Sleeping with the Sultan

“It’s quite all right, I can check for you, Miss Morningstar!” he said, so obviously smitten that Jenny laughed. He riffled through his pages. “Table D,” he announced. “That’s about five o’clock on the inner circle if you take the dais as twelve.”

This cryptic comment made sense a few moments later when they moved into the ballroom. Against the centre of the back wall was a raised octagonal dais where a Middle Eastern ensemble, including the traditional tar, setar, nay and santur, as well as zither and violin, was tuning up. Around the dais was a polished octagonal dance floor, and around that were arranged tiers of round tables, each seating eight people.

The band began playing as the guests entered and spread out to find their tables—a haunting melody that Dana recognized. It was a traditional Bagestani song called Aina al Warda?—“Where is the Rose?”—which had taken on a special resonance for the expatriate Bagestanis, all so bitterly opposed to Ghasib’s terrible regime. Her father had played it to Dana and her sister throughout her childhood.

“I wonder why you’re not at Table G with the rest of us?” Jenny moaned after accompanying her to Table D and discovering, contrary to both inclination and expectation, that the man with the clipboard was right.

“It’s a bore,” Dana agreed, but there wasn’t going to be a seating change now.

“Who are you with, then?” Jenny bent to the cards on either side of Dana’s own. The band was giving Aina al Warda? all it had, and as people around the room sank into their seats, Dana saw another stern dark man looking her way. He was dressed in the Western style, black tie, and looked as though he was wondering whether to cross over to her.

Her father.

Where is the Rose?

When will I see her?

The nightingale asks after his beloved….

She stared at him. Well, this put a whole new complexion on the fund-raising evening. This was no mere Drought Relief Campaign. Her father would not have come to any ordinary charity fund-raiser for Bagestan. He was convinced that, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, most of the money raised in good faith in the West went straight into President Ghasib’s own coffers and the poor scarcely saw a penny.

Dana took a fresh look around at the other guests. They were top bracket; the tickets to this affair had been very pricey. Only about half of them were the usual run of charity supporters and celebrity hunters, though.

The other half were wealthy, educated Bagestani expats—mostly those of a certain age who had been rich enough to get out of the country in sixty-nine, but sprinkled with a few who had come as refugees in the years since and made good. The next generation, the foreign-born sons and daughters like herself, were also well represented.

The women were mostly in traditional Bagestani dress of beautifully decorated shalwar kamees and trailing gold-embroidered scarf, and a number of the older men were in immaculate white djellabas. More than one of them, hearing that music, now had eyes that were brighter for tears.

Her father was still looking at her. She wondered if he had seen her dress. She hoped so. She was suddenly filled with a dry, dead fury, as if her father had somehow manipulated her presence here. Logic told her that was impossible.

“Hellooo,” Jenny carolled.

Dana surfaced, nodded a cool acknowledgement to her father and turned away. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Sir John Cross,” Jenny repeated, pointing to the card at the place setting to one side of Dana’s. “Who’s he?”

“A diplomat, I think. Or, he was.” She had a vague memory of her father’s voice. “Wasn’t he the British Ambassador to Bagestan at the time of the coup?”

“Search me!” Jenny shrugged. “Poor Dana! And Sheikh Ashraf Durran,” she read from the card on her other side. “One of those boring old farts in white skirts, I bet. My poor darling, it’s going to be a long night for you.”

“It is going to be a very successful fund-raising night,” Dana told her with dry sarcasm, unable to hold down her irritation.

“Is it? How do you know?” Jenny asked with a smile. She wasn’t big on world affairs, Dana reminded herself. And her interest in such things as mind manipulation techniques began and ended with using her disarming, housewifely smile in fabric softener commercials.

“Because it may say Drought Relief on the banners, but the real story behind this little event is Line Our Pockets with Gold and One Day We’ll Restore the Monarchy in Bagestan!” she told Jenny through her teeth. “God, these people make me sick!”

Jenny blinked. “What do—”

“Listen to that music! They’re deliberately playing on everyone’s insane hopes for Ghasib to be overthrown and a new sultan to come riding in on his white horse and turn back the clock to the Golden Age! It’s not going to happen, but they will get a fortune from the deluded tonight! It’s unspeakable!”

Jenny was looking at her in surprise. Dana wasn’t often like this, except when she was on the set playing the overexcitable Reena.

“But, Dana, wouldn’t you rather see Ghasib kicked out? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if one of the al Whatsit princes could be found and restored to the throne?”

“You’ve been reading the Sunday papers, Jenny. It’s nothing but ink and hot air. There are no al Jawadi princes! Ghasib had them all assassinated years ago. If anybody kicks Ghasib out, it is going to be the Islamic militants, and that’s just going to be a case of out of the frying pan, isn’t it?”

“But what about that one in Hello! magazine a couple of weeks back, who had amnesia? He was so gorgeous, too. He’s a grandson of the old sultan, and it said—”

“Najib al Makhtoum is not a viable candidate for the throne, even if he is who they say he is, which I doubt. They are all completely deluded, these people, and somebody is making sure they stay deluded.” She belatedly noticed the alarm in Jenny’s eyes, heaved a sigh and smiled.

“Sorry, Jen, but I got this stuff all my life from my father, and I hate it. You’re right, they are a bunch of boring old farts who want their palaces and oil rigs back and can’t accept that it isn’t going to happen. God, I wish I hadn’t come! It might be tolerable if I were sitting with you and the others. This way—” she gestured at the label that read Sheikh Ashraf Durran “—in addition to everything else, I’ll have to listen to a whole lot of demented ravings about how we’ve got Ghasib on the ropes at last.”

“Never mind,” Jenny murmured mock-placatingly, “you can always marry him. He’s probably got lots of money, and that’s what really matters.”

“Not if he were the last sheikh on the planet!” Dana vowed.

Jenny laughed, leaned to kiss Dana’s cheek again and moved off. Dana turned her head—and found herself looking at the harsh-faced stranger from a distance of a few feet. By the look on his face, not only was he an al Jawadi supporter, he had overheard every word of their conversation.

Two

For a moment she thought he was going to pass on by, but he stopped and faced her. His eyes bored into hers, but against a little shiver of feeling she couldn’t define, she managed to hold her gaze steady.

“Are you an optimist, Miss Golbahn, or a pessimist?” he asked in conversational tones.

Typical of a man like him to call her by her father’s, not her professional name. She was quite sure it was deliberately calculated.

“Don’t you mean, am I a dreamer or a realist?”

“No, I don’t mean that,” he replied, in a careful tone that infuriated her. His eyebrows moved expressively. “I mean, when you say that the restoration of the monarchy is impossible, do you speak from your wishes, or your fears?”

He had absolutely no right to challenge her about a conversation he had eavesdropped on in the first place. His arrogance made her grit her teeth—and tell a lie.

“I have no wishes one way or the other. I am simply calling it as I see it.”

“You have no wish to see a vicious dictator who destroys his country and his people swept from power,” he repeated, his face hardening.

She was damned if she would retract now.

“What good would my hopes do anyone?”

His burning gaze flicked down over her body, then back up to her face again. She suddenly felt what a disadvantage it was not to know whether she was naked or not. Had he just looked at her breasts?

“Do you feel you owe nothing to your father, Miss Golbahn?” he asked.

She stared at him in open-mouthed, indignant astonishment. Typical of a man like him to imagine a twenty-six-year-old woman should govern her actions according to her father’s pride!

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she demanded, dimly realizing that heads were now turning in their direction.

“I—”