Heat ignited ripples that rose up the glass-and-steel sides of the sleek modern buildings like smoke. They inhaled deeply and gratefully.īehind them, through bulletproof windows, Doha was already baking in the morning sun. More than half the ministers shook out cigarettes and lit them. With military precision, the bodyguards stepped back to a spot just behind and to the right of their respective masters.īesides the bottles of water, oversized cut-glass ashtrays had been set out in front of each chair.
Their bodyguards uncapped iced bottles of water, sipped the water first, then poured it into glasses that had been hand-washed by trusted personnel. They took their places around a polished rosewood table, thumbed open their hard-sided steel-and-titanium-reinforced briefcases, removed files red-stamped TOP SECRET. The ministers and their bodyguards rode in a pair of elevators to the top floor, walked silently down a thickly carpeted hallway studded on either side with more mercenaries, and entered an enormous light-filled conference room. In the vast lobby, the entourage passed between two rows of gigantic marble pillars, then through the elaborate security screening process their respective countries had paid for, commanded by a dozen uniformed, battle-hardened mercenaries hired specially for this occasion. They were accompanied by their bodyguards-men grimmer still than their masters, as heavily muscled as they were armed, ready for any sudden noise or movement. They held themselves like kings, these ministers, and in some cases they were as powerful as the kings of past ages.
Seven ministers from Jordan, Syria, Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, grim-faced, all carrying briefcases locked to their wrists by chains, each needing their personal thumbprint to open. S even ministers entered the famed Al-Bourah Hotel in Doha.
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