Florence of Arabia

by Christopher Buckley

  "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, estab
lished 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?"