The Killing Ground by Jack Higgins

perfect. Hussein was wearing dark aviator’s sunglasses and a tan suit of fine Egyptian linen. He removed the jacket and revealed a shoulder holster under his left armpit holding a Beretta pistol.
    Sara looked upon him. Hussein had been very careful in his dealings with her during the months she had been at the villa. As far as he was concerned, she knew nothing of his background other than the fact that he’d attended Harvard to qualify as a doctor and the war had prevented it.
    But she was a remarkably astute young lady, soon to be fourteen, as she was fond of pointing out to people, and could not fail to notice the enormous respect with which he was treated by other people, and not just at the villa. Even important politicians and imams treated him as special. The truth was that she loved her father very dearly and he had been the most important man in her life. He had strong principles; you somehow took it for granted that anything he did was exactly the right thing for you. No argument needed.
    Hussein was exactly the same. By religion, she had been baptized and raised as a Christian. She had no intention of changing that, al-

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    though she had never argued about it with her grandfather, being per-ceptive enough to realize it would get her nowhere, and intelligent enough to understand she was embroiled in a complicated problem.
    She liked Hussein very much as her cousin, but the idea that at an appropriate age it would lead to marriage was something she had no intention of taking seriously. Her father would find a solution; all she had to do was wait.
    The war, of course, was the war, but she was in a strange position. It was on the television every time you turned it on and it was also on the streets, very real, and it wouldn’t go away. Even the death of her grandfather had failed to shock her. Many members of the household staff had been killed on the streets one way or another during her time in Baghdad.
    The young men were already sampling wine behind her. When they offered a glass to Hussein, he refused, pointing out that he was flying, but he accepted salad sandwiches in leavened bread and sat eating a couple with Sara, who noticed that when his right trouser leg slid up a little it disclosed an ankle holster containing a Colt pistol. When she asked what it was for, he made light of it, stressing that though it was hardly likely that anything would go wrong, there were Arabs down there whose lives were hardly formal.
    On the other hand, he omitted to mention that an ankle holster was the mark of the true professional.
    For the moment, she was content and quite thrilled, and gradually, her head went back and she dozed.
    C H A R L E S F E R G U S O N ’ S C O U S I N , Professor Hal Stone, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Hoxley Professor of Marine Archaeology, had what was common to most academics in his profession: an almost total lack of money with which to conduct any kind of signifi-cant research.
    At Hazar, a diving operation on a World War II freighter had dis-

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    closed beneath it a Phoenician trading ship of Hannibal’s era. He could afford only one or two annual visits using local Arab divers operating from an ancient boat called the Sultan . On a previous visit, Dillon and Billy, both expert divers, had been able to render him some assistance.
    The phone call from Ferguson had sent the good professor into a frenzy of delight. When he wasn’t there, he employed his Arab foreman, a man named Selim, as caretaker. He phoned him with the news that he would be arriving and packed hurriedly.
    He hadn’t felt so cheerful in a long time and it wasn’t only because of the prospect of diving. His dark secret was that as a young man, he had worked for the Secret Security Services, and was well aware of the kind of thing Ferguson and his minions got up to. To be involved delighted him.
    “Transport provided?” he asked