“Perhaps,” she said. “You are alone?”
“Yes.”
The woman rose from her seat and extended her head beyond the narrow transom that separated them. She was old and battle-weary, her hair dyed black, her cheeks fleshy and veined. She wore a twenty-year-old’s silk dress that showcased a mottled, generous bosom. “But, you are very handsome,” she sang, her eyes dancing over him. “Très BCBG. You prefer women? Tell me now. If you favor boys, I will be happy to suggest an alternate location.”
Gabriel warmed her cold claw in his palm, raising it to his mouth and conferring upon it a kiss. “I hope that serves as an answer.” He allowed his eyes to linger on hers. “Surely, you do not work the entire evening?”
“Monsieur is too kind,” she admitted. “Membership is one hundred euros. No smoking in the pleasure chambers. If you carry a cocktail with you-wine, champagne, whiskey-please bring a coaster. We’ve just had the furniture redone. When you’ve enjoyed yourself, please dispose of your protection in the receptacles. We are a respectable establishment.”
“Of that I have no doubt.”
The establishment in question was called “Cléopatre,” and it was a come-one, come-all sex club dressed up as an Egyptian bordello. Gabriel paid his fee and passed through a beaded curtain into a salon decorated with an abundance of crimson velvet and smoked mirrors. Framed prints of Tutankhamen, Ramses, and Cleopatra decorated the walls, along with a poster of the pyramids at Giza. A corridor to his left led to a restaurant. The dining room was largely empty. A few couples dined lugubriously at their tables as a disco beat spilled from tinny speakers. Dancing queen. Dancing queen. You are the dancing queen. He walked back into the main salon as a statuesque African woman emerged from a doorway.
“Good evening,” she said, swinging her broad hips. “I am Véronique. You are familiar with Cléopatre?”
Véronique wore a gold lamé dress and looked like she weighed a hundred sixty pounds. Standing still, she teetered on her stiletto heels.
“Not entirely,” said Gabriel.
“We have several entertainment areas. There is the boutique upstairs, where you may buy something to wear this evening. Something to excite you. A ring. A collar. The boutique is also for watching. You may admire a lady from a two-way mirror. Don’t be ashamed. Naturally, she knows you are enjoying her striptease. Maybe you would like to visit the piano bar? Anyone may play. And it is a fine place to meet a companion for the night while you enjoy a cocktail-wine, champagne, whiskey.”
“I’m interested in seeing Bilitis’s Vineyard.”
Véronique’s eyes narrowed as a sly smile entertained her lips. “An adventurous gentleman,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led the way up a flight of stairs and pointed to a door marked with a pharaoh’s headdress. “Attire is forbidden in Bilitis’s Vineyard. You may remove your clothing and place it in a locker inside. Wear the key around your ankle or your wrist, as you please. I’ll wait for you here.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Véronique ran a hand inside Gabriel’s jacket. “Perhaps monsieur would enjoy some company in the vineyard?”
“Thank you, no.”
Véronique shrugged and moved away. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “The vineyard is only for those who like to play. It is upstairs and to your right. Please don’t linger. It makes the other members nervous. Some are quite shy. Their performance, you understand?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“What is it with you men coming from work?” she asked in parting. “Don’t you leave your briefcases in the office?”
“It took place in November of 1979,” said Sarah Churchill. “Juhayman al-Utaybi was a young officer in the Saudi Arabian National Guard. By all accounts he was a model soldier: charismatic, bright, tough as nails. He was also a devout Muslim. He came from a family of Wahhabi clerics. The Wahhabis practice a pure form of Islam. They’re fundamentalists who follow Muhammad’s teachings to the letter. No drinking, no smoking, no caffeine, prayer five times a day, and no extramarital sex. Family comes first, and that’s that. Good clean living by any standards. Well, you know all that…”
She and Chapel were headed across town to check out the premises of Cléopatre, the chichi sex club to which Kahn had purchased a membership six months earlier. Leclerc followed on his motorcycle, trailing a handful of his Action Service brethren. It was a long shot, but long shots were all they had.
“Go on,” said Chapel.
“A hundred years ago, the Saud family made a deal with their rival Ikhwan tribes to take control of what was then simply Arabia. Basically, they said, ‘You back us in our bid to unite the various tribes into a single kingdom, and we’ll make Wahhabism the kingdom’s religion. The Ikhwans cared more about seeing a pure form of Islam practiced across the land than political power, agreed.
“Over the years, however, it became clear that the Saudi potentates-King Ibn Saud, Faisal, Fahd, and Abdullah, take your pick-didn’t give two hoots for following the tenets of the religion. Oh, they put on a good show, but when the doors were closed, and sometimes when they weren’t entirely, they liked to enjoy what you might call a Western lifestyle. Booze, women, and lots of both. This was fine as long as the behavior was limited to just the king and his retainers. Things changed when they started pumping oil big-time, and they really changed after the first oil embargo in 1973, when the price of that oil skyrocketed. The kingdom’s revenues grew tenfold in a year. The royal treasury’s coffers were overflowing with petrodollars. The king, being a good chap and very generous, spread the wealth to his sons. And to his nephews and cousins, and their sons and nephews, and so on, and so forth. Soon, there were hundreds of princes jet-setting all over Europe and America, drinking and screwing their way through billions of dollars. Talk about boys behaving badly.
“It was the era of the ugly Arab. Once in London one of Faisal’s sons, forty-fifth or something in line of succession, took over a floor of the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane for a prolonged stay. Now, the Dorchester is swank as swank is. The prince, though, well in his cups, decided the hotel did not cater to his desert lifestyle. It was too civilized. Not at all in keeping with his Bedu roots. One day, he ran amok through Hyde Park, stole a dog, brought it back to the hotel, skinned it, and cooked it on a bonfire right smack in the corridor of the tenth floor. Word got back to the kingdom, along with umpteen hundred other stories about the Saudi predilection for call girls, coke, parties, and the ‘good life.’ The Wahhabis were not amused.”
“I can understand why,” agreed Chapel.
“Among them, Juhayman al-Utaybi was not amused,” Sarah continued. “He decided he’d had enough of seeing his religion ridiculed by the very family that had sworn to uphold its principles. He was sick of watching the West’s moral laxity undermine his country. Secretly, he gathered together a group of men who thought as he did. Soldiers, students, clerics. He proposed an audacious plan. They would take control of the Grand Mosque and force the House of Saud to change their ways. And he did it. On November twentieth, Utaybi and a couple hundred of like-minded reformists took control of the Mosque. For a week or two, he sent out letters decrying the Saud family, exposing their moral corruption. His version of Paul’s letters to the Romans. ‘The rot,’ he called it. The Sauds weren’t ones to take this standing still. They summoned their Western advisers-interestingly, the French, not the Americans-and after a decent interval stormed the Mosque. Utaybi didn’t give up easily. The battle raged for days. Dozens of rebels were killed. No one knows how many soldiers died. Juhayman al-Utaybi was captured alive. He and sixty-seven of his cohorts were tried, convicted, and beheaded. ‘Chop-chop,’ the Saudis call it. Islamic justice at its finest.”