He’d talked about this in the course he taught, Allison vaguely remembered, a thousand years ago in California. Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had been an Islamic puritan who wanted to return Islam to its original simplicity. He had the good fortune to win Muhammad ibn Saud, the head of the clan, to his cause, eventually marrying his daughter to the man’s son and successor. And the rest, as they say, is history.
“But Alidar has no true believers,” Maloof went on. “Which is probably for the best. The Wahhabis would burn down the whole world if they thought they could.”
Allison preferred not to think about religion.
Maloof sometimes referred to himself as “a modern, secular Arab,” which was fine with her. Back around 1800, he had told her, the Wahhabis had overrun the Buraimi Oasis, which had been under his family’s protection for centuries. “But I forgive them that,” he liked to say. “What I object to is their theocratic absolutism now.”
Allison preferred practicalities.
A month later, she killed a distinguished member of the Buhara community. She did it as he sat in the back seat of his car at a stoplight, using the silenced pistol Maloof had provided, firing through a hole in her chador and the open window of the car, having noticed that he kept his window open in the morning when it was still only in the mid-thirties. She had spent weeks studying the old man’s schedule and positioning herself for a possible opportunity. She timed her shot for the moment the light changed. As the old man slumped, his driver pulled away, delivering his master dead to his office six blocks away.
It was the riskiest kill of Allison’s career to date, for there were more than a dozen people at the stoplight, but no one realised what had happened, the slight sound of her pistol having been obscured by the noise and motion of the cars at the intersection all starting up. She crossed the street, forcing herself to move at the pace of the Arab women around her, and melted away. Attaining the Hilton and its ladies’ room, she sat in a stall and trembled for a full ten minutes, holding the pistol in her lap. Finally she opened her tote bag, undressed, wrapped the pistol in her chador and stuffed it in the bottom of the bag, put her Allison costume back on, and went to the hotel coffee shop for breakfast.
When she finally saw him that night, Maloof was ecstatic.
“I owe you diamonds, Miss Prime.”
“I’d settle for a Stairmaster,” she said. Her need for exercise was intense.
Maloof explained that the shock effect of the killing had produced as much fear as anger – a desirable consequence, as fear would infect every community. He also made her give back the gun.
“I want you to concentrate on being pretty,” he said. There was a man he wanted her to charm, an American who was coming to work for the prime minister.
“As you wish,” she said, exhaustion putting its hand on her shoulder. Being pretty suddenly felt like more than she could manage.
“Also,” said Maloof. “There is a rumour that the killer was a woman.” A jealous mistress perhaps, though the old gentleman was not known to have had one. The driver thought it might have been a woman. Lots of them at the stoplight where it must have happened. No reason for Allison to take any more risks just now.
Nevertheless, she did take another risk. When Tommy got home from Saudi that weekend, she showed him the chador – modelled it for him, wore it as she made his gin and tonic, left it on as he told her about his week, came over and sat on his lap, revealing herself to be naked underneath the silk, undid the top buttons of his shirt, and finally asked if she could keep it over her head as they had sex.
“If it would please you, sweetheart.” He was accustomed to occasional special requests.
They went to the bedroom, deferring dinner as they sometimes did.
“If I were to have an accident,” she said, lying on the bed as he undressed, “and became horribly disfigured, we could go on like this.”
“Don’t talk that way,” said Tommy.
She uncovered her face and smiled at him.
“You can leave it on if you like,” he said.
So she did. And afterwards she tied the black silk around her waist like a sarong, eating dinner bare-breasted the way she had on their honeymoon.
Two days later, she went to Ian’s for lunch and met Philip.
19
One of my party tricks is to talk American. This greatly amuses Philip Cooper. On days when I am not going to the Palace, we “hang out” after work and gossip about our Arabs. It’s a form of flirting. We wear masks to do it: I his accent, he often that of a black army sergeant.
I find Philip Cooper relaxing. Being in the business I am in – or was in? – I have a professional appreciation of his intense physicality. I feign nothing. I am completely off stage. I know that off stage is not my natural milieu, but it is a welcome change. For his part, he requires nothing of me but laughter.
He is also useful to talk to about Fatima, who is my ostensible assignment. He has never met her, which allows me to describe her, which allows me to think about her. I have never before needed someone who listens. It makes me wonder how men without mistresses function. I suppose some wives listen. They cannot all be fools. Fatima requires thought, and Philip Cooper gives me a forum.
This Webster the black sergeant seems to have been a philosopher. It is too bad we cannot arrange for him to visit. Alidar could use some philosophy. From Fatima I hear reports of worrisome developments, which she learns of from the children she receives – I call them children because they chatter so, but they are probably little viscountesses. There was the quote riot unquote. The Buhara are said to be getting “uppity.” This is a word I have learned from Sergeant Webster. Uppity Buhara use slang expressions the viscountesses do not approve of – though they apparently know the expressions – and have too much money. In my observation, everyone in Alidar has too much money, but Mubarek says I am a snob.
One time the little viscountesses stay late, and when Abdulrahman arrives for lunch they swarm around him in the hall. He is courteous and they are excited, so wicked Cassandra, who has also just arrived, says to Fatima, cannot your young friends stay to lunch? I would like to meet them.
They think Abdulrahman is wonderful, and this makes Fatima jealous, which is useful.
The young viscountesses all have brothers, none of whom Abdulrahman seems to know. To them this makes him grand, but it must be a mistake.
Philip Cooper begins to know some of the brothers, as a result of eating lunch at Ian’s Restaurant. I make him tell me their names, and then I make Fatima match them up with the little viscountesses, some of whom I begin to recognise. Everyone is related to everyone, and a lot of them are related to important Saudis. We make charts, Fatima and I. This greatly amuses Mubarek, who knows the genealogy of his principal subjects by heart.
The Honourable George, whom I sometimes encounter at dinner parties, tells me the little viscountesses and their brothers are irrelevant.
“What I worry about is the son,” he says.
I cannot respond, which he knows.
“I worry that he will turn out to be a little Zia.”
“Zia?”
“Zia ul-Haq. Dictator of Pakistan. Left those American diplomats in Islamabad to the tender mercies of the rabble – and they would have all been killed if they hadn’t locked themselves in the security vault. Zia was a major in the Indian Army when independence and partition came. Migrated toward fundamentalism as he rose in power. Sunni, of course. Had his predecessor, Zulfiqar al-Bhutto, hanged. Bhutto was a secular Shia, not incidentally. Went to Berkeley and Oxford. Daughter went to Radcliffe.”
“Do we care what happens in Pakistan?” I ask him. As an Englishwoman, I tend to lump India, Pakistan and Afghanistan together, and think of them as a separate part of the world.
“Look at a map,” says the Honourable George. “It’s right there once you get out the Strait of Hormuz. And more importantly, the Islamic world is like a pond. Drop a pebble in anywhere and the ripples hit every
shore. What happens between the Russians and the Afghans will matter to us soon enough. Anyway, Ibrahim likes his uniform too much, and he hasn’t gone to university, and when I see him at receptions, there does not appear to be anything transpiring behind his eyes. So he is a blank canvas for others to paint on if they can find a brush. And it is not difficult, in this part of the world, to encounter a creative fundamentalist.”
“How is Ibrahim?” I ask Philip.
“Happy, I think. Why?”
“Just curious.”
There is a rhythm to the conversations Philip Cooper and I indulge in after work. Some days we just talk over our shoulders as we put away files – Sheik Fawzi is very fond of neatness – and Philip does his Sergeant Webster number.
“A lot of people has asked me,” Sergeant Cooper Webster says, “can a man be killed by a file? The army says ‘no,’ but it would behoove you mens to be careful. I knew a man who knew a man in the First Cav got bit by a file. Three weeks later his finger fell off. Had to get discharged. Him was a good bowler too, before it happened.”
Some days I “get serious,” and interview “our guest tonight, Mr. Philip Cooper, who is just back from Alidar, where the situation is increasingly tense. Tell us, Phil, how did it look to you?”
“I have to tell you, Cassandra, it looked very dry.”
“Dry, Phil?”
“That’s right, Cassandra. They haven’t had rain for eight hundred years now, and the, uh, lawns are getting to be a problem.”
“How are they coping with it, Phil?”
“So far, Cassandra, really well. They’re bringing in bottled water. I think it comes from Germany. I’m recommending they switch to Coca-Cola for the nutrients. They’d need a technical assistance mission, though, because of the pop tops.”
“Have you spoken to the President about this, Phil?”
“I’ll be seeing him tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Phil. This is Cassandra Stahl in Washington.”
And every so often we brush the edge of intimacy. I’ll mention something. He’ll admit something. I keep a bottle of whisky in my bottom drawer, and we’ll have a little out of paper cups, forgetting lunch. Philip is puzzled and frustrated. He would like to engage our eccentric master in a conversation about the uppity Buhara and so forth, but His Excellency deflects all attempts. Philip wishes to admire the man, but he has not yet found a strategy for doing so wholeheartedly. And I fear the girl he runs with does little for his equanimity.
The day there is all that unexplained gunfire we are already sitting on the floor, half a room apart, the bottle between us.
“Bullets, Cooper,” I say. “Do they make you happy?”
They do not seem to bother him at all.
“If you were John Wayne,” I say, “you’d call me ‘Red.’”
“But I’m not,” he says.
“Come play with me,” I say, rolling on to my side to reach the bottle. It is getting pretty noisy on the street below us.
“Don’t hump the help,” he says.
“It’s boring having a king for a lover. At least this one. You never get laid.”
“Do you think we’re drunk?” he says. He is pretending to listen to the firing, but I know he is listening to me.
“I certainly hope so,” I say. I crawl further and begin taking off his shoes.
“Do you do this for a living?” he says.
“Yes, since you ask.”
“Have you tried this on the king yet?”
“Not till I finish with his daughter.” For a moment he almost believes me. “Oh, you silly boy. I don’t fancy her at all. She is too short-waisted.”
“You are an evil woman.”
“You could use one.”
“Do you know the play, Voice of the Turtle?” he says.
“Are you a turtle?”
“No, I will not stand up until the shooting moves farther away.”
“Well, at least help me take off your pants. I want to look at your duelling scars.”
“You have nice hands.”
“I have nice everything.” This is far from true, but I am told the ensemble is pleasing.
“This isn’t how I expected to spend the afternoon,” he says.
“We’re none of us here for the reason we thought. Tell me about the turtle.”
“Well, it was a play on Broadway. I think when it opened, the star was named ‘Sullivan.’”
“All Sullivans are stars.”
“You can leave my socks on.”
“No, I cannot.”
“About the Turtle….”
“Would you mind if I tied your hands behind your back?”
“Not while the shooting is going on.”
“Um. Perhaps next time.”
“The Turtle was, as I remember it, primarily about this guy having to stay overnight at some girl’s apartment, because of the trains or whatever.”
“Lucky boy.”
“Yes, well, that wasn’t automatic then, but when the curtain comes up on the Third Act the pull-out couch she’s so carefully made up for him is still all carefully made up, and we’re supposed to say, ‘ahah.’”
“And?”
“Times have changed.”
“Um.”
“Oooo.”
“Yes, now if you would please stop talking and let me be in charge of the sex, I think it would be a very good idea, because I fear you will perish in this absurd little country, being the sort of sweet, foolish American you are, and I’d hate it if you died horny.”
“I’m not horny.”
“Yes you are.”
Whereupon I take off my pearls and put them around his neck, and what follows does not belong in a family newspaper. I make gurgling noises. When we are finished, it is completely quiet outside. I kiss him.
“We Christians have to stick together,” I say.
EXECUTION
20
The thought kept presenting itself to Philip that he was missing something. Ian, for example, kept implying he had intelligence responsibilities. Philip didn’t, so why would a man with Ian’s connections think he did? Allison, too, kept flirting with the idea of a secret life – his, hers, theirs. It was a sort of joke between them, but it made his antennae quiver. Sergeant Webster had nothing to say on the topic, but sergeants sometimes got that way when their officer was being stupid.
Philip had received a letter from Arthur Allison, of all people. Its ostensible purpose was to tell Philip how a matter he’d worked on had been resolved, but since communicating at all was uncharacteristic of the man, you had to figure there was a how-are-you-getting-on? subtext. Philip didn’t know how he was getting on. Fawzi was becoming easier to work with, after a fashion. He’d offered to let Philip witness an execution. This was alleged to be an honour. Ibrahim had asked Philip to arrange a party for him – to meet some “suitable Buhara.” This was high politics, actually.
At Fort Bragg, Philip had had a brother officer who was missing something. His wife was having an affair. Everybody knew about it, and everybody carefully didn’t tell him. Even the non-coms got involved. Or perhaps one should say that since Philip and his friends were all idiot lieutenants, the non-coms, who in the particular part of the army he was in tended to have IQs of 140 and overseas tours they couldn’t talk about, had to get involved. A couple of them approached Philip, as they for some reason did with delicate matters, and said, sir, you gotta talk to the dickhead who is fucking Lieutenant French’s wife, cause he’s the kind of lieutenant who can’t handle that sort of shit, not that any of us likes it, sir, but it does go on, and we need to avert a mishap. So Philip went to the dickhead in question, who was unfortunately a captain, though fortunately in the air force, stationed at Pope Air Force Base, which is next to Bragg and is where the C-130s they jumped out of came from – fortunately because if you were a soldier the air force didn’t count – and said, why don’t you go on leave or get leprosy so your dick falls off or just forget to call Mrs. French aga
in, because if you don’t it could be most unfortunate. And the air force dickhead said, Lieutenant, are you threatening me? And Philip said, absolutely not, sir, and the way you can be confident of that, sir, is that in the sort of work we do there are never any warnings. So the air force dickhead puffs up like a toad and throws Philip out of his office and Philip has to go back to his company and tell the non-coms, sorry, I screwed up. Whereupon Sergeant Major Darcy talks to a friend in the Pentagon and Philip is urgently requested for temporary duty in Fort Richardson, Alaska, and while he is freezing his butt off about as far away from Fort Bragg as the international brotherhood of sergeants major can contrive to get him on short notice, the air force dickhead captain’s brand new Ford Mustang blows up in his driveway in the middle of the night. So the dickhead comes over to Philip’s company looking for Philip, and while he is arguing with Sergeant Major Darcy, the company commander, which in that particular part of the army is a lieutenant colonel, comes out of his office and says, what’s all this racket? The air force dickhead captain starts to mouth off about his Mustang, and the colonel, being the sort of individual you tended to find in that particular part of the army, says, “So far, son, you’ve been lucky,” and the orderly room gets pretty quiet all of a sudden, and that probably would have done it. Except that at that particular moment Lieutenant French walked in and recognised the air force dickhead from church, and not being a complete idiot, just in love with his wife, suddenly put two and two together the way an individual in that particular part of the army was expected to do but Lieutenant French had been avoiding doing, and after being persuaded by his colonel not to offer the captain any violence, which was really a shame, asked if he could get orders for ’Nam now, sir? And did. And almost immediately stepped on a landmine. Which shows you how dangerous women are. Anyway, Philip didn’t think he was being that stupid, but you never knew.
The thing Philip had never been able to understand was, what had Lieutenant French’s wife seen in the air force dickhead? Lieutenant French was a high-quality individual, in Philip’s personal opinion. What was he doing wrong? Philip had never lived with a woman – just dated them and so forth, just spent money on them – so he didn’t know what you were supposed to do if you did.
Submission Page 10
