omar held up his hand. “Stop.”
Assir brought the Mercedes to a halt. They’d crested a knoll on the dirt road. The desert rolled out before them, unbroken except for this trail that divided north from south. A small shack rested at the base of a cliff, three hundred meters ahead and a hundred meters off the road. According to the tracking device, the car was there, perhaps behind the hut.
“The common hut.” He pointed at the cliff. Assir eased the car forward and Omar picked up the radio. “They are in the common hut to our right. Do you see it?”
The radio crackled. “Yes.”
“Weapons ready. Form a perimeter around the front. Don’t underestimate them.” He tossed the radio on the seat, pulled out his nine millimeter, and chambered a round.
The cars split the desert and approached the shack from multiple angles, raising ribbons of dust as they converged on the cliff. Assir followed a pair of fresh tire tracks and brought the car to a stop fifty meters from the shanty. Dust drifted by and then cleared. From here the hut looked abandoned.
The other Mercedes stopped, one by one, in a great semicircle around the shack, pinning it against the sheer rock.
“There’s a car at the rear of the hut,” Assir said.
Omar nodded. The Mercedes purred. For a full minute he waited, not expecting anything. No one spoke over the radio; they would only follow his lead. He would prolong this menacing sight, this display of power, for Miriam to see from her pitiful hiding place. Ten black cars with tinted windshields, poised for the final kill, at his leisure.
Omar opened his door. The afternoon heat displaced the car’s conditioned air, coaxing a sweat from his brow before he stood. He looked down the line of sedans over the roof of his own. One by one their doors opened and twenty men joined him, loitering behind the cover of their doors.
Omar faced the shack. “I will give you to the count of ten to come out unharmed,” he called. “Then we will open fire.” He lifted his pistol and fired a round into the corner brick.
“One!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Miriam’s voice called out.
The strength of her voice surprised him. This in front of his men. He clenched his jaw.
“If you kill me, your father will take your head off,” Miriam called out. “And if he fails, then I promise you my father will not! Put your silly toy away.”
A hawk called from over the cliff. He hadn’t expected them to buy his threat, but neither had he expected her to dismiss him as a fool.
“And if you think you can come in here and kill Seth before dragging me out, you’d better reconsider,” she called out. “Do you really believe that I would allow myself to be taken alive, only to be forced to look at your hideous face for the rest of my life?”
She defied him in front of his men to draw out his anger. He knew it and was powerless to stop the chill that ripped through his bones. He decided then, staring through the heat at the shack, that Miriam would live only long enough to bear him a child. A son was all he needed from her.
“I hear the sounds of an animal,” he said calmly. “I would like to speak to the man. To the American.”
“Take a hike, Omar,” a male voice called out. “She said she doesn’t want to see you. Capisce?”
Perhaps for the first time in his adult life, Omar was speechless. Stunned and unfathoming.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Seth called out. “I take it back. But I’m afraid that Miriam has fallen hopelessly in love with me. We must allow love to—”
“You are talking about my wife!” Omar screamed. “My wife!”
His voice echoed off the cliff.
“Yes, well, that is a problem. But we’ve been praying to God in here and we think we have a solution to this mess. We’ve decided that it will be okay to share it with you. That is, if you’re man enough to come in and join us.”
Omar glanced at his watch. In two hours the sheik would storm the palace. It was time to be done with this foolishness.
“Your wife has demanded that I kill her if you come in after her,” the American called. “We’ll be Romeo and Juliet. We’ll both die in the embrace of true love. I’m fresh out of poison, but there’s a shard of glass in here that we think will do the trick.”
Would he do such a thing? No.
And yet . . . the American had to know the situation was hopeless for him. And Miriam would probably prefer death over capture. The realization drove a small wedge of agitation into Omar’s mind. He glanced down the line of cars. Seth stood to gain nothing by killing him. Twenty others here would storm the shack and take out their fury on him.
“I’m going in,” Omar said to Assir.
“Sir—”
“He has nothing to gain by killing me. If anything happens, storm the place.”
“And Miriam?”
Omar hesitated. “Keep her alive.”
He stepped out from behind the car door. Assir barked an order to the others behind him.
“The gun, Omar,” Seth called. “Drop the gun.”
He tossed the gun to the sand and walked on. The door came open with a gentle tug. He stepped into the dim room.
“Close the door.”
The American stood in the corner, dressed in an abaaya, eyes flashing in the candlelight. He held a shard of glass against Miriam’s throat.
“Close the door!” Seth said.
Miriam winced. She was dressed like a man. Omar pulled the door closed and faced them.
“Think I was kidding?” Seth asked. “Empty your pockets.”
Omar pulled out some coins. He tossed them onto the table. “You do realize that there is no way out of here. We are surrounded by twenty heavily armed men.”
Seth seemed not to have heard. “Pull up your pant legs.”
The American was after his knife. How did he know? Omar pulled out a ten-inch bowie knife from the sheath around his calf. He briefly considered rushing Seth then, but dismissed the idea with one look at the pressure of the glass against Miriam’s skin. She could not be harmed. Not yet.
He dropped the weapon on the table.
Seth retrieved the knife, walked to the window, and slipped the glass shard through a crack. He waved the knife through the air and held his hand out to the table, inviting Omar to sit.
“Please. Have a seat.”
Miriam backed to the corner, giving Omar a wide berth.
“You have nothing to gain by playing these games. You will give me my wife, or I will take her by force. It’s that simple.”
“Your wife. Yes. Actually, that’s what I want to talk to you about. Indulge me. Like you say, you have twenty men outside.”
Something about the American engaged Omar. This man with the loose blond hair, clothed in this black dress, possessed one of the highest intellects of any living man, they said. It hardly seemed possible. What could the man be thinking?
“You’re in no position to order me around, you fool. This is—”
“Sit!” Seth spun to Miriam and pressed the knife against her neck. “Sit, man! Sit, sit, sit!”
The American was crazed. For a moment their eyes challenged each other. Seth wasn’t as confident as he sounded. Omar had learned to recognize fear, and he saw it now in the American’s eyes. Still, Seth had the knife. If he were in the American’s position, he would not hesitate to use it.
Omar walked to the end of the table and sat.
“Excellent.” Seth pulled Miriam over to the opposite end. Now the table acted as a barrier between them. This man might not be a warrior, but Omar saw that he’d positioned himself well.
“You say that Miriam is your wife?” Seth asked.
He refused to dignify the question with an answer.
“But I don’t think she is,” Seth said. “Not really. And she doesn’t think she is either.”
“I have a dozen witnesses who say otherwise.”
“Shut up. Hear me out.”
“Then speak quickly. The city is burning, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“We don’t think she’s married because she hasn’t married you, Omar. She was forced to go through a ceremony, but that’s like saying I’m rich because I walk into a bank. You have to take possession of the money before you become rich. Miriam hasn’t taken possession of you.” He forced a grin. “But don’t worry, we’re not going to split hairs. We know that in both your eyes and her father’s eyes, she is married and, unfortunately, married to you.”
“Then get on with it.”
“We want you to divorce her.”
Omar laughed aloud. The man was not only mad; he was a brazen fool.
“In your tradition, you can divorce her by simply telling her in front of a witness that you divorce her. Easy come, easy go. If you divorce Miriam, everyone’s problems are solved. The coup will fail, because her father will withdraw his support; you won’t have to chase your runaway bride around the world any longer; she will be free to pursue the love she has for me. It’s a perfect plan. A happy ending.”
Omar could not believe he had heard this man. Had he misplaced some of his English vocabulary?
“If you knew our ways, you would know that neither of you is a legal witness,” Omar said. Heat spread down his neck. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t divorce my wife here, you imbecile! You called me into this place with the expectation that I would divorce my wife? Simply because you ask me?”
“No. I’m asking you to divorce your wife because it’s what’s best for Saudi Arabia and because she loves me. And because we think that God wants you to.”
“I won’t listen to this!”
Seth slammed the flat of his palm on the table. “You will listen!” He tapped his temple with his forefinger. “Think, man! Think!”
Omar squinted, unnerved by this presumptuous show.
“Okay, here’s how it works,” Seth said. “I evaded you and a couple hundred cops in the States. How? Because I could see into the future, right?”
He didn’t respond.
“Right?”
“So you say.”
“No, so it was. I could see everything anyone might do, and I knew what to do to facilitate any possibility.” Seth and Miriam exchanged a look. “The future can be changed. We can change it; God can change it.”
“Believe me when I say there’s no possibility that I will divorce my wife.”
“Ahhh. But we’ve both come to the conclusion that divorce is a possibility,” Seth said. “It’s possible that I have this gift to keep the Middle East from spinning out of control. So there must be a way, whether any of us can see how or not.”
“Then we will see God’s will,” Omar said. “And I can assure you that God’s will is to sustain the marriage constituted in his name.”
“Are you willing to test that?”
“What is there to test? God has given me a wife, this wife!” Omar stood, exasperated.
“Sit!” Seth slashed at the air with the blade. “You’re refusing to pray to God?”
“I already have!”
“Sit!”
The American had the appearance of a man who would kill. Omar sat.
Seth took a deep breath. “We’ve prayed for God’s will to be done. Now we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
“See what?”
“See what futures materialize.”
“I already know God’s will, and this country is waiting for me to fulfill it in a city fifty miles north of here. I am returning Saudi Arabia to God!”
“We will pray now. Again. If no future materializes in which you divorce Miriam, she will go with you without objection.” Seth exchanged another glance with her. She looked nervous but didn’t argue.
Never in his life could Omar have imagined a scenario as infuriating as this. Fires were burning the city, and he was in a hut arguing about prayer with his wife and an American infidel. He closed his eyes, contemplating how to regain control.
Seth still held the knife.