Keys in the ignition. Thank you, Ivan. You planned for everything. No time would be wasted fumbling with keys, as you dragged me to your car to get me out of here.

Where were you going to take me, Ivan? Whom do you trust?

Alamandar's last words rang in his ears. The Hindu woman is more of a Caliph than you are.

He thought they all hated her. But now he realized that she was the one advocating war. Expansion. The restoration of a great empire.

That's what they wanted. And all his talk of peace, of consolidation, of reforming Islam from the inside before reaching out to the rest of the world, of competing with Peter Wiggin using the same methods, inviting other nations to join the Caliphate without requiring them to become Muslim or live under Shari'a—they had listened, they had agreed, but they hated it.

They hated him.

So when they saw the break between him and Virlomi, they exploited it.

Or ... was Virlomi behind this?

Was Virlomi pregnant with his child?

The Caliph is dead. But here is his baby, born after he died but infused with the gifts of God from his birth. In the name of the baby Caliph, the council of wazirs will rule. And since the mother of the new Caliph is ruler of India, he will join the two great nations in one. With Virlomi as regent, of course.

No. Virlomi could not have wanted him murdered.

Ivan would have an airplane waiting. The airplane that brought him. With his own trusted crew.

Alai drove at a normal pace. But he did not drive to the checkpoint where he normally entered the airport grounds. In all likelihood, that place would be manned by the conspirators. Instead, he went to a service gate.

The guard sauntered over and started to tell him only authorized service vehicles could use this gate.

"I'm the Caliph, and I want to go through this gate."

"Oh," said the guard, looking confused. "I see. I—"

He pulled out a cellphone and started to punch at it.

Alai didn't want to kill this man. He was an idiot, not a conspirator. So he swung the door open, bumping into the man. Not hard. Just enough to get his attention. Then he closed the door and reached through the window. "Give me that cellphone."

The soldier gave it to him. Alai switched it off.

"I'm the Caliph. When I say to let me through, you don't have to ask anyone else's permission."

The soldier nodded and ran to the controls and the gate slid open.

As soon as Alai was through the gate, he saw a small corporate jet with Cyrillic lettering under the Common letters naming the corporation. The kind of plane Ivan would have used.

The engines started up as Alai approached. No, as Ivan's car approached.

Alai stopped the car and got out. The door of the jet was open, forming steps to the ground. Holding one hand on the pistol in his pocket— for he was taking this plane whether it was Ivan's or not—Alai walked up the steps.

A businessman—or so he seemed—waited for him inside. "Where's Ivan?" he asked.

"We're not waiting for him," said Alai. "He died saving me."

The man nodded once, then went to the door and pushed the button to raise it. Meanwhile he shouted, "Let's go!" and then said to Alai, "Please sit down and fasten your seat belt, my Caliph."

The plane began taxiing before the door was closed.

"Do nothing out of the ordinary," said Alai. "Nothing to alert them. There are weapons here that could easily shoot down this plane."

"Our plan exactly, sir," said the man.

What would the conspirators do, when they found out that Alai had escaped?

They would do nothing. They would say nothing. As long as Alai might turn up alive somewhere, they dared not be on record as saying anything.

In fact, they would continue to act in his name. If they followed Virlomi's plans, if her insane invasion went forward, then Alai would know they were with her.

When they were in the air—having waited for ordinary permission from the controllers—Ivan's man came back and stood diffidently two meters away.

"My Caliph, if I may ask?"

Alai nodded.

"How did he die?"

"He was busy shooting the guards surrounding me. He got two of them before they cut him down. I used his weapon to kill the others. Including Alamandar. Do you know how far the conspiracy went?"

"No sir," said the man. "We only knew that you would be killed on the airplane to Damascus."

"And this airplane? Where is it taking me?"

"It has a very long range, sir," said the man. "Where will you feel safe?"

Petra's mother was tending the babies while Petra and Bean oversaw the last preparations for the opening of hostilities. Peter's message had been terse: How busy can you keep the Turks, while watching out for Russians in the rear?

Turks and Russians allies, or potentially so. What game was Alai playing? Was Vlad in it? Trust Peter not to share any more information than he thought he had to—which was invariably less than other people actually needed.

Still, she and Bean had been spending every spare moment working out ways, using limited, undertrained, and underequipped Armenian forces to cause maximum disruption.

A raid on the most highly visible Turkish target, Istanbul, would enrage them without accomplishing anything.

Blocking the Dardanelles would be a harsh blow against all the Turks, but there was no way to project that much force from Armenia to the western shore of the Black Sea, and maintain it.

Oh, for the days when oil was strategically important! Back then, the Russian, Azerbaijani, and Persian wells in the Caspian would have been a prime target for disruption.

But now the wells had all been dismantled, and the Caspian was mostly used as a source of water, which was desalinated and pumped over to irrigate fields around the Aral Sea, with the runoff being used to replenish that once-dying lake. And to strike at the water pipeline would impoverish poor farmers without affecting the enemy's ability to wage war.

The plan they finally came up with was simple enough, once you bought the concept. "There's no way to strike the Turks directly," said Bean. "Nothing is centralized. So we'll strike Iran. It's highly urbanized, the big cities are all in the northwest, and there'll be an immediate demand for Iranian troops to come home from India to fight us. The Turks will be under pressure to help, and when they launch a very badly planned attack against Armenia, we'll be waiting."

"What makes you think it will be badly planned?" Petra asked.

"Because Alai isn't running the show on the Muslim side."

"When did this happen?"

"If Alai were in control," said Bean, "he wouldn't let Virlomi do what she's doing in India. It's too stupid and it will kill too many men. So ... somehow he's lost control. And if that's the case, the Muslim enemy we're facing is incompetent and fanatic. They're acting out of anger and panic, with poor planning."

"What if this is Alai's doing, and you don't know him as well as you think?"

"Petra," said Bean. "We know Alai."

"Yes, and he knows us."

"Alai is a builder, like Ender. He always has been. An empire won through audacious and bloody conquest isn't worth having. He wants to build his Muslim empire the way Peter is building the FPE, by transforming Islam into a system that other nations will want, voluntarily, to join. Only somebody's decided not to follow his path. Either Virlomi or the hotheads within his own government."

"Or both?" asked Petra.

"Anything's possible."

"Except Alai controlling the Muslim armies."

"Well, it's simple enough," said Bean. "If we're wrong, and the Turkish counterattack is brilliantly planned, then we'll lose. As slowly as possible. And hope Peter has something else up his sleeve. But our assignment is to draw Turkish forces and attention away from China."