Free Pharaoh by Valerio Massimo Manfredi Page B

on a Cypriot cargo boat bound for New York. The second was to drive to Alexandria, where he would board an oil tanker heading towards New Haven, Connecticut. The third would travel by ship from Jaffa to Barcelona, where he would take an Iberia flight for San Jose´ in Costa Rica, and from there board a United Fruits banana boat from Puerto Limon going to Miami, Florida.
    Two days later Abu Ahmid contacted three more young men in Nablus, in a mosque in the old city, and then, two days after, three others in Gaza, in a hovel in the refugee camp. All six, like the three in Bethlehem, were suicidal combatants sworn to death and trained to face any kind of situation. They also received instructions and itineraries.
    They were, and always had been, pawns on Abu Ahmid’s chessboard, replaceable as necessary. Each group, having completed its mission, could detach a member to remedy any losses in the other groups, until all three of their objectives were attained.
    All nine of them spoke English without the hint of an accent and were experts in the use of firearms and knives of any sort; they were proficient in the martial arts, could pilot an aeroplane or helicopter, parachute from any height, climb a rock or concrete wall and swim underwater with an aqualung.
    They had no names, but were known by their numbers. They had no mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers, and the documents they carried were false but perfectly forged. They did not prize their lives because they had been taught for years to be ready to sacrifice life at any moment for their cause, upon a signal from their leader. They could survive for days on a hard biscuit and a few sips of water. Inured to hunger and thirst, heat and cold, they could endure any suffering and withstand any torture.
    Each of the three groups had a leader who had absolute power over his companions, and could decide whether they lived or died. The whole of Operation Nebuchadnezzar, from start to finish, would depend on their abilities and their endurance.
    When they had all reached their destinations with their packages, they would contact ‘Nebuzaradan’, who would in turn advise him, Abu Ahmid. That moment would mark the beginning of phase two of the operation, the military attack they had been planning day and night for two years in minute detail.
    Now all he had to do was find a good vantage point from which to wait and review the operation from beginning to end. He reached Damascus and went from there to his tent in the desert not far from Deir ez Zor.
    It was there that he’d been born about sixty years before, and his small Bedouin tribe was still faithful to the memory of his father and to him, whom they knew as Zahed al Walid. He would awake every day at the break of dawn to contemplate the waters of the Euphrates enflamed by the splendour of the rising sun and to watch the herds as they set out for pasture behind their shepherds, while the women washed their clothes in the river and lit fires in the mud ovens to bake the bread that they served him hot and fragrant, smelling of fire and ash. The sun glittered on the coins that they wore on their foreheads and made them seem ancient queens of burnished beauty: Sheba who had seduced Solomon, or Zenobia who had so fascinated Aurelian.
    He would take long rides through the desert, towards Qamishli, and would ride so far out that he could see nothing around him, in any direction. Feeling alone between earth and sky on his horse’s back gave him an intense and terrible sensation of power. Then he would dismount and walk barefoot on the desert which once had nourished the lush soil of the Garden of Eden. Or sit on his heels and meditate in silence for hours, his eyes closed, attaining nearly absolute concentration, touching a transcendental dimension, as if in his bent knees were distilled the forces of the sky and of the earth.
    He would usually return at dusk and have dinner in his tent with the tribal chiefs, eating bread and salt and