top secret

Electronic intercept... Dateline December 2007... CIA protocol blue.
Station Chief, Langley, confirms tape appears genuine.
Conclusion: Voices are President Muammar Gadaffy of Libya and President Ahmed Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Eyes Only. Transcripts to President Bush, Prime Minister Brown, and James Healy.

Transcript.

Gadaffy: Are you serious? They fired him three weeks before Christmas?

Ahmadinejad: Would I kid about a serious thing like that?

Gadaffy: What sort of people are these? Have they no respect for the holy season? Even Osama goes on hiatus for Christmas.

(Sound of laughter. Apparently Ahmadinejad.)

Ahmadinejad: Next thing they'll be naming teddy bears Jesus.

Gadaffy: No seriously. What sort of people are they?

Ahmadinejad: Muammar old chum, these are the scum we call scum.

sheikh down

Bleak winds roaring up the mountain passes of the Panjeshr valley.
A tangled misbegotten landscape.
The direst winds in creation are howling over the mountains in the last place God made.
The sheikh does not hear them.
He is standing on an outcrop of rock, staring down the valley.
At this moment he himself is like something carved from the landscape.
An elemental almost mythic figure.
You cannot see the blood on his hands.
Two of his bodyguards stand a little to one side.
They have stood there for hours.
No matter how cold it gets they will not dare to approach their master nor leave him.
"What's wrong with Osama?" shivers the smaller bodyguard. "He looks as sick as a parrot. In fact I haven't seen him look like this since the imperialist infidels rolled up to Tora Bora and we all suddenly realised it's much more fun slitting the throats of unarmed air hostesses on civilian aeroplanes than messing with the American and British armies. But what's gotten into him today?"
His friend shrugs.
"There's a rumour in the camp," he whispers back. "The sheikh has just lost a million quid in a bet with Grinny Ahmadinejad."