This required thought. Maddas Hinsein pulled his abayuh around himself tightly. It always helped him to think.
"We can defeat their tricks easily," he said at last. "I hereby decree that Irait and Kuran have merged into a single entity. We are henceforth to be known as Iran, and these cowardly resolutions no longer apply to us."
"But, Precious Leader," he was told, "there already exists an Iran."
"Who are our mortal enemies," Maddas spat. "Let them eat the UN sanctions."
The aide had no answer to that. He went away. Maddas grinned, pleased with himself. Throughout his career, he had always found a way around the laws of the civilized world. Why hadn't he thought of this before? Yes, if there were two Irans, they could not level sanctions against one without leveling them at the other. It was a diplomatic masterstroke, almost as brilliant as the mustache decree. The world could no more denigrate him as an ignorant, untraveled Arab again.
Then came the news that even Maddas Hinsein could not ignore.
"Precious Leader."
"What!"
"Word has just come from the villa of your mistress, Yasmini. It was attacked. The guards lie strangled, the contents of their bowels heavy in their pants. It is horrible."
"They died defending their leader's mistress," Maddas returned stiffly. "Greater love has no Moslem than this."
"There is good news, Precious Leader."
"What?"
"Your mistress, she is safe."
Maddas stopped his heavy pacing. "Safe?"
"Yes, the Renaissance Guard must have beaten off the attack with their dying breaths. For when the change of guard entered the villa, they found your mistress still living. Unstrangled. Is this not a glorious day?"
Maddas Hinsein blinked his moist brown eyes several times, his brutal mouth going slack in the privacy of his veil.
"Where is she now?" he demanded hoarsely.
"We have brought her here to the palace, where she is safe, of course. She awaits your pleasure."
"One moment," Maddas Hinsein said, climbing out of his abayuh. He hastily stuffed it into his briefcase and carried it out of the office. He emerged, his other hand on the pearlhandled pistol dangling in a hip holster.
"Take me to my beloved Yasmini," he ordered.
The aide hastened to obey. Two Renaissance Guards fell in behind, at a respectful distance. Respectful, because they knew that President Hinsein was in the habit of shooting on the spot guards who inadvertently stepped on the backs of his boots.
The aide brought them all to a black door on a lower floor. It opened on one of the fifty-five bedrooms he used in rotation.
"In here," he said, grinning with pride.
"How do you know that the woman inside is truly my beloved Yasmini?" Maddas Hinsein asked slowly.
The aide's grin collapsed. Obviously the possibility was a new one to him.
"I . . . she . . . that is . . ." The guard steadied his nerve with a deep breath. "When the guard entered the house, she sat quietly, as if awaiting rescue."
"What has she said?"
"Nothing. It is obvious she is in shock from her ordeal."
"One last question," Maddas Hinsein asked, taking out his revolver and jamming it into the aide's Adam's apple. The heavy barrel fixed the man's larynx in place. "What color is her hair?"
Since his jammed larynx couldn't move, the aide simply shrugged. He hoped it was the correct response. Knowing the color of the President of Irait's mistress's hair was probably one of the punishable-by-death offenses. Like shaving or cultivating a mustache larger than the President's.
"You did not remove her abayuh?" Maddas asked.
The head shook in the negative. That was definitely the proper response, he knew.
The gun discharged and the aide shook all the way to the floor and after.
"That was your mistake, fool," Maddas Hinsein told the crumpled body.
Gesturing with his pistol, Maddas turned on his two guards.
"You and you. Enter and secure the prisoner."
The guards entered with alacrity. Maddas stepped away. If this was an assassination ploy, they would not emerge, and Maddas would run. If they did, he would have his answer to this puzzling turn of events. For one of Maddas Hinsein's deepest secrets was that he did not have a mistress. The abayuh-clad woman who sometimes sojourned in the suburban villa and sometimes in his own palace was none other than Maddas Hinsein himself. Many were the tricks of survival, he thought grimly.
The guards emerged. One said, "She is handcuffed, Precious Leader."
"Did she resist?"
"No."
"Stay here," said Maddas Hinsein, stepping in with his pistol leveled, just in case they were co-plotters. It paid to be careful. Every leader of bait in the last sixty years had died in office, and none had died in bed.
Maddas closed the door behind him.
The woman wore a black abayuh and veil that covered her face except for a swatch around the eyes. She sat demurely on a great bed, her long lashes lowered, her arms tied before her with heavy rope. Her head was oddly tilted to one side, as if listening.
Maddas paused to admire the cut of her abayuh. It was very fine. Perhaps he would add it to his collection.
"You are not my mistress Yasmini," he said, advancing.
The eyes looked up. They were violet.
"I know this because I have no mistress named Yasmini."
"I know," the woman said in perfect Arabic. Her voice was strange, somehow dark with portent.
"Before I shoot you dead, tell me how you know this."
"I know this," the woman said, "in the same way I know what fate befell your missing ambassador."
"What of the defector?"
"He did not defect. He was murdered. By an American agent. The same one who has been strangling your family and your advisers all over Abominadad."
"You have arranged to come here just to tell me this?" Maddas asked slowly.
"No. I have come to stir the Caldron of Blood. And you are my ladle."
And as Maddas Hinsein pondered those words, the prisoner stood up.
Maddas cocked his revolver. "I warn you."
The woman's abayuh began to lift and spread like wings, impelled by what, Maddas Hinsein knew not, but it was done with such eerie deliberateness that he held his fire out of stupefied curiosity.
The woman seemed to fill the room with her great black abayuh wings, and her shadow, palpable as smoke, fell upon him.
"Who are you?" Maddas demanded.
"I am your mistress."
"I have no mistress," Maddas barked.
"You do now," the woman said in American-accepted English. And both hands yanked off her veil, exposing tangled blond hair.
Maddas fired. Too late. A kicking foot knocked the pistol upward. The Scimitar of the Arabs never saw the foot strike. His eyes were on the two yellow-nailed hands that had emerged from hidden slits in the abayuh to untie the rope around her bound wrists.
The hemp fell away.
The revolver struck the floor and skittered into a corner.
But Maddas Hinsein's eyes were not on the weapon. He watched the eerie hands floating before the abayuh like pale spiders. They began clapping. The upper hands first, the lower ones joining in.
"What do you want of me?" Maddas croaked, mesmerized by those clapping hands. He licked his lips nervously. The sound in his ears stirred half-forgotten desires.
"It is not what I want of you, but what I can offer you," the strange four-handed woman whispered breathily as she drew close. The clapping hands switched off.
"What?" Maddas was sweating. But not with fear.
"I have come to spank you."
Maddas Hinsein's thick eyebrows quirked upward in time with his suddenly wet mustache like jumping caterpillars.
"I am yours, mistress," the Scourge of the Arabs intoned.
Then many hands were all over Maddas Hinsein, plucking his belt away, tearing at his pants, his underwear, and finally exposing naked skin.