Leeteuk was gone when Sora woke up from her troubled sleep.

The door of the windowless apartment was locked from the outside. There was a tray of prepared food on the table, plain and ordinary. She eat it.

She spent her time working on her skin, cleaning fingernails, scraping cuticles clean, washing and rewashing and combing tangles out of her hair.

The housing was very quiet because it was partly underground. She slept during the hottest, stuffiest part of the day. When she awoke, there was another meal on the table, but no Leeteuk. No nothing.

If this as what prison was like, she wasn’t going to enjoy it. Time ate at her. She marked its passage by the arrival of meals. The soldier that brought the meals was the antithesis of kind Ali. He had a rough, fear-inspiring scowl, burly arms and pock-marked skin. Sora stayed out of his way.

She drank gallons of water before her dry throat finally abate. Even when third day of isolated confinement came, she still craved water continuously. One day in the desert had done that. It boggled her mind. How coud the Arabs stand it?

The mirror told her when she had regained her natural complexion. She was sitting at the foot of the bed, all pink and clean, wrapped in the terry-cloth robe from another bath when Leeteuk finally returned. She didn’t hear him come in, only saw him when he stood in the opening between sleeping and sitting rooms. He held a brown paper package in one hand, the other gripped the metal frame of the door.

“Hello.” Sora’s startled heart thumped in her chest. He looked so tired. His mouth was tight, grim, and gray shadows haunted his eyes. “You are well?”

“Oh?” Sora shrugged and pulled the knot on her robe tighter as she stood. She’d had fantasies in her boredom, all of them with him at the center. “Yes, I am well. And you?”

“As can be expected. I have brought you clothes. Put them on.”

He offered the package, which was tied up with string. Sora looked at it, wondering about it. For three days, there hadn’t so much as a sock added to her sole outfit of a towelling robe. She wasn’t stupid. If he kept her , she couldn’t go anywhere. Now he brought clothes.

The silence cracked between them as crisply as the paper wrapping when she took the bundle from his hand.

“Am I going somewhere?” Sora pulled the package to her chest and crossed her arms over it.

“Yes.”

Studying his face, Sora held back a hundred questions. Maybe she’d learned something in the silence of the past few days. What she thought and had to say about things didn’t make a whole lot difference. She slipped the string off and opened the paper.

A shower silk garments fell onto the smoothly made bed. She lifted the thin straps of a black slip. It was of the finest quality, lace formed in a smooth bodice and deep hem.

She turned to see if Leeteuk was still there, but he had left the doorway. Peeking, she saw him standing with his back to her, contemplating his Prophet.

Sora untied her robe and laid it on the bed. She drew the slip over her head and shivered as the silk touched her skin. It clung to her , slithered like a Harlow gown over her hips and thighs, spread comfortably around her ankles. A deep slit from hem to knee allowed her to take a full stride in it.

There was more, an overdress, drank-colored and devoid of adornment, it was fitted at the waist and zipped up at the back to a high neck. The sleeves were long enough for her arms, which surprised her. There were sheer stockings with snug elastic tops that reached to her midthigh, and simple leather flats from the best Italian shoemaker.

She removed the string at the end of her braid and combed her hair, sweeping it straight back from her face, letting it fall unbound down her back. She crumpled the paper and string into a ball and put them in the trash, hung the robe in the little closet and went to stand in the sitting room.

“I’m ready.”Leeteuk turned. What he saw shocked him more than any holy apparition of slime several nights before. Sora was stunning. He remembered her skimpy, y black dinner dress, she looked like a kid in that costume compared to the woman she is now. She was elegant, a slender beauty. She had many, many facets, this unexpected woman find of his.

Leeteuk motioned with this hands for her to come to him. From his pocket he withdraw a black silk scarf. Turning it with experience hands, he brought it behind her head, drawing the narrow ends around . It fit snugly across her forehead and temples. Encircled the neck and fastened behind her head at the nape. Her hair was too long, too think to be contained as it should ave been. A sheet hund down her back to above her hips. Touching it, he was assured by the soft silky feel of it, no a hair had been harmed by her filthy disguised.

He had laid the abba aside when he’d entered earlier. Now he picked the garment up and held it open for her like a coat. He circled her shoulders and fastened the frog at , raised the hood over her head. A second frog at her held the cloak further secure and closed, slits in the sides allowed her hands movement.

This curious, not so heavy outer garment was a hooded cape, Sora discovered. It was long enough to sweep the ground at her feet. She stretched her neck, easing the confinement beneath hood and scarf and looked up at Leeteuk.

All he could see now was her face. A pale, beautiful face with chinky, imploring brown eyes and tempting, ruby red lips. He touched her chin, catching the point of it between his fingers.

“Kiss me.”

“Is this goodbye?” Sora frowned. Her eyes blurred with tears. She reached for him, catching hold of his arms.

Leeteuk shook his head, unable to manage any words of reassurance. What he was about to ask her was beyond redemption. She had the right to refuse him, but he had prayed long and hard that she had the courage he thought she did.

She struggled with the tightening in and the mist blurring her eyes. Then, holding his arms firmly, she leaned into him, putting to his, Sora vowed to savor the taste of him all her days, if this was the last moment she was to have with him.

Nearly overcome by the passion and promise of her kiss, Leeteuk had to grip her shoulders and set her away from. Him. He held her shoulders tight and looked someberly into her face. He could not bear to be separated from her again. She could not leave her behind. He could not for forward without her.

“Do you still want to go to Kuwait to look for your father?”

The question was the very last thing Sora had expected to hear from him. She blinked, twice, stunned. “You know I do.”

“Are you certain of that? The desert was not kind to you. Would you risk it again?”

I would risk anything to help my father. If it meant I had to walk through hell itself, I would do so to save him.”

Leeteuk’s expression was almost unreadable. “I thought as much. Many things have happened in the passing days. I have word from the resistance in Kuwait City that my father and yours may have escaped capture arrest.”

“Arrest?” Sora voiced alarm.

“Yes, arrest. All the Americans in the country are being taken to Baghdad to be used as bartering coins to keep your government from interfering. My hope is that I will be able to find our father and remove them in secret from the Republican Guard. I have other family members who are in danger, two very charming sisters, mere babies of only eight years. There is a chance they can be rescued, that your plane at the airport will provide us the means to spirit all our love ones out of the danger. It will be dangerous, and I have no guarantee of success. Your Vixen could be my family’s only salvation.”

“The Vixen One?” Sora’s eyes widened as she comprehended his plan.

“Yes. I need to know if the other plane has the same lockout device you had on the Vixen Two. Is it valid to assume your father would have disabled that jet the way you disabled yours?”

Sora’s thoughts spiralled. “Yes, most definitely.” She wanted to go with him and feared if she told him anything else, he would not take her.

“Would your fater use the same password as you did?”

“No.” Sora’s forehead tightened. “The password isn’t fixed. We had no idea in advance what code your pilots would prefer. He could have chosen anything, like I did.”

Leeteuk studied her face so intently Sora feared he’d uncover her lie. She had to go with him. She had to. He took a breath coming to a decision. “I was afraid of that.” He looked defeated. “I don’t have the luxury of time to send for Kyuhyun. You are my only hope.”

“You want me to go with you, to break the code if there’s one in place?” Sora held her breath, hoping.

“Yes.”

She exhaled, relieved. “And what do I get out of this? Wll you promise me that we won’t leave Kuwait without my father and my uncle Jack?”

“If you will, but think for a moment, Sora, you will see that I also need the same assurance from you. We must leave Kuwait together, when all the vital people have been assembled.”

“I can live with that,” Sora answered. “Is there anything else I should know?”

At that question, Leeteuk’s fingers tightened on her shoulders.

“You have already proven to me that you have the courage to move amid my people without fearing the consequences. I must be brutally honest with you. You are going to have to go through customs to enter Kuwait. The only way I can protect you, to keep you from being taken prisoner for you citizenship, is by making you my wife.”

“Say what?” Sora stiffened. Leeteuk’s hands kept her from backing away.

“As the wife of a defender of the faith, a haji, an orthodox man, you do not have to answer any man’s questions. You never have to speak for yourself, admit your nationality or show your face. You will be safe. It is the only way I can take you with me. Into Kuwait. Do you consent to the marriage?”

“I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

“It is so basic and simple that your western mind will not believe it possible.” Leeteuk’s fingers tightened. “By the tenets of Islam, if you became my wife, the wife of a sworn upholder of the faith, you become sequestered under the holy laws of purdah. No man other than I may look at your face. It is the easiest way to subvert the Iraqis. The Saudi have offered me diplomatic immunity in exchange for carrying certain documents to the ambassador. If you agree to marry me, you may go with me. I swear to you, I will protect your life with my own.”

“You’re not giving me much time to think about this.” Sora whispered. She heard the urgency of his tone. “Can’t we just pretend we’re married and do the same thing?”

“No,” Leeteuk’s head moved in definite negation of that suggestion. “I am a man of my word, Sora. I cannot lie or practice the arts of deceit others do. It must be true, or I cannot take the risk of bringing you with me. I will arrange for you to be taken back to Anaiza.”

“No.” Sora clutched hold of his forearms.

“Sora.” Leeteuk looked deeply into her questioning eyes. He had to convince her. It would be useless to go forward with such a reckless plan as the one he’d conceived and have the whole carefully constructed operaton fail because of one wickedly fast American jet wouldn’t crank over because of a lockout. Eventually, he could subvert the lockout, but the minute he began his assault on the hangar where resistance members had assured him the Kang jet was housed, the Iraqis could be onto his desperate plot. He hated to admit it, but they had to move with the skill of Israeli commandos. They must be in and out of Al Kuwait International in the blink of a cat’s eye.

“In the household of haj, a woman is strictly protected. No Muslim dares to question this. Our tenets are yoo ingrained. You will pass through customs under my wing, sheltered by the diplomatic immunity I am given, shielded by my faith. Behind a veil, you will be safe. It is the only way. Your only other avenue into Kuwait is to present your own documents. Please, Sora believe me when I tell you this – one glimpse at you American passport would bring on your immediate arrest.”

“Phew!” Sora’s eyebrows rose appreciably. “Just like Beiruth, huh?”

“Very close.” Leeteuk would not tell her that it was already a hundred times worse than Beiruth.

“All right.” Sora made up her mind. Her father’s life is at stake. “If it means I get into the Kang Hangar, I will do this any way you say will work.”

Leeteuk’s relief was so complete that his hands gentled on her shoulders and he drew and kissed her lips. The deep hunger that wok all his sleeping demons of desire when he touched her was as strong now as it had ever been she felt it too, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, returning his kiss with equal passion.

He force himself to end the kiss and separate their yearning bodies, ordering his mind to bank the passions that flared too easily between them. He store one finger across her moist trembling lower lip.

“You must not speak English to anyone once we leave this room.”

“I understand.”

“Aeywah is yes in Arabic, lae is no. Can you remember that?”

Sora nodded. He frowned, his mouth tightening as if some other worry greater than any he’d expressed to her preyed heavily on his mind.

“I cannot impress upon you how very important your silence will be. Swear to me. On your father’s life you will not speak to anyone. You accent… It is a dead giveaway.”

I swear. I won’t speak at all if my silence is important.”

“All right. I have your word. I shall have to trust you at the risk of my life and your own.” His fingers strayed to her hand and it tenderly. “Do not be afraid. Do not worry about the marriage. Divorce is easy to obtain under the laws of Islam.”

“Meaning, we are marrying in name only?” Sora’s words came out muffled. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of wondering if that fact pleased or displeased her.

“When we have returned safely to Anaiza and this is over.” He told her, “I will not hold you bound to the words we speak before the amman. But until then, you will obey me in all things, Sora. That is the way it will have to be.”

“What is an amman?” Sora asked.

“An Islamic holy man.”

“A priest?

“The equivalent in my religion. What is your answer?”

Sora’s eyes closed briefly. God was good no matter the culture. Her own belief were very strong. It would be a valid marriage in her eyes. Even if she did not repeat the words in sickness and in health, for richer of for poorer…. till death do us part, she would be thinking them.

She her lips and tucked her head for a moment composing herself. Leeteuk held her loosely, not making any demands. ran dry as her brothe’s criptic words on her computer screen flashed through her head. Goose gassed, Vix disabled. Should she tell Leeteuk that there might not be a fast getaway jet to spirit his entrapped family out of the country? If she admitted that she had another plane the DC-7, would he find he had no reason to take her with him? The goose had no sophisticated lockout capability.

Then she remembered the other disturbing words her brother had sent her. Appa poss. injury rt. leg, gunshot, Jack at hangar. She had two people she loved depending on her to get them free of a war zone. She had two people she love depending on her to get them free of war zone. She couldn’t risk being left behind.

“All right.” Sora straightened, withdrawing from the comfort his nearness provided. She’d feel better going along, anyway. In this crazy land, it hurt too much to be separated from Leeteuk for any reason, “I will marry you.”

“And I, you.” Leeteuk said solemnly. “The amman is outside. I will bring him in now.” Though she had time to ask about how the marriage would be dissolved, she did not. Nor did Leeteuk bring up the subject again.

The ceremony, which was simple in the extreme, was nonetheless binding for the solemnity of the Muslim priest performed it. Two ranking Saudi officer stood by as somber, silent witnesses to its completion.

That done, Leeteuk moved with the pace of a desert whirlwind, sweeping Sora into the storm with him.

After sitting days in silent, austere isolation, little more than an hour after she’d vowed her body and soul into Leeteuks keeping, Sora stpped into hell on earth, Kuwait International Airport.

She was the lone woman accompanying twelve Saudi diplomats. As they disembarked from the plane, Leeteuk put a leash into Sora’s hand. Ceasar padded at Sora’s side with regal indifference to the scene around him.

Leeteuk didn’t explain the dog’s mission. Sora didn’t ask. She held the leash and followed, period.

Sora walked with the Minister Jaleel, the head of the Saudi mission, at his sedate, unhurried pace. She twisted her head scanning the destruction that surrounded them. The sheer black gauze of her veil colored her view but did not block it.  

Leeteuk moved closer to her. She could not, it seemed, help being herself, observant, curious, and questioning. Stepping up beside her, he clasped her arm and squeezed it. Before they reach the trmac at the bottom of the plane’s steps, he put his lips closed to her ear and sad sternly, “Put your head down. Do not look closely at things the wife of a haj would never be so bold.”

It wasn’t mutiny in Sora’s eyes behind the veil when she looked up at him. It was confusion. He offered no sympathy. There was no time. An Iraqi soldier waited to meet them at the bottom of the ramp.

Maybe, thought Sora, when this is done, I will take great pleasure in killing him slowly. Would she have given him carte blanche if she had known the full extent of what was coming? If he’d explained to her what had really happened in Kuwait?

Now, she saw the horror that had transpired. She was in danger. Each of these diplomats was in grave danger. Everyone in Kuwait was in great danger. In her ignorance, she had been ready to face anything to find her father. How could she ever find him in this sea of disaster? Not a building surrounding the airport was intact. Artillery guns and tanks of the rapidly deployed Republican Guards pointed their silent muzzles at their last targets – the commercial jets hooked up to the terminal’s skyways. No one had bothered to remove the debris, whether it be strewn luggage or dead bodies.

If the airport could be so hideous, Sora dreaded what she would see inside the city.

The shattered terminal had the haunted appearance of a set constructed for a surrealistic movie. Carcasses and the guts of broken planes, burned out service trucks and bullet-ridden limousines had been bulldozed into a pile off the tarmac. The control tower was s slump of concrete supporting a twisted tangle of iron and dangling aluminium.

Shattered glass lay everywhere. Bombs craters gouge out whole section of the sidewalk. The makeshift rough planks laid across them rattled shakily underfoot. Inside, the half-guttered terminal was worse, far worse. The stench of death hung as heavily in the heated air as the rank odor of backed-up sewage and rotting fod. A pestilence of black flies made Sora grateful for her veil. She was appalled to find that the terminal was now a prison for all the people who had been trapped inside it. The food-service saff, ticket sellers, travel agents, airline workers, mechanics, pilots and too many passengers who, like Sora, had picked the wrong day to travel. Their of six Iraqi soldiers, seemingly oblivious to the indolent heat, swaggering ahead of the diplomats, clearing a way through the crowded concourse. They shouted and shoved aside trapped travellers with the butts if their guns. Babies screams, old ladies cried out and begged for help, clutching desperately at the diplomat’s robes as the entourage passed.

Shaken, with Leeteuk’s hand firm at her elbow, Sora moved on. But this time as she looked into the groups of crowded, contained people, waiting for planes that were never going to come, Sora saw what was missing. The women.

There were girls of tender years of each nationality. Boys and youths, fathers, grandfathers, uncles and old women. All appeared worn-out, exhausted, hungry and stressed beyond belief. But young women, the pretty mothers, the comely stewardess were nowhere to be seen. Sora’s blood rand cold imagining the horrifying fates of the young women who belonged with these terrorized folk.

Suddenly seething with fury unlike any she’d ever felt before, she turned to Leeteuk. His hand tightened on her upper arm. Did the arrogant ool truly expected ger meek obedience as token for his protection in the face of this? Too furious for own good, Sora yanked her arm free. She was crazy for having given him her words to stay silent. He was crazy for setting much impossible condition upon his offer to bring her with him.

At least behind the veil, no one could see the grim set of of gnashing of her teeth. Her unseen hands clenched against the urge to snatched Uzi and turn it to the soldiers. Why the hell didn’t the Saudi’s do something? Why didn’t Leeteuk?

Concerned, Leeteuk returned his light grip on Sora’s arm, determined to keep her moving. Minister Jaleel spoke easily to the Irai officer, deflecting his attention from the lone woman in their party.

Then they came to a huge gap in the building’s wall. Sora stopped and openly looked for the orange-and-white hangar that house Kang Air. She had to know which of her company’s major assets in Kuwait still existed.

She saw it, there at the far west corner of the runway, housed against a cluster of charter offices. The orange-and-white façade facing her was intact. Sora’s study also located soldiers, tanks, artillery, barricades of wire and cross bars that quarantined that end of airport. She couldn’t hold back a groan.

Leeteuk tugged on her arm, bringing her attention back inside the terminal. Sora wished he’d left well enough alone and left her at the airfield.

At the exit, their progress stopped. There, at the table, a more bombastic Iraqi controlled the gate and he took an immediate and keen interest in Sora. Lust blazed out his black eyes and he his lips with obvious anticipation when he commanded the diplomats to present their credentials.

Minister Jaleel protested this. The soldier refused to relent on his new Iraqi rule, no woman could enter without being searched, photographed and identified.

As Minister Jaleel produce his papers, Sora started to shake. She had no identification. She had the clothes on her back and a dog on a leash, nothing else. Protesting in Arabic that this sort of demand was atrocious, Leeteuk slapped his diplomat’s pass and passport into the hands of the beefy Iraqi soldier. Then Leeteuk took deferential hold of Sora’s arm and drew her closer to him.

Sora didn’t dare make a mistake no. the soldier flipped through Leeteuk’s passport slowly. A portrait from Sora’s wallet was affixed below Leeteuk’s, with a Saudi seal embossing and blurring her face. The soldier insisted she remove her veil. The gleam in his eyes made Sora sweat. Ceasar growled and inched closer to her.

Dropping his knuckles to the table, Leeteuk challenged the officer. “Dare you defy the commandments of Mahammed?” Sora blinked, not understanding the words, but getting his meaning. All twelve diplomats added their voices to the argument. They struck an impasse. Minister Jaeel demanded to see the officer in charge of the entire airport.

Just then, a higher ranking Iraqi officer came out of an office nearby and intervened. “What is the problem?”

“Not a problem, I am certain,” Minister Jaeel said, and smiled.

Leeteuk spoke from true outrage. “This infidel would demand the wife of a haj show her face in public when the law of Mohammed forbids it!”

Minister Jaeel placed himself between Leeteuk and the Iraqi as he appealed to the newly arrived, older officer. “These young soldier have been very zealous in his performance of their duty. That has troubled my young adjutant, whose devotion to Allah is the rule of his life. We seek assurance that they will not trouble the haji’s wife. Can you give that, my friend?”

“The woman has no diplomatic status,” the stubborn soldier argued. It was the leer from the men surrounding him that worried Sora.

“Where I go, my wife goes.” Leeteuk stood on the tenets of his faith.

“Most certainly –“ the older officer bowed with respect to Leeteuk’s status “- but we cannot let a woman pass into Iraqi without being assured of her true identity. A protected woman, posing as the wife of a haj, could be a traitor. How are we to verify who she is if her face remains hidden?”

“You have my word, and by the Koran, that is enough.”

The Iraqis were not following orders, but going beyond the bounds of them, refusing to honor the beliefs as old as the Koran. Leeteuk knew what their purpose was. He swallowed his fury at the fate of the women taken forcibly from the airport. Over that, his hands were tied. Allah help him if these bastards tried to take Sora from him.

“Soorah,” Leeteuk called Sora to get her attention. She was looking all around again. Even through the veil, her eyes looked troubled. Leeteuk could see them clearly, he feared the soldiers could tell how different the shape of her eyes were.

She moved to his side like a soft current, drawing her abba close to her shoulders in a parody of modesty, which Leeteuk was positive she did not have.

“Do not shame me, we are in a public place.” Leeteuk scolded harshly in Arabic. “This is not a place for a woman. They think you must be carrying some weapons. You will walk through the security device, the detectors, to prove that you have nothing to hide on your person.”

Everything he said was Greek to her, except his tone. By it, Sora thought she’d blundered again. Very much afraid, Sora gripped his forearm, a wide gold wedding band on her finger. She shook her head, whispering, “Lae, Leeteuk.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said in Arabic, patting her hand reassuringly. “I will go with you. Come Ceasar.”

“There,” Miister Jaeel said to the soldiers. “Does that not satisfy you? Now let us pass. We are here at the invitation of your president and are under his protection.”

Leeteuk took Sora’s hands and led her to the tall metal detector. Is this all that was about?” Sora thought. The dog went through, the she, then Leeteuk. No bells went off, no alarms sounded. They were in Kuwait.

As she sank into the back seat of a crowded Mercedes limousine, she let out a long sigh of relief. The three cars of the diplomat’s convoy moved slowly through the city. That was a blur from where Sora sat, surrounded by men, with Ceasar stretched uncomfortably in front of them.

She had an impression of barricades, soldiers and little else. The city streets were deserted. Not a single store was open for business. The wind of the gulf blew sand along sidewalks devoid of life, save for roaming, and lost dogs. Al Kuwait was a ghost town populated only by Iraqi soldiers.

Without a traffic to slow them, it wasn’t long before the cars turned inside the walled gates of the Saudi embassy. This time, Saudi soldiers in familiar uniforms and with friendlier dispositions, went through the same precautions as the Iraqis, with one exception. They did not question Leeteuk Park Haji Haaris about his wife.

Once inside the high, secure walls of the compound, all semblance of a ghost town evaporated. The large embassy complex was jammed with people both inside and out which slowed their progress walking from the cars to the embassy doors. Several dark men caught Leeteuk’s attention immediately. They spoke with him in the same rapidly, excited manner Sora had observed Saudis use in the desert. She watched Leeteuk’s face for clues, since it was not possible for her to understand any of their words. His features never lightened from their look of grave seriousness.

Obviously there was no good news to report. 

They were again held up on a long hallway where stairs converge rom upper and lower floors at a side entry door to the embassy. That conversation ended abruptly. Leeteuk pulled Sora to the stairwell that descended into the basement. They went down two levels, to a subbasement with only two doors on opposite sides of the steps.

Leeteuk produced a key to one of the heavy steel doors, inserted it into the lock and swung the door inward.

He pulled her inside a cool, darkened room full of rows of desk and computer terminals. All of the machine were on. A few ever-moving anti-burn screens of asteroid showers gave the subterranean room the appearance of a transplanted NASA control center. There was no one present to hear Leeteuk say in English, “Sit down at a terminal, please.”

Sara was one step ahead of him mentally, already looking for the nearest familiar keyboard with a modem and an internet screen. She sat down, chewing a corner of her lip, not asking the obvious, What is this about? From a pocket deep within the confines of his formal Saudi robes, Leeteuk removed a small black notebook that he thumbed open to a page of numbers.

“I have a job I need you to do.”