Desert Man Page 7

  It was only a matter of time. He would go slowly. He would neither push nor insist. He would be patient, because he knew that in the end his patience and persistence would be rewarded. It always had been.

  Josie McCall was no different than any other woman. More of a challenge perhaps, but he liked a challenge. It made the waiting exciting, the final result more enjoyable.

  Kumar leaned back against the fine leather seat of the limousine and smiled. She was a delectable woman from the top of her sunlit hair all the way down to her toes, and he had every intention of sampling all of that delectability.

  Sooner or later.

  He closed his eyes and felt his body grow hard with need, a need he knew could be eased by any of the dancing girls at the Palais Royale. But it wasn’t dancing girls he wanted, it was Miss Josie McCall. And by Allah, he was determined to have her.

  He shifted to try to ease the pain in his groin, and decided that it would have to be sooner rather than later.

  Chapter 6

  Josie debated at length about how to dress. This would be the first time she would meet the consul and his assistant, as well as the members of Prince Kumar’s cabinet and their wives. A good first impression was important. At last, because she knew it was the custom in this part of the world for a woman not to bare her shoulders, her arms or her legs, she chose an ivory silk georgette blouse with a Venetian lace collar and cuffs, and silky, soft ivory pleated pants, so full they gave the appearance of a skirt.

  With the outfit she wore a gold chain belt, a wide gold bracelet with matching earrings, and high-heeled gold sandals. She swept her hair back in the usual chignon, applied very little makeup and a dab of perfume behind her ears and on her wrists.

  A white stretch limousine arrived promptly at seven. The chauffeur opened the door, but before she could enter, Saoud, moving silently as a ghost on his bare feet, appeared at her side.

  “Allow me, madame,“ he said, and taking Josie’s arm helped her into the car before he got into the front seat beside the chauffeur.

  He sat very straight for one so tall, and it seemed to Josie, observing him from the back seat, that he was tense, alert. He turned his head whenever a car passed, and when suddenly a black Ferrari cut alongside, Josie saw him dart a look at the other car and with a muttered curse he reached inside his robe.

  He put a cautioning hand on the driver’s arm. The limo slowed and fell back. The black Ferrari moved ahead of them and in front of them and slowed down so that the two vehicles were only a few feet apart.

  Saoud whispered something to the chauffeur and the limo leapt forward at a speed that threw Josie back against the cushioned seat.

  “What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

  “It is nothing to concern yourself with, madame.“ He flipped the mirrored visor down. “I assure you, there is no need for alarm.”

  But why had he dropped back, then sped ahead? They were in an official car with the standard of Abdu Resaba painted discreetly on the side. Surely no one would bother a vehicle that belonged to the royal family. Or would they? Was there trouble here she didn’t know about?

  Before she could ask, Saoud said, “We will be at the palace in another few minutes. You see? There it is, on the rise of the hill.”

  Whatever alarm Josie might have felt vanished at the sight. The road leading up to the palace was lined on both sides with royal palms and lights that glowed to guide their way. The palace, too, was aglow with light, and for a moment she felt as though she had awakened in the midst of a wonderful fairy tale, that the white limo wasn’t a limo at all but a magic carpet taking her up a sweeping road that led to a castle right out of the Arabian Nights.

  And to the prince who waited there.

  She felt a flare of excitement and tried to push it away. She was here because she had been forced to come by a man in whom she had no interest. This was all very glamorous; the private plane, the house he had arranged for her, the Arabian palace they were approaching. But...and the but was a very big one, she had not come to Abdu Resaba of her own free will. As long as she was here as an American representative of International Health, she would be forced by protocol to be polite. But that’s all. She would offer nothing beyond that.

  They drove closer to an archway that curved over the road. The chauffeur blinked his lights and two armed guards, wearing long red robes and fezes, stepped forward, weapons that looked like Uzi machine guns at the ready.

  “Baraka, stop!” one of them called out.

  The other shone a flashlight inside the car.

  “The lady is a guest of Prince Kumar Ben Ari from the United States of America,” Saoud said.

  “Ah.” One of the guards nodded. “It is you, Saoud. Salam Alekom.“

  “And upon you peace,” the black man answered. “May we go on?”

  The guard nodded. And to Josie he said in English, “Have an enjoyable evening, madame.“

  As they proceeded up the hill, the palace seemed to grow in proportion, rising in cream-colored magnificence, its turrets and towers pointed skyward in the shadow of the moon. As they drew closer she saw there were terraced lawns, gardens and lighted fountains that rose like prisms of clear crystal in the evening air.

  The curved portal entrance rose to a height of one hundred feet. Mosaic tile in shades of gold and blue and lavender were inlaid upon the color of cream, richly beautiful even in the shade of night.

  Saoud opened her door, and helping her out of the limousine, offered his arm to escort her toward the entrance where a man and woman waited beneath the arches.

  The man came forward. “Mesa al khair, evening of goodness,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Mesa annour,” Josie responded.

  “You speak our language,” the veiled women said.

  “I speak a little,” Josie acknowledged.

  “Welcome to the royal house of Ben Ari. You will to follow me, please.”

  “Go with them.” Saoud bowed from his waist. “Have a pleasant evening, madame.“

  “Thank you, Saoud.” She hesitated for a moment, then turned to follow the man and woman through the arched portal into the palace.

  Her first impression, in addition to the grandeur that took her breath, was of clean coolness and a sense of peace. She stopped for a moment, gazing about her in wonder. The walls and ceiling of the first room were in brilliant colors of mosaic tiles such as she had seen at the Alhambra in Granada and the Alcazar in Seville. Marble columns rose in beautiful simplicity to the curved, intricately carved arches.

  The man faded away into a darkened corridor, but the woman motioned Josie to follow her through a patio perfumed with jasmine and orange blossom, down another wide corridor and finally to a tall door where two robed men stood at attention. The woman spoke and one of the men sprang forward to open the door.

  Josie stepped into a room that literally took away her breath. Two of the walls were done in green-and-gold mosaic, as was the three-story-high ceiling. One wall was draped in scarlet velvet, the other with a magnificent tapestry. Before she could recover another man hurried forward, bowed and asked, “Miss Josephine McCall?”

  Josie nodded. In the room beyond she saw a group of people gathered around a central fountain. Kumar stood in the center of the group. He was speaking to someone, but when he saw her he murmured to the man at his side and hurried toward her.

  He wore a robe of a deep red color threaded with gold. His head was uncovered and in the glow of the overhead lights his thick black hair glistened like the wings of a hawk.

  “Salam alekom,” he said. “Welcome to my house.”

  “Shukran,” she answered.

  “I didn’t know you spoke our language.”

  “I speak a little, not very well I’m afraid.”

  Kumar smiled. “I will teach you all you need to know.” And before Josie could respond, he offered his arm and led her to the group gathered near the fountain.

  “This is Miss McCall,” he said by way of a general
introduction, and led her to a tall, spare man in his middle fifties.

  “May I present your United States consul, Mr. Aubrey Bonner,” Kumar said.

  Bonner took her hand. “Miss McCall. How nice it is to meet you. I was delighted when I heard that International Health was sending someone to Abdu Resaba. If there is any way in which I can be of assistance, you need only ask. I understand your office will be in the consulate building and I look forward to seeing you there.”

  He turned to the man and woman standing next to him. “Please allow me to introduce my assistant, Ed Petersen, and his wife. Ed, Edith, this is Miss McCall.”

  Mr. Petersen was a wiry-looking man, so trim that she bet he ran three miles every morning before breakfast. He had a full head of gray hair and a trim mustache. His clothes were...Josie searched for the word and came up with “natty.” His wife’s weren’t. Though her flowered dress was obviously expensive, it did little to improve her thirty-pounds-overweight figure.

  Edith Petersen murmured a polite greeting, looked Josie up and down and said, “We must have tea some time soon.”

  Next Josie was introduced to the members of Kumar’s cabinet and their wives. The men were polite and obviously curious. Their wives, both robed and veiled, were so shy they barely mumbled a greeting. But when Josie spoke a few words in their language they smiled and one of them, a young woman, began to speak to her. In a few moments so did the other women, all except Edith Petersen, who looked as though she disapproved of Josie’s friendliness.

  It was a little while before Josie noticed that the men had moved to one side of the room and the women to another. Although this annoyed her, she had been in both Guatemala and Mexico, as well as the Middle East long enough to know this was the custom and there was nothing she could do about it. Very likely the two sexes would come together over dinner, but in the meantime they would be separated. This would give her an opportunity to explain to the women why she had come to their country and perhaps even to elicit their help.

  Before she could begin, however, Edith Petersen said in English, “I’m very glad to meet you, Miss McCall. It will be a blessing to have someone of my own kind to talk to. I have nothing in common with these women. They’re light-years away from us intellectually.”

  Josie’s face flushed with embarrassment, for herself and for the Abdu Resaba women. Barely controlling her outrage, she managed to say, “I agree that we’re different, Mrs. Petersen, but I often think we have as much to learn from other ethnic groups as they have to learn from us.”

  With that she turned to the other women and said in her halting Arabic, “I have come to Abdu Resaba in the hope of helping to improve your medical facilities. Tomorrow I will visit your local hospital.”

  The young woman she had first spoken to shook her head. “Of course you mean to visit only the women’s section of the hospital. It would not be proper to go into the wards where there are men.”

  “I’m a nurse.” Josie smiled reassuringly. “I’m sure when I explain to the doctors and staff why I’m there, they will understand.”

  “I do not think so,” another woman said. “Besides, the men are in one section of the hospital, where they are attended by the doctors and male nurses. The women’s section is apart, attended by female nurses. If it is necessary for a doctor to see them, there is a woman doctor from Egypt who can be called upon in an emergency.”

  “Do you mean there isn’t a staff doctor on hand, if a woman has a medical emergency?”

  “No, there is not, madame,“ an older woman said. “It would be incorrect for a member of the opposite sex to look upon the body of a woman who is not his wife.”

  The other women nodded in agreement, while Josie stared at them and wondered how in the world she would break through hundreds of years of tradition to do the job she had come to do.

  * * *

  At dinner the men sat on floor cushions on one side of the low table, the women on the other.

  Black olives, small tomatoes, pickled lemons, radishes, figs and dates were on the table when the soup was served. It was harira, a chicken soup that had been thickened with flour and eggs and flavored with pepper and cinnamon.

  That was followed by artichokes in a lemon-and-saffron sauce, a sea bass covered with vegetables and spices presented on banana leaves, lamb cooked in a marinade and finally a steaming bowl of couscous.

  It was not a meal to be hurried and almost two hours went by before the table was cleared and the wheat pudding and hot mint tea were served.

  Like the other women, Josie had remained silent while the men did the talking. Now and then one of the men glanced at her. Several of them smiled and nodded, and a younger man whom she thought might be the husband of the young woman she had first spoken to passed her the bowl of figs and said in English, “You would like, yes?”

  There was only one of them who looked at her differently than the others. He was a middle-aged man with a round, heavy jowled face and a salt-and-pepper mustache that curved down to meet a line of whiskers that circled his mouth. There was something about him, a sly, knowing, speculative look that made her uncomfortable, and when she saw him watching her she lowered her gaze.

  Most of the conversation was far too fast for Josie to understand, but she sensed midway through the dinner that the discussion had become heated. The man with the speculative look said something in a loud voice, and when he did Aubrey Bonner’s face got red. Before Bonner could say anything, Kumar spoke sharply to the man with the mustache. Not intimiated, Mr. Mustache growled something under his breath. The man next to him, a thin fellow with small eyes and a large nose added his two cents’ worth, and suddenly all of the men at the table, including Aubrey Bonner and Edward Petersen, were shouting.

  Kumar let it go on for perhaps two minutes before he struck the table with the flat of his hand, and in a voice so low Josie could barely hear said, “Baraka! Enough!”

  In the silence that followed he turned to Aubrey Bonner and Ed Petersen. “I hope you will forgive the members of my cabinet for their bad manners,” he said in English. “My great-grandfather had a way of dealing with such discourtesies, but alas times have changed and today it is frowned upon to cut out a man’s tongue.”

  He turned to look at the man who had started it, and in a voice that sent a chill down Josie’s spine he said, “Though there have been times when I have been tempted.”

  Without taking his gaze from the man, he dipped his fingers into the bowl of lemon water next to his plate and when he had wiped them on a clean napkin said, speaking so slowly and evenly that even Josie understood, “You have been discourteous to my guests, Sharif Kadiri. You owe them an apology.”

  Kadiri’s mouth tightened. He did not speak.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Then wait!” Kadiri pushed himself back from the table. He snapped a string of words to the men on either side of him and all three of them stood and strode out of the room.

  When they had gone there was silence. At last Kumar said, “Please accept my apologies, Mr. Bonner and Mr. Petersen. The behavior of my ministers was inexcusable.”

  “Not your fault,” Bonner said. “But if I were you, Prince Kumar, I’d keep my eye on that fellow. He means to stir up trouble.”

  “I can assure you that it won’t be anything I can’t handle.”

  “There have been rumors—”

  “That we should not discuss in front of the ladies.” Kumar stood and offered a hand to Josie to bring her up beside him. “I’m sorry this had to happen the first time you have been in my home,” he said. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t occur the next time you visit.”

  That ended the dinner party. The remaining members of Kumar’s cabinet, embarrassed by what had happened, left with their wives. Aubrey Bonner asked if he could escort Josie back to her home, but before she could answer, Kumar said, “It’s kind of you to offer, but I will escort Miss McCall.”

  He walked Bonner and the Petersens to the door and when he had
bid them good-night he returned to Josie.

  For a moment neither of them spoke. She was ill at ease and wished she hadn’t let Aubrey Bonner leave without her. She didn’t want to be here alone with Kumar.

  “Would you care for an after-dinner drink?” he asked. “I didn’t offer it before because of our customs, but we are alone now and we can have a brandy, if you’d like.”

  Without waiting for her answer, he went to a carved wall cabinet and took out a bottle of brandy. “I’m afraid the evening didn’t turn out the way I planned,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why was...? His name is Kadiri? Why was he so angry? Is it something political?”

  “Matters of state,” Kumar answered, and thought how like an American woman to want to discuss politics. An Arabian woman would never have asked such a question. But then, this woman wasn’t like the women of his or any other Middle Eastern country.

  A moment ago, when the others left, she had seemed anxious and ill at ease. Now she seemed more relaxed and strangely enough he found himself wanting to talk to her about his concerns and the things that worried him.

  He took two crystal snifters from the cabinet and poured a splash of brandy into each of them before he motioned her to a low sofa under the tapestry and said, “Come and sit down for a moment and I will tell you what it is that troubles me.”

  He warmed his glass between his hands for a moment, then touched his glass to hers, and after he had taken a sip said, “There are men in my cabinet who want to sell our country’s oil to Azrou Jadida instead of to the United States.”

  “Azrou Jadida?” Josie frowned. The country was small but powerful. It was bordered on one side by the Caspian Sea and on the other side by Il Efran. Last year they had invaded that country. Thousands of civilians had been killed, countless women had been raped. They had bombed and ravaged the land, and when they were finished they partitioned one third of Il Efran for themselves.

  “It’s a warlike country,” she said with growing horror. “Surely you wouldn’t consider selling oil to them.”

  “Of course not, but there are men in my cabinet who would, a faction led by Sharif Kadiri. He has gathered a group of supporters. There have been a few disturbances, but it isn’t anything I can’t handle.”