Chapter Twenty-six

Mr. Ahmed Al-Shahbaa, director of the Al Jazeera TV network was winding down in his office having gotten through yet another stressful day at work.

Already, the black suspenders holding his black slacks and shirt together were nowhere to be found anymore. Now it was lying somewhere in his briefcase stowed away under his Elm desk. The sleeves of his white-stiffed-fronted shirt were rolled up to the elbows, exposing deeply tan, slender forearms covered by a fine coat of body hair. His head of sable hair, frosted at the edges by a wisp of gray found rest on the headrest of his executive swivel chair, while his overly long legs were thrown heedlessly over the varnished top of the same Elm desk.

His job at Al Jazeera was not the hardest in the world. But surely, every day in office in this position at one of the top-flight news agencies in the world must have counted for something.

Today, however, seemed to be so different. Different in that it was most overwhelming in every sense of