Lord of the Desert

She bit her lower lip. “My friend, Maggie, said that there were rumors about him and young women. She said they weren’t true and that he started them himself.”

“He did,” he said quietly. “I can promise you that you will be in no danger from him. In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “I think you may find yourself pampered as you never expected to be, under his protection.”

She drew in a breath. “I hope you’re right!” she said fervently. “Oh, look at those shawls!”

She rushed forward to a display over the doorway of a shop. There was a black shawl with pear-shaped fringe work that took her breath.

“A Moroccan scarf, like those the women wear around their heads when they go out in public,” he said. “In Qawi, we call a head covering a hijab. Do you fancy it?”

“I suppose it’s very expensive,” she said, glaring up at him. “But you’re not buying it. If I can afford it, I’ll buy it for myself.”

He grinned. “Ah, that American independence asserts itself! Very well.” He spoke to the man in that gutteral tongue she still didn’t recognize and laughed as he glanced down at her. “It is fifty-six dirhams,” he told her.

“Fifty-six…!”

“Seven American dollars,” he translated.

She let out her breath and smiled. “I’ll take it!”

He helped her find the coins to pay for it and let the man package it for her. He put the parcel under his arm and led her through the maze of other shops where she bargained with delight for a small pair of silver earrings and a worked silver and turquoise bracelet.

“There,” he said as they went down a long cobblestoned path, “is the palace of the Raissouli.”

It took her breath away. The tiles, in white and many shades of vibrant blue, were combined in the most beautiful mosaic pattern she could have imagined inside the white, white walls of the exterior. There was little inside to see, but she touched the ceramic tiles with utter fascination.

“All the tile work is geometric,” she murmured.

“Worshipers of Islam are forbidden from representing anything human or animal in the patterns,” he explained. “Thus the geometric designs.”

“They’re so beautiful.” She sighed with pleasure. “When I think of our concrete and steel and brick buildings back home…”

“But you have wooden ones as well,” he reminded her.

“Yes, old Victorian homes with exquisite gingerbread woodwork. I’ve seen those. In fact, our ranch house is built like that. It isn’t luxurious or anything, but it’s rather pretty when it’s freshly painted.”

He studied the gleam of her platinum hair as they went back out into the sunlight and back out the gates of the old city and onto the streets. “Do you ever wear your hair down, Gretchen?” he asked softly.

“It’s very fine and flyaway,” she said with a smile. “Besides, it gets in my face in the wind, especially the sort they have here in Morocco. It blows constantly.”

“How long is it?”

She searched his curious eyes. “It comes down a little past my waist. Why?”

“I know another woman, also an American, with hair much like yours.” He grimaced. “She cut hers. I imagine her husband encouraged her,” he added darkly. “He knows how much I admire long hair.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Her husband?”

He glared. “They have a son, almost two years old.”

“She turned you down, I gather?”

His chin went up. “I would not offer marriage,” he said evasively. “He did.”

“Why, you rake,” she teased.

He didn’t smile. If anything, he looked grim and introspective.

“Sorry,” she said at once. “I suppose she meant something to you?”

“She was my world,” he said abruptly. “But there again, fate robbed me.” He glanced beyond her and frowned.

She turned, in time to see the man in the beige suit now standing with the bodyguards. One of the two men in black suits on the side of the street was making an urgent gesture with one hand. The man in the beige suit motioned to Philippe.

“We must go at once,” he said, propelling her down the walkway to where their guide was waiting with the black-suited men. He was quite suddenly someone else, someone who exercised authority and expected instant obedience. When they reached the black-suited men, they were standing with the one in the beige suit—the man Philippe had described as an employee of a Saudi prince. But the man wasn’t behaving like royalty at all. In fact, he was acting in a totally subservient manner, almost pleading from the tone of his voice.

Philippe snapped out questions and then orders in a language that sounded different from the one he’d used in these shops. He glanced down at Gretchen with concern and guided her back toward the car, with their guide in front and the other three men behind and to the side of them.

Gretchen didn’t speak. She had a sense of urgency and danger which made her move quickly and keep quiet. She felt Philippe’s quick, approving gaze as they made their way back to the car and got inside. The suited men got into the car behind them, another Mercedes she noticed, and they pulled out into the street and quickly back onto the highway that led to Tangier.

In scant minutes, she realized that they were gaining speed and that a third car was apparently in hot pursuit.

She glanced at Philippe with visible apprehension. He had pulled a cell phone from his pocket and was speaking into it rapidly in a foreign tongue. The car behind them, apparently following orders, suddenly whirled and blocked the narrow road so that the pursuing car had to swerve or hit them. As they raced away, the sound of rapid gunfire echoed behind them. Gretchen’s hands clenched so hard on her plastic bottle of drinking water that she almost burst it.

“It is all right,” Philippe said in a soft, comforting tone, his face hard and somber. “We are perfectly safe. You react well to a crisis,” he added with gentle praise.

“That was gunfire!” she said breathlessly.

“It was not meant for us,” he said nonchalantly. “We have only helped the young man in the beige suit avert a kidnapping attempt. I assure you, the Moroccan authorities are even now on the way to apprehend the perpetrators.”

“But they were armed,” she persisted.

He waved a hand. “Armed, but hardly in the class of Ahmed and Bruno.”

“Who are they?”

He chuckled. “Bodyguards.”

“Oh, yes. The prince’s bodyguards.”

He lifted an eyebrow and smiled at some private joke. He slid back his sleeve and checked his watch. It was thin and gold, expensive-looking. “I regret having to cut short our sight-seeing tour, but we would have had to leave soon, just the same. I have a rather important business meeting later this afternoon.” He lifted his dark head and searched her eyes. “Will you have dinner with me this evening?”

Her heart skipped and she smiled whimsically. “If you…I mean, I really would like that.”

“Bien. I will call for you at a quarter till eight.”

“All right.” She wasn’t used to having dinner so late, but the hotel didn’t serve meals until that hour. She was already hungry. Perhaps she could find something to nibble on in the small refrigerator in her room.

“Did you have breakfast?”