The Secret Soldier (25 page)

“And vice versa.”

“We do everything we can to keep oil at a reasonable price. We know what that means to your economy.”

Kurland hid his irritation at this lecture. “Of course, Prince.”

“Abdullah and I want you to know that our family will always be a friend.”

“You and Abdullah.”

“And those who will follow us. Just as Abdullah followed Fahad, and Fahad followed Khalid. All along, the oil flowed. One day, my brother won’t be here. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise. One day I won’t be, either. But whoever’s king, the House of Saud will always be loyal to America. And the oil will still flow.”

At least now I know why I’m here,
Kurland thought. “I wish I didn’t have to be so blunt, Prince, but is Abdullah seriously ill?”

“There are many kinds of illness. Some more obvious than others.”

Was Saeed saying that his brother was losing his mind and could no longer govern? Abdullah hadn’t struck Kurland as demented when they’d last met. Kurland didn’t see how he could ask, and anyway, he wasn’t sure he could trust Saeed’s answer. Instead he stalled. “Abdullah’s been a great friend to the United States. As you say.”

“Of course. But whatever happens, I want to reassure you that our oil will always be our gift to the world.”

Ambassadors were supposed to be diplomats. Even so, Kurland couldn’t let that last sentence pass. “Not exactly a gift, though, is it, Prince?”

 

 

WHEN THEY’D LEFT, SAEED
looked at Mansour.

“Do you think they understood?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll reach out to Abdullah.”

“They already have,” Mansour said. “We’ve logged the calls. But he’s not talking to them right now. Or anyone. He’s too angry.”

Or he’s planning a counterattack,
Saeed thought. “Sooner or later, he’ll talk.”

“If he raises his suspicions without any evidence, the Americans will think him a rambling old fool. Especially after the hints you’ve given them. There’s no need to worry, father.”

Mansour’s reassurances grated on Saeed. His son increasingly treated him as a nervous old man who needed to be managed rather than obeyed. In truth, Saeed was already Abdullah’s equal. Besides the Defense Ministry, he oversaw the Ministry of Transport, which distributed tens of billions of dollars in contracts every year, and headed the Supreme Hajj Committee, a job that kept him close to the Kingdom’s senior clerics. Only Abdullah’s control of the National Guard kept Saeed from dominating Saudi Arabia. The Guard, and the genuine affection that tribal chiefs and ordinary Saudis felt for Abdullah. Saeed knew that he and Mansour would never generate such feelings. He didn’t care. Better to be feared than loved.

But still he wanted the throne, for the power and the title both. When Abdullah took power in 2005, Saeed knew he was next in line. He imagined his brother would last only a couple years. Age and time had visibly worn on Abdullah. Saeed didn’t like waiting, but he was a decade younger than Abdullah, and orderly successions were the Saudi way.

But Abdullah had proven stronger than Saeed expected. And last year he had told the senior princes that he wanted his own son, Khalid, to be the next king. Foolish old man. Saeed and Abdullah rarely spoke anymore, but when he learned of the plan, Saeed called Abdullah himself. The conversation was short and blunt.

“You can’t do this.”

“You think our family wants you in power, my brother? Now that they see an alternative? You know what they call you? A scorpion.”

In the weeks that followed, Saeed waited for his brothers and nephews to tell him that they were against the plan. Some had. But not enough. Most, including Nayef, the third most powerful prince, had remained silent. They were canny, too cautious to choose a side until they knew the winner, Saeed thought. But he was realistic enough to admit other possibilities. Maybe the other princes disliked him too much to give him more power. Maybe they believed that as king he would install his sons as heirs. Maybe they simply were showing their love for Abdullah.

Saeed knew that he shouldn’t have cared. All his life, his ability to control his emotions had served him. But age seemed to have softened his iron will. An unceasing rage overtook him when he realized that his brother might keep him from his prize. The sun boiled his blood.
I will be king. By right and custom.
And even more elementally:
Mine. Mine. Mine.
A bell rang in his head morning until night. Even his ultimate relaxation, swimming laps in the Olympic-sized pool in his palace, failed to calm him.

Saeed believed he’d hidden his anger. But Mansour knew. A few weeks after Abdullah revealed his plan, Mansour arrived at Saeed’s palace. “This won’t stand, father.”

“Nothing’s certain yet.”

“I can stop him.”

“How?”

Mansour explained. For a moment, Saeed was almost frightened of his son. Of the vision that had led Mansour to create this private squad of killers. And then Saeed realized:
This is how the world sees me.

“You’ve been building this for years, and you never said?”

“Putting the pieces in place. I wasn’t sure I’d ever use it.”

“What if the Americans found it?”

“I could roll up these men tomorrow. And no one can connect them to me.”

“The funding—”

“Goes through a dozen different places. It’s airtight. I hid it from you, didn’t I?”

“And how do you propose to use these men?”

Then Mansour had sketched his plan, the step-by-step process of provoking Abdullah, of ratcheting up the Kingdom’s instability until Abdullah would have no choice but to overreact.

Five years before, or even one, Saeed would have stopped his son.
This is madness,
he would have said.
There’s no need.
But his patience was exhausted. And the bell rang:
Mine. Mine. Mine.

 

 

NOW THE ATTACKS HAD
begun.

On at least one level, they had succeeded. Abdullah was furious. At Princess Alia’s funeral, he hardly spoke. He sat beside Saeed, fists clenched, his legs twitching under his robe. Saeed didn’t believe Abdullah would be able to control himself much longer. Already, he’d nearly accused Mansour of treason. And when he exploded to the other princes, his accusations would rebound against him. Without evidence, he would sound insane. The family would have to rally around Saeed.

And yet . . . Saeed wished he hadn’t chosen this path. Mainly because of Mansour. When he’d agreed to rely on his son, the balance between them had shifted. The irony was not lost on him. In his quest for absolute control, he’d given power to his son. And overconfidence was Mansour’s great weakness. He was nearly fifty but had a young man’s arrogance. He had grown up in a world of supreme luxury and privilege, protected by Saeed’s power. He didn’t realize that even perfect plans could come apart.

A thought that reminded Saeed of another potential complication.

“What about the American? Wells?”

“We’ve lost him for now. Abdullah and Miteb can’t possibly have told him anything. And he doesn’t even work for the CIA anymore.”

Saeed knew about John Wells. Years before, Wells had stopped a nuclear bomb from going off in America. The incident was never publicly disclosed, but Saeed had heard of it because a jihadist Saudi princeling had financed the operation. Afterward, the CIA had given the Saudis proof of the prince’s involvement. To quiet the Americans, Mansour’s men had killed him in a staged car accident. But it was Wells who had found the bomb and killed the men who’d built it. Wells spoke Arabic, and he’d fought in Afghanistan. Saeed didn’t want him within one thousand kilometers of this operation.

“You need to find him,” Saeed said now.

“All right, father. We will.”

 

 

FIVE MILES SOUTH, AHMAD
Bakr sat against the wall of a mosque that was really nothing more than a one-room box with suras stenciled on the walls. Midday prayers had just ended.

Day by day, he was closing his camp in Lebanon and bringing his men to Saudi Arabia. Some flew from Beirut. Others drove overland through Syria and Jordan. In a few days, he’d have everything he needed for the third operation. This time he didn’t expect any congratulations from the general. No, this operation would come as a surprise to Ibrahim—and whoever was behind him.

Bakr’s phone buzzed. A blocked number.

He stepped onto a crowded street that stank of baked sewage and week-old meat. The buildings around him were only a few years old and already crumbling, rusty rebar poking from their concrete. This was Suwaidi, a gigantic slum in southern Riyadh, home to hundreds of thousands of immigrants and unlucky Saudis. The Riyadh police rarely ventured into Suwaidi, never at night.

Bakr flipped open his phone. “One hour. The gold souk.”

The gold souk sounded glamorous. It wasn’t. Wealthy Saudis shopped for jewelry in Dubai or London. The souk was a run-down warren of shops selling gold-plated necklaces and silver earrings. Bakr arrived early and wandered the stalls, making sure no one had followed him. The sergeant showed up five minutes late. He wore a plain white
thobe
and a nervous smile. Bakr put an arm around him and steered him to an empty café two streets from the souk’s rear entrance. They sat in a corner at a bruised Formica table. The room smelled of burnt coffee, and flies buzzed over the sugar bowls.

“Show me,” Bakr said.

The sergeant passed over a palm-sized digital camera. He worked on the north entry gate at the Diplomatic Quarter. “These are from today.”

“No one saw you take them?”

The sergeant shook his head.

“Tell me again how it works.”

“We get a call ten minutes before. Maybe fifteen. Telling us to be ready for a special convoy.”

“Always the same gate?”

“Not always. But mostly they prefer my gate. There’s less traffic. Then they give us another call a minute in advance. They’re so arrogant. Like it’s our only job. We clear the cars, make sure they have a path, and they come through. Fast. They’re very concerned about getting hit on the way out.”

“Then?”

“Police cars wait outside, and the convoy picks them up and then they go.”

“And how can you be sure it’s him?”

“If he’s involved, it’s five vehicles at least. Big ones, thick armor. Today it was a van at the front and the back and three Suburbans. You’ll see in the pictures. And like you told me, I made sure I was on the gate when they came through. And I saw him. You can’t see it in the pictures, not through the glass. But I did.”

Bakr waited, but the sergeant didn’t give him the last, vital piece of information. So, finally, he asked: “Which car?” Mentally adding,
You fool.

“Sorry. Second vehicle. The first Suburban. Middle row, left side.”

“You’re sure.”

“A thousand percent.”

The southern half, nearer Beirut, was densely populated and fertile. A half-dozen rivers supported farms and light industry. On day trips, tourists visited vineyards and the ruins at Baalbek. In Zahlé, which had eighty thousand people and was the largest town in the valley, Muslims and Christians lived together, their churches and mosques practically side by side.

North of Baalbek, the valley looked different. Water was scarce and precious. The people were entirely Shia, and mostly poor. The twin mountain ranges, the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, pulled away from each other. The land between grew dry and wild. Herds of sheep wandered across rocky hummocks. Roads turned to gravel without warning.

In the north, Wells felt very much at home.

 

 

HIS RIDE FROM CYPRUS
had gone smoothly. Wells sat on the deck as Nicholas and his men smoked in the cabin and argued in Greek. At one a.m. Wells called Gaffan on Nicholas’s satellite phone, confirming that Gaffan had arrived and passing along the GPS coordinates for the landing.

Two hours later, five miles off the Lebanese coast, Nicholas cut the cruiser’s lights. “You’re captain the rest of the way.” Nicholas nodded at the rubber raft tied loosely to the deck.

The raft was six feet long, five feet wide, with a rusted outboard engine at its back. It was made of black rubber, with a yellow patch sewn onto its right tube. Someone had drawn a smiley face on the patch. The smiley face failed to reassure. Wells felt a flutter in his stomach. He wasn’t a great swimmer. He hadn’t had much chance to learn, growing up in Montana. Was it possible he was ... scared?

But nothing scared him. Not bullets or grenades or nuclear bombs. And since nothing scared him, he couldn’t be scared now. So, good, he wasn’t scared. He was irritated. Because drowning would be an irritating way to die after everything he’d survived, and if this raft sank, he’d probably drown. Not scared. Irritated.

Wells was glad to sort that question out.

“Don’t be frightened,” Nicholas said. “If I wasn’t sure you’d make it, I wouldn’t let you go. You think I want you to drown, your boyfriend bothering me? It’s simple. We drop it in. You get in, push the red button, the engine starts.” Nicholas handed Wells a plastic yellow Garmin GPS, the landing position flashing a black X. “Aim at that.”

“Simple.”

“And one more piece of advice.” Nicholas pointed at the dim lights along the coast. “See that red light? On the left? That’s Syria. Stay away from the Syrians. They’re not nice. Otherwise, no problem. Smooth water. A big bathtub. It takes about an hour. Very flat coast, low draft, you ride right to the beach.”

“And when I get there I leave the raft?”

“For a hundred thousand dollars, I can buy a new one.”

Wells spent the five-mile ride promising himself he would take swimming lessons when this mission was done. But Nicholas was right. The trip was easy. The eastern Mediterranean was as dull as a lake, the waves no more than two feet. The raft rocked lightly as Wells navigated toward the
X,
keeping a hand on the wooden box where his weapons were packed.