The nations that gain from this affair are two regional enemies of Saudi Arabia: Qatar and Turkey. Officials from the latter have leaked virtually all the graphic details of the killing: that Khashoggi was dragged from one room to another; that the moment of his death was videotaped; that his corpse was hewn with a bone saw brought for the occasion. These details suggest a plan conceived and executed by professional slaughterers. But the details of this operation raise macabre practical questions. Why the bone saw, a piece of specialized surgical equipment? As a former butcher I can assure you that a saw from Home Depot will hack apart a mammal just as effectively, and is cheaper and much easier to explain. These official sources all portray the killing as cold-blooded (“like Pulp Fiction,” said one cinephile source), with every detail planned, to maximum psychopathic effect. Khashoggi had long-standing sympathies with the Muslim Brotherhood, which now finds its greatest support from Qatar and Turkey. Now those two governments have an effective wedge issue to divide the United States from Saudi Arabia, and extraordinary evidence that MbS is as sinister, and perhaps also as buffoonish, as Qaddafi or Saddam. This is the best week for Qatar and Turkey in some time.

So what happened? One possibility is that the Saudis lured Khashoggi into the consulate to kill him and dismember his corpse. Under this theory, consistent with the Turkish accounts, MbS is deranged. To carry out this assassination, he chose the one place in Istanbul where Saudi guilt would be universally acknowledged and undeniable. A drive-by shooting, or a car bomb, would not have sufficed. He killed Khashoggi to make an example of him, and without concern for the consequences.

Another possibility is that the Saudis merely (I use the adverb advisedly) intended to kidnap Khashoggi. They then botched the job and accidentally killed him. In this version of events, the Saudis would have informed Khashoggi that he was under arrest, and that his only choice would be to consent to transport to Saudi Arabia, to repent publicly, and to submit to indefinite house arrest. If Khashoggi balked, he would be attacked, drugged, stuffed in a box, and brought to the airport as an unwilling passenger. In due time, after persuasion and coercion, Khashoggi would surface in Riyadh to admit his error.

A Reuters source, no more or less credible than the Turkish sources, claims that a plan to kidnap Khashoggi went awry. Like many anonymous rumors, this one comes without even basic elaboration. Did they shoot him as he tried to flee? Did he have a heart attack? Did they overdose him?

I asked Ronald W. Dworkin, a Maryland anesthesiologist and the author of Medical Catastrophe: Confessions of an Anesthesiologist, how to sedate and transport a large 59-year-old Saudi man against his will. I wish all physicians answered my questions so bluntly.