Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [71]
But she could tolerate his arrogance. She saw it as a form of compensation for his disability, and she could continue to stand it, if only they had a child. For all the negatives of life, even in the so-called New Russia, what was the point, she’d told her mother, of living if you didn’t have a family?
33
PARIS, FRANCE
18ÈME ARRONDISSEMENT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25
9:06 P.M.
Fajer al Dawar checked his appearance in the mirror at his suite in the Paris Ritz hotel. Forty-five years old, of average height and build, he took great pride in his jet-black hair. His unusually fair skin was also a source of satisfaction to him, but he never spoke about it to his swarthy brothers. He ran a comb through his hair, patted a lock into place, then laid the counts down as he once again admired his figure in the new Armani suit.
As CEO of the Franco-Arabe Chimique Compagnie, Fajer made trips to Paris two or three times a year. At home he was a Muslim traditionalist, with two wives, though in the West he only spoke of his first. When he’d married, his father, from whom he’d inherited his enormous fortune, had taken him aside to talk. “An Arab of means should have the four wives the Prophet has promised, but no more. The first should be a woman you can hang on your arm in the West, but who also accepts her place. With the other three, you are free to choose as you wish, for no one will see them but your family. My advice is to marry once every ten years. That way you always have a young wife for your bed and to bring you children. Because they are so far apart, you will not have the jealousy problems others who are less careful in their planning face every day, to their regret.”
Fajer believed his father, though he also despised him. The first son of the second wife, Fajer had seen the philosophy of wife-taking in action, and though, from his experience, it didn’t work quite as well as his father had indicated, it was one of Allah’s gifts to man. In all, his father had fifteen children, six of them sons. Fajer’s mother had existed in the shadow of the first wife and taught Fajer from the first that she and he were but second-class family members. She had filled him with an anger he’d learned to conceal, but was the source of his ambition.
While in Riyadh, Fajer was publicly a strict Muslim, but those demands dropped away, though not without some ambivalence, the moment his private jet left Arab airspace. He enjoyed his Irish whiskey and the freer lifestyle of France, and he enjoyed enormously the statuesque blondes, available by the score at what was to him little cost.
As he rode the elevator down to the hotel lobby, Fajer considered once again his mixed feelings. He honestly did not know if he could survive without these periodic trips that served as a release from the orchestrated, oppressive life in Riyadh. As he’d come to recognize them for the safety valve they were in his life, he looked to his uncles who had never gone to the West. Each of them seemed to him a bit odd, even mentally ill. Could it be true that to submit to Allah, as Fajer had been taught, was ultimately not possible? Not, at least, and keep your sanity? Perhaps this was a symptom of the West’s current subjugation of the Muslim world, something that would change when the new Muslim age began. But such was not his lot, and for that he was grateful, if torn. The pressure would build in the weeks leading up to these trips, but knowing he would soon step into his Lear made it bearable. Now he was here and he hadn’t felt this lighthearted, this free, since his last trip.
To assuage his guilt, Fajer told himself these excursions were necessary. He had to present himself as he did to conduct business in the West. He had to act Western, had to fit in with foreign businessmen. If he took pleasure from the experience, he should not condemn himself for it.
In the lobby bar of the Paris Ritz, Fajer found his brother Labib al Dawar waiting, engaged in polite conversation