by Alex Archer
“Noted,” the Sultan said. He sprang up the stairs.
At the top a female aide in a stiff tan tunic awaited. “We have received word from the security forces,” she told him. “They have picked up the American archaeologist Annja Creed at Meriahpuri Airport, as you instructed.”
He chuckled softly. “I wish I’d bet old Krisna,” he said. “He thought she’d be discouraged and go home. I told him it takes determination to be the lone skeptic on a television series such as Chasing History’s Monsters. Excellent, Miri. Tell them to bring her to the palace at once, please.”
“They are on the way.”
“Thank you.”
He went into the antechamber to the office. It was spacious, well-lit and elegantly appointed, with a fine Bokhara carpet on the floor and spiky palms in planters. On a broad white divan lounged a strikingly beautiful woman with her legs tucked up beneath her. A green band held a gleaming mass of black, wavy hair back from her face. As was her custom her whole outfit was the same rich hue—the wrap around her upper body, leaving one shoulder bare, the sarong about her hips. An emerald winked from a gold setting in her navel, seeming to glow against her cinnamon-colored skin. It was an ambivalent sort of outfit—green was the color of Islam, yet the ensemble showed so much skin as to aggravate if not outrage the more puritanical traditionalists. But then, that was a Sufi all over.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you waiting to lecture me as well, Lestari?”
She smiled coolly. She looked no older than he. He suspected she was, though, possibly a good deal. Or is that mere superstition? Sufis enjoyed a reputation for all manner of mysterious powers, although they disavowed mysticism themselves. He tried hard for a very Western kind of rationalism, himself.
“I wanted to counterbalance that old hen, Krisna, presuming he’d counsel you to leap into bed with the Americans with both feet,” the woman said.
“Krisna is an old and valued counselor, Lestari,” the Sultan said. “He served my father before me. I’d never have survived without him. He may be prone to notions and to worrying. But he’s very wise.”
“The wise are often the worst fools,” she said.
He cocked a brow at her. “Another of your contradictory Sufi sayings? Your impacts are worse than Zen koans.” He was tweaking her—Sufis tended to bristle at having their Path compared to other forms of Eastern esoterica.
But Lestari laughed. She was a hard woman to read. That was refreshing in itself. Most women he encountered, as a young, rich, athletic Sultan, were as transparently easy to read as Cyrus St. Clair. And had much the same motivation.
“It seems no more than an obvious observation,” she said, “based on experience. And I’d advise you most urgently against considering Mr. St. Clair transparent. He is a man who is happy to play up those aspects of his motivation which his circumstances make apparent. There’s nothing so subtle as the proper kind of obviousness.”
“Another observation? You Sufis are inordinately fond of apparent contradictions, in all events.” His expression hardened slightly. “And I refuse to believe you’re reading my mind. I am a committed skeptic.”
She shrugged. “It is the Sultan’s privilege to believe what he desires,” she said, “and as for most self-professed skeptics, commitment would suit them well. You can attribute my occasional flash of insight to training in the Western discipline of reading body language, if you want.”
He raised a brow. “You give the West that much credit?”
She shrugged an elegantly bare shoulder. “Remember, my Sultan—we Sufis did not invent the motor car, but we still ride in them.”
“What I’ll remember is not to try sparring mentally with you,” he said ruefully. “It makes my poor head ring like a gong.”
“It does not,” she said matter-of-factly. “You are young, and thus intellectually lazy. So you seek convenient excuses.”
He glared at her. She returned his gaze calmly, her slightly squarish chin uplifted. He laughed.
“You’ve no more respect for authority than my cat,” he said.
“True.” She stretched, perhaps to emphasize the resemblance. “But as a perceptive cat person, you’ve noticed that despite what most people believe, cats are exceedingly loyal—in their own way.”
“Yes. And now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Do I bore my Sultan? Then let me be brief—be careful of the American.”
“St. Clair? Always.”
“He’s one,” she said. “I had in mind the woman. The very ingénue archaeologist. She’s trouble.”
“Lestari,” he said, in tones of exaggerated exasperation, “you’re too young to be my mother. Give me a break. All Americans are trouble. And at the risk of sounding sexist, so are most women.”
“Most? Indeed, my Sultan has yet much to learn.”
ONCE ALONE IN THE sanctum of his office, Wira checked the palace network for the special digest of local information and intelligence reports, constantly updated by his intelligence service. If anything urgent happened, he’d be alerted at once. But he liked to keep a finger on Rimba Perak’s pulse. Next he skimmed the headlines at several external sites for world events. He felt they gave him an insight into how the ever-mercurial Americans were thinking.
Then, having assured himself no crisis, local or global, was any more likely to loom up and swat his little kingdom than usual, he went to the Web site for Chasing History’s Monsters. He gazed at the lovely image of Annja Creed.
TO ANNJA’S surprise the Sultan sprang up from behind his mahogany desk and strode forward to meet her, smiling with teeth bright white in his dark face, his hand extended.
“Ms. Creed!” he said in excellent English with a slight British accent. “Such a pleasure to meet you. I’m a big fan of your work on Chasing History’s Monsters.”
She shook his hand. His grip was warm and dry. It was also like taking hold of a carved cypress root. Apparently the job of Sultan of Rimba Perak didn’t entail lounging on cushions all day eating grapes and being fanned. Unless that somehow gave you a grip like a vise. He didn’t exert any more than the polite degree of pressure—it was just obvious how much he held back.
What really surprised her was how young he was. And how handsome.
He wore dark blue trousers with a stiff-looking white tunic and a modest white turban. He was nearly as tall as Annja, trim, with the grace of a stalking tiger. His face was lean, with pronounced cheekbones and large brown eyes. The youthfulness of his appearance and carriage didn’t quite square up with the way he spoke, which suggested an older man.
“Do you usually have your favorite celebrities arrested the moment they enter the country?” she asked. “If that’s the case, I’m afraid you can pretty much kiss any prospects of developing a movie industry goodbye.”
The Sultan laughed. “I’m afraid I have yet to entertain a sufficient number of celebrities to develop a proper protocol. Perhaps you will be kind enough to assist me. Please, sit down.”
The office likewise took her off guard. It was spacious and well-lit, like everything she had seen of the Sultan’s palace as her two guards escorted her through it politely and with professional briskness. There were the plants in terra-cotta planters and a ceiling fan turning overhead, a lot more quietly than the one in Mr. Baxa’s interrogation room.
She was surprised how modest the office was. The desk, though a beautiful piece of furniture that gleamed as if it had been polished by several straight generations of artisans, was simple and clearly not designed to intimidate. Nor was the office set up with a huge expanse of open floor to be crossed to approach the Presence, nor little dinky or altogether absent chairs. Instead comfortable-looking chairs upholstered in batiklike designs awaited. With the shelves full of books and the sliding doors that led onto a balcony with palm fronds waving over it, it looked like a thoughtful man’s study, instead of the office of an absolute potentate barely halfway through his twenties.
The chairs were comfortable,
she found as she sat in one. Wira went behind the desk and seated himself.
His brown eyes met Annja’s. For a moment, they simply held gazes.
She looked away. Her cheeks felt unaccountably warm.
“I apologize for the rather abrupt way I had you brought here,” he said. “But you have, after all, involved yourself in the affairs of this country.”
“True,” Annja said. “But your country seems to have involved itself in trafficking in stolen antiquities.”
His lips pressed together. After a moment he put his hands on the desktop and stood. “Would you care to walk with me in the garden?” he asked.
20
The palace occupied a bluff inland from the bustle of Meriahpuri, where it was washed both by breezes from the sea and from the not particularly high but quite steep mountains inland. The shade of tall trees spaced carefully throughout the garden helped the breeze cool the air. It was still midday in the tropics. Annja was glad for her sunglasses.
Wira walked beside her with hands clasped behind his wedge-shaped back. He carried himself with a distinctly military bearing.
“You mentioned stolen antiquities,” he said. “I’d point out that most recently the artifact presumably in question was stolen from us.”
“Yes,” Annja said. “But only after you stole it from the Knights of the Risen Savior. There were a couple of other thefts along the line, culminating in their stealing it back. But ultimately, they claim it rightly belongs to them.”
“The question is, is that true? To whom does this relic rightfully belong?” Wira asked.
“That’s my question. Certainly, whoever it belongs to, it isn’t a murderous gang of South Sea pirates. They’d have a pretty tough time documenting a claim, anyway.”
Wira stopped and turned toward her. She halted, too. “Before we go further, what happened to my men? The Philippine government was kind enough to send along transcripts of your interviews with their investigators, although I’ve no way of knowing how accurate they may be. But they leave out a few details. Such as how twenty-four of this land’s finest warriors set out on that ship, but only one returned!” His dark eyes blazed with passion.
“Don’t hold it against Bima, please, that he survived,” Annja said. “I persuaded him that our escaping was the only way for his superiors—for you—to learn what really happened. He never would have agreed to leave his comrades had he not been in shock from his wound. And he was concerned about me, although I don’t think that swayed him from his duty.”
“Do you know what his name means? Bima?” She shook her head. “It means brave. His comrades often teased him about that, did you know?”
She smiled wanly. “Not really. If they teased him when I was around, they did it in Malay.”
“I am satisfied he lived up to his name, Ms. Creed. And I am more pleased than I can say that he at least survived. Losing one man would be unacceptable. Losing so many—”
He shook his head and looked carefully away. For a moment he looked even younger than his age, and quite vulnerable.
“It may not be fashionable to say so,” he said, “but I will avenge them.” His voice was thick with emotion.
“It may not be fashionable to say so,” she said, “but I agree. Revenge can get out of hand, don’t get me wrong. But the men who did this are evil men. They’ve earned your vengeance.”
He nodded. They walked on, between rose bushes buzzing with bees. “You are an exceptional woman, Ms. Creed. The Filipino investigator, a Mr. Baxa, mentioned as much in his annotations to the transcripts.”
“He didn’t say the whole thing was a tissue of lies, did he?”
“He said that to you?”
“Well—not in those words. Exactly. But of course, it was. As you’re well aware.”
“I am. Will you please tell me, succinctly, what happened? I would appreciate it greatly if you would also agree to give a full account to my intelligence staff. It will help to bring the murderers to justice.”
“I’ll be glad to,” she said. It wasn’t entirely the truth—given her life as it was, she never felt comfortable talking to authorities about anything in any detail. And she had the depressing certainty Sultan Wira’s intelligence service would be distressingly competent. But she would willingly endure their scrutiny, if it might bring justice to the pirates who had slaughtered all those valiant, laughing young men. And win back the relic.
She gave the Sultan a quick account of events. It consisted mostly of details she hadn’t told the Filipinos. She edited out all mention of the sword, as well as the fact she had shot several pirates. In her version, Bima did the shooting needed to get them clear in spite of his agonizing wound. Annja also claimed that once out of the superstructure they encountered no more pirates, and that they stole an unattended boat while the pirate crew infiltrated the ship like maggots, mopping up defenders and looking for treasure.
“You didn’t hear anyone talk about what they intended to find?” he asked.
“Not in any language I could understand,” she said.
He nodded. His brow was furrowed thoughtfully. “They must have gotten some hint as to what the ship had aboard,” he said. “Even as bold as pirates have become these days, it’s no small thing for them to mount an operation of such size. It was overkill for a normal freighter. They knew they’d meet resistance. Otherwise they would have fled.”
Annja had no idea how many casualties the commandos had inflicted on the pirates. The only actual fighting she had seen, as opposed to done by herself, had ended with both Rimba Perak warriors and the marauders indiscriminately chopped to pieces by the pirate heavy machine gun, probably firing blind. But I saw the commandos in action against the Knights, she reminded herself. I can’t believe they didn’t give better than they got.
“The pirates seemed awfully determined,” she said. “I know even a small ship like that, with cargo, is worth an awful lot of money. Especially to people who come from grinding poverty. But those men seemed to feel something really extraordinary was at stake.”
She looked at him hard. “And speaking of which, Sultan, what really is at stake here? What is it that so many people are willing to kill or die for?”
A white gazebo rose ahead of them. He gestured to it. “Let’s sit in the shade and have something to drink. I’ll tell you what I know.”
They sat in the small white structure’s shade and sipped lemonade served by a tall silent servant in khaki tunic and blue turban. “You have a lot of staff who don’t look ethnically Malay, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Annja said.
Wira nodded and grinned. It made him look even younger. “We’re pretty much a melting pot. The Pacific Rim’s always been like that, you know. My father, and my grandfather before him, took in a great many ethnically Indian refugees, Hindu and Muslim alike, fleeing persecution. What would today be called ethnic cleansing, in the sub-Saharan African states following the collapse of colonialism. The last wave of it, anyway. My mother was Indian. A Rajput—and a Hindu.”
Annja nodded. “You have a reputation as being very liberal, politically and religiously,” she said.
“I like to think of myself as liberal in the classical sense,” he said. “The modern usage seems to have acquired a lot of excess baggage. Of course that fits up pretty strangely with being a despot, no matter how hard I try to be an enlightened one. Those are the circumstances in which I find myself, however.”
He seemed at ease, sitting back with one long leg crossed over the other. He had a way about him that suggested he could snap into action like coiled spring from full relaxation, like a cat. Annja knew about that—it described her pretty well, too.
“I told your men on the Ozymandias,” she said, reluctant to wander back to potentially touchy subjects, “that they, and now you, don’t match up with the picture the Knights of the Risen Savior paint of you.”
His young face hardened as he sipped his lemonade. “You should be careful of them, Ms. Creed. They are dan
gerous men. Zealots, fanatics who long to bring back the days of the Crusades and help the gentle Issa, a holy man to Muslims as to Christians, to judge the world in fire.”
“Well, now, Your Excellency, that’s the thing,” she said. She was thinking, He probably won’t have an American television celebrity, even a very minor one, publicly beheaded or caned or anything for effrontery. “They don’t match your image of them any more than you match their image of you.”
“With all respect, people’s true motivations can be hidden by a winning nature and a smile.” He laughed. “As my own might well be, of course. At least, I try for a winning nature. Being confrontational causes more friction than it’s worth, I find. Especially when the nation one rules is the size, if not of a stamp, of only a largish postcard. Fortunately, I’ve studied a book on that very subject by a most wise man.”
“Jalal-ad-din Rumi?” she asked.
“Dale Carnegie,” the Sultan said. “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
She laughed. He shrugged. “It works,” he said. “Although sometimes I admit I have trouble behaving myself.”
He emptied his glass, set it down, and gazed at Annja for a moment. She tried hard not to think about other possible meanings of his words. She found herself more than a little drawn to him.
“I have set scholars to researching the relic’s history,” he said. “They come up with a great deal more speculation than solid information. There are persistent stories of some kind of relic being found in Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade, long after the alleged True Cross was discovered. It has been alleged to be a coffin containing the remains of a very holy man.”
“That squares with what the Knights told me,” Annja said. “Also, I can confirm that the object in the crate appears to be a coffin.”
He blinked at her. “You can?”
“I got a glimpse of it on the island of Le Rêve,” she said. “After your people took it away from the Knights and stashed it in a warehouse. Waiting for the Ozymandias, I suppose.”