Pharaoh by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

roasted lamb, and sit there until late, drinking ayran and talking about completely futile and irrelevant things like pregnant camels and the price of wool at the Deir ez Zor market. This was how he would fortify his spirit and sharpen his mind in preparation for the biggest game that had ever been played on earth, since the day on which Esau had lost his birthright over a bowl of lentils.
    He did not want to admit it, but he knew very well, in his heart, that on the other side of the chessboard there was a player just as cunning and as dangerous as himself. A man whose appearance was humble and unassuming like his own, capable of keeping a thousand different situations under control at the same time, wary and tireless, probably lacking any human sentiment save an arrogant pride in himself and his capabilities: the head of Mossad, Gad Avner. In the end, it would be the two of them playing the game to its finish and the stakes would be the City of God: Jerusalem.
    The world would not be any better, or any worse, than it already was, whoever the winner turned out to be, but you play to win, you fight to prevail; offences must be avenged and wrongs must be righted.
    After many millennia, Ishmael had returned from the desert to which he had been banished, to lay claim to his role as Abraham’s firstborn son.
    A BU A HMID remained in his tent in the desert for ten days and then returned, first to Damascus and then to Amman, to resume contact with the men who would fight his battle on the field: the bishops, the rooks and the knights of his gigantic chessboard.
    He waited a few days in a hotel in the centre of town until he received the message he had been waiting for: the date and time of an appointment in the middle of the desert, thirty miles north-east of the F7 oil pipeline pumping station.
    Towards evening he hired a taxi and travelled on the road to Baghdad until he’d crossed the border, then he left the taxi at a service station and joined a small caravan of Bedouins headed south-east, towards the pipeline.
    They left him at the agreed spot and he waited, alone, until the roar of a helicopter engine could be heard coming from the east, a large M1–24 Russian-made combat helicopter armed with missiles, cannons and rocket launchers.
    It was flying just a few metres from the ground, raising a dense cloud of dust as it passed. It flew over the oil pipeline, came to a standstill in the air and then landed about 100 metres away from where he was standing. The rotor blades continued to spin for a few minutes, then slowed down and came to a complete stop. The door opened and an officer wearing a tanker’s beret and a leather pilot’s jacket came towards him on foot. The helicopter turned off the lights on board, plunging the area into darkness and silence.
    The two men were now standing opposite each other.
    ‘ Salaam alekum , General Taksoun,’ said Abu Ahmid.
    ‘ Alekum salaam ,’ replied the officer with a slight nod of his head.
    ‘I’m glad that you agreed to meet me.’
    A cold wind was blowing and the sky threatened rain. The general was a thick-set man of about fifty. He had the dark complexion and large hands of the peasants from the south, but an uncommon pride in his bearing and gaze.
    ‘This meeting is very dangerous, Abu Ahmid,’ he said, ‘and it will have to be as quick as possible.’
    ‘I agree, General. I asked for this face-to-face encounter because what I have to tell you is so important that no message from any intermediary could communicate its full impact. Furthermore, the response can pass through no middleman; I must hear it directly from your lips. I will lay out my plan and my proposal. You have to abandon your . . . collaboration with the Americans and come over to our side.’
    The man started. ‘I will not remain here one more minute if you attempt to insinuate—’
    ‘Don’t bother protesting, General. We have indisputable evidence of what I’ve just said, and we are ready to hand