Ark Storm (12 page)

*   *   *

Reluctantly, they left the sea as the sun began to dip. Reality began to intrude. Gwen wanted to keep it at bay just a while longer.

She smiled up at him as they carried the boards back to her house. They peeled off their wetsuits. Gwen almost gasped as she saw a vicious scar that cut down Daniel’s ribs.

“Where’s that from?” she asked.

“Long story,” he answered. “Got a hose?”

Gwen recognized a subject change when she heard one.

“Over there.”

Together they hosed down the boards then stacked them. Daniel grabbed the hose and turned it on himself. He stood there, eyes closed, utterly unself-conscious as the water cascaded down his tan body. God, scar or no scar, he was beautiful, thought Gwen. He
was
ripped, with the long, muscled body of the best surfers. Muscles that didn’t just look pretty in the gym but could generate real power. For a fugitive moment, Gwen just watched. Then she headed in to her house, brought out a towel for him.

“I do have a shower inside,” she said, handing him the towel.

“This is just fine,” he said, vigorously rubbing his hair.

“I don’t know about you,” said Gwen, not giving herself time to wonder if this were wise, “but I am starving. If I snagged a coupla pizzas from the freezer, would you like one?”

“I would fall down on my knees.”

*   *   *

They put away two pepperoni and cheese, washed down with two Coors, talking easily, laughing. Leo, Gwen observed, was a quick convert to Dan. He planted himself at Dan’s feet and gazed up adoringly until he got a ferocious back rub.

Gwen sat back, relaxed. She would forget, then every so often, she would remember.

“What’s on your mind, Boudy?”

She sighed. “Is it that obvious?”

“It comes and goes, likes clouds across the sun.”

“You’re a romantic, Dan.”

“I know trouble when I see it. Am I wrong?”

She shook her head. “No. You’re right. I just can’t talk about it.”

“If you need to, I can listen well enough.”

Gwen smiled. “Thanks, I reckon you can.”

Daniel got to his feet, cleared the dishes, washed them and stacked them in the drainer.

“I’d best be going,” he said.

Gwen nodded. “I think that’s wise.”

“Maybe this isn’t. “He pulled her in, eye to eye, bent his lips to hers, kissed her slowly at first, and as she responded, faster and deeper. Their bodies pressed together and Gwen could feel his muscles hard against hers.

To her intense frustration, he was the first to pull away.

“Hell of an afternoon and evening, Boudy.”

She nodded, catching her breath.

“I do believe I have left you speechless!”

“With outrage! Not awe.”

“Felt like it,” he said, with his infuriatingly cocky grin.

He grabbed his keys off the table, and with a jaunty wave, he was gone.

*   *   *

Long after she’d heard his car fade away into the night, Gwen stood on the deck, her dog standing sentry at her side. The cool air was moist against her skin, raising goose bumps. The moon shone palely above her, haloed by a shimmering meniscus. She gazed out over the mass of the ocean, wondering what was there, what was coming her way. An ARk Storm? A murderous boss? The long arm of the Peruvians. Paparuda? Whatever the hell that was.… She had the feeling she sometimes got in the barrel, when her exit was closing.

27

HURRICANE POINT, FRIDAY NIGHT/SATURDAY MORNING

Gwen slept badly, haunted by images of Messenger’s Ferrari closing on the cyclist, striking the killer blow, then speeding off into the night. She pushed herself from bed, blowing out breaths of panic. She was going to have to do something; she just had no idea what. Run then think, she decided.

She was just lacing up her trainers outside on her deck when a throaty roar had her jogging round to the front of her house. She stood, hands on hips, as Daniel Jacobsen emerged from his Cougar.

He was carrying a bag from Bruno’s Deli. She could smell the croissants. He lifted up two coffees in a carry tray and smiled.

Gwen dropped her hands from her hips. It was impossible to be annoyed with this man. And that should have also annoyed the hell out of her.

“I come bearing breakfast. It’s Saturday morning. Don’t tell me you have to be somewhere.”

She smiled back. “Not for a while. But you’ll have to run with me first. Pain, then pleasure.” A lie, she thought; she loved to run. From the look of his body, he did too.

“Have to be barefoot for me,” he said, indicating his flip-flops.

“We could swim. Sea’s calm.”

“I have no trunks.”

Gwen grinned. “My cottage was built by naturists. You’ll thrill their ghosts.”

“Yeah, and hopefully not the sharks.”

“I’m sure you’ll just stun them.”

“Swim it is, then. You’re going to thrill the ghosts too?”

“Tempting, but no.”

*   *   *

The water was cold enough to give her a blood rush. It would have been bliss to swim without a swimsuit, thought Gwen, to feel the cold, salty water sluice over her.

“What the hell.” She wriggled, pulled off her suit, balled it up, and hurled it up onto the sand. She grinned at Daniel. “Even.”

She struck off at a fast front crawl. Daniel matched her stroke for stroke. She wondered how long he could keep up the pace. She glanced at her watch. They swam out beyond the gentle swell, a safe distance from the cliffs. Gwen found her rhythm, gliding through the water, falling into an almost mesmeric state. After half an hour, she turned around. Daniel turned with her, swam alongside, even when she upped her pace for the last quarter mile.

Time to get out of the water. She was too cold and too hungry to be coy. She strode from the waves. Daniel emerged with her. Neither of them said anything. Gwen felt an almost magnetic yearning to turn to him, somehow managed to stop herself. They grabbed their towels. Gwen secured hers round her body, was peripherally aware that Daniel did the same, waist down. She turned to him. Saw the same look in his eyes she felt in hers.

“Er, well, I think we’ve earned our breakfast,” murmured Gwen.

Daniel just smiled.

“You going to tell me about that scar?” asked Gwen as they jogged up the hill to get warm.

“If you tell me what’s been bothering you.”

“You won’t be able to help,” said Gwen. She glanced across at him. “I don’t mean that in an offensive way. It’s just…” She shrugged.

“I didn’t take offense. Like I said to Riley, I can keep my mouth shut.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

*   *   *

They took turns in the shower, Dan insisting Gwen go first. When she was done, Gwen heated the coffee in her microwave, laid out plates, squeezed some oranges. Dan emerged from the shower and walked up to Gwen, smiling at her, smelling of soap. And of man. Gwen swiveled, grabbed a tray, thrust it at him, a necessary barrier.

Together they carried breakfast out onto the table on the deck.

Gwen sipped her coffee. “So, Daniel, the scar…”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I do.”

He nodded, looked out across the huge blue sea. “Before I became a journalist, I was in the military. I joined up the minute I graduated Harvard. It was 2005. Nine-eleven had a big impact on me. I lost my uncle. Fuck of a way to die. It wasn’t about revenge, joining up—well, maybe a bit, at first. It was more a feeling that enough words had been spoken.
I wanted to do something.
I had skills they could use. They did use them, but I wanted to see the front line too, go where the rest of the platoon went. Iraq and Afghanistan. Wrong place, one day. Big IED. Shrapnel everywhere. Scar.” He turned back to Gwen.

“Is that why you left?”

“My best buddy died. I was inches from him. I’d done three tours. Reckoned it was time to quit while I was still walking unaided.”

She wanted to say
wow,
she wanted to kiss his lips. Her cell phone rang. Lucy. Shit, she’d almost forgotten.

“Boudy, running late,” breathed her friend. “Can we meet at twelve instead of eleven thirty?”

“Hi Luce, no prob.” She clicked off the call, turned back to Dan.

“I have to go out.”

He got to his feet, walked round to her, drew her up and in. His kiss was pure temptation. They both broke away.

“See you round, Boudy.” He picked up her shopping list, scrawled down a number. “In case you want a swim buddy again.”

Gwen watched him go. She could pretend she didn’t want him, knew it was one battle she was going to lose.

28

A SUPER-YACHT, MOORED OFF SAN DIEGO, SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Sheikh Ali Al Baharna sat in his stateroom aboard his two-hundred-and-eighty-foot yacht,
Zephyr,
currently moored off San Diego. The yacht was all sleek modernism, but the Sheikh could have stepped forward from any of the past fourteen centuries. Part of it was the
juhayman
, the facial attitude of his Bedu forbears, one of harshness, of disapproval. In company, he had to remind himself to wear his Western mask. Part of it was his clothing: he wore the traditional flowing white
kandoora
, and the
ghutra
, the white headdress, secured with a black
akal
. Part of it was the timeless scent that clung to him, the oil-based
oud
of his perfume, narcotic almost. It mixed with the spicy scent of the
bakhoor
frankincense which glowed in a
mabkhara
burner in the middle of the room.

The detritus of a game of backgammon lay before him and his guest. He took a sip of cardamom-flavored coffee served in a small golden cup. He was an elegant man. His moves were graceful as he waggled his hand, signifying to the uniformed waiter who hovered with the ornate golden Arabic coffeepot that he wanted no more. Three cups a day. Never more.

He laid down his cup on a mahogany side table and lounged back on the sofa. His unusually tall body was lean, the result of self-deprivation and a punishing exercise routine. He looked more like his Bedu forebears than did many of the modern Arab merchant princes, whose bodies, genetically long inured to a minimal diet in the deserts, had grown fat with the plenty brought by oil. Those close to him knew the asceticism wasn’t born of vanity, but of
al-jihad al-akbar
, the greater jihad, the internal jihad sanctioned by the Koran. He waged his own internal war against the temptations of the flesh.

This was a war of many battles, and during his young manhood, when he had studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford University, he had lost those battles. He had drunk alcohol with women who were free and with women for whom he paid. He had taken drugs. He had forsworn his five-times-daily prayers. He had been the despair of his father, who feared Allah and the wrath of the ruling Al Saud family perhaps in equal measure. With good reason.

Sheikh Ali and his father were Shia Muslims, from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where the country’s huge oil wealth gushed from the ground. His father had built the family fortune from modest means. He had been a driver for Aramco, the state oil company, and had quickly seen the opportunities for supplying the burgeoning oil industry. The ruling Al Sauds were keen to throw a few carrots to the Shia, who, despite being in the majority in the Eastern Province, were in the minority in Saudi as a whole and were routinely discriminated against by the Sunnis. So the Al Saud, ever pragmatic, keen to stabilize the Eastern Province, had granted the substantial trading concessions which allowed Sheikh Ali’s father not just to prosper, but to build over his lifetime an empire. On his death, his eldest son, Ali, had taken over his mantle and, with shrewd investments and some spectacular insider trading, had magnified the fortune.

He had also come back to the ways of Allah. Three things had wrought this: the first was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and with it the arrival of half a million infidel Crusader American troops in the Holy Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; the second was the realization that the Al Saud were, despite their prodigious wealth, never going either to defend the purity of the Kingdom and Islam, or enfranchise the Shia in the Eastern Province. The third thing was meeting the radical preacher, Sheikh Haider Al Jibrin, in San Diego, when Ali al Baharna went there to do his Masters in Economics.

And so merciful Allah had brought him back to the holy life that was real life. For many years now he had been following his path, still waging jihad, internal jihad, he was keen to remind his friends and acolytes. Only the chosen few knew the true extent of his wider jihad.

His eyes might have suggested it. They had a distant focus that seemed to see paradise, and they shone with an unflinching certainty that his was the way, his was the right and the just path, no matter how many innocents were slaughtered along the way.

His own private library might have revealed some of his philosophy—it was a history of armed struggles from the War of American Independence to the Partition and the emergence of Pakistan as a separate nation. History was littered by precedents, by terrorists and freedom fighters becoming legitimate. He liked the quote that
treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper none dare call it treason
. The same would be true of jihad. Once the Holy War had been won, the warriors would be hailed and sanctified as the legitimate government.

And thanks to the only vice he could not conquer, his desire to make money and more money still, though he had more than he could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes, he could prosecute that Holy War, arm the warriors. To cover his tracks, he was careful never to meet with the Jihadis in public. He had no need to. His money met them and spoke for him. And if the price of waging jihad was consorting with infidels, it was a price worth paying. They were tools. To be used and eliminated if and when necessary. So he drank his coffee and he smiled his smile.

“What news on Project Zeus?” he asked, a faint rolling of his “r” giving his otherwise Oxford-honed English an exotic lilt.