He didn’t answer. It was obvious that he didn’t believe her.
Suddenly she remembered. Youssef had been at that party. “Did Youssef bring you that tape?”
“Yes.”
“That was more than three months ago. Why did he wait so long to give it to you?”
He didn’t answer.
“He had to be guilty of something,” she guessed shrewdly. “And he thought by using this he could clear himself.”
“He said he was coerced by someone who brought him this tape. And that unless he did their bidding they would expose you.”
“I don’t believe that! He was the only one there who would have an interest in getting it. He had to be lying!”
Again he didn’t answer. Everything she said only confirmed his own belief.
“Are there other copies?”
“I hope not, for my sons’ sake as well as your own. I would not like them to learn that their mother committed adultery with a Jew.”
For the first time the pain he felt crept into his voice. “Do you know what you’ve done, woman? If this were to become public, Muhammad could never be adopted heir to the throne. When we are at war with Israel, how can any Arab accept as his ruler and spiritual leader one whose mother has committed adultery with a Jew? Even his own legitimacy would become subject to question. By your action you could not only lose for your own son the heritage to which he was born but cause the loss of everything my father and I have struggled for all our lives.”
“I’m sorry, Baydr,” she said. “But we have grown so far apart that I thought nothing between us mattered anymore. I knew of your women. I even accepted them. Now I see I did not even have the right to accept the options you granted me. Perhaps if I were an Arab woman I would have known that. But I am not. And I could never live the life of pretense that they do, seeing but not seeing, believing the words that belied the deeds.”
“It’s too late for that now. I have made arrangements for you and the children to return to Beirut the day after tomorrow. You will remain there in our home in seclusion. You are not to leave the house, you are not to see anyone, you are not to correspond or talk to anyone by telephone except immediate members of our family and servants until January, when Muhammad is officially invested as prince and heir to the throne.”
“And after that?”
“The day after the investiture you will be permitted to return home to America to visit your parents. You will remain there quietly until you receive the papers of our divorce.”
“What about the children?”
His eyes were as dark as blue ice. “You will never see them again.”
The pain in her heart choked off her breath. “What if I refuse?” she managed to ask.
There was an implacability about him that she had never seen before. “You have no choice. Under the laws of Islam the punishment for an adulteress is death by stoning. Would you have your children see that?”
“You wouldn’t!” she exclaimed, horrified.
His eyes were unwavering. “I would.”
Suddenly, she knew the truth. “Youssef! You killed him!”
His voice was contemptuous. “Youssef killed himself,” he said, gesturing at the videotape player. “With this.”
She was beaten. No longer able to control her tears, no longer able to look at him, she sank to her knees, covering her face with her hands. Her body was racked by sobs.
He stood there impassively, looking down at her; only a pulse beating in his temple gave sign of his own effort at self-control.
After a while the tears stopped and she looked up at him. Her eyes were swollen, her face drawn with pain. “What will I do?” she whispered in a hoarse hollow voice almost to herself. “What will my life be without them?”
He didn’t answer.
Slowly she rose to her feet and began to walk toward the door. Halfway, she turned back. “Baydr,” she said, the pleading clear in her eyes and in her voice.
The cold implacability was still in his voice. “Don’t waste your time, woman, begging my forgiveness. Instead, go and thank Allah for His mercy.”
Their eyes met for a brief moment, then her eyes fell. There was no more fight left in her. Slowly she walked from the room.
He locked the door behind her and went back to the desk. He stood looking down at the videotape player for a long time, then he reached down and pressed the start button once more. Almost at the same moment, he pressed the other button, marked ERASE.
The tape raced through the machine at ten times normal playing speed. Forty minutes of tape went through the machine in only four minutes. There was a click and he pressed the stop. A moment later he pressed the start button again. This time the tape moved at playing speed. But the screen remained blank and empty.
The tape had been wiped clean.
Baydr pressed the stop button. Machines made everything so simple.
If only there were a button that one could press to wipe the ribbon of life clean so that one could begin again.
CHAPTER 10
When she boarded the plane, Jordana was surprised to find Leila there with two young men. The young men, dressed in ill-fitting dark suits with bulging pockets customarily worn by Middle Eastern office workers abroad, got to their feet politely.
“I didn’t know you were coming with us,” Jordana said.
There was a strange, challenging tone in Leila’s voice. She spoke in Arabic. “Do you mind?”
Jordana was puzzled. Leila had always spoken to her in English or French. But perhaps it was because her friends were not as proficient in these languages as she. She dismissed the thought and answered in Arabic. “Not at all. I am glad to have you with us. I was just surprised. Your father hadn’t mentioned it.”
“He might have forgotten,” Leila said.
He didn’t forget, Jordana thought. She hadn’t seen him since the morning when he told her she would have to leave. Later in the day he had returned to Geneva and had only stopped by at the house to say goodbye to the boys. “He has many things on his mind,” she said, still in Arabic. She turned pointedly to the two young men.
Leila got the hint and introduced them. “Madame Al Fay, my father’s second wife, this is Fouad Aziz and Ramadan Sidki. They are joining me for a weekend at home.”
“Ahlan,” Jordana said.
“Ahlan fiki,” they replied awkwardly, bowing jerkily as if it were not customary for them.
Just then the two children, their Scottish nanny, Anne, and her personal maid, Magda, came up the ramp into the plane. The boys broke into happy cries when they saw their sister. “Leila! Leila!” they exclaimed, running to her.
She was almost cool to them, though when they had first met, and she made a big fuss over them and spent the better part of two days playing with them before they left for Gstaad.
Jordana thought that she did not want to bother with them because of her friends. “Take your seats, children,” she said. “And remember to fasten your seatbelts. We’ll be taking off in a few minutes.”
“Can we sit next to Leila?” Samir asked. “Can we?”
She looked at Leila. “If your sister wouldn’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” Leila said. Again Jordana noticed a grudging tone in her voice.
“All right, but you must behave yourselves.”
“Mother,” Muhammad asked, “why are you speaking Arabic?”
Jordana smiled. “I think it’s because your sister’s friends may not be as conversant in English as we are. That’s the polite thing to do if people don’t understand what you are saying.”
“We speak English, ma’am,” the young man called Ramadan said in a clear British accent.
“So you do,” she said. She looked at Leila, whose face was impassive. “I apologize for my misunderstanding then.”
Raoul, the steward, came back into the cabin. “Captain Hyatt would like to know if you are ready to take off, madame.”
“We will be as soon as everyone i
s in their places,” she said, moving to the rear seat near the round table that Baydr usually occupied.
There was a flurry of activity as the boys were strapped in and the others took their seats. Raoul and the stewardess, a pretty American named Margaret, made a swift round of the cabin checking the seatbelts. He nodded to Jordana, then went forward. A moment later the big plane moved down the runway.
Once they were in the air and the seatbelt sign was off, Jordana got out of her seat. She gestured to Raoul, who came forward. “Would you please prepare the bed in Mr. Al Fay’s cabin. I think I would like to lie down and rest.”
“Yes, madame.” He signaled swiftly, dispatching the stewardess to perform the function.
The boys were crawling all over Leila, who seemed nervous and barely able to tolerate them. “Don’t bother your sister,” Jordana said sharply. “Maybe she’s tired.”
Obediently the boys returned to their seats.
“I’m not feeling too well,” Jordana explained. “I thought I might lie down for a bit.”
Leila nodded without speaking. She watched Jordana make her way to the rear and enter the stateroom. She really could not understand what her father saw in her. In broad daylight, she was not as pretty as she had first thought. Without makeup, her face was drawn, there were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was stringy and not quite as blond as it had seemed. Just as well the woman had gone to sleep. It might make things easier.
She looked across the aisle at Fouad and Ramadan. Fouad glanced at his wristwatch, then back at her. “Another half-hour,” he said.
She nodded and leaned back against the headrest. She closed her eyes. Another half-hour was not too long to wait after all the time she had spent preparing for it.
***
It seemed to Jordana as if she had just closed her eyes when in her sleep she heard a child crying. She stirred restlessly, hoping the sound would stop. But it didn’t and gradually it penetrated that it was one of her children crying. She sat up in the bed abruptly, listening.
It was Samir. But it was not his usual cry or whimper. There was a peculiar note in it. A note of fear.
Quickly she rose from the bed and straightened her dress. Then she opened the door and went out into the cabin and down the narrow corridor to the forward lounge. At the entrance, she stopped, suddenly transfixed. Her mind could not take in what she saw. It has to be a nightmare, she thought wildly. It has to be.
Huddled in the area just behind the galley in the small space that Carriage used as an office when he was on board were the children, their nanny, her maid and the cabin crew, Raoul and Margaret. Raoul had one hand on the bulkhead to support himself and blood was streaming down his face from a cut on his cheekbone. In front of them stood Leila and her two friends.
But it was a Leila she had never seen before. In her hand she held a heavy automatic, from the belt of her blue jeans hung two hand grenades. The two men were even more heavily armed. In addition to the grenades hanging from their belts, each carried an automatic rapid-fire rifle.
Samir was the first to see her. “Mommy! Mommy!” he cried, breaking loose from his nanny’s grasp and running toward her.
Leila made a grab for him but he was too quick. Jordana bent forward and the child leaped into her arms. The tears were running down his cheeks. “They hit Raoul and he’s bleeding!” he cried.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she said soothingly, holding him tightly.
Leila gestured with her gun. “Get up there with the others.”
Jordana stared at her. “Have you gone mad?” she said angrily.
“You heard me,” Leila said. “Get up there with the others!”
Instead Jordana turned on her heel and started back down the corridor to the cabin. Leila moved so swiftly that Jordana did not know she was behind her until the sudden thrust of the gun against her back sent her sprawling in the narrow corridor, knocking the child from her arms.
Immediately, the child began to cry again. He sprang at his sister, flailing his little fists. “Don’t you hit my mommy, you bad girl, you!”
Indifferently, Leila sent him sprawling with a slap across the cheeks. The child fell in a huddle against his mother and she put her arm around him.
At the far end of the cabin, Muhammad began to cry. He pulled loose from the nanny and ran to her, kneeling on the floor beside her. Jordana put her other arm around him.
“These children are your brothers,” she said, ignoring the screaming pain in the small of her back as she tried to sit up. She looked up at Leila. “You will answer to God for your sins.”
“Slut!” Leila’s lips drew back in a snarl. “They are not my brothers. They are the children of an American whore!”
“It is written in the Koran that brothers and sisters are united by the father,” Jordana said.
“Don’t quote the Holy Book to me, bitch!” Leila snapped. “True brothers and sisters are united, not those you managed to convince my father were his own. I’ve heard all about that from my mother.”
“You are still committing a crime against your father,” Jordana said.
Leila laughed. “My father has betrayed any allegiance I may have felt for him. He has betrayed his own people and become an accomplice and tool of the Jews and the imperialists.”
Oddly enough, Jordana thought, she felt no fear for herself, only for the children. “It will be all right,” she whispered to them. “Don’t cry anymore.”
“On your feet!” Leila snapped.
Wincing with pain, Jordana struggled upright. Leila gestured with her gun for them to go forward. Painfully, holding Samir in one arm and leading Muhammad by the hand, she moved through the cabin.
“Give the children to their nurse,” Leila commanded.
Jordana looked at her.
“Do what I say! Quickly! Or they will be the next to be hurt!”
Silently, Jordana gave the boys over to the nanny. They looked up at her with frightened eyes. She patted them reassuringly. “Don’t be frightened. It will be okay.”
She almost screamed with pain as she felt the prod of a gun in the small of her back. When she turned, she saw the strange look of pleasure in Leila’s eyes. She tightened her lips. She would not give her the pleasure of hearing her moan.
“You go forward to the flight deck with Ramadan,” Leila said.
The young man made her walk in front of him. As she opened the door to the cockpit, he shoved her violently. She stumbled forward to her knees and he sprang into the narrow space behind her.
Captain Hyatt, the copilot, Bob, and the flight engineer, George, turned around in surprise. George reached overhead for a wrench.
Moving with unexpected speed, Ramadan hit him in the side of the face with the butt of the rifle, knocking him back into his seat. Blood began spurting from his broken nose. “Don’t any of you try anything foolish,” he said in his clipped British accent, “or you’ll kill everyone on this plane.”
Andy Hyatt looked up at him, then over at his flight engineer. “Are you okay, George?”
George nodded, holding a handkerchief to his nose. Jordana got to her feet. “Where’s the first aid kit?”
“In the cabinet over George’s seat,” Bob answered.
She took down the metal box and opened it. Quickly she stripped the wrapping from several packages of gauze bandages and gave them to George. She looked down at the captain. “Raoul has a bad cut on his cheek.” She started back into the cabin.
“Wait a minute!” Ramadan blocked her path. “You’re not through here yet.” He turned to the captain. “There are three of us aboard and we’re all armed with automatic weapons and grenades. That puts us in charge of this plane, do you understand?”
Hyatt’s voice was puzzled. “Three of you?”
“Leila is one of them,” Jordana said.
“Leila?” Hyatt let out a long slow whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned. This has got to beat it all. To be hijacked by your boss’s own daught
er.”
“Now that you understand, you will follow my orders exactly as I give them to you,” Ramadan said.
Hyatt glanced at Jordana. She nodded. He looked up at the young man. “Yes,” he answered.
“First, you will inform Beirut that there has been a change of flight plan; you will request clearance from Lebanon to Damascus.”
Hyatt made some notes on the scratch pad beside him. “Got it.”
“When we get into Syria, tell them there’s been another change of plans and get clearance over Iraq to Teheran.”
Hyatt looked at him. “I didn’t take on enough fuel to get us to Teheran.”
“Don’t worry,” Ramadan said confidently. “We’re not going there.”
“Where are we going then?” the captain asked.
Ramadan took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. He handed it down to the pilot. “That’s where we’re going.”
The captain glanced at it then back at him. “You’re crazy,” he said. “There’s no place to put a plane this size down there. It’s nothing but mountains.”
“There is a place,” Ramadan said. “I’ll show it to you when we get there.”
“Is there equipment for an instrument landing?” Hyatt asked.
“No,” Ramadan answered. He gave a short nervous laugh. “But you have the reputation for being one of the best pilots around. Surely, Al Fay would have nothing but the best. You shouldn’t have any trouble making a visual approach and landing.”
“I hope you’re right,” Hyatt muttered. He reached for the radio switch. “I’d better get on to Beirut.”
“Just a minute!” Ramadan pulled the extra set of earphones from the flight engineer’s desk and held one of them to his ear while keeping a finger on the trigger of the rifle in the crook of his other arm. “Now you can call. And, remember, no word of a hijacking or I’ll kill you right in your seat. We don’t want anyone to know about this. Just yet.”
Hyatt looked at him grimly and nodded.
“Now can I go back to help Raoul?” Jordana asked.
“Of course.” Ramadan seemed more relaxed. “And while you’re about it, you can tell them that I have everything under control up here.”
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