasis of the Aruch family.

In his youth, he had always thought of it as a place of coolness and shade. A sanctuary in the fire that was the desert. In his adulthood, he saw it for what it was. A pitiful lump of washed-out green in the Jordanian desert between As Salt and Madaba.

The sun was gone. Melted into fat blobs of orange as they rode into the oasis. Long shadows cast from ill-watered trees became specters of black across the sand.

The army pounded to a thundering halt.

They had no sooner stopped when the ragged tents that were speckled between the trees began to disgorge hordes of pitifully filthy men and women. Inhabitants of the oasis. The family of Nossur Aruch. They crowded around the army, pawing at boots and trouser legs, all the while wailing pathetically.

Aruch kicked at the faces of any who came near him. There were at least a dozen of his sisters jostling them. Even more nieces and nephews.

"Leave me, wanton trulls and whoresons!" Aruch shouted, viciously booting his older sister, Shaboobatez, in her fuzzy jaw. It would have knocked out her teeth had she had any left.

Hands raised in supplication, his family backed away.

Aruch slid off his horse.

The women of his clan were notoriously ugly, snagging as mates men who floundered at the stagnant end of the gene pool. The homely children they produced wouldn't have surprised anyone with a passing knowledge of genetics. The world would have been shocked to discover that Nossur Aruch had gotten the looks in his family.

The PIO head was like a movie star at his high-school reunion as he pushed his way through the sea of grabbing hands.

A filthy nylon tent checkered in white and black to match his kaffiyeh stood out in front of the rest. Aruch made it to the rear of the crowd, slipping through the closed tent flaps.

Inside was bare. It was no surprise. Years ago, on his first trip to the outside world, he had returned to find his tent completely stripped. His family had a tendency to steal anything that wasn't nailed down. Fortunately, their avarice was matched only by their laziness.

Dropping to his knees in the center of the tent, Aruch used his palms to push away the powdery sand that was the floor. A few short sweeps revealed a trapdoor. At one end was a wrought-iron loop.

Clawing for the handle, he pulled. At first it was a struggle, but soon the fused trapdoor hinges popped. He lifted the door.

At once a generator hummed to life. Fluorescent lights flickered on a moment afterward, revealing a steep staircase that ran down into an unseen chamber.