Two hundred eighty-two, Sarah thought. But who’s counting? Yossi had described it as a floating emirate. She permitted them to enter her thoughts. Her last contact had been Sunday afternoon. Eli Lavon had bumped into her in Oxford Street while she was picking up a few odds and ends for the trip. We’ll be with you the entire time, he had told her. Don’t look for us. Don’t try to make contact unless it’s a force-ten calamity. We’ll come to you. Have a nice trip.

She leaned back in her seat. She was still wearing the jeans and woolen sweater she put on that morning. Only ten hours removed from the chilly damp of London, her body was unprepared for the onslaught of tropical heat. The jeans felt as though they were glued to her thighs, and the sweater seemed to be sawing at the side of her neck. She glanced at bin Talal, who seemed to be having no difficulty adjusting to the abrupt change of climate. He had a wide face, two small dark eyes, and a goatee beard. Dressed as he was now, in his tailored gray suit and tie, he might have been mistaken for a financier. His hands, however, betrayed the true nature of his work. They looked like mallets.

The roar of the rotor blade made further conversation impossible, and for this she was eternally grateful. Her loathing of him was now limitless. Since just after dawn he had been a constant presence at her side, menacing in his politeness. At the airport he had insisted on coming with her to the duty-free shops and had intervened with a company credit card when she bought a flask of aloe lotion. During the flight he had shown an endless interest in all aspects of her life. Please, Miss Sarah, tell me about your childhood…Please, Miss Sarah, tell me about your interest in art…Please, Miss Sarah, tell me why you decided to leave Washington and come to London… To escape him she had feigned sleep. Two hours later, when she feigned waking, he probed at her some more. You say your father worked for Citicorp? You know, it’s quite possible he and Mr. al-Bakari have actually met. Mr. al-Bakari has had many dealings with Citicorp… With that she had slipped on her headphones to watch an in-flight film. Bin Talal had selected the same one.