CHAPTER ONE
THE sheer opulence of Al Kabibi airport stunned Bethany. The acres of glossy marble floors, the huge crystal chandeliers and the preponderance of gold fittings made her blink and stare.
‘Pretty impressive, eh?’ Ed Lancaster remarked in the slow-moving queue to Visa Clearance. ‘And yet five years ago there was nothing here but a set of concrete sheds and an unrelieved view of the sand-dunes! King Azmir pumped the oil but he stockpiled the profits. His tightfisted attitude caused a lot of resentment, not only with the locals but with the foreign workers as well. Conditions used to be really primitive here.’
The American businessman had joined their flight at a stopover in Dubai. He hadn’t stopped talking for thirty seconds since then, but Bethany had been grateful to be distracted from the grim awareness that, had her departmental head not decreed that she centre her research on this particular part of the Middle East, nothing short of thumbscrews and brute force would have persuaded her to set one foot in the country of Datar!
‘When King Azmir fell ill the crown prince, Razul, took over,’ Ed rattled on, cheerfully impervious to the fact that Bethany had stiffened and turned pale. ‘Now he’s a different kettle of fish altogether. He’s packed fifty years of modernisation into five. He’s an astonishing man. He’s transformed Datari society...’
Beneath her mane of vibrantly colourful curls Bethany’s beautiful face had frozen, her stunningly green eyes hardening to polar ice. All of a sudden she wanted Ed to shut up. She did not want to hear about Prince Razul al Rashidai Harun. Nor did she have the smallest urge to admit that their paths had crossed quite unforgettably during Razul’s brief spell at university.
‘And the people absolutely adore him. Razul’s like their national hero. They call him the Sword of Truth. You mention democracy and they get real mad,’ Ed complained feelingly. ‘They start talking about how he saved them from civil war during the rebellion, how he took command of the army, et cetera, et cetera. They’ve actually made a film about it, they’re so proud of him—’
‘I expect they must be,’ Bethany said flatly, an agonisingly sharp tremor of bitterness quivering through her.
‘Yes, sirree,’ Ed sighed with unhidden admiration. ‘Although this divine cult they’ve built up around him can be painful, he is one hell of a guy! By the way,’ Ed added, pausing for breath, ‘who’s coming to collect you?’
‘Nobody,’ Bethany muttered, praying that the monologue on Razul was over.
Ed frowned. ‘But you’re travelling alone.’
Bethany suppressed a groan. Actually, she hadn’t been alone at Gatwick. A research assistant had been making the trip with her. But, with only minutes to go before they boarded, Simon had tripped over a carelessly sited briefcase and had come down hard enough to break his ankle. She had felt dreadful simply abandoning him to the paramedics but, aside from the fact that she barely knew the young man, work naturally had had to take precedence.
‘Why shouldn’t I be travelling alone?’
‘How on earth did you get a visa?’ Ed prompted, suddenly looking very serious.
‘The usual way... What’s wrong?’
‘Maybe nothing.’ Ed shrugged with an odd air of discomfiture, not meeting her enquiring gaze. ‘You want me to stay with you in case there should be a problem?’
‘Of course not, and I see no reason why there should be a problem,’ Bethany informed him rather drily.
But there was. Ed had just moved off with an uneasy wave when the Datari official scrutinised her visa and asked, ‘Mr Simon Tarrant?’
Bethany frowned.
‘According to your visa, you are travelling with a male companion. Where is he?’
‘He wasn’t able to make the flight,’ she explained with some exasperation.
‘So you are travelling unaccompanied, Dr Morgan?’ he stressed, with a dubious twist of his mouth, as if he could not quite credit the validity of her academic doctorate. That didn’t surprise her. Female children had only recently acquired the legal right to education in Datar. The concept of a highly educated woman struck the average Datari male as about as normal as a little green man from the moon.
‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’ Bethany demanded irritably, her cheeks reddening as she was drawn to one side, the embarrassing cynosure of attention for everyone else in the queue.
‘Your visa is invalid,’ the official informed her, signalling to two uniformed guards already looking in their direction. ‘You cannot enter Datar. You will be returned to the UK on the next available flight. If you do not possess a return ticket, we will generously defray the expense.’
‘Invalid?’ Bethany gasped in disbelief.
‘Obtained by deception.’ The official treated her to a frown of extreme severity before he turned to address the other two men in a voluble spate of Arabic.
‘Deception?’ Bethany echoed rawly, unable to credit that the man could possibly be serious.
‘The airport police will hold you in custody until you depart,’ she was informed.
The airport police were already gawping at her with blatant sexual speculation. Even in the midst of her incredulous turmoil at being threatened with immediate deportation, those insolent appraisals made Bethany’s teeth grit with outrage. Sometimes she thought her physical endowments were nature’s black joke on the male species. With her outlook on the male sex she should have been born plain and homely, not with a face, hair and body which put out entire
ly the wrong message!
‘You are making a serious mistake,’ Bethany spelt out, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet three inches. ‘I demand to speak to your superior! My visa was legitimately issued by the Datari embassy in London—’ She broke off as she realised that absolutely nobody was listening to her and the policemen were already closing in on her with an alarming air of purpose.
A sensation new to Bethany’s experience filled her. It was fear—sheer, cold fear. Panic swept over her. She sucked in oxygen in a stricken gasp and employed the single defensive tactic she had in her possession. ‘I would like you to know that I am a close personal friend of Crown Prince Razul’s!’
The official, who was already turning away, swung back and froze.
‘We met while he was studying in England.’ Her cheeks burning with furious embarrassment at the fact that she should have been forced to resort to name-dropping even to earn a hearing, Bethany tilted her chin, and as she did so the overhead lights glittered fierily over her long torrent of curling hair, playing across vibrant strands that ran from burning copper to gold to Titian in a glorious sunburst of colour.
The official literally gaped, his jaw dropping as he took in the full effect of that hair. Backing off a step, his swarthy face suddenly pale, he spoke in a surge of guttural Arabic to the two policemen. A look of shock swiftly followed by horror crossed their faces. They backed off several feet too, as if she had put a hex on them.
‘You are the one,’ the official positively whispered, investing the words with an air of quite peculiar significance.
‘The one what?’ Bethany mumbled, distinctly taken aback by the staggering effect of her little announcement.
He gasped something urgent into his radio, drawing out a hanky to mop at his perspiring brow. ‘There has been a dreadful, unforgivable misunderstanding, Dr Morgan.’
‘My visa?’
‘No problem with visa. Please come this way,’ he urged, and began to offer fervent apologies.
Within minutes a middle-aged executive type arrived and introduced himself as Hussein bin Omar, the airport manager. His strain palpable, he started frantically apologising as well, sliding from uncertain English into Arabic, which made him totally incomprehensible. He insisted on showing her into a comfortable office off the concourse, where he asked her to wait until her baggage was found. He was so servile that it was embarrassing.
Ironically, the very last thing Bethany had wanted was to draw any unwelcome attention to her arrival in Datar. Suddenly she fervently wished that she had kept her stupid mouth shut. Her reference to Razul had been prompted by a shameful attack of panic. Why on earth hadn’t she stayed calm and used logical argument to settle the mistaken impression that there was something wrong with her visa? And why all that silly fuss about the fact that she was travelling alone?
Fifteen nail-biting minutes later the airport manager reappeared and ushered her out...out onto a red carpet which had not been in place earlier. Bethany began to get all hot and bothered, her nervous tension rocketing to quite incredible heights. The VIP treatment staggered her. Everybody was looking at her. Indeed it was as though the whole airport had ground to a dead halt and there was this strange atmosphere of what could only be described as...electric excitement.
It had to be a case of mistaken identity, Bethany decided, struggling to hold onto her usually bomb-proof composure. Who on earth did Hussein bin Omar think she was? Or did an acquaintance with Razul automatically entitle one to such extraordinary attention at the airport?
What an idiot she had been to claim friendship with him...especially as it was a lie...a really quite blatant lie, she conceded inwardly, grimly recalling her last volatile meeting with the Crown Prince of Datar, slamming down hard on the piercing pain that that memory brought with it. She had had a narrow escape—a damned lucky narrow escape, she reminded herself fiercely. She had very nearly made an outsize fool of herself, but at least he had never known that. She hadn’t given him that much satisfaction.
A whole column of spick and span policemen were standing to attention on the sun-baked pavement outside. Bethany turned pale. The heat folded in, dampening her skin beneath the loose beige cotton shirt and serviceable trousers she wore. Her discreet little trip to Datar had gone wildly off the rails.
‘Your escort, Dr Morgan.’ Hussein bin Omar snapped his fingers and a policeman darted forward to open the door of the waiting police car.
‘My escort?’ Bethany echoed shakily just as a young woman hurried forward and planted an enormous bunch of. flowers in her startled hands. As if that were not enough, her fingers were grasped and kissed. Then for a split second everybody hovered as though uncertain of what to do next.
‘Allah akbar...God is great!’ the airport manager suddenly cried. Several other excited male voices eagerly joined him in the assurance.
At that point Bethany simply folded backwards into the police car. The whole bunch of them were crazy! Instantaneously she scolded herself for the reflection. As an anthropologist trained to understand cultural differences, such a reflection ill became her. As the car lurched into sudden motion and the driver set off a shrieking siren to accompany their progress she told herself. to be calm, but that was difficult when she noticed the two other police cars falling in behind them.
Common sense offered the most obvious explanation. Hussein bin Omar had been appalled by the mistake over her visa because she had claimed that she knew Razul. In short, this outrageous fuss was his attempt to save lost face and simultaneously demonstrate his immense respect for the Datari royal family. That was why she had been supplied with a police escort to take her to her hotel outside the city. All very much over the top, but then this was not England, this was Datar—a feudal kingdom with a culture which had only recently begun to climb up out of the dark ages of medievalism.
She closed her eyes in horror as her driver charged a red light, forcing every other vehicle to a halt. Fearfully lifting her lashes again, she gazed out at the city of Al Kabibi as it sped by far too fast. Ultra-modern skyscrapers and shopping malls mingled with ancient, turquoise-domed mosques, the old and the new coexisting side by side.
As it left the lush white villas of the suburbs behind, the broad, dusty highway forged a path through a landscape of desolate desert plains. Bethany sat forward to get a better view of the fortress-like huge stone walls rising out of the emptiness ahead. Her driver jabbered excitedly into his radio while endeavouring to overtake a Mercedes with only two fingers on the steering wheel.
Bethany was on the edge of her seat, praying. And then, without any warning at all, the car swerved off the road outside the fortress and powered through a set of enormous turreted gates. A clutch of robed tribesmen suddenly appeared directly in their path. They were brandishing machine-guns. The driver jumped so hard on the brakes that Bethany was flung along the back seat, and then she heard the splintering crack-crack of gunfire and threw herself down onto the floor, curling up into as tight a defensive ball as possible.
The car rolled to a halt. She stayed down, trembling with fear, wondering if the driver had been shot but not prepared to raise her head until the bullets stopped flying. The door clicked open.
‘Dr Morgan?’ a plummy Oxbridge voice enquired expressionlessly.
Bethany peered up and met the politely questioning gaze of a dapper little Arab gentleman with a goatee beard.
‘I am Mustapha—’
‘The g-guns...?’ she stammered.
‘Merely the palace guards letting off a little steam. Were you frightened? Please accept my apologies on their behalf.’
‘Oh...’ Feeling quite absurd, Bethany flushed and scrambled out of the car; only then did alarm bells start ringing. ‘The palace guards?’ Wide-eyed, she stared at the older man. ‘This isn’t my hotel?’
‘No, indeed, Dr Morgan. This is the royal palace.’ He permitted himself a small smile of amusement. ‘Prince Razul requested that you be brought here without delay.’
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‘Prince Razul?’ Bethany repeated in a strangled voice, but Mustapha had already swept off towards the arched and gilded entrance of the vast sprawling building ahead, clearly expecting her to follow him.
The airport manager must have contacted Razul about her arrival, Bethany registered in horror. But why on earth would Razul demand that she be brought to the palace? After the manner in which they had parted two years earlier he could not possibly wish to see her again! Lifelong conditioning to the effect that he was every woman’s fantasy did not prepare an Arab prince for the shattering experience of having his advances rebuffed. By the end of their last, distressing encounter Bethany had been left in no doubt that Razul had been very deeply offended by her flat refusal to have anything to do with him.
Yet she had planned what she would say to him in advance, employing every ounce of tact at her disposal. She had known the strength of his pride. She had gone to great lengths in her efforts to defuse a volatile situation gently. Her face shadowed now, the cruel talons of memory digging deep. Razul had unleashed his temper and goaded her into losing her head. She wasn’t proud of the derision with which she had fought back but he had been tearing her in two. She had been fighting for her own self-respect...why not admit it?
As she followed the older man into a huge, echoing hall lined with slender marble columns she was in a daze. Her exotic surroundings merely increased the sensation. Tiny mosaics were set into wildly intricate geometric patterns in shades of duck-egg green and ochre and palest blue on every inch of the walls and ceiling. The effect was dazzlingly beautiful and centuries old. A tiny sound jerked her head.
A giggle...a whisper? She looked up and saw the carved mishrabiyyah screens fronting the gallery suspended far above her. Behind the delicate yet wholly effective filigree barrier she caught flutters of movement, fleeting impressions of shimmering colour and then a burst of girlish laughter, excited whispers emerging from far more than one female voice and then swiftly stifled. A drift of musky perfume made her nostrils flare.