Florence of Arabia

Christopher Buckley

FLORENCE OF ARABIA

Random House New York

This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters With the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. (Got that? Any questions? It's all made up. Okay? Whatever.

Copyright © 2004 by Christopher Taylor Buckley

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House. Inc.. New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Random House website address: www.atrandom.eom

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PROLOGUE

The official residence of His Excellency Prince Bawad bin-Rumallah al-Hamooj, ambassador of the Royal Kingdom of Wasabia to the United States oi' America, perches expensively on $18 million of real estate overlooking a frothy rapid of the Potomac River a few miles upstream from Washington, D.C. The emblem on the front gate of the palatial compound displays in bright gold leaf the emblem of the Royal House of Hamooj: a date palm tree, a crescent moon and a scimitar, hovering over a head. Viewed close up, the head does not bear a pleased expression, doubtless owing to its having been decapitated by the above scimitar.

Historically speaking, the head belonged to one Raliq "The Unwise" al-Sawah, who, one night in 1740 or 1742 (historians differ on the precise date), attempted to usurp the authority of Sheik Abdulabdullah "The Wise" Walfa al-Hamooj, founder of the Wasabi dynasty and future king. According to legend—now-taught as historical fact in the country's schools—Rafiq's severed head attempted to apologize to the sheik for its perfidy, and begged to be reattached. Sheik Abdulabdullah, however, was in no mood to hear these entreaties. Had he not treated Raliq like his own brother? He ordered the still-blubbering mouth to be stuffed with camel dung and the head tossed to the desert hyenas.

The event is commemorated every year on the anniversary of the Perfidy of Raliq. Adult male citizens of the kingdom are required to place a token amount of camel dung on the tongue, as a symbol of the king's authority and a reminder of the bitter fate that befalls those who attempt to undermine it. In practice, only Hamooji royal palace staff and the most conservative of Wasabis re-enact the ritual literally. A hundred years ago. an enterprising confectioner in the capital city of kalla devised a nougat that gave off the telltale aroma of the original article, enough to fool the mukfelleen, the religious police who sternly enforce the precepts of the Book of Hamooj. Wasabis could pop one onto the tongue and walk about ail day with a showy air of piety. Alas, the trickery was discovered, and the unfortunate candy-maker forfeited not only his license to manufacture sweets but his tongue, right hand and left foot. On assuming the throne in 1974. King Tallulah decreed that a symbolic piece of dung would suffice. This caused much grumbling among the Wasabi mullahs and Mukfelleen but vast relief among the adult male population.

A few minutes past midnight on the crisp fall night of September 28, the gates on which the royal emblem was mounted swung open and let out the car driven by Nazrah al-Bawad, wife of Prince Bawad.

Nazrah's exit would have gone more smoothly had she spent more time behind the wheel of an automobile. Wasabi women were not permitted to drive. However, being both enterprising and spirited, Nazrah had, since she was a teenager, been begging various males, starling with her brother Tamsa, to teach her the mysteries of steering, brake and gas. Taking the wheel of their father's Cadillac in the open deserts of Wasabia was not so complicated. In Washington, she would importune (that is. bribe) reluctant Khalil, her chauffeur-bodyguard-minder, to let her drive on certain half-deserted streets, and in the parking lots of such royal hangouts as Neiman Marcus and Saks fifth Avenue. She had progressed to the point of almost being able to park a car without leaving most of the paint on the fenders of the ones in front and behind. Khalil had. in the process, earned a reputation within the residential household as a driver of less than perfect reliability.

Here, tonight, Nazrah found herself maneuvering with difficulty. Exiting the gate, she sheared off the rearview minor and left a scrape down the side of the $85,000 car that would cause the most stoic of insurance adjusters to weep. Her intention had been to turn left, toward the city of Washington. But, seeing the headlights of a car coming up the country lane from that direction, she panicked and turned right, deeper into the deciduous suburb of McLean.

In truth, Nazrah was not thinking clearly. In truth, she was drunk. Drunk, as one might explain to a magistrate, with an explanation.

After more than twenty years in Washington, her husband, the prince, had announced his intention of returning to Wasabia. along with Nazrah and his three other wives. His uncle, the king, had decided to reward his decades of smooth service by annointing his nephew foreign minister. This was a big promotion that came with an even bigger palace and share of Wasabia's oil royalties.

The news was less than joyous to Nazrah, the youngest, prettiest and most independent-minded of the prince's wives. She did not want to return to Wasabia. Her years of living in America—even under the watchful eye of Shazzik, Prince Bawad's stern, neutered (so it was rumored) chamberlain—had left Nazrah with an appreciation of the role of women in Western society. She was in no hurry to return to a country where she would have to hide her lovely features under a veil, and in even less of a hurry to return to a country where women were still being publicly (logged, stoned to death and having their heads cut off in a site in the capital city so accustomed to the spectacle that it had earned the nickname "Chop-Chop Square."

Nazrah had been planning to inform the prince of her decision to remain in the United States that night after he returned home from his dinner with the Waldorf Group, a very influential group indeed, consisting of ex-U.S. presidents, ex-secretaries of state and defense, ex-directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, excellent folks, all—and what contacts they had! Since its founding ten years before in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Motel in New York City, the Waldorf Group had invested over $5 billion of Wasabi royal money in various projects. This made for close relationships all around. Many of the Waldorf's board of directors also sat on the boards of the companies in which all the royal Wasabi money was being invested.

Today's Waldorf board meeting concerned a desalination project. Desalination was always a hot topic in Wasabia, owing to its geographical peculiarity. The country was entirely landlocked. Its lack of a single foot of shoreline was a grating historical vestige, the result of a moment of bibulous pique on the part of Winston Churchill when he drew up Wasabia's modern borders on a cocktail napkin al his dub in London. King Tallulah had been uncooperative during the peace conference, so with a few strokes of his fountain pen, Churchill had denied him seaports. Thus do brief brandy-saturated moments determine the fate of empires and the course of history.

Wasabia's population was booming, owing to the fact that every man could lake up to four wives. You were hardly considered manly unless you had twenty children. As a result, it was an increasingly young and thirsty nation.

At the board meeting, Prince Bawad told the assembled Waldorf directors, dear friends all, that the kingdom would be pleased to invest S1.2 billion with the group. The group would in turn hire the necessary Texans—kindred desert people—to build more desalination plants and the requisite pipelines into perennially parched Wasabia. At the critical moment during the meeting, the chairman of the board, an ex-president of the United States, would scribble a number on a piece of paper and slide it over to Prince Bawad. The number on the piece of paper represented Prince Bawad's "participation"—such a nicer word than "skim" or "take"—in the profits.

This ritual usually went smoothly. But this time Prince Bawad, who was building a 150,000-square-foot ski lodge in Jackson Hole, felt that the sum was well, inadequate. He stared at the ex-president.

They had a good relationship, the ex-president and Prince Bawad. The former had been a guest, while president, at Bawad's present hundred-thousand-square-foot ski lodge in Aspen. Normally, he would have scratched out the number and written a slightly bigger one on the paper. But this time he did not. There had been grumbling among the Waldorfians. The kingdom had been getting a bit frisky lately in its demands. Business was, after all. business.

The ex-president merely smiled back, finally. Bawad, with a trace of a scowl, nodded his agreement to the number on the paper. The ex-president beamed and made a little joke about what a tough businessman the prince was. The meeting was adjourned, the doors opened and in came the refreshments, and such refreshments. It was a very pleasant group with which to be associated, the Waldorf. Never in the field of human profit was so much made by so few for doing so little.

BACK AT THE RESIDENCE. Nazrah took a nip from the prince's bottle of 150-vear-old French brandy-. When, at eleven o'clock, the prince still had not returned, she took another nip. Then another. By the time the prince did arrive home at 11:40, she was feeling no pain.

The speech that she had so carefully rehearsed tumbled off her benumbed tongue without eloquence or coherence, and heavily redolent of Napoleon branch-. The prince, moonfaced, goateed and imperious, and still fuming over his inadequate participation in the desalination project, brusquely ordered Nazrah to her room.

A late-night argument between an indulged royal prince and a tipsy junior wife is not an occasion of ideal dialogue. It deteriorated into shouts and terminated all too quickly and dramatically with the prince dealing Nazrah a cuff across the chops with a meaty, cigar-smelling hand. With that, he stormed off, loudly cursing Western corruption, to the bedroom of one of his less troublesome wives.

Nazrah, smarting and furious, went to her bedroom but not to bed. She hurled a few things into a Hermes overnight bag and made her way to the garage, where she could choose from eleven cars. (The prince loved to drive and was known personally to most of the Virginia state troopers.) She decided not to take the Maserati. Lamborghini, Maybach or Ferrari, these having too many buttons of uncertain provenance on the dash, and settled instead on the Mercedes in which Khalil usually chauffeured her, with whose controls she was quite familiar, including the special button on the walnut dash that overrode the guards' control of the front gate.

So it was that Nazrah found herself roaring out the gates past alarmed guards, with the grim Shazzik and two of his men, fierce Warga tribesmen in blue suits, in hot pursuit.

But where to go? She'd missed the turn to Washington.

After nearly colliding with several trees and going through a succession of red lights, she found herself turning north on Route 123 at a speed triple the legal limit, a fact not lost on Virginia state trooper Harmon G. Gilletts.

It was at this point, with Trooper Gilletts's red-white-and-blue flashing lights and urgent siren behind her. that she saw the sign announcing GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE. Any port in a storm.

The sight of a car approaching at high speed, followed closely by a state policeman in apparent hot pursuit, is not a welcome one these days at U.S. government installations. By the time Nazrah had reached the front gale of the CIA headquarters, a steel barrier had swiftly risen up from the cement. This abruptly and loudly terminated her forward progress, in the process activating so many airbags inside her vehicle that the princess disappeared from sight altogether, concussed into unconsciousness.

As Nazrah dreamed of turquoise antelopes living over a boundless black desert, pursued by giant scarlet crabs with snapping golden claws—adrenaline, cognac and the punch of air bags produce the most vivid visions—the United States government was waking to the reality of an incident of epic dimension.

FLORENCE of ARABIA

CHAPTER ONE

While Nazrah was still dreaming of psychedelic antelopes, the CIA guards and Virginia state trooper Harmon G. Gilletts, weapons drawn, examined their catch through the car's windows. All they could see, amid the myriad air bags, were two distinctly feminine hands, the one on the left bearing enough diamonds to put all of their children combined through Ivy League colleges and law school.

Another expensive German car drove up, this one bearing Shazzik, looking even more grim than usual, and his two mukfelleen. The CIA guards and Trooper Gilletts noted the diplomatic license plate but did not holster their weapons.

Shazzik emerged from the car and. in his accustomed peremptory manner—Hamooji retainers are not renowned for their courtesy to non-royals— announced that the vehicle contained a member of the household and asserted his rights of extraction.

This was too much for Trooper Gilletts. As a Marine Corps reservist, he had spent time in Wasabia during one of America's periodic interventionist spasms in the region. As a result, he could not stand Wasabis (a common enough sentiment among foreign visitors). Six months at the Prince Wadum Air Base had left Gilletts, a reasonable man of no particular bias, hating even the name "Wasabi."

He dispensed with the usual "sir," with which he addressed even the most wretched of his highway detainees, thrust out his impressive marine reservist pectorals at the chamberlain while tightening his palm around the grip of his Glock nine-millimeter, and counter-asserted jurisdiction on behalf of the sovereign commonwealth of Virginia. Stonewall Jackson at First Bull Run, just down the road from here, had been no less immovable than Trooper Harmon G. Gilletts.

The CIA guards, meanwhile, had pressed buttons summoning backup in the form of an armored vehicle capable (should any gale situation deteriorate seriously) of launching missiles; also of passing impressive amounts of electrical current through the bodies of the undesirable. A helicopter with snipers was also put into play. Why take chances? Why screw around?

Amid this bruit of riot vehicle, rotor blades, drawn guns, male barking and bantam outthrusts of chests, Nazrah's hallucinations ended. She stirred inside her bulbous polystyrene cocoon. The air bags deflated sufficiently to allow her wriggle room. She peered with horror at the standoff taking place outside her car windows and did what anyone would in such circumstances. She reached for her cell phone.

FLORENCE FARFALETTI HAD been in the U.S. Foreign Service long enough to know that when a phone rings after midnight it is A) never a wrong number and B) never a call you want to get. But being a deputy to the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs (DASNEA), she C) had to take the call.

"Farfaletti," she said with as much professional crisp as she could muster in the middle of a ruined REM cycle. Even though her last name had been spoken aloud for thirty-two years, it still sounded like too many syllables. But having changed her first name, she felt she couldn't change her surname. It would crush her grandfather, who remained defiantly proud of his service in Mussolini's army in Ethiopia in the 1930s. Perhaps after he died. He was in his nineties now. Or if she remarried. Meanwhile, she was stuck with the patronymic embarrassment of vowels.

"Flor-ents!"

Florence struggled against the glue of sleep. She recognized the Wasabian difficulty with soft C's. The voice was young, urgent, scared, familiar.

"Nazrah?'"

"It's me, Florents! It’s Nazrah!"

Florence flicked on the light, grimaced at the clock. What was this about?

She knew Nazrah Hamooj. They had met back in Kaffa, the Wasabi capital, when Florence lived there. Nazrah was the daughter of a lesser sheik of the Azami tribe, quite lovely, intelligent, self-educated—the only education a Wasabi woman could acquire, since they were barred from schooling above age fifteen. Nazrah was irreverent about the other wives, whom she referred to with delighted sarcasm as "my dear sisters." During her dismal time in Kaffa. Florence heard the gossip: Prince Bawad had married the much younger Nazrah to annoy his snobbish second wife. Bisma, who fell that Nazrah was socially several rungs too low down the ladder.

Florence and Nazrah had reconnected socially in Washington, at an embassy reception, one of the few occasions when Wasabi wives were on public display. They had managed to get together for a half-dozen lunches in French restaurants, where Nazrah ordered expensive wines in view of the frantic Khalil. Florence liked Nazrah. She laughed easily, and she was deliriously indiscreet. Nazrah knew of Florence's own experience with Wasabi princes and confided in her. Florence dutifully filled out the requisite State Department report after each encounter. Out of decency and respect for her friend, she left out certain details, such as those concerning Prince Bawad's amatory practices, If Nazrah had confided anything of strategic value or necessity to the United States. Florence would, of course, as an officer of the government, have vouchsafed it to the relevant authority. So why was Nazrah calling at this hour?

"Flor-ents. You must help me—I need asylum! Now. please!"

Florence fell her chest go light. Asvlum. Within the State Department, this was known as "the A-word." A nightmare term in a bureaucracy consecrated to stasis and inertia. "I want asylum" sent shudders down a thousand rubber spines. It summoned hellish visions of paperwork, cables, meetings, embarrassment, denial, restatement and—invariably—clarification. "I want asylum" ended in tears, approved or denied. Denied, it usually ended up on the evening news, a nation's shame, the anchorman asking, in tones sepulchral, disappointed and trochaic. "How could something like this have happened in the United States of America?''

Florence was now bolt, wide, awake. The wife of the ambassador of the country that supplied America with the majority of its imported fossil fuel was asking her, a midlevel Foreign Service officer, for asylum. Homeland security alert levels come in six color codes ranging from green to red. Florence's own alert levels consisted of just three: Cool. Oh Shit and Holy Shit.

Her crisis training kicked in. She heard a voice inside her head. It said. Stall. This was instantly drowned out by a second voice saying. Help. The second voice was real and coining through the phone. It was speaking Wasabi.

Florence found herself saying. "Tell them you're injured. Insist they take you to a hospital. Fairfax Hospital. Insist. Nazrah—do you understand?"

She rose and dressed and. even though burning, put on her pearl earrings. Always wear your earrings, her mother had told her from an early age.

OUTSIDE THE EMERGENCY ROOM entrance, she recognized Shazzik and the two mukfelleen For the first time in her life, she wished she were wearing a veil. During her months in Wasabia. she'd been required to and never got used to it.

Shazzik was furious, making demands of—she guessed—several CIA security officers. What worried her more was the amount of Virginia state trooper-age outside. Seven cruisers. Someone was bound to call the media, and once that happened, the options narrowed, few situations, really, are improved by the arrival of news trucks.

Two armed hospital security guards stood athwart the doors to the ER. Florence pulled her scarf over her head as a makeshift veil, lowered her head so as to look demure, and approached.

"I'm here to see Nazrah Hamooj. I am her family." She made herself seem and sound foreign. With her dark hair and Mediterranean complexion, she looked credibly Middle Eastern.

'Name?"

Neither "Florence" nor Tarfaletli" sounding terribly Wasabian. Florence said. "Melath." It meant "asylum" in Wasabi, a fact that would in all likelihood be lost on a Virginia hospital security guard.

Word was sent in. It came back: Let her in.

"She's all right. Her CAT scan and MRI were clean."

The doctor was young, not quite as good-looking as the ones in television dramas but, from the way he regarded Florence, an appreciator of beauty. Florence had grasped, as soon as boys began to bay outside her windows, that beauty was, in addition to being a gift, a tool, like a Swiss Army knife.

"Could you do another? Just in case?"

"She is your.. ."

"Sister."

"Well, we've established from a medical point of view that your sister is all right. Were you aware that she was drinking?" "Dear, dear." "She's lucky to be alive."

"Can you just keep her here? Under observation?" "This isn't the Betty Ford Center." "A few hours is all I'm asking." "The insurance company—"

Florence took the doctor by the arm and tugged him to a corner. He didn't resist. Men tend to yield to pretty women dragging them oil into corners. She dropped the Wasabi accent.

"I am asking you on behalf of the United States government"—she flashed him her State Department ID—"to keep that woman here in this hospital for a few hours. Surely there are some more tests you can give her?"

"What's going on?"

"Do you know what an honor killing is?" "This is a hospital, in case you hadn't—"

"Where she comes from, it's what happens to a woman who dishonors her husband or relative. No trial, no jury, no appeal, no Supreme Court, no ACIU, just death. By stoning or decapitation. You with me?"

"Who is she?"

"She's the wife of the Wasabi ambassador. One of his wives, anyway. She tried to run away. If you release her into their custody before I can figure something out, it's probably a death sentence."

"Jesus, lady."

"Sorry to lay that on you." Florence smiled at the doctor.

"How long am I supposed to keep her?"

"Thank you. Just—a few hours. That would really be great. There's a tall man outside. Middle Eastern, very unpleasant-looking, thin with a pencil mustache, high forehead and goatee. Tell him you need to do more tests, and she's in isolation."

"Oh, man."

"You're really, really great to do this. I won't forget it." Florence nudged him toward the swinging doors, then located Nazrah and drew the curtain around her bed.

Nazrah had held it together until now, but upon seeing Florence, she burst. The Great Desert in the interior of Wasabia had not seen such moisture in an entire year. She had, in the manner of women of the region, applied copious mascara, which now ran sootily down her tawny checks. Florence listened and nodded and handed her a succession of tissues. Nazrah explained. It hadn't been planned. She was sorry to have involved Florence. She'd intended to drive to the train station and take the Acela Express to New York City and then ... whatever the next step was. Then she'd taken the right turn. Then the police car. Then the CIA front gale seemed like ... Then the crash. And the only person she could think to call was Florence. She was so sorry.

Florence fought the temptation to say something hopeful, there being little reason to hope. At some point she realized she was holding Nazrah's hand.

Eventually. Nazrah's tear ducts gave up from exhaustion. Calm descended on her. She looked up at the hospital ceiling and said, "What will they do with me?"

The curtain parted with a fierce zip to reveal Prince Bawad and his retinue. He looks like Othello, Florence thought. And here's Shazzik in the role of Iago.

Accompanying them, she recognized State's chief security officer and, oh hell, Duckett. And McFall, CIA's chief for Near East.

Behind this scrum of officialdom Florence heard the doctor manfully explaining that there was some possibility of subdural something, but it was clear that he was being overruled. Bawad, whose linger-snaps could summon a kingdom's resources, had brought his personal physician and orderlies to earn her off. Nazrah was, as far as the United States was concerned. Wasabi national soil.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Why did she call you?"

"You've asked me that twelve times." Twelve times over the course of three interrogations. Present at this one were: Charles Duckett, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs (DASNEA); two frowns from the White House National Security Council: an FBI supervisor and a CIA guy introduced In a name most likely not real who probably worked for McFall. Also a stenographer who coughed. Why. Florence wondered, hadn't they sent along someone from Housing and Urban Development?

"Then I'm asking again. Aren't [?"

"Win don't you just box me?" She would have welcomed a polygraph at this point for variety.

"No one's talking about boxing you. Why did she call you?"

"She'd crashed her car. Charles. She looks out one window, and there are men with guns everywhere. We knew each other. We were friendly. I'm a woman. She found herself in a stressful situation. She probably wanted to talk to a sympathetic person in the U.S. government. Hard as they are to find."

"Why didn't you report it to us immediately?"

"I was going to once the situation stabilized."

"Stabilized? Sequestering a runaway diplomatic wife—the wife of Price Bawad. By what earthly definition does this qualify as stabilizing the situation?"

"I was trying to buy some cooldown time. That's all. She was terrified. Call it a human transaction. Just so we're all clear. I'm not running an underground railroad for Wasabi wives. Okay?"

Duckett read from inside a red folder marked TOP SECRET. "You said to her. "tell them you're injured. Insist they take you to a hospital. Fairfax Hospital. Insist. Nazrah—do you understand?' Why Fairfax?"

That they had a transcript of Nazrah s cell-phone call to her indicated two distinct possibilities: that the CIA could spontaneously intercept any cell call made on its propertv. Or—more interestingly—that the government had already tapped Nazrah's cell phone.

"It's the closest hospital."

Duckett grumpily opened a green TOP SECRET folder and scanned. "You say you met with her on ... seven ... separate occasions."

"That's right. Four lunches, one tea at the Four Seasons Hotel. We went shopping twice. It's all in the folder, the yellow one."

Duckett opened the yellow folder. "Are these reports complete?"

"How do you mean, complete?"

"Did you report everything?"

"Of course. Every thing relevant."

"What would you consider irrelevant?"

"Personal stuff."

"Define "personal.""

"Girl talk." Probably the best way to explain it to this high-testosterone bunch.

Ducked sighed as only a bureaucrat can, from the very depths of his soul. "Florence, this is not Twenty Questions. Everything that she told you is relevant."

Florence looked at Duckett, then at FBI, at the White House pair, at CIA— who seemed to be regarding her with an expression that went beyond strictly business. She turned back to Duckett.

"Okay. She told me that the prince likes to smoke hash, then dress up in cow boy boots and his tribal headdress and nothing else, then line up all four of his wives with their bottoms in the air and, well, 1 guess the technical term for it would be—"

"All right, that's all."

CIA burst out laughing. The White House mice looked stricken.

Florence said, "Next time a diplomatic wife confides in me, I'll be sure to put everything in writing."

"Would you excuse us?" Duckett said to the others. He added to the stenographer. "You, too."

CIA flashed Florence a grin as he exited.

"God of heaven and earth, why would you reveal something like that?" Duckett said, aghast. "In front of them? Don't you understand the situation? The Wasabis are madder than hornets. If they find out that State has been retailing—to CIA—intimate details of..." He put his head in his hands. "Oh, what a disaster. They'll use this to crucify us. You know what they'll say, don't you? That you were on a personal vendetta."

"That's absurd. I was trying to help a fellow human being. Ridiculous as that may sound."

"You were married to a Wasabi. And you're Italian. 'Vendetta' is an Italian word."

"I'm as American as you are. And that is just completely out of line. To say nothing of stupid."

"Explain it to their Foreign Ministry!"

Florence had grown up fascinated by her grandfather's tales of the Middle Fast. At college she majored in Arabic studies and was fluent by the time she graduated Yale. There she met Hamzir, a minor Wasabi princeling, charming, handsome, raffish, rich and, being a reservist fighter pilot in the Royal Wasabi Air Force, dashing. What American girl with a predilection for the Middle East wouldn't have fallen in love? They were married weeks after graduation.

After a honeymoon in the Mediterranean on a 125-foot yacht, Florence arrived in her new home of Kaffa to a succession of discoveries, exponentially depressing. Hamzir had not been straightforward about the realities of life as a foreign Wasabi bride. He'd told her that she would be exempt from the strictures governing Wasabi women. Not to worry, darling!

Florence found herself under virtual house arrest, required to wear the veil outside the home and to be accompanied by a male escort. With this much, she resolved to cope. But within three months, she discovered that her birth-control pills had been switched with sugar substitutes—the kind one puts in coffee. Confronted, Hamzir shrugged and grunted that it was time, anyway, (hat she bore him a child. She retaliated in the Lysistrata fashion by cutting off sex. whereupon he went into a rage and announced the next evening over dinner—as if remembering a dentist's appointment the following day—that he was taking a second wife, a first cousin. Pass the lamb, would you'!'

The next morning Florence drove herself (a flogging offense) to the U.S. embassy and said. Beam me up. Scotty. Their response was You got yourself into this, and now you expect us to get you out of it? Here, read this. They handed her a pamphlet tilled "What American Women Should Understand When They Marry a Wasabi National." The State Department's reflexive response to any American in extremis overseas is to hand them a pamphlet—along with a list of incompetent local lawyers—and say. "We told you so."

Florence was not one to be deterred. She announced firmly that she would not leave the embassy except in a car driven by an embassy staffer, to Prince Babullah Airport. An enterprising young Foreign Service officer, like herself of Italian extraction, worked out a quick and dirty arrangement with the Italian embassy and got her out of the country on an Italian passport, to which Florence was technically entitled.

Back in the U.S.A., she went to work in Washington with a Middle Eastern foundation. One day, bored, and thinking about the enterprising Foreign Service officer in Kaffa who had rescued her. she sat for the Foreign Service exam. She passed. Being fluent in Arabic and an expert on the culture, she was posted to Chad. After 9/11, it was thought that her skills might be better suited elsewhere at State, so she was moved to Near Eastern Affairs.

Florence said to Duckett, "Did they have a tap on her cell phone? Or did they intercept the call on the spot?"

"What does it matter? They have you on tape, urging her to flee. Practically issuing amnesty on the spot."

"But who taped the call? Who gave you the transcript?"

"McFall's person, Brent whateverhisname."

"Ask him how they got it."

"They're not going to tell me that. You know what pricks they are about sources and methods."

Florence whispered, "Tell him that you know what they were up to." Duckett stared. "Namely?"

"That CIA had a tap on Nazrah's phone long before she drove into the gate. That they were working on her. That they'd targeted her. That they were going to try to blackmail Prince Bawad through her."

Duckett pursed his lips. "Thanks to you, now they do have something on him."

"But they won't be able to use it if you tell them that you've seen through them. That you're on to them. That you've blown their operation. And that you're now going to climb to the top of the Washington Monument and scream your lungs out about it."

"But what if it's not true?"

"Let the director of CIA deny it. To the president's face. In the Cabinet Room."

The lines on Duckett's forehead relaxed, as if he'd suddenly been injected with Botox. He let out a pleased, ruminative grunt. His loathing of the CIA went back to one of his first overseas postings. Ecuador. There, he had overseen the opening of one of State's dreary cultural exchange centers, this one designed to "highlight the historic synergy between the United States and Ecuador." The next day it was blown up, ostensibly by a local guerrilla group, but in fact by the CIA, who wanted to stage an anti-U.S. outrage in order to widen its campaign against the current set of rebels. Duckett had been licking this still-moist wound lor decades. He was smiling now.

He called the others back in. "I've questioned Ms. Farfaletti. and I have established to my satisfaction that her version of the events is accurate and truthful. Now"—he picked up the transcript of Nazrah's call—"I'm not going to ask you, or you, how this call came to be intercepted. Because that would not only compromise sources and methods, it would also raise the appalling possibility that one or more agencies of the U.S. government were spying on the wife of a diplomat. Not just any diplomat but the dean of the diplomatic corps—a close personal friend of the president of the United States."

"That's a bunch of shit."

"Which your director, or yours, can scrape oil" the bottom of their shoes—in the Cabinet Room, after State has presented to perspective on the matter." FBI and CIA stared.

"Alternatively" continued Duckett, lord of the moment, "we can all of us agree that the matter is now closed. Princess Nazrah is, as we speak, on her way back home in a Royal Wasabi Air Force transport. The media is unaware. So. gentlemen, how shall we proceed?"

The White House people whispered with FBI and CIA. FBI said, none loo happily. "We're done here." On the way out, the CIA man winked at Florence.

The next morning Florence inserted her ID card into the State Department turnstile, half expecting the display to read CANCELED, like a maxed-out credit card. But it let her in. Apparently, she still had a job in the United States government.

She sought out George. George was a desk-limpet in the Political/Econ section who amused himself during his lunch hour by devising crossword puzzles in ancient Phoenician, one of twelve languages he spoke fluently. He claimed to dream in seven of them, and George was not the sort to boast. His model was Sir Richard Burton, the nineteenth-century polymath-explorer who spoke thirty-five languages and dreamed in seventeen. One of the most daring adventurers of all time, Burton was a curious role model for the agoraphobic George, who had managed to wriggle out of every foreign posting he had been offered, except for one eighteen-month stint in Ottawa, during which he learned Micmac, a complex native Canadian language.

"I had the most vivid dream last night. In Turkish. I was on the Bosporus with Lord Byron and Shelley. We were each in one of those idiotic tourist pedal boats, trying to get from one side to the other, only the continents started moving apart. What do you make of that? You look awful. Did we not sleep last night?"

"George, Nazrah Hamooj asked me for asylum."

"If you think that's more important than interpreting my dream, fine."

Florence told him what had happened, leaving out the detail about Prince Bawad's ride-'em-cowboy fantasy.

"Hmmm. I knew something must be cooking. Cables between here and Kaffa have been living fast and furious. They scrambled a Royal Wasabi transport out of Jacksonville to Dulles. Oh, the humanity oh, the paperwork."

George caught the look on Florence's face. "That was she on board? Oh, dear. I hear the sound of sharpening steel."

"I'll call Tony Bazell in Kaffa." Florence said. "Maybe he can—"

"What? Storm the palace? forget it, Maybe they'll let her off with thirty lashes." George peered at Florence. "Are we leaving something out? Are we not telling all? Out with it."

"I... Nah."

"In Italian." It was the language they used for office gossip. She told him.

"Mamma mia All four? Simultaneously? Well, I knew the prince entertained, but I had no idea. Filthy old goal. No wonder the poor thing wanted asylum. She probably dreamed of a nice, boring life in the 'burbs. Apron, gingham frock, pies cooling on the windowsill, golden retriever named ... Brandy, stretching class on Tuesday, yoga on Thursday. Lord and Taylor's trunk show. Jeopardy! every night at seven-thirty during dinner with a husband named Cliff... no, Brad. Brad the Impaler. Who would ask for oral sex only on his birthday. Now she's on her way back to Wasabia. Land of fun and sun. Well, darling, you tried. God knows you tried."

Two days later. Florence called Bazell at the U.S. embassy in Kaffa, who put her through to the embassy guy who kept the Chop-Chop Square tally. Nazrah Hamooj had been executed that morning at dawn by sword, for the crime of adultery.

"She was pretty calm about it, from what we heard. Sometimes they make a hell of a fuss. Last month they did Prince Rahmal's wife. Man. did she put up a light. Yelling, screaming, kicking. They finally jabbed her full of Valium so they could get a clear cut. Tomorrow's entertainment is they're stoning a woman to death for schtupping—get this—the black cook. It's the Thousand and One Nights. They can't get over it. Is this a great country or what?"

CHAPTER THREE

If Florence had an office with a door, she would have shut it and had a private cry, but she didn't, so she used the ladies' room. She remained there most of the morning, until George sent someone in to get her. When she emerged, he said, "Frankly, you'd look better under a veil." and put her in a cab and sent her home.

She unplugged the phone and went to bed and had a dream in which Nazrah was lying on the hospital bed with mascara streaming down her cheeks, and Shazzik, dressed in a female nurse's uniform, was administering a lethal injection. Nazrah's body gradually shrank and was sucked into the tube and up into the plastic drip bag. where she was imprisoned, screaming silently for help. Florence started awake, so drenched in perspiration that she got up and took a shower.

She went to work the next morning and stayed at the office until past midnight for the next three days.

When she was finished, she printed three numbered copies, placed them in TOP SECRET folders, gave one to Duckett's secretary, another to George, and sent the other straight to the top.

"So this is what you've been holed up doing lo these three days?" George opened the folder and read the cover page and let out a whistle. He read at the speed it look him to turn the fifty-odd pages.

"Well?" she asked.

"Couldn't put it down. The middle bit could use some bulling. It was Tallulah the second, not Tallulah the third, who instigated the practice among the Hawawi of female circumcision—quis’ha, by the way, not quish'aa."

"Other than that?"

‘I’m sure it helped to get it out of your system." "I sent it to Duckett."

George stared. "Why don't you just stab him in the heart with Malal's dagger and get it over with?"

Their boss kepi a nineteenth-century gold and silver dagger on his desk, a gilt of Prince Malal, Wasabia's minister of agriculture. It was probably the cheapest present ever given by a Wasabi royal, but Duckett was proud of it. He used it as a letter opener, and sometimes brandished it to make a point.

"George, I'm asking you what you think."

"I hardly know where to begin. This goes a bit beyond our traditional brief. You didn't really send this to him? Come on." Florence nodded. "And to S." "You sent it to S?"

"Why not?'This way Duckett can't stop it. You're the one who's always saying it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission." "Well." George said. "Well, well, well, Wow."

Florence's phone rang. "Florence? Mr. Duckett wants you. It's urgent." "Do you want to be cremated." George said, "or do you prefer traditional burial?"

FLORENCE ENTERED DUCK KIT'S office without knocking and closed the door behind her. It shut with a portentous click.

Charles Duckett was leaning back in his chair, as if trying to distance himself physically from the document in front of him. He was looking at it as though it were a dead animal, far gone in putrefaction, that had been malevolently dumped upon a pristine altar consecrated to solemn rituals and tended to by votaries of an elite cult.

The cover sheet looked up insistently.

FEMALE EMANCIPATION AS A MEAN'S OF ACHIEVING LONG-TERM POLITICAL STABILITY IN THE NEAR EAST: AN OPERATIONAL PROPOSAL Submitted by Florence Farfaletti. DDASNEA Circulation: SecState. DDASNEA

"I know you've been under a strain, Florence. I understand that—" "Charles, the reason I sent it to S before getting your approval was to relieve you of responsibility. And to be honest, I didn't think I'd get your approval. So what do think?"

"What do I think?" Duckett said absently. "Of the fact that one of my deputies, whose actions reflect directly on me. has circulated a proposal calling for the fomenting of revolution in a country that supplies one third of America's energy needs, a country to which we are formally allied, to which we are vitally and strategically linked... circulated it and sent it directly to the ... secretary of state? What do I think'?"

"I truly believe that—"

"Do you see this phone on my desk. Florence?" "Yes, Charles, I see the phone."

"Any moment now, that phone is going to ring. It will be S calling. The secretary would like to see you, Mr. Duckett. Right away. That's what the voice will say."

"Charles—"

"During my time here. I've endeavored to make my infrequent visits to S occasions of light. Sometimes, given the region it falls to us to superintend, that is not always possible. But at least when the secretary sees me walk into his office, he does not say to himself, Why, here's Charlie Duckett! Say, isn't he the one whose staff sends me cockamamy proposals to undermine the social structure of America's most strategic partner in the Middle East? Why, come on in. Charlie boy! What's that Skunk Works of yours cooked up this time? Ho ho. Certainly hope The Washington Post doesn't find out I've been reading proposals to overthrow Wasabia. Ha ha. Might makes things a bit sticky at the dinner I'm giving for Prince Bawad next Thursday at my house. Oh, and by the way. Charlie old bean, what's this about one of your people operating an underground railroad for his runaway wives? Gosh, why didn't I think of that? What better way to promote harmony between our two countries! Let's give that girl of yours a promotion! Are you out of your fucking mind. Farfaletti?"

"I made it clear to the secretary in my cover letter that you hadn't signed off on it."

Duckett rubbed his forehead. The lines were back. "I protected you. I went the extra mile. Now I'm beginning to think you're working for them."

"Them? Who are you talking about?"

"Them." Duckett did the Langley Hook.

"CIA? Charles, I work for the State Department. I work for you."

"No, no. This could only be an Agency operation. To destroy State—from within. It's happened before, you know. In Quito."

"Charles, I'm on your side. I'm just trving to think outside the box."

"What-box? Pandora's?"

"If we want to bring about change in the Middle East, this is the way to do it. I'm convinced of it. It might be the only way."

"How do I explain? Where do I begin? It is not our job to bring about change in the Middle East"

"It's not?"

"No, it is not. Our job is to manage reality."

His phone rang. The shadow of the angel of death passed over Charles Duckett's features as he answered. "Yes." he said grimly, swallowing. "Yes. Right away." He hung up. "Satisfied, Florence?"

"Let me go with you. Let me make the case. I can."

Duckett rose slowly. His eyes had gone glassy. "I was up for the ambassadorship, you know. It was mine. It was all set. They told me."

He shuffled out of his office like a mental patient in slippers going off to get his noon meds.

George was wailing for her. "Where would you like me to ship your remains?"

THE NEXT MORNING Florence received by interoffice notification that her request for transfer to the visa section of the U.S. consulate in the Cape Verde islands bad been approved, effective immediately.

"You might have told me you'd applied," George said. "I thought we had a relationship."

Florence started glumly at the paper.

"Well, let's look on the bright side." he said. "Bracing sea air on all sides, steady climate, especially during hurricane season. And whale-watching second to none. A lot of the harpooners on the Nantucket whale ships were Cape Verde men."

"Shut up, George."

"I thought it was a damn slick proposal. Oh, hell. I'll miss you." "I'm not going to Cape Verde. For God's sake."

"You're not going to quit? Just go, put in a few months. Duckett's due for a rotation, he'll be gone before you know it. Think of it as a vacation. Couple of months on the beach in Cape Verde, nights hobnobbing with the local gratin. You'll be back before you know it, tanned, rested and ready. Come on, Firenze."

George was the only one outside her family who called her that. And he'd guessed it. It was the baptismal name her father, a native of Florence, had insisted on. The priest had initially refused, there being no Saint Firenze. but there are few theological issues that can't be resolved with a hundred-dollar bill. Florence Americanized the name in the fifth grade after she'd had enough abuse from classmates. But George much preferred Firenze to Florence, which he said sounded like the cleaning woman's name.

"I'm out of here." she said. She kissed George on the forehead and collected her things and left. What now? There were a dozen foundations in Washington where her knowledge of the Middle East would be better used than on an archipelago off the coast of Senegal. Where better, she figured, to sink back into the earth than a foundation? But what a shame, what a waste.

IT WAS A STUNNING, crisp fall day, and feeling liberated alter dropping off her letter of resignation. Florence zipped up her black leather jumpsuit— the sight of which caused cricks in many a male neck—tied her hair in a pony-tail, donned the red helmet, flipped down the visor, pressed the start button on her motorcycle and screamed out of the city at a deliciously breakneck speed.

At the end of River Road, she turned left and roared deeper into country. She glanced down at the speedometer and saw that she was going almost ninety miles per hour, too fast, but what bliss! The fall leaves went by in a lush slipstream blur of gold and red and orange.

Another color suddenly appeared in her rearview mirror, not found in nature, electric blue and flashing. For a moment she considered trying to outrun it, but then she let up on the throttle and rumbled over to the shoulder to await the inevitable Do you have any idea how fast you were going, ma'am?

The man who got out of the unmarked car was not in uniform. The first discordant note that struck her was his age. He was in his mid-sixties, at least. He was trim, with the body of someone who had once been an athlete or in the military, gray about the temples, with wire-rimmed glasses perched on a sharp nose. The eyes, now close enough for her to see, were bright blue and twinkled. His lips were pursed, but pleasantly, in something like a smile. It didn't compute. Florence looked at the flashing blue light mounted on his dashboard. Some county supervisor or sheriff?

"Goodness gracious, young lady. Ninety miles an hour—on a road teeming with deer? You could have been killed."

It was said in an avuncular way.

"And what a waste that would be." He was grinning at her. "Excuse me," she said, "who are you?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" He chuckled. "That's quite a machine you have there. Used to do a bit of motorcycling myself. Oh, yes, yes."

Still astride the bike, Florence moved her thumb over the starter button.

"Oh now, don't be in such a big rush. I should think you'd be very interested to hear what I have to say. Very interested."

Something kept her from pressing the button. "Could I see some identification?" she said gently.

The man seemed to find this amusing. "Oh, certainly, certainly. What sort did you have in mind?"

"Look, sir—"

"We read your proposal, Florence." Florence stared.

"On achieving stability in the Middle Fast? Very interesting, original. And, by gosh, out of the box. Not at all your usual State Department pap. No wonder they wanted to transfer you to Cape Verde! I had to look it up on a map. My goodness, it's a long way from nowhere. May I buy you a cup of coffee? This must seem very forward, I know."

"Are you with the State Department?" Florence asked.

"Hardly. Come on. I'll buy. There has to be a Starbucks around here."

"I don't—"

"Do you remember the Starbucks in Kaffa?" "What?"

"The one at the corner of Alkakazir and Ben Qatif? How the mukfelleen made them cover the mermaid's boobs on the logo? Now, whenever I go to a Starbucks. I check for her boobs. Silly, I know. Do you want to follow me, or shall 1 follow you?"

"I..."

"I know. You came out here to feel the wind in your hair, the road rise up to greet vou. But all I'm asking for is ten minutes of your time at a neutral, well-lit public place. If, after that, you want to walk away, no one's going to stop you. and I'll still pay for the latte. You like tall non-fat double-shot, yes? And sugar substitute, preferably not in lieu of birth-control pills?"

The only human being to whom she had confided that detail was the State Department polygraph operator during her background check. She didn't know what to say, so she followed him on her motorcycle to a suburban Starbucks.

They sat outside, by a parking lot full of expensive cars driven by people who looked like they had something to do with horses.

"Look, before we go any further, who are you?" she asked.

The man appeared to consider the question. He said thoughtfully, "Why don't you just call me Uncle Sam?"

"I take it you're with the government. What is it you want?"

"Quite possibly, the same thing you do. Long-term political stability in the Middle Hast. Now. there's a goal. Oh. yes."

"You agree with my proposal?"

"We've tried pretty much everything else, haven't we? And what a pig's breakfast we've made. Dear, dear, dear. Well, I always say, if you can't solve a problem, make it larger. The remarkable thing is how well we mean. America. And yet it always turns out so—badly. But I didn't come out here to bore you to death, no, no. I suppose you'll be wanting some bona fides. You'd be foolish not to. And we know you're not that. Let's see. I know—given the region we're dealing with, why don't we use the Thousand and One Nights as a model. I'll be the djinn in the lamp. Ask me for three things that only the good old U.S. government could provide. If you're still not satisfied, then you're still one tall latte ahead, right?"

Florence considered. "Tomorrow's PDB."

Uncle Sam chortled. "Ouch."

Every morning, the president of the United States received the presidential daily briefing, the most highly classified document in the government, seen by fewer than a half-dozen pairs of eyeballs.

"Thank you for the coffee."

"Drive safely, young lady."

THE NEXT MORNING Florence rose as usual at five-thirty for her five-mile run. On her way out. she saw that an envelope had been inserted under the door. She opened it and saw across the top page: FOR THE PRESIDENT'S EYES ONLY. The date was today's.

She read. The Kremlin was planning to use nerve gas on a Chechen stronghold. The president of Venezuela was... Florence's eyes widened. In the Sea of Japan, a U.S. submarine was shadowing a North Korean freighter thought to be carrying... Jesus. And yet I here was no way of knowing whether the document was a fake. She regretted, like so many who have rubbed the lamp, having thrown away a perfectly good wish.

Two days later, she picked up her morning newspaper and saw the headline:

NAVY INTERCEPTS JAPAN-BOUND NORTH KOREAN FREIGHTER CARRYING NUCLEAR DEVICE

An hour later, while she was still digesting this along with her bran muffin, her phone rang. It was Uncle Sam.

"Could you make your second wish just a tad easier?"

"All right." she said. "Ten million dollars in Wasabi gold sovereigns."

"You'll give them back, yes?"

"Maybe."

The next afternoon there was a knock on her door. She looked out the peephole and saw a FedEx man with three large boxes on a hand dolly.

"Farfaletli? Sign here, please. They're kind of heavy."

Florence was in her living room staring at piles of gleaming gold Wasabi sovereigns bearing the royal crest when the phone rang. Unclc Sam.

"FedFx. Nice touch, don't you think?"

"All right," she said. "I'm convinced."

"Don't you want your third wish?"

"Why don't I save that."

"That's a Relief. I thought you might ask for a nuclear warhead. You're a very demanding young lady. Welcome aboard." "Aboard what, exactly?"

"Don't ask, don't tell. All you need to know is that you now have the best job in the United States government. No Charlie Duckett looking over your shoulder, no endless reports and memos and all that razzmatazz. No inspector generals, no Senate committees. Anything you need to do the job, you just ask your uncle. Within reason, please. I don't want to be getting bills from Maserati or Chanel or Van Cleef and Arpels. thank you very much."

"What part of the government am I working for?" "The Department of Outside the Box." "Come on. I want to know."

"Young lady, you've been handed the ultimate credit card. Why question it?"

"What if I'm caught?"

"Well"—he chuckled—"exactly my point. Not to make light of it." "For a second there, you sounded like Satan."

"Satan? That's a terrible thing to say. I'm one of the nicest people you'll ever meet."

"Why me?"

"It was your idea, wasn't it? You know the language. The region."

"So do a lot of people."

"It's a vendetta. You're Italian."

"I'd file a discrimination complaint, if I knew where to find you."

"Oh, all right—you're passionate to emancipate women throughout the Arab world. As a means toward achieving lasting political stability in the region. Docs that assuage your outraged ethnic pride?"

"It's a start."

"I'll pin ten dollars on the Virgin Mary at the next wop street fair I come across."

"That will cost you twenty bucks."

"For someone whose grandfather helped Benito Mussolini try to conquer North Africa, you pack plenty of altitude, young lady. All right, let's talk about your team."

CHAPTER FOUR

Rick Renard had learned his trade under the best—or worst, depending on where you set the bar integrity-wise—public relations man in the business: Nick Naylor. Naylor had gained notoriety as chief spokesman for the U.S. tobacco industry during its last Herculean struggle against the armies of neo-puritanism. lie ended up serving a twenty-month sentence in a federal prison—minimum security, he would point out as a matter of pride—for allegedly arranging his own kidnapping by anti-smoking terrorists. Now Naylor ministered in the rich loamy pastures of Hollywood, Lending to the vanities of the celluloidariat, a type of client whose needs could never be met and thus guaranteed lifetime employment. Lobbying to get your client nominated for an Oscar, or planting a prejudicial item in the gossips about the spouse currently being dumped, was not, Nick confided to his protege, the heroic stuff of Washington lobbying, yet it was pleasant enough in L.A.'s balmy, moisturized clime. Whenever he reached Nick on his cell phone. Rick could hear the soli, high-pitched whine of German automotive engineering idling on the freeway. "I spent a hundred and twenty thousand on this car," Nick would say. "And do you know, it can go from zero to four miles per hour in twenty minutes."

Nick had been trying to persuade Renard to come join him. The money! The pools! The women! But Rick was not yet ready to surrender to those blandishments, to have his still-sharp edge be filed down by pedicurists in striped

cabanas by turquoise rooftop pools. He had apprenticed well under Nick Naylor. At this point in his career, he was acknowledged by even the most grudging of his peers to be the capital's premier champion of causes so devoid of hope, so lacking in integrity, there was a kind of gallantry to it that aspired to the level of grandeur.

For instance, it was to Renard that the American College of Princes of the Church had turned, hoping to put behind it—to use an apposite word—the altar-boy-groping scandals. They had quietly engaged him to get an American cardinal elected pope. Rick did not succeed at this quest. Being arrested by the Swiss Guard, escorted to the limits of Vatican City and barred ever from re-entering the holy city cannot be said to constitute a public relations triumph, especially when the next pope hailed from Madagascar. And yet he succeeded at changing the conversation back home. No longer were pallid, twitchy former altar boys and their posse of expensive lawyers Topic A.

Bui it was Renard's handling of another steaming-hot religious tuber that had gotten Florence's attention.

A year before, the Reverend Roscoe G. Holybone—"'the G stands for God," as his literature humbly put it—spiritual leader of several hundred thousand devout anil fanatically devoted Southern Baptists, declared from his televised pulpit in Loblolly, Georgia, that the prophet Mohammed was a "degenerate." It was the consensus, even among the stiffer evangelical element, that the Reverend had gone off his metis, but this was scant comfort to the prophet's 1.5 billion followers. Fatwas were issued from a hundred minarets, which seemed only to inflame the Reverend Holybone and his minions, who. like mailed crusaders on the parapets of Acre, responded with burning pitch and missiles, shouting defiance.

This hugger-mugger took place inconveniently in the middle of a presidential primary race. This required all the various candidates to spend precious airtime denouncing the Reverend instead of detailing their bold visions for America's future. Events reached a crescendo when the governor of Georgia was forced into the unenviable position of having to call out the National Guard to protect Reverent! Holybone. who had responded to the latest assaults on his person by barricading himself inside his $12 million Holybone Tabernacle with a die-hard remnant of acolytes, fearsomely armed.

Into this radioactive swamp, few public relations types would dare to wade. Yet only hours after the Reverend's helicopter was brought down by a shoulder-fired missile, there was Rick Renard on practically every TV channel, issuing statements on behalf of the Reverend's heirs, calling for an end to hostilities and for the healing to begin; moreover, pledging $5 million to build a Baptist-Muslim intercultural center on the campus of Holybone University, featuring five basketball courts, each facing east for spontaneous midgame prayer. Today relations between Holyboners and Georgia's admittedly not numerous Muslims are immeasurably more tranquil than during the Days of Rage. Credit for that went not only to whoever had fired the fatal SA-7 at the Reverend's chopper, but also to the deft spinnings of Rick Renard. A man as fearless as that. Florence thought, she wanted on her team.

THE OFFICES Of Renard Strategic Communications International were two blocks from Washington's Dupont Circle, far enough from K Street to be geographically distinct from that porcine corridor—oinking trough, some might say—of American enterprise, and yet close enough so that Rick could have lunch with his friends and soul mates who worked there.

Florence had made the appointment, staling only over the phone that she represented a "significant institutional client." No sweeter syllables existed to a PR man's ear. Renard went through the motions of pretending that he was all booked up that day. then pretended to spot a cancellation. Why, he could see her that very afternoon.

Upon walking into his office, she saw that he had dispensed with the customary Washington Wall of Ego, consisting of framed photographs of the politicians being offered for sale. The price of the politician was indicated by the size of the photo. If the photo showed the politician golfing with the lobbyist, or smoking a Cuban cigar, the client could expect a 10 percent surcharge, as the lobbyist and politician were quite chummy.

Instead. Florence saw behind Renard's desk a floor-to-ceiling mural. It was a version of a famous New Yorker magazine cover showing that the world west of New York City was rather small and not really worth bothering with. In this case, the boundary waters were the Potomac River. Beyond it. where the Pacific

Northwest would normally be, was the word MICROSOFT. Beyond the Pacific Ocean was a land labeled SONY. A lobbyist's tour d'horizon. Of course, neither of these corporate titans was a Renard client, nor in all likelihood would either ever be. His clients by and large lurked in the shadows rather than the bright sunlight. This was hardly cause for shame, for his profession knew none and acknowledged even less.

A row of clocks mounted on the wall indicated the time in various world capitals. This was intended to proclaim Renard Strategic Communications International's global reach. It might be four A.M. in Jakarta, but that fact would not be lost here at world headquarters.

All this Florence took in as Rick Renard rose, smiling, to greet her.

"Ms. Farfaletti." he said, as though it were the most important name in the world. He tried not to stare, but his eyes couldn't help lingering on the unexpected loveliness before him. She reminded him of whatwashisname. the Italian painter—he really must remember the names, it always impressed a certain type of client—Modig-something, the one who painted women with their heads slightly cocked to one side, looking like they were asking the painter, "Won't you please have sex with me?" Sometimes they were nude, which made Renard wish he'd been there in the studio when the paint was still wet.

"Mr. Renard?"

"Sorry. You reminded me of someone. I lave we met. Ms. Farfalelti?" "No. But I'm a meal admirer of your work." "Farfalelti. That would that be ..." "Finnish."

Renard smiled. Always smile when a prospective client makes a joke. "I would have said Danish."

"It means little butterfly. More or less. In Italian." "Is that your married name?" "No, Mr. Renard."

"So, how can I be of service? You said over the phone it involves the Middle Fast." Rick gestured somewhat grandiosely toward his Wall of Clocks. One gave the time in Dubai. "We maintain offices throughout the region."

"Mr. Renard"—Florence smiled—"you have mail drops 'throughout the region.' Post office boxes. I'd hardly call them offices."

Rick blushed. "Modern communications these days, you don't really need offices. Per se. But I assure you we're wired in that part of the world. Just this morning I was on the phone to Dubai."

"Really? And what did Dubai have to say?"

"Of course, I can't talk about specific clients. But I think it's fair to say that the situation is far from terrific. Well, what is terrific in that part of the world?"

"Are you still working for the government of North Korea?"

"No. Ms. Farlalctti. That was just one project. And it was before the Japanese thing."

"The launching-the-missile-at-Japan thing?"

Renard cleared his throat. "I am not currently in a business relationship with the government of North Korea."

" 'field of Screams.' Isn't that what the newspapers called it?"

"1 was unaware that the golf course in question had been built with so-called slave labor." Rick sighed. "Slavery's a subjective term, isn't it?"

"Not especially."

"They asked to put on a celebrity pro-am golf tournament. To promote international peace understanding. At the time I thought. Why not? Would I do it again?" Rick shrugged. "Probably- not. But my job is not to make judgments on clients. My job, as I conceive it, is to help them get their message across. This is the strategic part of strategic planning. Now"—he smiled—"did you come here to talk about golf in North Korea?"

"No. I came because I want to bring about permanent stability in the Middle East."

"Hmm." Renard nodded pensively, as if he had been asked for his thoughts on promoting a new brand of toothpaste. "And what sort of budget did you have in mind?"

"Money would not be a factor. Within reason, of course."

"In my experience, Ms. Farfaletti, "within reason' is exactly where money becomes not only a factor but the factor."

Florence placed her briefcase on Rick's desk and smartly snapped Open the spring-operated clasps. Inside were two bricks of crisp new thousand-dollar bills. She placed them on his desk.

Renard tried not to drool. "You said you were with ..."

"The United States government." "Oh."

"Do you always sound that disappointed when a client places two hundred thousand dollars in cash on your desk?"

"No. no. My inner child is definitely doing somersaults. What sort of 'permanent stability in the Middle East' are we talking about? And may I ask, what branch of our wonderful government do you represent?"

"The State Department."

"So, CIA. Wonderful. I'm a huge fan. Your colleagues were extremely helpful to me over there in North Korea when the mine exploded on the golf course."

"1 didn't say I was with the CIA, Mr. Renard."

"No, you didn't. So I would be working for the State Department. Um-hum."

"You understand the confidential nature of all this." "Ms. Farfaletti. here at Renard Strategic Communications, discretion rules."

"That's very reassuring. Mr. Renard."

"Well"—Renard smiled and picked up the bricks of cash, tossing them playfully into the air—"I've always wanted to give something back to my country.

"It's a pleasure dealing with such a patriot. Mr. Renard." "When your country calls, I mean, you pick up the phone, right?"

CHAPTER FIVE

Florence and the curious person who called himself Uncle Sam had been sequestered in a small safe house in Alexandria, Virginia, for two days, going through personnel files. The house was normally used to debrief, or entertain, defectors. To judge from the acrid reek of old cigarette smoke, the defectors must all have died of lung cancer.

They examined the files on Uncle Sam's laptop computer, which appeared to have the most intimate access to the files of U.S. government intelligence officers and covert operators. Whatever doubts Florence might have had about Uncle Sam, he was certainly wired.

"What if you left the laptop on a bus?"

"I don't ride buses," he sniffed.

"Then what if someone look it from you? Would they be able to access all this?"

Uncle Sam sighed. "Anyone who turned this machine on without pressing the right sequence of keys would find himself in a very unhappy position." "You mean it would explode?"

"Yes, Florence. Now what about this one." he said as another file popped onto the screen. "He was station chief in Karachi. Military background. Might be just the ticket."

Florence scrolled through the file. "No," she said.

"What's wrong with him?"

"I want someone with a grudge."

"Bias, you mean. How many times do 1 have to point out—everyone hates Wasabis."

"You're the one who's biased."

"They're so eminently detestable. You should know. You married one."

Florence wasn't inclined to tell Uncle Sam that she didn't want anyone he recommended. He'd made a fuss over her choice of Rick Renard. "What is this, the Dirty Dozen?" She put her foot down. This was either going to be her team or not. "Let's keep looking."

Uncle Sam groaned. "How many hies have we been through?"

"If you're bored, why don't you go for a walk? Leave this here with me."

"You'd only blow yourself up. Heavens to Betsy, are you looking to make a purchase, or just browsing?"

finally, he went upstairs to lie down, leaving Florence to scroll the personnel files of America's armies of the night. They began to blur. Then she realized that she was hunting according to looks. An hour into this phase of the search, she stopped scrolling.

He was in his army uniform, the black beret tipped jauntily over his forehead. Florence examined the ribbons on his chest and looked again at the face. She could tell right away, without reading any further, that he was a southerner. He looked pleased with himself, as though the night before, he had nailed the homecoming queen on the Astroturf in the back of his Ford pickup, under the stars. Or maybe he was pleased with his decorations. She checked his place of birth, and there it was: Mobile. Alabama. The photograph had been taken twelve years ago. She scrolled in search of a more recent photograph and found it. The grin was gone. She read the file and saw why. No longer the young eager warrior. Yes, this one.

"I've found him," she announced to Uncle Sam as he returned.

He scanned the file. "Good Lord, he's completely unsuitable."

"That's why I want him."

"Young lady. I am not running a dating service here." "I'll try to keep my hands off him. I have to say. why is a sexist pig like yourself interested in women's emancipation?"

"Look at this file." Uncle Sam snorted. "I'm surprised he's even still in government employ. Did it escape your notice that he's the one who called in that cruise missile strike in Dar es Salaam last year—the one that destroyed the residence of the Indonesian ambassador?"

"No, I happened to note that." Florence replied. "And it was a good target."

"Florence, the secretary of state had to personally apologize to the Indonesian prime minister."

"You're starting to sound like my boss. So what if the secretary of state had to apologize to the Indonesian prime minister. The strike destroyed a Qaeda chem-weap plant. They put it put it right next to the ambassador's residence, disguised as a 'children's prosthetic limb factory' Good for him for calling in the strike. And shame on us for making him take the fall for it, just because some grandstanding senator running for president decided to make an issue of it. Sometimes I think the U.S. capitol is a giant Jell-O mold."

Uncle Sam sighed dramatically and scrolled. "What about this? When he was station chief in Matar, he had an affair with the wife of the U.S. ambassador. What does that tell us?"

"That he was horny. That sort of thing goes on all the time."

"Not in my day. Not in my shop."

"It's of less importance that he was doing the Macarena with the ambassador's wife than that he was station chief in Matar, he must have the place wired seven ways from Sunday. Look at his file. Station chief Amo-Amas. three years. Deputy chief Kaffa, two years. Fluent in Arabic and French. Look at these terrorist renditions. He's the one who got Adnan Bahesh, arguably the worst human being on the planet. He's the one who found out that Saddam Hussein was plotting to assassinate Bush in '93. Look at his chest. Three Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts. This isn't good enough for you?" Florence closed the lid of the laptop, slid it away from her and crossed her arms over her bosom. "Search over."

"Fine. Fine." Uncle Sam said poutily. "But listen here, young lady, it would be disastrous to this entire operation if you had a personal liaison with this man."

"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer."

"He's a southerner. It's all they think about—sex. And stock-car racing."

"I take it your ancestors came over on the Mayflower, or did they arrive earlier, with the Vikings?"

"May I suggest that you save some of this righteous indignation for when you get over there?"

THERE WAS ONE last person to recruit, and he would be the hardest. He arrived at the Alexandria safe house at the appointed time on the dot. he was always prompt.

"Firenze? What is all this? Oil my God, it's foul in here."

George looked around the apartment, which had been furnished by some color-blind gnome who worked in a subdivision of a subdivision of a sub-bureaucracy whose job was to furnish and decorate safe houses for U.S. intelligence agencies. The paintings, if they could be called that, had been bulk-purchased at Wal-Mart and were only one step removed aesthetically from paintings of bulldogs in visors playing poker.

George said. "I see you've been to Sotheby's."

"Do you want something to drink?"

"What are you pouring? Wine in a box? Malt liquor?"

"George, you and I together are going to accomplish something really big. Really, really big."

"Can I think it over? No."

"Don't you want to hear about it?"

"Not particularly. Is this where we slash the North Korean defectors? So they'll feel at home?"

Florence explained, insofar as it could be explained, about Uncle Sam. the PDB, the $1.0 million in gold, the operation, the carte blanche, the fact that he had been able to pull the strings that got George himself reassigned. George listened with deepening gloom, uttering dismissive grunts: "U'm-um. Um-um."

"George," she said, "do you remember the conversation we had about what if we were in charge for just ten minutes?"

"Vividly. You recall my saying that I didn't want to be in charge for ten minutes? I want to be left alone, Firenze."

"Thank you, Greta Garbo. Is that why you joined the State Department?"

"You know perfectly well why I joined the State Department."

"Because of one remark by your mother at a Thanksgiving dinner?"

George's great-great-uncle was Adler Fillington Phish, the American diplomat, then ambassador to Bogota, to whom President Theodore Roosevelt famously cabled in 1902: SECURE ISTHMUS BY CHRISTMAS. This led to the "secession" of Panama from Colombia, the building of the canal and the further enrichment beyond wild dreams of Cleveland industrialist Mark Manna, New York financier J. P. Morgan and William Cromwell, founding partner of the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. The gilded trio later expressed their gratitude to Ambassador Phish by retaining him as counsel in numerous transactions, inaugurating the Phish family fortune.

By the time George arrived, four generations later, the family fortune had dwindled to Phish House, a once handsome redbrick federal in Georgetown, now in dire need of maintenance. George's mother. Philippa Phish Tibbitts, had never gotten over the disappointment of not being richer, or the departure of her husband. Jameson "Bucky" Phish, for an Argentine polo player named Esteban, a close friend of the Kennedys, which only made it worse. She had been nursing these grievances for many years with increasing dosages of vodka (now mixed with buttermilk). One particularly gruesome Thanksgiving dinner, she announced in front of all the guests that George, seated at the table and as usual staring glumly into his mushroom soup—trying not to lunge across the table and concuss his mother with the silver tureen (a gift from the newly installed governor of Panama, and the last item of any real value remaining in Phish House)—that her son would never have "the gumption" to join the Foreign Service: moreover, that he would probably end up "arranging flowers for a living." George signed up for the foreign Service exam the following Monday. Here he was, sixteen years later. It remained unclear who had won.

"George," Florence said, "you're one of the most brilliant men I know. You're wasted behind that desk. Look at this chance we've been handed. It'll never come this way again."

"You don't know the first thing about this Uncle Sam."

"Now you sound like my mother. It's a chance to make history. Never mind actually helping eight hundred million Muslim women."

"A lot of those women are perfectly content, you know. I'll bet half of them like wearing the veil and being put on a pedestal." "Some pedestal. I low would you like it?"

"Living in a society that considered me a second-class citizen and restricted my rights? Let me get back to you on that."

" 'All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.' Edmund Burke."

" 'If you run away, you live to run away another day.' Mel Brooks."

"1 can't do this without you. George. It's going to be fun."

"No. It's going to be a nightmare. And I'm going to be in it."

HANDS ON HER HIPS. Florence studied her dinner table. Uncle Sam had proposed the Alexandria safe house for the first group meeting, but she'd decided instead to cook them a good Italian meal at her little house in Foggy Bottom. She wasn't sure what the chemistry would be among them, but she did know there are few occasions in life that can't be improved by a delicious dinner of bresaola, risotto—crawfish and fava beans, her own recipe— chocolate-raspberry tiramisu. espresso and bottle after bottle of Barolo. She wore a black cashmere turtleneck. pearl stud earrings, toreador pants, heels and a flouncy apron that made her look even sexier, in a 1950s way.

The first one to arrive was Bobby Thibodeaux. the CIA guv. He rang the bell live minutes before eight. CIA people always show up early. They like to be in control of the situation. George arrived punctually at eight. Rick Renard arrived twenty minutes late, complaining of having been made so by a congressman "who wouldn't shut up."

Florence served flutes of iced Prosecco. The three men faced one another awkwardly. She found herself watching Bobby Thibodeaux's face as he took in his two new colleagues.

Bobby was in his late thirties, powerfully built, with short blond hair and hooded eves that gave him a skeptical expression just shy of cool hostility. He moved economically, as if conserving his energy. His first word to her was "ma'am." She greeted him in Arabic and suppressed a smile when he returned her "Salaam" with an Alabama accent. I le caught her look. He was not the sort of person on whom anything was lost. Florence found herself blushing.

"Well." she said, holding out her glass of Prosecco and clinking it against theirs in turn. "To Aqaba."

"Aqaba?" Renard said.

George and Bobby looked at him. Bobby said. "You'd be the PR guy?" "Strategic communications," Rick said.

A mirthless grin crossed Bobby's face. He turned to George. "So, would you be with the State Department?" CIA people overseas tended to refer to State Department personnel as "embassy pukes."

Florence thought she'd better jump in. "I've been to Aqaba. It's quite Lovely and cool. The king of Jordan maintains a small palace there."

"Where you been posted?" Bobby asked George.

"I've been here, actually."

Bobby's eyes drooped. "How long you been with State?" "Sixteen years."

"You been in Washington for sixteen years?" "Sixteen and a half."

Bobby turned to Renard. "How long you been strategically communicatin'?"

"I've had my own firm for four years." Rick said. "You spent much time in the Middle Fast?" "I get to Dubai pretty regularly." "What d'ya think of the new airport?" George tried to catch Rick's eye. "its... nice. Fine." Bobby grinned. "What's so funny?"

"There is no new airport in Dubai." George said. "Shall we eat?" Florence said.

The Barolo and risotto with crawfish and lava beans look some of the edge off. George helped Florence clear the main course and, in the kitchen, whispered to her. "Where did you find him? Killers R Us? His knuckles touch the floor."

"We need him."

"You know he's the one who called in that cruise missile strike in Dar?" "It was a good target."

"I'm all for bombing foreign ambassadors, but just because some redneck thinks he smells paint thinner.. ."

"George, it was a Qaeda chem-weap factory."

"Whatever. I think we'd better have another bottle of wine."

"Gel back in there and protect Renard."

"He walked right into that one. A hit man from Dogpatch, a PR hack and a queer foreign Service officer. Quite the A-Team you've assembled, Firenze. They'll be writing ballads about us, and thank God I'll be dead."

Florence came in with another bottle of Barolo.

Bobby was telling Rick. "In Vietnam. Navy SEALs. when they'd killed a VC cadre, they'd cut out the liver, take a bite out of it and throw it down by the body. According to Buddhist theology, you can't enter heaven unless you're whole. Put a major freak on em."

Rick paled and put down his knife and fork.

"You gonna finish that?" Bobby said.

‘Uh. no."

"Mind?" Bobby took Rick's plate. He said to Florence, "This is quite excellent, ma'am. I never had bugs with risotto before." "Bugs?"

"Crawfish, where I come from." "Why don't you call me Florence?" "Florence. Okay. Florence of Arabia."

"Just Florence will do." She raised her glass. "So, to Aqaba. then?" Bobby raised his glass. "What the hell. To Aqaba."

"It's a metaphor," George said to Rick. "It means we're going to die before we get there."

'"If the camels die. we die.'" Bobby quoted. "And the camels will start to die in twenty days."

CHAPTER SIX

he emirate of Matar (pronounced, for reasons unclear, "Mutter") consists of a ten-mile-wide, 350-mile-long strip of sand that runs along the western coast of the Gulf of Darius. Its northern boundary begins in the mosquito marshes of the Um-katush. From there it runs on a generally south-eastern course for several hundred miles, to the Straits of Xerxes, where it curves gently westward until it terminates at Alfatoosh, on the sparkling shore of the Indian Ocean.

Viewed on a large-scale map, Matar seems an illogical political entity, like so many American congressional districts, whose contorted outlines are the result of successive attempts to maximize incumbencies and to inconvenience challengers. One might suspect, contemplating Matar's bizarre physical configuration, that its borders had been drawn so as to deprive its much larger neighbor to the west, the Royal Kingdom of Wasabia of access to the sea. One would be correct.

The account of Matar's creation is described in David Vremkin's magisterial history of the creation of the modern Middle East, Let's Put Iraq Here, and Lebanon Over Here: The Making of the Modern Middle East:

Churchill was furious With the French, in this case with reason, as they had been carrying on separate negotiations with (Wasabi king) Tallulah over the matter of saltwater ports. By the lime the conference convened.

he was in no mood lo dither with the French foreign minister. Delavall-Poolriere. He had stayed up until five in the morning with Colonel Lawrence. Glandsbury and Tuff-Blidgel. as well as Jeremy Pitt, miserable from the heat and another attack of gout. The next morning, as everyone filed in. Bosquet and Gaston Tazie both noticed that Tuff-Blidget's lingers were green, blue, yellow and magenta and signaled frantically to the French delegates. Too late. By the lime the fifty participants had taken their places around the green felt table in the Great Hall of Sala-al-din at Majma Palace, the British had their maps drawn and ready. The ink. Chomondelev observed, was "quite dry."

Siggot, Sykes's majordomo (who. two years later, would be killed during a freak tea-pouring accident at Kensington Palace with Queen Alexandra), described the sound of "Winnie unrolling his map over the conference table" as "like a suddenly unfurled topgallant sail snapping in a twenty-knot freshet off Cowes." Vivid indeed. Realizing what was happening. Delavall-Pootriere tried to object on procedural grounds, but Churchill, pointing his cigar at the Frenchman "like a half eaten breakfast banger" threatened to extend the Balfour Declaration, which provided for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, into Lebanon and Syria—that is, well into the French sphere of influence.

The last thing the French wanted. Meg-Wright noted in his cable that morning to Arthur Glenwoodie, was "wave after wave of irrendendist kibbutzim mucking about the Levant." Such a move would also have the effect of pitting the British branch of the Rothschild family against the French branch, which for some time had been eyeing the western slopes of the Bekaa and Xoosh valleys as potential vineyards for experimental sauvignon noir grapes. Delavall-Pootriere could do nothing. He had been outmaneuvered.

King Tallulah, livid over seeing his promised coastline vanish with several strokes of the British cartographical pen, denounced the conference as a "gathering of jackals and toads" ("jamaa min etheeah weddqfadeah"), stormed out of the hall and left Damascus with his bodyguard of two hundred Bedou and Hejazi. Picot observed to Gastin-Piquet, "Sa majeste est bien fromagee ("The king is well cheesed").

For his part. Gazir Bin Haz, the plump, pleasure-loving minor sharif of the Wazi-had—trailers and Fishermen along the Daiian littoral since the time of Alexander—now found himself emir of a territory that effectively blocked Wasabia from getting its oil to the sea. This had, of course, been Churchill's plan all along. What better way to repay King Tallulah for his obduracy over the proposed tariff on unpitted dates, to say nothing of the endless arguments over who should enter Damascus first, and wearing what?

That night over brandy and cigars in the billiard room at the British Legation, Churchill told Glandsbury that he could not decide which had given him more pleasure, thwarting Delavall-Pootriere or "forcing that royal ass Tallulah to drink his own oil."

KING TALLULAH WAS LEFT with no choice but to cut a deal with the emir of Matar. Wasabia built its first pipeline through Matar to the Gulf shortly after the signing of the treaty. Over the wars, a dozen more pipelines followed. Wasabia simply had no other means of getting its oil to market.

The Emirate of Matar prospered magnificently from this steady black income stream through its territory. The emirs never released official figures, but annual revenues from the so-called courtesy fees paid by Wasabia into successive Bin Haz exchequers were, by the end of the century, estimated to run annually to the tens of billions of dollars. The Bin Haz dvnastv continued to maintain the official face-saving fiction that the country's extraordinary wealth derived from fig oil, dates, fishing and tourism.

This last assertion was in some ways the boldest, given Matar's fierce sandstorms and average summer temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Matar could, however, legitimately boast that part of its abundant gross domestic product came from gambling. The present emir had developed Infidel Land, a complex of hotels, casinos and theme parks on an offshore archipelago accessible by a ten-mile-long causeway. Matari residents were (officially) not allowed to cross the causeway and take part in the gaming—and collateral activities— but this law was rarely observed and never enforced. The emir had decreed it as a bit of window dressing for the local mullahs.

His handling of Matar's religious authorities had been, by unanimous consent, masterful. Matari mullahs were the best fed in the Muslim world. Indeed, they were so prosperous that they had acquired the local nickname of "moolahs." They received a generous salary from the stale, luxury apartments, a new Mercedes-Benz every three years and an annual six-week paid sabbatical, which most of them chose to take in the South of France, one of Islam's holiest sites.

As a result of the emir's attentions in this area, Matar was a veritable oasis of tolerance. Its mullahs were among the most contented and laissez-faire of their faith. As one scholar put it, "Here, truly, is Islam with a happy face." Clerical careers were avidly sought in Matar, and strictly regulated.

This approach to matters religious stood in starkest contrast with that across the border in Wasabia. After Sheik Abdulabdullah "The Wise" came into power in 1740 (or 1742), he struck a deal with Mustafa Q’um, imam of the Nejaz, to consolidate his power throughout the territory. Mustafa preached an extremely austere version of Islam called mukfellah. Abdulabdullah agreed to make mukfellah the official religion of all Wasabia. if Mustafa would pledge his allegiance to the Hamooj dynasty". Thus Wasabia united under one rule.

Alas, this doomed Wasabia to becoming—as one historian put it—the Middle East's preeminent "no-fun zone." Unless, as he dryly noted, "one's idea of fun includes beheading, amputation, flogging, blinding and having your tongue cut out for offenses that in other religions would earn you a lecture from the rabbi, five Hail Marys from a priest and, for Episcopalians, a plastic pink flamingo on your front lawn." A Google search using the key phrases "Wasabia" and "La Dolce Vita" results in no matches.

This disparity in religious temperament, added to the matter of the national border, made relations between the two countries predictably strained. King Tallulah's successors chafed over having to pay Matari emirs the so-called Churchill tax.

In 1957. King Talubadullah. Tallulah's grandson, threatened to seize a twenty-mile-long strip of Matar on the almost ostentatiously flimsy grounds that Caliph Ibn Izzir (1034-1078 c.e.). a very remote Hamooj ancestor, had established a summer fishing camp there. He went so far as to move a tank division up to the Wasabi-Matar border, and to dispatch Royal Wasabi Air Force

Mirage lighter jets (supplied by Wasabia's great friend France) to fly "maneuvers" along the disputed area. This caused a few days of anxious hand-wringing at the United Nations, until the U.S. ambassador in Kaffa quietly told the Wasabi foreign minister to "cut it out."

The United States maintained good relations with Wasabia—the unthinkable alternative being to use less oil—but it had always supported Matar's sovereignty as a means of containing Wasabian power in the region. The old lion Churchill might have been drunk, but he was shrewd. The U.S. tilt toward Matar also had the advantage, as Henry Kissinger noted in Years of Genius. Volume XXI of his memoirs, "of driving the Wasabis nuts."

Wasabia periodically rattled its scimitar at Matar and threatened to push through to the sea, but these episodes were not taken seriously by the emirati. Protected by America, its economy guaranteed by Wasabi oil, the local religious fat, happy and uncensorious, Matar was the Switzerland of the Gulf. The only things it lacked were a Matterhorn and a chocolate-bar industry.

All in all, it was the ideal platform for Florence and her team. And there was this advantage: You could even order a drink at the bar.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Florence had given a great deal of thought to the emir's present. It had to be expensive enough to get his attention, but she wanted it to be distinctive and conversation-starting, not just another gaudy bauble of gold to keep a drowsy emperor awake.

The emir was fond of hunting gazelle while sitting in a special seal mounted on the front of his Hummer. Bobby proposed a matched pair of gold-plated, engraved 30-06 rifles from Holland and Holland. George, who found the slaughter of gazelles grotesque, noted that the emir's gun collection already consisted of more than two hundred rifles. He counterproposed a twelfth-century edition of the Holy Koran that had been owned by the last sultan of Moorish Spain, bound in ivory and inlaid with Arabian sea pearls and Ceylonese emeralds—a steal at $3.4 million. Rick, ever with his eye on the PR aspect, said the fact that it had belonged to the last sultan of Spain could only prove awkward. Why not, he said, a private submarine that he had seen in the Sharper Image catalog? "Arabs like water, right? Bet they'd love the idea of being completely submerged in it." George complained that at $750,000, the sub wasn't nearly expensive enough for a man whose wealth ran to the tens of billions. There was some discussion about equipping the submarine with U.S. Navy torpedoes and missiles, to make it more exciting. Uncle Sam nixed that on the grounds that there were U.S. warships operating in the Gulf of Darius, and it wouldn't help matters if one of them accidentally identified the emir's sub as an enemy and destroyed it.

In the end, Florence decided on a helicopter. It was a civilian version of the U.S. Army Blackhawk, specially fitted out so the emir could sit in a 270-degree plexiglas turret in front of the pilots and shoot gazelles through an ingenious Mylar port. You can't be too thin, too rich, or own too many helicopters. The emir was delighted with his present, and Florence shortly received a summons to the royal palace in the capital city of Amo-Amas.

The four of them were registered at the Opulent, the city's nicest hotel, overlooking the harbor. The lights of the tankers lying at anchor twinkled in the distance. In Churchill Square, the large marble statue of Matar's patron glowed in the spotlights. The present emir's grandfather had erected it in the 1920s. The face bore an unmistakable smirk. The statue faced west, toward Wasabia.

They met in Florence's suite. George had managed to contract a stomach bug, no small feat, since most of the Opulent's room-service food was flown in daily from Paris. He sat clutching his bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

"Enjoyin' the Middle Fast so far, are you?" Bobby said.

"Why don't we start?" Florence said. "Are we all right having this conversation here?"

Bobby nodded. "Only bugs in here are the crawly kind." George shuddered.

Bobby tapped at his laptop. A photograph of the emir projected onto the wall. He tapped another button, and up came a photograph of the emir's wife. Florence studied the image. The sheika was lovely, in her late thirties, fair-skinned, with intelligent eyes and a slightly disappointed expression.

Bobby lapped more buttons. Up on the wall came photograph after photograph of stunning women, which perhaps explained the sheika's look of disappointment.

"What's this, the Victoria's Secret catalog?" Rick said.

"A few of emir's special friends." Bobby said. "Mainly French and Italian. Lately, he seems to be inclinin' toward Russians. But he'll screw anvthin', includin' the dog, if there's nothing else handy."

"Shall we try to keep it respectful?" Florence said. "Just in case the room is bugged?"

Bobby continued his brief. "His wife, the sheika Laila, Matari mother. English father. He was an engineer, worked on the pipelines. Made a ton of money. Married up. daughter of a well-to-do sharif. Laila. she was educated at Swiss schools, Lausanne. Went to Oxford. Bright girl. She had a nice TV career goin’ in London, anchorin'—they call it presenting. Hung out with all the right people, includin' the royals. She and Prince Charles dated once or twice, but nothin' happened sackwise."

Rick said, "How do you know that?"

"I can't go into sources and methods. But hell. MI5, they got a whole section, all they do is analyze who the prince is bangin'. Movin' along—Laila. she fell in love with the then future emir. Gazzir Bin Haz, when he was on a visit to Royal Ascot. That's their big horse race."

"We know." George said.

"Never been, myself. Anyhow, he sort of swept her oil her feet, literally. Dashing sort, scrubs up good when you put him in a top hat and tails. She had the right credentials, and he brought her back to Xanadu-on-the-Gulf and made her an Arab wife." Bobby looked over at Florence. "Happens."

"Go on. Bobby."

"Well, everythin' was Jake connubial bliss-wise, for a while. They had a son together, Hamdul. Then, well, you know how it is. a man doesn't wanna eat at the same restaurant night after night. So he built himself a fuck palace—pardon, ma'am—a place down the coast, on the beach in Um-beseir. Got pretty much everything a man could ask for. Hell, we thought we were livin' high if we had some outdoor carpeting in the back of the pickup."

"Thank you for the cross-cultural reference." Florence said.

"Got a helipad and a three-thousand-fool runway, in case he's in such a hurry for the ladies that a helicopter isn't fast enough." Bobby chuckled. "Man, it's good to be the emir.

"Anyhow, the sheika, she's no idiot. She knows all about Um-beseir. In the past, she's been willing to do the thing a lot of wives do, look the other way. boys-will-be-boys. Part of it was that when she married Gazzir, knowin' he was gonna be emir once his old man croaked, she made him agree—in writing— that he wouldn't take any more wives. This didn't play well with the local emirati and the moolahs. In this part of the world, you haven't amounted to much if you haven't left behind at least a hundred or so sons. That explains why they got forty thousand princes across the border in Wasabia. Hell, you can't spit in Wasabia without hittin' a crown prince. Not that they encourage spittin’ on the royals. But he musta been in love, 'cause he went along with Laila's demand. even got the head moolah to issue a theological ruling on it, which concluded—surprise—that it was wargat."

"What does that mean?" Renard asked.

"Kosher."

"Win did she insist on monogamy?"

"Because she wanted her son to sit on the throne. A harem full of wives doesn't make for a real relaxed atmosphere. Historically. Arab wives were always lookin' oxer each other's shoulder, poisoning each other, poisoning each other's kid so that their own would succeed. Their son. Hamdul, he's now ten years old. But the recent development that's of particular interest to us is that Laila has put her foot down, finally, about all the bangin' and sere win' down at Um-beseir. She wants it to stop. Our information is that she's been makin' life quite difficult for Gazzir lately."

"Why?" Florence asked.

"This is sensitive information."

"We can handle it."

"There appear to be two factors. One, she's worried about gettin' a sexual disease from him. She's a very attractive woman, and every now and then the emir does get amorous with her. The second factor is that young Hamdul's gettin' to the age when he might pick up palace gossip. She doesn't want him to hear from some flunky that his dad can't keep his scimitar in his pants. So there it is."

"Thank you, Bobby," Florence said. "Extremely useful."

"Shouldn't we study this further before we proceed?" George said. His lower lip was crusted pink from dried Pepto-Bismol.

Bobby stared at him. "You mean spend six, seven months draw in' up a feasibility study? With lots of tabs?"

"Well, if you'd rather just rush in pell-mell..."

MATAR WAS LIBERAL in the matter of women's dress; nonetheless, Florence took care to observe the formalities. She wore a matching pantsuit of turquoise and purple shantung silk, and over her hair an Hermes scarf. According to Bobby, the emir liked to give these scarves to his mistresses. "If they've been good—really good—there'll be a diamond bracelet inside. And if they've been really, really good, a red Ferrari outside."

Florence was ushered into the audience room. The door was flanked by two bodyguards in ceremonial dress and swords.

"Salaam alaikum." Florence said without accent. "Sherefina. somow ‘kum."

The emir's eyes brightened, and not just at his guest's flawless Arabic. He took her hand and bent and chastely kissed it. Florence blushed at the attention. She continued in Arabic, remembering that in Matar, conversation with the emir required use of the third-person address, not altogether easy for Americans, who want to call everyone "pal" or "bub" or "honey" after five minutes.

They sat. Florence noted that the Louis XVI chairs were a few inches lower than the emir's Louis XIV chair. At not quite live foot six. Emir Gazzir Bin Haz—"Gazzy" to his family and intimates—was not a tall man. Exactly the height, it occurred to Florence, of T. E. Lawrence. What large things small men have accomplished.

He was impeccably accoutred, in an immaculate white thobe garment, his head covered with a gutra. the triangular folded cloth tied with the traditional gold-rope agal Four of his plump fingers, she observed, were adorned with rings. His goatee was perfectly trimmed, his lips oyster-moist from a lifetime's contact with the greatest delicacies the world had to offer, from caviar to Dom Perignon to foie gras. His face radiated contentedness; and why not? The Emir might just be the happiest camper on earth.

"Your Majesty is most welcoming." Florence said with a slight bow.

"It is a trait with us." he said, switching to English. He was, like most highborn Mataris, an Anglophile—they sent their future emirs to Sandhurst—and enjoyed displaying his excellent command of the language. "Even the humblest Matari will open his door to a stranger and share what he has." He smiled. "Not that you will find many humble Mataris, mind you. This, too, is a trait with us. I fear."

"Your country is truly blessed to have such abundance." "Our fig oil is second to none." "Justly famous throughout the world."

"It has many, many applications. Perfume, industrial—do you know that it is used as a lubricant on Chinese rockets?"

"I was not aware of this fact. But how marvelous."

The emir leaned forward intently. "It lowers cholesterol. Rather, it increases the good cholesterol. In time, the medical studies will establish this beyond question, God be praised."

"Matar is a river to the world."

They looked at each other.

"Shall we cease with the bullshitting?" He smiled. "His Majesty is too gracious. I was about to run out of conversation about fig oil."

"I've never used it myself," the emir said, taking a cigarette from a gold box in front of him. A servant dressed to match the drapery appeared like a swift ghost. He lit the emir's cigarette and disappeared back into the folds with a soil rustle of silk. "Ghastly stuff. I prefer walnut oil, ground by four-hundred year-old millstones in the Dordogne. I have it flown in. Anyway, who cares about cholesterol. I have my blood changed every month by Swiss doctors. I donate the old blood to the hospital. It is quite sought after, apparently. Now. Florence—and why don't I just call you that, since I am unable to wrap my tongue around all those pretty Tuscan vowels—you have given me a nice and. I must say, original present. I could show you an entire room filled with gifts I have received of the most appalling taste. The worst was a Monopoly game board done in twenty-four-karat gold, inlaid with rubies and diamonds and all manner of precious stones, with the little hotels and houses made of platinum, if you please. What did they expect me to do, melt it down? I know Arabs enjoy a reputation for vulgarity, but really. By the way. your Arabic is excellent. You are, I take it, with the government? Surely. In some capacity? CIA? It would be audacious of them to send a woman. Would they have such imagination? 1 think not. In the past, when your country has wanted something—and my dear, they always want something—the gifts have been... I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but dear, dear, dear. The sort of thing that God—praise be upon His name—would buy if he shopped at Wal-Mart. We are about to have a Wal-Mart here. Such excitement. Once I was offered a briefcase full of cash. Cash!" He giggled, waving a hand about the room, which looked as though everything in it had been dipped in gold, twice. "Do I look as though I need cash? - So"—his eyes narrowed a bit, showing Florence a glimpse of the hard-eyed coastal trailer of yore—"who are you, lovely lady? And without seeming rude, what do you want?"

This bluntness was un-Arabic. Had she put a foot wrong?

"Your Majesty favors me with his directness. I have come to ask your permission to approach the Sheika Laila with a business proposition."

The emir grimaced. His face, a caramel pudding in repose, suddenly looked quite fierce. "Business proposal? The sheika? You've not come to ask her to endorse some product?"

"No, sootnoow el-amir."

"A cause? A children's disease? Let me guess. Land mines. All the beautiful women, they are against land mines. We don't have any here. I am happy to say. Though there have been times when I confess I would gladly plant them like flowers along my borders. But the gazelles might step on them. And we would rather shoot the gazelles, would we not? From our lovely new helicopter. So generous. Indeed, I wonder, what have we done to merit such ... generosity?"

"1 am pleased that His Majesty is pleased. But no. I do not seek the sheika's endorsement on behalf of any skin cream or disease or against land mines. We would like to start a satellite television station here in Matar, and have her be in charge of it."

The emir stared. "You do take us by surprise. I thought this was going to be about oil. It usually is, one way or the other. Last week some Americans were here from Texas. So often they are from Texas, or Oklahoma. One yearns to meet Americans from other parts of the country. Where are you from?"

"A part with trees, Majesty."

"1 low very lucky for vou. Television, you say. The sheika. I hardly think—"

"With His Majesty's permission, I would show him some numbers."

"No, no. The emir does not deal with numbers. There are ministers for that, for every kind of number."

"They are interesting numbers, lord. They suggest that there are vast sums to be made. But I will take them to the ministers, as His Majesty" commands."

"How do you mean, 'vast-'.'' The desert is vast. The ocean is vast."

"In the neighborhood of two billion dollars per year, my lord."

"That's not half vast."

Florence handed the emir the single sheet of paper she had prepared. "What sort of programming?" he asked.

"The figures are based on targeting a female audience, my lord." The emir screwed up his face. "Female?"

"They are the ones who do the shopping. Who make the purchases."

"I suppose. Who has the time but the women. But there are already two Arabic channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. I will say, in case you are with the CIA, that I am not in sympathy with either of their political points of view. Every time I turn them on, there is Osama sitting in front of his cave looking in dire need of a new kidney. But then one can always"—he pressed the button on an imaginary remote control—"see what is on the History Channel. There is always another documentary on Hitler. They really ought to call it the Hitler Channel. But why the sheika?"

"Many reasons, lord. First, she is the sheika, the first lady of Matar, a respected personage of reputation and authority. Second, she has experience in television."

"Yes." the emir said, as if warming to the concept, "she was very successful in London. Until she gave it up to marry a raghead!"

Florence smiled noncommittally.

"But a very nice rag. Go on. You have our attention."

"Third, we of course require a Matari partner in this enterprise, since by law. Mataris must own fifty-one percent of any business operating here. These three factors make the sheika a natural person to lead our venture."

"Who is 'we? Who are you?"

"I am merely a television producer. This project is my concept. With an enterprise of this size, one has backers, investors. But we are prepared to give to you—"

"To the people of Matar, you mean."

"Fifty-one percent ownership."

"Um."

"Shall we say fifty-five percent?"

"My hearing is not what it used to be. The years of shooting gazelle..."

"Sixty percent?"

"I think 1 heard you say seventy."

"Sixty-five."

"Let us say two thirds, sixty-six. So much easier on the accountants."

"So it is done."

"And the sheika's role, she would be, what, ornamental?"

"On the contrarv. It is our hope that she would become very much involved. It was this part that worried me in presenting the plan to His Majesty."

"How so?"

"I fear that we might be, well, taking her away from you. Starting a television station can be a very consuming enterprise. But very fulfilling."

"Ah. Well, that is for her to decide."

"His Majestv's reputation as an enlightened man and husband does not do him justice."

"We are not a backward people. Ms. Farfaletti. Unlike some in the region. I shall present your proposal to the Sheika. I must say, I have mixed feelings, for is it not written that a man who makes his wife queen ends up washing the dishes himself?"

"But is it not also written, sire, that a man who gives his wife an occupation creates for himself an oasis?"

"I'm not sure what part of scripture we're both quoting, but you may have something there, Ms. Farfa—Florence. Now, if you will excuse me, my next audience is upon me. You see that an emir's life is not all fig oil."

"I hardly see how His Majesty manages at all."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Word arrived the next morning at the Opulent that the sheika Laila would receive Florence that same day for lea.

Florence felt oddly more nervous about this meeting than she had about the interview with Emir Gazzir. Perhaps it was because she had spent so much time going over Bobby's File. She fell she'd been prying indecently into the woman's life. She fell—yes, that was it—guilty. It was one thing to try to pull the wool over the eyes of a plump born-lucky potentate with the nickname of Gazzy, and another to deceive his long-suffering wife. All for a good cause. But still, Florence felt a kinship with the woman. They were both bright women who been swept away by princes to go live in sand castles. Florence's had simply crumbled first.

Bobby's briefing on Laila was appalling in its detail. It spoke well of the CIA's detail-gathering, but—really.

"No, no, I don't want to know that." she said after Bobby began to explain the circumstances under which Laila. at age seventeen, had lost her virginity: on a school trip, in Paris, to a guide at the Louvre. "It's just not relevant, and it's none of my or anyone's business."

"It's all business." Bobbv said. "You never know what detail's gonna be the one saves you." He put the dossier down on her desk. "I'd seriously suggest you read this file in its entirety. Ma'am." And with that, he walked out.

She sought out George, who had recovered somewhat from his stomach distress. "Why do I feel like such a shit readme this?" she asked.

"I guarantee you feel better than I do. I don't want to agree with Attila the Hun, but he's probably got a point. Plus. I'm dying to find out if she lost her virginity in the Louvre."

"I'll let you read it yourself."

THAT AFTERNOON FLORENCE was ushered into the cool terrace of the sheika's apartment at the palace, overlooking an aqua stretch of beach. A hundred yards offshore, fountains shot seawater into the air in a pattern roughly approximating the Bin Haz royal crest. It had the practical advantage of cooling the air on the seaward side of the palace, though it left one's skin a bit salty.

Laila rose to greet her guest. The chairs in this room of the palace. Florence noted, were all of the same height. The sheika was quite beautiful, though this is not an especially rare quality among wives of princes. She was thirty-seven, one of the more innocent facts Florence knew about her from Bobby's briefing. She was taller than her husband, a fact accentuated by the three-inch heels she wore, in contrast to the normally slippered feel of Arab women. She had superb cheekbones, a line nose and peregrine-falcon eyes. She could have been a model—in fact, she had been during a college summer, more to annoy her parents than for the money. She wore a silk pantsuit from Paris and the merest while chiffon scarf that set off her abundant dark hair. Around her neck was the simplest gold necklace. On her finger was an engagement diamond, admittedly a rock at eight carats, along with her wedding band. On a table behind her were two silver-framed photographs. One was of her and Prince Hamdul: the other showed her husband in full tribal regalia. Florence took in the separation of the two photographs.

"Welcome." The sheika gestured to a chair. Her manner was pleasant and hospitable, with just enough formality to prompt Florence to come to the point without dwelling too long on Matar's climate, natural beauty or the marvel of the sea fountains beyond the terrace.

"The emir has discussed with the sheika the matter on which I have come to Matar?" Florence said.

A smile played across Laila's face, softening it like a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight in a formal drawing room. Florence blushed.

"The matter on which you have come to Matar? Yes, he told me all about it. Would you care for something other than tea? I sometimes have a glass of something around this time."

A servant materialized out of nowhere, just as the emir's had. The sheika nodded, and the servant disappeared, reappearing shortly with phantomlike efficiency, bearing a tray of beaten silver on which were two cut-crystal flutes filled with a bubbly crimson-and-gold liquid.

"Pomegranate juice and champagne," Laila said, handing one to Florence. "A Matari Kir, if you will. Sahteyn. Thank God we have a word for 'Sante' in Arabic. One would have thought otherwise."

The cool, tangy-sweet bubbles went down Florence's throat and filled her with a relaxing warmth.

"The custom was to offer our guests fig cordials." Laila said. "Promoting our national industry. But it was so truly disgusting that I discontinued the practice."

"The sheika seems to share the emir's views on figs."

"Why don't we dispense with the third-person nonsense? I've never gotten used to it. I keep looking about the room to see where this person is people are referring to, and it's me. Call me Laila. If we do this thing you propose, you'll be calling me that soon enough. I suppose. Do you prefer 'Ms. Farfaletti'?"

"Florence, please."

"As in Firenze?"

"Yes," Florence said, impressed. "My father was a proud Italian. Most are, one way or another."

"And what are you doing here, so far from Florence?"

"The emir did not explain?"

"He said you wanted me to run some kind of Pan-Arab television station aimed at women." Laila leaned back in the armchair. "What a proposition. Such offers hardly come along every day. Almost, one might say, too good to be true?"

"We think you're just the person to do it. Really, the only person. It could be very exciting."

"Do we?"

The two women stared at each other. There was no hostility in Laila's gaze, but it was as cool as the Kir in Florence's hand. “This project—it is of your own devising?"

"Yes. Of course, one needs backers." The word lay on Florence's tongue like aluminum foil, harsh and unnatural.

"And in the interests of due diligence, who exactly are these backers?"

"They're all described here." Florence reached for her briefcase and took out a folder and handed it to Laila. Laila studied the pages listing the names of the backers, all of whom were fictitious, though actual human beings were standing by to play their parts, should Laila pick up the phone. As Laila studied the list. Florence studied her.

"They are in it for the money, one supposes?"

"In an impure world, money is a pure enough motive."

Laila smiled. "And your associates at the hotel—they are your staff'

"Yes. I thought to bring them in the event that the project met with your approval, so we could get started. They were eager to see Matar. In all honesty, their enthusiasm might have had a bit to do with the duty-free shopping and the pleasures of Infidel Land."

"Duty-free shopping and slot machines." Laila said. "Ah. the richness of Matari culture. Your associate. Mr. Robert Thibodeaux—Farfaletti and Thibodeaux; it sounds like an expensive law firm. Now tell me about him."

Florence glanced out at the fountain. She had never been a very adept liar. "He's an executive producer. He makes things happen."

"And Mr. George—he is feeling better?"

Florence felt her mouth going dry. "Yes, thank you. You're very well informed."

"I own the hotel. My little project. The emir thought it might give me something to do. To occupy me. And now along comes your television project to occupy me even more. This will certainly keep me busy, wouldn't it? Or perhaps that is the ... idea?"

Florence felt like a pane of glass.

"And Mr. Renard," Laila continued. "Renard. He would be the Fox of the team?"

"Programming," Florence squeaked.

"It's this desert air. It can be quite brutal. Drink some water." "You have me at a disadvantage."

"Yes, I rather do, don't I?" The sheika smiled. "So what part of the United States government are you with? CIA? It's rather... out of the box for them, isn't it?"

"To be honest," Florence said, "I'm not quite sure myself, disingenuous as that may sound."

"You look as though you could use another drink. You needn't worry. I'm not going to say anything. As long as I'm satisfied this isn't something my husband cooked up to keep me from objecting to that whorehouse he's got in Um-beseir. Actually, I'm rather intrigued. I think we'd both better have another drink."

CHAPTER NINE

Maliq bin-Kash al-Haz was the younger brother of Emir Gazzir. .Walk/ and Gazzy had different mothers, as is generally the case when a father has sired more than thirty offspring.

The two were quite different in temperament: Gazzir plump, hedonistic and deliberate; Maliq lean, intense and headstrong. The one quality they shared was a deep venality. Maliq's brand was in some ways the more understandable, given the disadvantages of his birth. His mother had been one of the maids in the palace, a comely Yemeni whom the emir simply could not resist. (Not that the emir ever really resisted anything.) As soon as the child was born, she was packed off to Sanaa with a sackful of Matari gold sovereigns. The child would have accompanied her, only the emir took a fancy to him upon seeing him for the first time, declaring. "What a fine-looking devil is this!" He promptly named him Maliq (Matari for "fine-looking little bastard") and added him to his already abundant spawn, to be raised in the royal household.

Early on, Maliq displayed a precocious talent for leveling whatever playing field he was engaged upon. When a camel race was arranged on his eighth birthday, he sneaked into the stables the night before and fed all the other princelings' camels barley mixed with charcoal, which, as anyone knows who has ridden a camel that has gorged on barley and charcoal, makes a camel particularly cranky and unsubmissive. Maliq won the race and the prize. Thus began a lifetime's fascination with racing.

As Matar's minister for sport, morality and youth endeavor. Maliq had, over the years, established the annual Matari 500 auto rally as the high point of the social season. He was not only the event's chairman and chief patron, he always participated in it and, God be praised, always won. Among the aficionados of the Matari track, the question asked was not "Who won?" but "Who came in second?"

There had been spectacular upsets. Gentile Fabriani. the Italian, had thrown a rod in the 389th lap and gone through the wall, Uldo Pantz, the dashing Bavarian, so tantalizingly close to the finish line, had mysteriously blown all four tires and come to smoky grief in the midfield. And when, in '99, the American Buddy Banfield hit an oil puddle that inexplicably materialized in front of his car as he sped toward certain victory—did not the whole racing world mourn? It had gotten harder to attract top-ranked drivers lo compete in the Matari 500. Maliq had to keep raising the second-place purse to the point that it had reached rather extravagant levels.

But the race had done much over the years to raise Matar's profile in the world. Matar was now synonymous throughout the world with fig oil, duty-free shopping, gambling and corrupt auto racing. The emir's decision to go along with Florence's TV Matar idea was motivated not just by the prospect of another pipeline of cash into his exchequer, but also by a desire to show the world that Matar could take its rightful place at the global table of diversified industry.

But now, in his early forties. Maliq had begun to weary of auto races. Perhaps the novelty of winning every Matari 500 had worn off. The trophy room in his palace was so crowded with gold cups that it had begun to stir in him not pride but a certain ennui. Inspired in part by his exiled mother, who had taken to e-mailing him from Sanaa, he had set his sights on a higher trophy: his brother's throne.

His brother Gazzv, the emir, was not unaware of this fact. He had kept a close eye on his half brother ever the since the day of his twelfth birthday, when the camel he was riding violently pitched him into a nettle patch.

It was by Gazzy's assent that Maliq was allowed to win every Matar 500.

He knew it would keep the young prince content and fulfilled. But it is written that a well-fed scorpion does not lose his appetite; he only grows a larger stomach. Such was the state of affairs at the time of Florence's arrival in Amo-Amas.

Complicating the situation were the French, who tend to complicate every situation. They knew about Maliq's ennui and designs on the throne, and had cannily been maneuvering to exploit it. They maintained an embassy in Amo-Amas, and its staff had not been whiling away the lazy hot afternoons in coffeehouses along the quays. On the contrary, they were well aware that, in the terminology of the intelligence community, Maliq presented a target of the most delicious opportunity.

France had never really gotten over its humiliation at the hands of Churchill and his cartographers in 1922. "Revenge is a dish best served cold" may be a Spanish proverb, but as Fr Rochefoucauld put it, "How pleasant it is to cram cold dead snails down the throat of an Englishman." Here was France's chance to even an ancient insult and, with any luck, inflict a little collateral damage on America.

Over the years, France had missed no opportunity to exploit strains in the U.S.-Wasabi relationship. When America declined to sell its latest fighter jet or other frightful technology to the Wasabis on the grounds that they might use it against Israel, France would step in and shrug by way of showing how profoundly reasonable it was, and say, "But of course you may have some of ours!" American congressmen representing the districts in which the American fighter jets were made would then go and clamor to the White House that "those fucking Frogs" were making a killing while they were "sucking hind tit." (Such an elegant idiom, the lobbyist's.) Invariably, the president would need the congressmen's votes on some upcoming bill and would relent. The Wasabis would get their new jets, stripped of a few high-tech features so as to make the transaction more palatable to the Israelis. No matter. A single Israeli lighter pilot could shoot down the entire Royal Wasabi Air Force and still have one hand free to hold his bagel.

Sensing that history was handing them a golden opportunity, the French intelligence service contrived to lure Prince Maliq to Paris.

The invitation came from the president of Auto-Vitesse SA. makers of the world-class racing cars as well as the distinctive Allez-Oop mini-coupes so popular in America. Founded in 1912 by Emil Lagasse-Ponti, the firm had made dozens of winners of Grand Prix auto races. The company expressed its desire to have Maliq drive a Vitesse in the upcoming Matar 500. Maliq was not immune to such blandishments.

What a fete his French hosts put on for him when he came! Dinner at the Flysec Palace in Paris with President Villepin, a night at the opera, featuring an especially commissioned one-act entitled The Thousand and One Laps, with the outstanding French tenor Olmar Blovard in the starring role as Malpique, the dashing thirteenth-century Moorish camel racer who saves Islam in beating the evil English crusader, Bertram the Unwashed, to the finish line. The allusion to current events was not lost on the man sitting in the presidential box. surrounded by an adoring French female entourage. The next day Maliq's royal progress continued with a visit to the Vitesse plant outside Lyon for two days of celebrations and lunches and dinners. By the time he departed France in a government Airbus, with six gleaming new Vitesse Formule Un cars in the cargo hold, Maliq was firmly and permanently a Francophile. Who can resist the French when they deign to play the seducer?

Meanwhile, the announcement in Al Matar—the country's leading (and only) newspaper—that the sheika Laila had been appointed VEO of the new satellite television network, TV Matar, had not gone unnoticed in Paris.

A large complex in a western suburb of Amo-Amas was made available to Florence and her team. During the first gulf war. it had housed a detachment of U.S. Special Forces commandos. Florence found a leftover graffito in her office, scribbled there by some Ranger or Navy SEAI.: “Give War a Chance." The casual visitor would find mostly native Matari employees. But the heart of the operation beat in quiet obscurity in a distant wing of the complex. The sheika's own office was physically separate—it was thought more prudent this way—in a black-glass skyscraper in downtown Amo-Amas, designed by the Finnish architect Po Skaalmo, who had also executed the Grand Foyer at Infidel Land.

The work was proceeding at fever pace, twenty hours a day. What sleep was to be had was on cots in the office. But no one complained. Excitement and purpose coursed through their shop. Even Bobby and George were sniping less at each other. Uncle Sam flew in for a visit and pronounced himself delighted with their progress. He didn't whimper when George showed him the invoices, though he did remark that for this kind of money, they could start a TV network back in the States. Meanwhile, he had arranged for the necessary satellites.

"Got a great deal from the NSA on some used birds." He grinned in his wire-rimmed eyeglasses and slicked-back graying hair, the very picture of a 1950s General Motors executive. Was there anything they needed? Anything at all? He seemed to have an all-access backstage pass to the entire United States government. Florence no longer probed about his precise role within it. She was too busy, and why question a gift horse? She assumed that he was with the CIA. though Bobby said he'd never seen him before. Perhaps he belonged to some directorate within a directorate, one of those star chambers set up for a specific mission years ago. which someone forgot to shut down—still operating like a probe launched at a distant planet decades before, proceeding deeper and deeper into the frosty night of space, autonomous, serene, oblivious.

As TV Matar's chief of programming, Renard was in absolute paradise. What PR man hasn't dreamed of having his own television station with no client breathing over his shoulder? This morning Rick was doubly excited, since he was previewing for Florence and Laila the show that would be at the centerpiece of TVM's morning schedule.

"You're going to love ibis." he said. They were assembled in the screening room. Laila was wearing glasses and chain-smoking cigarettes, looking every centimeter the TV executive.

"This is our flagship. The tone-setter. The anchor, if you will."

"Weigh anchor. Rick." Florence said. "I've got to meet with the fragrance people in half an hour."

Florence felt more like an advertising director these days than the godmother of Arab feminism. When not attending to technical details at the station, she would be furiously courting advertisers. Strictly speaking, it wasn't necessary, but the more ads they had, the more legitimate the whole enterprise would look, and the more money would flow into Gazzy's coffers, Laila had been indispensable, attracting the manufacturers of the luxury goods sold in Matar's duty-free shops. She hinted lo recalcitrants that if they didn't advertise on her new television network, they would lose their franchises at Amo-Amas

International Airporl, the most lucrative duty-free environ in the entire Gulf region.

"Her actual name is Fatima." Rick said as the film rolled. The hostess of the show walked out onstage fully veiled, to the applause of the studio audience.

"They're all named Fatima," Faila said, exhaling smoke. "And the rest are named Laila."

"The focus group lapped it up with spoons," Rick said. "I've never seen a Q. factor like we got."

The veiled figure walked onto the set, which was arranged in the manner typical of a morning talk show. She walked right into the coffee table, pitching head over heels, in the process revealing beautiful legs in sheer stockings as well as a flash of lovely thigh and garter belt. The soundtrack exploded in female laughter.

"We had to add that after the fact." Rick said. "The actual audience didn't know what to make of it. But once they got it, oh did they get it. It was like this release of a thousand years of repression and—"

"Shall we just watch. Rick?"

The name of the show came up in letters: Cher Azade.

"We tested," Rick said. "Most of them got it right away that it's French, that it means 'Dear Azade,' a play on Scheherazade, the chick from the Arabian Nights story."

"Chick. Rick?"

"Whatever."

The line below the title came up in Arabic: The Thousand and One Mornings.

The hostess picked herself up off the floor and bumped into one of the chairs. The audience roared. She groped her way to her seal and sat down. "This new veil," she said, "I can't see a thing..."

The audience howled with laughter.

Rick said, "I Love Lucy meets The Arabian Nights."

"Don't tell the religious police," Azade the hostess said, "or it will be thirty lashes. And that's just for showing an inch of ankle!"

The audience laughed.

"Well," Florence said, "that'll gel their attention. Laila?" "Oh, yes."

Rick said, "Now here's the beautiful part. They can't touch her, technically. George found this loophole in the Book of Hamooj. where they get all these bullshit rules from."

"Rick, please don't use that language in front of the sheika."

"I can handle it. Florence," Laila said.

Rick went on. "The Book of Hamooj is where all the religious rules are, about what women can and can't do. Which basically includes everything, including having an orgasm, assuming they didn't cut out the ... uh .. ."

"It's called a clitoridectomy." Laila said. "The genital mutilation of young women, to encourage chastity by depriving them ol sensual gratification. One of Islam's prouder achievements."

"Right. The mukfelleen. the Wasabi religious police—the ones who go around with whips beating women on the spot if so much as an inch of flesh is exposed—are the ones who shoved the young girls back into the school that was on fire because they weren't covered. What a fucking country. But theoretically, they can't complain here because it was technically an accident that she tripped. George—he knows all this shit—he found this clause in that book where, if you reveal your flesh accidentally, you get a free pass. It goes back to like the fourteenth century Some Hamooji princess fell off her camel and went ass over teakettle. Everyone saw her legs. It was this huge scandal. The whole caravan had to stop while they debated whether to stone her or cut off her head. Someone finally said. 'Wait a minute, this is the caliph's favorite squeeze we're talking about here. He's waiting for her in Kaffa, and we're going to bring him her head in a basket'.'' Fuck that." But the religious cops had to save face. So they wrote it into the law that you can't be punished if the flesh was revealed accidentally. From a religious point of view, they can't lay a hand on us."

"They're going to go absolutely ballistic." Laila said.

Rick smiled. "Isn't that the whole point?"

They watched the rest of Cher Azade's debut.

Laila said lo Florence. "It would seem Matar now possesses the atomic bomb. I can hardly wait lo set it off."

"Should we preview it for the emir?" Florence asked.

"Win don't we not bother him with it? He's so busy these days with his affairs of state."

CHAPTER TEN

TV Matar went on-air at sunrise on the day of the new spring moon. Advertisements had been taken out in the Wasabi newspapers and magazines, alerting women to a new station: "Just for you!" and full of "delicious recipes" and "advice on everything from raising a family to being a good wife in today's society." The ads flew under the radar of the Wasabi censors, who assumed it was just another of those shows where you learn how to make zesty hummus and to properly starch your husband's thobe. How surprised, then, were the ruling males of Wasabia to hear the shrieking peals of delighted female laughter as Cher Azade was beamed into homes from Wanbo to Kaffa to Akbukir.

"My next guest—not that I can see her—are you there. Farah?" "Over here, Azad!"

"God be praised. Now. Farah, I understand you have actually driven a car?" "Yes! A Mercedes."

"It's too exciting. What's it like, driving an automobile'.''" "Thrilling—thrilling beyond words." "Did you hit anything?"

"Just some mukfelleen religious police who were chasing me. So I backed up and ran them over again."

"Oh, dear." Azade scolded. "That will earn you a good beating. What did you do then?"

"I kept on going till I got to the border. The car is outside. I left the motor running. Would you like to go for a drive?"

"Only if we can run over religious police. Now, don't go away, even if you do have a car, because we're going to have a commercial for some lovely perfume. And don't you go away—we have a wonderful program for you, including a self-defense instructor who's going to give us tips on how to cope with cranky violent husbands and boyfriends during Ramadan."

THE PHONES RANG at the Ministry of the Enforcement of Religion in Kaffa, headquarters of the mukfelleen. There wasn't much they could do immediately, other than go about smashing and confiscating television sets. Their trademark purple sedans careened through the streets, screeching to a halt at the sight of a television in a cafe or store, disgorging enraged, whip-wielding mukfelleen in their distinctive black and blue thobes.

"We're back, praise God. That was very useful, what the self-defense instructor showed us. wasn't it?"

"Most helpful." said Azade's co-hostess. "Now I might actually look forward to Ramadan."

"I'm going to get a big brass tray with handles so I can use it as a shield. Now, our next guest has written a book." "How exciting."

"Needless to say, you won't find it in the stores. But we'll put a number on the screen, and if you call, you can buy it over the phone, and they'll mail it to you in an undetectable wrapper."

"What's the book called, Azade? You make me eager to read it already."

"It's called Stop. You're Killing Me: The Repression of Women in Arab Societies and What You Can Do About It."

"God be praised. What's it about?"

The studio audience laughed.

"It's not a cookbook. I can tell you."

THE WASABI FOREIGN MINISTER telephoned Matar’s ambassador to Kaffa. It vexed him to hear the program playing in the background of the ambassador's house as he excoriated him. "This is a hostile act." he growled.

"I shall inform my emir. Your Augustness." the ambassador said, eager to get oil the phone so he could return to watching.

"WHAT INSPIRED you to write this book?"

"It's hard to put my finger on it. Azade, but probably when the religious police pushed those girls back into the burning school because their heads weren't covered. I thought, What kind of barbaric society do we live in that such abominations go on—every day?"

The studio audience applauded

"Thank you for sharing that. The book is Stop, You're Killing We. By Yasmeen Khamza. I want everyone listening to buy two copies. Plus one copy for each of your husband's other wives. We'll make their heads spin, sisters. Thank you, Yasmeen, for being with us this morning. Now we're going to have another commercial, and then we're going to have a fashion show. Just because we have to wear these ghastly sheets over our heads doesn't mean we can't look our best."

A PHONE RANG in Paris.

"It's time." said the voice. "The moment has arrived." "I think so. too."

In Um Beseir, the emir's Xanadu-on-the-Gulf, his chief of staff, Fetish, was reluctant to disturb his master, inasmuch as the emir was ensconced in his satiny bower with three ladies. Two of the women were spectacular new talents from Kiev and St. Petersburg. The third was a Parisian, also talented. She had been introduced to Gazzy's harem by his brother Maliq, of all people. What a devil. He'd met the girl, Annabelle, on one of his trips to France to get new racing cars. The emir was most grateful to his brother, and was coming back to thinking that in matters of love, as in food, the French ruled supreme.

The sheika’s new television project had so preoccupied her lime that Gazzy was once again free—God be praised—lo refresh himself, undisturbed, in the loamy fields of Eros, to take his pleasure without distraction by the crystalline shores and turquoise waters.

"My lord?"

"Really, Fetish—this is no time—"

Fetish preferred the phone and whispered. "It is King Tallulah himself." It wasn't every day that the king of Wasabia called Gazzy. "What's he want?"

"Lord, he did not tell me. His manner is not pleased. Indeed, he sounds wroth."

"Give me the phone, then. Honestly. Darlings," Gazzy said to the three women, "go and have a swim, eh? Hello?" The emir struggled to clear his head of the champagne. "Majesty? You honor me greatly with this call. May you be in good health and have the strength often men half your age. What is the nature of this urgency that I am summoned in the midst of prayer? Television? No. no. no. it's Laila's—the sheika’s—enterprise. Women's business—recipes, clothes, child rearing, baking pastries, that sort of— Ah? Eh? Oh. I'm. Well. I'm sure there's some explanation. Of course I will look into it. Yes. yes. Um-hum. And the prince, your brother, he is well. God be praised? And the forty thousand crown princes? God is truly abundant and merciful. Absolutely. You have my word upon it. Before the sun has kissed thy western borders, thou shall hear from me. Be assured of my word. My best to your good wives. And the little princes. Salaam."

He clicked off and tossed the phone at Fetish, who, from experience, was adept at catching phones tossed in disgust.

"Shall I alert the pilot royal that we will be returning to Amo-Amas, lord?"

"Certainly not. The old son of an Egyptian whore acting the king with me. Matar is not a province of Wasabia. last I looked at a map. It seems that the sheika's new television program does not meet with his royal approval." Gazzy considered. A pleased look came over his face. He grunted, "Hah—good. Well, tell Azzim to look into it and make a report But Fetish?" "My lord?"

"Tell Azzim—no hurry, eh?"

The emir chuckled to himself. I le looked out past the silk lent folds toward the palm-fringed lagoon, where the women loitered bare-breasted in the waist-deep shallows, like the three ladies of Baghdad, braiding one another's hair.

"Will my lord be taking a swim before lunch?"

"Well, if you're going to chase after me with telephones, Fetish, there would be no point. I mean, would there'.-'"

Fetish smiled and bowed. "1 am confident that my lord will receive no further interruptions."

"In that case"—the emir sniffed—"I will take my refreshment in the lagoon. Then 1 will take my lunch. We'll have the lobsters and the caviar with the creme fraiche. To make our Russian guests feel at home. And then the Sultani orange and myrlleberry sherbets."

"Excellent, lord."

So picturesque, the girls, the way they arrayed themselves in the lagoon like natives in the Gauguin painting, their skins glistening with oils in the sunlight shafts that pierced the palm canopy.

"Fetish, when you present the sherbets, place a large pearl atop each mound."

"The cultured pearls, or the natural Gulf pearls?"

The emir considered. "The Gulf. It's a special occasion, Fetish. Really, what a terrible miser you can be." As my lord commands."

UNCLE SAM CALLEDD Florence, sounding delighted. "Goodness, goodness, goodness, did you ever kick up a sandstorm. They're having meetings about it at the UN. The Wasabi delegate demanded an apology from the Matari delegate." "Wait till you see next week's prime-time lineup."

"I'll be watching. Now. you watch out for yourself, young lady. There are snakes in that desert, keep a low profile. Pay attention to your man Thibodeaux."

It was tricky, conducting polls in a country like Wasabia. This fell to George, who was naturally inclined, inasmuch as the State Department's standard approach to any problem was to study it until it organically expired. He hired a Dutch firm in The Hague (a writable geographical synonym for inoffensiveness) to conduct a Trojan-horse phone survey of Wasabi households. Most of the questions had to do with imported vegetables.

George presented the results to Florence and Rick and Laila. Bobby was not there, occupied as he was of late with security matters, or what he called "proactive pre-emption."

"They seem to be eating it up." George said. "We're basically number one in Wasabia."

"If there's such a thing as ‘must-see TV,' this is it." "Good job programming. Renard." Florence said. Rick nodded.

"How are we doing with the men?" Florence asked.

"Not great among the conservatives. A lot of TV sets are being turned off or tossed out into the street. Good news for Sony. The younger men seem to be rather fascinated." George looked up from his papers and sighed. "This isn't terribly scientific. I'd have preferred a more longitudinal study over—"

"We don't have time. What else?"

"Four fifths of women said they want her to take off her abaaya on-screen."

"1 don't think we're there quite yet." Laila said. "Azade is a blossom that we ought to let bloom gradually."

"Two thirds want fewer recipes," George continued, "and more sex, and an overwhelming majority want Britney Spears on to talk about her navel piercings. I don't know how that question got in there. I didn't put it in. I've never reallv gotten the point of Britney Spears."

"How's Yasmeen's book doing?"

"Gangbusters. We're giving it away, of course, since women can't have credit cards. Sending it from Holland and France. The Wasabi customs agents have been confiscating about half of them. We're having to get creative in the packaging and mailing origins. We've been labeling the boxes Tulips' or "Chocolate' and marking them "Perishable.- But we'll have to shift strategy, probably. FedEx is being difficult."

"Thank you, George. Good work."

"We'll do another survey next week, after the new show."

THE NEW SHOW was Chop-Chop Square, a prime-time soap opera about a royal family living in an unnamed country that looked uncannily similar lo Wasabia. It debuted in the eight P.M. prime-time slot and was being denounced from five hundred mosques by dawn the next day. The Wasabi Information Ministry called it "an abomination before God."

Bobby, looking more sleepless than usual, reported that the grand mullah of Muk, Wasabia's leading religious authority—and certainly no cream puff, he—was preparing to issue "the mama of all fatwas."

"Well." Laila said, drawing on another cigarette, "that'll melt the wax in Gazzy's ears."

Florence noted that Laila seemed to be reveling in it all. She ascribed this not so much to the “fun" TV Matar had unleashed among the Wasabis as to the predicament into which it had thrust her husband, the emir. Laila confided to her that there had been a rather royal scene the night before.

The emir had said, "What are you and that American woman doing, in the name of God the most merciful? Tallulah himself has called me—thrice."

"He called here first, darling. I told him you were at Um-beseir. Unwinding from the rigors of your duties here."

"There's no need for that, madame. You might have informed me about the content of this—this television station of yours. By the prophet's holy beard, Laila. What are you and this American woman doing? “I hear things about her."

"She's a very shrewd businesswoman. Would you like to see how much money you made last week? I have the figures. Here."

"Um, Are these ... true?"

"These, darling, are only the beginning. Has it not escaped my lord's notice—" "Will you please not call me that? What has gotten into you?" "Perhaps it's what you have gotten into." "Have I taken more wives? No."

"Is that your definition of fidelity?"

"Laila. you arc giving me pains in the chest. You must stop. Do you want Hamdul to be fatherless?" It was the emirs practice to fake chest pains whenever he found himself cornered.

"Shall I summon the royal cardiologist?" Laila said.

"It's passed. Not that you'd care." He studied the sheet of paper with the figures. "I must say, these are impressive."

"So is this." Laila handed him a clipping from Al-Ahram, the Pan-Arabic newspaper. The headline said. IS THE "PUDDING OF MATAR" THE NEW SALADIN?

The story had been written by George and placed by Renard and paid for by Bobby.

TV Matar, the new satellite television station based in Amo-Amas. comes with a bold agenda and is causing speculation throughout the region that Emir Bin Haz. until now thought to be merely content to rake in his Churchillian riches and disport himself at his "winter palace" has a heart that, contrary to reports of faintness. appears to beat strongly indeed.

"Hmm." said Gazzy. frowning. "My lord is not pleased?" " 'Pudding of Matar'?"

"Darling, they're calling you the new Saladin, for heaven's sake. Accept the compliment."

"Well." Gazzy said, tossing the clipping to the floor. "this is your thing, not mine."

"Bv all means, come aboard, dear husband. Join me." She stroked his cheek tenderly. "It has been a very long time .. ." "Hmm .. ." "Darling?" "Yes, darling?"

"You have been busy, and I don't want to catch something." "Really, Laila!"

"You are not the offended one. Gazzir. Don't have a Potemkin tantrum with me. I am making a hygienic point."

"You certainly know how to spoil the mood."

"Oil, for heaven's sake. Hamdul is more mature. And he's ten years old. All I'm asking for is a blood test. Hardly unreasonable. You have your blood changed every month as it is."

"Never mind. Now. what about this television?"

"What about it?"

"It's got Tallulah in a temper."

"Darling, you detest Tallulah and the Wasabis. And 'this television' is going to make you one of the richest men in the gulf, not to mention 'a new Saladin.' If there's a problem. I'm not getting what it is."

"I'll have to discuss it with my ministers."

"I'm sure they'll be full of wisdom, and you will emerge wiser than ever." "God be praised." the emir said, "there are times when I wonder if I mated with a she-devil!"

"You used to say that to me in bed. Our first night at the Connaughl. Oh. what a lion was my lord," she teased tenderly, stroking his cheek.

He wanted her badly, but he was not about to lower himself to having a blood test. He stomped off to continue his growling in private. Yet he was also tempted to smile, for this projected advertising revenue stream was indeed like a gush of sweet water in the baking sand of the desert. And it was pleasant enough to be called the new Saladin, even if he was not quite clear who the infidels were.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The gist of what Delame-Noir was explaining to Maliq, as they sat drinking coffee in the grand salon of the Palais Framboise outside Paris—headquarters of Delame's corner of the French government—was that the moolahs were key to the whole business. Maliq was impatient and uncomfortable. He did not enjoy being condescended to by the tall, elegant, exquisitely tailored man, who kept dropping knowing references to Wasabi and Matari history.

Dominique Delame-Noir was head of the Onzieme Bureau, which undertook France's more sensitive foreign operations. He was also the author of a monumental account of the 1922 Middle East peace settlement, written from the French point of view, entitled We Will take the Lebanon and Syria, and You Can Keep the Jews and the Palestinians. He spoke three dialects of Arabic, also Pashtun and Kurdish: he would apologize—perhaps overdramatically—for his Farsi. He also published poetry in Arabic. Le Soir's critic called it "an attempt to fuse the obtuse mysticism of Gibran with the hypercaffeinated, wall-eyed nihilism of Sartre." Whatever.

"Of course." Delame-Noir said to Maliq with the air of a rising soufflé, "the dialectic that was in place in the early eighteenth century, between Rafiq and the imam of Muk, this is not something we would want to see in the new Matar?"

Maliq countered with an opacity of expression intended to signal that his brain was so occupied weighing the nuances and permutations that he had no neurons to waste on trivial facial muscles. In truth, he didn't know what the hell Delame-Noir was talking about..Just get to the part where I become emir.

"Nor." Delame-Noir droned, "would anyone welcome a return to the period of 1825 to '34! The discordant interregnum of Ali bin Hawalli, and the consequent retrenchment of the Mohab, followed by the nouvelle hejira of the Bahim Habb?"

Delame-Noir smiled serenely and arched an eyebrow by way of highlighting the Cartesian brilliance of this historical perspective. Maliq yearned to be in one of his Formula One cars, vibrating with speed down the hot asphalt Straightaway at one quarter the speed of sound, past adulatory crowds screaming with all their might. "Maliq! Maliq the Magnificent!" Enough of this— enough.

"1 am aware of all this you say," he said, putting down his Sevres china coffee cup on a table that had been made for one of Louis XV's mistresses. "But I have come to discuss the future of Matar, not the past"

Delame-Noir touched him on the sleeve with the tip of his fingers. "But exactly!"

Maliq stared.

"How well you appreciate the historicity of the situation, perhaps alone among the contemporary umara. And how interesting to contemplate the parallel facing the present emir—your brother—and his and your great-great-great-uncle, Mustafa bin—"

“Yes, yes, yes, Mustafa." Maliq groaned. "The parallel leaps out at one like a Sirhan adder. But what about the bank accounts?"

"Ah," Delame-Noir purred, aiming a long linger toward the twenty-two foot ceiling, where fresco putti flitted. "Your apprehension is total. For you, Maliq bin-Kash al-Haz. this is not a matter of mere political opportunity—no. no— but of duty. Consanguinity in perfect harmony with duty, within the gyrody-namic of historicity."

What was this old fool talking about? At least he seemed to be concluding this stream of elegant drivel.

"No. no, this we do not see every day. Bravo, mon prince. I salute you."

"The bank accounts." Maliq tried again.

"Yemeni," Delame-Noir said. "It's all fixed."

"What about the American woman. Farfaf—however you pronounce it— Flor-ents."

Delame-Noir was keenly interested in the American woman but for the time being was resolved, wise old spv master that he was. to keep certain details to himself, such as the fact that he had inserted one of his people, the talented Annabelle. into Gazzy's Um-beseir harem.

"We are of course keeping a close eye on her," Delame-Noir said, his speech now plain and to the point, stripped of rococo curlicues and acanthus leaves. "She is making a big success with her television station. Your brother is making very much money. He seems very content, I must say."

"My brother is a debauched toad."

"The question is how to restore Matar to its true greatness. Now, I think it would be a very good idea for you to begin the cultivating of the mullahs. I think you should start spending more time in the mosques."

"The mosques'?" Maliq snorted. "I'm a race-car driver."

"And a brilliant one. Twenty times the champion!"

"Twenty-one."

"Exactly. But is this any reason not to have a religious conviction? Surely this—along with the Yemeni bank accounts—would make them see you in a new light?"

Maliq sighed. "My reputation isn't very religious."

Delame-Noir pretended to be thinking it over, when he had actually planned every word of this conversation, every comma. He looked up at the ceiling as if searching for the answer. "You know the saying—it's originally French, but the English stole it, along with even thing else—'There are no atheists in foxholes'?"

"Yes?" Maliq lied.

"Is it not also true that there are no atheists in the cockpit of a Formula One in flames, going four hundred kilometers per hour?" Delame-Noir smiled.

"What are you proposing?" Maliq said with the annoyance of the slow learner. "That I burst into flames and crash?"

A look of pain played across Delame-Noir's face. "Not at all, mon prince!" 'The smile returned with a sly upturn at the corner of the mouth. "I was thinking that we could assist with certain technical details. Or perhaps your own technical crew is already proficient with certain, shall we say, special effects?"

Maliq didn't like the insinuation, hut Delame-Noir's scheme was now apparent, and he rather liked it.

“The Prince Maliq is safe!" TV Matar's news announcer Fatima Sham told viewers. "He is alive and safe! God he praised!"

Florence was watching the broadcast from the control booth with George and hobby and Rick. She still hadn't gotten accustomed lo hearing "God be praised" from the mouths of TV news announcers. It didn't ring right lo the American

ear. The chairman of the Federal Reserve today said that he was culling the prime rate by a half point. God he praised!

Renard winced, too. PR types lend as a rule lo be godless, unless there's money to be made, in which case they can become very pious indeed But George had been adamant about having the anchors and reporters drop in the occasional "Allahu akhar" on the grounds that it "gives us Arab Street cred." A little street cred was probably a good idea, given the babe quotient in TV Matar's announcers. They were all women, and dazzlingly good-looking, and utterly Westernized.

In this particular instance. Florence thought "God be praised" might be appropriate. This war the Matar 500 had its most dramatic finish ever. Prince Maliq’s car—in the lead, as usual—had suddenly begun spewing black smoke. But rather than pull over, the prince had bravely kept going the two remaining laps. After he finished first, his car's rear end burst into flames. He slowed to a stop and leaped out. blackened with soot. The fire-rescue team hosed him down with chemical foam. Standing there, black and foamy, he was a strange but triumphant sight. George declared that he looked like "a blackamoor Pillsbury doughboy."

Fatima, the news announcer, was reporting that Prince Maliq had gone straight from the racetrack lo the mosque, "where he gave thanks for his miraculous escape."

"I suppose I'd do the same." George said, "though you wouldn't find me driving one of those things in the first place."

Bobby was intently watching the interview with Maliq on the monitor. It had been taped before the start of the race. Maliq was telling the reporter how "really great God is."

'He's awful religious all of a sudden." Bobby said.

"Maybe he found God." George said. "It happens. People are always finding God in the desert. He doesn't have much competition out here. No one finds God on Madison Avenue."

"I found God on K Street." Rick said.

"What are you talking about?"

"The day I got the sultan of Brunei account. I walked out onto the street, and the whole heavenly choir was singing. My whole body was vibrating. It was a total religious experience. Fiffy-thousand-dollar monthly retainer. I felt exalted."

"You know. Rick," George said, "every time 1 think about going into the private sector, you open your mouth, and my drab, colorless existence and niggardly paycheck suddenly seem noble."

"That car he drives." Bobby said, still watching the monitors, now replaying in slow motion Maliq's accident, "its French-built"

"The prince is a major Francophile," George said. "Spends a lot of time in Paris. He was just there. They all go there to shop. Everyone goes to Paris except poor old George, stuck in this hole, working for Queen Cruela for slave wages."

“Why doesn't poor old George go shop at the duty-free." Florence said, typing at her computer terminal. "Amazing bargains."

"I spent all my money on those slot machines at Infidel land. They're rigged. I'm telling you. This entire region is corrupt"

"Why don't you write a long cable lo Charlie Duckett about it?"

"Say what you will about him, he didn't chain me to a desk the way you do. At least in Washington. I had a life."

Bobby stood and put on his jacket.

"Where are you going?" Florence said.

"Gonna go see if I can find God."

"Give Him my regards." Renard said.

Florence watched him go. George watched Florence watching him go. "Are we developing a crush?" George murmured.

Florence blushed.

"Rather a nice package. I admit, but really. Firenze, not your type. I'm sure the sex would be earthmoving and volcanic, but what would you talk about afterward? Alabama versus Auburn? How to crush someone's windpipe? Blowing up a car? Tapping telephones?"

"If you don't have anything to do, I'll find something for you to do."

"Why—why—did I let you drag me off to this macabre place?"

"Rick." Florence said, "can we run next week's episode of Chop-Chop?"

Rick dialed it up onto one of the monitors. The three of them watched. In last week's episode, Princess Mahnaz was unjustly accused of adultery by her husband, the evil prince Wakmal. She had found out that Wakmal was secretly supporting a terrorist cell aimed at deposing his good brother, the king of Ambalah. Wakmal had thrown her in jail and was planning to cut off her head. Mahnaz's first cousin, the dashing young Tafas, had smuggled a message of hope to her in prison inside a chocolate bar, telling her that he and his commandos were planning to rescue her. But Wakmal had gotten wind of the escape plan and. unbeknownst to Tafas, had laid a trap. Chop-Chop Square was TV Matar's number one show, getting huge ratings. The Wasabis were not amused.

FLORENCE PEERED THROUGH the fish-eye peephole on her apartment door. When she saw it was Bobby, she flipped the safety catch back on the pistol and opened the door. She was in her silk pajamas, as it was past two in the morning.

He looked sheepish, flushed. "Sorry to bother you. ma'am." "Ma'am" al this hour? Can I—would you like something to drink?" she said.

"It's not a social call." I le seemed nervous. "Are you all right, Bobby?" "I screwed up, I'm afraid."

"Let's have a drink anyway." She poured bourbon into two glasses and gave one to him.

"1 went to the racetrack." Bobby said. "I wanted to take a closer look at the prince's car. All that smoke. I don't know if you noticed, but it seemed kinda even on both sides. Anyhow. I found his car. and sure 'nuff, it was rigged with smoke makers."

"We knew he cheats, right? He's won every race."

"Wasn't that got my attention. It was all that yakety-Yak about God being wonderful, runnin' off to the mosque. His car bein' French-made. You have to look at the whole picture. I did some checkin’, Two weeks ago, he went to Paris, and while he was there, he paid a visit to the Onzieme Bureau."

Florence knew about the Onzieme. "He did? You know this?"

"Yeah. So I thought it would be worth checkin' out the car." Bobby looked into his untouched glass of bourbon. "It didn't go so well."

"What happened?"

"Had a little accident. Someone got killed. I didn't honestly have a lot of choice in the matter. They opened up on me first." He looked at her, and there was innocence to it. "I'm not—I don't—" He fidgeted. "I'm not one to kill non-combatants, y’ understand."

"Go on."

"I was lookin' inside the car, and suddenly, someone's shootin' at me. Like I say, there wasn't anything else I could do. I'm sorry about this. I truly am. I recognize that it complicates things. On the other hand, what I found out was probably worth findin' out."

They sat for a moment in silence.

"It could have been a burglary." Florence said.

"Not really."

"Industrial spying."

"I don't think so."

"It could have been a relative—of one of the race-car drivers over the years who was killed racing against Maliq. They were breaking into the garage in order to sabotage his car. Revenge. What better motive is there in this part of the world?"

Bobby looked at Florence. He nodded thoughtfully. "That's all plausible, but there's two problems. First, that wouldn't go very far in a Matari court: second, it's worth even less if the other guv was to identify me."

"The other guy?"

"There was another guy. He got away. My second screw up. I'm not doin' all that great tonight. Point is. I've got to go now." "Go?"

"Well, yeah. I've gone from the asset to liability column. I feel bad about this."

"It couldn't be helped. But you can't just leave." she said. She realized that she had been leaning closer to him. He seemed aware of this lad as well and looked awkward.

"It wouldn't do your operation much good if they arrested me. This is a pretty liberal place by some Middle Fast standards, but he is the brother of the emir, and someone just killed one of his people while pokin' about his garage."

Florence considered, her mind racing. "But how's it going to look if you just disappear?"

"I think I can accomplish that part in such a way that it doesn't look suspicious." "How?"

"Do you want to know or need to know?" "Both."

Bobby looked at her. "I have someone at Immigration. He'll backdate my departure so that the record will show I left the country yesterday." "Oh. Well, But how we you leaving, then?"

"Thought I might do some fishing. There's lot of fish in these waters, you know." I le stood to leave. "Look. I'll be back as soon as I can, all right? You hang in there, Flo, hear?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

News of the killing in Maliq's garage ran on page one above the fold in Al Matar. It was also duly reported on TV Matar. Florence had no choice in the mutter. Matar was uniquely peaceful among the countries of the region, and this murder, of one of the servants of a crown prince—on the day of his miraculous escape from death!—smacked of mischief. The police were said to be pursuing leads.

Florence found out what she could while appearing not to take too great an interest. Meanwhile, she put off having to face Laila for as long as she could, faking a cold. She decided for the time being not to tell George and Rick what had happened, in the event that they were hauled in and questioned. She felt very alone.

There was another development: Maliq announced that he was giving up professional racing and was pursuing a new passion—religion. He declared that the killing of his servant Abu Tash was nothing less than "assassination" undertaken by "the enemies of Islam." This left a good many people in Matar, even among the more conservative religious element, scratching their heads. It was unclear why a shooting in a garage was religiously motivated, but whatever. Moreover, Maliq asserted, the real target had been he. An advertisement appeared in Al Matar, offering a reward of five hundred thousand baba

($100,000 US. for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the "assassin."

"Where's Attila?" George asked a few days alter Bobby had disappeared. "I haven't seen him. Is he out blowing up bridges?"

"He went back to Washington." Florence said as casually as she could. "You remember, he left the day before the race."

"No, he didn't."

"Yes, George, he did."

"Firenze. what are you talking about? He watched it with us right here in the control room."

"No. George, you're mistaken. He went home the day before." Rick chimed in. "No. he was here. I remember."

Florence looked at the two of them. "George. Rick, listen to me. Bobby went home the day before the race. Do you understand'!'"

They stared at Florence. Finally. George whispered, "Oh, God."

"Keep smiling." Florence said. There were technicians present.

"I knew this was going to happen."

"We're not going to discuss it now, George."

"And we're left to clean up after him? Typical CIA—"

"It was an accident, George." Florence said. She was trying so hard to make her expression look normal that it fell like a bad face-lift.

"Accident my—"

"George, please shut up. We'll discuss it at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, in the event you're asked questions, all you know is that he went home on some family matter. The day before the race. Don't say any more about it."

"They'll know."

"No, they won't. It's all been taken care of, Just concentrate on your work." "You might have told us." George said, sounding wounded. "I was trying to protect you."

"Well, thank you. I feel so much safer." George stomped off'. "Sorry, Rick."

"It's the Middle Fast." I le shrugged. "What can you expect. But look, if they start pulling out my fingernails, you might as well know right now: I'll tell them everything."

"I'll bear that in mind."

A moment later, he said, "Do they. ..do that sort of thing around here?"

"No. It's one of the most progressive countries in the region. The land where duty-free was born."

The doors to the control room opened. Laila entered, followed by four fierce-looking men. "Florence, where have you been hiding? Are you better? You look a bit peaked."

"Just a cold." Florence regarded Laila's entourage, who had taken up stations ten feet away.

Laila tracked her gaze and explained. "Gazzy's orders. Because of the killing in the garage. Everyone is acting completely gaga."

"Have they found out anything?"

"You must understand, the Matari police are known around the world—for incompetence. There isn't much crime to speak of. They're out of practice. They have a description of some kind, but it was dark."

"Do they know what the"—Florence forced the word out—"murderer was after?"

"Maliq's insisting it was some kind of assassination gone awry. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would bother assassinating him, unless"— Laila lowered her voice—"it was a relative of one of the drivers he beat."

"That had crossed my mind," Florence said, trying to give the theory a nudge.

"But we can't say that on TV."

"No," Florence said. "Of course not, Maliq seems quite ... changed since his accident."

"You have no idea. He came to see Gazzy yesterday at the palace and in front of people began lecturing him on the Koran. Can you believe—Maliq! Gazzy wasn't at all amused. He said, 'My dear brother, 1 think you must have bumped your head against the steering wheel.' Maliq became very demonstrative and began denouncing Gazzy for selling the country out to infidels. His exact words. Gazzy was livid. He ordered Maliq out of the palace. And now some of the moolahs are making an enormous to-do out of it all, encouraging pilgrimages to Maliq's garage. To touch the miraculous vehicle. It's straight out of a TV Matar soap opera. One of the moolahs has even issued a fatwa saying it's a religious duty! Do you believe? It has been a very long time since any fatwa was issued in Matar, Gazzy called in the moolah who issued it and gave him what-for."

"Laila." Florence said. "Is it possible that Maliq is up to something?" "It's more likely that he's down to something. But what do you mean?" "Is it possible that Maliq is trying to mount some kind of coup against the emir?"

Laila stared at Florence. "Do you know something?"

"No. But sudden religiosity always makes my antenna go ping. And why are the moolahs suddenly so exercised? They've been pretty quiet up till now."

"Gazzv thinks thev just want new Mercedeses. I le's instructed the imam to tell them to behave or they'll find themselves walking to Mecca on their next hajj. Do them good. As for Maliq, who knows, maybe he found God on the final lap. Who can fathom the mind of Maliq. Who would want to? So how's the new episode of Chop-Chop Square? I'm dying to see it."

"We were discussing whether to kill off Princess Mahnaz or have Tafas rescue her in time. What do you think?"

"I myself love a neat happy ending, lots of ribbons, but then Mummy brought me up on Dickens. Is Bobby here?"

"Bobby?"

"Mr. Thibodeaux."

"He had to go back to the States."

"Oh? When?"

"Earlier in the week." Florence said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

"Pity."

"Why?"

"I wanted to ask him something."

"I'll probably be speaking to him. Anything I can pass on?" Laila looked at Florence. "He's coming back? "Of course."

"When?"

"As soon as he can."

"Ah. It can ... wail," Laila said, though her look had turned into a stare that was making Florence squirm.

FLORENCE PHONED UNCLE SAM on the secure satellite phone, the one Bobby had said to use only "once we start taking mortar fire."

'How's mv girl? Hew 1 love the new show. I'm betting on Tafas to swoop down at the last minute and rescue Fatima."

"Mahnaz."

"1 thought they were all named Falima. Hard to tell them apart with those veils."

"That's what we're trying to change. It may not be Mahnaz who needs rescuing. Have you spoken to our friend?"

"Oh yes, oh yes. He called in this morning. He's in—we're on the secure phone, I see—Paris."

"Paris?"

"I le's finding out all sorts of interesting things. Have you been gelling any knocks on your door in the middle of the night? They're notoriously incompetent, the cops there."

"No. I had to tell George and Rick. And Laila just dropped by and seemed kind of curious about our friend's absence."

"She's a sharp one. the sheika. It's that British education. Well, you're doing God's work over there, young lady, keep it up. Uncle is proud, darn proud. Don't speak to any strangers. And keep that phone handy, remember, it's your lifeline."

Florence hung up. She fell paranoid. She wished Bobby were here, but if he was on to something fruitful in Paris, good.

George was off pouting somewhere, so she sought out Renard, who always managed to cheer her up with his unabashed venality and outrageous schemes.

"Rick." she said, "what did you want to be when you were growing up?"

He looked up from his editing machine. "You mean, did I always want to be a sleazy PR hack?"

"I didn't say that."

"Gosh. Frenzy"—Frenzy was his nickname for Florence, a corruption of George's Firenze—"all I wanted to do was help people."

"Really?"

"I remember clearly as a young boy of seven or eight, dreaming of one day helping rich Florida citrus growers get sweeter tax breaks out of the Appropriations Committee at the expense of California melon growers."

"You're very cynical, you know."

"I'm not saying I don't have standards. I turned down Michael Jackson as a client."

"You did?"

"I wasn't sure he had the money. But look at me now, Renard of Arabia, helping to liberate nearly a billion veiled women, to create lasting peace in the Middle East, a region that has known nothing but strife and sectarian haired for thousands of years. Look." He pointed to his forearm. "Goose bumps."

"That's sunburn."

"You step outside here for thirty seconds and—zap—skin cancer. It's like walking around inside a microwave oven. No wonder they dress like Casper the Ghost. It's a very strange place, this."

"Why are you here? 'The money?"

"Why not?"

"I'm not sure I believe that." "There might be another reason." "Oh?"

"I'm not sure you want to hear it. At least right now, what with everything going on."

Florence stared, mute, inarticulate, lie was attractive, Rick, lean and wolfish, and had circumstances been different, who knows.

"No." He smiled. "Don't ruin the exquisite awkwardness of the moment by saying something nice. Anyway, at Renard Strategic Communications, we never get emotionally involved with the client. It almost always ends with them wanting a discount."

Rick turned back to his editing machine. "I've got a killer idea for a new-show. I've been kicking myself in the ass that I didn't think of it sooner."

Georges reaction was "You can't be .serious." This persuaded Florence that it was exactly the way to go. George was still in many ways a creature of the State Department, and if it made him blanch, the idea was certifiably bold.

The three of them presented it lo Laila, who kept saying as Rick laid out the plots of the first three episodes, "Oh my," "Oh my my" and "Jesus." When he was finished, she said, "This will go down like a pound of bacon in the middle of Ramadan."

"Do you want to give the emir a heads-up?" Florence asked.

"Good God. no." Laila laughed. "No. I think we'll make this a surprise for the emir. He's so busy these days. The hectic pace of Um-beseir. How he survives, I don't know."

Florence and Rick got up to leave. Laila said, "And how is Mr. Bobby?"

"Fine. Busy."

"Will he be rejoining us soon?" "Yes." Florence said. "I'm sure."

"Oh, good." Laila smiled. "It's so very dull here without him."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The knock on the door came not quite in the middle of the night, hut close enough for dramatic purposes: 11:35 by Florence's digital wall clock.

Looking out her peephole. Florence counted three men. Even in the ambiguous sterility of their white thobes, they looked like police—either police or members of a death squad. They identified themselves over the intercom as "Inspectors Muhammed, Rama and Azbekir from the Division of Internal Services, madame."

Florence pressed the redial button on the secure cell phone that Bobby had given her. This theoretically alerted the cavalry.

"Gentlemen," she said through the intercom, "it is late, and I was asleep." She spoke in English rather than her fluent Arabic.

"It is most urgent, madame."

"What does it concern?"

"Your colleague, Mr. Thee-thi-boo."

"He's not here."

"Yes, madame, this is the precise urgency."

"If it's urgent, you should speak to him directly."

"But he is not here."

"Then how can it be urgent?"

But... madame, you must admit us. We are the police."

She wondered how long she could weave this conversational Mobius strip. Suddenly, her phone chirruped. When she answered it, a gruff American voice sounding like the personification of the 101st Airborne Division said. "You all right, ma'am?"

"There appear to be policemen outside mv door."

"Did they say what they want?"

"Questions about our friend."

"We're nearby."

"What should I do if they take me with them?"

"Remain calm. Keep your head down."

"Who are you, anyway?"

"Not quite sure at this point, ma'am."

"I can handle them. I don't want any more shooting."

"Madame!" Inspector Muhammed said insistently over the intercom, sounding plaintive, "you must admit us! It is official business. Please be putting on decent clothing."

Florence opened her door and faced the three men with the appropriately furious air of a chaste and blameless Arab woman rousted from prayers at an uncomely hour. "What is the meaning of this?"

"We must speak to you about your colleague Mr. Tee-boo—Thce-bo—"

"Mr. Bobby. What about him?"

"He has departed the kingdom." Inspector Muhammed said with alarm. "So do hundreds, thousands, of people every day." "But there is an irregularity." "What irregularity?"

"He was witnessed severally here in Amo-Amas, in this city, by many persons, on the fifteenth of this month."

"So?"

"But we are told by his office here that he departed on the fourteenth. This cannot be true."

"I don't remember when he left. I think, yes, it was the day before the big auto race."

"No, madame. this cannot be." "What is the problem?"

"The problem is that he is desired for questioning." "Why?"

"We are doing the questioning, madame. We have spoken with him by the cell telephone, and he is informing us that he departed Amo-Amas bv Air France on the fourteenth, but there is no such record of his ticket with Air France."

"What does your Immigration Department say? He would have been checked out of the country by the proper authorities at the airport."

Inspector Muhammed frowned. "That is very correct. What you say is precisely the case, yes."

"So?"

"There is an irregularity. The information of the Immigration Department and Air France is not in accordance."

"Who are you going to believe?" Florence said with disdain. "Your own government or some French airline?"

"The problem is remaining, madame," Inspector Muhammed said.

"Not here and not at this hour. But I'll tell you what. 1 will personally bring it up with the emir, may Allah keep him safe for a thousand years."

"The emir?"

"Yes. I have an audience with His Majesty tomorrow at nine o'clock. Assuming I am allowed to have any sleep before then."

"Thank you, madame." Inspector Muhammed said unhappily.

THE NEXT MORNING.. precisely at nine o'clock, Florence and Laila presented themselves before the emir. On the agenda were the latest (eye-popping) advertising revenue figures for TV Matar.

Florence managed to slip in a coy reference to the fact that Matar's answer to the secret police had banged on her door at a late hour. She watched the emir's and sheika's faces closely for a reaction, Laila appeared surprised and displeased.

"The Lions of Matar." she snorted. "That's their motto. Lions! An ostrich could defeat them in battle."

"Laila." the emir said, "you must not speak of them that way. They are thoroughly professional and vigilant."

"What about that assassination squad sent from Iraq three years ago to kill you? Who warned you of it? The CIA. Where was the vigilance of the 'Lions of Matar'?"

"Our people knew all about the Iraqi assassins. They work in concert with the CIA."

"Darling, they're imbeciles. Starting with their chief, your cousin Fahim." Laila turned to Florence. "The emir has, as you know, seventeen half brothers, all of them half-witted, for a total of eight and a half brains among them."

"Laila!"

"Praise God that my dear husband was endowed so well. In all respects." "Why do you speak so disrespectfully, and in front of Florence? You embarrass her."

"No. darling. I embarrass you."

The emir's face was a prune of displeasure. "Truly, I am out of patience. Show me the advertising figures." As he studied them, the prune was transformed into an apricot, tender and Smooth. "Um ... hm ... God be praised... Well, well, I must saw this is most satisfactory."

"I am gratified that my lord finds our humble work so worthy," Laila said.

"My wife." the emir languidly said to Florence, "has developed what you in the West call an enormous 'attitude' since she started working with you. Some might call it a Western infection."

"The only infection to be found around here," Laila said, "has not been brought to Matar by Florence."

"I will not be spoken to in this manner!" Gazzy exploded. "Is the emir of Matar to have no peace in his own tent?"

"You do push him," Florence said when they were alone.

"1 might as well have some fun. I assure you, it's just an act on his part It's so he can fly off in a swirl of self-justification to Um-beseir and his huge bed and his Russian hotsy-totsies. If he ever gets around to writing his autobiography, it should be titled 'The Seven Pillows of Wisdom.'"

"Maybe we should do a show called that." Florence smiled.

"I've seen it," Laila said.

Mukfellahs, TV matar’s new sitcom about an inept, though ruthless, squad of Wasabi-type religious police, caused an immediate sensation throughout the region. A prominent Cairo television critic dubbed it Friends from Hell

The opening episode showed the six regulars all relaxing at the office after a hard day of whipping women for a variety of offenses, complaining about how their arms hurt and passing around ibuprofen tablets.

"That last one put up a struggle. But that'll teach her to walk on the sidewalk without a male escort."

"We live in a shameful world, brothers. If it were not for us, hell would be full to bursting."

"My arm, how it aches! Five hundred lashes I dealt today. And three stonings tomorrow."

"Listen to Mansour! he whimpers like that woman at the mall today!"

'God's mercy upon us!" declared another. He was reading the label on the bottle of ibuprofen. "These pills are manufactured by a company named Pfitzer!"

"So?"

"It's Jewish, you fool!" "German. Surely."

"Do you want to take that chance?" 'The man thrust his linger down his throat and ran off-camera, making terrible sounds.

'The others exchanged a glance and then plunged their lingers down their throats and ran off-camera.

"Clever." Florence said, "the way it deals so subtly with the issue of anti-Semitism."

"Yeah." Rick said, "I was sort of pleased with that, too."

THE GRAND IMAN of Muk, the highest religious authority in all Wasabia, issued a fatwa calling for the assassination—"the more bloody, the more pleasing in the eyes of God"—of the entire staff of TV Matar. The fatwa, published in Al Kuk, Wasabia s leading newspaper, further slated that anyone who performed this holy deed would be guaranteed not only eternity in the nectar gardens of paradise but also twice the usual number of kohl-eyed virgins, for a total of— here religious scholars differed, but—more than 140, enough to keep most men, even the stoutest, busy for eternity.

The reaction to the show from the Wasabi Royal Ministry for foreign Matters was equally furious. They denounced the broadcasts as "an act of gross interference in the internal affairs of Wasabia" and as "a severe provocation."

The Wasabi Ministry for the Enforcement of Chaste Technology was tasked with jamming TV Matar's satellite broadcasts into Wasabia. This they managed to accomplish, for a few hours. All at once their jamming was counter-jammed by an apparently superior technology, originating, as it turned out. in Tel Aviv, where the broadcasts of Mukfellahs had developed an early and enthusiastic following, even among the ultra-Orthodox, who did not even believe in television. The Wasabi Ministry for the General and Permanent Disapproval of Israel promptly look its case to the United Nations Security Council. For several days, soft clucking noises could be heard around the table as Wasabia's indignation was simultaneously translated into 196 languages, at which point the United States delegate pointed out that there were not that many countries in the world. The United States permanent representative to the Security Council, a bald pate set in a sea of frowns, raised his pen high in the air and vetoed whatever it was that needed to be vetoed, and everyone went off lo the Henry Kissinger book party at the Four Seasons Grill Room. The situation in Amo-Amas, on the other hand, was more and more becoming less and less placid.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Explosions are not, alas, unusual events in the Middle East, hut until now Matar ("Switzerland of the Gulf") had been spared the ambient blast of gelignite.

The last time there had been any explosion worth noting was in 1936, during an official visit by H.M.S. Indubitable, earning the duke of York, filling in for his brother. Fdward VIII, who had jumped ship in Cap d'Antibes when he learned that Mrs. Simpson was there attending Verbena Goughsborough-Pong's masked ball. He simply announced to his aide-de-camp that he had no intention of continuing on to Matar to "swat flies and be surrounded by a lot of frightful smelly wogs," leaving the Foreign Office to explain to a naturally disappointed emirate that His Majesty had been stricken with shingles.

The poor duke of York, who in a few years would be thrust unwillingly upon the throne of England after his older brother succumbed to the mysterious charms of the Baltimore divorcee—some said it had to do with ice cubes— was dragged twitching and stuttering down the Indubitable's gangway to convey the crown's "d-d-deep f-f-f-feelings of f-f-f-f-f-friendship for the p-p-p-people of Muh-muh-muh ..."

Not desiring to prolong the duke's distress, the Indubitable's commanding officer, Admiral Sir Knatchbull Cavendish-Hump, ordered the commencement of the nineteen-gun salute. The gunner's male mistakenly loaded a live round, which landed in the Dismalya Quarter, ever after nicknamed "Dismal Street."

The episode provoked a full-fledged nervous breakdown in the duke, who was taken below and not seen on deck until the ship reached Aden. A condolence fund was established for the family of the bereaved, and for the building of a vocational school, which still bears the plaque commemorating "the historic bond and comity between Great Britain and the Royal Emirate of Matar."

The old-timers on Randolph Churchill Street, along Amo's harbor front, sipping mint tea and smoking their noon pipes of qoosh, the mildly narcotic herb mixed with tobacco, remarked that this explosion had reminded them of that day back in 1936 when the future king visited.

No one was killed this time. God be praised. A miracle, it was said. The explosive was in an SUV parked at the intersection of Charlwell and Marlborough streets. It disintegrated into ten thousand pieces, but the blast acted as a propellant for a nearby car. Witnesses watched the vehicle loft hundreds of yards into the air and then make a graceful parabolic descent through the roof of St. Margaret-in-the-Marsh Anglican Church. Had Deacon Whitcomb been less ginger, the event might well have ended in tragedy.

Naturally, the incident caused intense speculation in the cafes of Amo-Amas. those hatcheries of Matari gossip. Had the blast been directed precisely at St. Margaret's? And if so, was this the opening salvo in a jihad? And if so, why the Anglicans? Could it be a reaction against the recent ordination of the transgendered bishop of Leeds? True enough, the event had not gone down well among the more conservative element in the far reaches of the Anglican communion. Taking no chances, Whitehall announced that it was dispatching a team of forensic experts to "assist" the Matari authorities in their investigation. Al Matar called the episode a "wake-up call." while acknowledging that it was unclear who exactly was supposed to wake up.

Meanwhile, Maliq, now preaching daily from the pulpit of his new madrassa, where students memorized the Holy Koran while learning how to service race cars, denounced the bombing as the work of "foreign blasphemers who have been allowed to defile Matar's holy soil." This was a clear shot at the palace. The emir was not pleased.

"There's never been anything holy about Matar's soil." Laila said to Florence. "But it is getting rather messy. I don't suppose you know anything about this?"

"Of course not." It had the advantage of being true. "Only asking. You sound offended."

"Why would I know something about a bomb blast in downtown Amo?"

"Darling. I'm simply saying that things were rather more quiet in Matar until you and your entourage arrived. We used to be the Switzerland of the Gulf. It's starting to look more like Baghdad. Gazzy's in a slink. He's on his way back from Um-beseir, which always puts him in a foul mood. I overheard his man Fetish talking about a four o'clock appointment Gazzy has today with Valmar, the French ambassador."

"Oh?" Florence said, trying not to sound too interested.

"Maybe he has a question about what wine to serve with which mistress. Change of subject. Darling, they're starting to ask me rather pointed questions about your Mr. Thibodeaux. I do think it would make sense if he returned from this urgent family business that seems to be occupying his time. They want to ask him some questions."

"About the shooting? Why would he know anything about that?"

"Just mention it if you speak to him."

Florence shrugged. "Sure."

SHORTLY BEFORE: SIX O'CLOCK that afternoon, Florence's office door opened to reveal an unhappy-looking Fetish, accompanied by two men of the royal household whom Florence recognized as members of the royal bodyguard.

Fetish dispensed with the usual bowing and scraping. He was in a bad mood for two reasons: die grouchiness of his emir, and having to depart Um-beseir. Fetish liked Um-beseir almost as much as the emir, for the reason that he was enjoying a little liaison on the side with the new talent from Paris, Annabelle. Dangerous, to be sure, but well worth it.

Florence was wanted by the emir. "Right now."

It was while she was sitting in the back of the sedan, the glum Fetish in the front passenger seat, that Florence's secure cell phone rang. She answered, and on the other end, she heard the welcome if problematic voice of Bobby.

"Why. Dad," she said, "how are you? I'm sitting here with Sharif Fetish.

We're on our way to see the emir. In the palace. Isn't it exciting? How's Mom? Is she feeling better?"

"The car bomb," Bobby said. "It was the Frogs."

"Really? Isn't that wonderful. Is she being nice to the nurses?"

"I'm on my way back there."

"No, no. I don't think it's a good idea to move her right now." "I'll be in touch."

"Bo—" she caught herself. "Bye." She said to Fetish. "My mother. She's in the hospital. She's doing better." Fetish accepted this tiding without emotion. Florence added under her breath, "Thought you'd want to know."

LAILA WAS IN the emir's office when Florence arrived. The air in the room had the distinct aroma of a recent argument.

"Leave us," the emir said to Fetish and various attendants.

"Florence," Laila said, "the emir has just—"

"I will conduct this audience, thank you. just because you two are broadcasting over my airwaves does not mean that I will be pre-empted in my own tent." "Darling, no one is trying to 'pre-empt' you."