Lucy Gordon - The Sheikh’s Reward

‘Now you must go,’ he said. ‘For the moment. When the time is right for us to meet again, I will let you know.’

His arrogance had a usefully cooling effect on her. Angrily she freed herself and hastened to button up her blouse.

‘You will let me know-when you have decided?’

‘When the fates have decided,’ he corrected her gently.

‘Oh, no, you don’t. I want the interview you promised me. If I leave without it, I won’t come back, ever.’

‘We’ll see,’ he said, smiling. ‘But you will certainly leave without it.’

The world was resuming its normal shape. She changed tack. ‘Now look, why don’t you just be reasonable and we can-?’

‘It’s no use, Diamond. The answer is no.’

‘And don’t call me Diamond.’

‘No, your name is Frances Callam. So, I needn’t have gone to such lengths to find it out.’

‘Didn’t your secretary tell you? The one who saw me home?’

‘It was no part of his duties to ask your name,’ Ali said smoothly.

‘But he must have told you where I lived,’ she insisted. ‘You could have discovered my name that way.’

His eyes flashed, and now she was certain that he had returned to find her gone, and this tale was an invention, so that she shouldn’t know she’d successfully snubbed him.

‘Why should I need such methods when I had a much better way?’ he asked with a shrug. ‘I have a small confession to make-about that cheque.’

‘The one for a hundred thousand?’

‘That’s right.’ He smiled straight into her eyes, and despite her annoyance Fran felt the return of disturbance deep within her, which had less to do with his sexual charisma than with his sheer charm. He shouldn’t be allowed to smile like that.

‘I’m afraid I stopped it,’ Ali admitted. ‘My bank will refuse to pay, but they will tell me who it’s made out to. And so, if you hadn’t come here today, I would have learned your name anyway.’

‘Would you really?’ she said slowly.

‘Very unkind of me, wasn’t it?’

‘Very. But I did something rather unkind too. I didn’t try to cash that cheque myself. I made it out to the International Children’s Fund, and gave it to them yesterday, with your compliments.’

He laughed out loud, showing strong white teeth.

‘That’s very good, an excellent story. But, my dear Diamond, did you really think I’d believe that any woman could refuse such a sum of money?’

‘I returned the necklace.’

‘Worth about a tenth of the cheque. Giving away a hundred thousand would have been another matter.’

‘Well, I did,’ she said, getting cross. ‘As you’ll soon find out. When the cheque bounces, your name will be mud-probably in world headlines.’

‘No, no, don’t keep it up. It was a good try, but I’m not that easily fooled. Now I’m afraid you must go. You’ve caused me to waste too much time.’

‘Yes, I mustn’t disturb you from making money, must I?’

He saw her to the front door. ‘Till our next meeting?’

‘I wonder if there’ll be one?’

‘In my country we say-the answer is written in the sand.’

‘And in my country we say-don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.’

Ali watched her until she’d vanished from sight. As he turned back into the house his secretary was hurrying from the office, very pale.

‘Excellency, someone from the ICF is on the phone to say they are most grateful for your generous cheque, but owing to a misunderstanding at the bank-’

Ali swore and vanished into the study. It took all his charm to smooth away the problem, and within five minutes a new cheque had been made out to the charity. As he sealed the envelope his eyes were unreadable.

‘She fooled me,’ he murmured. ‘A hundred thousand, and nothing given in return.’

He took a sheet of paper and wrote on it ‘Frances Callam’.

After regarding the name for a moment he crossed it out and wrote ‘Diamond’.

Then he crossed that out, and wrote ‘Scheherazade’.

ALI BEN SALEEM’S house was quiet for a few days while he took a flying trip to New York. He returned in a hurry and spent the next week on the telephone, confirming deals and setting up new ones. Apart from his secretary, the staff saw very little of him, and he saw little of them. He certainly had no time to notice the new maid, which was what Fran had counted on.

It had been surprisingly easy to set up. Joey had mobilised his contacts to find an employment agency in the area. Using bribery and persuasion, he’d arranged for them to send out an advertisement to all the houses in the area, and Ali’s chief steward had taken the bait. The house needed a live-in maid. Fran had applied, carefully disguised in a long, dark wig, drab clothes and flat shoes, and calling herself Jane. She’d been hired at once.

She’d thought long and hard before going under cover in Ali’s house. It wasn’t the way she liked to work, and she’d very nearly backed off.

But then the Sheikh had spoken in her mind: ‘I do not discuss business with women… In my country women know their place and keep to it… No woman is equal with men.’

It was the memory of his imperious tone, as much as his words, that made her temper rise and her resolve harden. She knew she would have no peace until she’d made him unsay those words, and give her some respect.

She’d started on the day Ali departed. To begin with, her work had been downstairs, mostly in the kitchen. Once she was allowed upstairs, to clean Ali’s bedroom, but only under the steward’s supervision.

She’d found the room disappointingly austere. There was none of the silk-curtained luxury of downstairs, where Ali entertained ladies with names like Diamond. In his private domain Ali had plain white walls, polished floors and a large mahogany bed. Three pictures adorned the walls, all of them of horses. The steward had informed her that these were His Excellency’s racehorses, shown at their moments of triumph in the Derby, the Grand National and at Ascot. Then he’d remembered his dignity, and told her sharply to get on with her work.

Fran wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for. Apart from getting a general picture of his life, she wanted something that would let him know she couldn’t be simply dismissed, as he had done. It was proving hard to find.

She was working alone now. Joey had left London to take up another assignment in the north. She’d told Howard that she had to be out of town for a few weeks. Nobody knew where she was. She felt safer that way. But she was growing depressed by her lack of progress.

When Ali returned she kept well out of his sight, but it was hardly necessary. Sheikh Ali didn’t notice servant girls.

But tonight it seemed he’d made a mistake. Watching from above, Fran had seen him go to his bedroom with files tucked under his arm. An hour later he’d been summoned downstairs by a late visitor, and gone down without locking his door.

This was her chance. Those files might contain some detail that would prove to be the key to the whole, involved oil empire. This man who spent a fortune on his pleasures and gave his people no say in the running of his little country must be made accountable. And she was the person to do it. If she also made him sorry he’d patronised her, that would merely be a bonus.

As soon as she saw him vanish she slipped down the stairs and into his room. The files were spread out on the bed. To her disappointment only one was in English, but she started on that.

She read rapidly, and as she did so her eyes widened with indignation. The documents concerned The Golden Choice, the casino where she and Ali had met, and they made it clear, beyond any misunderstanding, that Ali was the owner.

‘The unscrupulous-’ Words failed her, but she hurried to read as much as possible, her indignation growing.

Then, from behind her, came the ominous sound of a door being closed. Appalled, she looked up and found Ali standing there, regarding her with a cynically tolerant smile.

‘I have to take my hat off to you,’ he said. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

Fran rose to her feet, trying to look dignified. It was difficult in the circumstances, but she did her best.

‘You should have known I wouldn’t give up,’ she said defiantly.

‘But I did know. The interest has been in seeing how far you were prepared to go. My dear Diamond- Frances-Jane-whatever you’re calling yourself today-did you think I’d be so easily fooled?’

‘You-knew it was me?’

‘The advertisement that came through my door so conveniently, directing me to an employment agency? Of course I knew. I warned my steward to look out for you, and sure enough you turned up. To be fair, you did a good job. He barely recognised you. I knew you at once. There’s something about you that no drab clothes can disguise.’

‘You knew all along,’ she repeated, in a daze.

‘Poor Diamond. You thought you were doing so well.’

His smile never wavered as he spoke, but behind it lurked something that troubled her, something that would have frightened her if she’d been easily scared. Inside, he wasn’t smiling. She was sure of it the next moment when he turned the key in the lock, and put it in his pocket.

‘Hey, now, let me out of here,’ she said, as firmly as she could.

‘You want to rush away? Isn’t that a little premature, seeing how much trouble you took to get in here?’ He indicated the file she’d been reading. ‘I do hope the result was worth it.’

That reminded her that she was aggrieved. ‘You deceived me,’ she said.

He began to laugh. ‘I deceived you? You smuggled yourself into my house under false pretences, and I deceived you?’

‘At the casino. It was a set-up. You own the place. No wonder you didn’t mind losing. You were losing to yourself. And you fixed the winning too, making me think I was a lucky charm. Just another way of recycling the money to spend on enjoying yourself.’

‘I didn’t fix the winning,’ he said. ‘That would be cheating, and beneath me. It just happened that way.’ He saw her sceptical look and snapped, ‘I do not lie.’

‘Of course not; I’m sorry.’

‘You seem to have a very poor opinion of me. But after everything that’s happened I think we should declare a draw and be friends.’

As he spoke he opened a mahogany cupboard, revealing a refrigerator within it. From it he took a bottle of champagne, which he opened and poured into two glasses.

‘You won’t refuse to drink champagne with me, will you?’ he asked. ‘Or would you prefer a nice cup of tea?’

‘Tea would be very dull,’ she said, recovering her poise and accepting the glass.

She’d been surprised to find Ali taking this in good part, but, after all, she hardly knew his character. Doubtless he was feeling pleased at having wrong-footed her, and the matter would end here.

‘You’re a most extraordinary woman, Diamond,’ he said affably, beginning to tidy away the files.

‘My name is Fran,’ she pointed out.

‘I know, but I can’t help thinking of you as Diamond. Fran is such an abrupt name, but my Diamond is the jewel who glittered for me that first night, and has teased and tormented me ever since. You must admit that after that cheque you owed me the chance to get my revenge.’

Fran couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I read in the paper about your generous donation. I really did get the better of you, didn’t I?’

She heard him give a swift intake of breath. He was looking at her strangely, and for one moment she thought she saw something in his eyes that he would rather have concealed. Briefly it flashed in his eyes- a look of cold menace, warning her to beware.

Then it was gone as completely as a desert mirage. He was smiling as he said, ‘No woman ever managed that before.’

‘I’m beginning to realise that I didn’t know you at all,’ Fran admitted. ‘I never dreamed that you’d be as reasonable as this about it.’

‘What did you expect?’ he asked, amused.

‘I’m not sure, but something outrageous and outside the normal rules.’

‘In other words, you thought I’d act like a stage foreigner out of a cheap novelette,’ he said, sounding nettled. ‘I’m a civilised man.’

‘I know. It was very unfair of me.’

‘So now that’s settled I think we should toast each other, as equal combatants.’

They chinked glasses.

‘I wonder what you’ll tell your confederates?’ Ali mused, sitting beside her on the bed.

‘Luckily I have no confederates. I prefer to work alone.’

‘What about the little man who was with you at the casino? Don’t tell me you haven’t been sending him reports?’

‘I only employ him occasionally. He’s far away on another job right now.’