Missh stared at him for several minutes in silence. ‘Father — do you not realize what is happening out there beyond the walls of this palace?’
‘I realize very well, son. The revenues of oil are being used to make us into the most modern industrial nation in the world.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘What are you saying? It is true; no one has the modern equipment we have. Just take a look around you — at this office — everything in the world that is new, advanced, for industry, for agriculture, for medicine — I have either examples here, or the literature. There is nothing that is new and that is of value that we do not have either in this country, or on order.’
‘But your people aren’t interested — at least, most of them are not. They are plotting, father, plotting now, and any day they will rise up.’
‘You talk rubbish, son. Your mind has been poisoned by your foreign education. I knew I should not have sent you — but the Sauds send their sons, Oman sends his — so I must send mine.’
Missh quietly related to his father what had happened to his car at the Quommah Beach Club.
‘It serves you right,’ said the Emir. ‘That Beach Club is a place of decadence. The heir to the throne of this country has no business in a place like that, and your people were telling you so. It was their way of getting a message across; that is all.’
‘You are crazy, father, if that is all you think it was — crazy. Unless we do something now, you and I and all your wives and all your loyal servants will be dead. The people are going to rise up like they did in Iran, like they did in so many countries. It is no different here.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ demanded his father, belligerently.
‘I’m not suggesting. From now on, father, I am telling you what is to happen, and you are going to agree.’
The Emir stared at his son incredulously. ‘I am listening, son,’ he said contemptuously.
‘You are to abdicate, and I am to take over as ruler. If we do this, then Mr Culundis will give us arms, and a loyal army to defend ourselves against the revolutionaries, and to rout them out.’
‘You are crazy,’ said the Emir.
‘No, father, it is you who is crazy. I will not stand by and die because of your madness.’
‘I suggest if you feel this way, then you take a plane and get out of this country, the sooner the better.’
‘No, father, this is my home. I am not leaving.’
‘And I am not abdicating.’
‘Oh yes you are.’
‘And just how do you propose to make me?’
‘By asking you nicely first: and then, if you do not agree, father — by force.’
The Emir pulled open the central drawer of his desk; it took him some moments, for it was stuck, and he had to jerk it out slowly, from side to side. Then he rummaged for several moments in a tangle of papers, pens, rulers, rubbers, cellotape, before he pulled his hand back out. In it he held a Browning revolver. It was a massive heavy gun, of First World War design, and looked like something that might have been discarded as obsolete by Lawrence of Arabia. He stood to his feet, swaying, shaking with rage and brandishing the gun out in front of him. ‘By force, you say, by force?’
He was pointing the gun at Missh, and shaking it about furiously. Missh put his hands up. ‘Be careful, father, it may be loaded.’ There was an explosion, and a bullet ripped through a window pane. The Emir’s eyes bulged and he swung the gun down towards the floor in fright; somehow, he pulled the trigger again, and a bullet tore into his own foot. Howling with pain he jerked the gun up, firing into his desk top. Missh had by now flung himself to the floor; the bullet ricocheted off a metal in-tray and ripped into the Emir’s stomach, flinging him backwards and onto the floor. Missh rushed over to his father and pulled the gun a safe distance away. His father lay there, ashen grey, bleeding heavily from both his stomach and his foot. Missh rushed to the telephone on his father’s desk; at that moment, two guards came running in through the door. Missh rang down to the palace’s residential doctor and instructed him to call an ambulance and come right away. Then he joined the guards who were kneeling by his father.
The guards looked at his father and then looked at him. Their eyes were full of suspicion. A cold wave of fear suddenly swept aside all the other emotions Missh was feeling. They suspected him of shooting his father; if his father died now, he could face a firing squad. He shook his head frantically. Ali Al Shammham, his family’s short, fat doctor, hurried into the room, clutching his black briefcase.
‘What happened? What happened?’ he shrilled in his high-pitched voice. He knelt down beside the Emir, whose breathing was becoming slower and deeper and whose eyes now remained shut for long periods between blinks.
‘My son,’ said the old man. ‘Bring my son.’
‘I am here, father.’
‘You are right,’ said the old man. ‘I am too old to rule — it is time I must step down. Tonight. Now. I have become a danger, a liability to you, to my country. From tonight, you are the new Emir—’ He looked up and around at the peering faces. ‘You here are my witnesses. From tonight, Prince Abr Qu’Ih Missh becomes Emir of Amnah.’ He nodded slowly, but certainly. ‘Now get me to hospital.’
Missh turned away, tears streaming down his face. The doctor gave the old man a shot of morphine, then began work to try and stem the bleeding. Missh picked up his father’s head and cradled it between his thighs. As the doctor worked, he wept, loudly and uncontrollably.
12
Amanda sat in silence, a knot of fear gripping her stomach, her hands rigidly holding onto the front of the seat; the blurred red, white and occasional amber lights beyond the clacking wiper blades came and went like the programme of some nightmare slot machine. But she wasn’t standing in front of any slot machine; she was in the passenger seat of Alex Rocq’s Porsche, and she was speechless with fear.
For an hour, Rocq had cursed and sworn at the Friday night rush hour, through Battersea and then Wandsworth and then down the Kingston by-pass. They had driven down the motorway, first the M25, then the M23, at speeds ranging between 115 and 150 miles per hour; how they hadn’t been stopped by the police was a miracle, and she would have much rather they had been, for at least it might have made him drive slower.
Off the end of the motorway, in the thick two-way traffic, he had forged a third lane and resolutely stayed there, lights blazing, hooting frenetically, occasionally ducking in behind a car or a lorry and shouting, ‘Bastard!’ at the oncoming vehicle which had not given way. She looked at his tensed-up face, eyes squinting against the glare; he had been tensed up like this all week. Something was eating him, she was sure, but he denied anything was.
She had been to see Baenhaker again, and hadn’t bothered to tell Rocq. Baenhaker looked a lot better, but he too was in a livid mood. He wouldn’t say why either. The doctors had told him his injuries were not as severe as they had at first feared, and that he could expect to make a full recovery. She thought that news ought to have cheered him up, but all he could do was pour out a torrent of vitriol against everything. She had asked him about the accident but he could remember nothing, nor even anything he had done the day of the accident.
The Porsche braked hard, the wheels sliding over the wet tarmac, the nose snaking viciously; a chill went through her. ‘Oh, God, we’re going to crash!’ she thought, but they stopped about half an inch short of the tailgate of the Range Rover that was turning right. She turned to him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Alex, I don’t want to die, thank you very much. We’re not in any hurry — why can’t you drive a bit slower?’