Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler)

  Gary continued to deny the idea. “You’re kidding, right? We don’t even have a script.”

  “We can make it all up,” the young woman told him. She had a positive glow about her that was infectious. Her enticing cleavage was right in his face too, but Gary failed to go for it.

  “No, I’m not here to make any movies.”

  “Awww,” she whined playfully.

  “Where are you gonna be later on?” Johnny asked her.

  “I don’t know. Around, I guess.”

  He nodded to her. “I’ll call you then.”

  “Will Gary be with you when you call?” she asked. The tall, boyish American looked old and young at the same time. And she mentioned his name as if she had known him for years.

  “We can arrange something. I’ll call you.”

  As soon as they left the young woman, Gary asked, “What was that all about?”

  Johnny shook it off. “She’s a big flirt, man, but if she likes you and …” He shrugged. “Who knows? But I like the Hollywood line you gave her. I have to use that.”

  “But it wasn’t a line. She does look like a star. She reminds me of Jessica Alba.”

  “Who?”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it.”

  “You want to get a drink before we leave?” Johnny asked him.

  Gary thought about the man driving and declined. He also wanted to remain alert.

  “Maybe at the next party.”

  They had only been there for thirty minutes, but they had rushed through the place like a whirlwind, collecting several party invites along the way.

  “All right, fine with me. We got a few more places to hit.”

  As they walked back out into the parking lot to fetch the car, Saeeda had gotten herself into some type of trouble. A huge bodybuilder of a man was pulling her arm, and he was not with security.

  Gary noticed immediately as the young woman struggled to free herself.

  “What’s going on there?” he asked Johnny.

  Johnny looked and froze. “Shit. She’s always getting involved in something. She probably had too much to drink.”

  Gary disagreed. “She didn’t have too much to drink. She’s just bubbly by nature.”

  Regardless of nationality, he knew the type. Bubbly women tended to attract overzealous guys who wanted to control them. Gary also doubted that she had spent much time in Lebanon. She didn’t have the seriousness for it. She seemed more like a free-flowing British girl. Even the guy who harassed her looked British—big, white and rigid.

  To confirm his hunch, Gary asked Johnny, “Do you know her from Britain too?”

  There seemed to be a lot of British citizens who traveled back and forth to Dubai. Johnny had been telling him all about it.

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Well, she doesn’t seem like she’s local. And I’ve never been to Lebanon, but I don’t picture them being so ah … poppish, I guess I could say. You know, she seems like a person who watches a lot of television.”

  Johnny laughed. “I know what you mean. I think she’s only been to Lebanon twice. And she said she was bored there.”

  In the meantime, she cursed the brute of a man who mishandled her.

  “Look, would you leave me alone?!” she shouted.

  Gary looked around for the security guards, but they were not in the parking lot area, nor did anyone seem brave enough to step up to help her.

  On a whim, the young Lebanese woman turned and looked Gary straight in his eyes from the short distance between them.

  “Gary, could you tell him to let me go and leave me alone?”

  It was a moment of truth and bravery that had come at short notice.

  “Ah, don’t get involved with that,” Johnny warned him nervously. Gary was tall, but not that tall, and he didn’t seem like much of a fighter. He was a pretty-boy American with a light beard. But once Gary reflected on the anger and helplessness of his past experiences, there was no way that he would turn her down. Besides, he was now trained for chaos.

  “Hey, man, let her go.”

  “And what if I don’t?” the man finally spoke in terse English.

  Gary breathed deeply to remain calm. “Here we go,” he told himself out loud. He imagined that Jonah could still hear him through his cell phone as he moved forward. But there was no more to be said. The big British man was asking for a fight.

  “Hey, man, don’t do it,” Johnny said, reaching to pull Gary back. It was too late.

  As the American approached him, the big Brit refused to budge. He was at least six foot five and two-hundred and fifty pounds. Nevertheless, Gary knew exactly how to handle him.

  He asked the man one time, while standing less than three feet away from him, “Are you gonna let her go?”

  He was in perfect distance to strike.

  “No.”

  In a flash, Gary faked a right-hand punch, and when the big man moved to block it, Gary whipped him in the back of his leg with a kick that caught him off-guard. Before he could regain his balance, Gary cracked him with an overhand right to the jaw.

  “Whoa!” Johnny cheered.

  In less than five seconds, the British man was on his hands and knees, wondering what had happened.

  Saeeda had scampered away to safety, but had turned around to see the rest of it. So did the gathering crowd who were all leaving the party for their cars.

  Gary could have finished the big man off with another powerful kick while he was down, but he found no need to.

  This guy has no chance of beating me, he convinced himself. Gary’s years of personal military training with Jonah had prepared him to fight more skilled and dangerous men, and he could tell that his British foe was nothing more than big.

  The man looked up from the ground and said, “I don’t know what you just did, but you better run now.”

  It was Gary’s turn not to budge. He stood there and allowed the man to climb back to his feet.

  “I don’t run so easily,” Gary commented bravely.

  The big man raised his arms and clenched his fists, but instead of throwing a punch, he charged at Gary with his head down, like a rhino. Expecting as much from an unskilled fighter, Gary countered him with a leaping knee while pulling the man’s head down into it, creating a brutal collision that rattled the man’s brains and knocked him flat on his face.

  “Oh, shit!” someone yelled from the crowd.

  The man hit dirt like a falling log with a pile of dust flying up into the air.

  “Is he dead?”

  Gary shook his head. “No, he’ll live. He just has eggs for brains right now.”

  Saeeda laughed uncomfortably with the crowd. But deep down, she began to wonder how much trouble she had caused herself by getting him involved. The American stranger wouldn’t be around her every day. And what if more men came after him? How many could he fight?

  As the crowd continued to buzz about what they had witnessed out in the parking lot, the security guards rushed out to get involved.

  “What’s going on?”

  Johnny frowned and said, “You guys are late.”

  “Yeah, you weren’t here when I needed you,” Saeeda complained.

  The beefy security guards inspected the man, lying facedown in the dirt. Then they looked back at Gary, standing near him.

  “Did you do this? What did you hit him with?”

  They found it hard to believe the American could have knocked out such a big man. The Brit was even bigger than them.

  “Ah, he just ran into my knee,” Gary told them lightly.

  “And he deserved it,” Saeeda said. “He’s always bothering me.”

  “Well, who is he?” Gary asked her. He didn’t want to assume anything.

  Saeeda became vague with a shrug. “He’s just a friend of a friend.”

  That was Johnny’s cue to get him out of there. “All right, man, we got places to go.”

  As the security guards woke the man up and helped him to his
feet, the crowd began to disperse to their cars, including Johnny and Gary.

  Saeeda ran them down.

  “What are you doing? Where are you guys going?” she asked them.

  “He’s my guest. I’m showing him a good time,” Johnny answered through the car door window. He didn’t even bother to roll it down. He was noticeably upset.

  “Are you still gonna call me?”

  “Yeah, I’ll call you later,” he snapped and started the car.

  Saeeda decided to wave to them. “Bye, Gary. Hope to see you later.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Johnny mumbled under his breath as he pulled off.

  As soon as they were out of the parking lot and on the road again, he said, “Man, I didn’t like that at all. What if you couldn’t fight and you got your ass beat back there? It would have been all her fault. I’m never speaking to her again. She’s bad for business.”

  Gary smiled at him and shook it off. “What did you expect her to do? She needed help, and no one wanted to help her.”

  “Yeah, because they all know that she’s full of drama.”

  “And yet you wanted me to make movies with her.”

  “Because she’s drama,” Johnny repeated. Then he broke out and laughed. “You kicked that guy’s ass back there, man. You know martial arts or something? You only hit him four times.”

  “Three times,” Gary corrected him.

  “So you do know martial arts?”

  Gary flirted with not admitting anything, but it was too late for that.

  “Maybe.”

  Johnny looked at him. “Maybe my ass. What are you, a trained fighter or something? You went into that guy like you knew you could beat him. I just thought you played baseball or something … a pitcher.”

  Gary reflected on all of the sparring he had done over the past few years with his training team, and he shrugged. “I haven’t done any rounds professionally. But I bet that guy hasn’t either. He scares most people with his size. But the more dangerous men are usually smaller.”

  Johnny continued to watch him and listened in awe as he drove. “I don’t know what to say, man,” he commented. “You’re over here all by yourself, and you wouldn’t even give me your name. Is Gary your real name? No wonder you called yourself ‘The Traveler.’ I feel like you’re over here on a secret mission or something.”

  Gary smiled and didn’t comment.

  “Are you? Are you on a secret mission that you can’t tell anyone?”

  “No,” Gary said sternly. “Now let’s get to the next party.”

  “Yeah, like you’re gonna tell me anyway, right?” Johnny asked him sarcastically.

  “Exactly,” Gary countered.

  They were back to a cat-and-mouse game.

  “Well, this sucks. Now I don’t know what to do with you. Are you even supposed to talk to women? I noticed how you turned them all down in there. And they all liked you too.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Johnny frowned at him. “My friend, I work these clubs every night. Give me some credit. I just know.” Then he grinned and added, “The girls at the restaurant liked you too. They called and told me already. So you have a lot of options over here if you wanted to use them.”

  Gary shook his head and grinned, thinking nothing of it. He understood through his past experiences that having a bunch of the wrong women could be dangerous for a guy.

  “Like you said, women can be bad for business,” he hinted.

  “So you are here on business?”

  “I didn’t say that. But what if the rest of these women have big, jealous boyfriends like that one?”

  Johnny thought about it and shook it off. “No, most of them are single. And the ones who do have boyfriends, they wouldn’t have a chance against you. You’ll take them out in two hits. I know these guys.”

  Gary chuckled. “You’re not giving them enough credit. Every man can be beat.”

  “Yeah, like ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson, right?”

  “Exactly. But let’s stop talking about fighting and get back in the mood for meeting girls.”

  Johnny grinned. “Now you’re talking my language. So how many do you want? Have you ever tried four at one time?”

  Gary shook his head and grinned. This guy is unbelievable, he thought. I don’t think I was ever this bad. Then he thought about Colombia again. Or maybe I was for a minute.

  *****

  When Gary made it back to his hotel, he was exhausted. It was three-thirty, which translated to only seven-thirty at night back home. But it sure didn’t feel like it. He hit the bed like a sack of bricks. That’s when Jonah called him back. At first he ignored the phone, until it rang louder.

  “Hello?” he answered, disturbed.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “You wouldn’t know?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, why are you calling so late?”

  Jonah paused. “Oh yeah, it’s in the middle of the night over there, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure you know that already. So what do you want?”

  “I just wanna to tell you to watch yourself. Don’t try to be a hero over there.”

  Gary shook his head against the plush white pillows and began to laugh.

  “Unbelievable,” he stated. “I thought you told me you wouldn’t intervene.”

  “I wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not concerned.”

  “Well, just so you know, I think I handled myself pretty good tonight.”

  Jonah responded with silence.

  “Hello?” Gary called her.

  “I’m here. And I guess there’s no more to be said. So, how long are you planning on staying?”

  “Why, you thinking I’m gonna be in five more fights?”

  Jonah chuckled. “Maybe two more, but not five. Just be careful who you’re picking. But saving a damsel in distress can’t be too bad. Just don’t try to save them all.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Gary commented, “I don’t plan to. The women over here have just as many issues as Americans.”

  “Hey, you watch your mouth,” Jonah warned him.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot … you’re one of them.”

  “You know what … go on and go to bed.”

  “Thank you.” And he hung up and crashed to sleep without another word.

  Chapter 14

  Early that morning in the capital city of Abu Dhabi, Abdul held and kissed his eighteen-month-old son, Rafi Maalik, while Hamda stood by them, smiling regally in all white.

  “He’s a beautiful young prince,” she noted.

  Abdul agreed with her, cracking a broad smile of his own. “And I will teach him all about good business,” he promised. He then handed the energetic boy back to his mother.

  Dressed in a light-gray suit, white business shirt and a red silk tie, Abdul was ready to head off for work at his offices in downtown Dubai. It was slightly after six, and his young family was up bright and early with him.

  “When are we going to meet with your uncle? He’s been calling all this week, and I can tell that he is anxious to see you,” Hamda said.

  Abdul nodded. “I know. As you can imagine, with all that has gone on, I have been very busy this week. I planned for us to visit with my uncle at his house this weekend.”

  Hamda grimaced, surprised. “Are you just now telling me this? I need to prepare. What day are we visiting?”

  “Tomorrow, so you can prepare today.”

  He would rather his wife remain at home and plan for their visit to his uncle, Sheikh Al Hassan, than for her to drop by again at his office. Hamda and her tendencies for outspokenness and attention could be very distracting to Abdul and his staff members. She was a very magnetic woman, which made him proud but also leery and overprotective.

  “Thanks for telling me in advance,” she said.

  Abdul grinned. “You are welcome.”

  Hamda leaned forward to kiss her husband on the lips and finger h
is red silk tie as their young son pulled away in her arms to stop from being squashed between his parents.

  “Have a good day at work,” she told Abdul.

  “I plan to.”

  He called for his driver and security team as he walked briskly through his elaborate seven-bedroom mansion. He planned to move into a larger one once he and his wife had added to the family. A gigantic foyer of white marble columns awaited him at the front door and emptied into a driveway outside, where his white Rolls Royce was parked with the security team in the Cadillac SUVs surrounding it.

  “Good morning,” Abdul told his men.

  “Good morning.”

  He climbed inside the back of his car and immediately dialed a number on his cell phone to reach a private investigator for individual counsel. Abdul wanted to know more about the accident and other recent events at his construction sites before anyone else knew, so that he could later respond preemptively to inquiries. But before he spoke, he pushed a button that raised a soundproof window for privacy, separating his backseat from his driver.

  “It’s Abdul. What have you found out?” the Emirati businessman asked.

  His counsel answered, “There were several men onsite that day who had been on the job for less than a few weeks. They then quit immediately after the incident. But did they quit because of the dangers of the job, or because they had already served their short-lived purpose?”

  It was a good question. “What are your thoughts?”

  “If I may be frank,” the counsel responded. He didn’t want to insult the Emirati developer.

  “Yes, please, be honest.”

  “Well, many of the men have complained about being driven hard at work, like camels, and they have not particularly liked your site managers. But others could have been placed there to create more discontent with the workers you already have.”

  Abdul had not even thought of that. “Do you think that someone would have them to do that?”

  The counsel paused. “Abdul, how many adversaries do you think you may have in your development business? Do you think there are men who may not want you to be successful?”

  Abdul began to think of the many older Emirati developers of tourism properties around Dubai. Of course, he had beaten out many of them on bids for new projects, and as a much younger man in business, some of his elders had pointed to his powerful uncle as his only key supporter. Nepotism was common around the world. Nevertheless, there were much bigger developers in the United Arab Emirates, and so many properties to build, that Abdul could not imagine anyone being that concerned about him getting some projects.