Florence of Arabia (13 page)

"Tell Azzim—no hurry, eh?"

The emir chuckled to himself. I le looked out past the silk lent folds toward
the palm-fringed
lagoon, where
the
women loitered
bare-breasted in the waist-deep
shallows, like the three ladies of Baghdad, braiding one another's hair.

"Will my lord be taking a swim before
lunch?"

"Well, if
you're going
to chase after me with telephones,
Fetish
, there would be no
point.
I
mean,
would
there'.-'"

Fetish
smiled and bowed. "1 am confident that my lord will receive no further
interruptions."

"In that case"—the emir
sniffed
—"I will take my refreshment in the lagoon.
Then
1 will take my lunch. We'll have the lobsters and the caviar with
the
creme fraiche. To make our Russian guests feel at home. And then the Sultani orange and myrlleberry sherbets."

"Excellent,
lord."

So picturesque, the girls, the way
they
arrayed
themselves
in the lagoon like
natives
in
the Gauguin painting,
their skins glistening with oils in the sunlight shafts that pierced the
palm
canopy.

"
Fetish
, when you
present
the sherbets, place a large
pearl
atop each mound."

"The cultured pearls, or the natural Gulf pearls?"

The emir considered. "The Gulf. It's a special occasion,
Fetish
. Really, what a terrible miser you can be." As my lord commands."

UNCLE SAM CALLED
D
Florence, sounding delighted. "Goodness, goodness, goodness, did
you
ever kick up a sandstorm.
They're
h
aving meetings about it at the U
N. The Wasabi delegate demanded an apology from the Matari delegate." "Wait till you see next week's prime-time lineup."

"I'll be watching. Now.
you
watch out for yourself, young lady.
There
are snakes in that desert, keep a low profile. Pay attention to
your
man Thibodeaux."

It
was tricky, conducting polls in a country like Wasabia. This fell to George, who was naturally inclined, inasmuch as the State Department's standard approach to any problem was to study it until it organicall
y expired. He hired a Dutch firm
in The Hague (a writabl
e geographical synonym for inof
fensiveness) to conduct a Trojan-horse phone survey of Wasabi households. Most of the questions had to do with imported vegetables.

George
presented the results to Florence and Rick and
Laila
. Bobby was not there, occupied as he was of late with security matters, or what he called "proactive pre
-
emption."

"T
hey seem to be eating it up." G
eorge said. "We're basically number one in Wasabia."

"If there's such a thing as ‘
must-see TV,' thi
s is it." "Good job programming.
Renard." Florence said. Rick nodded.

"H
ow are we doing with the men?" Florence asked.

"Not great among the conservatives. A lot
of TV sets are being turned off
or tossed out into the street. Good news for Sony. The younger men seem to be rather fascinated." George looked up from his papers and sighed. "This isn't terribly scientific. I'd have preferred a more longitudinal study over—"

"We don't have time. What else?"

"Four fifths of women said they
want her to take off her
ab
aaya
on-screen."

"1 don't think we're there quite yet."
Laila
said. "Azad
e is a blossom that we ought to let bloom gradually."

"Two thirds want fewer recipes," George continued, "and more sex, and an overwhelming majority want Britney Spears on to talk about her navel piercings. I don't know how that question got in there. I didn't put it in. I've never reallv gotten the point of Britney Spears."

"H
ow's Yasmeen's book doing?"

"Gangbusters. We're giving it away, of course, since women can't have credit cards. Sending it from Holland and France. The Wasabi customs agents have been confiscating about half of them. We're having to get creative in the packaging and mailing origins. We've been labeling the boxes Tulips' or "Chocolate' and marking them "Perishable.
^-
But we'll have to shift strategy, probably. FedEx is being difficult."

"Thank you, George. Good work."

"We'll do another survey next week, after the new show."

THE NEW
show
was
Cho
p-Chop Square,
a prime-time soap opera about a royal family living in an unnamed country that looked uncannily similar lo Wasabia. It debuted in the eight
p.m
. prime-t
ime slo
t and was being denounced from f
ive hundred mosques by dawn the next day. The Wasabi Information Ministry called it "an abomination before God."

Bobby, looking more sleepless than usual, repor
ted that the grand mullah of Mu
k, Wasabia's leading religious authority—and certainly no cream puff, he—was preparing to issue "the mama of all fatwas."

"Well." Laila said, drawing on another cigarette, "that'll melt the wax in Gazzy's ears."

Florence noted that Laila seemed to be reveling in it all. She ascribed this not so much to the
“
fun" TV
Matar
had unleashed among the Wasabis as to the predicament into which it had thrust her husband, the emir. Laila confided to her that there had been a rather royal scene the night before.

The emir had said, "What are you and that American woman doing, in the name of God the most merciful? Tallulah himself has called me—
thrice."

"He called here first, darling. I told him you were at U
m-beseir. Unwinding from the rigors of your duties here."

"There's no need for that, madame. You might have informed me about the content of this—this television station of you
rs. By the prophet's holy beard,
Laila. What are you and
this American woman doing? “I h
ear
things about her."

"She's a very shrewd businesswoman. Would you like to see how
much money you made last week? I
have the figures. Here."

"Um,
Are these ... true?"

"These, darling, are only the beginning. Has it not escaped my lord's notice—" "Will you
please
not call me that? What has gotten
into
you?" "Perhaps it's what
you
have gotten into." "Hav
e I taken more wives? No."

"Is that your definition of fidelity?"

"Laila. you arc giving me pains in the ch
est. You must stop. Do you want Hamdul to be fatherless?" It
was the emirs practice to fake chest pains whenever he found himself cornered.

"Shall I su
mmon the royal cardiologist?" L
aila said.

"It's passed. Not that you'd
ca
re."
H
e studied the sheet of paper
with the figures. "I must say,
these
are
impressive."

"So is this." L
aila handed him a clipping from
Al-Ahram,
the Pan-Arabic newspaper. The headline said.
is
the
"pudding
of
matar"
the
new
saladin?

The story had been written by George and placed by Renard and paid for by Bobby.

TV Matar,
the new satellite television station based in Amo-Amas. comes with a bold agenda and is causing speculat
ion throughout the region that E
mir Bin Haz. until now thought to be merely content to rake in his Churchillian riches and disport himself at his "winter palace" has a heart that, contrary to reports of faintness. appears to beat strongly indeed.

"H
mm." said Gazzy. frowning. "My lord is not pleased?" " 'Pudding of Matar'?"

"Darling, they
're calling you the new Saladin,
for heaven's sake. Accept the compliment."

"Well." Gazzy sai
d, tossing the clipping to the f
loor. "this is your thing, not mine."

"Bv all means, come aboard, dear husband. Join me." She stroked his cheek tenderly. "It has been a very long time .. ." "Hmm .. ." "Darling?" "Yes, darling?"

"You have been busy, and I don't want
to catch something." "Really, L
aila!"

"You
are
not the offen
ded one. Gazzir. Don't have a P
otemkin tantrum with me. I am making a hygienic point."

"You certainly know how to spoil the mood."

"Oil, for heaven's sake. H
amdul is more mature. And he's ten years old. All I'm asking for is a blood test. Hardly unreasonable. You have your blood changed every month as it is."

"Never mind. Now. what about this television?"

"What about it?"

"It's got Tallulah
in a
temper."

"Darling, you detest Tallulah and the Wasabis. And 'this television' is going to make
you
one of the richest men in the gulf, not to mention 'a new Saladin.' If there's a problem. I'm not getting what it is."

"I'll have to discuss it with my ministers."

"I'm sure they'll be full of wisdom, and you will emerge wiser than ever." "God be praised." the emir said, "there are times when I wonder if I mated with a she-devil!"

"You used to
say
that to me in bed. Our first night at the Connaughl. Oh. what a
lion
was
my
lord," she t
eased tenderly, stroking his cheek.

He wanted her badly, but he was not about to l
ower himself to having a blood test. He stomped off
to continue his growling in private. Yet he was also tempted to smile, for this projected advertising revenue stream was indeed like a gush of sweet water in the baking sand of the desert. And it was pleasant enough to be called the new Saladin, even if he was not quite clear who the infidels were.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

T
he
gist of what Delame-N
oir was ex
plaining to Maliq, as they sat
drinking coffee in
the grand salon of the Palais F
ramboise outside Paris—headquarters of
Delame
's corner of the French government—was that the moolahs were key to the whole business. Maliq was impatient and uncomfortable. He did not enjoy being condescended to by the tall, el
egant, exquisitely tailored man,
who kept dropping knowing references to Wasabi and Matari history.

Dominique Delame-N
oir was head of the Onzieme Bureau, which undertook France's more sensitive foreign operations. He was also the author of a monumen
tal account of the 1922 Middle E
ast peace settlement, written
from the French point of v
iew, entitled
We Will t
ake
the Lebanon
and
Syria,
and
You Can Keep the Jews and the Palestinians.
He spoke three dialects of Arabic, also Pashtun and Kurdish: he would ap
ologize—perhaps overdramatically—for his Farsi. H
e also published poetry in Arabic.
Le
Soir
's
critic called it "an attempt to
fuse the obtuse mysticism of Gibran with the hypercaf
feinated,
wall-eyed nihilism of Sartre." Whatever.

"Of course." Delame-Noir said to Mali
q with the air of a rising soufflé,
"the dialectic that was in place in the early
eighteenth century, between Rafiq and the imam of Muk,
this is not something we would want to see in the new Matar?"

Maliq countered with an opacity of express
ion intended to signal that his
brain was so occupied weighing t
he nuances and permutations that h
e had no neurons to waste on trivial facial muscles. In truth, he didn't know what the hell Delame-Noir was talking about..
Just get to the part
where I become emir.