Florence of Arabia (11 page)

Florence glanced out at the fountain. She had never been a very adept liar. "He'
s an executive producer. H
e makes things happen."

"And Mr. George—he is feeling better?"

Florence felt her mouth going dry. "Yes, thank you. You're very well informed."

"I own the hotel. My little project. The emir thought it might give me something to do. To occupy me. And now along comes your television project to occupy me even more. This will certainly keep me busy, wouldn't it? Or per
haps
that is the ... idea?"

Florence felt like a pane of glass.

"And Mr. Renard," Laila continued. "Ren
ard. He would be the Fox of the
team?"

"Programming," Florence squeaked.

"It's this desert air. It can be quite brutal. Drink some water." "You have me at a disadvantage."

"Yes, I rather do, don't I?" The sheika smiled. "So what part of the United
State
s govern
ment are you with? CIA? It's rat
her... out of the box for them, isn't it?"

"To be honest," Florence said, "I'm not quite sure myself, disingenuous as that may sound."

"You look as though you could use another drink. You needn't worry. I'm not going to say anything. As long as I'm satisfied this isn't something my husband cooked up to keep me from objecting to tha
t whorehouse he's got in Um-beseir. Actually, I'm rather intrigued. I
think we'd both better have another drink."

CHAPTER
NINE

M
aliq bin-Kash al-Haz was the younger brother of Emir Gazzir. .Walk/
and Gazzy had different mothers, as is generally the case when a father has sired more than thirty offspring.

The two were quite different in temperament: Gazzir plump, hedonistic and deliberate; Maliq lean, intense and headstrong. The one quality they shared was a deep venality. Maliq's brand was in some ways the more understandable, given the di
sadvantages of his birth. H
is mother had been one of the maids in the palace, a comely Yemeni whom the emir simply could not resist. (Not that the emir ever really resisted anything.) As soon as the chi
ld was born, she was packed off
to Sanaa with a sackful of Matari gold sovereigns. The child would have accompanied her, only the emir took a fancy to him upon seeing him for the
first time, declaring. "What a f
ine-looking devil is this!" He promptl
y named him Maliq (Matari for "f
ine-looking little bastard") and added him to his already abundant spawn, to be raised in the royal household.

Early on, Maliq displayed a precocious talent for leveling whatever playing field he was engaged upon. When a camel race was arranged on his eighth birthday, he sneaked into the stables the night before and fed all the other princelings' camels barley mixed with charcoal, which, as anyone knows who has ridden a camel that has gorged on barley a
nd charcoal, makes a camel part
icularly
cranky and unsubmissive. Maliq
won the race and the prize. Thus began a lifetime's fascination with racing.

As Matar's minister for sport, morality and youth endeavor. Maliq had, over the years, established the annual
Matar
i 500 auto rally as the high
point of the social season. H
e was not only the event's chairman and chief patr
on, he always participated in it and, G
od be praised, always won. Among the aficionados of the
Matar
i track, the question asked was not "Who won?" but "Who came in second?"

There had been spectacular upsets. Gentile Fabriani. the Italian, had thrown a rod in the 389th la
p and gone through the wall, Uldo Pantz, the dashing Bavarian, so tantalizingly close t
o the finish line, had mysteriously blown all four tires and c
ome to smoky grief in the midf
ield. And when,
in '99, the American Buddy Banf
ield hit an oil puddle that inexplicably materialized in front of his car as he sped toward certain victory—did not the whole racing world mourn?
It
had gotten harder to attract top-ranked drivers lo compete in the Matari 500. Maliq had to keep raising the second-
place purse to the point that it
had reached rather extravagant levels.

But the race had done much over the years to raise Matar's profile in the world. Matar was now synonymous throughout the world with fig oil, duty
-
free shopping, gambling and corrupt auto racing. The emir's decisio
n to go along with Florence's TV
Matar
idea was motivated not just by the prospect of another pipeline of cash into his exchequer, but also by a desire to show the world that
Matar
could take its rightful place at the global table of diversified industry.

But now,
in his early forties. Maliq had begun to weary of auto races. Perha
ps the novelty of winning every
Matari 500 had worn off. The trop
hy
room in his palace was s
o crowded with gold cups that it
had begun to stir in him not pride but a certain ennui. Inspired in part by his exiled mother, who had taken to e-mailing him from Sanaa, he had set his sights on a higher trophy: his brother's throne.

His brother Gazzv,
the emir, was not unaware of this fact. He had kept a close eye on his half brother ever the since the day of his twelfth birthday, when the camel he was riding violently pitched him into a nettle patch.

It was by Gazzy's assent t
hat Maliq was allowed to win every
Matar
500.

He knew it
would keep the young prince content and fulfilled. But it is written that a well-fed scorpion does not
lose his appetit
e; he only grows a larger stomach.
Such was the state of affairs at
the time of Florence's arrival in Amo-Amas.

Complicating the situation were the French, who tend to complicate every situation. They knew about Maliq's ennui and designs on the throne, and had cannily been maneuvering to exploit it. They maintained an embassy in Amo-Amas, and its staff had not been whiling away the lazy hot afternoons in coffeehouses along the quays. On the contrary, they were well aware that, in the terminology of the intelligence community, Maliq presented a target of the most delicious opportunity.

France had never really gotten over its humiliation at the hands of Churchill and his cartographers in 1922. "Revenge is a dish best served cold" may
be a Spanish proverb, but as Fr
Rochefoucauld put it, "How pleasant it is to cram cold dead snails dow
n the throat of an Englishman." H
ere was France's chance to even an ancient insult and, with any luck, inflict a little collateral damage on America.

Over the years, France had missed no opportunity to exploit strains in the U.S.-Wasabi relationship. When America declined to sell its latest fighter jet or other frightful technology to the Wasabis on the grounds that they might use it against Israel, France would step in and shrug by way of showing how profoundly reasonable it was, and say, "But
of course
you may have some of ours!" American congressmen representing the districts in which the American fighter jets were made would then go and clamor to the White House that "those fucking Frogs" were making a killing while they were "sucking hind tit." (Such an elegant idiom, the lobbyist's.) Invariably, the president would need the congressmen's votes on some upcoming bill and would relent. The Wasabis would get their new jets, stripped of a few high-tech features so as to make the transaction more palatable to the Israelis. No matter. A single Israeli lighter pilot could shoot down the entire Royal Wasabi Air Force and still have one hand free to hold his bagel.

Sensing that history was handing them a golden opportunity, the French intelligence service contrived to lure Prince Maliq to Paris.

The invitation came from the president of Auto-Vitesse SA. makers of the world-class racing cars as well as the distinctive Allez-Oop mini-coupes so popular
in America. Founded in 1912 by Emil Lagasse-Ponti,
the firm had made dozens of winners of Grand Prix auto races. The company expressed its desire to have Maliq drive a Vitesse in the upcoming
Matar
500. Maliq was not immune to such blandishments.

What
a
fete his French hosts put on for him when he came! Dinner at the Flysec Palace in Paris with President Villepin, a night at the opera, featuring an especially commissioned one-act entitled
The Thousand and One Laps,
with the outstanding French tenor Olmar Blovard in the starring role as
Malpique, the dashing thirteenth-century
Moorish came
l racer who saves Islam in beating the evil English crusader,
Bertram the Unwashed, to the finish line. The allusion to current events was not lost on the man sitting in the presidential box. surrounded by an adoring French female entourage. The next day Maliq's royal progress continued with
a
visit to the Vitesse plant outside Lyon for two days of celebrations and lunches and dinners. By the time he departed France in a government Airbus, with six gleaming new Vitesse Formule Un cars in the cargo hold, Maliq was firmly and permanently a Francophile. Who can resist the French when they deign to play the seducer?

Me
anwhile, the announcement in
Al
Matar
—the country's leading (and only) newspaper—
that the sheika Laila had been appointed V
EO of the new satellite television network, TV
Matar,
had not gone unnoticed in Paris.

A large complex
in a western suburb of Amo-Amas was made available to
Florence
and her team. During the first gulf war. it had housed
a
detachment of U.S. Special Forces commandos. Florence found a leftover graffito in her office, scribbled
there by some Ranger or Navy SEAI.: “G
ive War a Chance." The casual visitor would find mostly native
Matar
i employees. But the heart of the operation beat in quiet obscurity in a distant wing of the complex. The sheika's own office was physically separate—it was thought more prudent this way—in a black-glass skyscraper in downtown Amo-Amas, designed by the Finnish architect Po
Skaalmo,
who
had also executed the
Grand Foyer
at Infidel Land.

The work was proceeding at fever pace, twenty hours a day. What sleep was to be had was on cots in the office. But no one complained. Excitement and purpose coursed through their shop. Even Bobby and George were sniping less at each other. Uncle Sam flew in
for
a v
isit and pronounced himself delighted with their progress. He didn't whimper when Geo
rge showed him the invoices, thoug
h he did rem
ark that for this kind of money, they
could start a TV network back in the
State
s. Meanwhile, he had arranged for the necessary satellites.

"Got a great deal from the NSA on some used birds." He grinned in his wire-rimmed eyeglasses and slicked-back graying hair, the very picture of a 1950s General Motors executive. Was there anything they needed? Anything at all? He seemed to have an all-access backstage pass to the entire United States government. Florence no longer probed about his precise role within it. She was too busy, and why question a gift horse? She assumed that h
e was with the CIA. though Bobby
said he'd never seen him before. Perhaps he belonged to some directorate within a directorate, one of those star chambers
set up for a specific mission y
ears ago. which someone forgot to shut down—still operating like a probe launched at a distant planet decades before, proceeding deeper and deeper into the frosty night of space, autonomous, serene, oblivious.

As TV
Matar's chief of programming, Renard was in absolute paradise. What PR man hasn't dreamed of having his own television station with no client breathing
over his shoulder? This morning
Rick was doubly excited, since he wa
s previewing for Florence and L
aila the show that would be at the centerpiece of TVM's morning schedule.

"You're going to love ibis." he said. They were assembled in the screening room. Laila was wearing glasses and chain-smoking cigarettes, looking every centimeter the TV executive.

"This is our flagship. The tone-setter. The anchor, if you will."

"Weigh anchor. Rick." Florence
said. "I've got t
o meet with the fragrance people in half an hour."

Florence felt more like an advertising director these days than the godmother of Arab feminism. When not attending to technical details at the station, she would be furiously courting advertisers. Strict
ly speaking, it wasn't necessary, but the more ads they had,
the more legitimate the whole enterprise would look, and the more money would flow into Gazzy's coffers,
Laila
had been indispensable, attracting the manufacturers of the luxury goods sold in Matar's duty-free shops. She hinted lo recalcitrants that if they
didn't
advertise on her new television network, they would lose their franchises at Amo-Amas