Blink of an Eye (13 page)

She looked at him for a moment. “Yes. I am a princess and I have fled my country. My name is Miriam.”

“Miriam.” Seth liked her right away. “Will you please get in the car, Miriam?” He looked around. The lot was empty.

“What is your name?”

“Seth. I'm sorry—”

Seth's horizon blurred. He could still see the parking lot, but his mind clouded on the edges. And then he saw two Mercedes driving down two parallel streets. And he saw that the two streets covered the only two exits of this parking lot.

He blinked and his vision returned to normal.

Seth resisted a relapse into panic. He jerked his head to the right exit and then the left. Nothing. He took two steps around the hood for Miriam, but he immediately turned back for his own door. What was he going to do, set her in his car like he'd set her on the toilet?

“Get in the car! Quick, get in the car!”

She still didn't move. If he couldn't get her to move now . . .

He slammed his fists on the hood and yelled each word distinctly. “Get—in—the—car!”

She scrambled for the door and tugged. It was locked.

Seth dived in, unlocked her door, and twisted the ignition key. The motor growled. Their doors pounded shut.

“What is it? Why are you yelling at me?”

“They're coming! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell, but they're just—” He craned for a view of the exit and saw that the coast was clear.
Okay, baby, just sneak on out. Maybe this time you're wrong. Intuition can
only be so good, right?

He grabbed the stick shift with a cautious hand and nudged it into drive. The car eased out into the lane, lights still off.

“How do you know all this?” she asked. “Where are we going?”

“
Sh
. Please.”

Come on, baby . . .

The tires crunched over the asphalt, loud in the night. His hands pressed into the wheel, white in the knuckles. How
do
you know all this, Seth? The Cougar rolled toward the exit.

Yeah, baby. Yeah, we got it. We—

Lights glared in the mirror. He glanced up. Twin lamps blazed toward them from the back entrance. Seth slammed the pedal to the floor. The Cougar surged, roared past the last three cars in the lot, and shot out into the street.

Another set of lights, the ones from the second Mercedes he'd seen in his mind's eye, penetrated Miriam's window on a collision course. They would have collided too—broadside at thirty miles an hour—if Seth had kept his cool and yanked the wheel around to escape. The change in direction would have slowed the Cougar enough for the onrushing car to end things right there. But Seth didn't turn—he froze like a crash-test dummy behind the wheel, unable to move as he should have.

The Cougar flew across the street in a fly of sparks, missed a parked car on the passenger's side by inches, pounded over the curb with enough force to bend both rims, and roared over the lawn of the UC Berkeley Art Museum.

“Turn! Turn, turn!” Miriam yelled.

They were zeroing in on a thick maple. Seth regained control of the beast and spun the wheel. The Cougar laid a broad swipe of the lawn bare and shot onto Durant Avenue, where Seth managed to swing the car into the right lane.

But now the Mercedes was on Durant as well, back on his tail.

“Hold on, baby! Ha!”

Seth floored the Cougar, and the 454 accelerated with enough power to force their heads back into the seats. He was terrified; the cold sweat on his neck said so clearly enough. But he was also alive, wasn't he? Really alive. Like being airborne in a twenty-foot wave with foam roaring two feet overhead. He'd almost forgotten why he loved surfing. Danger. Clive Masters might have been onto something after all.

Miriam whimpered. She twisted in her seat, saw the pursuit.

“Faster!”

“We have a red light—”

“Drive faster! Faster.”

“Faster,” he repeated and nailed the throttle. They split the intersection of Durant and Bowditch at a good sixty miles an hour. The Mercedes slowed for the light and then crept through.

“Fast enough?”

She didn't respond.

By the time they reached Shattuck, the Mercedes' lights were weaving in and out of view. By the time they hit Interstate 80, the lights were gone.

They headed south, and Seth had no idea where they were going. They just headed south.

“They're gone,” Seth said.

She looked back. “Yes.”

“Now what?”

She looked over at him, face white. “Maybe they will come again.”

“Maybe you should tell me why they want you,” he said.

“Maybe you should tell me how you know they want me,” she said.

How he knew? He didn't have the faintest idea. But that didn't matter. What did matter was that he
had
known. He couldn't shake the thought that he was meant to be here, riding down the freeway with a woman named Miriam from Saudi Arabia.

And even if he wasn't necessarily meant to be here, in some strange way he wanted to be. Because she needed him; because he had just felt his blood flowing, really flowing, for the first time in years; because his mind had pulled a couple of very cool tricks back there for the third time in three days.

And then there was the fiasco that awaited him at the Faculty Club.

Yes, he belonged here. At least for the moment.

“You first,” he said.

chapter 12

h
ilal stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Hyatt Regency's twenty-third floor, overlooking the millions of lights along the San Francisco Bay. A strange blend of emotions crowded his chest—the same as every time he visited the United States—a mixture of excitement and sadness that left him empty. Somehow Europe and Asia were different. He'd seen plenty of large cities full of excess, beginning with Riyadh, which in many ways bled more exorbitance than the rest put together. If the princes were known for anything, it was spending money. No, it wasn't the wealth boasted by San Francisco's coastline that bothered Hilal.

It was the unlimited freedom of every citizen to bask in this wealth that bothered him. Nowhere else in the world did as many individuals have as much as in America. In most countries the wealthy paid the price of personal freedom with rules.

But here, the people enjoyed both immense wealth and unparalleled freedom. The combination made America unique among nations. The mutawa might accuse him of straying from the edicts of the Prophet and acquiescing to the infidels for such a statement, and in some ways they would be right.

Unfortunately, only a few truly understood that Saudi Arabia faced political extinction if she did not adapt to the changing world. Fortunately, King Abdullah was one of those.

Hilal turned from the window and poured himself a scotch. It felt good to be in a country where he didn't have to break the law to do what he did normally. He threw the drink back and swallowed.

A black nine-millimeter Browning Hi-Power lay beside the briefcase on the bed. His contact had delivered the weapon to him an hour earlier with a few other items he'd requested. Another benefit of freedom.

Six hours earlier he'd arrived and learned that the sheik's daughter had fled Berkeley. Sorting out the details of what transpired at the university had not been easy. Evidently, two Arabic men had passed themselves off as Hilal and an embassy associate and attempted to take her. This meant that someone else valued the woman as much as the king did and knew Hilal was on his way to collect her.

To his way of thinking, there was only one reason any Saudi assassin would go to such lengths to intercept Miriam. They needed her for their own gain. There was only one way to gain from a woman, and that was through marriage. The mixing of bloodlines.

Someone sought Sheik Abu al-Asamm's allegiance. Which meant that someone wanted power over the king.

But who? Who would know of his trip and the woman's whereabouts?

Wouldn't it be ironic if the kingdom's fate was decided by a woman rather than a man? Of course, a single bullet to her head would decide everything.

The shrill sound of the hotel phone interrupted his thoughts, and he picked it up. “Yes.”

“Good evening, Hilal.”

“General Mustafa. It would be best for me to call you on your cell phone. I've taken care of security. Every six hours, as requested by the king.”

“Of course.”

Hilal paused. His first call to Saudi Arabia had been directly to the king, but he couldn't interrupt Abdullah every six hours to update him on this mess. General Mustafa was a blood brother to the king and the head of intelligence. If they couldn't trust him, they could trust no one.

“She escaped with an American—Seth Border, a student,” Hilal said.

“So, the authorities are cooperating.”

“Locally, yes. I'm scheduled to meet with the State Department tomorrow afternoon in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the local police have begun a search for the car. We believe she's headed south. Several complaints were called in from other motorists. Evidently the man thinks he's in a race car.”

“Don't all Americans?” The general chuckled.

Hilal found no humor in the statement. “The police say they will have the car by morning. With any luck I will be on a plane back to Riyadh tomorrow night.”

“Good. Then this should be a simple matter.”

“Perhaps. She managed to escape the two men who tried to intercept her.”

There was a pause. “Will you track them?”

“I have a car; I have a police scanner. Freedom has its advantages, General. I'll call back in six hours.”

Hilal hung up the phone, picked up his briefcase, checked the room by habit, and left for the garage.

Khalid spoke softly into the secure phone line. “Those idiots were
your
men. And now an American helps her?”

Omar leaned back in his chair and said nothing.

“The fact that Hilal himself has gone means the king suspects something.”

“The king always suspects something. His days are numbered and he knows it.”

Silence.

“Who is this American?” Khalid asked.

“Seth Border,” Omar said, shifting the receiver to his opposite ear. “A student. That's all my men were able to learn before they left the scene. Evidently the police showed up in some force.”

“That would be Hilal's doing. By now he's working with the authorities.”

Omar sighed inaudibly. In the end, men like his father always depended on men like him, didn't they? On killers and enforcers of the law. True strength was always wielded by the sword. Even the Prophet had known that.

Khalid took a deep breath. “You will need to marry her in America if you can,” he said. “With Hilal involved, bringing her back could be a problem. And if she does not cooperate, then she must be silenced.”

“Killed.”

“We can't have her telling the world stories. General Mustafa called ten minutes ago,” Khalid said. “Hilal called him. They've already identified the American's car and expect to take Miriam into custody by morning. She's headed south.”

“There's no question about Mustafa's loyalty?”

“No.”

“How often will Hilal call him?”

“Every six hours. We will know what he knows before the king does.”

“I'll call from New York; if there's any change, I'll make necessary adjustments.” Omar paused. “In the meantime you should prepare the sheik for the worst. We need his loyalty even if his daughter is killed.”

Khalid snorted. “You are telling me how to arrange my business now?”

Omar ended the call.

chapter 13

m
iriam sat in the speeding Cougar and watched the endless string of oncoming headlights. They'd spent an hour speculating who was after her and what course would be best for them.

They'd made their way south on Interstate 5 toward Los Angeles. Although they saw no indication that authorities were in pursuit, Seth insisted that the farther they traveled from Berkeley, the safer they would be. Judging by the labyrinth of freeways and endless lines of cars, Miriam didn't believe anyone had a hope of finding them.

After a flurry of discussion, Seth settled into an introspective state, drifting between deep thought and filling her in on America, as it really was, he said.

They stopped once for petrol. He gave her a short tour of the gas station, explaining what the different candies were and why he preferred the red licorice strips over the black ones and why mixing a fruit drink with candy for health reasons made no sense because the candy was bad enough on its own. So were most of the nuts.

They came out with two tall bottles of cold Dr Pepper, two bags of red licorice, and two bags of beef jerky, which he assured her was just as hard on the body as the other “junk” they had purchased. Consistency seemed important to him.

She assured him that she knew most of this—not only had she spent a summer in California while attending Berkeley, she had made several trips to European cities and read a thousand magazines published in the West. Still, he did have a unique perspective.