Lucy Gordon - The Sheikh’s Reward

© 2000

H E WASa prince to his fingertips. Tall, black-haired, his head set at a proud angle, Prince Ali Ben Saleem, Sheikh of the principality of Kamar, drew everyone’s gaze as he walked into the casino.

It wasn’t just his handsome features and his tall body with its combination of power and grace. There was something about him that seemed to proclaim him skilful at everything he attempted. And so men regarded him with envy, women with interest.

Frances Callam watched with the others, but her eyes held a peculiar intentness. Ali Ben Saleem was the man she had come here to study.

She was a freelance journalist, much in demand for her skill at profiling people. Editors knew that she was unbeatable in stories where large sums of money were concerned. And Ali was one of the wealthiest men in the world.

‘Will you look at that?’ Joey Baines breathed in awe, watching Ali’s imperial progress to the tables. Joey was a private detective whom she sometimes hired as an assistant. She’d brought him along tonight as cover while she visited the casino and watched Ali at play.

‘I’m looking,’ Fran murmured. ‘He certainly lives up to the legend, doesn’t he? In appearance anyway.’

‘What’s the rest of the legend?’

‘He’s a law unto himself, accountable to nobody for where his money comes from or where it goes to.’

‘But we know where it comes from,’ Joey objected. ‘Those oil wells he’s got gushing away in the desert.’

‘And a lot of it vanishes in places like this,’ Fran said, looking around her with disapproval.

‘Hey, Fran, lighten up. Can’t we enjoy life among the fleshpots for just one night? It’s in a good cause.’

‘It’s in the cause of nailing a man who doesn’t like answering questions about himself, and finding out what he has to hide,’ Fran said firmly.

Joey ran a finger around the inside of his collar. His short, undistinguished person looked uncomfortable in the black tie and dinner jacket that was de rigueur for the men.

‘I can’t believe you came here looking like a goddess just to work,’ he said, eyeing her slender figure, pale skin and red-gold hair with wistful lust.

‘Down, Fido,’ Fran said amiably. ‘Tonight this is my work outfit. I need to look as if I belong in this place.’

She’d succeeded in her aim. Her dress seemed to be solid gold glitter with a neckline that plunged low, and a side slit that came up to her thigh. She was rather disconcerted by the dress’s frank immodesty, and had hired it only with misgiving. But she was glad now that she’d done so. In the glittering, sophisticated ambience of The Golden Chance, London’s premier casino, this was how to look.

As well as the dress, she’d hired the solid gold jewellery that went with it. Hanging earrings accentuated the length of her neck, heavy gold bracelets weighed down her wrists, and a long gold pendant plunged between her breasts, emphasising her décolletage .

I look like a kept woman, she thought, faintly shocked at herself.

But so did every other woman here, and in that respect the outfit was a success.

Certainly she could have held her own among the women who crowded around Sheikh Ali, competing for his attention, and being rewarded with a smile, or a kiss of the fingers in their direction. The sight made her seethe.

‘Arrogant so-and-so,’ she muttered. ‘Men like that are supposed to be extinct.’

‘Only the ones who can’t get away with it,’ Joey told her wisely. ‘Those who can are as bad as ever.’

‘You’re jealous,’ she said indignantly.

‘We all are, Fran! Look around you. Every man in the place wants to be him, and every woman wants to sleep with him.’

‘Not every one,’ she said firmly. ‘Not me.’

Ali had finished his royal progress and was settling at one of the tables. Fran edged nearer, trying to observe him without looking too interested.

He played for very high stakes, and when he lost he merely shrugged. Fran gulped at the sums he tossed away as though they were nothing. She noticed, too, that once play started he forgot about the women at his elbow. One minute he was flirting madly with them. The next they didn’t exist. Her annoyance grew.

It grew even more when play stopped and he turned on the charm again, clearly expecting to take up with them where he’d left off. Worse still, they let him.

‘You see that?’ she muttered to Joey. ‘Why doesn’t one of them spit in his eye?’

‘You try spitting in the eye of a hundred billion,’ Joey said. ‘See how easy it is. Why must you be such a puritan, Fran?’

‘I can’t help it. It’s how I was raised. It’s not decent for one man to have so much-so much-just so much.’

She’d been going to say ‘so much money’, but Sheikh Ali had so much of everything. From the moment of his birth it had all fallen into his lap. His father, the late Sheikh Saleem, had married an Englishwoman and remained faithful to her all his life. Ali was their only son.

He’d inherited his little principality at the age of twenty-one. His first act had been to cancel all deals with the world’s mighty oil corporations, and to renegotiate them, giving Kamar a far larger slice of the profits. The companies had raged but given in. Kamar’s oil was of priceless quality.

In the ten years since then he’d multiplied his country’s wealth more than ten times. He lived a charmed life between two worlds. He had apartments in both London and New York, and he commuted between them in his private jet, making huge, complex deals.

When not enjoying the high life in the west he returned to his domain to live in one of his palaces, or to visit Wadi Sita, a top secret retreat in the desert, where he was reputed to indulge in all manner of excesses. He never contradicted these rumours, nor even deigned to acknowledge them, and because no journalist had ever been allowed to glimpse the truth the stories flourished unchecked.

‘Does Howard know you’re here tonight?’ Joey asked, naming the man whom Fran usually dated.

‘Of course not. He’d never approve. In fact he doesn’t approve of my doing this story. I asked him what he could tell me about Ali, and he just gave me the PR line about how important he was, and how Kamar was a valuable ally. When I said there were too many mysteries, Howard went pale and said, “For pity’s sake, don’t offend him.”’

‘What a wimp!’ Joey said provocatively.

‘Howard isn’t a wimp, but he is a merchant banker, and he has a banker’s priorities.’

‘And you’re going to marry this guy?’

‘I never said that,’ Fran answered quickly. ‘Probably. One day. Maybe.’

‘Boy, you’re really head over heels about him, aren’t you?’

‘Can we concentrate on what we’re here for?’ she asked frostily.

‘Place your bets, please!’

Ali pushed a large stake out over the board to red twenty-seven, then leaned back with an air of supreme indifference. He maintained it throughout the spinning of the wheel as the little ball bounced merrily from red to black, from one number to another. Fran found she was holding her breath, her eyes riveted on the wheel, until at last it stopped.

Red twenty-two.

The croupier raked the stakes in. Fran watched Sheikh Ali, frowning. He didn’t even look at the fortune that was vanishing. All his attention was for his new stake.

Suddenly he looked up at her.