Florence of Arabia Read Online Free Page A

Foreign Service officer in Kaffa who had rescued her. she sat for the Foreign Service exam. She passed. Being fluent in Arabic and an expert on the culture, she was posted to Chad. After 9/11, it was thought that her skills might be better suited elsewhere at Stat e, so she was moved to Near Eastern Affairs.
    Florence sai d to Duckett, "Did they have a t ap on her cell phone? Or did they intercept the call on the spot?"
    "What does it matter? They have you on tape, urging her to flee. Practically issuing amnesty on the spot."
    "But who taped the call? Who gave you the transcript?"
    "McFall's person, Brent what everhisname."
    "Ask him how they got it."
    "They're not going to tell me that. You know what pricks they are about sources and methods."
    Florence whispered, "Tell him that you know what they were up to." Duckett stared. "Namely?"
    "That CIA had a tap on Nazrah's phone lo ng before she drove into the gat e. That they were working on her. That they'd targeted her. That they were going to try to blackmail Prince Bawad through her."
    Duckett pursed his lips. "Thanks to you, now they do have something on him."
    "But they won't be able to use it if you tell them that you've seen through them. That you're on to them. That you've blown their operation. And that you're now going to climb to the top of the Washington Monument and scream your lungs out about it."
    "But what if it's not true?"
    "L et the director of CIA deny it. To the president's face. In the Cabinet Room."
    The lines on Ducket t's forehead relaxed, as if he'd suddenly been injected with Botox. He let out a pleased, ruminative grunt. His loathing of the CIA went back to one of his first overseas postings. Ecuador. There, he had overseen the opening of one of State 's dreary cultural exchange centers, this one designed to "highlight the historic synergy between the United States and Ecuador ." The next day it was blown up, ostensibly by a local guerrill a group, but in fact by the CIA, who wanted to stage an anti-U.S. outrage in order to widen its campaign against the current set of rebels. Duckett had been licking this still-moist wound lor decades. He was smiling now.
    He called the others back in. "I've questioned Ms. Farfalett i. and I have established to my satisfaction that her version of the events is accurate and truthful. Now"—he picked up the transcript of Nazrah's call—"I'm not going to ask you, or you, how this call came to be intercepted. Because that would not only compromise sources and methods, it would also raise the appalling possi bility that one or more agencies of the U.S. government were spying on the wife of a diplomat. Not just any diplomat but the dean of the diplomatic corps—a close personal friend of the president of the United States."
    "That's a bunch of shit."
    "Which y our director, or yours, can scrape oil" the bottom of their sho es—in the Cabinet Room, after St ate has presented to perspective on the matter." F BI and CIA stared.
    "Alternatively" continued Duckett, lord of the moment, "w e can all of us agree that the matter is now closed. Princess Nazrah is, as we speak, on her way back home in a Royal Wasabi Air Force transport. The media is unaware. So. gentlemen, how shall we proceed?"
    The White House people whispered with FBI and CIA. FBI said, none loo happily. "We're done here. " On the way out, the CIA man w inked at Florence.
    The next morning Florence inserted her ID card into the State Department turnstile, half expecting the display to read CANCELED, like a maxed-out credit card. But it let her in. Apparently, she still had a job in the United States government.
    She sought out George. George was a desk-limpet in t he Political/E con section who amused himself during his lunch hour by devising crossword puzzles in ancient Phoenician, one of twelve languages he spoke fluently. He claimed to dream in seven of them, and George was not the sort to boast. His model was Sir Richard Burton, the nineteenth-century