Before she went off the deep end, Sora fought a valiant battle to get hold of herself, think and calm down. She was tired, frightened, jet-lagged, dehydrated and surrounded by an uncountable number of hostile armed men whose language she didn’t speak. These Arabs looked at her with… well, she didn’t knew what their scathing, disturbing looks meant.

What she knew was about Saud Arabia she could stuff in a thimble. She’d make an overview study of Islamic art for the purpose of making an eye pleasing designs. There her inquiry had ended. Everything else she knew about Mideast was media gleamed, via telecast of terrorist bombings, ongoing internal wars, propagandas and coup attempts. None of which she’d ever followed. She couldn’t think of any Arab she’d ever met in her life.

Yes, Sheik Haaris had come to San Antonio and finalized his order for the Vixen, but she had not been included in those meetings. Her father had glib-tongue Matthew had handled all contractual negotiations.

In fact, when the white-robe sheik had visited the Kang detail shop, the six women who worked on the assembly floor had been given a paid holiday. Likewise, the three Kang sisters, also employed by their father’s company, didn’t go within five miles of the plant that day.

Margaret, Katie and Sora had laugh it off and chalked up the day to their father’s astute maneuver to gain Kang Industries a highly favourable contract. Only Sora had voice dissatisfaction with the repressive action. Some of the sting of that repression had fuelled Sora’s insistent on flying her Vixen to Kuwait.

Right now, she wished she’d never been handed the design problem in the first place. Her thought turn to worry about her father. What, dear God, could have happened to him? Had the 2016-1 exploded, caught on fire of been hit by a bomb? What about her uncle Jack and the hangar, the supplies on the ground? What about the goose, the old DC-7 hunker plane?

A million more questions without answers flashed though her mind as the helicopter sped west across the desert. What were these people going to do with her? Would she and her dad be held for a ransom or become hostages in some stupid political game? Her father have important clients in this part of the world, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember a single patron’s name. What was she going to do? The inability to answer any of her own questions only intensified the massive headache blooming behind her eyes. For too long in the noisy, draftee helicopter, Sora sat with her eyes closed and her fingers pressed on her forehead.

Then she jolted up straight, eyes wide as she took a look at everything that it was possible to see – the earphone covered heads of the pilot and the navigator of the helicopter, and beyond the wide screen, the sweeping ocher-and-tan-desert.

Too late, Sora realized. She should have looked for land marks from the very start, noting directions, making contingencies for escape before she became a prisoner. Glaring at the sight unfolding before her eyes, she silently groaned.

The helicopter was setting onto a clear marked helipad atop a cluster of buildings on a rocky hillside. The slopes were stark and barren. She saw no other sign of civilization near this outpost on the edge of oblivion.

For all Sora knew, she was at a prison.

Four men rushed up an outer stair to meet the helicopter. All wore ankle-length robes. Two carted AK-47’s to Sora’s great relief, the third seemed a gentler sort. He bowed profusely before her as he offered a long slender hand to assist her out of the craft. The fourth scrambled into the cargo bay and snatched up her scant luggage and the leather briefcase. Ducking the sweep of rotor blades, all four escorted her down the steps into the adjacent enclosed courtyard. The bearer scuttled ahead, opening and closing heavily timbered doors between courts. A stripped robe fluttered around his bony ankles, but Sora could concentrate on nothing but his black turban that had a silk tail hanging off the center of his back.

As they passed the series of gates, the two machine-gun-toting bandits never spoke a word. Their piercing black eyes regarded her with the same distrust she’d noted in the soldiers. The third seemed openly worried, and fired lots of questions Sora’s way that she could not answer because she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the helicopters rotor as it retreated into the sky.

Sora racked her brain, summoning every smidgen of self-defence and survival lore she had gleaned from years of watching television. She expected imprisonment and had the resistance of a marshmallow to prevent it.

It threw her even more off balance to step inside a beautiful tiles, ornately columned hall of such massive proportions she was reminded of imposing government buildings. Wide balustrade stairs rose to a cool upper level. Within minutes of walking along Persian-carpeted halls where vases overflowed with exotic greenery, the babbling man , whose English was dismal, at best swung open a set of doors to a private chamber .

Expecting an austere cell, Sora gawked at a living area that belonged on the cover of Architectural Digest.

Along the way to this lavish setting, the armed bandits had faded behind the scrollwork. The scuttling porter set down her garment bag and briefcase and disappeared. The tall, rather thin man struggling so valiantly with English threw open another set of doors to reveal a bedroom of such ostentatious wealth Sora nearly swallowed her tongue.

“This… make you… comfortable… lalla, yes?” he asked haltingly.

“I will stay here?” Sora blinked stupidly as he bowed three times and made gestures with his hand, touching his head, chin and .

As he straightened, a smile beamed from his face. “Here, yes! Com…for…table, here, yes, sleep, bath, rest.” He put his hands on this forehead, looking dismayed. “Forgive… my Anglais… please, mam’selle. Many years pass since I speak it, yes. One becomes, how you say, rus-tee, yes rusty. That is the word. Please be comfortable. You are tired. Rest. Bathe away strain of journey. A meal will be waiting for you when you emerge from the bath. Do you require a woman to serve you?”

Sora looked to the low table where her travel bag had been laid. “No, I have everything I need, Thank you.”

Maybe this is a hotel of some sort, she thought as the man departed, drawing the outer doors shut in his wake.

She found it hard to keep that thought in mind when she dropped her weary body into a huge, tiled tub of steaming water that bubbled and swirled around her tired limbs. Never in her life had she been in a hotel with such a lavish amenities. She’d have gone to sleep on the spot and probably drowned if she hadn’t been so hungry.

Refreshed by the bath and dressed in the smart slacks and cotton shirt she’d brought along for sight-seeing, Sora returned to the formal living room.

There, she found that the servant who had introduced himself as Ali had spread a veritable feast on a round glass-topped table large enough to seat eight.

She sat down without ceremony, slavering over frosted fruits, seasoned vegetables, marinated meats and rice dishes fit to serve a king. Her stomach contracted with gratitude. Remembering her manners, Sora spread a fine linen napkin over her lap and looked up at the man. “May I ask you a question?”

“But of course Mademoiselle.” The servant bowed obsequiously, most solemn-faced.

“Where am I?”

“This is the winter palace of Sheik Leeteuk Park Haji Haaris.”

“In Saudi Arabia?”

“In Anaiza Arabia. The desert is all the same, ma’am.”

“I do not want to assume anything incorrect here, you understand? Is your Sheik Leeteuk Park Haji Haaris the son of Sheik Wali Haj Haaris?”

“His eldest son my lady, by his first wife, Yaella, she’s a Korean. This is her family home. The young prince inherited it, as is custom.”

Sora divined much from the Arab’s simple explanation. First, and most importantly, she was likely as safe as she would ever be… under these strained circumstances.

Sora raised an eyebrow in mute acceptance and began to tuck into the food. She concentrated on a heavenly batch of rice and seasoned mutton. As she ate, the sharp edge of her deep hunger lessened and she thought of questions. “Ali, do you have news of what happened in Kuwait? Has the newspaper arrived” Or better, is there a broadcast in English on any television channel?”

The man gave her a puzzled look, and Sora wondered if she taxing his scope of English by talking rapidly. Then his expression lost its perplexed look and he said smoothly, “No, mam’selle. We do not have such things. In Riyadh you could learn world news, but here in Anaiza most of what happened the world passes us by.”

Sora knew her face showed her disappointment at the answer. “Riyadh.” She echoed his accent, trying out the word on her own tongue.

“How far away is Riyadh? How long will it take me to get there?”

He gave her a look that Sora could only interpret as paternal. Were he decked out a stole over his long wrist robe, Sora could have identified him as a priest. And, in spite of her basic unease, Ali’s calm and unthreatening demeanour did a great job in soothing her concerns, but his words did not.

“It matters not the distance or the time of the journey to the capital, lalla. You may not go there.”

“Why not?” Sora set her fork down. Alarm welled inside her like a flush of flood. Her calm in the aftermath of the tempest, she realized, was shock. Any moment she could lose control. She swallowed the jolt of fear, determined not to let her emotions get out of hand again.

“You are American? Yes?”

“Yes. I am.”

“You have not yet been in Arabia before this?”

“No. I never have. This is my first visit.”

Ali spread his palms open in a gesture of universal understanding. “A woman may not travel here without her father’s permission. Your father is in Al Kuwait, yes?”

“To the best of my knowledge, yes.”

“Well there you have it mam’selle. When your father comes, you ask his permission, and should he grant it, you may travel about at your leisure.”

His reasoning left her reeling.

“Do you know how I got here?” Sora asked ersely.

“Yes Sheik Leeteuk delivered you to our safekeeping.”

An oversimplification, if Sora had ever heard one. “For the record,” she murmured as pleasantly as she could, “I flew my own plane into the middle of a war over Kuwait City, Ali.”

“A war over Kuwait mam’selle? I do not want to correct a guest as I know that would be most impolite, but sure you are mistaken. That cannot be.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad things, but what else does one call bombs flying everywhere? An airport terminal blowing up call before your eyes?”

“I do not know mam’selle. I have worked many years for Sheik Leeteuk. He is most fundamental man, very upright in his beliefs. He would not allow a woman to move beyond his protection, not even a foreign woman. But not to worry, no matter the trouble in Kuwait, you will be safe here at Anaiza.”

Sora blinked twice over the servant’s smooth deflection of her worries. She wanted to argue that what she’d seen and experience had nothing to do with the fundamental beliefs of the man whose hospitality she was temporarily force to accept.

“You’ve missed the point,” she said calmly. “I cannot sit here doing nothing when my father is in the middle of heaven only knows what kind of danger.”
 

“I see.” Ali nodded. “But, I can see that your journey has exhausted you. You must rest, yes? When Sheik Leeteuk returns, you may speak to him of these things that trouble you. It is not within my power to answer your questions about Kuwait.”

Ali busied himself with cleaning the table. Sora was it was pointless to argue. He was right about her being exhausted. The truth was, she was bordering n collapsing right where she sat. That opulent bed she’d seen in the next room beckoned to her.

Though how she was going to sleep when she had so many worries she didn’t know. And his advice to save all her questions for Sheik Leeteuk didn’t make her feel any more like resting.

In her present state, she couldn’t begin to figure out how she was going to reason with t that walking nightmare of chauvinism she’d slapped on the tarmac. That thought drooped red-hot acid onto her magnificent meal she’d consumed.

Sora glared at the double doors Ali closed on his way out with the rolling tray. Did she hear the click of a lock? Was she imprisoned? She shuddered, wondering if a man with an Uzi slung over his shoulder stood watching just beyond the carved rosewood. Should she get up and find out? She decided against it, and rubbed the pads of her fingers across her eyes. Even all gentle motion hurt. She’d been awake too long.