Keys to the Kingdom (28 page)

‘Was there anything else?’ Rosinski asked. She was aware that every minute they spent together increased the risk for the Princess.

‘No, I think that’s all. I tried to remember everything that was said but my mind seems so confused these days.’ She looked from Worley to Mary Jo. ‘You will stop them, won’t you. You cannot allow them to succeed. The consequences are too terrible to contemplate.’ She leaned forward and put her head in her hands.

Mary Jo stroked the top of the Princess’ head. The woman was on the edge. It was a miracle that she had kept in there this long. She looked at Worley and he signalled with his eyes. He moved to the door and was gone without a word. Now that the man was no longer present one level of danger had been avoided. Two women in a hotel room was not the same as two women and a man who was the husband of neither.

‘Don’t worry, Nadia,’ Mary Jo said softly. ‘Arthur and I will stop them.’

Worley’s mind raced as he sat in the rear of the embassy car. They were heading into town on the Al Malek Fahed Road. That little bastard Al Tawil has been playing him for a fool, he thought as the evening traffic buzzed around him. Saudi Arabia might be on the ropes economically but it hadn’t seemed to reduce the number of Mercedes and Porsches zipping along the well lit highway. The driver turned left into Al Imam Torki. At Al Sowailim he turned right and they found themselves in Justice Square facing the Al Hokm Palace. The square was in fact a triangle with the old Clock Tower at one apex, the Al Hokm Palace at another and the Great Mosque at the third. The driver stopped and Worley got out of the car. The Palace was one of the older ones in Riyadh. The Princes generally built their new monstrosities in the suburbs. Al Hokm was not as big as the modern edifices but Worley supposed if there was a chapter of Saudi history to be played out then this was the perfect site. He walked slowly around the Square. He passed the Great Mosque with its twin spires climbing into the sky. This was the place where he had seen Gallagher just a few short weeks ago. So much had changed in that time that it was difficult to take everything in. He took a deep breath and he could smell Arabia. To the south of the square was the Al Dairah Al Jadidah Markets. The shops and stalls were closed but the smells of incense, saddle leather and exotic spices still filled the air. He realised with a deep sadness that he was going to miss the smells and sounds of the Middle East. He had spent too many years roaming the souks and exploring the Empty Quarter. His colleagues at the Foreign Office would have simply said that he had ‘gone native’ like many a Briton before him but that was too easy an explanation. He would miss Saudi but his heart lightened when he thought of England. For an instant he was back in Yorkshire and could smell the freshly cut grass after a September shower. He could feel the salt spray on his face as he looked out across the Channel from the cliffs of Dover. He suddenly wanted very badly to go home.

‘Salaam Alaikum,’ two old men hailed him from the edge of the market. They sat behind a rickety table that had seen better days and where two tea cups were set.

‘Alaikum Salaam,’ he called back and the vision of the green and pleasant land faded from his mind. He looked around the Square again. It was obvious that Gallagher intended to assassinate the King. His death would be the final nail in the coffin. First economic chaos, then political upheaval, it wasn’t a bad plan. The Royal Family would rent itself apart in a series of succession battles. Meanwhile the country would be fragmenting. Gallagher couldn’t be permitted to succeed. Somehow he had to stop the Majlis. He walked back towards the car. As he reached it two lorries filled with National Guardsmen turned into the square from Al Thomairy Street. This was the first deployment, he thought. By to-morrow the place would be swarming with military. How the hell would Gallagher manage to assassinate one of the most closely guarded men on earth? That was the question and if they couldn’t stop the Majlis, he had less than twenty hours to find the answer.

Princess Nadia hadn’t stopped shaking since she had left Mary Jo at the Intercontinental. She already knew that in betraying her husband she had crossed a line and that she could never go back. Now that her betrayal was complete, fear consumed her body and turned her to a quivering mass of flesh. In her own mind she had already decided that if her husband succeeded then she would work ceaselessly to get her daughters out of Saudi Arabia and into some country where they could have a life. She still had relatives in the Lebanon who were politically powerful and she resolved to use them in order to free her children. Once or twice during the journey back to her villa she noticed the driver of the car glancing at her in the mirror. She had kept her abaya wrapped around her face both to indicate her devoutness and to hide her fear. As soon as the car arrived at the villa, she slipped from the back seat without a word and entered through the women’s entrance. The villa was in fact a small palace with twenty-five rooms. It was surrounded on all four sides by a nine-foot high wall and the buildings totally enclosed a central courtyard containing a small swimming pool used mainly by the women and children. The women lived at the back of the courtyard and the two-story structure of the harem looked out over the swimming pool. Nadia looked furtively out of her veil as she entered through the side door. She closed the door behind her and began to move towards her quarters.

‘Welcome whore.’

Her heart leapt to her mouth at the sound that came from the darkness beside the outer wall. She had heard the tone is Kareem’s voice many times before and in that instant her bladder failed her. ‘I am not a whore and have never been one.’ She turned and faced him ignoring the warmth in her groin and the trickle of urine running down her legs. She could hear her voice cracking with anger. Kareem was obsessive about the concept of
ird
and unless she could convince him that no man had interfered with her she would surely die.

‘Your lies are a sin before Allah,’ Kareem came out of the darkness exposing a face that was twisted with hate. ‘You are a whore and a fornicator and you have despoiled my honour and the honour of my family.’

He walked forward into the light and Nadia saw the purple streaks on his face. Her head felt light and she almost fainted. She pulled herself together. The next few minutes would decide whether she would live or die. She tried to steady her voice. ‘I swear on the grave of the Prophet that I have not betrayed you with another man. Your
ird
is intact and I have not dishonoured you or your family.’

‘Lying whore,’ he lashed out with his mutilated left hand and caught her full in the face. ‘You shame not only me but Allah with your black tongue.’ He grabbed her reeling head with his right hand and closed his fingers on her throat. ‘You will tell me the truth. I will hear of my shame from your fornicating lips and you will tell me the name of the man you shamed me with.’

Nadia’s senses were swimming. The side of her face was throbbing and she had difficulty breathing. She could feel herself being dragged along by Kareem’s strong hold on her throat. ‘Please,’ she croaked but the pain and the movement continued. She could see that they had reached the inner courtyard. Her head was still pounding and the pressure on her throat was intense. She fought to suck air into her lungs. She could feel the light fading and her eyes beginning to close. At that moment, Kareem released the grip on her throat and she collapsed on the ground. She pulled in great gulps of air so quickly that the passage of air burned her throat. Her head was beginning to clear but the throbbing continued in her jaw and her neck felt tender. She glanced up and looked into two burning eyes that spit hatred in her direction. She raised her gaze further and she could see faces at the windows of the balcony that surrounded the courtyard. Among the faces were those of her daughters. She could see the pained expressions on their faces and she wanted to call out and tell them that she loved them and that everything would soon be all right.

Kareem stood over her. ‘Now you will speak, whore, or I will squeeze the very life from your body.’

‘I have not shamed you,’ she spoke the words with difficulty. She knew that her husband was a beast but he was also an educated man. He would beat her within an inch of her life but he would not kill her.

His mutilated left hand dug into the hair of her head and he began to pull her across the tiles that surrounded the swimming pool. She tried to resist but she couldn’t find the strength. The abaya slid from her body.

Kareem turned and looked down at her. He spat on her prostrate body. ‘You even dress like a whore. Have some honour, woman, and confess your sins.’

‘I have not betrayed you with any man,’ she tried to cover her exposed legs. She felt the blow on her face at the same time as she heard the scream from the balcony. Her head swam and a fog appeared before her eyes. The pain in her face began to recede as the fog became thicker.

‘No,’ Kareem screamed. He pulled her limp body from the ground. ‘You will not cheat me.’

He dragged her to the edge of the pool and tossed her into the water.

She was almost totally unconscious when she hit the water. It closed around her like a welcoming shroud. She felt it sting the bruises on her face as she sank beneath it.

Kareem jumped into the pool after her. He pulled her face from the water and put his own close to it. ‘Tell me, whore. Before you go to hell. Tell me how you have betrayed me.’

She heard his voice but it seemed a long way off. There was the sound of crying even further away and she felt sad that she would not be able to console her children. Her head went under water again but she did not struggle as she felt the water close over her. Kareem could be permitted his little victory. She realised that soon she would be dead and beyond his power. Mary Jo would stop his plan and the Ikhwan would be destroyed for once and all. The blackness enveloped her.

Kareem pulled the limp body upright. She was dead. He wanted to tear her body apart but he knew that even that would not satisfy the dishonour she had brought on him. He dropped her back into the water and climbed out of the pool.

‘Get her out and dispose of her,’ he said to a servant as he re-entered the house. This should have been the greatest night of his life. In twenty-four hours he would be the leader of his great nation. The Ikhwan would strike as soon as the Al Sauds were destroyed. The Air Force and National Guard would rebel and he would be confirmed as the new leader. Yet all this joy was nothing to the shame he felt at the betrayal of one of his women.

CHAPTER 38

Worley sat in his apartment in the embassy compound. He couldn’t sleep. For several hours he had been trying to develop a plan that would somehow foil Kareem’s plot. But his brain was immersed in a fog of exhaustion. Gallagher was out there somewhere preparing to carry out his plan. How the hell could an intelligence operative stop him? Gallagher was a man of action. He had placed the bombs and fired the bullets that had killed people. It needed someone like Robert to be Gallagher’s nemesis. Robert had been his action half. He had once asked his brother whether he had taken another life. Robert had nodded rather than answering. He had followed up by asking what it felt like. His brother had refused to answer but Worley could see that the experience had not been a pleasant one. He had never countenanced killing another human being and that included Patrick Gallagher. He wanted his brother’s killer brought to justice. He had no desire to turn himself into a killer. The SAS wet team would handle Gallagher if that became necessary. But the team was in the air and would soon be on station in Dhahran. And that was where they would remain until he located Gallagher. But by then it might be too late. As soon as he had returned to his apartment he had called Burfield in London but his superior had already left for the evening. What could Burfield do? There was less than sixteen hours to the beginning of the Majlis. Gallagher could be anywhere. If he intended to assassinate the King, he could take his shot from any of a dozen vantage points. It would require a battalion to cover all the options. He’d been beaten and he would just have to accept it. People like Gallagher always appeared to have the upper hand. He sipped on his glass of Lagavulin as he listened to the strains of a Beethoven symphony. His eyes closed and he drifted into memories. Like Scrooge, his ghosts had developed a habit of visiting him. He felt no presence in the room but they had taken up residence in his mind. The glass slipped from his hand and he fell asleep.

Rosinski arrived at her apartment sometime after eleven o’clock. Her first inclination had been to go immediately and see Worley but she resisted the temptation. The shit was about to hit the fan in a big way and she couldn’t think of a single way of putting a stop to it. As soon as she had settled herself in her apartment, she had read her e-mail messages. She had been correct. Her lawyer had settled with the ‘Company’ and they wanted her out of Saudi Arabia as soon as she could pack, if not sooner. The same message had been passed to Gilman and from to-morrow morning she would have no status in the embassy. That cut off one avenue of putting a stop to Kareem’s plan. She could no longer go to the Ambassador and try to convince him that something heavy was about to go down. He would already be aware that she no longer worked for the CIA and Gilman would convince him that she was talking through her ass. There was only one other solution and for that she would need access to her office.

The embassy guards had not yet been informed that she was no longer on the staff so she breezed past the two Marines on duty at the front door.

‘Hi, Mizz Rosinski,’ the older Marine said as she passed. ‘Gotta hot date with the computer?’ He and his friend exchanged a sly glance.

‘I get more pleasure from it than from most of the men in this town,’ Rosinski replied and passed quickly by.

She made straight for her office. Her key still worked but she had no illusions. By to-morrow morning the lock code would be changed and her personal items, what little there was, would be in a cardboard box outside the door. If she failed to collect them, they would go out with the evening trash. The ‘Company’ wasn’t big in the heart category. She looked around the office. They’d told her when she launched her case that there was no way she could stay on. They said she was going to miss the buzz so why not drop the action and let everything just go back to normal. They’d been right. She was going to miss the buzz. The ‘Company’ was her husband and the child she had never had. She was sure as hell going to miss it. There was one final thing she had to do. She picked up the phone and dialled the abridged number that would connect her directly with Langley.’