Florence of Arabia (4 page)

"I
had the most vivid
dream last night. In Turkish. I
was on the Bosporus with Lord Byron and Shelley. We were each in one of those idiotic tourist pedal boats, trying to get from one side to the other, only the continents started moving apart. What do you make of that? You look awful. Did we not sleep last night?"

"George, Nazrah H
amooj asked
me for asylum
."

"If you think that's more importa
nt than interpreting my dream, f
ine."

Florence told him what had happened, leaving out the detail about Prince Bawad's ride-'em-cowboy fantasy.

"Hmm
m. I knew something must be cooking. Cables between he
re and Kaf
fa have been living fast and furious. They scrambled a Royal Wasabi transport ou
t of Jacksonville to Dulles. Oh,
the humanity oh, the paperwork."

George caught the look on Florence's face. "That was she on board? Oh, dear. I hear the sound of sharpening steel."

"I'll call Tony Baze
ll in Kaffa." Florence said. "Maybe he can—"

"Wh
at? Storm the palace? forget it,
Maybe they'll let her off with thirty lashes." George peered at Florence. "Are we leaving something out? Are we not telling all? Out with it."

"I... Nah
."

"In Italian." It was the language they used for office gossip. She told him.

"Mamma mia
All four? Simultaneously? Well, I knew the
prince entertained, but I had
no idea. Filthy old goal. No wonder the poor thing wanted asylum. She probably dreamed of a nice, boring
life in the 'burbs. Apron, ging
ham frock,
pies cooling on the windowsill,
golden retriever named ... Brandy, stretching class on Tuesday, yoga on Thursday. Lord and Taylor's trunk show.
Jeopardy!
every night at seven-thirty during dinner with a husband named Cliff... no, Brad. Brad the Impaler. Who would ask for oral sex only on his birthday. Now she's on her way back to Wasabia. Land of fun and sun. Well, darling, you tried. God
knows
you tried."

Two days later. Florence calle
d Bazell at the U.S. embassy in Kaffa,
who put her through to the embassy guy who kept the C
hop-Chop Square tally. Nazrah H
amooj had been executed that morning at dawn by sword, for the crime of adultery.

"She was pretty calm about it,
from what we heard. Sometimes they make a hell of a fuss. Last month they did Prince Rahmal's wife. Man. did she put up a light. Yelling, screaming, kicking. They finally jabbed her full of Valium so they could get a clear cut. Tomorrow's entertainment is they're stoning a w
oman to death for schtupping—get
this—the black cook. It's the Thousand and One Nights. They can't get over it. Is this a great country or what?"

CHAPTER
THREE

I
f Florence had an office
with
a door, she would have
shut
it and had a
private
cry,
but
she didn't, so she used the ladi
es' room. She remained there most of the morning, until George sent someone in to get her. When she emerged, he said, "Frankly, you'd look better under a veil." and put her in a cab and sent her home.

She unplugged the phone and went to bed and had a dream in which
Nazrah
was lying on the hospital bed with mascara streami
ng down her cheeks, and Shazzik,
dressed in a female nurse's uniform, was administering a lethal injection.
Nazrah
's body gradually shrank and was sucked into the tube and up into the plastic drip bag. where she was imprisoned, screaming silently for help. Florence started awake, so drenched in perspiration that she got up and took a shower.

She went to work the next morning and stayed at the office until past midnight for the next three days.

When she was finished, she printed three numbered copies, placed them in
top secret
folders, gave one to Duckett's secretary, another to George, and sent the other straight to the top.

"So this is what
you
've been holed up doing lo these three days?" George opened the folder and read the cover
page and let out a whistle. H
e read at the speed it look him to turn the fifty-odd pages.

"Well?" she asked.

"Couldn't put it down. The middle bit could use some bulling. It was Tallulah the second, not Tallulah the third, who insti
gated the practice among the H
awawi of female circumcision—
quis’ha
,
by the way, not
quish'aa."

"Other than that?"

‘I’m
sure it helped to get it out of your system." "I sent it to Duckett."

George stared. "Why don't you just stab him in the he
art with Malal's dagger and get
it over with?"

Their boss kepi a nineteenth-century gold and silver dagger on his desk, a gilt of Prince Malal, Wasabia's minister of agriculture. It was probably the cheapest present ever given by a Wasabi royal, but Duckett was proud of it. He used it as a letter opener, and sometimes brandished it to make a point.

"George, I'm asking you what you think."

"I hardly know where to begin. This goes a bit beyond our traditional brief. You didn't really send this to him? Come on." Florence nodded. "And to S." "You sent it to S?"

"Why not?'This way Duckett can't st
op it. You're the one who's always saying it's easier to ask fo
rgiveness than permission." "Well." George said. "Well, well, well,
Wow."

Florence's phone rang. "Florence? Mr. Duckett wants you. It's urgent." "Do you want to be cremated." George said, "or do you prefer traditional burial?"

FLORENCE ENTERED
DUCK KI
T'S office without knocking and
closed the door behind her. It shut with a portentous
click.

Charles Duckett was leaning back in his chair, as if trying to distance himself physically from the document in front of him. He was looking at it as though it were a dead animal, far gone in putrefaction, that had bee
n malevolently
dumped upon a pristine altar consecrate
d to solemn rituals and tended to by votaries of an elite cult
.

The cover sheet looked up insistently.

FEMALE EMANCIPATION AS
A MEAN'S
OF
ACHIEVING LONG-TERM POLITICAL STABILITY
IN THE
NEAR EAST: AN
OPERATIONAL
PROPOSAL
Submitted by
Florence
Farfaletti. DDASNEA Circulation:
SecState.
DDASNEA

"I know you've
been under a strain, Florence. I understand that—" "Charles, the reason I
sent it to S before getti
ng your approval was to relieve
you of responsibility. And to be honest, I didn't think I'd get your approval. So
what do think?"

"What do I t
hink?" Duckett
said absently. "Of the fact that one of my deputies, whose actions reflect directly on me. has circulated a proposal calling for the fomenting of revolution in a country that supplies one third of America's energy needs, a country to which we are formally allied, to which we are vitally and strategically linked... circulated it and sent it direc
tly to the ... secretary of stat
e? What do I
think'?"

"I truly believe that—"

"Do you see this phone on my desk. Florence?" "Yes, Charles, I see the phone."

"Any moment now, that phone is going to ring. It will be S calling.
The secretary would like to see you, Mr. Duckett. Right away.
That's what the voice will say."

"Charles—"

"During my time here. I've endeavored to make my infrequent visits to S occasions of light. Sometimes, given the region it falls to us to superintend, that is not always possible. But at least when the secretary sees me walk into his office, he does not say to himself,
W
hy, here's Charlie Duckett! Say,
isn't he the one whose staff sends me cockamamy proposals to undermine the social structure of America's most s
trategic partner in the Middle East? Why,
come on in. Charlie boy! What's that Skunk Works of yours cooked up this time? Ho ho. Certainly hope
The Washington Post
doesn't find out I've been reading proposals to overthrow Wasabia. Ha ha. Might makes things a bit sticky at t
he dinner I'm giving for Prince
Bawa
d next Thursday at my house. Oh,
and by the way. Charlie old bean, what's
this
about one of your people operating an underground railroad for his runaway wives? Gosh, why didn't I think of that? What better way to promote harmony
between our two countries! Let
's
give that girl of yours a promotion!
Are you out of your fucking
mind.
Farfaletti?"

"I made it
clear to the secretary in my cover letter that you hadn't signed off on it."

Duckett rubbed his f
orehead. The lines were back. "I
protected you. I went the extra mile. Now I'm beginning to think you're working for them."

"Them? Who are you talking about?"

"Them."
Duckett did the Langley H
ook.

"CIA? Charles, I work for the State Department. I work for you."

"No, no. This could only be an Agency operation. To destroy State—from within. It's happened before, you know. In Quito."

"Charl
es, I'm on your side. I'm just t
rving to think outside the box."

"What-box? Pandora's?"

"If we want to bring about change in the Middle East, this is the way t
o do it. I'm convinced of it. It
might be the only way."

"How do I explain? Where do I begin? It is not our job to bring about change in the Middle East"

"It's not?"

"No, it is not. O
ur
job is to manage reality."

His phone rang. The shadow of the angel of death passed over Charles Duckett's features as he answered. "Yes." he said grimly, swallowing. "Yes. Right away." He hung up. "Satisfied, Florence?"

"Let me go with you. Let me make the case. I can."

Duckett rose slow
ly. His eyes had gone glassy. "I
was up for the ambassado
rship, you know. It was mine. It
was all set. They told me."

He shuffled out of his office like a mental patient in slippers going off to get his noon meds.

George was wailing for her. "Where would you like me to ship your remains?"

THE NEXT MORNING Florence received by interoffice notification that her request for transfer to the visa section of the U.S. consulate in the Cape Verde islands bad been approved, effective immediately.

"You might have told me you'd applied," George said. "I thought we had a relationship."

Florence started glumly at the paper.

"Well, let's look on the bright side." he said. "Bracing sea air on all sides, steady climate, especially during hurricane season. And whale-watching second to none. A lot of the harpooners on the Nantucket whale ships were Cape Verde men."

"Shut up, George."

"I thought i
t was a damn slick proposal. Oh,
hell. I'll miss you." "I'm not going to Cape Verde. For God's sake."

"Yo
u're not going to quit? Just go,
put in a few months. Duckett's due for a rotation, he'l
l be gone before you know it. Thi
nk of it as a vacation. Couple of months on the beach in Cape Verde, nights hobnobbing with the local gratin. You'll be back before you know it, tanned, rested and ready. Come on, Firenze."

George was the only one outside her family who called her that
.
And he'd guessed it. It was the baptismal name her father, a native of Florence, had insisted on. The priest had initially refused, there being no Saint Firenze. but there are few theological issues that can't be resolved with a hundred-dollar bill. Florence Americanized the name in the fifth grade after she'd had enough abuse from classmates. But George much preferred Firenze to Florence, which he said sounded like the cleaning woman's name.

"I'm out of here." she said. She kissed George on the forehead and collected her things and left. What now? There were a dozen foundations in Washington whe
re her knowledge of the Middle E
ast would be better used than on an archipelago off
the coast of Senegal. Where bet
ter, she figured, to sink back into the earth than a foundation? But what a shame, what a waste.