Sallum relaxed, stretching his muscles. It was important to exercise after an execution. You had to stop the tension building up in your back. He glanced through the tiny flat. It consisted of just this small bedroom, a shower room, a kitchen you could hardly stand up in, and a sitting room furnished with a single sofa, a television and a DVD player. The place was shabby, poor and impersonaclass="underline" the furniture all looked as if it had been picked up second-hand.
Well, what could an English woman who divorced her Saudi husband expect?
Her handbag was lying at the foot of the bed. Sallum took it in his hands and examined the contents. The usual junk women carry around with them — lipsticks, mirror, address book and some old photographs — but it also held her passport, her driving licence, her Saudi identity card and a letter detailing her appointment with the minister.
She had changed since the passport photograph had been taken four years previously. She was older, but also sadder — at a glance Sallum could tell that those four years had not been kind to her. Asiya al-Kazim, according to her passport, was 26, born in Wolverhampton of Muslim parents, but married to a Saudi man for three years, and subsequently divorced. Nobody would miss her for days.
Sallum moved to the dressing table, picked up a jar of nail varnish, and began to coat his fingernails with the pink liquid. Five manicures over the past two weeks had worked — his nails looked just like a woman's. Taking the mascara next, he dabbed make-up carefully on to his eyelashes. Then he picked up a stick of red lipstick, and peering close to the mirror, applied a thin layer to his lips. Get it right, he reminded himself: enough to make him look like a woman, but not so much that it made him look tarty.
Lips, eyes, and nails. That should be enough to fool anyone.
Sallum picked up the black robe from the bed and fitted it over his shoulders. Then he lifted the black veil over his face, adjusting the cloth so it draped over his shoulders, completely obscuring his face. He looked across at the mirror: only his dark eyes and red lips were discernible through the veil. The rest of his face was completely masked.
From his bag he slipped out a pair of plain black women's shoes with a half-inch raised heel. He pulled on a pair of nylon pop socks then slipped on the shoes and took a few unsteady paces across the floor. He had practised several times, but walking precisely like a woman seemed like one of the hardest skills for a man to acquire.
So long as I don't speak or lift my veil I will pass for her.
He walked back through the door and shut it carefully behind him. The corridor was empty as he made his way back down to street level.
Sallum stepped out into the baking heat of the Riyadh afternoon, the veil and the robes already causing him to sweat.
I must not dawdle. The day's killing is not yet complete.
Matt Browning let his finger rest on the second button of Gill's blouse. He slipped his right hand inside the soft white cotton, gripping the taut, lively breast hidden behind her bra. He could feel it stiffen beneath his palm. His left hand gripped her side then worked its way along her back, rubbing the skin and stimulating the nerve endings beneath. They had been together nearly two years now, and Matt knew the spots, and how to work them.
He could hear her breath quickening. Outside, a hundred feet below her twelfth-storey apartment, waves were crashing against the rocks of the Marbella shoreline. An early evening wind was starting to whip in from the Mediterranean, rustling through the curtains. Matt could feel Gill's sharp, red fingernails clawing through the hairs on his chest.
His hands moved faster across her skin, unclasping her bra, plunging inside her jeans, and their lips collided. Matt could feel her hands unbuckling the belt of his trousers. He tore the jeans from her, flung them on to the cold, limestone floor, and suddenly he was on top of her, his face nuzzling into the soft skin of her neck, his body thrusting into her. 'Do it to me,' she muttered. 'Do it to me now.'
Half an hour later, Matt lay back on the sofa, spent. A ripple of quiet sensory satisfaction ran through every muscle of his body. He was tired yet invigorated. Christ, he thought. Gill has the shortest fuse of any woman I have met. She could kill a man who turns up ten minutes late for a date.
How do I possibly tell her?
He looked into mellow, green eyes and flicked a lock of long auburn hair away from her face. Gill looked good just about anyway you could imagine: in jeans and a T-shirt, dressed up for a formal party, in her swimsuit down on the beach, or covered with kids' paint after working down at the nursery. But she looked best of all naked. She was completely comfortable in her own skin, treating it the way some women treated an expensive new outfit: as something she was proud of, and wanted to show off to the man she was with. The demure, quietly spoken girl was unpeeled whenever he undressed her, revealing the powerful, passionate woman hidden underneath.
Christ, thought Matt, the thought running through his brain like a tape stuck in a loop. How do I possibly tell her?
'I think we'll have a live band rather than a disco,' said Gill. 'That would be nicer, don't you think?'
Matt nuzzled his face into her back, aware of the thin layer of post-coital sweat coating her body. He flicked his tongue against her earlobe distractedly.
Gill pushed him away. 'And we need to decide what the readings are going to be. I don't suppose you have some special poem.' She looked at him and smiled indulgently. 'No, I didn't think so.'
Standing up, Matt reached for his boxer shorts and pulled them up around his waist.
'There are just so many choices to make.'
Matt took a deep breath. That temper — that was what worried him. 'There isn't going to be any wedding,' he said at last.
'What do you mean there isn't going to be a wedding?'
'There isn't going to be a wedding because I'm a loser and a fuck-up,' said Matt. 'I don't deserve a princess like you.'
Geoff Burton looked down at the passport, then up into the eyes of the woman standing in front of him. Light brown, with a trace of make-up around them.
Sallum could read what he was thinking: they all look the same under those bloody veils.
I might as well be a camel for all he cares.
Burton was a rugged man, six feet tall. He looked hot in his uniform, even though the Riyadh Hilton was air-conditioned. Asiya al-Kazim was due to see the minister at three. She had half an hour. 'You're Asiya al-Kazim?' Burton said.
Behind his veil, Sallum nodded. He handed across the letter of appointment. It was written on Ministry of Defence headed notepaper, an invitation sent three weeks ago. This soldier will have heard of her, Sallum decided. Her name had been splashed across the British papers a few months ago. A Wolverhampton girl, a Muslim, Asiya had married a Saudi who charmed her off her feet, then moved out to Riyadh. She'd soon realised she wasn't allowed to drive, couldn't shop, couldn't work, and her husband beat her senseless every night. So she'd decided she'd rather be back in Wolverhampton. She divorced the Saudi, then discovered the catch. Under Saudi law, she couldn't leave the country without her ex-husband's permission, so she was trapped here. A couple of backbench MPs had been making a fuss about why British soldiers were helping defend a country in which a British woman was effectively held prisoner. Sallum had researched her story, and chosen her because she had an appointment with the minister. And because he knew a British soldier would not try to search a Saudi woman. She was the perfect cover.
'Got your ID card?'
Sallum fished in the handbag, pulling out the card and handed it across. Behind the veil he lowered his eyes demurely. He could see the solider glancing at his nails, noticing how neatly trimmed and varnished they were. Just like a woman.