The General's Daughter

by Martin Rosenstock

About the Author: Martin Rosenstock's stories have appeared in Mystery Magazine, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, as well as on Literally Stories. For Titan Books, he has edited Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Seven.

Excerpt

Nouf moved the curtain aside an inch and peered down on the villa’s back garden. No one would look up, but nonetheless she remained hidden behind the wall of her room. The four men sat below the palm trees on two diwan benches taken from the tent. Another stood a few meters away next to the fountain, talking into his cellphone and gesturing at his interlocuter. Nouf took a puff on her vape, then let it disappear into the pocket of her sweatpants.

The man next to the fountain was in dress uniform—a major—but Nouf was certain that her father’s other visitors also had spent years in the military. They sat with the measured precision she knew from her father. Two in suits, white shirts, collars open. Short, mustachioed. Arab, definitely, but not Khaliji. Both smoking. One of them in his early thirties, slicked-back hair, tense features, navy blue Italian suit, tailor-made. Good looking in a bland sort of way. The guy beside him, in his fifties. Twice the size of the younger one. Like he needed to turn sideways to get through a door. Shaved head, jowly, grey couture suit. Across from them, next to her father, a portly man in his early sixties. Brown winter dishdasha, bareheaded though. Pulling the beads of an amber misbah through his fingers with the nail of his left thumb. A bored, powerful face.

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