Sheik Fouad was looking down at the parade for the 10th Emirate Day celebrations. Although it was still before noon the sun was blasting down on the assembled crowd. From the shaded balcony of the governmental building he scanned the stand on the other side of the street.
When would the messenger come and bring the would-be assassin his bomb? His secret police had found out that the owner of the catering company hired for the big Emirate Day Festival for his royal children and those of his government and other high ranked families was planning to smuggle a bomb into that party and kill the future of their houses.
The man was now sitting almost opposite of the Sheik on the stand on the other side of the street. Mahmoud, the head of security, had said that the murderer would receive his bomb from some foreigner here at the parade, but that as of now they had no idea who that person would be. So they posted plain-cloth secret police all around him and were waiting to see the trap spring shut.
The new recruits for the Desert Police marching down the street on their camels and in their 4wheel drives looked smart in their white robes and red/white headscarfs. He could see the young men glowing. It was an honour to march and cheered by your fellow countrymen and women and have the ruler waving to you.
The Sheik did not see any movement on the stand in front of him. The bastard was still sitting there with the only empty chair next to him with a small suitcase he had put on it. Apparently he had said to everyone asking if the seat was taken that he was waiting for someone to go and sit there.
The Sheik felt a rolling thunder building up in him. Who was such a bad one as to try and disrupt the country after he had managed to bring peace to it again after many years of civil war and religious disputes? Who was behind this plot?
More then ten years ago he had come to this place as a young man with his fighters. The young descendant from the Caliphs from the old days who had combined the oil money of his family and religious standing into a fighting force that had cleaned the country of the violence and bloodshed. Now this land between sea and the big desert was what the Wall Street Journal had described in yesterdays paper 'the combination between 1001 nights and silicon valley'. For Westerners maybe an odd combination with people who had to wear traditional clothing, where he had reimposed polygamy again and even harems after so many boys and men had died in the civil wars but were also boys and girls could go and study and get themselves a career in science, engineering or commerce although they looked like people from the glory-days of the past.
Suddenly his eyes detected movement. He saw a woman walk down on the steps of the stand towards the suspect. She was clad in the obligatory long wide black abbaya and headscarf. But even dressed like this he suddenly realised he knew who she was. Her fair skin stood out in the crowd and she was taller then most.
She was that blasted English woman who taught law at the American University here in the capital and who had had the nerve to write him a letter more or less demanding him to exempt her as a foreigner and a non-believer from covering up. He had written her back that if her human rights were violated by it and her feminism could not stand it the best solution was to find employment elsewhere but if she liked her teaching position she best just dressed up for the occasion. The nerve. Not even his own subjects would have written him a letter like that.
After a few weeks he had been invited at embassy for the birthday celebrations for their own king and had suddenly seen her as one of the people there he was formally introduced to. He had gotten a glimpse of long copper red curly hair, big very light blue eyes and huge creamy breasts spilling out of a very formal evening-dress of layers of cobalt blue thin fabric that would have been the fashion hit around the time the Titanic sunk.
He had given her a nod and turned to the next in line but had caught himself thinking "Your tongue is way too sharp and you do not know your place, but I would not mind sinking myself between your thighs Miss Roses and Whip-cream." How good it would be to kiss those breasts and have her probably likewise white legs around his hips bucking in pleasure.
Now that blasted woman was about to ruin the meeting of the bomb-plotters. That would be so her!