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      DEADLINE YEMEN

      by Peggy Hanson

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2013 by Peggy Hanson.

      All rights reserved.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      THE ELIZABETH DARCY SERIES

      Deadline Istanbul

      Deadline Yemen

      FOREWORD

      It will be immediately obvious to the reader that I am a hopeless Yemenophile. The country has attracted me since before I went to live there 1975-1978. Those three years embedded themselves in my mind with dust-filled romantic memories that I felt compelled to put down in some form. I was fortunate enough to do some consulting work in 1980 that put a little flesh on the bones of memory.

      I started writing Deadline Yemen while living in India, using only my memories and every book on Yemen I could get my hands on as background. It was a personally-integrating experience to picture myself on a street or in a mufraj as I had been years before. But I actually had little idea of how Yemen had changed over the years until 2004, when two women friends and I returned to the country. On that trip, besides reveling in Sana’a’s majesty, we traveled the route the British explorer, Freya Stark, had taken in 1936, in the remote Wadi Hadhramaut. It was back to the ancient incense route; unbelievably exciting. Each of us clutched a copy of Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia, in which she chronicled her travel on a donkey. We were in a comfortable SUV, but no matter. For those days we were explorers like Freya Stark. Around every corner lay new mysteries. Recent history intruded, such as passing the Bin Laden compound and encountering a section of the world where the activities of 9/11/2001 are routinely regarded as a David and Goliath story. (It has, in fact, become very dangerous for foreigners to travel in the wadis of the Hadhramaut because of al Qaeda actions.)

      I have made several subsequent trips to Yemen since 2004, often with a friend who speaks Arabic and collects Yemeni silver jewelry and therefore leads me up into inaccessible mountain villages and down to desert outposts along the Red Sea. Always, the native hospitality of Yemeni Arabs has overwhelmed us.

      In Deadline Yemen I have taken many liberties. The picture of Yemen spans decades and reflects my own rose-colored memories as well as current fact. The Dar al-Hamd, which used to be the principal hotel in Sana’a, is no longer in use and its gardens are withering from the chronic lack of water in the city. Sa’da has been banned to foreigners for several years because of the Houthi rebellion raging there. I have endowed Sa’da with an airport, which it never used to have and is now for military use. I have placed the story in 1997, before Osama bin Laden became a household name and before everyone carried cell phones. The time frame allows me to remember my years as a VOA journalist as they were before all the instant communications of today. The honey motif in the plot is based on a story I read in the New York Times some years ago about the arms smuggling network of bin Laden. The character of Nello is based on an Italian I knew in the 1970s who taught me to make tomato sauce from the ingredients then available. Sadly, he never had an Italian restaurant in Sana’a.

      In short, Deadline Yemen is largely fantasy, based on certain inalienable truths. If it helps to spark interest in the most exotic country in the world, and perhaps to make its people more understandable, it has done the job its author intended.

      CHAPTER 1

      The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being.

      Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia

      1997

      It’s a myth that a woman needs a male escort in the Middle East. My taxi driver treated me just as he would any man: he tried to cheat me.

      “Fifty riyals?” I asked in mock amazement, leaning into the window. “I won’t pay more than thirty.” My Arabic was rough but, within these parameters, understandable.

      The driver I’d selected from the line of jalopies adjusted his loose turban, shifted his wad of qat to one side of his mouth, spat green juice onto the ground and gestured for me to get in—a magnanimous act of compromise on the price. He didn’t offer to help me, so I pushed my carry-on into the front seat and crawled into the plastic-covered back seat. The dashboard had fake fur all over it and looked like a poor ragged animal that had had a hard winter. Egyptian music whined from the radio. I didn’t even look for a seat belt.

      The e-mail had arrived in the Trib newsroom in Washington three days earlier. Its heading said, “from Halima in Sana’a.” The message itself was spare: “Come. Please.”

      Halima is not the sort to exaggerate. Given the debt I owed her—in truth, my life—my reaction was intense and personal. And here I was.

      I’d had a companionable chat on the plane with a charming international type who said his name was Michael Petrovich, so I hadn’t expected to be taking a taxi alone in the middle of the night. I’d thought I’d be dropped off at the hotel in gentlemanly fashion. But plane relationships often don’t last past the luggage carousel, and this one was no different.

      He’d turned to me as we watched the line of shabby bags squeak past, stuck out his hand, and with an ambiguous look in his eyes, said, “Elizabeth, this has been a pleasure. More than you can know. I hope to see you again in Sana’a. I’m being picked up for a meeting. Will you be all right?” Petrovich’s gray eyes looked regretful through the haze from passengers lighting up after the flight.

      Meeting at midnight?

      “Of course!” I laughed. “I’m fine.”

      I picked up my carry-on and marched out into chill desert mountain air to the row of jalopies at the taxi stand while he still waited for his luggage. I travel light and unencumbered. The man from the front seat of the plane, the quiet one with khaki pants and a laptop who’d watched as Petrovich and I had walked up and down the plane at the Cairo stop, stood at the baggage carousel waiting for his luggage, too. I’d nodded briskly and felt his gaze follow me.

      CHAPTER 2

      O bird, o winged one, from the people of Yemen, convey

      To [Clinton] this message

      Who in America is leader.

      Spontaneous Yemeni poetry translated by Steven C. Caton, “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”

      Michael Petrovich had regrets as he was whisked from the airport in a shiny black SVU with tinted windows. The car smelled newer than anything else in Yemen. Should have dropped her off, that attractive Elizabeth. She was older than he usually pursued. But as he aged, he grew wiser. About women at least, and this one was intelligent and interesting—qualities a man could learn to appreciate. Petrovich sighed a little, thinking of her gray eyes, her laugh—and his life and its mistakes. Wonder where she’s staying. Oh, well. Work came first.

      The well-dressed “greeter” who had held his name on a card sat in front with the driver. The other man sat in the back seat—not so snazzy, with worn jeans and red-checked kaffiyeh turban around his blond head. He had a wad of qat in his cheek, which muffled his speech a little.

      “So, how are you, Michael?” There was a hint of deference.

      “Oh, fine—except for this cold. Had to sniff my wintergreen oil several times on the flight. You ever try it? Great stuff. I get it in the Frankfurt airport.” He waved a little blue bottle in front of his companion. “It clears your head. You can use it for stiffness, too.”

      Petrovich sniffed deeply from his bottle, careful to not get the pungent minty fumes in his eyes, pulled a pant leg up to rub some on a calf muscle, recapped the bottle, leaned back and got down to business.

      “Had drinks with the Chechens last night. I don’t think they’ll cause problems.”

      Other than about his health, Petrovich did not engage in small talk with men.

      His companion rubbed his eyes as the strong wintergreen scent suffused the limo. “We might have a little problem

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