Chapter 20: Unexpected Benefit of Some Religious Instruction

There were also some messages. One was from Mr. Constable, the MI6 officer at the embassy. He told me they had analysed the recording, but that I’d have to come to the embassy to read the transcript. By appointment. But not on Thursdays.

Another message was a transcript of a text message from Asim, which contained an invitation to join him on his next visit to Dubai. It seemed he was in the mood to catch a movie, and Dubai had cinemas. Well, two. The third message consisted of a somewhat distracted American male voice, asking me if I would mind getting back to him with the warranty number of my DVD player. That I knew to be an invitation from John Stein to drop in at the fishing supply shop, preferably with a heads up so he’d be there, too. You know, in terms of customer service so far I’d rate the CIA 8 out of 10, and MI6 only 4 out of 10. If you’re considering a career as an international assassin, this may be worth knowing.

Dusk prayer (maghrib) would be around six thirty, so I’d have to be back at the palace by six. I would make it there in time, but without having had dinner. And so it was the McDrive for me, even though I am hardly a fan of the arches (but even less so of the king). I also don’t know the menu, particularly in Arabic. So after a very confusing discussion at the drive through window with a young man who didn’t speak English except for words such as ‘McShake’ and ‘McNuggets’, neither of which I will willingly eat, I gave up. That’s a bit awkward as you then have to pass the order window where that same guy is waiting, but I waved at him instead, smiling as if we’d been school chums and I’d only swung by to greet him. I can spread confusion too, you know.

I hoped I’d have enough time to change into a fresh suit, or at least a shirt, before reporting to prince Omar, but he intercepted me on my way to the lift.

“You. We have appointment.”

“I’m aware, Yowrihnes. May I freshen up before we leave?”

“You have five minutes. I come with you.”

Oh, wonderful...

He followed me to my room. The door was ajar, which was odd and alarming. I had changed the main lock to something decent, and had mounted a Sherlock S2 bluetooth smart lock on the inside. (They’re eighty dollars a piece on Ali Express right now, if you’re interested. A lot of spy equipment is readily available through commercial channels, actually.) It allowed me to lock the door from the outside via my phone, even for those who had a copy of the key. Currently I wasn’t using it, but I felt it might come in handy.

My ‘sleepwear’ hadn’t alerted me about the break-in, as I’d left the palace unexpectedly and hadn’t activated it because Amina would generally service my room around ten a.m., just when my classes with Princess Alexandra started. We’d communicate via notes, but occasionally she’d come to my room in in the afternoon to deliver some towels or do something else that didn’t need doing. I think she enjoyed our chats. Civilised people were few and far between around here, especially ones who didn’t immediately denounce you as a whore and a sinner for discussing the weather with someone unrelated to you. Maybe that was a novelty she enjoyed.

She never said a word about herself or where she was from, but the United Kingdom seemed like a magical place to her and she told me she dreamed of visiting the Lake District. Well, why shatter that illusion? There’s nothing wrong with the Lake District, except if you visit it by car: you’ll be chased by locals overtaking you at seventy miles an hour on roads originally laid out for about five horse drawn carts per day and it has more ‘no parking’ signs than there is krill in the ocean, but hey, sure, it’s good to have a dream. She’d also seen me getting out of my car and seemed to think I enjoyed hearing praise about it. I didn’t, but couldn’t think of a nice way to shut her up. I did once observe what she did in my room during my absence via the observation equipment (the camera in the electric toothbrush was one, but my laptop was also one of my tools), but all she did was clean very thoroughly. One time I saw her taking a five minute break in my chair as she looked around the room and then closed her eyes for a minute or two. That’s hardly a crime. Technically it wasn’t even my chair.

“What the...” I muttered, as I entered my room. All my books were on the floor! My mattress had been turned over! Someone had rifled through all of my clothes! My laptop was gone! That was really a problem, because I had been doing a lot of work on that. I had Wi-fi maps, personnel rosters, camera locations, MAC-addresses of interesting devices on the network and lots more on that thing. I wasn’t immediately worried someone would be able to find that data, but I still didn’t like the idea it was gone.

“Did you do this?” asked Omar.

“Yeah. I always throw all my stuff on the floor when I leave. Don’t you?” I snapped. Apart from the laptop, nothing seemed to be missing.

“Maybe we should ask the Khafama,” suggested Omar.

“Oh, I will. Where is that little...”

I needn’t have asked. The Khafama appeared, with a devious grin.

“Did you do this?” asked Omar, in Arabic. I could understand most of the answer:

“Yes, Your Royal Highness. I inspected this room for alcohol and drugs. I am sorry to report he had changed the lock. We had to force it. And he added THIS!”

He held up the Sherlock lock in triumph.

“Where’s my laptop?” I asked, seething.

“I confiscated it. There may be blue movies on it. Or Zionist propaganda. We will need your password.”

“Did you find any alcohol or drugs?” I asked.

“No. Not this time,” he grinned. “Maybe in laptop?”

“Carstairs, why did you put a lock on your room?” asked Omar.

“Because my private property is stored here! There’s no telling who might have the keys to the old lock. Basically I was trying to prevent this, except laughing boy here took a crowbar to my door. Look at this! He’s wrecked the door!”

“The Khafama is charged with safeguarding the respectability of this house. If he thought you were hiding alcohol...” began Omar.

“OF COURSE HE THOUGHT THAT! You made him pay for my hotel room the other week, remember? He’s just getting back at me. Look, I want my laptop back right now. This instant.”

“It has to be inspected...” began the Khafama, but Omar raised his hand.

“Mr. Carstairs has given you no reason to suspect there might be haram substances in his room. Give him back his laptop. He has to teach the Princess tomorrow.”

“But...” began the Khafama, but Omar was already in the hallway.

“Two minutes until we leave, Mr. Carstairs. Clean shirt or no clean shirt. Prayer waits for no man.”

The Khafama stayed behind, to gloat some more as I found a shirt and changed into it.

“I hope your laptop is still in one piece,” he said. Now there was a man blissfully unaware of how many people I had killed so far, some of whom had annoyed me far less than him.

“I sure hope so to. Because guess who will be paying for my new one if there is so much as a scratch on mine? Or if the hard disk has any kind of issue? If you think that hotel room was expensive, wait until you see my new Macbook Pro.”

That seemed to shut him up. I guess my laptop wasn’t going to accidentally slip out of his hands on a marble staircase after all. It took a lot of willpower not to slam him into the wall on my way out, but vengeance is a dish best served cold. That’s a platitude I tend to forget, but in this case I was willing to give it a go.

Another escort was waiting for us. You can get used to anything, really. At least this time the Imam wasn’t on board, but Omar tried to engage me in a religious discussion. I think he was trying to find common ground between Christianity and Islam. However, since I only know the religious stories behind famous classical artwork, I didn’t put up much of an argument. In fact, I couldn’t see any kind of similarity, except that both Mohammed (blessings and praise upon him, obviously) and Jesus (not on a motorbike for a change) are people that have supposedly existed for realsies. In fact, Islam acknowledges Jesus was real, but doesn’t think he warrants all that much attention. Well, whatever. I had no particular interest in this discussion or indeed in visiting this or any other mosque, but it was clearly going to happen so best to get it over with. Maybe I could pull the fire alarm or leave an upper decker in the Imam’s private washroom or something. Not getting deported was the primary objective right now. And so I humoured Omar by not putting up much of an argument, although he did seem to take that as proof that his teachings were having an effect on me.

We arrived at the mosque about five minutes before the sunset prayer, which is a big deal on a Friday. The parking spaces around the building were full, with cars ranging from newly waxed BMW 5 series and immaculate Land Rovers with plastic seat covers to more modest Honda Accords and quite a few pick-up trucks. They’re as popular in the Middle East as they are in America, which is quite funny. The difference is that the ones in the ME are about half the size of their American counterparts, and not technically owned by a credit card company.

The mosque, which Asim had once pointed out to me as we drove past, had a reputation for being popular with very orthodox muslims. It wasn’t much to look at, at least not compared to quite a few others I had seen both here and in Dubai, and its appeal wasn’t helped by the green neon lights along the side of the prayer tower. Men were coming in from the square in front of the main entrance and from cars that pulled up to double and triple park. That’s fine during prayers. After all, nobody is supposed to be doing anything else, or going anywhere. I saw only men. No women and not even children. By now I’d seen quite a few mosques filling up or emptying out, mainly on my way to the car or the mall, and there’d always be young boys, sometimes not even old enough to walk without holding their dad’s thumb, but not here. And never any girls. Ever.

The driver of our limousine opened the door and I was the last one out, because that’s the way that goes. Not that Omar was expecting a red carpet or anything, although he was met by Imam Musa ibn Ja’far (I thought I might mention the fucker’s full name again) who was on his way up the tower. He shook hands with both of us, which surprised me but might have had something to do with the fact we were being watched by the faithful, and then he used an external staircase to go up the prayer tower. That was three, if not four floors up! Do that five times a day, plus some light gymnastics (get on your knees, bow to Mecca, get up again, breathe out, don’t forget to tighten the abs and relax the sphincter) and you get more of a workout than me most days. I didn’t even get around to swimming any more.

For lack of something else to do we watched him climb up. About a minute later the speaker clicked on and the miaowing began. This was hardly the only mosque in the vicinity and others joined in almost instantly, as if this one was the one to kick things off. As I’ve explained, this was merely the call to prayer.

In fact, Omar explained all this to me now. He tried giving a running translation but that didn’t go so well because he wanted to be far too precise. We entered the mosque and I had no choice but to take off my shoes. And my hat, of course. There was a wardrobe of sorts, but muslims pray with their heads covered and so there wasn’t really a place for me to keep my hat safe. Omar saw me fussing with it and almost snatched it out of my hands. He gave it to someone who could have just walked in from the street but who was apparently something like a vicar.

“He’ll put it in the Imam’s office for you,” said Omar. “Now we go wash.”

“I’ll wait here.”

“No. You come with me. Don’t worry, you don’t have to wash. I know you think God doesn’t mind if you are covered with dust.”

“I was brought here in a limousine and I live in a palace. I think I’m okay, dust wise.”

The look on Omar’s face told me he was holding back as he shook his head and entered the wash room, where dozens of men were enthusiastically washing their feet, blowing gunk out of their noses and doing Christ knows what else to prepare for worship. I’m one hundred percent certain I’d have fainted like a dowager if he’d made me set foot in that room.

A Westerner in a summer suit (on socks) waiting in the hallway is apparently not what most people were expecting to find. Without Omar as my host, I immediately got some very vicious looks and people barked questions at me I couldn’t understand. Well, apart from the guy who came in, sized me up and barked: “JEWISH?! JEW?! YOU ARE JEW?!”

Fortunately, the guy who had walked off with my hat came back. I saw him slipping a key into the wide pocket of his dishdasha. He explained to several very, very concerned parties why I was here and stuck around to shield me from new accusations. I took the opportunity to lift the key from his pocket. This may sound daring and perhaps somewhat incredible, but remember that I’d had a few hours of training with the CIA recently and that this was a lot easier than even the simplest exercise they’d made me do. I pretended to more or less cower behind him and just dipped into his deep, wide, pocket for a second. After all, I had evil plans. In fact, I had one in the chamber that would probably gross out Pinhead. It would be a shame to waste that.

The chorus of hocking and spitting emanating from the wash room reached a crescendo more or less at the same time the Imam reached his last call to get your fucking ass in the door and do some serious worshipping. Omar appeared again and waited with me just inside the prayer room. Again, don’t think marble or grand chandeliers: think wall to wall green carpet with brown and orange geometric patterns woven in, a stack of prayer rugs near the door for people to take, a rack with cubby holes where regulars such as Omar could keep their own carpet rolled up, a lectern for the Imam and about ten small albeit rather nice carved lamps hanging from the suspended ceiling. Along the walls at somewhat regular intervals stood small, moveable radiators, the electric ones filled with oil. Obviously they weren’t in use now, but even in Saudi Arabia it can get more than a bit nippy around December, particularly at five in the morning.

All in all there were about one hundred and fifty men there, mostly sat on their rugs and chatting to their neighbour. The Imam walked in and actually smiled at me.

“Please! You come!” he said, inviting me to pull up a rug.

“The Imam is inviting you to join us in worshopping God Almighty,” explained Omar.

“Uhm ... Yeah. I don’t think so.”

“But it’s God! Your God. Our God. Same God!” said the Imam.

“Uh-huh. Here’s the thing, though: If I take part in an Islamic religious ceremony, even if it’s only once, that means I’ve converted to Islam. That’s both by your standards AND mine. And since you have a strict ‘no backsies’ policy, that means that from that moment I am not only a Muslim, but also subject to Shariah law. So if I then go back to being an Anglican, I’m an apostate and I should be put to death. And I think you know that. In fact, I think that’s your game.”

Allah waits for no man and we were getting many curious looks from the crowd, who couldn’t wait to get their asses up and their heads down for some celestial ass-kissing. Apparently I had seen through their little plan, but they didn’t have time to debate me. Showtime, folks!

“Then you wait! OUTSIDE!” said Omar, who now showed a thick vein bulging in his neck. He pushed me out of the prayer room and shut the door behind me. The hallway was empty, as was the washroom, the square outside and ... the office.

I wasted no time, apart from putting my shoes back on now that nobody was watching. The key was so simple I could probably have picked that lock with the back of a teaspoon, but I was still very slow at that point and this saved me at least three minutes. Plus, I had no teaspoon on me. Never do. ‘I’ll just stir it with my dick,’ as the Dutch prophet Youp van ‘t Hek says.

First I did those things MI6 drills into you, inasmuch as you can drill anything into me in a mere two weeks. I checked for a security system or any kind of cameras, hidden or otherwise, I locked the door from the inside and I produced the white gloves I keep in my back pocket. I wasn’t technically anyone’s butler right now, but those gloves were thinner than a single cotton sock and at this point there was at least one in virtually every pocket I owned. Really, I’m like a balloon clown but with white gloves. Serious, actual, REAL spies who do not have a plausible explanation for keeping gloves on their person at all times tend to keep a small bottle of liquid Band-Aid (or Elastoplast if you will) around, to coat their fingertips. That works fine to prevent prints, but you will still leave behind DNA. Remember to use at least THREE coats, okay? One won’t cut it. More is better, but applying ten layers per finger takes ages and leaves you with hands like an Octopus.

They also teach you to look for your escape route. Well, there was a door that did indeed lead to a private bathroom, but the cistern was mounted near the ceiling! I know there are ways to get a Trump in there anyway, but I was not about to shit in a plastic bag or on a tea saucer, so sadly that was not an option. The lavvy did have a window I could climb through, although it would likely ruin my suit, not to mention how I would crack my skull falling out of it on the other end. So let’s make that plan Z.

I stepped back into the Imam’s office to inspect his window as a means of escape. That would work a lot better, although I’d emerge from the building in full view of a row of shops on the other side of the street. I also looked up and noticed an attic ladder, or rather the cord to pull it down. I guess that would have to be plan B, if one were needed.

The Imam had two desks. One was just filled with stacks of books, the overflow of a Billy book case. Yes, IKEA operates in Saudi Arabia. The difference is their catalogue shows no women. NONE. In the showroom everyone blushes when they pass the beds, which is not something I know from experience but was told by my lovely hosts when I visited the American compound. When a woman wants to test a mattress, the staff clears the entire section of people. Prayer time is also a problem at IKEA because if you just entered the maze and it’s time to pray, you are NOT going to make it out in time so it’s a bit like musical chairs. And yes, the meatballs are halal. I knew you’d ask. There’s nothing odd about halal meat, you know. Kosher is a lot more hassle than halal.

Underneath the desk stood two steel fireproof filing cabinets, the ones with the sliding drawers that can hold about a hundred hanging document folders and hopefully keep them safe during a blaze. They were locked.

The other desk had my hat on it, and a chair on both sides, one for him and one for his visitors. He kept it relatively clean. The desk had locked drawers and no trace of having had a laptop on it. Most people who lock away their laptop don’t bother with the mouse mat or the power supply, after all. The number of pens and pencils told me this guy was old school. I didn’t think I’d learn much by going through his papers, anyway. I couldn’t even read them. There wasn’t a word of English to be read here. He did have a small all-in-one printer, but that wasn’t so odd: those things don’t need to be hooked up to a computer to be useful.

I turned around, wondering what I could fuck up here. Glue his drawers shut? Put glue on his chair? I didn’t even have glue! I could ruin his printer, but they retail at seventy dollars or so. But then I saw a notice board with pictures, which at first glance I had mistaken for a poster or maybe a volunteer schedule. About thirty pictures of very suspicious looking men, all between twenty and about fifty years of age, were stuck to a whiteboard. Some were Polaroid pictures, most seemed to be colour printouts on glossy paper. One or two had the telltale marks of ink tanks that were about to give up. There were scribbled notes stuck underneath them, written on grey Post-Its (I never even knew they made them in grey) and secured with sticky tape. And I was suddenly overcome by the urge to take out my phone and start taking pictures. Many, many pictures. As the dull yet shrill voice of the Imam came through the walls, delivering a lecture on the virtues of ruining not just your own life but that of everyone you meet, I documented every square inch of that room, and that notice board in particular.

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Carstairs of Arabia

Ron Dudderie

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