“I’ll bet your brother arranged this bubbly. Halib, my hero, here’s to you!” Colin drained his glass—"Mm,
wonderful!”
—and poured another, before coming to sit beside her on the spindly, uncomfortable sofa, sliding one arm along the back. Leila, anticipating his move, edged forward and rested her arms on her knees. In vain. Colin began to tickle her spine. He was “tiddly,” to borrow that awful word he used to describe not being drunk and not being quite sober either. Tiddly was one degree below pissed and two degrees below legless. Tiddly, he’d assured her, often, was
the
thing to be. On the whole she agreed, because in that condition she found him easier to manage.
“You’ve got a present for me,” she said, edging still farther forward. “Do you remember?”
“Present?” His face clouded. “I’ve already given you the ring, we bought a tea service together—”
“When we were in Ios, you promised to tell me something on our wedding night.”
Colin seemed to sober up with astonishing alacrity. He put his glass down on the table next to his side of the sofa. “My dream?” he said shortly.
“Yes.”
“Can’t you think of anything you’d rather talk about?” His smile was mischievous. “Dreams are rather boring.”
Still she did not look at him. “Tell me why your mother blamed you for your father’s death.”
“I’m sure she didn’t, not really. You know how kids love to—”
“No. No, I’m sorry. You made me a promise and now I’m claiming it.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because it’s a mystery between us. I don’t like that.”
The flush that had come into his cheeks was, she sensed, nothing to do with Laurent Perrier, 1964 vintage.
“You won’t tell me.” She made that a statement, not a question.
Colin stood up, staggering a little. In contrast with a moment ago he seemed a lot more drunk now. No longer tiddly. Pissed.
“All
right” Aw’righ'.
“I want another drink.”
She bit back the words, You’ve had enough already and said, “Just tell me, Colin. I don’t ask much.”
“The plane went down.” His speech was slurred, though she could understand him. “It began to sink quickly. There was a window. My father got me out through it. But … he was too big. Got … stuck.”
He drained his saucer of champagne, knocking it back as if it were gall.
“I was looking at him when … just happened that way. Saw him go down. Sucked down. Just his head, looking through the window, this look on his face, and the wave washing over it. Oh,
God.”
The glass fell to the carpet. He dropped to his knees. Very slowly, he bent forward until he was resting on all fours. For a moment he hung there, like a dog. Then he collapsed.
Leila had not touched her own glass. She stood up, straightening her skirt over and over again, a mechanical doll that some bored little girl has forgotten to switch off. After a while she gathered herself enough to pour the remains of the champagne down the toilet and flush it, before putting the empty bottle back in the ice bucket. She placed a pillow under Colin’s head and covered him with a blanket. Then she let herself out.
The corridor was empty. The entire hotel felt empty, though doubtless there were other guests marooned in isolated corners of this mausoleum. She crept along to the next room. Its door stood ajar. As she pushed it open, an unseen hand drew it away from her and, once she was inside, closed it again.
Halib, whose hand it was, said, “Good.” He sounded impressed but surprised.
On a table directly in front of her was a briefcase, the one she had seen in his suite at Oxford’s Randolph Hotel earlier that same summer. Draped over a nearby chair was a woman’s dark gray suit, with a white blouse and thick stockings; a pair of black patent leather shoes were aligned neatly underneath.
“He swallowed the drink?” Halib inquired. “He’s sleeping?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “My husband is sleeping.”
She felt like a figure from some darkly terrifying Jacobean drama. ’
Tis Pity She’s a Whore,
perhaps.
“Nobody saw you come here, to this room?”
“Nobody.”
“Excellent.” He hesitated. “What’s it like, being married?”
Leila, expecting Halib to pile on the pressure, had been working out paths of resistance. His question astonished her. As always.
“The same,” she replied listlessly.
“Oh.”
She thought she knew every nuance of his every mood, but tonight he was different.
“I’m getting married myself,” he said.
Her legs gave way and she sank down into the nearest chair, never taking her eyes off his face. She had come to this room expecting to find her brother at his most possessed, in full control of his frightful powers, and now this. He was blushing. He was
shy.
She ought to say something. “Who’s Father fixed you up with?” she asked eventually.
“Father doesn’t know yet. Annette.”
She could not focus on Annette. Then it dawned. “The one you were with today?”
He nodded. Leila stared and stared. He was bashful, he was happy, he was going to marry one of his unbeliever tarts, a foreign infidel, and Feisal didn’t even know. Allah, what a joke! In other circumstances, how funny it would have been: her brother, Halib, breaking the family mold.
“Did I give you the idea?” she asked.
He giggled.
Giggled!
“In a way, I suppose,” he said. “I want sons. Don’t you think she’s wonderful, poppet? Well, you hardly know her yet, but you will.”
“Don’t call me poppet. What’s Father going to say?”
“He’ll adore her. Naturally.”
Looking at his face, she was drawn to one inevitable conclusion. Halib had fallen in love. “Shall we begin, angel?”
His words, spoken in precisely the same light tone, caught her by surprise. What could he mean? He was in love, he was going to get married; surely he couldn’t go on with this night’s work? “Begin?”
“The uniform first, I think.” He looked at his watch. “Sorry to rush you, but not a lot of time.”
She collected all her resources and said, “Don’t make me do this, Halib.”
“You promised.”
“I can’t go through with it.”
“Although earlier today you went through with the wedding. Yes. A deal’s a deal, poppet. We’ve done our bit, now it’s your turn. Change your clothes.”
She put all the mute appeal she could muster into her gaze, but he was no longer a lover; he was cold right through to his soul.
“Grandfather Ibrahim died because you let his murderer into the house,” he said. “You disobeyed orders. Nobody ever asked you to pay for that until you were grown up, and even then no one asked you to pay. But when you wanted to marry Colin, it was too much. So you made a deal.”
“And now I’m breaking it.”
“And now I’m going down the passage to murder your husband, okay?”
His bright smile never faltered as he went across to the bedside table, took out a SIG-Sauer P226, checked its magazine, and made for the door. She grabbed him, spun him around, tried to grapple for the gun, but he held it above his head, an indulgent brother teasing his kid sister into a game, while his smile, that fine dazzling display of teeth, became one long taunt.
She stopped struggling. She dropped his arms and turned away, shielding her eyes. She was sobbing, but he did not care. She knew he did not care.
“Poppet …
poppet!
Why do we need all this hysteria, this brouhaha? Mm?” He spread his hands wide. “It’s so simple, so safe! What am I asking you to do? To take part in an amusing little charade, that’s all.”
Her gaze came to rest on the blouse. Rayon. Plain, simple. Funny, she had not known before today what murderers wore,
Woman’s Realm
no help there. They wore white rayon.
She picked up the clothes and ran into the bathroom.
When she emerged ten minutes later—it took so long because she had to put her hair up underneath an official-looking cap—Halib subjected her to a thorough inspection before proclaiming himself satisfied. He handed her the briefcase. She took it without a word. They went out. They took a back staircase, emerging into an alley behind the hotel. By now darkness had fallen; the alley was deserted. London smelled of rain and damp garbage, its traffic a rough but distant sea. When a horn sounded somewhere in Park Lane she thought, irrationally, how nice for the people in that car to be going out to a good dinner.
Talking of cars, hers was big and black, and it stood parked a few yards away, its nearside wheels on the pavement. As they approached, the driver started the engine. Halib handed his sister into the back seat, along with the briefcase. He closed the door. He bent down to blow her a kiss, although Leila, staring straight ahead, did not see it. He tapped the car’s roof with the flat of his hand and waved, before returning to the hotel via the front entrance, keen to be high-profile visible, alibi perfect.
Leila’s drive was a short one. She found that maddening. She wanted the journey to take all night. All year. In the event, it lasted five minutes.
They pulled up outside a house that was illuminated from top to bottom, great wedges and shafts of light buttressing out of it onto the pavement. Leila sat immobile. Five seconds passed. The chauffeur turned his head slightly. She was aware of him studying her in the mirror. Halib’s man. His eyes reminded her of a bird’s. Underneath those eyes you’d find a vicious beak, to rend and tear.
As Leila got out, a stopwatch clicked on inside her mind. She caught a glimpse of a gilt chandelier inside a ground-floor room, and oil paintings hung from oak panels. Voices, loud and bibulously cheerful through the glass. Music. Five seconds gone, never to return.
She straightened her shoulders and climbed the steps to the front door beneath the portico. Five more seconds lost forever. The door opening, to reveal a butler, the real thing, one hand straightening his lapel.
Lights, camera….
“Yes, madam?”
Action.
“Foreign Office,” Leila said, pointing to the black-and-gilt badge pinned on her breast. “I’m carrying a memorandum from the Foreign Secretary to His Excellency Nasser al-Qotbzadeh. It concerns their meeting tomorrow. I’m to await a reply.”
The butler glanced down at her briefcase. “I will tell the ambassador, madam. Do you wish to step inside?”
Leila nodded and crossed the threshold. The hallway was wide and long, with an imposing staircase of shallow semicarpeted steps leading up and around to the first floor, whence came the sounds of revelry. Somebody’s wedding reception, perhaps? The butler floated up the stairs, disappearing around the bend at the top. Shortly afterward a crowd of girls came down in a haze of tattle and giggles. At least two of them were Jewish. This particular Arab ambassador was known to have a yen for the Nobel Peace Prize. Halib claimed actually to like the fellow; but, as he said with a shrug, business was business.
Two minutes and forty-five seconds,
read the stop-watch inside her skull, when a tall Arab came scurrying down the stairs with a worried look on his face and the butler in tow.
Leila fingered the official badge attached to her jacket, pressing a concealed switch. There, she’d done it; the radio signal was sent. Outside, in the street, the driver would have received it. He’d be getting out of the car, going around to open the rear door for her….
“I told you, ask me first before letting anyone in,” the Arab yapped at the butler. He turned to Leila. “Yes, miss, what can I do for you? I am his Excellency’s secretary.”
Leila repeated the story about a memorandum for the ambassador. The Arab looked at the briefcase suspiciously. “Open it, then, open it.”
“The communication is confidential; his Excellency holds the key.”
“What? Nonsense, I never heard of such a thing.”
Leila gawked at him. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Halib had told her the briefcase would be taken in as a matter of course.
“I’ve got my orders,” she said weakly. “I’m sure if you consult with the ambassador—”
The doorbell rang. The butler went to answer it. On the step stood a uniformed constable, who said, “Who’s with the Foreign Office car outside?”
“I am,” Leila said. Her heart was racing. Not more difficulties; this whole thing was falling apart.
“It’s blocking the street. You’ll have to move.”
She couldn’t believe this was happening. She was trapped between the policeman and the ambassador’s secretary; they wouldn’t accept the briefcase, they wouldn’t let her go; part of her was glad, but she didn’t want to die.
“I’m here with a message,” she said to the policeman. “A message for the amb—”
“I don’t care if you’re signing the ruddy Treaty of Versailles, I want you to move that car and I want you to do it
now.”
Four minutes exactly since she’d left the car. Leila’s palms were dripping sweat. She couldn’t go on, it was all going to fail and fail disastrously.
Help me!
she cried silently.
“Tell my driver,” she retorted. To her astonishment her voice sounded firm and under control.
“He says he won’t move without your say-so.”
Four minutes and twenty-five seconds.
Leila shot a look of appeal at the Arab. “I’ll be back at once. I must wait for a reply. But it’s urgent, and I can assure you that the Ambassador does have the key. Excuse me.”
She put down the briefcase and went out while the policeman continued to harangue her unpleasantly. She approached her car and bent to speak to the driver, who became aggressive. The policeman began to shout. The driver grumpily put his car in gear and moved a few yards at a snail’s pace, with the policeman still resting one hand on the window ledge.
They had reached an intersection. Leila glanced back to see that the front door through which she’d just emerged had closed, the portico was empty.
“Now!” said the policeman, and she gazed at him vacantly.
Five minutes.
While she was dithering, the constable grabbed her arm, wrenched open the rear door with his free hand, and thrust her inside, following with such speed that he sprawled over her lap. The car leapt forward, cornered on two wheels, and there, ahead of them, were the lights and fast-flowing traffic of Park Lane.