The Gulf

by David Poyer

  * * *

  After that, they remanned battle stations and fired Phalanx and small arms for an hour. Shaker wanted to shoot the 76mm as well, but Wise looked up the Omani regulations and nixed it; nothing larger than 20mm without prior notice. The captain nodded quietly and thanked him. From surface firing, he exercised them in Rules of Engagement interpretation, anti-Silkworm tactics, and vectoring of attack aircraft.

  They finally secured just after midnight. Dan found himself standing on the starboard wing, trembling, his clothes wringing wet.

  He stared out on a scene of apocalyptic grandeur.

  Ahead of him, the sky was burning. Close in the torches were visible, vibrating bands of fire that waved slowly in the wind. They lit the water like lines of gaslights in a London fog. Farther away, they were cut off by the horizon, but still their light trembled in the sky like an infernal aurora. Not a star was visible, though there were no clouds; dust, smoke, and ambient light blockaded their feeble glitter from the Gulf.

  In the glowing night, row on row, outgoing ships stood eastward in a line that stretched beyond sight. Deep-laden, swollen with oil like honey ants, their palely glowing superstructures seemed to plow through the sea without benefit of hulls beneath. Like some giant, primitive invertebrate, the Gulf’s narrow mouth and anus were the same. This was its only entrance, and for two hundred miles the traffic divided, left and right, a great highway on the sea. Behind him, over the bridge-to-bridge circuit, came the gabble of hundreds of voices as the Omani authorities tried to maintain order.

  He became aware then of someone beside him. He turned his head and made out Shaker. The weird sky glow was bright enough to see dark heeltaps under his eyes. The captain bent, instinctively masking a flame behind the splinter shield. Then straightened, his cigarette glowing like a dying sun.

  “It’s like fucking Fifth Avenue out here,” he muttered. “What are you doing still up, XO? We got a long day tomorrow. Rendezvous with the battle group, do the refuel, then find our convoy.”

  “I don’t know.” Lenson looked out at the ships. “Just taking a breather. I’ll go below in a little while.”

  He glanced toward the chart table. But as if he’d read his mind, Shaker murmured, “We’re on track, half an hour ahead of intended movement. Your senior QM, he’s sharp.”

  “I’ve known Mac since I was a jaygee. He’s about the best there is.” Dan paused. “This whole crew’s good, Ben.”

  “They’re shaping up,” said the captain, his voice noncommittal. “We still got a few slackers. But they’ll come around quick. Or they won’t be here long.”

  “Slackers?”

  “Or let’s say, people I’m not sure about yet.” The captain’s voice trailed off as he looked aft. “Lieutenant Pensker, for one. What do you know about him?”

  “About Terry … let’s see—”

  “Where’s he from? Where’d he go to school?”

  “He’s from Indiana. OCS. Graduated from Ball State, I think, with a masters in electrical engineering.” Dan searched his memory for more. “He’s married, but I’ve only met his wife once. A pool party at Glynda Bell’s. Lena’s a nice girl. Quiet. No kids yet.”

  “Kind of car’s he drive?”

  “Car? Uh, Japanese. One of the sporty ones. Toyota or Datsun, I think.”

  “What’s your impression of him? Good guy? Bad guy? Strong or weak?”

  Dan considered this, uneasily wondering whether the fact that Pensker was black had anything to do with Shaker’s questions. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. The Navy discouraged and punished discrimination—there were black COs and even admirals now—but it still existed. “He’s sharp, Captain. He rewrote our Combat Systems Doctrine, and the Fleet Training Center inspectors, when we went to Gitmo for refresher training, they wanted a copy, said it was going to be Fleet standard for Perry class as far as they were concerned. Leadership, he’s good there too. Takes care of his men. He’s taking this deployment seriously. All he needs is seasoning.”

  Shaker asked nothing more. Dan glanced at the bulky silhouette. The captain had perched himself on the wing chair, and looked like he was settling in.

  Then he thought, That’s exactly what he’s doing. With the Strait transit tonight, hundreds of ships on the scope, this man planned even less rest for himself than he allowed his overworked crew.

  He hoped he was wrong about the racial business. Aside from his momentary suspicion on that angle, so far he couldn’t, if he was honest, fault Shaker in anything he’d done. Van Zandt had been a standout ship, a measure for excellence by the Navy’s book. Shaker wanted to make it even more of one—but by some only gradually revealed Scripture of his own. He was driving the crew, the officers, as if at any moment the sky might open to a plunging missile.

  But it could! Dan had wondered himself about Bell’s preoccupation with cleanliness, preservation, administrative correspondence, lectures on safe driving and sexual harassment, sometimes ahead of combat training.

  So what was it about Benjamin Shaker that however obscurely bothered him? Because something did. Something he couldn’t quantify, but felt nonetheless.

  He decided now that his instincts were wrong. Two days into command, Shaker had already changed the ship beyond recognition. Dan thought of the chiefs, how they’d carried their cherished sofa out of their lounge with their own hands. Remembered the men on the mess decks, leaping up from loaded trays with curses, yes, but also with alacrity, with something not far from eagerness, exhausted as they were.

  Shaker was a leader. And he was right. Van Zandt was a warship in a war zone, and anything could happen. And the crew knew that. In liberties to come, early in the evening they would piss and moan about him. But later they would defend their captain and their ship with their fists as something that had almost disappeared from the fleet: a fighting ship, a grimly honed instrument of war. What they sweated for, what they sacrificed and bled for, there they would find their pride.

  Till now, he’d supported the captain because it was his duty. Now, looking at the lights of the distant tankers, glittering and dancing on the undulating mirror of the sea, Dan thought, I’m wrong. He’s what this ship needs. Maybe what the whole Navy needs. No polish. All business. Shaker was no peacetime sailor, no advancement-obsessed careerist like Ike Sundstrom had been. He was a man of war.

  “Good night, captain,” he said, and gave him a short salute.

  Shaker’s voice came muzzy; he was dozing in his chair, ten feet from the officer of the deck. “’Night, XO.”

  He stopped at the chart table, studying their course in the dim red light. He extended the DR trace to noon the next day. It ended at Point Orange, the rendezvous. He checked it again, signed a movement report McQueen had left for release, and set his watch for 0400. As Shaker had said, it would be a long day.

  Lying in his rack a few minutes later, Dan smiled. For the first time in two months, he felt safe.

  11

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  THE car from the palace turned out to be a Silver Shadow. Blair leaned back into brushed leather and the scents of oiled walnut, cowhide, and a memory of perfume. The door clicked closed and, separated from them by soundproof glass, the chauffeur slid behind the wheel.

  “These people don’t go tourist class, do they?” she murmured.

  Beside her, Harrison L. Shaw III, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, chuckled as he tilted a mirror, ran his fingers through his hair, tweaked his tie. He was career Foreign Service, an immaculate man who looked like a young George Bush. He didn’t answer her right away. He never did, as if somewhere behind his washed-out blue eyes a rather slow computer was iterating down to a possible response, judging its suitability, then translating it into Yale English.

  At last he said, “No. Not in anything. Like the new Specialist’s Hospital. Fahd threw out the first plan; he thought it was too conservative. He wanted the best hospital in the Middle East. The highways are planned for a city with three times the population
Riyadh has today.”

  “Of course, they can afford it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Will the king be there, do you think?”

  “Tonight? I doubt it. But Ismail’s the man you want to see. Governor of the Eastern Province, overseer of the Defense Ministry, Fahd’s favorite nephew—he’s the one you want, all right.”

  “Thanks again for setting this up,” she said, a little unwillingly. She still wished Shaw had let her go alone. But he’d insisted.

  “That’s what I’m here for—among about a million other things.” He chuckled, then went serious. “I want to caution you again, by the way—”

  “I think you’ve cautioned me enough, Harrison.”

  He quirked his eyebrows, but seemed to decide on silence as the best riposte. The car began to move. Though no sound or vibration reached the passengers, the scenery began to slide by. The embassy grounds dropped away, giving place to the new city of Riyadh.

  She’d last seen the capital of what was arguably the richest nation on earth five years before. Then it had been a small but growing oasis, still with a sleepy air. Now it was transformed, as if it had fast-forwarded from the seventeenth century directly into the twenty-first. The palms, though, still lined the new highways, and for that she was grateful. She loved their delicate extensions toward the sky, the penislike curve of their trunks.

  She smoothed her skirt over her lap. She’d let Shaw advise her on her clothing. This was the longest skirt she owned, mid-calf. She wore a high-collared ecru blouse under the camelhair blazer, black flats, and for jewelry, simple onyx earrings—square ones. She’d even disciplined her hair into a french braid, a process that took an hour. In her purse was a paisley scarf, in case she needed to cover it.

  As the car whispered onward, she ran over what she had to do in the upcoming interview. They’d be essentially the same facts and questions she’d already presented to ruling figures in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Only the Saudis were far more powerful, and pivotal, than any of the sheikhdoms. Their attitudes would be decisive in her final report to Talmadge. And in the final determination of what policy the United States should pursue in the Gulf.

  It would be delicate, however. Ismail didn’t have to see her. He didn’t have to agree to a thing. He could toss her out if he felt like it. She had very little power here.

  “Remember now,” said Shaw, leaning again across the seat, “be gentle. Gentle! These people don’t like to be approached directly, or presented with ultimatums. They don’t bargain, either. Every concession has to be a gift, a gesture of friendship between equals. And if he asks you personal questions—”

  “Harrison,” she said, “please shut up.”

  * * *

  Prince Ismail was nearly as tall as she, a glossy man in his late thirties. His quizzical, up-from-under half-smile had been all over the papers at the Inter-Continental, where she was staying.

  He was standing in the driveway as they swung through the gates. She wondered for a moment how he’d known; then understood; of course, the chauffeur had a phone. He was wearing a double-breasted Savile Row blazer, salt and pepper slacks, and a white Arab headdress. He wasn’t tall, but neither was he afflicted yet by the paunchiness that transformed so many Arab men after thirty from Omar Sharifs to Sidney Greenstreets. Clean-shaven, except for an ambitious but rather sparse mustache. No candidate for Playgirl, but good-looking. His smile said he knew it.

  He and Shaw greeted each other with a handshake, held longer than two Americans would have. Then he turned to her, glittering dark eyes looking her up and down and frankly approving what they saw. “And this is Miss Titus?”

  “Prince Ismail Bin Faisal Bin Turki Al Abdullah Al Saud, let me introduce Ms. Blair Titus, senior staffer for Senator Talmadge.” For a moment, she wondered whether she ought to curtsey. No, that was only for the king.

  The prince released her hand, leaving it smelling of lavender, and led them inside.

  She’d expected something like this, but still she blinked. Every exposed inch of the floor and walls was marble, and the rooms were gilded—no, not gilded, it was gold. Roses in cloisonné stork vases tall as a man, Sung Dynasty temple lions, a wall of carved jade and ivory figures in glass cases, gilded temple carvings with scenes of warriors in battle.… Ismail, or his decorator, had a taste for Chinese. The carpets had that flat, drab shabbiness that meant incredible age and incredible expense.

  The prince led them slowly through room after room, glancing back as if enjoying her reaction. They went down a curved cascade of stairs and she found herself again under the late-afternoon sky, this time in a garden thronged with roses. Amid them, between two fountains, a table had been set, European-style, with lacquered Chinese chairs.

  “I thought we’d dine outside this evening. Please don’t tell me you’re allergic to roses.”

  “I love them.” The funny part was, she did. She stared around, only then noticing that despite the 120-degree heat, dew glistened on nodding petals. Air-conditioned the old way, by the fountains. A splash startled her; golden koi inlaid with coral and opal gaped, gulped air, and sank again into glittering transparence. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Gardens are an Arab tradition. Small paradises, hidden away from the violent and ugly world outside. The rose is often identified in our poetry with Woman—wooed, captured, and then protected within enclosing walls.”

  He fingered a pale pink blossom, but he was gazing at her rather than it. “The Isfahan, for example. It has an intense, spicy scent, not unmixed with a faint bitterness … like love itself, perhaps?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said again, deliberately obtuse to his allusions. “You must spend all your time here.”

  “I only wish I could. Harry, you did tell her not to admire things too much, that as a good host I’m obliged to give them to her?”

  “In that case, yes, I’ll take the garden,” she said firmly. Both men laughed.

  “How is Washington?” Ismail went on, apparently abandoning the language of flowers.

  “Hot and busy.”

  “I spent four years there in the seventies. At American U. It was a peaceful town then. After Vietnam, and before crack.” He sighed. “I often wish I was a student again. No responsibilities, you see. And no wives.”

  “How many do you have, Your Highness?”

  “How many? Four.” He shrugged. “Just now I regret it, making the acquaintance of such a lovely woman. But that is our limit, you see.”

  “Will we meet them tonight?”

  She caught Shaw’s wince out of the corner of her eye. However, Ismail seemed to take it in stride. He said casually, “No, I’m afraid business bores them. And two are in Paris at the moment. No, there’ll only be five of us. We three, Mr. Nawwab, the Defense Minister, and a poet. One of our more honored men, though I don’t think he’s well known in the West. Dr. Ibn Ubaiyidh.”

  The inclusion of a poet in what she’d understood to be a political dinner seemed odd to her, but she didn’t remark on it. “I hope he’ll be able to … recite something,” she ventured.

  “Perhaps. If we stroke him. You have any Arabic at all, Miss Titus?”

  “Just ‘is-salaam alaykum’ and ‘min fadlak,’ I’m afraid.”

  “Certainly the two most useful phrases in any language.”

  Really, Blair thought, he was exquisitely polite. Except for that casual dismissal of his wives. He hadn’t picked those manners up in the United States.

  A butler and several servers appeared, threading their way among the roses. One came directly to them, balancing a tray, and the prince said, “Champagne?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “No alcohol. It’s our version—apple juice, soda, and orange juice.”

  “Thank you, that sounds delicious.”

  “Are you from Washington, Ms. Titus?”

  “My family’s from the Midwest, but I grew up in Maryland. Charles County.”

  “That’s horse co
untry, isn’t it? Didn’t Harry tell me you rode?”

  “Well, less now than I used to.”

  “Hunting, yes? You shake your head a little—jumping, that was it! See, Harry, I have a memory after all, don’t I? I have a mare you will have to ride. She’s taken honors in England. Tell me you’ll make an afternoon, fly to my farm in Ushayrah.”

  Blair smiled, almost sarcastically. For a moment she thought of asking who he planned to ride. But a glance at Shaw’s warning eyebrows made it easier not to. Sure enough, Ismail’s next question was “And are you married?”

  “No.”

  “A woman like you, unmarried? What a waste.”

  “I’m not sure I look at it that way,” she said, cutting another glance toward Shaw. Was this customary, this personal cross-examination? For a moment, she wished she’d listened more closely. But the ambassador’s buffed smile held no guidance now.

  She looked back at Ismail, to find the dark eyes focused on hers from a foot away. She stepped back instinctively. “American men, Your Highness, don’t seem to understand that I have a career, too.”

  “Perhaps the problem is not wholly with them.” He’d moved forward when she moved back; she could smell his breath now. “Certainly one area in which we Arabs differ from you—please don’t take this personally—is the belief that man and woman were created for different tasks. Could it be that you’d be happier married, with children, making a home for someone?”

  Children. Was that all that was on their minds? “I doubt it,” she said, barely keeping herself from snapping at him.

  Perhaps Ismail felt how angry she was getting. At any rate, he dropped it, explaining quietly he’d have to leave them for a moment. The other guests were arriving. Alone again with Shaw, she said, “He seems easy enough to get along with.”

  The ambassador pondered this. “Personally, yes. Diplomatically … well, you’ll find out,” he said at last. “Really, Blair, I don’t know what you hope to do here. You’re not going to get anything out of Ismail that State hasn’t, that I haven’t.”