man or a woman? How much is your judgment worth? How much? Bet!
Above on the open roof was the luxurious embassy pool behind an Arabic latticework not meant for protection against bullets. It was around that pool that the hostages knelt in rows as wandering groups of killers aimed machine pistols at their heads. Two hundred and thirty-six frightened, exhausted Americans awaiting execution.
Madness!
Decisions: Despite well-intentioned Israeli offers, keep them out! This was not Entebbe and all their expertise notwithstanding, the blood Israel had shed in Lebanon would, in Arab eyes, label any attempt an abomination: The United States had financed terrorists to fight terrorists. Unacceptable. A rapid deployment strike force? Who could scale four storeys or drop down from helicopters to the roof and stop the executions when the executioners were only too willing to die as martyrs? A naval blockade with a battalion of marines prepared for an invasion of Oman? Beyond a show of overpowering might, to what purpose? The sultan and his ruling ministers were the last people on earth who wanted this violence at the embassy. The peacefully-oriented Royal Police tried to contain the hysteria, but they were no match for the roving, wild bands of agitators. Years of quiescence in the city had not prepared them for such chaos; and to recall the Royal Military from the Yemenite borders could lead to unthinkable problems. The armed forces patrolling that festering sanctuary for international killers were as savage as their enemies. Beyond the inevitable fact that with their return to the capital the borders would collapse in carnage, blood would surely flow through the streets of Masqat and the gutters choke with the innocent and the guilty.
Checkmate.
Solutions: Give in to the stated demands? Impossible, and well understood by those responsible though not by their puppets, the children who believed what they chanted, what they screamed. There was no way governments throughout Europe and the Middle East would release over 8,000 terrorists from such organizations as the Brigate Rosse and the PLO, the Baader Meinhof, the IRA and scores of their squabbling, sordid offspring. Continue to tolerate the endless coverage, the probing cameras and reams of copy that riveted the world's attention on the publicity-hungry fanatics? Why not? The constant exposure, no doubt, kept additional hostages from being killed since the executions had been 'temporarily suspended' so that the 'oppressor nations' could ponder their choices. To end the news coverage would only inflame the wild-eyed seekers of martyrdom. Silence would create the need for shock. Shock was newsworthy and killing was the ultimate shock.
Who?
What?
How?
Who...? That was the essential question whose answer would lead to a solution - a solution that had to be found within five days. The executions had been suspended for a week, and two days had passed, frantically chewed up as the most knowledgeable leaders of the intelligence services from six nations gathered in London. All had arrived on supersonic aircraft within hours of the decision to pool resources, for each knew its own embassy might be next. Somewhere. They had worked without rest for forty-eight hours. Results: Oman remained an enigma. It had been considered a rock of stability in Southwest Asia, a sultanate with educated, enlightened leadership as close to representative government as a divine family of Islam could permit. The rulers were from a privileged household that apparently respected what Allah had given them - not merely as a birthright, but as a responsibility in the last half of the twentieth century.
Conclusions: The insurrection had been externally programmed. No more than twenty of the two hundred-odd unkempt, shrieking youngsters had been specifically identified as Omanis. Therefore, covert operations officers with sources in every extremist faction in the Mediterranean-Arabian axis went instantly to work, pulling in contacts, bribing, threatening.
'Who are they, Aziz? There's only a spitful from Oman, and most of those are considered simple-minded. Come on, Aziz. Live like a sultan. Name an outrageous price. Try me!'
'Six seconds, Mahmet! Six seconds and your right hand is on the floor without a wrist! Next goes your left. We're on countdown, thief. Give me the information!' Six, Five, four... Blood.
Nothing. Zero. Madness.
And then a breakthrough. It came from an ancient muezzin, a holy man whose words and memory were as shaky as his gaunt frame might be in the winds now racing down from Hormuz.
'Do not look where you would logically expect to look. Search elsewhere.'
'Where?'
'Where grievances are not born of poverty or abandonment. Where Allah has bestowed favour in this world, although