23

“We’ve received a communication from the Red Hand,” Lestari said. They walked together through darkened palace corridors. Lamps at the bases of the walls cast amber fans of light upward, past the plants in their copper pots and shadowed niches. Tonight the Sufi woman wore royal-blue, with a sapphire in her navel.

“What did they say?” Annja asked.

“I’ll leave that for His Majesty to tell you,” the woman said in her usual manner, which somehow contrived to be at once sultry and deadpan. Annja could never shake the impression the woman was laughing at her on the inside. She felt a strange, nerdish urge to find some way to let her know she was in on the joke. But she could not. Especially since she wasn’t.

At the foot of the stairs Lestari paused and draped a bare arm over a banister. Everything she did looked as if she was posing for a classic Greek sculpture. Her ability to exude sexiness without apparently trying, like her air of superiority, infuriated Annja.

“You’ll find the Sultan awaiting you in his study,” Lestari said in her throaty contralto. “It’s to your left at the top of the stairs, down two doors. I leave you here. But before I do, I have a question. What do you intend in regard to the Sultan?”

Annja felt her stomach lurch. Her nostrils flared like an angry horse’s. “I really don’t see what business that is of yours,” she said.

“It may be, and it may not,” the woman said with a smile. “That remains to be seen. I did not ask the question in order for you to answer it to me. I asked it in order for you to answer it for yourself. Good evening.”

She turned and glided past Annja, back along the amber-lit hallway. She moved silently, as if her slippered feet did not touch the floor tiles.

Shaking her head, Annja trotted up the stairs. “The worst thing,” she muttered under her breath, “is that she’s right. I need to ask myself that.”

She had spent a lot of time in the Sultan’s company the last few days. Even if most of it entailed little more than sitting in his office, leafing fruitlessly through volumes from the palace’s vast libraries, or flipping through endless pages of Internet printouts while he read reports off the thin plasma screen that rose up out of his desktop on his command. He also muttered earnestly on his phone, issuing the occasional command, questioning constantly.

She could never help feeling his presence, like a warm stove in a cold room. Even away from the palace, walking clean streets between whitewashed downtown walls, past construction sites where the last of the tsunami damage was being repaired, or sitting in her room reading her e-mail, she kept seeing his face. Even doing her workouts his face or voice popped into her mind, to her aggravation.

I’m just a commoner, she reminded herself sternly as she set off down the second-floor corridor. She hated thinking of herself in those terms. Yet like most Americans she found herself fascinated by the concept of royalty and nobility, even though as an antiquarian she knew better than most the foibles of the high-born. Why would he be interested in me?

She blushed, slightly embarrassed by her own thought.

“Ms. Creed!” the Sultan exclaimed. “What a pleasure to see you.”

She looked around. She saw no one.

“Up here,” he called. She had stepped into a room with a high-domed ceiling, patterned with intricate looping knots and interlocked rectangles, like the floor tiles. The walls were lined with bookshelves. An old-fashioned mobile ladder on casters stood to her right, attached to a rail that ran around the top of the wall. Wira, dressed in green trousers and a loose white shirt with the sleeves rolled up his hard brown forearms, perched at the top of it.

He climbed down. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Your cheeks—you aren’t feverish, are you?”

She shook her head quickly. “Just a touch of sun. That’s all.”

He gave her a stern look. “Be careful,” he said. “Our tropical sun can be hard on fair skin such as yours.”

Then he laughed. “Listen to me! I sound like Krisna. Who sounds just like Polonius, most of the time. As if you, the globe-trotting adventurer, needs me to warn you about the sun!”

“Your concern is always appreciated, Your Majesty.”

He came toward her holding out both hands. “There’s a time for formality, I know,” he said. “But I hope that time has passed for us. I dare to think we have become colleagues, and may be on our way to becoming friends. I’d be honored if you’d simply call me Wira. Except when Krisna is around—it’ll make him crazy.”

She laughed. “You? Honored? The honor’s mine—Wira.” She took his hands. “But please call me Annja, your—Wira.”

He smiled and squeezed her hand. For a wild heart-pounding moment she was sure he was about to lean forward and kiss her.

Instead he let go of her hands and raised his head. “Gentlemen,” he said in a sharper tone. “Our guest has arrived. Please join me in the study.”

She looked at him, puzzled. Inside she was trying to sort out whether she was disappointed or relieved. Or maybe why she was both.

He caught her eye, grinned and shrugged.

“Your people bug your own quarters?” she asked.

“Palace security,” he said. “They’ll do it no matter how sternly I order them not to. So I make use of it. It’s handier than an intercom, and I hate walking around with a headset on all the time, or something stuck in my ear.”

Purnoma and Colonel Singh came in, the Sikh looking tall and grave and splendid as always, with his beard oiled and up-curled at the bottom, and Purnoma dressed as if he was either a cat burglar or heading out for a little midnight basketball when they were done. She wouldn’t put either past him.

They returned her greeting in their usual ways, Singh nodding gravely and Purnoma with his usual grin. Whereas Wira looked and acted, when he wasn’t being prematurely middle-aged and serious and head-of-state, like a young man scarcely past adolescence, Purnoma looked and moved like a fifty-year-old kid. He seemed genuinely likable. At the same time Annja suspected that the flashing grin and those glittering obsidian eyes, if he was seriously interrogating you, would be far more terrifying than any bellowing or bluster.

I’m glad he’s on my side. For now, she thought.

“We’ve heard from the pirates,” Wira said. “Through an intermediary. The usual channels through which ransom demands are delivered, you understand.”

Annja nodded. “I have some idea of how business is done in such cases.”

Singh’s stern expression, which usually looked chiseled in place, actually hardened. “Everyone speaks of never negotiating with these pirate scum,” he said. “But everyone does it. Even ourselves.”

“Speaking of terrorists,” Annja said, “I’ve been wondering—could the pirates be working with the Sword of the Faith?”

Wira shook his head. “If anything, they hate each other more than they hate us,” he said. “Like any purists, Sword of the Faith are prudes, deeply conservative. And like many terrorist movements around the world they try to gain popular support by crushing more conventional criminals.”

“So the pirates want to sell the relic to you?” Annja asked.

Wira nodded. “They’re giving us an exclusive opportunity to bid before they put it up for open auction.”

“Including to Sword of the Faith,” Purnoma said. “Greed makes strange bedfellows. Just like fanaticism.”

“Where are the pirates now?” Annja asked. For some inexplicable reason she was starting to get a cold, creeping sensation in the muscles of her cheeks and down her lower spine.

The domed room was dominated by a large, low table with eight sides. Its top surface gleamed like polished mahogany, causing Annja to suspect it was a reading table, or perhaps for gaming. Wira did something with his right hand. The tabletop revealed itself as a circular high-definition screen showing a map.

“Nice techno-toy,” Annja said.

“Useful, too,” Wira said. He was a bit of gadget geek, she had noticed. Still, if you were as rich as Croesus and had high-tech haven Singapore as a near neighbor and patron, why not? He did seem to make good use of his toys.

“Thanks to your giving us the frequency for your GPS tracker, Ms. Creed,” Purnoma said, “we’ve located them in the Sulu Sea. Overhead imaging shows a substantial junk fleet gathered there at anchor.”

“Aren’t they making a conspicuous target of themselves?” Annja asked.

“They are, unfortunately, in Philippine territorial waters,” Singh said.

“And you can’t strike at them without causing a nasty international incident,” she said.

“And there you have it,” Wira said.

Annja frowned down at the map. A set of little red ship figures showed the pirate fleet’s location. “I don’t suppose you could get the Philippine government’s permission to hit them?”

The Sultan’s young cheeks bunched in a grimace. “We don’t dare,” he said.

“Eddie Cao Cao would get the request before the Philippine Foreign Minister did,” Purnoma said, “courtesy of his paid traitors.”

“Who plague us in abundance,” Singh rumbled.

“Minister Purnoma is highly effective at rooting them out,” Wira said quickly.

“And it does precisely no good,” the boyish internal-security chief said. “They’re like roaches. They just keep breeding, in dark, moist, smelly places.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just confessing to my own incompetence.”

“Not at all,” Wira said. “We have to face reality, no matter how unpleasant.”

Annja looked from face to face. “That’s my cue,” she said deliberately, “to ask why you gentlemen have invited me here to tell me this. I don’t have such an exalted opinion of myself to think you’d seriously consult me concerning Rimba Perak affairs of state.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Annja,” Wira said earnestly. “You’ve displayed remarkable gifts.”

“Listen, Ms. Creed,” Purnoma said, “speaking of roaches, you seem to have a gift for turning up whether you’re wanted or not, and being pretty hard to kill. Apologies for implicitly comparing you to pirates. What I’m saying is, if you’re not an operator, you should be. I’d offer you a job.” His eyes crinkled in amusement. “Consider it done.”

“I’m flattered, Mr. Purnoma,” she said. “But surely you don’t believe I’m somebody’s intelligence agent?” If he does, she thought, I’ll be leaving in a van with no windows. If at all.

“I don’t,” Wira said hurriedly.

Purnoma was looking at her with his head tipped to one side like a curious bird. “I don’t know what you are, exactly,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re a threat to the Sultan or the State. And everything else is just idle curiosity.”

“I don’t want to be rude,” Annja said, “but I still wonder why you took the trouble to call me here tonight. I have a feeling it’s important.”

The three men traded glances. She had the impression they were uneasy in her presence. That was odd, for three such powerful men—and in this small nation, their power was functionally absolute. As warmly friendly as Wira was, as cheerful as Purnoma was, as unfailingly polite as Singh was, the Sultan was an absolute ruler, and the others were his left hand and his right. They were hard hands indeed, Annja had no doubt.

Wira actually cleared his throat like a schoolboy admitting he put the frog in the teacher’s desk. “I have come to a decision,” he said. “It pertains to your area of expertise, and your own involvement in this affair. My advisers concur.”

“What’s the bad news, then? You don’t mean—”

“Whatever the nature of this relic the Red Hand’s stolen,” Wira said, “we all agree it has enormous potential to do harm—as a symbol of enormous power, if nothing else. Even your Knights admitted it could contain a secret that might conceivably overturn the order of the world.”

“That’s highly speculative—” Annja began.

“Yes,” Wira said, nodding. He was all elder statesmen now, old beyond his years. “But the order of the world, such as it is, is already balanced on a dagger’s tip. Tensions run high. Rivalries between great powers, that once seemed extinguished forever, are now at least flickering alight again. And no one knows for sure who might have nuclear weapons, nor where. We cannot afford to let the coffin fall into the wrong hands. Nor, for that matter, to permit it to stay long in the hands of Eddie Cao Cao.”

She gasped. “You can’t!”

“We hope not to,” Wira said.

“As a last resort, Ms. Creed,” Singh said, making things explicit, “we are prepared to sink the entire pirate fleet, and send the relic to the bottom of the sea. If not blow it to pieces.”

She turned away. “I can’t believe you’re even thinking of this.”

She felt Wira approach. Sensed a hand reach for her shoulder then stop short.

“We only consider it,” he said softly, “because the alternative might be even more unthinkable.”

“Relax, Ms. Creed,” Purnoma said, with a little laugh. “We’re not launching yet. You were about to remind us we couldn’t attack the pirates in Philippine waters anyway, am I right? And as the Colonel says, it’s a last resort. Somebody as clever as you are ought to be able to help us find a way to avoid it coming to that.”

She turned. “You really think so?”

“We do,” Wira said. “You not only got onto one of my ships, you got off it again, bringing with you a badly wounded man, in the midst of a pirate attack. That was quite an achievement.”

She still wanted to rage, to demand, to plead, to force them to promise to preserve the coffin at all costs. She knew how much good it would do. Her shoulders rose and fell as she drew in a deep breath and let it go.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come up with something. Thanks for giving me the chance.” She turned to go.

“Ah—one more thing,” Wira said. He actually sounded embarrassed.

She turned back.

“In light of the fact that the Red Hand have made their first move,” Wira went on, “and in light of the two attempts on your life—”

“You know about both? The drive-by, too?”

Purnoma laughed. This time it grated a bit. “Give me some credit, Ms. Creed,” he said. “Maybe terrorist attacks in the city are more common than we like, but people don’t blow out the windows of our finer boutiques in the shopping district with machine guns every day. It’d play hell on tourism. And we did scrape that one shooter off the sidewalk by that café. Allah knows who he was working for, because I sure don’t.”

“But why didn’t you—”

Purnoma laughed. “What? Bring you in after the first attempt? Question you? What were you going to tell us we didn’t know? Somebody tried to kill you? Noticed that, check. You have a pretty good idea why people might want to? So do we.” He smiled wider. “I hope that if you have any possibly pertinent information, you’d make sure to share it with us.”

So you let bad guys take a couple of cracks at me, she thought, to make sure I was telling you everything. You cagey little son of a—

She shook her head. “You’re thorough at your job, Mr. Purnoma.”

For the first time since she’d met him he looked something other than cheerful. His youthful face suddenly looked its age and more with obvious worry. “I hope I’m thorough enough, Ms. Creed.”

“With those attempts on your life in mind,” Wira said, with what she thought was a reproachful glance at his security chief, “I have decided to move you into the palace for the duration of our contract. I’ve taken the liberty of having your possessions transferred from your hotel. I trust you’ll find your quarters here satisfactory. If not I’m sure we can find a way to accommodate you.”

Why, you arrogant, high-handed…Sultan, she thought. She forced a smile.

“I’m sure I’ve been in worse places,” she said brittlely. “Thanks for your concern, Your Majesty.”