"What is your name?" Sultana asked.
"Nick."
"Neek."
"Close enough," said Carter with a smile. "Tell me, how did you come to be called Sultana?"
"That you shall soon discover for yourself."
Her hands busied themselves with the fastenings of her chador. It came undone, sliding off her curves to fall at her feet. Carter was dazzled by the splendor of her garments, and still more dazzled by the splendor of her body.
She was magnificent. Her wickedly ripe body was bedecked with jewelry. Jeweled rings glittered on her fingers, multiple strands of gold necklaces studded with precious stones and pearls fell across her heavy breasts. She wore a red-sequined halter top and a crystal-sequinned G-string. After a moment, Carter realized that what he had taken for red sequins were really rubies, while the G-string was set with diamonds.
"Are you as mighty on the field of love as you are on the field of battle?" Sultana teased.
Carter embraced her. She made quite an armful. Perfumed heat rose from her flesh, smoother than the gauziest silken veil.
He wanted her urgently, but he would take her slowly. Slowly… slowly… very slowly. That was best.
"Time to lift the veil," he said huskily.
He took off her face covering. She was perfection, her pouting lips an invitation. As her desire mounted from his caresses, she smelted sweeter still.
He found the catch to her halter, a maddeningly tricky clasp. It came undone and her heavy breasts tumbled free, her nipples like carnelian. He polished them with his tongue. Moaning, she stroked his hair, neck, shoulders.
She slipped free from his embrace, shedding her silks and beads and baubles in a dance that was old when Salome was young.
She moved away from him while he undressed, but not too far away. Naked and sleek, tawny flesh glowing in the lamplight, she sprawled on a chaise longue, a leg dangling over each side, her arms folded behind her head. It was as erotic an image as Carter had ever seen.
Looking up at his powerful, aroused body standing at the end of the chaise, she smiled and murmured, "Take me."
He plunged between her spread thighs and it took his breath away.
She was right. It didn't take Carter very long at all to learn how she had earned her name. She was a one-woman harem who made a man feel like a king. Or, in this case, a sultan.
Faranyah pounded on the outer door. Carter stood on the open-air balcony, looking down into the courtyard. It was still dark, but dawn was not too far distant, that hour when a good Moslem can distinguish the difference between a white thread and a black thread, and so knows that it is time for the morning call to prayer.
There was some kind of commotion at the main gate.
Carter was almost dressed. He adjusted the slings on his shoulder harness and holstered Wilhelmina. Now he was fully dressed.
Sultana threw on a robe and opened the door. Faranyah chattered at her. Sultana closed her eyes, then took a deep breath to steady herself. "He is here," she said.
"I know," Carter said.
He had Wilhelmina at his left side, Pierre in his crotch, and Hugo on his right arm. He was ready to raise merry hell. "Let's go," he told Sultana.
She was coming with him. He wasn't going to leave behind a ready-made victim for Reguiba's revenge.
Sultana picked up a leather pouch filled with her jewelry, the only item she was taking with her. A slight problem arose. She wanted to take Faranyah with her too.
"I can't leave her behind," she said.
But Faranyah didn't want to go. She shook her head while beating it with her palms, wailing her strong negative.
Sultana was worried and exasperated. "She does not want to go. She has not gone outside the compound walls for over ten years."
"You two work it out," Carter said. "I'll go down and greet our guest." He started for the door.
She halted him with a soft hand on his arm. "Neek."
"Yes?"
She kissed his cheek. "Allah be with you."
"Thanks. Be ready to go, once the shooting stops."
Carter left the suite. Faranyah and Sultana were still arguing over whether or not the slave would accompany them. A dark hush held the echoing halls of the palace. Its occupants would wait this clash out behind locked doors. Sultana had told him that the household guards would not get involved. Their only allegiance was to the palace of sin.
He went to meet Hodler.
Karl Kurt Hodler was an East German athletic prodigy. The state was his mother and father and it had shaped him into a scientifically engineered tool, first for athletic competition, later for destruction.
Hodler had gone to Munich in 1972 to compete for Olympic gold. He brought home a bronze medal, won in the grueling pentathlon. Today he would win neither gold nor bronze, but lead, the kind that comes out of the barrel of a 9mm Luger. He would, if the Killmaster had any luck in the matter. And Carter would need that luck, since Hodler was ranked as a world-class marksman with a pistol.
Hodler had brought back more than the bronze in 72. He had seen the work of the Palestinian Black September squad that massacred eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village. That was for Hodler. He had finally discovered a team he wanted to join, namely, the league of world-class international terrorism. Since then, he'd won his varsity letter in sabotage and murder a hundred times over.
Technically he was still attached to the East German spy squad specializing in wet work, but in reality he was more or less a free agent, able to move around as he pleased, so long as his work coincided with Soviet-bloc goals. He hadn't been back home for over ten years.
Operation Ifrit wasn't a Soviet action. Militant Islam didn't need any direction from the Soviets, though they were glad to take all the Russian weapons and assistance they could get, as long as there were no strings attached. Since Ifrit's goals were the same as the Soviets — destabilization of hostile regimes in the Islamic world — the Russian bear was more than happy to lend a hand.
Hodler was an organizer and an expeditor par excellence. It's easy to motivate people when you're a killer. Two months ago he'd arrived in Al Khobaiq at Reguiba's behest to take charge of the moving and shaking.
Hodler worked hard and played hard. On his first night in the emirate he had been taken to the Crescent Club by hosts determined to show their guest a good time.
Something unique in his experience happened to Hodler that night. He took one good look at the magnificent Sultana and fell for her hook, line, and sinker.
The icy East German death machine fell madly, obsessively in love with the Khobaiqi courtesan. He was addicted. He had to possess her utterly. No other man could have her, touch her, even look at her.
Initially, some of Sultana's admirers were inclined to dispute the point. One was found shot dead, the other had the larynx torn out of his throat by a killer who had broken the backs of two bodyguards to get to him. After that, the general attitude was that if Hodler wanted her that badly, he was welcome to her.
Sultana's wishes were of no importance in the matter. Hodler did not mistreat her, never so much as laid a finger on her in anger. And he was often angry at her coolness. She submitted in body but not in mind. His lavish gifts failed to impress her; his lovemaking left her cold.
No matter. Hodler was convinced that in time she would learn to love him. Especially since he saw to it that no other male got near her.