“They are men of the Hashimi, an ancient desert tribe,” the Sheikh said. “An offshoot of the mystical Sufis, but more austere. They have some interesting customs. For one, the men all take vows of silence upon marriage.”
“Well, that probably makes for a happy marriage,” Kathryn said, shaking her head and pulling her head-scarf lower down her face to block out the setting sun. The men had brought robes and head-scarves for them—clearly furnished by their women, because the fabrics were soft and clean, neatly folded, and infused with a fragrance that smelled familiar somehow, like something from Kathryn’s past. “Are you serious, though? These men really won’t speak? Not even to you?”
“Aistamea,” said the Sheikh, glancing at the tall, quiet man on the camel bringing up the end of their little caravan. “Wataqul ‘iina eizmak ealaa alsamt yjb ‘an yajeal zawajatik saeidatun!”
The man broke into a huge smile, and the Hashimi leading their train turned and laughed too. Soon all three of the Arabian men were laughing on their camels, and Kathryn just sighed and shrugged and petted the coarse brown hair on her camel’s thick neck.
“Clearly the joke’s on me,” Kathryn said to the camel. “But you won’t laugh at me, will you, boy?”
Just then the camel turned its head and opened its mouth wide, revealing long yellowish teeth and thick red gums. It raised and lowered its head three times before turning back to the treacherous path ahead, and the men’s laughter rose to the next level until Kathryn had no choice but to join in.
“OK, even the camels are laughing at me,” she said finally, shaking her head. “I give up.”
“Nobody is laughing at you,” the Sheikh said, grinning wide and pulling his camel up alongside hers until they were riding in lockstep. “I simply translated your clever remark about how their vows of silence probably make for a happy marriage. They were impressed by your wit.” Then the Sheikh frowned and raised an eyebrow, glancing at Kathryn’s camel and then back at her. “As for the camel . . . well, that is between you and him. That reaction was a bit unusual.”
“I think he likes being scratched on this side of his neck,” Kathryn said, reaching out and trying it again. Sure enough, the big guy turned and looked at her again, his massive head swaying like he really was agreeing with her. Then Kathryn frowned when her hand rested on a calloused bump on the camel’s neck. “What’s this?” She caressed the spot, and the camel’s body rumbled as it grunted in approval. “An old injury,” she said, touching it again and feeling out its shape. It was perfectly round. Almost like a bullet had gone in there. A very large bullet. “Well,” she whispered, pushing away the burning question of what exactly these silent men of the Hashimi did for a living. “Whatever happened, I’m glad you’re alive and here with me, big guy.”
“What’re you two whispering about?” said the Sheikh, who had dropped behind Kathryn again as the caravan navigated the top edge of a dune in single file. But then even Hyder went silent as the four camels slowed down to a crawl, the graceful animals taking each step carefully and methodically as they made it one by one along the narrow ridge to the flats of sand beyond.
Kathryn took another sip from the metal canteen she’d been given. The water was cool, and she could taste the minerals in it. Clearly it had come from a well, and she’d put aside any thoughts of catching something the moment she’d tasted its sweetness. It felt good. It felt clean. Just like the way her head scarf and robes felt clean. Who were these people, the Hashimi? And how did the Sheikh know them?
“Where are we, anyway?” she asked after a while. She tried to picture a map of the region. They’d been in Habeetha, on the banks of the Golden Oasis. Then when they’d escaped the Russian attack, she’d assumed the chopper had headed northeast, toward Hyder’s kingdom of Sehaar. But then she’d lost track after the American attack. “Saudi Arabia?”
The Sheikh grinned and narrowed his gaze, looking toward the horizon. “We are in the Wild West, my American assassin. Open desert. Unclaimed land.”
Kathryn snorted. “There’s no unclaimed land on Earth anymore. Maybe Antarctica, but even that’s technically been claimed, since it’s shared ownership by all nations. Seriously, Hyder. Where are we?”
“All right, yes, we would be within the western borders of Saudi Arabia. But what I said is also true. This truly is like the wild west. There are no government services out here. No police or army patrols. No permanent settlements. The few who live in this part of the desert are nomads, men and women who live in tent-cities and move like the sands and wind. They claim any land they choose, and it is theirs. No one can say otherwise.”
“Nomads,” Kathryn repeated softly. “Wanderers. Here today, gone tomorrow. Ghosts of the desert.”
The Sheikh nodded, pulling up alongside her so they were in lockstep once again. “Yes. And we will join them. Until we make sense of what is happening.”
Kathryn took a breath and nodded. She’d already figured that much out. It made sense. About as much sense as anything else that was happening in her messed-up world.
“Though how do we begin to make sense of what’s happening when we’re hidden away in the middle of nowhere?” she asked stubbornly, a part of her tugging at her insides and saying that maybe she just needed to get on the damned phone with Mel. She could trust Mel, couldn’t she? Couldn’t she?
“We take a lesson from the Hashimi,” the Sheikh replied, scanning the horizon and then locking his gaze towards the west. “We stay silent. We watch. We listen.”
Then he pointed, and Kathryn gasped when she saw the peaks of wooden tentpoles, the tents themselves made of brightly colored patchwork fabric, vivid blues and vibrant greens, deep reds and soaring yellows. The colors were loud, happy, delightful. It was like they were headed to a carnival, a traveling circus.
“What in the world?” she muttered as the sounds of women chattering and children playing rose up around them. “Oh, my God, Hyder. This is incredible.”
17
Sheikh Hyder watched the American woman who’d been sent to kill him. Marry him and then kill him. She was draped in the colors of an unmarried Hashimi woman, pure white robes with black and gold trim. Her pretty round face was glowing as she gestured and pointed, smiled and laughed with the other women. Her brown eyes twinkled like golden sand. Her dark hair was full and thick. She was beautiful. She was an angel.
But perhaps an angel of death, came the thought from the dark recesses of the Sheikh’s mind. He’d read her file. He knew what she’d done, what she was capable of doing, what she’d been sent to do. He was skeptical of the hypnotism thing, but it appeared to have worked in certain cases, and he couldn’t let his guard down. He knew that was what she’d been trying when they first made eye contact: that left-right movement of the eyes. He’d have to stay on guard. Always on guard. Until he was sure of her.
Kathryn looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her brown hair open and wild, her eyes innocent and pure, as if those eyes had never looked upon death or pain, or at least were unaffected by what they’d seen.
Ya Allah, what a woman, the Sheikh thought as he smiled at her and then turned away as the Hashimi women glanced at him and broke into laughter like a cluster of giddy schoolgirls. John and Mel have gotten me good this time. I do not know how they could know the effect she’d have on me, but in two days she has gotten into my head, under my skin, into my mind in a way that scares me.
“Hyder,” came her voice from behind him just as the Sheikh stepped out of the makeshift courtyard formed by a grouping of the women’s tents. “Hyder, wait.”
The Sheikh turned and smiled as he watched his assassin approach in her white and gold robes. “You look like a virgin about to be sacrificed to the Greek Gods,” he said, raising an eyebrow and feeling his blood heat up when he saw the outline of her nipples through the sheer cloth.
“Well, I’m not a virgin. And you ar
e most certainly not a Greek God,” she retorted, running her fingers through her hair and glaring at him.
“Two days ago you were a virgin, before I took you,” the Sheikh whispered, stepping close and smiling down at her as he saw her turn red instantly.
“Excuse me? What the hell are you—”
“None of the other men count. What you did with them was not sex. It was not even lust. It was certainly not love.”
Kathryn’s face almost drained of color, but she gulped and blinked and gathered herself, forcing a smile. “Oh, and this is love? Is that what you say every year to the woman you grace with ten nights of your company?”
The Sheikh frowned when he realized what he’d said. He hadn’t meant to say it. It had just come out. “Kathryn,” he said finally, his mind racing as he tried to gather himself. “Kathryn, listen.”
“I’m listening. Go on. Tell me how much you love me,” she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts and looking up at him, challenge in her brown eyes.
“OK,” he said, his voice trembling as it became clear what he was about to do. “All right, Kathryn. Go ahead and do it. Hypnotize me.”
“Wait, what?”
“You were sent here to marry me, yes? And marriage is built on trust. So do your mind tricks, take me under your spell, ask me whatever you want. I will open myself up to you this once.” The Sheikh paused, his jaw going tight as he pointed at her. “But once you are satisfied that you know what you need to know about me, you must finish the job.”
Kathryn’s face was white as the sand, and her voice wavered as she spoke. “Finish the job . . . you mean . . .”
“I mean that if I allow myself to be hypnotized so you can satisfy your curiosity and erase your doubts about my past, you will do what you’ve been sent to do. You will marry me.”
Her eyes went wide for a moment before she shut them tight, like she was trying to wake up from a dream or perhaps go back into it. “You can’t be serious,” Kathryn said. “I don’t understand.”
“You will understand if you ask the right questions, my CIA spy,” the Sheikh whispered. “Now come. The sun is setting on our second day together. A perfect time to be joined in holy hypnotism, wouldn’t you say?”
18
Kathryn watched the Sheikh sit cross-legged before her on the firm sand of the empty courtyard. The Hashimi had left them alone, seemingly without being asked to do so. It was like they could read minds.
Is that what I’m about to do, Kathryn wondered as she gathered her robes and went down on her knees before the Sheikh, this tall, muscular beast of a man whom she’d known two days though it felt like two years, maybe two decades.
Oh, God, this whole thing is a act of trust, a leap of faith, isn’t it, she thought when she saw the look in the Sheikh’s green eyes. He’s trusting himself to me even though he knows I can’t be trusted. And in return he’s asking . . . what is he asking of me?
“Marry me, become my Sheikha. Ask the right questions, and you will understand,” he’d told her. “Ask the right questions and you will understand.”
And then it hit her. Oh, God, he’s trusting himself to me in a way that he’s never trusted anyone, not even himself. He wants me to dig deep, to unearth things that perhaps have been buried so long they’re out of reach for him on his own. Things about his past that perhaps he doesn’t remember, doesn’t want to remember, can’t remember. In his own way, he’s asking me to help him understand himself, isn’t he? He’s asking me for help, though he may not even realize it!
Kathryn took a deep breath and exhaled. She looked into Hyder’s eyes and smiled, nodding once as if to acknowledge what they couldn’t say in words, that this was the ultimate exercise in trust, the ultimate leap of faith. Even the Sheikh didn’t know what would come from this, did he?
“Just relax and follow my breathing,” Kathryn said softly, inhaling and exhaling in a steady rhythm. “Just listen to my voice.”
She wouldn’t need a pendulum or any external device to take him under, she knew. He was receptive, and the environment was perfect. The sun was setting over the dunes, and the desert skies were bathed in purple, red, and orange. The crescent moon was already showing, bright and perfect, and the stars were making themselves known. The wind had softened to a warm breeze, and the Hashimi were nowhere to be seen or heard.
“My voice,” she said again, keeping her breathing steady, her eye contact fixed but relaxed, her voice strong but soft. “Just my voice. Nothing but my voice. My voice. My voice. My voice.”
She stayed with the flow for several minutes, and finally she saw the Sheikh’s eyelids flutter and his eyes lose focus. He was in that altered state of consciousness, that middle ground between waking life and the dream world, the subconscious state where he was open and vulnerable.
Oh, God, he’s really gone under, hasn’t he, Kathryn realized as she tried to stay calm. But it was hard, because she knew what it meant to have someone go under so easily and completely. It meant they trusted you. Perhaps it meant even more.
“Why do you trust me?” came the question, the words coming before even the thought, it seemed. “How can you trust me?”
The Sheikh slowly took a breath, closing his eyes briefly and opening them. “I trust you because I choose to trust you. Because it is worth the risk. You are worth the risk.”
“Worth the risk that if it comes to it, I might be faced with a choice of killing you or betraying my country?” Kathryn asked, using all her willpower to stay calm and not be affected by what the Sheikh had just said, by what it meant. What it meant to her.
“John Benson and Mel believe that if things work out, you will not need to make that choice,” said Hyder after a pause.
“If things work out. What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
Kathryn gulped and wondered for a moment if the Sheikh was really under or just playing. But the signs were right: dilated pupils, slightly unfocused eyes, calm replies that came without hesitation, without guile, but yet colored by his personality. He was still a king, after all.
“OK,” she said, breathing deep and nodding. “Let’s move on. How do you know Benson and Mel? You said you were an informant. Tell me about—”
“Operation Nightshade,” came the reply, this time after a moment’s hesitation. Then the Sheikh’s eyelids fluttered, as if he was fighting something. “Nishaani. Nisha. Ya Allah, what did we do!”
Kathryn frowned as she wondered yet again if she was being played. After all, the Sheikh had seemed awfully eager to volunteer for this interrogation. And hypnotism wasn’t foolproof, especially on someone who knew how it worked, how to counter it, how to . . . fake it?
No, she thought firmly as she remembered what the Sheikh had just said about her. “I choose to trust you,” he’d said. Trusting her was a choice he’d made, even though he knew she shouldn’t be trusted, she couldn’t be trusted.
“What did you do?” Kathryn asked softly as the sun set over the rolling dunes, casting them in the early shadows of nightfall. “What was Operation Nightshade?”
“Russia,” said Hyder. “Nishaani. Ya Allah, what did we do? She was so young. So ambitious. So ready to do good, so anxious to save the goddamn world. She was ready to do anything, to be anything. To be anyone.”
Kathryn frowned as she watched the torment on the Sheikh’s handsome brown face. There was something here, and for a moment Kathryn wondered if she even wanted to know.
“Tell me, Hyder,” she said softly. “Go on. I’m listening. What was Operation Nightshade?”
Suddenly the Sheikh grinned, his face twisting and his eyelids fluttering. “Ya Allah, you can guess, can you not? You are on the twin mission of Operation Nightshade.”
The blood rushed to her face and then drained so quick Kathryn almost passed out in the sand, but she managed to control herself even th
ough she needed a moment for everything to stop spinning.
“Your sister . . .” she said slowly, “. . . she was asked to . . . to . . . seduce and marry Yuri Gorka? It was an intelligence operation? A government mission?”
The Sheikh nodded. “Yes.”
Kathryn frowned, her head still spinning. “But that must have been years ago. What was the objective of the mission?”
“Same as the objective of your mission. Control. Influence. Power.”
Kathryn nodded. “So Nishaani—Nisha—she was supposed to eventually kill Yuri Gorka? But why? Russia isn’t a kingdom with kings and queens and heirs. It at least pretends to have elections. What good would killing him do?” Kathryn snorted in disbelief and shook her head. “And anyway, the mission must have failed, since I was the one ordered to kill him in the end.”
The Sheikh shook his head. “Did it fail? No. Nishaani was never supposed to kill him. She was supposed to love him. To stand by his side. To rise with him.” He smiled. “Russian politics is very much like the old world of kings and queens. Yes, it is a democracy in name, which means that if a mayor or president dies in office, the next in command takes over. But in Yuri Gorka’s case, he was still just a candidate for mayor of Sevastopol. A well-loved candidate. A well-loved candidate who campaigned with his well-loved wife.” He paused and took a breath. “And it is by no means unusual for the spouse of a popular politician to run for office herself. Especially when she is doing it to fulfill the hopes and dreams of her dear, departed husband.”
“Nisha? Your sister? What are you saying? So Nisha Gorka will run for mayor on her dead husband’s ticket? That was the plan all along? A ten-year marriage that was a lie just to get—”
“The marriage was not a lie. I know my sister. She does not do things halfway. If she was focused on marrying a man, she would do it with all her energy. All her passion. All of her.”
Assassin for the Sheikh_A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel Page 9
