Florence addressed them sternly. "Put your weapons down. We have none."
The security agents froze, startled by this unexpected temerity. Then one of them, apparently the leader, approached and cuffed Florence hard across the face. The blow caught her off balance. She fell. The staffer with the wastebasket moved toward the attacker and got the butt of a pistol in his face, breaking his nose and misting the air with blood. Florence, dazed, felt the cold snap of metal around her wrists. She was pulled to her feet and dragged out of the control room.
They hustled her into the back of a car and threw a blanket over her head. Whether this was to humiliate her or to keep her from seeing where they were taking her. Florence could only speculate.
She knew the location of police headquarters and, from the cars movements, tried to calculate whether this was the destination. After a quarter hour of turns that she could not follow, she had no idea where they were taking her. The leader sitting in the front seat did not respond to her questions.
It was only ten miles to the Wasabi border, and it was this directional scenario that was the least pleasing. But there was another possibility: that she might be on her way to the same fate that had befallen Fatima. Florence imagined the car stopping, the blanket being pulled from her head, the neck-deep hole dug in the sand, the basket full of small stones, a video camera mounted on a tripod. They'd want a record of this one, too.
Her face flushed hot, and she felt like she was going to throw up. But then the image of herself covered in her own mess, as she was executed, overrode her nausea. If this was to be her fate, Florence was resolved to meet it with such dignity as she could, head high, and serene, with maybe even a shouted "Fuck you!" at her killers. Well, perhaps something more elegant than "Fuck you!" She mused on her final words.
A half hour passed. Finally, the car slowed, made a series of turns and stopped. She heard voices. She was pulled from the backseat and, with each arm firmly grasped, was marched across a stone floor. She remembered from her State Department hostage training to notice every detail, but with the blanket over her head, it wasn't easy. She thought. There's the floor. I might as well notice that. But in the end, it was only a floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
She was taken to a windowless room of ambiguous architectural purpose. It could serve as a cool cellar for fresh foodstuffs, Kaffir limes and Damascus melons. Such subterranean spaces had other, less pleasant uses. The thickness of the door that shut behind her. the sparseness of the furnishings before her—a wooden chair and table, an overhead lightbulb. a bedspring cot and plastic tub—bespoke austerity. The one item out of place was a video camera mounted on a tripod.
By her wrist watch, its face scuffed by the handcuffs, it was going on three in the morning when the door opened. The man confronting her wore Western dress that might have been a military uniform minus insignias.
"You are being deported," he said. He put some papers on the table before her. "Where you are deported to, it depends."
She read the papers. It was a confession in the form of a script. Presumably, she was to read it for the video camera.
In it, she admitted loan "unnatural and immoral relationship"—not with the sheika but with her TV Matar colleague Fatima Sham. Florence had become enough of a journalist to know a good lead paragraph. She read on. She was further admitting to trying to blackmail the Wasabi Royal House of Hamooj. Her "shameful plot" was to demand $20 million from them. When they refused— "as, God be praised, they should have"—Florence's lover Fatima Sham put on television the "wicked and untrue" story about Princess Hamzin. Someone put a lot of thought into this, Florence mused as she read. It went on to say that Florence and her "accomplices" then avenged themselves on the "honorable Wasabis" by killing Falima in the gruesome manner depicted and sending a copy of the tape to Kaffa, saying they would put it on TV Matar and blame them for it if a ransom of $40 million weren't paid. Again, the "upright" Wasabis held fast. But then "the police"—the script did not specify whose police—caught her. She could no longer live with the shameful things she had done, so she was recording this "true confession." It concluded with an apology to the emir of Matar and the king of Wasabia for perpetrating such vile doings while a guest on "holy" soil.
"Well." she said finally, looking up at her dour jailer. "I seem to have been very busy."
He pressed the record button on the video camera. "Begin," he said.
Florence looked into the camera. "My name is Florence Farfaletti," she said. "I'm an American citizen. It appears that I am being held in some basement somewhere. It's a bit damp, but otherwise tolerable. Have a nice day."
The man pressed the stop button. "You won't like it in Kaffa." He came toward her. Florence recoiled, thinking he was going to strike her, but instead, he unlocked her handcuffs.
"You run a television station." he said. He pointed to the video camera. "So, here is television camera. In two hours I come back. Make the film."
She used the next hour to explore every inch of the room. She tried to pry a piece of wire from the cot, with the idea of fashioning a tool to pick the door lock, but gave up after five minutes. There were problems with this approach, the first being that she did not know how to pick a lock. They'd taught her the rudiments of the skill during her weekend of hostage training in Virginia, but she had never really gotten the hang of it. She thought of buying herself sometime by sabotaging the video camera, but that seemed like feckless temporizing. Perhaps if she kept talking but never quite confessed until the tape ran out—a video Scheherazade, with the tape counter stopped at 1001.
She wondered what was going on back in Washington. What was Uncle Sam doing? Pulling strings or erasing computer files? Or sitting down to a martini and medium-rare porterhouse with onion rings at the Palm?
She missed Bobby. She missed George. She missed Rick. George and Rick wouldn't be much good, but they'd cheer her up. She shut her eyes, headachy with fright and fatigue, and dreamed of the conning tower of a U.S. nuclear submarine breaking the glass-still surface beyond the snaky beach. Where was Laila? The hours passed.
A FEW MINUTES before seven A.M. by the sculled watch, she heard the sound of the door being unlocked. Her heart was pounding. The door opened, admitting the jailer and another man, a torturer by his looks. The jailer went to the video camera and examined the counter. It was still set at 003. His face creased with displeasure. He nodded to the torturer, who look out a nine-millimeter pistol and pressed the muzzle against Florence's forehead. It was as cold as a doctor's stethoscope. She swallowed and closed her eyes.
"You make confess?"
"No."
"Kill her," the jailer said.
Florence shut her eyes. She smelled gun oil. She wondered what they would do with her body. Feed it to the sharks beyond the reef? The crabs would finish it off. She saw her own bones, bright white, phosphorescently aglow against the blue of the water, resting placidly at the bottom. Get it over with.
The hammer snapped forward against the action. Florence emitted a little shriek and opened her eyes. The men were smiling cruelly, but there was the unmistakable element of defeat in their eyes. They left. She stood and kicked the plastic bucket across the room. It ricocheted off the wall. Then, from terror and exhaustion, she passed out.
In the dream, she was thirsty, very, very thirsty. She was biting down on her lips to draw blood to drink. She was in the desert. It was a furnace. In the attack on Aqaba. it was so hot that Lawrence's hands blistered on the metal of his rifle. There was a submarine. A submarine in the middle of the desert? Don't ask. Go aboard—listen—they're calling you.
“What day is it?" she said to Laila. "Thursday."
Florence had been in the subterranean room for five days before the door flew open and in rushed Colonel Boutros of the Royal Matar Constabulary, along with two of his men.
"God be praised, you are safe, madame. Are you grievously injured? What did they do to you? Did you see their faces? Can you give a descript
ion?"
When they brought her out, she saw that she had been in the basement of some abandoned factory-like building on the edge of Amo-Amas. She asked Colonel Boutros at least a hundred questions on the drive to the constabulary headquarters. His answers seemed guarded. And when they arrived at the HQ. there was a crowd of reporters with cameras wailing. Colonel Boutros preened, posing with Florence. "God be praised, we have found her!"
A television reporter thrust a microphone at her and said. "Flor-ents. will you now announce an end to the sexual jihad by Matari women?"
"To the what?"
"You did not know?"
"I have been locked in a cellar for live days."
"'The women of Matar made jihad on your behalf. Against the men of Matar."
"How did I hey do this?"
"After you were taken, the sheika Laila went on the television and called upon the women of Matar not to make relations with their husbands until you were returned. There are many men in Matar grateful for your return."
Florence was digesting this when she heard sirens. A forty-foot-long while limousine bearing the royal crest and accompanied by a motorcycle escort arrived. Fetish, the emir's man, was inside, all greasy smiles. "Praise truly be to Allah that you are returned lo us safe!" Then it was off to the palace.
After being given a room to clean up in and fresh clothing, Florence was admitted to the emir's ceremonial chamber. As she walked in. there was a flash of light that caused her to flinch. An official photographer. The emir stood— that was unusual—and walked over to her. He embraced her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead as the camera flashes continued, bathing them in flickery strobe light. Laila looked on.
"Dear sister!" he said, "what a time you have had, and how worried we were!" He continued to pose for a few more pictures. Then Fetish waxed and the photographer was gone and it was just the emir, Florence and the sheika. There was tension. Florence noted, between husband and wife.
"How are you feeling, dear Florence?" he said. "I am appalled, appalled that this could have happened. And yet"—he lowered his voice to a gentle lecturing lone—"you were very naughty to do what you did. This is not the American Super Bowl, where you can put just anything on television. You have no idea, no concept, of what trouble you caused me with my neighbors. They moved tanks—tanks!—to my border. Your own government was most anxious. Most anxious. They were no doubt thinking. O God, not another Kuwait. There were many conversations between Washington and Kaffa and Amo-Amas. I don't want to look at my phone bill. Well, it's all fixed. For now. Sit, sit, for heaven's sake. Do you want some tea? Something more than tea? Whiskey? I could use one myself. Thank God for the diligence of Colonel Boutros."
Florence looked at Laila, who gave her a glance, as if to say, Just play along.
"Yes," the emir said, straightening slightly. (Always sit up straight while lying through your teeth.) "It was his men who found you. And just in time. God knows what evil things they had planned for you."
Florence said. "Thank God for Colonel Boutros."
"Were you able to see their faces?" the emir asked solicitously. "We will hunt them down. They will know no peace. Or perhaps they have already fled across the border."
"My captors—they were ... Wasabi?"
"Of course. No Matari would do something so barbaric."
This brought a grunt from Laila. The emir stiffened. He said, "Laila was very concerned for you. As were we all. She went on television and told the women of Matar to withhold... normal marital relations until you were found."
"It worked for Aristophanes" Laila said tartly.
The emir grinned. "It certainly gave us inspiration to find you. All of Matar—especially the males—rejoices in your return. Which must, alas, be brief under the circumstances. I think it would be best if you departed Matar.
I shall be sorry to see you go, Florence. How you have enlivened our drab little kingdom by the sea. But before you go, one or two matters."
"I would have thought at least three or four, sire."
"Eh? Ah, your terrible ordeal has not dulled the wit. Excellent, excellent. Now, if you would make a little statement." "That's what my captors wanted me to do."
"Oh, nothing like that." the emir said rather too quickly. "Just something to make peace between me and the women. You see," he said with a tight glance at Laila, who was viewing him with distinct coolness, "the impression was given that our government was insufficiently concerned by this terrible abduction. Of course, nothing could be further from reality. You will correct this impression before you leave?"
Florence eyed the emir coolly. "As Your Grace commands."
"You are very simpatico, Florence. It's the Italian in you. I have always adored the Italians, though they were very naughty under Mussolini. So you will make peace between me and the women. Good, good. Well then, I must take my leave of you. How can I repay what you have done here? You must come back and visit. Oh, I almost forgot, a present."
The emir clapped his hands. Fetish appeared holding a black box. The emir opened it. It was a medal, lushly done in enamel and gold in the shape of a lion's head, above two drawn swords, the emblem of royal Matar.
"The Order of the Royal Lion of Matar. First Class." the emir said proudly, putting it around her head. "This is the first occasion ever it has been given to a woman."
Florence looked at Laila, who was rolling her eyes. Florence bowed slightly. "It is a great honor, sire." "Hurry back, my dear. Hurry back. Darling, will you see Florence off?"
Florence and Laila spoke softly on the way to the car. "Sexual jihad?" Florence said.
"Don't knock it. It worked. No Matari male has been laid in five days. Other than my husband. Powerful incentive, that. Still, if it hadn't been for your Mr. Thibodeaux, you might still be in that room. He went into very high gear after you were taken." "Bobby? Is he—"
"Outside, he's got himself a new identity. It's rather daring. Do be sure to compliment him on it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Florence heard the crowd before she and Laila walked out the front door of the palace. "What's this?" she said to Laila. "Your fans, darling."
There were thousands of them, mostly women. When they saw Florence. I hey began to ululate in the way of Arab women, though it had been rather a very long time since this tradition had been observed in progressive Matar. They began to chant, "Flor-ens! Flor-ens!"
To the object of this homage, standing on the marble steps, it sounded like the name of some household air freshener. They surged forward, swarming around her, touching her, grasping. She was presented with flowers. Palace security tried to push them back without success.
Laila had seen to it that cameras were there to record it all, as well as a TV Matar truck to feed the footage to a satellite 250 miles up and back into millions of televisions. Lately; Laila had been thinking like the producer of a reality TV show, a fact that appalled her somewhat.
"Flor-ens! Flor-ens!"
Laila shouted into Florence's ear, "I think you'd belter address them, darling, or they'll never let you out of here." "But—"
"Remember to thank Gazzy, or you will never get out of here."
Florence blushed and swallowed, her mouth dry as dust. She felt more exhausted than triumphant, but she raised her hands to quiet the crowd, and into her mind flashed, unavoidably, the image of Peter O’Toole scampering whitely across the top of the dynamited Turkish train. Try as she might to shake it from her head, she couldn't. The movie wouldn't stop playing. The next image was of the wounded Turk firing the pistol shot into O’Toole's shoulder. Now she looked down at the surging crowd with fear. Though most of the women wore Western dress, there were a few dozen wearing abaayas. Maybe the University of Chicago anthropologist was right: Perhaps some Arab women didn't want to be rescued from oppression. Florence weighed this terrible possibility along with how simple it would be to kill her right now. How easily a gun could be concealed beneath the veil.
The fear emboldened
her. She gestured forcefully for the crowd to quiet. It did. She opened her mouth to address it and—was dumbstruck for words. It was then that she realized tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"Darling," Laila said, "do pull yourself together."
Then Florence heard a voice, a male voice, southern-accented. It said. "Goddammit, girl, you gonna say somelhin' to the folks or just stand there blubberin' like you won the Miss America contest?"
The voice seemed to be coming from a woman dressed in an orange abaaya. Florence looked over at Laila, who was smiling.
Florence's impulse was to leap into the arms of the orange apparition, but this was, she decided, not an appropriate crowning gesture at a moment of feminist triumph—leaping into the arms of a CIA Muslim drag queen.
"Well?" it said. "Come on. Don't got all day"
Florence raised her arms higher, and the crowd quieted
"God be praised, sisters, I am glad to be back with you. I am sure that your husbands are glad, too!" They liked that, the crowd. "I am grateful to you, and to the sheika Laila."
Laila waved and said sideways, "Don't forget Gazzy."
"And of course to the emir," Florence said, "the Lion of Matar, the New Saladin ..." Florence tried not to burst out laughing. "Champion ... and protector of Arab women ... throughout the world!"
"Aren't you laying it on a bit thick, darling?"
Florence's expression was not lost on the Lion of Matar, watching on television in his office. Bitch, he thought. But the crowd was roaring, and that, in the end, was what muttered. At least the bitch would be on an airplane in a few hours, gone for good.
The crowd was chanting, "Flo-rens! Flo-rens!" The Lion of Matar took the television remote control in his plump, bejeweled hand and pressed the off button.
“I’ve never kissed a woman." Florence said to Bobby.
Laila had arranged for them to be driven separately to Florence's apartment overlooking Marlborough Square. They'd have a few hours together before the flight out.
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