The Sheik's Command (18 page)

B
efore Zakir could order his two generals to mobilize protection for the new satellite installations they were interrupted by radio reports beginning to come in from across Al Na’Jar about bombings at the hidden military sites.

Zakir’s jaw clenched.

Those installations were all marked on the map Nikki had stolen.

“The waves of sabotage will shut down military communications systems across most of the country!” barked one of his generals.

There was no shred of doubt in Zakir’s mind now—the woman he’d invited into his home and his bed was a traitor. Enemy. Hatred sliced into his heart, and bitterness filled his mouth. He issued a rapid series of orders to his generals, who then clicked their boots with a slight bow of their heads and departed with staccato steps echoing down the halls.

Zakir pressed his intercom, called for one of his Gurkhas. While he waited for the man to arrive he poured water into
a glass, quickly swallowing a handful of the pills Tariq had prescribed him to reduce blood pressure around the optic nerve.

When his Gurkha reported, Zakir instructed the guard to retrieve the small bottle Nikki had stashed atop the medicine cupboard in the doctor’s rooms. He ordered him not to touch it with his fingers but to slip it into a paper bag. Zakir wanted to preserve the fingerprints on the glass.

While he waited for his Gurkha to return, Zakir placed his hands on the back of a chair, bent his head and closed his eyes, trying to gather himself, trying not to self-destruct with the fury of betrayal, or the pain he felt at allowing himself to fall—so damn hard—for another Juliet spy sent to seduce him in order to destroy the Al Arif dynasty.

How could you be such a fool!

What truly slayed him was the skill with which Nikki had manipulated his emotions, how she’d touched on the things so dear to him—his family, his love for the desert, his deep loyalty to his country. She’d deceived him with her apparent kindness and compassion, her knowledge of his people. And she’d apparently used innocent children to do it. Zakir had no doubt Samira’s disappearance was now part of some elaborate scheme she’d cooked up once she found out via the Internet that he was going to marry one of those women to secure his rule.

Plus she’d coaxed him into revealing his Achilles’ heel—his impending blindness.

Zakir swore softly.

She’d undoubtedly already passed this information to his enemies. He was going to face a challenge to his throne whether he caught her or not.

The Gurkha guard returned with the bottle in a paper packet. Zakir removed it using a piece of cloth. He held just
the lid, lifting it to the light. Inside was one opaque white capsule.

“Take this pill and this bottle,” Zakir said very quietly as he replaced the jar in the paper bag. “Have it flown via Black Hawk directly to the royal pathologist in Al Na’Jar. Tell him I want prints lifted from this glass, and I want to know what the powder inside this capsule is. And I want it before nightfall.” He inhaled carefully. “If the pathologist needs laboratory access to identify the powder, get it, but make sure he is isolated. Because no one, understand,
no one
from the King’s Council—not even my emissaries—can know about this.”

As Zakir gave the orders, word came in over the radio of another blast. Yet another satellite installation had been sabotaged by insurgents and several more of his Sheik’s Army troops had died in the explosion.

Zakir summoned two more Gurkhas and calmly, coolly ordered his men to have Nikki Hunt followed 24/7, but to never allow her to know that she was under scrutiny, and to give her free rein, even if she attempted to leave the palace grounds.

“Your goal is to learn who she makes contact with, then put tails on those people and follow them to additional contacts. I want to see if they’ll lead us to the source of this insurgency.” Zakir paused, the vision in his right eye now blurring again, as well. These episodes were coming back-to-back, and the darkness was not recovering in his left eye at all now. But he wasn’t ready to go blind yet. He wanted to hold on to his vision long enough to look into Nikki’s eyes when he sentenced her. To death.

“I want her every move recorded. Report back to me regularly.”

Meanwhile, Zakir would mobilize the rest of his army for counterattack should Nikki lead him to an enemy base.

As soon as his men left his office, Zakir dialed Tariq’s number. He paced, waiting for Tariq to pick up.

“Do you know what time it is here?” Tariq said, his voice thick with sleep.

“It’s urgent, Tariq,” he said quietly. “I have a possible lead to the insurgents. I need to know the status of the private investigation into Nikki Hunt.”

“
She
is your lead?”

“Possibly.”

“The same woman being vetted for betrothal? For queen of Al Na’Jar?”

Zakir pinched the bridge of his nose tightly. “Have they got anything on her yet?”

Tariq was silent for a moment. “I am sorry, brother.”

Zakir cursed to himself. His brother had instantly deduced that once again Zakir had been led by his libido into a relationship with a female traitor. “There is nothing to be sorry about,” he snapped. “The woman will lead us to our enemies, and that is what we want. But I need to know what our investigators have on her ASAP.”

“I have not received a report yet—I’ll call our investigators at once.”

“Tell them that this woman’s name is likely not Nikki Hunt. Her passport is probably false.” Zakir hesitated, suddenly overwhelmed again by how deeply he’d fallen for her and how badly he’d wished she could be exactly who she’d claimed to be.

Several beats of silence hung between the continents. When Tariq spoke, his voice was quiet. “You’re sure she’s a fraud,
ya akhi?
”

“Certain of it.”

“Does she know about your eyes?”

Zakir raked his hand over his hair. “Yes.”

Another beat of silence.

“You cannot let her get out with this news, Zakir.”

Instead of answering, Zakir leaned forward, clicked a key on his computer. “I am sending digital images of her face to your computer for biometrics cross-referencing. They were captured by our security cameras. I’ll also be sending a scan of her fingerprints I’m having lifted from a glass bottle. I’d like you to pass these on to the investigators. Call me as soon as you know something.”

Tariq studied the images his brother had just e-mailed to him. Frowning, he glanced up from his computer. It was dark outside, and snow fell soft and thick over the city, swirling in eddies beneath the yellow halos of streetlamps. Tariq got up from his desk, pulled down the blinds and returned to examine the stills Zakir had sent him. There was something so terribly familiar about the woman’s face.

He swore he knew her from somewhere.

Nikki was distraught. She’d gone down into the olive grove during the dark hours of dawn while Zakir was drugged, and she’d handed the document over. But the men had not returned Samira. Instead, they’d informed Nikki they’d bring her the next night, if the map checked out.

And today something was going down. A sense of urgency had taken over the palace. Soldiers moved with focus. Choppers thudded over the fortress fetching and carrying important-looking people who moved in and out of Zakir’s office all day. The king himself had remained sequestered there.

Then Nikki heard news of bombings being whispered by kitchen staff. And more attacks throughout the country. No one was looking for Samira, either, which disturbed Nikki.

Stressed beyond words, she paced up and down the length of her room.

If Zakir found out what she’d done, she would certainly face trial.

Death.

She needed to get Samira back tonight, and she had to find a way to get the hell out of here, maybe using all this action as a distraction. Nikki left her room and quickly made for the children’s chambers. There she packed a few bags, getting the younger children ready. She told them to remain in the chambers and to be prepared to move at a moment’s notice. And she instructed them to remain silent, to tell no one—not one single soul—that they were ready to evacuate the palace.

“Solomon,” she whispered, crouching down to eye level, “I am putting you in charge, okay?”

He nodded gravely. “What about Samira?”

Nikki bit her lip, her heart squeezing at the liquid emotion gleaming in young Solomon’s big round eyes. These children has seen so much darkness in their life that they absorbed bad news with stoic acceptance. “She’s coming back tonight, Solomon. I promise,” she whispered very quietly in French. “Keep this to yourself, okay?”

He nodded, one lone tear rolling like a jewel down his dark cheek. Nikki bit back her own emotion. “And Solomon, if something happens to me, go to the staff in the kitchen and get someone to show you how to leave the palace. Try to find your way back to the Rahm Hills. The Berbers will take care of you.”

“What could happen to you, Miss Nikki?”

“
Rien,
Solomon. Nothing. But just in case the king gets angry with us—”

“He can be an angry man?”

“I think he can be a very angry man.”

Especially when he finds out what I have done to him.

At dinnertime there was still no sign of Zakir. Unable to
eat, Nikki declined the food the palace staff brought to her. And when the sun sank behind the red and brown peaks and a hot velvet darkness swallowed the land, Nikki made sure no one was following her, and she went down into the olive garden.

A different man stepped out of the shadows. Bigger. Rougher.

Her grabbed her, doused her torch and yanked her back into the trees.

“Where is Samira?” she hissed with mounting panic as she saw no sign of her.

“You did not follow orders,” the man growled in broken Arabic.

“I did!
Where is she?
” Frantically, Nikki peered into the dark shapes between the twisted trunks and branches of the ancient olives. But there was nothing. “You bastard!” she swore, lunging for the knife sheathed at his hips, grabbing the hilt. She yanked it free, but the man’s hand clamped like a vise over her wrist. He twisted her around, wrenching her hand up high behind her back, and he shoved her cheek hard into the gnarled bark of an olive tree.

Nikki’s heart thudded as she felt the tip of his knife press against her carotid artery. Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered that it was a hunting knife, not a jambiya or kukri.

“You lie,” he whispered, his breath hot against her ear. And it hit her that he was not a native Arabic speaker, but she could not place the accent. French or Italian, maybe. He twisted her arm higher, and she gasped in pain. He dug the blade against her skin.

“What,” she said hoarsely, “makes you think I didn’t follow your orders?”

His mouth came even closer. She could smell mint and a
particular tobacco, black, bitter. A hint of aftershave. This man wore gloves.

“Because,” he whispered, mint-tobacco breath feathering hot over her lips,
“the Sheik is still alive.”

She froze, heart palpitating. “
That’s
what you wanted from me? The pill—it was supposed to kill him?”

The man removed something from his pocket. She noted he was wearing jeans, a Western shirt. He keyed his PDA, held it in front of her eye, the other side of her face still squished against rough bark. The screen on his PDA flickered to a gray glow. Then an image came up.

Samira.

A hood over her head, jambiya at her throat. The man holding the blade wore a balaclava.

Nikki’s assailant gave a command into the device, and the hood was ripped from Samira’s head. Nikki choked at the sight of her orphan’s terrified eyes, the dried blood on her mouth, one eye swollen shut. “Wait!” she whispered. “Please…please don’t do anything. I…I used another drug on the king, a barbiturate. I thought it would be easier to medicate him with it because I was familiar with the dosage and could be certain how long he’d stay under. With the capsule you gave me…I…I was unsure.” Leaves rustled.

“You still have the capsule?”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I have it. It’s in a jar on top of the cabinet in the physician’s examining room.”

“You will use it, then. Tonight. The poison will take between eight to twelve hours to work. If Sheik Zakir Al Arif is not dead by tomorrow evening—” he thrust the PDA image of Samira in front of Nikki’s nose “—she dies instead.”

“Then you will have won nothing,” Nikki rasped as he continued to press her face hard against the tree.

“And neither will you.” He spun her around suddenly,
moonlight glinting in his dark eyes that showed through the balaclava slit. “Will you do this?”

Nikki stared directly into his eyes. The skin around them was pale. He was Caucasian. “What guarantee do I have that you will honor
your
word?”

“She’s not dead yet, is she?”

“That’s because she still holds currency for you,” spat Nikki. “She’s still got leverage.”

He hooked his gloved knuckle under her chin, forcing her face up. He brought his lips so close they almost skimmed hers. “If you do this,” he whispered, “she
will
go free. And if you do it well, no one will know that it was you who assassinated the Sheik. We don’t want you or the girl. All we want is for the Al Arif dynasty to die. For too long they have ruled this desert. It is now our time.”

He let her go, and like a black ghost, he slipped back into the trees.

Nikki began to shake violently. She braced her palm against the tree, bent over and threw up. Then she crouched down, searching for her doused torch amongst the sharp, dry leaves. The air in the grove was hot, the leaves rustling as the breeze stirred. But as Nikki located her torch, she heard a crunch of twigs. She stilled. Then she heard it again, another footfall.

“Who…who’s there?” she called nervously, drawing her veil back over her face.

She thought she heard another sound, as if the footsteps were retreating.

Nikki waited in the shadows for a long while. She had no idea what to do. And nowhere to turn.