they are in a blue Mercury Sable, believed to be headed east out of the city. The police have issued an order to stop the car when it is located.”
Omar stared down through the smoked-glass window ten stories above Century Boulevard without acknowledging Assir. Sa’id stood to Omar’s right, hands held at his waist. These two had failed once, but they would not fail again.
An orange-and-yellow plane floated by the window on its final approach to LAX. Southwest Airlines, the tail read. It looked like a lizard.
He’d left his thawb in London Heathrow Airport in favor of a dark-gray silk suit. With his trimmed beard, he looked more Mediterranean than Arabic—his intention. He’d been in the United States a dozen times and learned early that Saudi Arabians tended to draw attention, especially if they placed the title of prince before their names. There was a time for attention, of course, particularly in nightclubs frequented by women.
But this time he was after only one woman. She was a Shia Muslim, she was rightfully his property, and he would have her or she would die, either option in accordance with the law.
He remembered watching his first stoning as a boy of seven. The Nizari sect had pulled the woman out of a wagon and pushed her roughly to the ground. The wagon was piled high with stones the size of a man’s fist. After a short pronouncement of guilt, ten men started throwing the stones. He learned later that she was seventeen and her crime was flirting with a man. The punishment was a harrowing sight at first, seeing the stones bounce off her body as she waddled around on her knees. She wore her abaaya and veil, which only made the stoning mysterious. He tried to picture what was happening under those garments and then picked up a rock himself and lobbed it. Amazingly, it landed on her head and bounced off. The black cloth darkened with blood. His father laughed and handed him another stone. The woman passed out four times and was reawakened after each instance before she finally died.
The flight over the Atlantic had given him time to stew over the matter of his bride, and with each passing hour his anger swelled. This chase wasn’t simply about his right to claim what belonged to him; it was about the future of Saudi Arabia. The future of a sacred culture in which man was ordained to rule and thereby ensure the worship of God. The future of Islam itself was at stake. Not the Islam followed by most Arabs, but the true Islam of the Nizari, a tiny minority now. In power, it would expand.
Someone had once compared the Nizari to the Americans’ KKK, a small Christian minority. In truth, when he looked at America, all he saw was the KKK, and he hated them all.
Omar turned from the window. “This is from General Mustafa or from the scanners?”
“Both. The lead investigator on the case is making his way toward San Bernardino.”
Mustafa had filled them in on Hilal’s meeting with the State Department. The fact that the Americans expected the NSA to track down his wife both pleased and angered Omar. They could be instrumental in leading him to her. The agent on the case reported to Hilal on the hour, and whatever Hilal learned, Mustafa learned. This was good.
No one had a right to the woman but him, however. Hilal’s pursuit was not as large a concern as the American agent’s involvement. Whoever found Miriam first would have to be killed, but the prospect of killing the king’s man was like child’s play next to killing the NSA agent. Even so, Omar wouldn’t allow the Americans to take her into their custody and coddle her. They would return her to the king. His marriage to her would be lost.
Omar decided on a straightforward approach. “Then we go to San Bernardino,” he said, moving toward the door. This Clive would lead him to Miriam, and he would be the jackal, would close in after she’d been found. He would steal the prey, would make the prey his wife, and then extract payment for her insult to Allah. To Islam.
To him.
Samir stood at the gates to the great mosque in Mecca, dressed in a traditional white seamless ihram. He stared at the three-story cloth-covered cube known as the casbah, which sat in the sun sixty meters off, black and oddly plain considering its reputation as the most holy place on earth. Allah gave it to Adam after expelling him from the Garden of Eden and then later led Abraham to it. Through the ages, many idolatrous people had bowed at its base to any one of a hundred gods worshipped in Mecca before the prophet Muhammad claimed it.
The pagans came here to worship before dawn, stripped of their clothing, wailing. The mystery that lay behind that black cloth felt to Samir like a physical force that squeezed his chest every time he came to the holy mosque.
The courtyard boiled over with several thousand Muslims on pilgrimage. Mumbled prayers rose to the sky, a steady groan to God. But Samir wasn’t concerned with their prayers; he sought his Creator’s guidance for his own dilemma. Only now, eyes fixed on this most holy of holies, did he finally know the will of God.
Not once did the suras in the Koran call God a God of love. But he agreed with the teachers—this was because God’s love was self-evident. One doesn’t need to say that the casbah is black if everyone already knows its color. Muhammad had no need to expound on the love of God, because love is at the very heart of Islam. So then, Samir’s own life would have to be a life led by love.
There could be no greater love than the love he felt for Miriam. Nothing mattered now except her.
Samir left the mosque and hastened toward the limousine that waited on the main street. His love for Miriam was as essential to life as the beating of his own heart. He’d never exposed himself to any other human being as he had to Miriam. The memories of their innocent touches in Madrid haunted him still.
In Saudi Arabia, where flesh was so deliberately covered, one tended to take note of the flesh one saw. Miriam had seen his bare chest and upper arms only three times, once by mistake when he was changing shirts in the garage, and twice when she’d pulled his thawb aside in curiosity. He’d never exposed himself beyond this, of course. That would wait for marriage.
But she’d seen more of him than any woman had. Tracing his chest with her index finger, she’d wondered aloud how a driver came to have such strong muscles. He made a joke about lifting all her heavy bags in and out of the car, and they laughed as only lovers can laugh at the slightest hint of humor.
What Miriam didn’t know about him would shock her, if she didn’t suspect his true identity already. Miriam’s intelligence had first attracted Samir to her, before he even saw her face. Surely she would know that her true father, the most powerful sheik among the Shia, would not entrust his daughter to a common man. But he doubted Miriam knew that the man she’d fallen in love with was well-known in small circles as a warrior. An exceptional one, worthy of the task given him.
The sheik had spared no expense in training him to be Miriam’s protector. Now, for the first time, he would put that training to good use.
He opened the rear door and slid into the limousine. The sheik sat against the opposite door.
“Drive,” the sheik said.
The driver pulled into the street.
“So. What has God told you?” Al-Asamm asked.
“God has told me that he is a God of love.”
The sheik looked at him. “You will go?”
“Yes. I will go. For love.”
The sheik nodded and smiled. “Many have already gone ahead of you. Hilal, Omar, and now the Americans.”
“Good. They will only make my job easier. You’re receiving the information still?”
“Yes. You’ll know what they know. But we’re running out of time. They can’t be allowed to reach her before you do, Samir. Hilal, at least, will kill her. And there’s no telling what Omar will do out from under my eyes. He won’t kill her, but he may maim her.”
“I won’t let that happen. You trained me to protect her. I will do just that. And I have the advantage—your daughter knows me. As soon as I’m in a safe position, she’ll come to me.”
Samir looked out the side window at the faithful streaming to the mosque and breathed a prayer for her safety until he arrived.