19

Wira sat several minutes on the veranda, sipping his lemonade, enjoying the shade and the perfume of his garden. He found few pretexts for relaxation. Now he was giving his visitor a decent interval in which to leave. He almost felt gratitude to the man, despite having seen quite enough of him for one day. If not longer.

At last, unable to postpone any further, he rose and went into the palace. The foyer was cool, with high, white walls. Fragrant floral sprays sprang from vases in niches in the walls. Potted plants of various sizes were everywhere. He had inherited his father’s love for greenery.

As he walked down a corridor a man materialized at his side. He was small, even for a Malay, wiry, of indeterminate but plainly advanced age. His head was shaved. He was dressed in a traditional sarong. Wira nodded at him.

“Krisna,” he said. “I perceive you’re going to nag me.”

“Someone must guide my Sultan when his feet stray from the path of wisdom,” his Grand Vizier said.

A simile occurred to the Sultan, concerning a sheepdog. He smiled to himself and left it unsaid. Despite his name—which meant “wisdom” in Malay, and was common among islanders of all faiths and also belonged to a Hindu god—the Grand Vizier was a devoutly traditional Muslim. Comparing him to a dog, an unclean animal, would have insulted him, which Wira did not intend. As Sultan, Wira had to make many unpleasant decisions, take many harsh actions. He hated to act unkindly unless necessity forced it. And Krisna had been his loyal adviser and friend since boyhood.

“I appreciate your solicitude, as always,” he contented himself with saying.

“You must take care to placate Mr. St. Clair,” the Grand Vizier said.

“Why?” Wira asked. “Because he’s CIA?”

“Oh, no, my Sultan.” Krisna shook his hairless head. “He is most assuredly not CIA. I suspect he belongs to some other, more secret arm of the U.S. government. One which by reason of flying below the radar enjoys more latitude than the CIA, you see.”

Wira waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t care about details. I dislike playing games. There’s so much work to be done. I want to help our people educate themselves, to develop a strong economy—without allowing ourselves to become addicted to our own oil, a prisoner of monoculture, as it were, like the Saudis.”

“The United States of America is hardly a detail, Excellency,” Krisna said stiffly.

“Neither are the other powers who pretend such avid friendship. At the very least, let them buffer one another. Play games undermining each other—and meddle in our affairs the less. In particular, Krisna, I have no desire to serve the U.S. as a torturer-by-proxy. Nor do I intend to suffer being deposed by some kind of color-coded people’s revolution, bought and paid for with U.S. dollars.”

They came to the foot of a broad stairway sweeping up to the palace’s second floor. Wira glanced down at his smaller companion and sighed. “Please forgive my vehemence, old friend.”

“There is nothing to forgive, Excellency. I only advise that you take care not to give the Americans anything to forgive, either. They’re not good at it.”

“Noted,” the Sultan said. He sprang up the stairs.

At the top a female aide in a stiff tan tunic awaited. “We have received word from the security forces,” she told him. “They have picked up the American archaeologist Annja Creed at Meriahpuri Airport, as you instructed.”

He chuckled softly. “I wish I’d bet old Krisna,” he said. “He thought she’d be discouraged and go home. I told him it takes determination to be the lone skeptic on a television series such as Chasing History’s Monsters. Excellent, Miri. Tell them to bring her to the palace at once, please.”

“They are on the way.”

“Thank you.”

He went into the antechamber to the office. It was spacious, well-lit and elegantly appointed, with a fine Bokhara carpet on the floor and spiky palms in planters. On a broad white divan lounged a strikingly beautiful woman with her legs tucked up beneath her. A green band held a gleaming mass of black, wavy hair back from her face. As was her custom her whole outfit was the same rich hue—the wrap around her upper body, leaving one shoulder bare, the sarong about her hips. An emerald winked from a gold setting in her navel, seeming to glow against her cinnamon-colored skin. It was an ambivalent sort of outfit—green was the color of Islam, yet the ensemble showed so much skin as to aggravate if not outrage the more puritanical traditionalists. But then, that was a Sufi all over.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you waiting to lecture me as well, Lestari?”

She smiled coolly. She looked no older than he. He suspected she was, though, possibly a good deal. Or is that mere superstition? Sufis enjoyed a reputation for all manner of mysterious powers, although they disavowed mysticism themselves. He tried hard for a very Western kind of rationalism, himself.

“I wanted to counterbalance that old hen, Krisna, presuming he’d counsel you to leap into bed with the Americans with both feet,” the woman said.

“Krisna is an old and valued counselor, Lestari,” the Sultan said. “He served my father before me. I’d never have survived without him. He may be prone to notions and to worrying. But he’s very wise.”

“The wise are often the worst fools,” she said.

He cocked a brow at her. “Another of your contradictory Sufi sayings? Your impacts are worse than Zen koans.” He was tweaking her—Sufis tended to bristle at having their Path compared to other forms of Eastern esoterica.

But Lestari laughed. She was a hard woman to read. That was refreshing in itself. Most women he encountered, as a young, rich, athletic Sultan, were as transparently easy to read as Cyrus St. Clair. And had much the same motivation.

“It seems no more than an obvious observation,” she said, “based on experience. And I’d advise you most urgently against considering Mr. St. Clair transparent. He is a man who is happy to play up those aspects of his motivation which his circumstances make apparent. There’s nothing so subtle as the proper kind of obviousness.”

“Another observation? You Sufis are inordinately fond of apparent contradictions, in all events.” His expression hardened slightly. “And I refuse to believe you’re reading my mind. I am a committed skeptic.”

She shrugged. “It is the Sultan’s privilege to believe what he desires,” she said, “and as for most self-professed skeptics, commitment would suit them well. You can attribute my occasional flash of insight to training in the Western discipline of reading body language, if you want.”

He raised a brow. “You give the West that much credit?”

She shrugged an elegantly bare shoulder. “Remember, my Sultan—we Sufis did not invent the motor car, but we still ride in them.”

“What I’ll remember is not to try sparring mentally with you,” he said ruefully. “It makes my poor head ring like a gong.”

“It does not,” she said matter-of-factly. “You are young, and thus intellectually lazy. So you seek convenient excuses.”

He glared at her. She returned his gaze calmly, her slightly squarish chin uplifted. He laughed.

“You’ve no more respect for authority than my cat,” he said.

“True.” She stretched, perhaps to emphasize the resemblance. “But as a perceptive cat person, you’ve noticed that despite what most people believe, cats are exceedingly loyal—in their own way.”

“Yes. And now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Do I bore my Sultan? Then let me be brief—be careful of the American.”

“St. Clair? Always.”

“He’s one,” she said. “I had in mind the woman. The very ingénue archaeologist. She’s trouble.”

“Lestari,” he said, in tones of exaggerated exasperation, “you’re too young to be my mother. Give me a break. All Americans are trouble. And at the risk of sounding sexist, so are most women.”

“Most? Indeed, my Sultan has yet much to learn.”

ONCE ALONE IN THE sanctum of his office, Wira checked the palace network for the special digest of local information and intelligence reports, constantly updated by his intelligence service. If anything urgent happened, he’d be alerted at once. But he liked to keep a finger on Rimba Perak’s pulse. Next he skimmed the headlines at several external sites for world events. He felt they gave him an insight into how the ever-mercurial Americans were thinking.

Then, having assured himself no crisis, local or global, was any more likely to loom up and swat his little kingdom than usual, he went to the Web site for Chasing History’s Monsters. He gazed at the lovely image of Annja Creed.

TO ANNJA’S surprise the Sultan sprang up from behind his mahogany desk and strode forward to meet her, smiling with teeth bright white in his dark face, his hand extended.

“Ms. Creed!” he said in excellent English with a slight British accent. “Such a pleasure to meet you. I’m a big fan of your work on Chasing History’s Monsters.”

She shook his hand. His grip was warm and dry. It was also like taking hold of a carved cypress root. Apparently the job of Sultan of Rimba Perak didn’t entail lounging on cushions all day eating grapes and being fanned. Unless that somehow gave you a grip like a vise. He didn’t exert any more than the polite degree of pressure—it was just obvious how much he held back.

What really surprised her was how young he was. And how handsome.

He wore dark blue trousers with a stiff-looking white tunic and a modest white turban. He was nearly as tall as Annja, trim, with the grace of a stalking tiger. His face was lean, with pronounced cheekbones and large brown eyes. The youthfulness of his appearance and carriage didn’t quite square up with the way he spoke, which suggested an older man.

“Do you usually have your favorite celebrities arrested the moment they enter the country?” she asked. “If that’s the case, I’m afraid you can pretty much kiss any prospects of developing a movie industry goodbye.”

The Sultan laughed. “I’m afraid I have yet to entertain a sufficient number of celebrities to develop a proper protocol. Perhaps you will be kind enough to assist me. Please, sit down.”

The office likewise took her off guard. It was spacious and well-lit, like everything she had seen of the Sultan’s palace as her two guards escorted her through it politely and with professional briskness. There were the plants in terra-cotta planters and a ceiling fan turning overhead, a lot more quietly than the one in Mr. Baxa’s interrogation room.

She was surprised how modest the office was. The desk, though a beautiful piece of furniture that gleamed as if it had been polished by several straight generations of artisans, was simple and clearly not designed to intimidate. Nor was the office set up with a huge expanse of open floor to be crossed to approach the Presence, nor little dinky or altogether absent chairs. Instead comfortable-looking chairs upholstered in batiklike designs awaited. With the shelves full of books and the sliding doors that led onto a balcony with palm fronds waving over it, it looked like a thoughtful man’s study, instead of the office of an absolute potentate barely halfway through his twenties.

The chairs were comfortable, she found as she sat in one. Wira went behind the desk and seated himself.

His brown eyes met Annja’s. For a moment, they simply held gazes.

She looked away. Her cheeks felt unaccountably warm.

“I apologize for the rather abrupt way I had you brought here,” he said. “But you have, after all, involved yourself in the affairs of this country.”

“True,” Annja said. “But your country seems to have involved itself in trafficking in stolen antiquities.”

His lips pressed together. After a moment he put his hands on the desktop and stood. “Would you care to walk with me in the garden?” he asked.