Dangerous Pleasure(49)

8



Paige stood at the high windows of the bedroom and stared through the crack of the partially opened shutters to where Jafar and Azir stood on the other side of the fortress wall, barely visible.

The two men had their heads close together as they stared at the ground as though looking for something, the metal detector Jafar carried so shadowed that at first it had been hard to tell exactly what it was.

Their dark thobes, the loose, long-sleeved, ankle-length garments, unadorned and plain, rippled at their legs from the winds sweeping from the mountains. On their heads, the ghutra, a large square cloth of cotton, dark in color to match the thobe, was wrapped around their faces to protect them from the cold wind and secured with the thick, double, black cord.

Azir seemed to teeter ever so often, and in the two hours she had watched them surveying the natural bank that split the land along the length of the fortress, she’d seen the old man almost topple over more than once.

Jafar kept close to him, catching him whenever he stumbled and staying close to him whenever the crazy old goat seemed to wander from whatever they were doing.

They were searching for something as far as she could tell, and evidently having little success in finding it.

“What are they looking for?” she asked Tariq as he worked on a piece of electronics at the small table across the room.

A muttered sound resembling a male grunt met her question. “Azir has spent years trying to find all the hidden tunnels coming in and out of the castle,” he told her. “Each time he finds one he has it dynamited or filled in in some way to make it impossible.”

She stared back down at the men with a frown. Why would they worry about hidden tunnels?

“To keep Abram from escaping,” she murmured almost to herself.

“Pretty much,” Tariq agreed. “Azir is fanatical about keeping him here until the king releases the funds he had frozen over twenty years ago. If Azir can get them returned, then the government has to pay out, no matter what, for the next ten years or risk breaking a treaty with several of the tribes that were a part of the original pact. They’ll go to any lengths to keep from doing that, and Azir knows that.”

Greed. Power. That was what it all came down to, one way or the other. Azir was hungry for it, just as his sons had been. Those who didn’t hunger for it tried peaceful means at all costs, and kept their demands clearly stated.

Azir wanted nothing more than to fund whatever fanatical regime he was supporting, and nothing mattered but his wants. Not even the heir who seemed to be his last hope of a comfortable life in his old age.#p#分页标题#e#

She continued to stare out the window, watching as they began to track the ground with the metal detector once again.

“How does a metal detector help them find underground tunnels?” she asked without turning back.

“It’s not exactly a metal detector,” he answered. “It’s specially modified to pick up pockets beneath the ground, vacancies that would indicate a cave, a cavern, or a tunnel.”

“Is there a tunnel where he’s looking?” She glanced back, but rather than searching for his eyes her gaze moved to his naked back once again.

“Not that we’ve found,” he told her with a quick shake of his head. “Abram and I have searched high and low for tunnels that haven’t yet been found. So far, we haven’t found anything.”

She turned back to the scene below to see Jafar gesture angrily to Azir with a frown. She would have never believed he was as deceitful as it appeared he was, or that he could have been a risk to her. Learning he had helped conspire to kidnap her had been a disillusioning blow.

There had been a lot of surprises in the past four days though, things she had truly never expected. She’d known Khalid’s cousins most of her life. At one time or another she had been introduced to them under various circumstances outside the Saudi regime. Until perhaps five or six years before, his Saudi cousins had been regulars at many of the vacation spots her parents had visited, for either business or pleasure.

Then, the positions they had held within the Saudi government had been dissolved, Paige had learned.

Because of Ayid and Aman, Khalid had told her. Once the king had received proof they were still involved with terrorist activities, all the males working in the Riyadh government had been asked to return to their own province. Ayid and Aman had destroyed the regime’s trust for the entire family.

Jafar and Tariq had actually held very lucrative positions within imports and exports, allowing them to travel all over the world. Several of Jafar’s family members were still in the U.S. attending college on student visas he had arranged while they were still very young.