‘What I’m saying, Walt, is that this is old news. The abdhan had an accident a couple of months ago—’
‘Having a massive coronary in your sleep after eighty-five years of being one of the world’s last absolute rulers can hardly be classified as an accident, babe.’
‘The bottom line is that the old man died and they replaced him, which means the wire-service story is wrong. Do you want me to phone them and—?’
‘The story is one hundred per cent on the money. The old guy died, they crowned his successor—’
‘Seref Baldov. Wasn’t that his name?’
‘Right. And yesterday there was some kind of tribal ceremony, something to do with horses. A mock battle, who the hell knows—?’
‘A tribal ceremony?’ Dorian couldn’t quite keep the scorn from her voice. ‘Hasn’t anyone told these people we’re on the threshold of the twenty-first century?’
Hemple’s teeth showed in a smile. ‘Exactly. Americans are planning a mission to Mars and the Barovnians still play at being Cossacks. Interesting point, isn’t it?’
Dorian sighed. Now she knew where this was going. A heading danced before her eyes. COSSACKS AND COSMONAUTS. Well, something like that. It didn’t matter because the piece she’d write wouldn’t rate a title. Walt would want a filler, some human interest thing that could be tucked in to fill space on the bottom of a page.
‘How many words? Fifty?’ she asked. ‘A hundred?’
‘So this Baldov guy,’ Hemple said, ignoring her, ‘the new abdhan, fell from his horse. He hit his head and now it looks like he may not pull through.’
Dorian nodded. ‘I get the picture—although frankly I don’t know why WorldWeek’s readers should much care. Just because this little king of barbarians wants to play Mongol warrior—’
Hemple’s brows drew together. ‘You need to do your homework, babe. Barovnia may be backward, but it’s got oil reserves that make the Arabs look like paupers, and minerals they can mine for the next thousand years—and if Baldov kicks the bucket it’s also going to have a new abdhan.’
He didn’t want a filler, she thought, he wanted an article. Not from her, of course—she’d only do the research. Someone with a name would be tapped to really write the piece.
‘Interesting,’ she said, trying to look as if it really were. ‘OK. I’ll put together what I can. How much time do I have?’
‘Send me your first fifteen hundred words as soon as you can after touchdown.’
Dorian’s heart gave a thump of excitement. Hemple had never sent her further than Newark on a story. Surely, he couldn’t mean...
‘Am I going somewhere?’ she asked carefully.
‘The Barovnian embassy’s arranged to fly a planeload of reporters from the major media out tonight.’
Dorian swept the stack of magazines and papers into her arms and sank down in the chair.
‘Are you sending me to Barovnia to cover this coronation?’
Hemple shoved a slim manila folder across his scarred desk-top. ‘That’s all the background the library could put together on such short notice. You can read it in the taxi on your way to the airport.’
A thousand questions were racing through Dorian’s head, but there was one in particular that demanded an answer, even though only a fool would ask it.
‘Walt?’ She took a breath. ‘It’s not that I’m not—’ She hesitated. Pick a word, she told herself, one that won’t give away the fact that you want to leap into the air and whoop with joy. She cleared her throat. ‘It’s not that I’m not pleased with this assignment, but it occurs to me, we didn’t send anybody to cover the last guy’s coronation.’
Her boss nodded. ‘Right.’
Dorian nodded, too. ‘Well, then, why...?’ She hesitated again, but it had to be said. ‘Why now? And why has the Barovnian embassy offered to fly reporters in? I mean, why would they think we’d be interested?’
Hemple leaned forward. ‘Does the name Jack Alexander mean anything to you?’
It took a few seconds to change gears. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘Sure. He’s the head of Alexander International.’
‘Uh-huh. The guy inherited millions, and he’s racked up millions more on his own.’ Hemple switched his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘What else do you know?’
She frowned. WorldWeek had done a piece on the man once, when she’d first started at the magazine....
A look of disdain narrowed her mouth. ‘Our article said he collects women almost as easily as he collects money—except he holds on to the money.’
Walt Hemple laughed. ‘I don’t think we put it quite like that but yeah, that was the general idea. Anything else?’
‘No, I don’t—’ She nodded. ‘He hates personal publicity. His women lined up to be interviewed, but we couldn’t get a reporter past Alexander’s door.’
‘Not with questions about himself, no. Ask him about Alexander International, he talks. Ask him about Jack Alexander, he turns to stone.’
‘Walt, I really don’t understand. All this is interesting, but what’s the point? If you’re sending me to Barovnia, what’s all this side-bar stuff about Alexander have to do with it?’
Hemple’s chair groaned its displeasure as he tilted it forward and leaned across his desk.
‘Alexander International should really be called Barovnian Exports. Sixty, sixty-five per cent of what it controls comes from there.’
‘So?’
‘So,’ Hemple said, smiling slyly, ‘it turns out that our pal, Mr Alexander, has been sitting on a secret, babe.’ He paused dramatically. ‘Mama was a Southern belle. But Daddy—Daddy was a Barovnian. A Barovnian of royal lineage, no less.’
It was Dorian’s turn to lean forward. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Hemple said with relish, ‘that Jack Alexander was born Jaacov Alexandrei.’ The sly smile came again. ‘I mean that the guy’s a product of the Virginia Military Academy, Harvard, and the Wharton School of Business—and now it turns out that under that hand-tailored, three-piece suit beats the heart of the guy who may become the next abdhan.’
Dorian’s green eyes opened wide with shock. ‘What?’
‘Alexander’s gonna be on that plane, along with a handful of his business buddies—American advisers, the Press release calls them. How’s that grab you, babe?’
It grabbed her. How could it not? It was the best kind of story, a reporter’s dream, all the most basic human interest stuff combined with something as serious as oil and gold and international dollars.
‘Are you sure?’ Hemple nodded, and Dorian frowned. ‘Wait a minute. If this is the same Jack Alexander, the one who’s gun-shy of publicity, why’s he taking a planeload of reporters along with him to Barovnia?’
‘The embassy made the arrangements, not him.’ Hemple’s eyelid dropped in a conspiratorial wink. ‘And from what I’ve heard—on the QT, of course—Alexander made them wait until the last minute before he agreed to their plan. The guy’s no dummy. There’d be no way to keep something like this off the front pages—he must figure the best way to handle things is to control the story inside Barovnia, where he’s got the power, instead of having rumours leak out from the foreign embassies.’
Dorian