Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley Page A

communications," Rick said.
    A mirthles s grin crossed Bobby's face. He turned to George. "So, would you be with the State Department?" CIA people overseas tended to refer to State Department personnel as "embassy pukes."
    Florence thought she'd better jump in. "I've been to Aqaba. It's quite Lovely and cool. The king of Jordan maintains a small palace there."
    "Where you been posted?" Bobby asked George.
    "I've been here, actually."
    Bobby's eyes drooped. "H ow long you been with State?" "Sixteen years."
    "You been in Washington for sixteen years?" "Sixteen and a half."
    Bobby turned to Renard. "How long you been strategically communi catin'?"
    "I've had my own firm for four years." Rick said. "You spent much time in the Middle Fast?" "I get to Dubai pretty regularly." "What d'y a think of the new airport?" Georg e tried to catch Rick's eye. "it s... nice. Fine." Bobby grinned. "What's so funny?"
    "There is no new airport in Dubai." George said. "Shall we eat?" Florence said.
    The Barolo and risotto with crawfish and lava beans look some of the edge off. George helped Florence clear the main course and, in the kitchen, whispered to her. "Where did you find him? Killer s R Us? His knuckles touch the f loor."
    "We need him."
    "You know h e's the one who called in that cruise missile strike in Dar?" "It was a good target."
    "I'm all for bombing foreign ambassadors, but just because some redneck thinks he smells paint thinner.. ."
    "George, it was a Q aeda chem-weap factory."
    "Whatever. I think we'd better have another bottle of wine."
    "Gel back in there and protect Renard."
    "He walked right into that one. A hit man from Dogpatch, a PR hack and a queer foreign Service officer. Quite the A-Team you've assembled, Firenze. They 'll be writing ballads about us, and thank God I'll be dead."
    Florence came in with another bottle of Barolo.
    Bobby was te lling Rick. "In Vietnam. Navy SEAL s. when they'd killed a VC cadre, they'd cut out the liver, take a bite out of it and throw it down by the body. According to Buddhist theology, you can't enter heaven unless you're whole. Put a major freak on em."
    Rick paled and put down his knife and fork.
    "You gonna finish that?" Bobby said.
    ‘U h. no."
    "Mind?" Bobby took Rick's plate. He said to Florence, "This is quite excellent, ma'am. I never had bugs with risotto before." "Bugs?"
    "Crawfish, where I come from." "Why don't you call me Florence?" "Florence. Okay. Florence of Arabia."
    "J ust Florence will do." She raised her glass. "So, to Aqaba. then?" Bobby raised his glass. "What the hell. To Aqaba."
    "It's a metaphor," George said to Rick. "It means we're going to die before we get there."
    '"If the camels die. we die.'" Bobby quoted. "And the camels will start to die in twenty days."
    CHAPTER SIX
    he emirate of Mat ar (pronounced, for reasons unclear, "Mutter") consists of a ten-mile-wide, 350-mile-long strip of sand that runs along the western coast of the Gulf of Darius. Its northern boundary begins i n the mosquito marshes of the U m-katush. Fr om there it runs on a generally south - eastern course for several hundred miles, to the Straits of Xerxes, where it curves gently wes tward until it terminates at Alf atoosh, on the sparkling shore of the Indian Ocean.
    Viewed on a large-scale map, Matar seems an illogical political entity, like so many American congressional districts, whose contorted outlines are the result of successive attempts to maximize incumbencies and to inconvenience challengers. One might suspect, contemplating Matar 's bizarre physical configuration, that its borders had been drawn so as to deprive its much larger neighbor to the w est, the Royal Kingdom of Wasabia of access to the sea. One would be correct.
    The account of Matar 's cr eation is described in David Vre mkin's magisterial history of the creation of the modern Middle East, Let's Put Iraq Here, and Lebanon Over Here: The Making of the Modern Middle East:
    Churchill was furious With the French, in