Chapter Six
The sun blazed white hot in his eyes when Ward stepped out of the silver Mercedes limousine – silver like a Thermos bottle, the Sheikh had only half joked – onto the long, intricate Persian rug under the square stone entrance of the palace. He really needed to rethink all the black clothing, Ward thought. How did the Saudi women, black clad from head to foot, do it?
For miles, Ward had watched the palace rise out of the desert through the limo’s tinted windows. He found the vast building’s structure thoroughly fascinating. He’d expected curves and scrollwork but the palace was starkly geometric. Its flat, golden sand-coloured façade had layers of hard angles and narrow rectangular shapes. Even the tall minaret was in the shape of a sharply cornered rectangular prism rather th
