Florence of Arabia

by Christopher Buckley

  "1 don't know. Imam." The introduction of the oubliette had altered Fetish's posture: his spine was now bent in permanent bowing. "Five minutes. Do you understand, Fetish?" "Thou art truly benevolent."

  Delame-Noir was ushered in. "The imam is indulgent to see me on such short notice."

  "We are very busy-, monsieur. What is it you wish to see us about?"

  "We have made an intercept of the Americans’ communications, sire. I thought you would want to have it from my lips, personally, rather than over the telephone."

  “Yes?"

  "It is very sensitive." 'Yes. yes, yes. So?"

  Delame-Noir lowered his voice. "I gather my lord yesterday had a telephone conversation with Prince Bawad, the Wasabi foreign minister'.''"

  "How do you know that? What if I did? I'm the ruler of Matar."

  In fact, the French had a tap on Maliq's phone, thanks to Fetish. But best to pretend that it was the dreadful Americans.

  "I am not criticizing. Imam. But it would appear that the Americans were listening in on this conversation. They are very technically, well— They are clever at this, at least. The vicissitudes of modernity. Always someone is listening. As for me. I understand, it is none of my business. But now, because of what we have learned, it becomes in a way my business. You grasp the essence of mv discomfort?"

  "Concerning what?"

  "We have the recording of the conversation, thanks to the American eavesdroppers. I gather Prince Bawad was very—how to say it?—authoritarian with you?"

  "I can hold my own with Prince Bawad." Maliq said stiffly.

  "Of course you can. To me, it seems very rude the way he treated you. Very imperious, very bossy, Calling you—forgive me. Great Imam, for I am only quoting, eh?—the son of a kitchen slave, a cheater at automobile racing, and saying that if you don't do exactly as the Wasabis say—what were his words, exactly?—'we will remove you from the throne like a rotten fig." A strange figure of speech. I agree. He is not so adept at the diplomacy, the prince, for a diplomat"

  "Bawad is a toad. From now on. I deal only with Tallulah."

  Delame-Noir shrugged as only a Frenchman can. "Yes. but Bawad is King Tallulah's nephew, and they are very close. I don't think that the prince would have said these things to you if his uncle the king did not approve."

  "What of it?" Maliq said impatiently.

  "Mon imam, the point is that the Americans are in possession of a tape recording of this conversation. And my conclusion is that if you execute the sheika Laila. the Americans may use this as a pretext to become involved directly. Florence has stirred up much publicity in the United States. In the world."

  "And what are the Americans going to do? Not buy oil? Bah."

  "Perhaps they will leak the tape of Bawad ordering you to kill her. And how is that going to look if it's played? Making it seem as though you are just a puppet of the Wasabis. Who wants this? The Wasabis, perhaps they don't care. But we, France, as your allies and true friends, this we do not want." Delame-Noir smiled. "We want a strung imam in Matar. An independent imam! Not one who must ask permission from the House of Hamooj every time he wants to go to the bathroom. Of course, it goes without saying that you may always depend on France."

  Maliq threw up his hands. "What am I supposed to do? They want this sheika dead. And they want the Florence creature even more, and they blame me—me!—for not catching her. Florence tricked us, you realize. I asked her to make a tape, just as you told me, and she tricked us, the slut-bitch. It plays once and—poof, nothing, gone like a djinni."

  "This was my own stupidity. Great Lord." Delame-Noir said soothingly. "You played your part with brilliance and subtlety, and we—no. I alone myself—let you down by not anticipating that they would resort to this CIA trick. I curse myself. I will not sleep tonight for—"

  "You're overdoing. Dominique."

  "Yes, I suppose I am."

  "What am I supposed to do now? You say the Americans will use this tape of the conversation between me and Bawad?" "I fear they might, yes."

  "Why don't I call in the American ambassador and tell him his country belter start building windmills to keep them warm this w inter?"

  "But my lord, is it wise to inform the Americans that you know about this? We have them exactly where we want them."

  "We do?"

  "But yes. Instead of making threats to the Americans, you say to them. 'Look, my hamburger-eating friends, we know the sheika works for the CIA.'"

  "She does?"

  "No. but you tell the Americans that you think she does, and this will make them very nervous. You tell them that she has confessed to even thing. You say, "And now the Wasabis, they are being very severe. They want me to chop off her head. You would think they are French! Ha! But I have decided that I'm not going to chop off her head. I'm going to give her to you—with the head intact. Do you know why, my American friends? Precisely to show the Wasabis that I am my own imam, my own person, that I don't take orders from anybody. And now here is what you Americans are going to do for me in exchange, first, I want to start hearing you say nice things about me in the United Nations. Second. I want you to stop saying all these terrible things about how France was very naughty to help me become emir. And third, I want you to send your people—your Delia Force commandos, who are very good—into Amo-Amas and remove this Florence woman of yours. Dead or alive, it's no matter for me, but it's time for her to go. I am not looking to make the next Joan of Arc. But if you don't come and get her, I will deal with it very soon. And finally; if you don't help me with these things, you Americans are going to have a very cold winter, yes?'"

  "Hmm." Maliq said. "Do you think they'll go along with it?"

  "My dear imam, you must understand—the Americans are idealistic to the point where they must lower their thermostat two degrees. Then they become very practical."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Florence and Bobby were in the middle of shooting another "Osama"—the name they had given Florence's videotapes—when they heard an electronic chirping. It startled them, since the phone had been turned off, and cell phones as a rule do not ring when they are in the off mode. And now this one was ringing.

  Florence moved toward it. Bobby said. "Couple of grams of C4 can make for a pretty bad headache."

  He took the phone from her and walked to a far corner of room. Florence watched him. He took a breath, held the phone at arm's length and pressed the TALK button. He exhaled and held the receiver a foot from his ear.

  "Salaam." He listened, his eyes darting sideways nervously. "I'll give her the message." he said with an edge in his voice, "if I see her."

  Florence mouthed: Who?

  Bobby mouthed back: Uncle Sam.

  She held out her hand. Bobby cupped his over the receiver and whispered. "Keep it short." He gave her the phone and began gathering up their things. She recognized by now the rhythms of another hasty departure.

  "Well, well." Florence said into the phone.

  "Young lady. do you have any idea what sort of problems you're creating back here?"

  "Didn't you tell me at our first meeting, 'If you can't solve a problem, make it larger'?"

  "I didn't tell you to make it this large. We’ll talk about it when you get home. The last thing we need is for you to be captured." "First get Laila out."

  Uncle Sam sighed. "What did you have in mind? An amphibious assault on the palace, or Black Hawk Down: The Sequel? Have you been outside lately? There are more Wasabi troops in Matar than there are citizens."

  "It's not a request."

  There was a pause. "I'll do what I can."

  "Not good enough."

  "It will just have to be."

  Bobby motioned to Florence: Finish up.

  "Oh-one-four-five hours," Uncle Sam said. "That's one-forty-five A.M. I'll have the water taxi on station, the usual place. Is Omar Sharif there? Put him on."

  Florence numbly handed the phone to Bobby, He listened, grunted a few "yeah"s and hung u
p.

  "Somethin' wrong here," Bobby said. "Come on, time to go."

  "Did you tell him about us?"

  "What about us?"

  "That we're sleeping together?"

  "I... might have. Come on, that doesn't matter right now." "Why would you have told him that?" "Because he asked."

  "When did you tell him we were sleeping together?" "After we started sleepin' together. Flo, we gotta go." "Why would you tell him?"

  " 'Cause he asked me if you were a dyke. The rumors, he didn't know what to believe. He was tryin' to get you to leave the country, and you wouldn't, so he-"

  "Assumed I was a lesbian. So is that why you slept with me? Is this part of your mission? Sexual preference observation officer?" "Of course not. Goddammit, Flo."

  "Don't you goddammit. If anyone gets to goddammit, it's me." "Flo, we gotta go. I got a bad feeling about that call." "I thought we were being exfiltrated by submarine." "Maybe. Will you just get your stuff, girl?"

  In a huff. Florence gathered her things, consisting at this point of her pistol, cell phones and hated, smelly abaaya.

  They got in the car. Instead of driving off. Bobby circled around to the front and parked two blocks away, facing the front of their little house.

  "What are we doing?"

  Eliminatin' possibilities." Bobby was slumped low in the driver's seat, watching the house through small binoculars. His right hand rested on the bull of the pistol lucked into his waistband, beneath the folds of his thobe.

  A quarter hour later, a sedan approached the house from the far side, slowed and stopped. Four men got out. They wore the distinctive black and blue thobes of mukfelleen. They carried pistols instead of standard-issue whips. Bobby peered intently through his binoculars.

  "Well, sum-bitch. Goddammit."

  " Mukfeleen?'

  He handed Florence the glasses. "See that heavyset guy in front with the mustache? His name is Anbar Tal. He's a captain in the Royal Matar Air force Security Service. I recruited him."

  "He's... CIA?"

  "Last I checked."

  "Why is he approaching our house with all those men and pistols?"

  Bobby peered through his binoculars. "The body language somehow isn't convevin' to me We're here to help"

  He slipped the car into reverse and slowly began to back away.

  Florence looked in the rearview mirror and saw the men in black and blue thobes approaching their car from behind. Bobby instinctively floored the accelerator.

  There were two loud thumps from behind, and then the men in thobes were on the trunk of the car, and not happy about it. In the next instant, they were on the hood, and even less happy. Then they were on the ground in front of the car, limp and beyond caring one way or the other.

  The car was now speeding backward at thirty miles per hour. Ahead, in the receding distance. Florence saw the five muks. led by Anbar Tal, running toward them, aiming their pistols. It took a second for Florence's overworked brain to process that this stance was preliminary to worse developments. She processed this critical insight a quarter second before the first bullet smashed through the windshield, leaving her abaaya coated in safety-glass crumbs. Crouching in her seat, she heard more vitreous explosions, accompanied by obscene mutterings from the driver's seat. Then there were even louder explosions, which after a moment she realized came from nearby. Bobby was driving backward and firing out the window with his left hand.

  "Could use some help," he said.

  Florence had fired a gun only once, many years ago. during her brief State Department training course. Though she had gripped a pistol many times in the previous weeks, it now felt strange and unwelcome in her hand as she flipped the safety off and aimed out the window. She shut her eyes and fired.

  There was a loud metal thunk. followed by an explosive hissing and a vertical jet of steam. She had shot through the hood of their car and punctured the radiator.

  Bobby swung the wheel hard over and yanked the hand brake, turning the car 180 degrees, then shifted into drive and floored it. The problem was that an internal combustion engine, however expertly engineered by the finest automotive minds in Germany, is not designed to run, either efficiently or for long, once penetrated by nine-millimeter rounds. Steam hissed from the hood like water spewing from the spout-hole of an angry whale.

  "You all right? Flo? You hurt?"

  "I'm okay. Oh, shit, Bobby, I shot the car."

  "Listen up. I'm gonna turn that corner. I'm going to stop. I want you to get out. Okay? Now, listen to me: There's a man who works at the live-chicken souk. He's got a booth, the name on it is ZamZam Best Chickens. Got that? His name is Azool bin-Halaam. He's worked for me. He's independent. No one knows about him, not CIA, not Uncle Sam, not the Frogs, no one. He can get you on the ferry to— Shit, come on, you, sum-bitchbastard!" Bobby was pounding the dashboard in the obscure hope that the engineers had installed a sensor there that, when pounded violently, would instruct the car's computer to ignore the fact that a nine-millimeter bullet had been fired through the engine's cooling system. Alas, the engineers had overlooked this feature. "I'm not going to leave you here," Florence said.

  "Shut up and listen. You tell Azool you're a friend of Cyrus from Cyprus. Got that? Cyrus from Cyprus. He'll get you out of the country on the ferry to Pangibat. Got that? ZamZam. Azool. Cyrus from Cyprus. Have you got that?"

  They'd turned the corner. Bobby pulled the cranking car over and stopped. The street was blessedly teeming with pedestrians, some of whom paused to stare at the strange sight, a hissing Mercedes.

  "Go, Flo. Please. Don't make me beg. girl, I'm too old."

  She opened the door to get out, then closed it. She took her pistol and turned around and aimed through the rear window. "Just drive."

  "Goddammit, woman."

  "Just drive."

  Spewing cusswords, Bobby stepped on the accelerator. A violent, bronchitic hissss issued from the hole in the hood as the last of the coolant evaporated. The car moved forward without conviction.

  Looking back, Florence saw a dark sedan round the corner fast. Pedestrians bolted out of the way.

  She braced the gun in both hands and kept her eyes open. The first shot shattered the glass of their own rear window, providing a clear field of fire. She aimed again and methodically emptied the magazine of eight rounds into the windshield of the pursuing vehicle. The car veered from side to side and then went off the road and onto the sidewalk and into the plate-glass window of a pastry shop.

  "Better." Bobby muttered.

  Florence ejected the spent clip and rummaged in her satchel for a fresh one.

  Bobby turned off down a narrow street. The hissing had stopped. The temperature-gauge needle was hard over into the red, indicating meltdown. This and a loud knocking sound augured the necessity, sooner rather than later, of alternative transportation.

  Bobby braked. They opened the doors and got out. A car similar to the one Florence had dispatched turned the corner. It accelerated toward them. Florence saw pistols aimed at them from the windows on both sides.

  Bobby opened fire. A hole appeared in the windshield in front of the car's driver, another in front of the passenger. The car veered sharply lo the right, into a lamppost, in the process shearing off an arm that had been aiming a pistol.

  Florence gasped. Bobby came around and pulled her lo her feet. They ran down alleys until Bobby, breathing hard, finally announced, "Okay, walk, just walk."

  They walked, another Matari couple taking a leisurely stroll after shooting dead a half-dozen men.

  The streets around them screamed with sirens. From above, they could hear the urgent whoosh and roar of rotor blades.

  Bobby whispered to her. "Y'ever fainted?"

  "No."

  "Start."

  "What?"

  "Just faint, would you?"

  Florence collapsed to the pavement as best she could without breaking a kneecap. Why. she had no idea. She closed her eyes.

  She heard
a male voice speaking Arabic, asking what was wrong.

  "She is pregnant," Bobby said with perfect lack of sympathy or tenderness and exactly the right tone of annoyance.

  "She shouldn't be outside in that condition." the man said.

  "Don't I know it? Twelve times I told her, and a thirteenth, but she insists. She thinks exercise will give her a male child."

  "God will that it be. Is she all right?"

  "I think her time has come. We must have an ambulance."

  Florence thought. Clever boy.

  "I will call you one."

  "Allah favors the compassionate. Thank vou. brother."

  While the man spoke into his cell phone, Bobby leaned down and whispered, "Now, why didn't 1 think of that?"

  Matar had good infrastructure and civil services. The ambulance arrived within minutes. Florence had maneuvered her satchel underneath her abaaya so that her outline was appropriately gravid. The two attendants loaded her onto a gurney and into the ambulance. Bobby jumped in after her.

  "Which hospital?" he asked an attendant.

  'Churchill—I mean king Bisma. Thev changed the name."

  "You better hurry unless you want to deliver the child right here." As the attendant went about rolling up the folds of Florence's abaaya in order to fasten the blood-pressure cuff, Bobby brought the pistol butt down on the back of his head. Then he reached through the doorway and pressed the muzzle of the pistol to the driver's neck and pulled back the hammer for that extra note of emphasis and said, "If you want to live, drive to the airport. If you'd rather die. I will drive."

  The man emitted a squeak and began to beg for his life. "Relax. Do as I say, and everything will be well."

  The man continued to babble and wail, he had seven children. He was the sole support. He had missed prayers that morning. If he died now, he would not see paradise.

  Florence stripped the unconscious ambulance attendant of his uniform vest, then bound his hands and mouth with adhesive tape, which ambulances have in copious supply.

  Bobby told the driver. "Slow down and turn off the siren."

  The driver obeyed, still blubbering. Bobby handed him the radio handset.