Ahmed was socially awkward, soft-spoken, and easily distracted. Shakira, on the other hand, was a master manipulator of her husband’s message, and she managed his relationship with his people. She controlled how his image and voice made it to the citizens of Syria and the citizens of the world.
Her husband was an Alawi, but Shakira was a Sunni, and when the war came she helped broker deals between many of the Sunni groups in Syria that were now helping the Azzam government in its war against the Sunni majority.
Few knew that much of her husband’s success, his power, his very survival, was due to Shakira.
The war had changed her husband. In the past three years the Russians had moved into Syria en masse to help Azzam, not because they liked him or believed him to be in the right in this struggle. No, they helped him because they wanted air and land bases in the Middle East, and access to a Mediterranean port. Along with the Iranians, the Russians had helped turn the tide against the rebels, and while Shakira had seen herself as invaluable to her husband for years, now she worried that his alliance with Russia was minimizing her importance to him.
Ahmed had grown into the scheming and brutal dictator that for fifteen years he’d only portrayed himself as while Shakira had served as the major power broker behind the scenes.
Though she, the Iranians, and the Russians had successfully bolstered her husband’s regime, bringing it from the brink of destruction to where they were now, within a year of outright victory in the brutal civil war that had raged for over seven years, the public image Shakira had carefully cultivated for herself had been utterly destroyed. The wider world knew her husband for what he was, and the wider world was not buying what Shakira was selling anymore. The civil war that the Azzam regime prosecuted mercilessly had eroded any lingering goodwill that the jet set, the Western press, and anyone outside the loyalist enclaves in Syria had for Shakira. No longer was she flying off to Italian islands to meet with rock stars to talk about world hunger. The EU had banned her from traveling into its borders, and sanctions locked down all of her husband’s personal bank accounts in Luxembourg and Switzerland, and more than half of hers.
The fawning media outlets of the world had long ago ceased fawning about Shakira.
Though her nickname before the war had been the Rose of the Desert, now people in the Western press had taken to referring to her as the First Lady of Hell.
* * *
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And now, as Shakira sat watching television and glancing down to her satellite phone every minute or two, she thought about the last few years, what she had endured for her husband, and what he had put her through.
Shakira had introduced the enchanting young Spanish model Bianca Medina to Ahmed, and for that Shakira would forever be angry with herself. That Shakira did not know about the affair for the first year of it was her second major regret. She should have been watching her husband’s actions closer, for the sake of both herself and Ahmed.
It wasn’t the affair itself that bothered her. No, she didn’t care about who her husband slept with. He was slow and simple, boring and unloving to her. Shakira was involved in an affair of her own, after all, although she was certain Ahmed had no idea. As long as she raised the children and continued to support the regime, she had always felt her place was secure for the rest of her life, or at least the life of her husband. She’d lived her days certain that their mutual survival remained important to them both.
And then something changed.
Shakira had recently learned details about her husband’s relationship with his mistress, and now Shakira saw Bianca Medina as a threat, a threat that could destroy everything she’d worked so hard for.
So the bitch had to die.
A knock at the door was followed by the sound of footsteps in the entryway to her quarters. She had been expecting no guests, but she knew who it was, because no one else in her world would dare walk into her private salon without waiting to be acknowledged at any time of day or night, especially not at this rude hour.
The footsteps stopped as the late-night caller waited to be summoned, but before she called out, she glanced at her TV. Al Jazeera had just transitioned to a live cut-in on their programming; the screen changed from the TV studio to a shot of a darkened Parisian street, flashing lights and running police and medical personnel in the background.
Shakira smiled thinly, hopeful that the impeccable timing of the man at the door would fill in the details of the images on her huge television.
She spoke in French. “Come in, Sebastian.”
A man stepped through the darkened salon quietly. When she heard him walking up behind where she sat on the sofa, Shakira lifted the sat phone and held it up. “I thought you’d call. Someday someone will see you coming into my flat in the middle of the night. They’ll suspect you aren’t here to discuss my holdings in Switzerland.”
The man knelt in front of her, close. He leaned forward to kiss her, but she did not mirror the action. They did kiss, but she clearly had other things on her mind.
He said, “I was discreet. I thought it would be best if I delivered the news I have in person.”
“Tell me.”
He leaned in again, and she started to lean back and away. She was all business, and wanted this conveyed to the man. But as she tried to separate from him the second time, he brought a strong hand out, put it behind her head, pulled the face of the first lady of Syria to his, and kissed her hard on the lips.
Just as she started to kiss him back he let go, stood, and went to a chair on the other side of the coffee table.
Shakira quickly sat up and composed herself, hiding the fact that she’d even held a moment’s interest in his affections.
Sebastian Drexler was forty-three and Swiss, with close-cropped white-blond hair and steel blue eyes. He was a thin but fit six feet, and his mature face bore no wrinkles to speak of. While he was unmistakably good-looking, his eyes conveyed danger along with intelligence.
Shakira knew Drexler well enough to see his guarded mannerisms. Something was clearly wrong. “Did you not call because you needed the walk from your office to think about how you would inform me that you failed?”
Sebastian Drexler was a supremely confident man, so he delivered his bad news with the same cool tone as if he’d told her he’d just won the lottery. “There is much we do not know yet, but I have been monitoring communications between Islamic State’s foreign operations bureau and their cell in Paris. It appears ISIS has failed in their objective. The lone surviving operative who escaped the attack reported to his command that Bianca Medina was not in the suite, and the Syrian bodyguards killed five or six of the eight attackers. Others were captured by French authorities.”
Shakira’s face darkened. She spoke in a measured tone, fighting to control herself. “Where is Bianca now? With the police?”
“No. And that’s the curious part. I’ve been listening in to police radio transmissions in Paris, as well. The police there think she’s been kidnapped.”
Now Shakira gasped in surprise. “Kidnapped? Kidnapped by whom?”
“Unknown. Certainly Daesh doesn’t have her. The cell member who contacted the head of their foreign operations bureau was quite clear. He didn’t take the woman, he didn’t even see the woman, and his comrades are all either dead or in the hands of the police.”
Shakira stood and began pacing the dimly lit room. “I didn’t bring you into this to lose her! I will not accept failure!”
Drexler remained seated. An air of composure surrounded him. “We haven’t failed, Shakira. We will find out what’s going on, and we will fix it. I have people employed in Paris right now who are very well connected, and they will locate the woman and those responsible for taking her.”