Florence of Arabia Read online

  Florence was now bolt, wide, awake. The wife of the ambassador of the country that supplied America with the majority of its imported fossil fuel was asking her, a midlevel Foreign Service officer, for asylum. Homeland security alert levels come in six color codes ranging from green to red. Florence's own alert levels consisted of just three: Cool. Oh Shit and Holy Shit.

  Her crisis training kicked in. She heard a voice inside her head. It said. Stall. This was instantly drowned out by a second voice saying. Help. The second voice was real and coining through the phone. It was speaking Wasabi.

  Florence found herself saying. "Tell them you're injured. Insist they take you to a hospital. Fairfax Hospital. Insist. Nazrah—do you understand?"

  She rose and dressed and. even though burning, put on her pearl earrings. Always wear your earrings, her mother had told her from an early age.

  OUTSIDE THE EMERGENCY ROOM entrance, she recognized Shazzik and the two mukfelleen For the first time in her life, she wished she were wearing a veil. During her months in Wasabia. she'd been required to and never got used to it.

  Shazzik was furious, making demands of—she guessed—several CIA security officers. What worried her more was the amount of Virginia state trooper-age outside. Seven cruisers. Someone was bound to call the media, and once that happened, the options narrowed, few situations, really, are improved by the arrival of news trucks.

  Two armed hospital security guards stood athwart the doors to the ER. Florence pulled her scarf over her head as a makeshift veil, lowered her head so as to look demure, and approached.

  "I'm here to see Nazrah Hamooj. I am her family." She made herself seem and sound foreign. With her dark hair and Mediterranean complexion, she looked credibly Middle Eastern.

  'Name?"

  Neither "Florence" nor Tarfaletli" sounding terribly Wasabian. Florence said. "Melath." It meant "asylum" in Wasabi, a fact that would in all likelihood be lost on a Virginia hospital security guard.

  Word was sent in. It came back: Let her in.

  "She's all right. Her CAT scan and MRI were clean."

  The doctor was young, not quite as good-looking as the ones in television dramas but, from the way he regarded Florence, an appreciator of beauty. Florence had grasped, as soon as boys began to bay outside her windows, that beauty was, in addition to being a gift, a tool, like a Swiss Army knife.

  "Could you do another? Just in case?"

  "She is your.. ."

  "Sister."

  "Well, we've established from a medical point of view that your sister is all right. Were you aware that she was drinking?" "Dear, dear." "She's lucky to be alive."

  "Can you just keep her here? Under observation?" "This isn't the Betty Ford Center." "A few hours is all I'm asking." "The insurance company—"

  Florence took the doctor by the arm and tugged him to a corner. He didn't resist. Men tend to yield to pretty women dragging them oil into corners. She dropped the Wasabi accent.

  "I am asking you on behalf of the United States government"—she flashed him her State Department ID—"to keep that woman here in this hospital for a few hours. Surely there are some more tests you can give her?"

  "What's going on?"

  "Do you know what an honor killing is?" "This is a hospital, in case you hadn't—"

  "Where she comes from, it's what happens to a woman who dishonors her husband or relative. No trial, no jury, no appeal, no Supreme Court, no ACIU, just death. By stoning or decapitation. You with me?"

  "Who is she?"

  "She's the wife of the Wasabi ambassador. One of his wives, anyway. She tried to run away. If you release her into their custody before I can figure something out, it's probably a death sentence."

  "Jesus, lady."

  "Sorry to lay that on you." Florence smiled at the doctor.

  "How long am I supposed to keep her?"

  "Thank you. Just—a few hours. That would really be great. There's a tall man outside. Middle Eastern, very unpleasant-looking, thin with a pencil mustache, high forehead and goatee. Tell him you need to do more tests, and she's in isolation."

  "Oh, man."

  "You're really, really great to do this. I won't forget it." Florence nudged him toward the swinging doors, then located Nazrah and drew the curtain around her bed.

  Nazrah had held it together until now, but upon seeing Florence, she burst. The Great Desert in the interior of Wasabia had not seen such moisture in an entire year. She had, in the manner of women of the region, applied copious mascara, which now ran sootily down her tawny checks. Florence listened and nodded and handed her a succession of tissues. Nazrah explained. It hadn't been planned. She was sorry to have involved Florence. She'd intended to drive to the train station and take the Acela Express to New York City and then ... whatever the next step was. Then she'd taken the right turn. Then the police car. Then the CIA front gale seemed like ... Then the crash. And the only person she could think to call was Florence. She was so sorry.

  Florence fought the temptation to say something hopeful, there being little reason to hope. At some point she realized she was holding Nazrah's hand.

  Eventually. Nazrah's tear ducts gave up from exhaustion. Calm descended on her. She looked up at the hospital ceiling and said, "What will they do with me?"

  The curtain parted with a fierce zip to reveal Prince Bawad and his retinue. He looks like Othello, Florence thought. And here's Shazzik in the role of Iago.

  Accompanying them, she recognized State's chief security officer and, oh hell, Duckett. And McFall, CIA's chief for Near East.

  Behind this scrum of officialdom Florence heard the doctor manfully explaining that there was some possibility of subdural something, but it was clear that he was being overruled. Bawad, whose linger-snaps could summon a kingdom's resources, had brought his personal physician and orderlies to earn her off. Nazrah was, as far as the United States was concerned. Wasabi national soil.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Why did she call you?"

  "You've asked me that twelve times." Twelve times over the course of three interrogations. Present at this one were: Charles Duckett, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs (DASNEA); two frowns from the White House National Security Council: an FBI supervisor and a CIA guy introduced In a name most likely not real who probably worked for McFall. Also a stenographer who coughed. Why. Florence wondered, hadn't they sent along someone from Housing and Urban Development?

  "Then I'm asking again. Aren't [?"

  "Win don't you just box me?" She would have welcomed a polygraph at this point for variety.

  "No one's talking about boxing you. Why did she call you?"

  "She'd crashed her car. Charles. She looks out one window, and there are men with guns everywhere. We knew each other. We were friendly. I'm a woman. She found herself in a stressful situation. She probably wanted to talk to a sympathetic person in the U.S. government. Hard as they are to find."

  "Why didn't you report it to us immediately?"

  "I was going to once the situation stabilized."

  "Stabilized? Sequestering a runaway diplomatic wife—the wife of Price Bawad. By what earthly definition does this qualify as stabilizing the situation?"

  "I was trying to buy some cooldown time. That's all. She was terrified. Call it a human transaction. Just so we're all clear. I'm not running an underground railroad for Wasabi wives. Okay?"

  Duckett read from inside a red folder marked TOP SECRET. "You said to her. "tell them you're injured. Insist they take you to a hospital. Fairfax Hospital. Insist. Nazrah—do you understand?' Why Fairfax?"

  That they had a transcript of Nazrah s cell-phone call to her indicated two distinct possibilities: that the CIA could spontaneously intercept any cell call made on its propertv. Or—more interestingly—that the government had already tapped Nazrah's cell phone.

  "It's the closest hospital."

  Duckett grumpily opened a green TOP SECRET folder and scanned. "You say you met with her on
... seven ... separate occasions."

  "That's right. Four lunches, one tea at the Four Seasons Hotel. We went shopping twice. It's all in the folder, the yellow one."

  Duckett opened the yellow folder. "Are these reports complete?"

  "How do you mean, complete?"

  "Did you report everything?"

  "Of course. Every thing relevant."

  "What would you consider irrelevant?"

  "Personal stuff."

  "Define "personal.""

  "Girl talk." Probably the best way to explain it to this high-testosterone bunch.

  Ducked sighed as only a bureaucrat can, from the very depths of his soul. "Florence, this is not Twenty Questions. Everything that she told you is relevant."

  Florence looked at Duckett, then at FBI, at the White House pair, at CIA— who seemed to be regarding her with an expression that went beyond strictly business. She turned back to Duckett.

  "Okay. She told me that the prince likes to smoke hash, then dress up in cow boy boots and his tribal headdress and nothing else, then line up all four of his wives with their bottoms in the air and, well, 1 guess the technical term for it would be—"

  "All right, that's all."

  CIA burst out laughing. The White House mice looked stricken.

  Florence said, "Next time a diplomatic wife confides in me, I'll be sure to put everything in writing."

  "Would you excuse us?" Duckett said to the others. He added to the stenographer. "You, too."

  CIA flashed Florence a grin as he exited.

  "God of heaven and earth, why would you reveal something like that?" Duckett said, aghast. "In front of them? Don't you understand the situation? The Wasabis are madder than hornets. If they find out that State has been retailing—to CIA—intimate details of..." He put his head in his hands. "Oh, what a disaster. They'll use this to crucify us. You know what they'll say, don't you? That you were on a personal vendetta."

  "That's absurd. I was trying to help a fellow human being. Ridiculous as that may sound."

  "You were married to a Wasabi. And you're Italian. 'Vendetta' is an Italian word."

  "I'm as American as you are. And that is just completely out of line. To say nothing of stupid."

  "Explain it to their Foreign Ministry!"

  Florence had grown up fascinated by her grandfather's tales of the Middle Fast. At college she majored in Arabic studies and was fluent by the time she graduated Yale. There she met Hamzir, a minor Wasabi princeling, charming, handsome, raffish, rich and, being a reservist fighter pilot in the Royal Wasabi Air Force, dashing. What American girl with a predilection for the Middle East wouldn't have fallen in love? They were married weeks after graduation.

  After a honeymoon in the Mediterranean on a 125-foot yacht, Florence arrived in her new home of Kaffa to a succession of discoveries, exponentially depressing. Hamzir had not been straightforward about the realities of life as a foreign Wasabi bride. He'd told her that she would be exempt from the strictures governing Wasabi women. Not to worry, darling!

  Florence found herself under virtual house arrest, required to wear the veil outside the home and to be accompanied by a male escort. With this much, she resolved to cope. But within three months, she discovered that her birth-control pills had been switched with sugar substitutes—the kind one puts in coffee. Confronted, Hamzir shrugged and grunted that it was time, anyway, (hat she bore him a child. She retaliated in the Lysistrata fashion by cutting off sex. whereupon he went into a rage and announced the next evening over dinner—as if remembering a dentist's appointment the following day—that he was taking a second wife, a first cousin. Pass the lamb, would you'!'

  The next morning Florence drove herself (a flogging offense) to the U.S. embassy and said. Beam me up. Scotty. Their response was You got yourself into this, and now you expect us to get you out of it? Here, read this. They handed her a pamphlet tilled "What American Women Should Understand When They Marry a Wasabi National." The State Department's reflexive response to any American in extremis overseas is to hand them a pamphlet—along with a list of incompetent local lawyers—and say. "We told you so."

  Florence was not one to be deterred. She announced firmly that she would not leave the embassy except in a car driven by an embassy staffer, to Prince Babullah Airport. An enterprising young Foreign Service officer, like herself of Italian extraction, worked out a quick and dirty arrangement with the Italian embassy and got her out of the country on an Italian passport, to which Florence was technically entitled.

  Back in the U.S.A., she went to work in Washington with a Middle Eastern foundation. One day, bored, and thinking about the enterprising Foreign Service officer in Kaffa who had rescued her. she sat for the Foreign Service exam. She passed. Being fluent in Arabic and an expert on the culture, she was posted to Chad. After 9/11, it was thought that her skills might be better suited elsewhere at State, so she was moved to Near Eastern Affairs.

  Florence said to Duckett, "Did they have a tap on her cell phone? Or did they intercept the call on the spot?"

  "What does it matter? They have you on tape, urging her to flee. Practically issuing amnesty on the spot."

  "But who taped the call? Who gave you the transcript?"

  "McFall's person, Brent whateverhisname."

  "Ask him how they got it."

  "They're not going to tell me that. You know what pricks they are about sources and methods."

  Florence whispered, "Tell him that you know what they were up to." Duckett stared. "Namely?"

  "That CIA had a tap on Nazrah's phone long before she drove into the gate. That they were working on her. That they'd targeted her. That they were going to try to blackmail Prince Bawad through her."

  Duckett pursed his lips. "Thanks to you, now they do have something on him."

  "But they won't be able to use it if you tell them that you've seen through them. That you're on to them. That you've blown their operation. And that you're now going to climb to the top of the Washington Monument and scream your lungs out about it."

  "But what if it's not true?"

  "Let the director of CIA deny it. To the president's face. In the Cabinet Room."

  The lines on Duckett's forehead relaxed, as if he'd suddenly been injected with Botox. He let out a pleased, ruminative grunt. His loathing of the CIA went back to one of his first overseas postings. Ecuador. There, he had overseen the opening of one of State's dreary cultural exchange centers, this one designed to "highlight the historic synergy between the United States and Ecuador." The next day it was blown up, ostensibly by a local guerrilla group, but in fact by the CIA, who wanted to stage an anti-U.S. outrage in order to widen its campaign against the current set of rebels. Duckett had been licking this still-moist wound lor decades. He was smiling now.

  He called the others back in. "I've questioned Ms. Farfaletti. and I have established to my satisfaction that her version of the events is accurate and truthful. Now"—he picked up the transcript of Nazrah's call—"I'm not going to ask you, or you, how this call came to be intercepted. Because that would not only compromise sources and methods, it would also raise the appalling possibility that one or more agencies of the U.S. government were spying on the wife of a diplomat. Not just any diplomat but the dean of the diplomatic corps—a close personal friend of the president of the United States."

  "That's a bunch of shit."

  "Which your director, or yours, can scrape oil" the bottom of their shoes—in the Cabinet Room, after State has presented to perspective on the matter." FBI and CIA stared.

  "Alternatively" continued Duckett, lord of the moment, "we can all of us agree that the matter is now closed. Princess Nazrah is, as we speak, on her way back home in a Royal Wasabi Air Force transport. The media is unaware. So. gentlemen, how shall we proceed?"

  The White House people whispered with FBI and CIA. FBI said, none loo happily. "We're done here." On the way out, the CIA man winked at Florence.

  The next morning Florence inserted he
r ID card into the State Department turnstile, half expecting the display to read CANCELED, like a maxed-out credit card. But it let her in. Apparently, she still had a job in the United States government.

  She sought out George. George was a desk-limpet in the Political/Econ section who amused himself during his lunch hour by devising crossword puzzles in ancient Phoenician, one of twelve languages he spoke fluently. He claimed to dream in seven of them, and George was not the sort to boast. His model was Sir Richard Burton, the nineteenth-century polymath-explorer who spoke thirty-five languages and dreamed in seventeen. One of the most daring adventurers of all time, Burton was a curious role model for the agoraphobic George, who had managed to wriggle out of every foreign posting he had been offered, except for one eighteen-month stint in Ottawa, during which he learned Micmac, a complex native Canadian language.

  "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 Hamooj asked me for asylum."

  "If you think that's more important than interpreting my dream, fine."

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

  "Hmmm. I knew something must be cooking. Cables between here and Kaffa have been living fast and furious. They scrambled a Royal Wasabi transport out 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 Bazell in Kaffa." Florence said. "Maybe he can—"

  "What? 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."