Zealot (7 page)

Four Arab men in suits and surly looks were waiting for him inside. They surrounded him as soon as he entered. “
Masá al-kháyr
,” MacLeod bade them good evening in his friendliest voice, flashing his most sincere smile. It never paid to piss off guys
carrying automatic weapons under their coats before finding out what their problem was.

“Duncan MacLeod?” asked one of them, an older man in a traditional Arab headdress, the
kaffiyeh
, and MacLeod nodded.

“Dr. Amina is expecting me,” he said and immediately two of the other suits each grabbed him by an arm. This wasn’t exactly
what he expected on a first date. He looked at the two men holding him, then at the older man in the
kaffiyeh
, who was regarding him sternly. “You wouldn’t happen to be her father, would you? Look, I promise, I’ll have her home by
midnight,” he joked, but the Palestinian was not amused.

“Search him,” he commanded, his face implacable. The suit holding MacLeod’s right arm pulled MacLeod’s wallet and a small
box in colorful gift wrap from his jacket and tossed them to the older man. The fourth suit proceeded to pat down MacLeod’s
chest and under his arms.

“Hey, watch it, that tickles,” MacLeod protested. The Palestinian, ignoring him, frisked him around the waist, then up and
down each leg. MacLeod pulled away. “Sorry, buddy, you’re not my type.” The friendly edge was beginning to wear off his voice.

“He’s clean,” the one frisking him reported to his boss. The two suits restraining MacLeod released him.

“Sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen.” MacLeod casually tugged the sleeves of his jacket back into position. “What do we do
next? Retinal scans? IQ tests? Or do I get to see Dr. Amina now?” At the older man’s nod, one of his men began to speak quietly
into a small walkie-talkie.

Kaffiyeh
tore the paper from the box and opened it, scrutinizing the contents. Apparently convinced the palm-sized box didn’t contain
an incendiary device, he closed the box and made a halfhearted attempt to stuff it back into its wrapping. Then he opened
MacLeod’s wallet and gave it a cursory look before handing them both back. “Our apologies, Mr. MacLeod,” he said, anything
but apologetic. “She will be down directly. Please wait here.” He indicated a chair in full view of all corners of the room.

“And you’re not going to tell me what this is about, are you?” MacLeod asked as he put away his wallet and tattered gift.
The Palestinian merely turned and walked away. “Somehow, I knew that was a rhetorical question.” MacLeod sat down in the specified
chair, drumming his fingers on his thighs as he waited for Maral. There were others in the lobby seemingly going about their
business, all of them careful not to be caught watching him, but he could feel a dozen eyes burning into him in secret. It
was a relief when he saw Maral coming across the lobby toward him a few minutes later.

He moved toward her, took her hand in his and kissed it gently. “
Káyf hálik
?” he greeted her in her native language, asking her how she was.

Maral smiled at him. “
Mabsúta
, Duncan,” she assured him she was well, and the words were warm and throaty. Her hair was still worn up in combs, but she
had exchanged her conservative suit for a moss-colored dress that swirled around her calves and brought out the burnished
gold in her skin. It was Paris
haute couture
and yet somehow still the epitome of Arab modesty. MacLeod couldn’t decide whether it was the dress that enhanced Maral’s
natural beauty, or Maral who enhanced the dress’s.

“You look magnificent,” he said, meaning every word of it.

She laughed. “How often does a girl get to Pans?” She did a quick little turn in front of him. “I don’t think I’ve worn anything
quite this fancy since my wedding.”

Over one arm Maral carried a silk shawl in whirls of greens and golds adorned by intricate beadwork. “May I?” MacLeod took
the shawl from her and draped it around her shoulders. “Spring nights here can still be chilly, but we don’t have too far
to go.” With a light touch, he stroked the silk as it lay across her shoulders. It was soft and cool. “This is lovely,” he
said, but he meant so much more than the shawl, keenly aware of the curve of her shoulder, the gracefulness of her arm as
he caressed them beneath the silk.

Maral tied the ends of the shawl in front of her, then playfully guided his hand along the edge of the silk as it passed gently
over her breast before holding his hand tight against the knot of the shawl where it lay just beneath her bosom. Her dark
eyes met his own and a moment sparked between them. It wasn’t a promise. It was a possibility.

“This was my grandmother’s,” she finally said, but MacLeod could tell that wasn’t what she really wanted to say. “It was part
of her dowry from my great-grandfather.” She abruptly released his hand and his gaze as her bodyguard Assad and yet another
man who had obviously been shopping off the rack at Spy City approached them.

“We’re ready, Doctor,” Assad announced.

“Then I guess so are we.” Maral offered her arm to MacLeod. “Duncan?”

He looked at the two men, who were obviously armed to the teeth and who clearly intended to accompany them. “I didn’t realize
this was a double date.” He turned to Maral. “I thought you were going to arrange to leave Toto at home.”

Maral’s face reflected her deep concern. “Farid didn’t tell you?” She looked across the lobby toward the man in the
kaffiyeh
.

“I’m afraid they were too busy measuring my inseam. Not a very chatty bunch. Tell me what?”

She reached out and touched his hand. “There’s been more trouble at home.” Her eyes grew darker, her voice took on a note
of pain. “Forty-three people were murdered outside a mosque in Hebron yesterday by an extremist Jewish student with an automatic
weapon.”

That would explain the smell of paranoia in the lobby, the heightened security. He understood immediately. “And you’re afraid
of retaliation.”

Maral nodded. “All of the peoples of Palestine are children of thousands of years of blood feuds and retribution. A Jewish
attack like this will only lead to an Arab counterattack Then an Israeli response, then a Palestinian uprising. And then the
military will crack down, and the next thing you know, five years of compromise and negotiation and movement—however so slowly—toward
peace could be gone. All because of one fanatic. Everything we fought for. Everything we’ve gained. We will be prisoners again
in our own country.” MacLeod caught a glimpse of the combination of eloquence and a had edge of steel that bred a strong negotiator.
“We cannot let that happen.”

“Then you
are
in danger?”

“No more here than in Ramallah, I think. But you see, don’t you, why Farid and his security people would not allow me to go
to dinner with such a charming, mysterious stranger without proper”—she looked at stern-faced Assad and his brooding associate
and said wryly—”chaperones?”

“Well, the more the merrier, I always say.” MacLeod took Maral’s arm and started toward the door. He glanced back at Assad.
“You coming, Toto?”

“I will drive,” Assad announced.

“I thought we’d walk,” MacLeod said. “The restaurant’s only a few blocks away, and it’s a nice night. C’mon, the exercise’ll
do you good.”

“I will drive,” Assad reiterated.

“I’m afraid Farid has picked a different restaurant for us,” Maral told MacLeod apologetically, “one he knows is secure. I
hope you don’t mind. It was either this, or I would be having room service one in my hotel room again.”

MacLeod smiled at her. “It’s fine. I don’t care where we eat or what we eat, as long as it’s with you.”

Maral laughed. “I’m beginning to think you have the patience of a saint, Duncan MacLeod.”

“If it keeps you from becoming a martyr, I can be anything you like.” He ushered her through the revolving doors to a dark
Town Car waiting outside.

The ride to the restaurant was an uncomfortable one, Maral sandwiched in the backseat between MacLeod and the sullen Arab
whose name MacLeod still didn’t know. With the two bodyguards listening to their every word, it wasn’t the best place for
conversation beyond remarks about the weather and the sorry state of Parisian traffic. It was to everyone’s relief when they
finally arrived at the restaurant.

MacLeod escorted Maral inside to find the place completely empty. “I hope this isn’t a commentary on the food,” he remarked,
surveying the empty tables.

“We have it all to ourselves this evening,” Maral explained. “Just the four of us? How romantic.”

The owner of the establishment, a rotund Frenchman with a handlebar mustache, hurried over to greet them and ushered them
to a table. MacLeod helped seat Maral and then sat himself down opposite her. The two bodyguards took up their positions,
standing like twin towers of doom and gloom at the corners of the table.

Maral removed her shawl and draped it on the back of the empty chair to her right, but the silk was slippery and slid from
the chair to the floor. Immediately, both guards swooped in to rescue it as if throwing themselves on a live grenade. Maral
had to laugh at how ridiculous they looked, and once she’d started, found she couldn’t stop. “I can’t do this,” she said through
her laughter.“This is all too surreal. I’ll never get used to it.” Tears came to her eyes, though whether they were tears
of laughter or frustration at their situation, MacLeod couldn’t tell.

He got up and pulled two nearby tables a little closer to the table where he and Maral were seated. He pulled a chair out
from under one table, grabbed Assad by the shoulders and directed him to the chair. “You, Beavis, sit.” He pulled a chair
out from under the second table and indicated it to Assad’s partner. “And you, Butthead, over here.” The partner was about
to protest, but one glance at the look on MacLeod’s face and he sat where ordered. MacLeod sat back down in his own seat.
“Better?”

“Much better,” Maral agreed. “Thank you.”

MacLeod reached for the wine list, then stopped. “Would you be offended if I had a drink?”

“Offended? Why would I be offended?”

“Islam. You said at lunch yesterday you didn’t drink, and I thought…”

Maral shook her head. “I’m afraid the last devout Muslim in my family was my grandfather. I don’t drink, but it’s not a religious
obligation. You should help yourself.” MacLeod called the owner over and ordered a glass of wine.

“Would Monsieur like to see a dinner menu?” the owner asked.

“No…” MacLeod looked over at Maral with a twinkle in his eye. “Surprise us.” The owner hurried off to confer with the chef.
“Now,” he said to Maral, “tell me more about your family.”

“My father was raised in Islam, but he was always full of doubt, even as a child. He grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp
in Jordan, and he always had trouble understanding why my grandfather believed it was written that peasants from Russia should
take away the farm that had been in our family for nearly three hundred years. My mother was a Christian, from Bethlehem.
My uncles, who still raise sheep there, like to claim that it was our ancestors who saw the great star over Bethlehem and
found the baby Jesus. That’s how long they say my mother’s family have herded sheep in that area.”

MacLeod could remember many sunny afternoons as a boy spent off adventuring with his cousin Robert, even though they’d both
been warned to mind the sheep. And many’s the cold, lonely night spent helping a ewe bring new life into the world. “I come
from a long line of shepherds, myself.”

The owner brought MacLeod’s wine to the table, but MacLeod, fascinated by this glimpse into the complex layers that made up
his dinner companion, didn’t touch it. “So, your mother was an Arab Christian, your father an apostate Muslim. How about you?”

She shrugged. “I guess you could say my brothers and I are interested spectators. Respectful of both traditions and practicing
none. That’s why my father wanted to move to America, where race and religion wouldn’t matter so much anymore.”

MacLeod knew better than that and could tell she did, too. “And did it?” he prompted.

“Of course it still mattered. “Dirty Arab’ hurts a child as much in English as it does in Hebrew. And we could never truly
get away from everything that was happening back home.” She stopped talking for a moment, as if unwilling to peel back a deeper
layer on such short acquaintance, then continued on with her story. “My father managed to drink himself to death by the time
I was nineteen. So much for that American dream, huh?” Her little laugh was mirth-free. “I’ve seen alcohol. I saw it promise
my father the peace he was looking for, then strip it all away from him. And, since I’m told I’m very much like the stubborn
old fool in other ways, I’ve decided it’s best I stay away from it.”

MacLeod touched her hand across the table. “I suspect you are neither old nor a fool.”

“Ah, but don’t forget stubborn.” She turned her hand over so that his palm rested in hers, then held his hand. “So, now I
have bared my soul to you, it’s your turn.” Her purring voice, her chocolate eyes flecked with gold, the way she stroked the
back of his hand, she was certainly persuasive, and even the sudden arrival of the first course would not deter her from her
request. As the owner left the table, she pinned MacLeod’s hand beneath hers when he tried to reach for his fork. “Tell me
about Duncan MacLeod.” Stubborn she was, indeed.

“Not much to tell, really. I own a small barge on the Quai de la Tournelle. Cold in the winter, but you can’t beat the view.
I run a dojo back in the States. I like to read. I like to run.” He gave her a little self-deprecating grin. “I’m really rather
boring, when you get right down to it.”

“Yes, I know these things. You have a martial-arts studio that barely breaks even, you have no other visible means of support
apart from dabbling a bit in antiques. And despite that, you always pay your taxes on time, and you give extremely generously
to charities, especially those involving orphaned children. Your last traffic ticket was two years ago. You have no criminal
record, yet your name seems to come up quite frequently as a witness in police records, which tells me you are a ‘do-gooder’
with an overgrown curiosity.”