This is the third part of a three part story. This chapter is told from the point of view of Alex.
I was drifting in and out of sleep, snuggled against the sleeping body of my lover. His presence was nice, but his snoring was annoying. Perhaps I would need to insist that he went back to his own room from now on after we did our dirty deeds together. I wondered how Steph put up with it. I didn't really know enough about their home life to speculate. We'd been intimate, but we weren't yet together in that way that couples or long-term throuples get. I wondered if we would reach that point. I had been sincere in my promise to Steph to not take her man, and I also knew the long-term statistics about throuples. However nice things were now (apart from the snoring), this was unlikely to last.
My Dad had drilled me on classic rock history. I thought of our little arrangement as the pre-Yoko phase of the Beatles, the pre-Wall phase of Pink Floyd, the pre-Rumours phase of Fleetwood. Without the drugs, obviously. The pre... actually would it be the pre-conception phase of Oasis? I'm sure that they weren't fighting prior to Liam's birth. Anyway, the point was, this would evolve into something else, and soon enough we would be choosing whether the break-up song would be a fond farewell or Swiftian in its intensity. I thought that we were adult enough for the former. And in the meantime, we were making great music.
Todd and I had had a good trip so far. We left for Riyadh today, and then we would be heading home, with new contacts and contracts lined up. We really were a good team, and Steph had proven to be well worth bringing on board despite the closeness of it all. She had good ideas, and had a winning sincerity with officialdom. I could be arrogant and impatient, and sometimes I needed to be kept shut in my box while Steph negotiated stuff.
She must have sensed me thinking of her, because suddenly my phone was ringing. 5:30am? Surely she remembered the time difference. Frowning, I picked up the call, bleary eyed.
"Steph?"
"Alex? Oh God, sorry did I wake you? I keep forgetting!" She gave a ditzy laugh. My frown deepened. This was not a good news call, particularly if she felt it was so important that she had to play the blond card.
"Hey Steph, it's okay. How can I help?"
"Oh I'm so sorry. It was nothing really. It's just that Todd didn't pick up, and I tried ringing three times. I so forgot about the time! He must have his phone on mute. Maybe when you see him, could you let him know to check his phone? I mean I feel bad calling three times. I need to make some décor decisions in the new house. I mean hopefully when he sees three calls he'll call be back at a better time, just as long as it's not three in the morning for me!" Could you mention it anyway, just in case?
"I surely shall, Steph. Three times, you say? Okay, I've got the message! Hey honey, do you mind if I get a couple more hours sleep first? Then I'll go knock on his door."
"Sure!" she giggled. "And sorry again!"
I put the phone down, seriously concerned. I knew their alarm signals. One squeeze for alert, two for danger, three for emergency. Steph had definitely been working on the assumption that she was being overheard, and she had something big going down.
Todd was awake, having heard my end of the conversation, and he'd picked up my expression. We'd installed a secure signaling app for this circumstance, but we were normally reluctant to use it. Nothing is truly secure.
I bent over to whisper in Todd's ear. "Emergency call from Steph. Message her back. Assume we're being monitored."
He nodded, brow furrowed, and unlocked his phone. Grimacing, he showed me that there had indeed been three missed calls from Steph. He established a VPN connection and pulled up their messaging App. He sent a single "?" to Steph. It wasn't long before her message came back. His eyebrows shot skywards, and without comment he gave his phone to me to read, and started putting himself together to go back to his room.
Steph's message was pretty blunt.
"We are cooperating fully with US and Saudi authorities. It appears that A has been using our software for fraud. Please be warm towards A/F and invite them BOTH to visit us at a date to be arranged later. BEHAVE yourselves. Any trouble contact.."
The message ended with the contact details of two people who were apparently US agents of some kind.
Todd came out of the bathroom, and I pointed to the way that Steph had emphasized 'BEHAVE'. He nodded, and made a fucking gesture with his fingers, followed by a slit throat gesture. Well, that was it for our summer of love, at least for now. At least the snoring would no longer be a problem: with the strength of Steph's messaging this morning, perhaps we would be sleeping at separate hotels. Or in separate jail cells.
***
We made it to Riyadh that afternoon. In snatched, oblique conversations, we had agreed to keep to our original plan except for following Steph's instructions. We only had two nights here and then we were headed home.
Keeping some distance from Ahmad was impossible. As soon as we arrived at the airport, we were met by his personal chauffeur, who told us that our rooms had been upgraded to be on the top floor of the hotel, next to Ahmad's Presidential Suite. When I protested, I was told that he was fully covering our costs. I wondered what he was chasing from us.
I didn't have to wonder too long. We had been informed that Ahmad was unavoidably detained and that we would see him and Fatemah in the morning. But after Todd and I had had a thoroughly professional dinner together and gone to our separate rooms, there was a quiet knock on my door. I looked through the peephole, and there was Ahmad.
I open the door, furiously trying to work out how to handle this. Almost certainly, Ahmad was being watched even more closely than we were.
"Ahmad! What a pleasure," I said, but I didn't invite him in.
