Читать книгу Deadline Yemen (The Elizabeth Darcy Series) - Peggy Hanson - Страница 10

CHAPTER 6

The desert, I’ve found, is a good place for the curious, for even on a short walk you can expect the unexpected, a glimpse of something you’ve never seen before… It’s the desert—open, apparently lifeless, with few places to conceal anything—where secrets, perhaps the best secrets, are to be found.

Nicholas Clapp, Sheba

Tom Reilly often took advantage of his status as a foreigner to go out at night. For one thing, it kept the short working morning followed by the long lunch and qat hours sacred. For another, soldiers usually didn’t accost ferengi, even during curfew hours. The code of Arab hospitality held even in those situations.

And what could a foreigner do that would affect Yemen in any basic way? Tom enjoyed the casual attitude most Yemenis had toward guests, even if the guests stayed on far past their invitation.

Sometimes he wondered what they thought of him, really. He had lots of qat friends. But were they friends behind his back? Yemenis were irreverent and always joking. Did they joke about him?

Fortunately for his purposes, Tom’s business dealings had not aroused much curiosity in the capital. That would have been most inconvenient.

On this evening, Tom Reilly plunged ahead into the narrow alleys of the souq, not looking left or right. He had a man to meet about a dog.