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.Men screamed in exultation.Gunfire ripped the air in bursts of frenzied jubilation.Day and night, torches burned from metal braziers around the Great Sultan's Palace.Their glow silhouetted revelers into misshapen shadows across the high walls of the Eblan seat of power.The potshots that had pocked palace parapets from time to time over the past decade and a half were no more.The West had been brought to its knees.America-desecrator of the Arabian Peninsula-was impotent, helpless to strike at the loftiest seat of righteous Arab power.By the grace of Allah, the heart of Ebla's sultan had been returned to them.And with its return the people of Ebla had been whipped into a fever of jihad-inspired enthusiasm.Sultan Omay watched his subjects from the Fishbowl.The bulletproof glass was still firmly in place.The twin threats of American assassination and his own people's joyful, reckless aim kept it there.He had come too far to be stopped now.The excitement of the past two days had taken its toll on the ailing sultan.Sleeplessness and fatigue seemed to have aged him another twenty years.More and more he was beginning to resemble the mummies of his ancient Eblan Page 52ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlancestors, found years before in ruins near modern Tel Mardikh in Syria.The sultan's white-knuckled hands gripped the railing of his veranda for support as he thought of his forebears.Those had been the glory days of the Eblan empire.Back then Ebla knew real strength.When they were alive, those mummies had presided over an empire both rich and powerful.Sultan Omay had inherited none of that ancient greatness.His was a kingdom of goat-herds and nomads.The puny pools of oil that had been discovered in the desert outside of Telk Madsad had given him his great fortune.But those wells were long dry.A grand metaphor for Ebla itself.Childless, the sultanate would end with him.Lately his prime minister and some other officials had been suggesting he establish free elections.Distant relatives of the sultan had been looking to ascend to the throne.There was even a push among the people to install an ayatollah as leader and create a fundamentalist Islamic republic.He was not even dead, and they were already circling, snatching out with grabbing claws, eager to pick his parched, tired bones.Let them.It was all over anyway.They just didn't know it yet.Ebla was destined to sink into the desert dust.But he would give them cause to celebrate first.Their ancient nation would rise again, if only as a dying gesture.And Sultan Omay still had an ace up his sleeve.Something no one yet knew about.Not even the Saudi, Assola al Khobar, so proud of the millions he had spent in support of his fatwa.The Great Plan.The glass-enclosed box was hot.Sunlight beat down upon him.Omay felt light-headed in the intense heat.Still much work to do.Turning, he stepped from the balcony.He had the shuffle of a nursing-home patient.How mocking a thing Death was.His mind was as sharp as it had ever been, yet his body was failing him.Much faster now, it seemed, than before.Omay walked carefully out into the hallway.He took his private elevator downstairs.An Ebla Arab Army colonel was waiting for the doors to open."They are ready, Sultan," the colonel announced with a crisp, British-style salute.Sultan Omay nodded.He continued walking in the same unhurried pace as before.The colonel fell in beside him."Have they been told why they are here?""No, Sultan."Omay allowed himself a wicked smile.Around his eyes the waxy skin bunched into tangled knots.When they reached a set of doors at the end of the corridor, the colonel stepped abruptly ahead of the sultan.Another soldier was there.Each military man grabbed a door handle.Standing at attention, they pulled their respective doors open wide.The leader of Ebla shambled slowly between them.Alone.The room into which he stepped was large and ornate.Rich tapestries hung from walls.Banners in the traditional reds of Ebla's ruler stretched from high arches.Huge, brilliantly lit crystal chandeliers stretched down from the ceiling's center beam.And beneath them sat hundreds of reporters from nations all around the world.All were men.The sultan had forbade female reporters from attending.At the appearance of the sickly monarch the reporters clamored to their feet.Flashes from cameras popped from around the periphery of the crowd.Videocameras whirred endless spools of tape.In the wake of the kidnappings, the international press had descended like a swarm of biblical locusts on Akkadad, but had been denied access to the palace since the start of the crisis.As a result the hunger for any scrap of Page 53ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlinformation had grown exponentially with each passing hour.When it was announced by the palace that the sultan had finally consented to be interviewed, the thunder from the feet of a thousand stampeding reporters rattled windows as far away as Baghdad.Almost every news outlet was set to broadcast the press conference live.Every camera in the room tracked the steps of the frail figure as he walked through the doors and onto the dais.He stepped up to the podium."Sultan Omay! Sultan Omay!"The chorus of voices screamed the name of the aged ruler as he settled in behind the podium.The Eblan monarch looked weaker to them than at any time in the past.Even back during the near fatal bout with cancer that had turned him from the path of terror.His eyes were bleary, his body shaky.He gripped the edge of the podium for support."Sultan Omay!" In the first row of seats a reporter from America's BCN network screamed the name so loudly, ropy veins bulged in his neck.In his desperation to be the first to shout a question, he stepped eagerly forward.It was the first and last break in protocol.The press rapidly discovered things were not as they had been during the sultan's days as the Great Peacemaker.Armed soldiers had ushered the reporters into the room and now patrolled the edges of the large crowd.When the BCN man broke ranks, a guard jumped in front of him.With calm dispassion he slammed the butt of his rifle into the jaw of the reporter.The man dropped like the Tokyo stock market.For the rest of the gathered press it was as though the palace servants had started pumping tranquilizer gas through the air vents.Catholic schoolchildren playing musical chairs could not have found their seats more quickly.Soldiers dragged the bleeding and unconscious BCN reporter from the hall.The press dutifully filmed him up to the moment his legs disappeared through the rear door.The door closed with a palace-rumbling thud.At the podium the sultan waited for the room to grow completely silent before opening his mouth.When he finally spoke, his words were a pained rasp
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