he might have been better behaved. He was wriggling violently in his chair, and Claire gasped as she saw it tilt, rushing instinctively to steady it before it fell.
Close to the baby was enchanting, with soft olive skin and huge tear-drowned dark eyes. He clutched hold of her blouse, the crying stopping as he gazed up at her. He wasn’t even secured properly in the chair, and Claire wondered a little at the child’s parents, allowing such an inexperienced and uncaring girl to have charge of him. Was one of the men seated at the table the child’s father? She glanced towards them and found herself pinned where she stood by the sharply cold glance of the man with the green eyes. What was the matter with him? she thought, unconsciously touching her tongue to suddenly dry lips. Did he think she was going to run off with the baby? His eyes dared her to so much as touch the child, and perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was the piercingly forlorn cry the baby gave as she started to move away that prompted her next action.
Almost automatically she turned back, smiling a little as the baby, sensing victory, lifted his arms. She half expected the man watching them to tear the baby out of her arms, but surprisingly no one moved. When she had been training to be a secretary she had often supplemented her income by baby-sitting and although it had been a couple of years since she had last held such a small child she found herself instinctively slipping back into the mothering role.
The olive cheeks were faintly flushed, his skin hot, and Claire guessed that he was probably teething. His clothes were obviously expensive but crumpled and stained with food. Suddenly realising what she was doing Claire moved to put him back into the chair. He cried protestingly, clinging on to her. Torn between common sense and an inborn instinct to comfort him she glanced across the room. He was still watching her and it was something in that look that impelled her towards defiance. Turning away from the chair and walking back to her own table, she soothed the complaining howls, murmuring soft nonsense which seemed to have the desired effect for the cries gradually ceased. She had just reached her table and turned when she saw the men enter the room.
Later she decided she could only have acted by blind instinct, because surely there hadn’t been enough time for her to register the menacing appearance of the gun; the silent intent of the man pointing it towards the now empty highchair, and even as he sought her out she was pushing over the sturdy table and crouching behind it, cradling the baby as she heard the sharp splinter of china and another noise that chilled her blood.
Gunfire was something she was familiar with from television, but she had never before experienced it so close at hand. The silence that followed those staccato spurts of sound was, in its way, even more terrifying than what had gone before. Dimly she was aware of running feet, of doors being closed, of someone approaching, a dark hand resting on her shoulder. She knew she tensed, unable to turn and look up, her too-vivid imagination working overtime, so that when she was eventually able to move the first thing she saw was the gun, held casually in the hand of the man standing over her.
Fear thundered through her body, leaving her drenched in perspiration, and trembling so much that he had to drop the gun to pull her to her feet. She heard him mutter something she couldn’t understand and she had a vivid moment’s recognition of green eyes, no longer ice-cold but hard with a burning anger, as her head was pushed against his shoulder and her body, betrayingly, sank gratefully against solidly braced male muscles, taking the support they offered without paying the slightest heed to her brain’s feverish command to resist and pull away.
Dimly she was aware of the doors opening, of hurried, staccato conversation; her eyes fluttered open, to discover that she was still holding the baby and that both of them were safe and unharmed.
The arms that had been holding her fell away and she told herself it was foolish to experience such an acute sense of loss. Dizzily she became aware of her surroundings; of the limp, lifeless dark-suited bodies lying on the floor; of the small, voluable middle-aged man who had erupted into the room, and whose features she vaguely recognised; but most of all of the man who had been holding her and who was now standing several feet away talking calmly to his plump, disturbed companion, both of them pausing to glance at Claire.
She only realised when the baby let out a protesting cry that she was holding him too tightly. Her head felt as though it was full of cotton wool. She seemed to have strayed into another world and she still couldn’t take in what had happened. Now, only the overturned table and the smashed crockery remained to prove that it had been real, that she had actually taken shelter behind it while bullets flew about the room. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to laugh—or to cry—and the only thought surfacing through the muddle of her brain was that if she had to pay for the broken china it would probably use all her godmother’s parting cheque.
‘Please… forgive me… I am so disturbed that I forget my manners.’ Claire smiled vaguely at the plump bearded man. ‘I am Sheikh Ahmed ibn Hassan,’ he told her, introducing himself, ‘and if you had not…’ He tried to compose himself, shaking his head slowly. ‘Allah must have been smiling upon us this morning, Miss…’
Dutifully Claire supplied her name. ‘But, we cannot talk of this here. Will you come up to my suite so that I can thank you more properly…?’ He saw her hesitation and smiled, warmth and charm lighting his rather heavy features, and in that instant Claire recognised him.
He was the head of a small Middle Eastern state and she had seen his photograph in the papers. He was in Britain on a state visit, although the Press had suggested there might be something more in it than that. His country would offer a strategic point for Europe and its allies in a military sense, and it was strongly hinted that this could be the purpose underlining his visit. Claire also remembered reading that his nephew and heir had recently been killed in an accident together with his wife, and there had been rumblings of a Soviet plot to instate a ruler of their choice with sympathies to them rather than to the West.
‘I can ask the hotel management to vouch for me…’ her companion was saying earnestly and Claire realised that he had misinterpreted her hesitation.
She shook her head and proffered a brief smile. ‘No… no. I recognise you from your photograph in the papers, Sheikh.’
When they left the room they were followed by most of the other occupants, although Claire noticed that one man stayed behind and the mockery in his green eyes seemed to follow her as she walked out of the room, head held high, the baby still clutched in her arms, surrounded by what seemed like a phalanx of silent men.
The lavishness of the Sheikh’s suite made her blink, and as she sat down Claire found herself wondering curiously about the child she was still cuddling. She couldn’t blot out of her mind looking up and seeing that gun pointed lethally in the direction of the highchair.
‘You must be wondering what is going on,’ Sheikh Ahmed announced when she had refused a cup of coffee and his attendants had been dismissed. ‘This child,’ he looked at the baby on her knee, ‘is the only son of my nephew, and will in time succeed me as ruler of our state. Today’s events have proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that his life is at risk.’ The baby started to cry and he frowned in concern. ‘There is something wrong?’
Claire shook her head wryly. ‘Not really. He is wet and hungry. His nursemaid… the girl who was with him in the dining-room…’
‘I suspect she was a plant who had been paid to leave him unattended. He is normally guarded at all times, but Raoul tells me that the girl insisted that I had said he was to eat in the dining-room. This is not true, and if it had not been for your quick actions…’
‘I thought we were both going to die,’ Claire admitted, shuddering herself.
‘And yet thinking that, you did not abandon Saud,’ the Sheikh commented watching her. ‘Raoul tells me that but for your quick thinking Saud would be dead.’
‘Were you… were you expecting something to happen?’ Claire asked, remembering the guns which had appeared as though by magic in the hands of the men in the dining-room.
The Sheikh shrugged fatalistically. ‘Not so much expecting as suspecting. There is a faction in our country that does not approve of our ties with the West. It