She did not answer. He yanked again and the black wig came off in his hand. Her blond shoulder-length hair tumbled out.
His look of astonishment was followed by a shriek from Audrey Cameron. In a trembling voice she cried, “I knew you seemed familiar. You’re Sunday. Then that was the president.”
The president. Of what? Sayyid stared at Sunday and realisation dawned. He had had the former president of the United States under his control and didn’t even know it. The game was over. But he could still have satisfaction. He’d always had his own contingency escape plan. In two hours he’d be over the border. But first…
His men, confused, and somewhat frightened, were staring at Sunday. Sayyid shoved her away.
“Take aim,” he said.
They pointed their guns at Sunday.
“All of them,” Sayyid snapped.
There was a roaring sound outside. A helicopter. Al Hez must have made his escape and come for him.
He lifted his hand. The men, now frightened and confused by the noise outside the cave, knew to fire when he dropped it.
He looked at Sunday. “For you I would have given twenty thousand camels.”
“Stop!” The voice of majesty filled the chamber. Side by side Henry and the sultan stepped through the widened opening.
Awed, the kidnapers stared at their monarch.
“Mercy and exile will be given to those who put down their guns,” the sultan said, his tone frightening in its absolute authority.
The clatter of rifles was followed by the deep, subservient bows of the outlaws.
“Majesty, your generosity…” Sayyid began.
As Henry reached for Sunday and running feet signalled the arrival of the royal troops, the sultan addressed Sayyid. “My generosity is not for you. You were not carrying a gun.”
“So in some ways, the trip was quite successful, was it not, sir?” Sims asked as he presented Henry with a glass of champagne. After staying a night in the palace they were on their way home in Henry’s private jet, which had flown Sims and the Secret Service detail to Ahman.
Sunday gasped. “How do you figure it was successful, Sims?”
“Well, from what I understand, madam, you weren’t recognised for days. That must have been refreshing, only I do hope you won’t try it again soon. It was quite distressing for us, oh my, yes.”
Sunday thought of the moment when she’d been sure she was going to die. “Sims,” she said, “you do have a way with words. It was quite distressing, oh my, yes!”
When Sims left, she said, “Henry, you had a few last words with the sultan. What did he want to tell you?”
“It was pretty interesting. When I sympathised with him about Hasna’s death, he told me that one of al Hez’s group at the Taj Mahal has confessed that Hasna was poisoned. But then we talked about the attempted revolution. Mac said that he’s going to make some changes in government, set up ministers who represent the different areas of his country, give the people more of a voice in the government. He asked if I approved. Of course, I did. Then we both quoted an interesting proverb that we used to debate.”
Sunday waited.
“No man is wise enough or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power,” Henry said solemnly.
“I absolutely agree,” Sunday said, “and not the least because if that weren’t true in our country, I’d be out of a job.”
Thomas H. Cook
If there have been more beautifully written books in the past three years than Thomas H. Cook’s ‘Mortal Memory’, ‘Breakheart Hill’, and ‘The Chatham School Affair’, I failed to read them. Although his early work was first rate-after all, he received Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations for Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, as well as for a true crime book, Blood Echoes, his more recent, more mature novels are truly distinguished.
It is always trite to say that a given work transcends its genre (as the Los Angeles Times has said of Cook’s work), because that is inevitably true of superior works of art. It remains, however, impossible not to say it of those books. They are mysteries, of course, in the sense that they contain crime and suspense and murder, but they are firstly poignant, elegant portraits of people and families that remain etched in the consciousness long after the covers have been closed.
The following tale, conceived almost miraculously in the midst of a conversation, offers one of the most unexpected twists you are likely to experience-a surprise ending to end surprise endings.
Fatherhood
Watching them from a distance, the way she rocked backward and forward in her grief, her arms gathered around his lifeless body, I could feel nothing but a sense of icy satisfaction, relishing the fact that both of them had finally gotten what they deserved. Death for him. For her, perpetual mourning.
She’d worn a sombre gown for the occasion, her face sunk deep inside a cavernous black hood. She stared down at him and ran her fingers through his blood-soaked hair, her features so hideously distorted by her misery it seemed impossible that she’d ever been young and beautiful, or ever felt delight in anything.
By then the years had so divided us and embittered me that I could no longer think of her as someone I’d once loved. But I had, loved her, and there were times when, despite everything, I could still recall the single moment of intense happiness I’d had with her.
She’d been only a girl when we first met, the town beauty. Practically the only beautiful thing in the town at all, for it was a small, drab place set down in the middle of a desert waste. To find something beautiful in such a place was nearly miracle enough.
She was already being pursued by the local boys, of course. They were dazzled by her black hair and dark oval eyes, skin that gave off a striking olive glow. I yearned for her no less ardently than they, but I kept my distance.
Looking out my shop window, I would often see her as she swept down the street, heading toward the market, a large basket on her arm. Coming back, the basket now filled with fruit and vegetables, she’d sometimes stop to wipe a line of sweat from her forehead, her eyes glancing briefly toward the very window where I stood, watching her, and from which I always quickly retreated.
The fact is, she frightened me. I was afraid of the look that might come into her eyes if she saw me staring at her, their pity, perhaps even contempt, for a portly, middle-aged bachelor who worked in a dusty shop, lived alone in a single musty room, had no prospects for the future, and who had nothing to offer a vibrant young woman like herself.
And so I never expected to speak to her or approach her in any way. To the extent that she would ever know me, it seemed certain it would be as the anonymous figure she sometimes noticed as she made her way to the market, a person of no consequence or distinction, as flat and featureless in her mind as the old stones she trod upon. My fate would be to watch her silently forever, see her life unfold from behind my shop window, first as a young woman hastening to the market, then as a bride strolling arm-in-arm with her new husband, finally as a mother with children following behind her, her beauty deepening with the years, becoming fuller and richer while I kept my post at the window, growing old and sickly, a ghostly, gray-haired figure whose life had finally added up to nothing more than a long and fruitless longing.
Then it happened. One of those accidents that make a perpetual mystery of life, that bless the unworthy and doom the deserving, and which give to all of nature the aspect of a flighty, cruel, and unloving queen.
One of my customers had tethered a horse to the post outside my shop. It was sleek and beautiful, and coming back from the market, the girl of my dreams stopped to admire it. First she patted its haunches. Then she moved up the twitching flanks to stroke its moist black muzzle. Finally, she fed it an ear of corn from the overflowing basket she’d placed at her feet.