Climax of Passion

She was alone. And cold. And the memory of her father had somehow lost the power to spark the fire in her belly. Another man did that. The man, almost certainly, used by Xa Shiraq to shame, damage and humiliate her father.

CHAPTER NINE

HE WAS outside the tent when Amanda emerged the next morning. He was alone. Clearly no one else was allowed within the vicinity.

His face was rendered indistinguishable by the cowl of his burnoose, but now Amanda would have known him anywhere. In any clothing.

She felt his eyes snap over her in quick appraisal. Amazingly she had slept well. Perhaps the jasmine scent also had soporific qualities. The early morning air was crisp, engendering a sense of vitality, but he added dynamism to it. Amanda waited for him to speak, aware that her fate lay in his hands.

‘You are ready to depart now?’ he asked without preamble.

It was the authoritative part of him that spoke. No desire. No intimacy. Cool, decisive, distant. His night under the stars seemed to have brushed aside the part of him he had revealed the previous evening. Perhaps disloyalty to Xa Shiraq sat uncomfortably on his shoulders. Perhaps much depended on her attitude this morning.

Was he waiting to discover which way she would turn? Was he watching like a cat to see how the mouse would try to avoid the danger and traps which abounded?

Amanda had decided last night he was not Jebel Haffa. The roundabout way he had answered her question about his identity inclined her to believe he was a far more complex man than the faithful follower Jebel Haffa was purported to be, probably someone higher in authority who worked behind the scenes. That fitted the anonymity he was intent on keeping. It also fitted what had happened at the hotel in Fisa.

‘I’m ready for any new challenges,’ she answered calmly. In her mind she added, Mr Complimentary Upgrade.

‘You will instruct Mocca to lead your convoy on to the location marked on your father’s map.’

Amanda could not hide her surprise. ‘You know about that?’ For years she had considered the maps her secret weapon.

‘Your father was hardly discreet. You are not the first to come looking for Patrick Buchanan’s great discovery,’ he said dryly.

‘It is as well to have another failure, particularly by his daughter’s expedition.’

He was so confident it would fail. Had her father been mistaken? Amanda couldn’t believe it. Even in the delirium preceding his death by pneumonia, her father had still been lucid about the crystal caves. They had to exist.

‘You’re allowing me to continue?’ she asked, wary of misunderstanding his intentions.

‘Your convoy will follow your exact instructions in everything. They will go, they will search, they will not find what you are looking for.’

‘Where will I be in the meantime?’

‘With me.’

It was a flat statement of fact, not allowing her any choice in the matter. It gave her no indication of what they would be doing together.

He nodded towards the camp where Mocca and his extended family were bustling around, packing up, ready to depart. There seemed to be far more efficient organisation in their activities this morning. ‘Go and give your orders. Then you will return here to me.’

It was clear she was to appear to be a free agent, although she wasn’t. If she deviated in any way from his instructions, Amanda had the sinking sensation that her fall into disgrace and oblivion was virtually certain. She resigned herself to doing what was requested and set off to speak to Mocca, determined that both her manner and words be above criticism.

She had no idea if Upgrade’s reference to being partly Jebel Haffa was significant or merely symbolic. Whatever and whoever he was, he was still acting under orders from Xa Shiraq. It seemed highly unlikely that these arrangements were his own. Although he probably had some latitude in carrying out the sheikh’s will.

She hoped his manner would be different once they were alone. If they were to be alone. How she had got herself into this situation, and how she was going to get herself out of it, Amanda did not precisely know.

She might be about to be whisked off to Alcabab to face justice according to Xa Shiraq. She might be accused of treason against the State.

On the other hand, if she were to rejoin Mocca at the site to be explored, and that exploration did prove to be an exercise in futility, the sheikh could consider her failure as the definitive means to bury the question of Patrick Buchanan’s discovery once and for all. In which case, why wasn’t she being allowed to go to the site and confirm the failure?

If he wanted her expedition to fail in a blaze of publicity she would be accompanying it. As neither of these situations seemed feasible, it meant one thing with certainty. There was a deeper purpose behind what was happening.

Excitement tripped her heart into a faster beat. If Upgrade had wanted her simply for his pleasure, he could have had her last night. He had chosen differently. Perhaps his words revealed not so much desire and wanting and vul-nerability, but instead constituted an excuse to withdraw.

Amanda had the disturbing feeling that she was nothing but a pawn. If that was the case, Amanda knew enough about chess to know that pawns could become queens. She hoped to show Upgrade how it was done.

‘Good morning, Miss Buchanan,’ Mocca greeted her in singsong triumph. His grin was very wide. ‘You see? There was no...o...o problem. Your bodyguard would have been an insult to your great patron.’