Fairytale love couple feel Washington's political heat

By ROGER FRANKLIN

NEW YORK - Fairytales are not supposed to be too complicated: Brave knight rescues beautiful princess and whisks her off to the Land Where Dreams Come True.

Simplicity itself, really - which is why US Marine Jason Johnson cannot figure out why everyone else is reading from the wrong script.

He fell in love with a Bahraini Princess, hatched a daring plot to smuggle her out of the country and then pulled off the operation with military precision.

As far as the square-jawed man of action is concerned, he played his part to perfection - as did the almond-eyed member of the desert kingdom's royal family, who gave up a life of servants and luxury to follow the working-class Marine she loves.

But the 25-year-old machine-gunner now finds himself being treated as a villain by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who wants to put his bride on the first plane back to Bahrain, where he fears she may well pay with her life for the crime of giving her heart to the wrong man.

Terse communiquaacés and undiplomatic denunciations are bombarding Washington from its small Gulf ally. A billion-dollar deal to supply Bahrain with US-built military hardware could be in jeopardy, as might America's tenuous right to station troops in a strategically vital country that sits right on the doorstep of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

If you take the off-the-record word of Albright's State Department underlings, the throne of Bahrain's Al-Khalifa dynasty might even be in jeopardy unless 19-year-old Meriam Al-Khalifa is bundled back to her furious father, who is the first cousin of an equally outraged Emir.

In the meantime, now that the former Corporal Johnson has been demoted to private and ordered to clean septic tanks at Nevada's Camp Pendleton military base, his royal bride is learning to do her own washing and trying to earn a smile from her new father-in-law. A working man who drives a cement truck, Dale Johnson has had almost as many reservations about his son's match as the well-tailored diplomats in Washington.

"It's kind of a Cinderella story in reverse," lamented Johnson's grandmother, Frances, who has taken the lovers into her modest Las Vegas home while they fight a desperate battle to save Meriam from deportation. "Men with foreign accents have called up and threatened to kill us all."

Last week, in a decision Frances Johnson described as chilling, a federal judge refused to dismiss charges that Meriam entered the country illegally last November.

As the couple's lawyer said outside the courthouse: "In Bahrain, the greatest crime a young woman can commit is giving herself to a foreigner, particularly a non-Muslim foreigner. What Meriam is facing, at the very least, is shame, terrible punishment and captivity for life inside her family's home. And that is the very best she can hope for."

The judge was unmoved and ordered the bride to face another hearing within 90 days, a court date that will determine if she is to be sent back to whatever fate the rulers of her feudal homeland might impose.

Johnson, who was serving a 12-month tour of duty in the sheikhdom, happened to be killing time in a shopping mall when he spotted the elfin Meriam. Her glance caught his and Cupid's dart struck home. They exchanged telephone numbers and pledged to meet again.

The Princess was soon calling him in hushed tones from her family's palatial home while he poured out his heart in long letters penned to fill the lonely hours between their sly and secret assignations.

Getting together was always difficult. When Johnson came to pick her up, he kept his blond crewcut covered and rented luxury cars that would not seem out of place in her ritzy neighbourhood.

Spies were everywhere. When they kissed for the first time it was in a movie theatre. What they did not know was that a pair of Bahraini secret policemen were lurking in the seats behind them, snapping photos which went first to the ruler, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, and then to Meriam's father.

Her privilege of leaving the family compound without a chaperone was revoked. She became a prisoner in her own home, able to call her beau only when her father and his retainers were asleep.

Johnson hatched his scheme to take Meriam home with him. After weeks of long, cold nights checking out Bahrain Airport with a pair of infra-red sniper's goggles, he noticed that departing Americans were never required to show their passports as they marched past the immigration counter.

In November, after briefing his sweetheart in a series of smuggled notes, he was waiting when she slipped from the family home and traded her designer clothes for oversized combat pants, a baggy shirt and baseball cap to hide her long, dark hair. With Johnson at her side and a set of forged travel papers that her lover had crafted, the Marine shepherded her past the military police and on board a non-stop military charter flight to Chicago.

By the time cabin crews discovered the stowaway, it was too late for anybody to turn back.

At Chicago's O'Hare Airport, State Department officials were waiting with orders not to let Meriam's feet touch US soil. Fortunately for the sweethearts, an Immigration official appears to have been rubbed the wrong way by Washington's imperious envoys and countermanded their orders by granting a temporary application for political asylum.

Two weeks later, they exchanged rings before a justice of the peace.

Though more liberal than their counterparts in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Bahrain's ruling elite knows its country's alliance with Washington demands kid gloves. The ruling Al-Khalifa clan wishes to squelch the notion that rapacious US soldiers are debauching the fair flower of Bahraini womanhood.

Neither the State Department nor the Government of Bahrain shows a sign of relenting, and the Al-Khalifa regime's promise not to punish Meriam has been enough to persuade the Americans that no harm will come to her. US officials remain adamant that the court hearing to decide her future will go ahead. But Johnson has still managed to find a faint glimmer of hope: After opposing the marriage, his father has become a reluctant convert to the cause of love.

"Bahrain wants our dollars, they want our military, but when a young couple falls in love, they're against it," Dale Johnson fumed. "It's time for Uncle Sam to set these people straight."