“I love my faith, but I’m also a modern Saudi woman. We have two faces. When we are at home, we are obligated to keep it hidden behind a black veil. But in the West…”

“You can drink the occasional daiquiri and lie topless on the beach.”

“Exactly.”

“Does your father know?”

She nodded. “He wants me to be a true woman of the West but remain faithful to the tenets of Islam. I’ve told him that’s not possible, at least not in the strictest sense, and he respects that. I’m not a child, Sarah. I’m twenty-seven years old.”

She rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand. “And how old are you?”

“Thirty-one,” Sarah said.

“Have you ever been married?”

Sarah shook her head. Her face was still turned to the sun, and her skin felt as though it was burning. Nadia knows, she thought. They all know.

“You’re a beautiful girl,” Nadia said. “Why aren’t you married yet?”

Because of a telephone call I received at 8:53 the morning of September 11, 2001…

“All the usual excuses,” she said. “First there was college, then my doctorate, then work. I suppose I’ve never had time for love.”

“No time for love? How sad.”

“It’s an American disease.”

Nadia lowered her sunglasses over her eyes and rolled onto her back.

“The sun is strong,” Sarah said. “You should cover up.”

“I never burn. It’s one of the good things about being a Saudi.” She reached out and lazily buried the end of her cigarette in the sand. “It must be very strange for you.”

“What’s that?”

“An all-American girl like you, working for Zizi al-Bakari.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Nadia, but I’m hardly an all-American girl. I spent most of my childhood in Europe. When I went back to America to go to college, I felt terribly out of place. It took me a long time to adjust.”

“It doesn’t bother you working for a Saudi?”

“Why should it?”

“Because many people in your country blame us for the attacks on 9/11.”

“I don’t happen to be one of them,” Sarah said, then she recited the lines that Gabriel had given her in Surrey. “Osama chose Saudis to carry out the attacks so he could drive a wedge between your country and ours. He’s declared war on the House of Saud as well as America. We’re allies in the fight against al-Qaeda, not adversaries.”

“The Saudi intelligence services have warned my father repeatedly that he is a target of the terrorists because of his close relationship with the Royal Family. That’s why we have such stringent security.” She gestured toward the bodyguards. “That’s why we have to bring gorillas to the beach instead of two nice-looking boys.”