Florence of Arabia

by Christopher Buckley

  "I... Nah."

  "In Italian." It was the language they used for office gossip. She told him.

  "Mamma mia All four? Simultaneously? Well, I knew the prince entertained, but I had no idea. Filthy old goal. No wonder the poor thing wanted asylum. She probably dreamed of a nice, boring life in the 'burbs. Apron, gingham frock, pies cooling on the windowsill, golden retriever named ... Brandy, stretching class on Tuesday, yoga on Thursday. Lord and Taylor's trunk show. Jeopardy! every night at seven-thirty during dinner with a husband named Cliff... no, Brad. Brad the Impaler. Who would ask for oral sex only on his birthday. Now she's on her way back to Wasabia. Land of fun and sun. Well, darling, you tried. God knows you tried."

  Two days later. Florence called Bazell at the U.S. embassy in Kaffa, who put her through to the embassy guy who kept the Chop-Chop Square tally. Nazrah Hamooj had been executed that morning at dawn by sword, for the crime of adultery.

  "She was pretty calm about it, from what we heard. Sometimes they make a hell of a fuss. Last month they did Prince Rahmal's wife. Man. did she put up a light. Yelling, screaming, kicking. They finally jabbed her full of Valium so they could get a clear cut. Tomorrow's entertainment is they're stoning a woman to death for schtupping—get this—the black cook. It's the Thousand and One Nights. They can't get over it. Is this a great country or what?"

  CHAPTER THREE

  If Florence had an office with a door, she would have shut it and had a private cry, but she didn't, so she used the ladies' room. She remained there most of the morning, until George sent someone in to get her. When she emerged, he said, "Frankly, you'd look better under a veil." and put her in a cab and sent her home.

  She unplugged the phone and went to bed and had a dream in which Nazrah was lying on the hospital bed with mascara streaming down her cheeks, and Shazzik, dressed in a female nurse's uniform, was administering a lethal injection. Nazrah's body gradually shrank and was sucked into the tube and up into the plastic drip bag. where she was imprisoned, screaming silently for help. Florence started awake, so drenched in perspiration that she got up and took a shower.

  She went to work the next morning and stayed at the office until past midnight for the next three days.

  When she was finished, she printed three numbered copies, placed them in TOP SECRET folders, gave one to Duckett's secretary, another to George, and sent the other straight to the top.

  "So this is what you've been holed up doing lo these three days?" George opened the folder and read the cover page and let out a whistle. He read at the speed it look him to turn the fifty-odd pages.

  "Well?" she asked.

  "Couldn't put it down. The middle bit could use some bulling. It was Tallulah the second, not Tallulah the third, who instigated the practice among the Hawawi of female circumcision—quis’ha, by the way, not quish'aa."

  "Other than that?"

  ‘I’m sure it helped to get it out of your system." "I sent it to Duckett."

  George stared. "Why don't you just stab him in the heart with Malal's dagger and get it over with?"

  Their boss kepi a nineteenth-century gold and silver dagger on his desk, a gilt of Prince Malal, Wasabia's minister of agriculture. It was probably the cheapest present ever given by a Wasabi royal, but Duckett was proud of it. He used it as a letter opener, and sometimes brandished it to make a point.

  "George, I'm asking you what you think."

  "I hardly know where to begin. This goes a bit beyond our traditional brief. You didn't really send this to him? Come on." Florence nodded. "And to S." "You sent it to S?"

  "Why not?'This way Duckett can't stop it. You're the one who's always saying it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission." "Well." George said. "Well, well, well, Wow."

  Florence's phone rang. "Florence? Mr. Duckett wants you. It's urgent." "Do you want to be cremated." George said, "or do you prefer traditional burial?"

  FLORENCE ENTERED DUCK KIT'S office without knocking and closed the door behind her. It shut with a portentous click.

  Charles Duckett was leaning back in his chair, as if trying to distance himself physically from the document in front of him. He was looking at it as though it were a dead animal, far gone in putrefaction, that had been malevolently dumped upon a pristine altar consecrated to solemn rituals and tended to by votaries of an elite cult.

  The cover sheet looked up insistently.

  FEMALE EMANCIPATION AS A MEAN'S OF ACHIEVING LONG-TERM POLITICAL STABILITY IN THE NEAR EAST: AN OPERATIONAL PROPOSAL Submitted by Florence Farfaletti. DDASNEA Circulation: SecState. DDASNEA

  "I know you've been under a strain, Florence. I understand that—" "Charles, the reason I sent it to S before getting your approval was to relieve you of responsibility. And to be honest, I didn't think I'd get your approval. So what do think?"

  "What do I think?" Duckett said absently. "Of the fact that one of my deputies, whose actions reflect directly on me. has circulated a proposal calling for the fomenting of revolution in a country that supplies one third of America's energy needs, a country to which we are formally allied, to which we are vitally and strategically linked... circulated it and sent it directly to the ... secretary of state? What do I think'?"

  "I truly believe that—"

  "Do you see this phone on my desk. Florence?" "Yes, Charles, I see the phone."

  "Any moment now, that phone is going to ring. It will be S calling. The secretary would like to see you, Mr. Duckett. Right away. That's what the voice will say."

  "Charles—"

  "During my time here. I've endeavored to make my infrequent visits to S occasions of light. Sometimes, given the region it falls to us to superintend, that is not always possible. But at least when the secretary sees me walk into his office, he does not say to himself, Why, here's Charlie Duckett! Say, isn't he the one whose staff sends me cockamamy proposals to undermine the social structure of America's most strategic partner in the Middle East? Why, come on in. Charlie boy! What's that Skunk Works of yours cooked up this time? Ho ho. Certainly hope The Washington Post doesn't find out I've been reading proposals to overthrow Wasabia. Ha ha. Might makes things a bit sticky at the dinner I'm giving for Prince Bawad next Thursday at my house. Oh, and by the way. Charlie old bean, what's this about one of your people operating an underground railroad for his runaway wives? Gosh, why didn't I think of that? What better way to promote harmony between our two countries! Let's give that girl of yours a promotion! Are you out of your fucking mind. Farfaletti?"

  "I made it clear to the secretary in my cover letter that you hadn't signed off on it."

  Duckett rubbed his forehead. The lines were back. "I protected you. I went the extra mile. Now I'm beginning to think you're working for them."

  "Them? Who are you talking about?"

  "Them." Duckett did the Langley Hook.

  "CIA? Charles, I work for the State Department. I work for you."

  "No, no. This could only be an Agency operation. To destroy State—from within. It's happened before, you know. In Quito."

  "Charles, I'm on your side. I'm just trving to think outside the box."

  "What-box? Pandora's?"

  "If we want to bring about change in the Middle East, this is the way to do it. I'm convinced of it. It might be the only way."

  "How do I explain? Where do I begin? It is not our job to bring about change in the Middle East"

  "It's not?"

  "No, it is not. Our job is to manage reality."

  His phone rang. The shadow of the angel of death passed over Charles Duckett's features as he answered. "Yes." he said grimly, swallowing. "Yes. Right away." He hung up. "Satisfied, Florence?"

  "Let me go with you. Let me make the case. I can."

  Duckett rose slowly. His eyes had gone glassy. "I was up for the ambassadorship, you know. It was mine. It was all set. They told me."

  He shuffled out of his office like a mental patient in slippers going off to get his noon meds.

  George was wailing f
or her. "Where would you like me to ship your remains?"

  THE NEXT MORNING Florence received by interoffice notification that her request for transfer to the visa section of the U.S. consulate in the Cape Verde islands bad been approved, effective immediately.

  "You might have told me you'd applied," George said. "I thought we had a relationship."

  Florence started glumly at the paper.

  "Well, let's look on the bright side." he said. "Bracing sea air on all sides, steady climate, especially during hurricane season. And whale-watching second to none. A lot of the harpooners on the Nantucket whale ships were Cape Verde men."

  "Shut up, George."

  "I thought it was a damn slick proposal. Oh, hell. I'll miss you." "I'm not going to Cape Verde. For God's sake."

  "You're not going to quit? Just go, put in a few months. Duckett's due for a rotation, he'll be gone before you know it. Think of it as a vacation. Couple of months on the beach in Cape Verde, nights hobnobbing with the local gratin. You'll be back before you know it, tanned, rested and ready. Come on, Firenze."

  George was the only one outside her family who called her that. And he'd guessed it. It was the baptismal name her father, a native of Florence, had insisted on. The priest had initially refused, there being no Saint Firenze. but there are few theological issues that can't be resolved with a hundred-dollar bill. Florence Americanized the name in the fifth grade after she'd had enough abuse from classmates. But George much preferred Firenze to Florence, which he said sounded like the cleaning woman's name.

  "I'm out of here." she said. She kissed George on the forehead and collected her things and left. What now? There were a dozen foundations in Washington where her knowledge of the Middle East would be better used than on an archipelago off the coast of Senegal. Where better, she figured, to sink back into the earth than a foundation? But what a shame, what a waste.

  IT WAS A STUNNING, crisp fall day, and feeling liberated alter dropping off her letter of resignation. Florence zipped up her black leather jumpsuit— the sight of which caused cricks in many a male neck—tied her hair in a pony-tail, donned the red helmet, flipped down the visor, pressed the start button on her motorcycle and screamed out of the city at a deliciously breakneck speed.

  At the end of River Road, she turned left and roared deeper into country. She glanced down at the speedometer and saw that she was going almost ninety miles per hour, too fast, but what bliss! The fall leaves went by in a lush slipstream blur of gold and red and orange.

  Another color suddenly appeared in her rearview mirror, not found in nature, electric blue and flashing. For a moment she considered trying to outrun it, but then she let up on the throttle and rumbled over to the shoulder to await the inevitable Do you have any idea how fast you were going, ma'am?

  The man who got out of the unmarked car was not in uniform. The first discordant note that struck her was his age. He was in his mid-sixties, at least. He was trim, with the body of someone who had once been an athlete or in the military, gray about the temples, with wire-rimmed glasses perched on a sharp nose. The eyes, now close enough for her to see, were bright blue and twinkled. His lips were pursed, but pleasantly, in something like a smile. It didn't compute. Florence looked at the flashing blue light mounted on his dashboard. Some county supervisor or sheriff?

  "Goodness gracious, young lady. Ninety miles an hour—on a road teeming with deer? You could have been killed."

  It was said in an avuncular way.

  "And what a waste that would be." He was grinning at her. "Excuse me," she said, "who are you?"

  "That's the question, isn't it?" He chuckled. "That's quite a machine you have there. Used to do a bit of motorcycling myself. Oh, yes, yes."

  Still astride the bike, Florence moved her thumb over the starter button.

  "Oh now, don't be in such a big rush. I should think you'd be very interested to hear what I have to say. Very interested."

  Something kept her from pressing the button. "Could I see some identification?" she said gently.

  The man seemed to find this amusing. "Oh, certainly, certainly. What sort did you have in mind?"

  "Look, sir—"

  "We read your proposal, Florence." Florence stared.

  "On achieving stability in the Middle Fast? Very interesting, original. And, by gosh, out of the box. Not at all your usual State Department pap. No wonder they wanted to transfer you to Cape Verde! I had to look it up on a map. My goodness, it's a long way from nowhere. May I buy you a cup of coffee? This must seem very forward, I know."

  "Are you with the State Department?" Florence asked.

  "Hardly. Come on. I'll buy. There has to be a Starbucks around here."

  "I don't—"

  "Do you remember the Starbucks in Kaffa?" "What?"

  "The one at the corner of Alkakazir and Ben Qatif? How the mukfelleen made them cover the mermaid's boobs on the logo? Now, whenever I go to a Starbucks. I check for her boobs. Silly, I know. Do you want to follow me, or shall 1 follow you?"

  "I..."

  "I know. You came out here to feel the wind in your hair, the road rise up to greet vou. But all I'm asking for is ten minutes of your time at a neutral, well-lit public place. If, after that, you want to walk away, no one's going to stop you. and I'll still pay for the latte. You like tall non-fat double-shot, yes? And sugar substitute, preferably not in lieu of birth-control pills?"

  The only human being to whom she had confided that detail was the State Department polygraph operator during her background check. She didn't know what to say, so she followed him on her motorcycle to a suburban Starbucks.

  They sat outside, by a parking lot full of expensive cars driven by people who looked like they had something to do with horses.

  "Look, before we go any further, who are you?" she asked.

  The man appeared to consider the question. He said thoughtfully, "Why don't you just call me Uncle Sam?"

  "I take it you're with the government. What is it you want?"

  "Quite possibly, the same thing you do. Long-term political stability in the Middle Hast. Now. there's a goal. Oh. yes."

  "You agree with my proposal?"

  "We've tried pretty much everything else, haven't we? And what a pig's breakfast we've made. Dear, dear, dear. Well, I always say, if you can't solve a problem, make it larger. The remarkable thing is how well we mean. America. And yet it always turns out so—badly. But I didn't come out here to bore you to death, no, no. I suppose you'll be wanting some bona fides. You'd be foolish not to. And we know you're not that. Let's see. I know—given the region we're dealing with, why don't we use the Thousand and One Nights as a model. I'll be the djinn in the lamp. Ask me for three things that only the good old U.S. government could provide. If you're still not satisfied, then you're still one tall latte ahead, right?"

  Florence considered. "Tomorrow's PDB."

  Uncle Sam chortled. "Ouch."

  Every morning, the president of the United States received the presidential daily briefing, the most highly classified document in the government, seen by fewer than a half-dozen pairs of eyeballs.

  "Thank you for the coffee."

  "Drive safely, young lady."

  THE NEXT MORNING Florence rose as usual at five-thirty for her five-mile run. On her way out. she saw that an envelope had been inserted under the door. She opened it and saw across the top page: FOR THE PRESIDENT'S EYES ONLY. The date was today's.

  She read. The Kremlin was planning to use nerve gas on a Chechen stronghold. The president of Venezuela was... Florence's eyes widened. In the Sea of Japan, a U.S. submarine was shadowing a North Korean freighter thought to be carrying... Jesus. And yet I here was no way of knowing whether the document was a fake. She regretted, like so many who have rubbed the lamp, having thrown away a perfectly good wish.

  Two days later, she picked up her morning newspaper and saw the headline:

  NAVY INTERCEPTS JAPAN-BOUND NORTH KOREAN FREIGHTER CARRYING NUCLEAR DEVICE

/>   An hour later, while she was still digesting this along with her bran muffin, her phone rang. It was Uncle Sam.

  "Could you make your second wish just a tad easier?"

  "All right." she said. "Ten million dollars in Wasabi gold sovereigns."

  "You'll give them back, yes?"

  "Maybe."

  The next afternoon there was a knock on her door. She looked out the peephole and saw a FedEx man with three large boxes on a hand dolly.

  "Farfaletli? Sign here, please. They're kind of heavy."

  Florence was in her living room staring at piles of gleaming gold Wasabi sovereigns bearing the royal crest when the phone rang. Unclc Sam.

  "FedFx. Nice touch, don't you think?"

  "All right," she said. "I'm convinced."

  "Don't you want your third wish?"

  "Why don't I save that."

  "That's a Relief. I thought you might ask for a nuclear warhead. You're a very demanding young lady. Welcome aboard." "Aboard what, exactly?"

  "Don't ask, don't tell. All you need to know is that you now have the best job in the United States government. No Charlie Duckett looking over your shoulder, no endless reports and memos and all that razzmatazz. No inspector generals, no Senate committees. Anything you need to do the job, you just ask your uncle. Within reason, please. I don't want to be getting bills from Maserati or Chanel or Van Cleef and Arpels. thank you very much."

  "What part of the government am I working for?" "The Department of Outside the Box." "Come on. I want to know."

  "Young lady, you've been handed the ultimate credit card. Why question it?"

  "What if I'm caught?"

  "Well"—he chuckled—"exactly my point. Not to make light of it." "For a second there, you sounded like Satan."

  "Satan? That's a terrible thing to say. I'm one of the nicest people you'll ever meet."

  "Why me?"

  "It was your idea, wasn't it? You know the language. The region."

  "So do a lot of people."

  "It's a vendetta. You're Italian."

  "I'd file a discrimination complaint, if I knew where to find you."

  "Oh, all right—you're passionate to emancipate women throughout the Arab world. As a means toward achieving lasting political stability in the region. Docs that assuage your outraged ethnic pride?"