This sort of thing was Abdul Rahman's least favourite kind of reporting.

Rain was pelting the windows of the nondescript little Starbucks tucked away between two four-star Abu Dhabi hotels he was seated in. His coffee (whatever it was called) was sitting on the oddly sticky table in front of him, losing heat. He felt almost the same way.

He had rushed back to Kuwait International Airport and then through the tourist maze that was the UAE in a euphoric daze for most of the previous day, the name Johannes Tearfly ringing in his head in a sexy, hallucinatory woman's voice. He had sent him three emails, one from the airport, one from on the plane and one from this Starbucks but he hadn't responded yet. That marked a proper twenty-four hours without much sleep. The first of many, he hoped.

Abdi knew he couldn't depend on the Tearfly thing. Whatever romantic ideas the old associations had implanted in his head, he knew he had to do most of the framework-building anyway. He was intimately familiar with Tearfly's work, even if those memories were tinted with the rose-shades of nostalgia and teen spirit. Anti-American tirades interspersed with little to no nuggets of actual fact. He wasn't Abdi's favourite Bloodistan writer, to be sure. But a Bloodistan writer, at last!

In the meantime, he had to put some sort of story together. He didn't like working with anything to do with the US Government. They had very good memory. But, given the circumstances, if the US launched a drone to survey Damya, it wouldn't be from the island itself. There were no real foreign military outposts there. Plus, there would have had to have been more than one if people actually observed it. It wouldn't be from Turkey for mostly the same reasons. Cyprus was also unlikely, given the Greece-UK deadlock. And that left Syria.

And Syria left him with a tiny sliver of opportunity. America was an impenetrable fortress. The only way in was if you knew somebody like Snowden or Assange. But the Syrian government was a far leakier endeavour. And Abdul Rahman knew a girl who knew a guy who knew a guy who worked as a clerk for someone high up the Defence Ministry. It was a pissy source, he knew, so scattered that whatever came in through the grapevine was very questionable in veracity. But, these things usually led somewhere else and he was hoping this one would.

He had refreshed the Gmail app on his phone another five times before the doors swung open and Lindsey walked in, dripping all over the classy hardwood floor. Her mousy, short brown hair had been protected to a considerable extent by her hat but strands of it hung in ungainly clumps along the front of her face. She "phewed", energetically peering around the room like the annoying little ferret she was till she spotted Abdi by the window. She rushed over.

"Welcome to sunny Dubai, huh?" She laughed, putting her coat around the back of her seat and sweeping her hair back over her face. Abdi knew for a fact she'd forget to take it on her way out and made a mental note to remind her.

"Yeah, quite a welcome," he said.

She shook the contents of his cup around and then took a sip. "See, that's the thing with this place. It reciprocates."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well," she said, and her voiced tapered higher towards the end of the word like a cartoon character. "You come in with negative energy and Dubai feeds it right back at you. Even the weather. See, we all heard."

"This is about Gemma, isn't it?" Abdi rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He had regretted introducing his 'girlfriend' to the Lindsey and the rest of the young freelance fraternity here the moment he first did. That was, he still believed, Gemma's fundamental problem. She couldn't put on an act for you, even if it was just for one bloody dinner party. It was just always her heart and soul and everything on her sleeve.

"Look dude, honestly, things with her were just-

"Can we not talk about the whole negative influence thing, Lindsey? We already did. Many times. I'm over it."

She saluted. "Aye aye, captain. Anything you'd like. I know you're the strong and silent type."

In all honesty, he could understand very well why Lindsey would get the impression that he was still depressed about what happened. Because when what happened happened, he was at Lindsey's seedy little hotel room in Dubai trying to freshen up before his series of interviews he had managed to wrangle with (barely) willing little businessmen associated with Khaniman. He had seen Gemma's pixie little face appear on his phone screen, heard her special ringtone, answered it after taking a quick shot of Lindsey's illicit booze and then had had the conversation. Then, he had come back and sat down, filled with a crippling sense of failure anyone would mistake for sadness and misery. Lindsey had been then, and continued to be, very sweet.

"So, work and the weather?" Abdi asked, peering into his now empty cup of coffee. He decided he was too lazy to get up and go order another one.

"Weather's shit, as you can see. Work is crawling along, I suppose. Couple more stories in to MBC and they might make me permanent-ish."

"Do you want it?"

"I don't know. Would you?"

Abdi shrugged. "Dunno. MBC, probably not."

"This the part where you tell me I'm worth so much more?" she said, batting her eyelashes.

He laughed.

"So, what's this about? What's the favour you want me to pull?" That's what he liked best about Lindsey. The fact that she had a clearly defined business mode with it's own distinct set of rules of interaction.

"How's the Syrian contact?"

She leaned forward, elbows on table. A business-mode classic. "Which Syrian contact? The BBC Middle East correspondent one or the government one."

"Government one."

"Haven't used him in a long time. Bloke's a bit of a soothsayer more than anything else. Serious ethical slash moral gripes about ratting out his own government for money. I just poke him when I want to know if there's something serious brewing."

"And?" he asked. "Is something serious brewing?"

"In Syria?" She bit her lip. "Nothing I can think of the Haqq would be interested in. Sentimental crap about refugee camps, maybe? Hit me with some keywords."

"US surveillance drones," Abdi said.

She pursed her lips and blew. "I don't know, that's almost a given there at this point. Kids in Iraq are making Instagram memes about it. But I'm guessing you're referring to the recent little news buzz around the area."

"Hmm," he said. "It's weird."

"Weird how?"

"Not Raqqa, not Aleppo. Just west Syria was where they spotted it."

"And Lebanon. And Turkey as well, somehow. Wait..." Her eyes opened wide and she gasped theatrically. "You're chasing the mother land, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

"No, I'm a freaking idiot for not even realizing that. Damya, of course. No bases. Shaky diplomatic relations with the US. No discernible reason to intervene there like everywhere else in the Middle East."

"So, you haven't heard about anything like this already?" Abdi asked. He could never be too sure how much these things were just an elaborate act she put on.

"No, I just never put two and two together. It's pretty obvious though. Uncle Sam has a huge hard-on for that place. Just a huge, vivid, pulsating, engorged-

"I just ate," Abdi said and she grinned and pinched his cheek. It seemed business-mode was over.

"Still so cute! That Swedish girl doesn't know what she's missing," she squealed.

"Dutch. Continue."

"Yeah, so it's pretty obvious why. Forty percent Muslim population and the rest are ethnically Russians. Strong trade ties with Putin territory as a holdover from the Warsaw Pact. Last year there were twenty ISIL recruits who claimed to be from there. It's geographically right next to all the action."

"But how legal would something like surveillance be?"

She chuckled. "Legal? Baby, if there is an international court of law, America runs it. But no, you were on the right track with Syria and Lebanon. Probably the ideal locations to launch the drones, if that's really what they are. The question is, why?"

Hmm. The plot thickens. So as we slowly and gently let things cook, why don't you contribute to the ingredients by leaving a sweet/spicy comment with a garnish of a vote if you're feeling extra fancy. Let's make this Lasagna together.