LITMIR.BIZ

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      “She is wearing a white wedding dress and veil, you know. She’s not going to be able to just disappear. In a restaurant or any public place she’d attract comment.”

      “Where would she go, then?”

      Her imagination failed. Where could you hide wearing a staggeringly beautiful pearl-embroidered silk wedding dress with a skirt big enough to cover a football field and a tulle veil five yards long?

      Latif put his foot on the brake and drew in to the side of the road, where, under a ragged striped umbrella, a child was selling pomegranates from a battered crate. At the Cup Companion’s summons the boy jumped up to thrust a half dozen pomegranates into a much-used plastic bag, and carried it to the car.

      As Latif passed over the money he asked a question, which Jalia could just about follow. The urchin’s response she couldn’t understand at all, but from his excited hand signals she guessed that he had seen Noor pass.

      Latif set the bag of fruit into the back seat beside his sword and put the car in motion.

      “What did he say?”

      “He saw a big white car go past with a woman at the wheel and a white flag streaming from the roof,” he reported with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “About half an hour ago. Another man in a car asked him the same question soon after. The white car hasn’t come back. He’s not sure about the other.”

      “A white flag!” Jalia exclaimed. “Why would she be flying a white flag?”

      “To signal her surrender?”

      His dry voice made her want to laugh, but she suppressed the desire. She had no intention of getting pally with the man.

      They were in the city centre now. Latif began cruising the streets, turning here and there at random. As best she could, Jalia monitored passing cars as well as those parked at the side of the road. She glanced down each side street as they passed.

      Jalia sighed.

      “Oh, if this isn’t just Noor all over!” she muttered. “Turn a deaf ear to everything until it suits her! If she’d listened to me when I was talking to her—if she’d actually sat down and considered what I was saying, she would have come to this conclusion long ago. Instead she waits until it’s almost too late and will cause the maximum chaos!”

      Latif threw her a look. “Or you might say that if you hadn’t tried to force your views on her so unnecessarily, there would have been no fear suddenly erupting in her and taking over.”

      “You say unnecessarily, I say necessarily…” Jalia sang in bright mockery, then glowered at him. “Why are you right and I’m wrong?”

      “I?” he demanded sharply. “It is Bari and Noor’s judgement that you challenged, not mine! I have no opinion, except that when two people decide to get married they should be left to make their own fate!”

      She whooped with outrage.

      “And what were you saying to me not twenty minutes ago?” she shrieked. “Were you advising me not to marry Michael, or was I hallucinating? You would be a fool to marry this man!” she cited sharply. “Was that what you said, or do I misquote you?”

      His eyes met hers, and she sensed a kind of shock in his gaze. A muscle in his cheek twitched, but whether with annoyance or an impulse to laugh she couldn’t tell. It was funny, but she was too annoyed to find it so.

      “You blame your cousin for not giving serious consideration to your doubts about her engagement, but you do not listen to my doubts about yours. Who has the double standard now?” he said, with the air of a man pulling a brand from the burning.

      Laughter trembled in her throat, but she was afraid of letting her guard down with him. Jalia bit her lip.

      “Great! We’re both hypocrites,” she said, shaking her head.

      Instead of making a reply to that, Latif jerked forward to stare out the window.

      “Barakullah!” he breathed.

      He had turned into the wide boulevard that led down to the seafront. At the bottom was the broad, sparkling expanse of the Gulf of Barakat, and miles of bright sky.

      Jalia narrowed her eyes against the glitter. Off to the right a forest of silver masts marked the yacht basin.

      “A yacht!” she cried. “Of course! I’ll bet she knows someone on a boat—maybe some friend even sailed over for the wedding. The perfect hide—”

      “Look up,” Latif interrupted. He stretched an arm past her head, pointing into the sky, where a little plane glinted in the sun as it headed up the coast towards the mountains.

      “That plane? What, do you think—?”

      “It is Bari’s plane.”

      Jalia gasped hoarsely. “Are you sure?”

      “We can confirm it soon enough.”

      “But what—?” Jalia fell silent; there was no point babbling questions to which neither of them had answers.

      Latif turned the car along the shore highway. After a few minutes he turned in under an arched gateway in a high wall, and she saw a small brick-and-glass building and a sign announcing the Island Air Taxi service to the Gulf Eden Resort.

      Out on the water several small planes were moored, bouncing gently in the swell. Latif stepped on the brakes and pointed again. Ahead of them on the tarmac, carelessly taking up three parking spaces, as if the driver had been in too much of a hurry to care, sat a large white limousine, parked and empty.

      They slipped out of the car.

      “Is that it? Is that the al Khalids’ limousine?” she asked.

      He nodded thoughtfully.

      “My God,” Jalia breathed. She felt completely stunned. She stared up at the glinting silver bird in the distance. “Is Noor at the controls, do you think? Why? Where can she be going? And where’s Bari?”

      Latif turned his head to run his eyes over the half dozen other cars in the lot, then shook his head.

      “His car is not here.”

      She stared up at the plane as if the sight of it would tell her something. A gust of wind struck her, blowing the green silk tunic wildly against her body. She felt a blast of fine sand against her cheek.

      Latif stiffened to attention beside her. He was still looking into the sky, but not at the plane. Frowning, Jalia turned her head to follow his gaze.

      In the past few minutes a mass of cloud had boiled up from behind the mountains, and even as she watched it was growing, rushing to shroud the sky over the city.

      Over the water the sky was still a clear, hot blue, but that couldn’t last. Jalia turned her head again to stare at the plane, watching anxiously for some sign that it was banking, turning, that the pilot had seen the clouds building and made the decision to put down again.

      But the little plane, the sun glinting from its fat wings, sailed serenely on.

      Five

      There was little sleep for anyone in the palace that night. The phones rang constantly, with family and friends in the country and abroad calling for news, calls from officials organizing the search team, and journalists around the world clogging up the line asking for details of Princess Noor’s Fatal Peril.

      Everybody felt worse when the couple’s disappearance began to be announced on repeated television news bulletins in the early evening and the announcer’s voice resonated with the kind of gravity that meant he thought Princess Noor was probably dead.

      But they couldn’t just turn it off. It was entirely possible that some reporter would get wind of a search team discovery and broadcast the news before the family was notified. The regular announcements became a horrible kind of

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