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“Depending on traffic through the Suez Canal, maybe four days. Why?”
“The Secretary of State was on her way there for some preliminary talks. We just lost communication with her plane. We fear it crashed.”
“We’ll be there in three.”
SEVEN
OVER THE SAHARA DESERT
WHEN HER FINGER SLIPPED OFF THE STRING, FIONA CURSED. She looked up quickly to make sure no one heard, even though she was alone in the private bedchamber in the rear of the aircraft. Her mother had been a strong believer in using soap in the mouth to discourage profanity, so her reaction was automatic even forty years later.
The violin was her refuge from the world. With bow in hand she could empty her mind of all distractions and concentrate solely on the music. There was no other activity or hobby that could quiet her thoughts so thoroughly. She often credited it with keeping her sane, especially since accepting the appointment to head the State Department.
Fiona Katamora was one of those rare creatures who come along once in a generation. By her sixth birthday, she was giving violin concerts as a soloist. Her parents, who had been interned during World War II because both had been born in Japan, had taught her Japanese while she taught herself Arabic, Mandarin, and Russian. She entered Harvard when she was fifteen and law school when she was eighteen. Before taking the bar exam, she took time off to sharpen her fencing skills, and would have gone on to the Olympics had she not torn a ligament in her knee a week before the opening ceremony.
She did all this and much more and made it look effortless. Fiona Katamora possessed a near-photographic memory, and required only four hours of sleep a night. Apart from her athletic, academic, and musical talents, she was charming, gracious, and possessed an infectious smile that could brighten any room.
Fiona had over a hundred job offers to consider when she passed the bar, including a teaching position at her alma mater, but she wanted to dedicate herself to serving the public trust. She joined a Washington think tank specializing in energy matters, and quickly made a name for herself with her ability to see causalities others simply couldn’t. After five years, one of her papers was submitted as a doctoral thesis, and she was awarded a Ph.D.
Her reputation within the Beltway grew to the point that she was a regular consultant at the White House for Presidents of both parties. It was only a matter of time before she was tapped for a cabinet post.
Still unmarried at forty-six, Fiona Katamora remained a stunning beauty, with raven hair as glossy as obsidian and a smooth, unlined face. She was trim and, at five foot six, tall for her ancestry. In interviews, she said she was simply too busy for a family of
her own, and while gossip magazines had tried to link her to various men of wealth and power she almost never dated.
In her two years as Secretary of State, she had worked wonders around the globe, restoring America’s reputation as peacemaker and impartial arbiter. She had helped broker the longest cease-fire to date between the government of Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger separatists, and had used her skills to settle a disputed election in Serbia that had threatened to become violent.
Fiona had shaken things up within the corridors of the State Department as well. She had garnered the nickname “dragon lady” because she had swept house at Foggy Bottom, cutting out layer upon layer of redundant staff, until State was the model of efficiency for the rest of the government.
And now she was headed for what could be the crowning moment of a remarkable career. The preliminary talks were meant to establish the framework for what was to be called the Tripoli Accords. If anyone could bring peace to the Middle East after ten presidential administrations failed, it would be Fiona Katamora.
She finished playing the Brahms piece she’d been practicing and set the violin and bow aside. She wiped her fingers on a monogrammed handkerchief and did some exercises to work out the mild cramping. She feared that arthritis was starting to make inroads.
There was a knock on the cabin door.
“Come in,” she said.
Her personal assistant, Grace Walsh, popped her head around the jamb. Grace had been with Fiona for more than a decade, following her boss from plum job to plum job.
“You wanted me to tell you when it was four.”
“Thanks, Gracie. What’s our ETA?”
“Knew you’d ask, so I spoke with the pilot. We’re about forty-five minutes out. We’ll be over Libyan territory shortly. Can I get you anything?”
“A bottle of water would be great. Thanks.”
Fiona buried herself in the stack of papers spread out on the bed. They were dossiers on all the major players expected at the upcoming summit, including brief biographies and photographs. She’d gone over them all before, committing most to memory, but she wanted to make sure she had everything just right. She quizzed herself on which ministers were related to their country’s rulers, names of wives and children, educational backgrounds, anything to make this as personal as possible.
She was most intrigued by Libya’s dynamic new Foreign Minister, Ali Ghami. His was by far the smallest dossier. Reportedly, Ghami had been a low-level civil servant until he’d come to the attention of Libya’s President Muammar Qaddafi. Within days of a meeting between the two men, Ghami had been elevated to Foreign Minister. In the six months since, he had been on a whirlwind tour throughout the region, drumming up support for the peace conference. His reception in various Middle Eastern capitals had been cool at first, but his dynamic personality and utter charm had slowly started to change minds. In many ways, he was like Fiona, and maybe that’s why she couldn’t get her mind around what bothered her about him.
Grace knocked again and stepped into the bedroom. She set a bottle of Dasani on the nightstand and turned to go.
“Hold on a sec,” Fiona said, and showed her the photograph of Ghami. “What does your woman’s intuition tell you about him?”
Grace took the picture and held it close to one of the Boeing 737’s windows. In the official photograph, Ghami wore a Western-style suit cut perfectly for his physique. He had thick salt-and-pepper hair and a matching mustache.
Gracie gave her the picture back. “I’m the wrong person to ask. I fell in love with Omar Sharif when I saw Doctor Zhivago as a teenager, and this guy has that same vibe.”
