Keys to the Kingdom (18 page)

Nadia’s sobbing gradually subsided. Rosinski continued to hold her and felt the rough leather mask against her skin. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Tell your superior about the Ikhwan,’ the words tumbled from Nadia’s mouth. ‘Make them stop what is going to happen. They must be stopped or the country will run red with blood. Only the Americans can stop them. Only you can turn back the tide. But don’t mention my name. My husband must never learn that I have spoken to you about his business. You must promise me, Mary Jo.’  She gripped Rosinski’s abaya. ‘You must never let my husband know that I have betrayed him.’

Rosinski saw the fear in Nadia’s eyes and felt a deep sorrow for her. ‘I promise,’ she said hoping that she meant it and Nadia’s grip on the abaya released. ‘I already told my chief about the new Ikhwan. He doesn’t believe that any one group has the capability of organising a coup. Even with the assassination, I don’t think he’s going to react. We’ve got half an army stationed in Dhahran and they’ve got every piece of military equipment known to man. The day things start to go wrong there’ll be American military on the streets. And that’s a fact.’

Nadia threw her head back scornfully. ‘You don’t know this country, Mary Jo. And neither does your chief. The religious council of the
Ulema
have sworn that after the Gulf War foreign troops will never interfere in the internal affairs of Saudi Arabia. As soon as the rebellion begins your American troops will be on a transport home. You have to stop them before they go too far.’

Deep down Rosinski knew that Nadia was right on the button. The American presence in Saudi Arabia was largely cosmetic. Their role was supposedly to protect the Kingdom against an external threat from Iran or Iraq. However, their real role was to protect the oilfields of the Eastern Province. There was no way US troops would be used against Saudi dissidents. Kareem would have nothing to fear from the GIs stationed at Dhahran.

‘What about the Saudi army?’ Rosinski asked.

‘They have the best equipment in the world except nobody knows how to use it. Their officer corps is pampered and corrupt. At the first sign of general unrest they will cut and run. I tell you, Mary Jo, unless your country does something to stop it, the new Ikhwan are going to make Lebanon and Iraq look like a picnic.’ She moved the curtain aside.  ‘Now I have been missing for far too long. Our driver will become suspicious and he might tell my husband that I have been misbehaving.’ She stopped just as she was about to leave the alcove at the back of the shop. ‘I have never thought of myself as a hysterical woman. And I don’t particularly like breaking down the way I just have but I am very scared. Very, very scared. I know my husband and I know what kind of fanatics he is associated with. If you had looked into the eyes of this man, Nasrullah, as I did, you would know exactly what I mean. A lot of people are going to die before they are finished. Now we really must go.’

Mary Jo held her arm. ‘I know what I’m asking is dangerous but could you try to keep in touch with me if you find out anything further.’

‘I’ll try,’ Nadia said pulling down her mask and retreating into her abaya. She opened the curtain to the alcove fully. ‘No promises but I will try. Give me two minutes and then you can leave.’

Rosinski watched Nadia’s back disappear out of the shop. She turned and the shop owner caught her eye. He motioned to his wares set out on the glass-topped table before him. She shook her head and stood still for what appeared to be an eternity. At last she felt she had given Nadia enough of a start. She opened the door and left the shop. Everything looked the same as it had when she had entered the souq some minutes before but now she viewed it in a different light, it was dark and strange. Eyes examined her as she left the door of the shop and made her way back towards Tamari Street. The women still chattered at the perfume and cosmetics counters but Rosinski took no comfort in the familiar sounds. The souq was now a place of foreboding where the Saudi male ruled. She pulled the abaya closer around her as if to ward off the outside world. She had come into this world with a neutral view on everything. Her parents had taught her right from wrong and the only male in her young life, her father, had been the finest man she had ever met. But since then it had all been downhill. She couldn’t exactly say that she hated men but her life experience had led her to believe that she could very easily exist without having anything to do with ninety-nine percent of them. Eyes followed her progress past the saddle maker and the individual hawkers. She examined every face wondering whether it belonged to the religious zealots of the new Ikhwan. Her lips ached for a taste of good Bourbon and her body craved the comfort of her bed. She had reached the garment shops and on another occasion she might have been amused by the sight of an outsized pair of boxer shorts hanging from a wire line. How could anyone be afraid of someone who wore such a garment under his
thobe
? But the Saudi male was one very serious asshole. You told someone that they could murder their wife or their granddaughter with impunity and they would just go ahead and do it. She felt that she should maybe resign from the human race altogether. But if she did that she would not have the pleasure of seeing Gilman crawl when she put the whole package before him. She would need concrete evidence if she were to expose the whole sorry mess. And only Nadia could provide her with that evidence. She reached the edge of the souq and exited onto Tamari Street. There was no sign of Nadia in either direction. The two mutawan she had noticed on entering the souq where still stationed where she had first seen them. They tapped their long sticks against the ground as though wishing for some passer-by to transgress against the law of Islam. Justice for such transgressions was swift and was meted out summarily. The Embassy driver clicked his tongue impatiently and she made her way to the car. The driver made no attempt to open the door for her but sat imperiously behind the wheel. This was one of the only countries on earth where her Ivy League education and her Ph. D. placed her some rungs below the lowest male on the ladder of life. Maybe these guys do need to get taken down, she thought as she settled herself in the rear of the car. And just maybe the female God had sent her to Riyadh to do it.

CHAPTER 25

Paris

Frank Terman sat at a table outside ‘Les Deux Magots’ in Place Saint Germain des Près and watched the crowds streaming away from the Metro Station. After leaving Boston, he’d made his way to Key West where he had sold his bar for 50 cents on the dollar. He was going to miss the Keys. His bar had provided him with a decent enough living and all the pussy he could handle. That was the past. If the ‘Company’ were on his case, he would have to find a new way of life. The Saudi ‘project’ had provided him with enough money to start again. The trick was he’d have to stay alive in order to spend the money. He had wondered how Linkletter had come across him. He assumed that the old man was connected into the Houston Mob and that they had dredged Terman up from their Florida contacts. Had that been the case, his chances of survival would have been high. The Mob had no need to clean up if he had been a simple referral. On the other hand if he was in the middle of a ‘Company’ operation that required deniability, his life was in serious danger. Patrick Gallagher was going to lay waste to large tracts of Saudi Arabia and he seriously doubted that anyone with half a brain was going to claim credit for the ensuing mayhem. That made Frank Terman a loose end and that meant he had to disappear. He scanned the crowds milling around the square. Nobody struck him as being worthy of interest but what did ‘Company’ contractors look like? The answer was they could look like ordinary people. He had used a spare Canadian passport to travel to France but he knew that if they were on his trail, he would have to keep ahead of them in terms of documentation.  He glanced at the piece of white paper on the table in front of him. Four beers had cost forty Euros. He tossed a fifty Euro note on the table and stood up. It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon and his appointment with the document forger in the Rue de ‘l’Abbaye was for four thirty. That gave him a full half hour to walk the short distance along the Rue Bonaparte.

Terman noticed the woman standing at the corner of the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de l’Abbaye just as she started to move away. He felt the reassuring weight in his pocket of the Browning Hi-Power he had purchased the previous day from an Algerian contact. It had cost him 1000 Euros but was worth every penny. He followed the progress of the woman as she walked away. She had gone no more than 50 metres when she removed a cell phone from her pocket and put it to her ear.  ‘Shit,’ the word exploded from his mouth. The choice was to run or to go through with the contact.  If they were already on to him, that meant they had the Canadian identity. He needed the documents he’d ordered if he was to disappear properly. ‘Fuck it all,’ he upbraided himself as he headed for the forger’s house in Rue de l’Abbaye. It took him exactly ten minutes until he stood in front of the house and glanced around. The street was empty. They wouldn’t take him out on the street, so they would be inside. He rang the bell on the door and released the safety on the Browning. The door buzzed and he pushed it open. The hallway in front of him was empty. The forger’s apartment was at the rear of the ground floor. They were going to take him inside. He walked forward on the balls of his feet preparing to move in any direction as soon as the action started. He was halfway down the hall when the forger’s door opened and the man he had seen in the St. Regis and later at the Marriott Copley appeared. Terman didn’t bother to shout, he pulled the Browning from his pocket and popped the man with a shot to the head. He hit the deck as a second man appeared through the open apartment door and sprayed the hall with automatic fire. Terman lay on his ample stomach and fired half a clip in the direction of the shooter. Four of the eight shots hit their target and the shooting stopped.  Terman stood up. Adrenalin coursed through his body. He advanced towards the door and entered the apartment. The forger lay dead just inside the entrance. Terman turned him over and saw that he had been stabbed. He passed the dead body and started searching frantically for the documents he had ordered. He found them on the table where the forger worked. He stuffed the three passports into his pocket and started for the door. He had just entered the hall when the woman he had seen on the corner pushed in the main door. Her face registered surprise and then she went for her pocket. She was too slow and two bullets from the Browning had already entered her body before she had even removed her weapon from her pocket. Terman moved forwards and picked up her dead body. He carried her back to the apartment and dumped her beside her colleagues. Then he closed the door. ‘You are in big fucking trouble,’ he said to himself as he exited the house. The street was still empty although he could hear a police siren in the distance. He started to walk away from the house but not too quickly. He would have to get rid of the gun and pick up another weapon. And he would have to go even deeper underground. Patrick had told him about the house in Belize. That’s where he would go. When the operation was over, he and Patrick could work out something more permanent.

Dhahran

Sweat stung the eyes of the young man driving the large petrol tanker. He felt the steamy heat grip at his throat and a drop of sweat fell off his nose past his parched lips. Ahead of him in the grey light of early morning sat the blocks of buildings indicating King Abdulaziz Airbase. He glanced in the mirror and saw the white Mercedes carrying his two friends was still fifty metres behind him. The tanker hit a bump in the road and the young man gasped in terror. Three hundred kilos of homemade explosives were packed into the twin steel tanks and the driver had no idea of how volatile the mixture might be. The leader of their cell, an afghani who they revered, had constructed the bomb. The driver and his friends were simply the delivery mechanism. The young man had no desire to die. He was not a fundamentalist and had no wish to sit at the feet of Allah before nature would require it. He glanced again in the rear mirror before wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt. His mouth was dry and he licked his lips to moisten them. It had not been his choice to become a terrorist. He remembered how proud he had been when he had been admitted to university. A golden future and a well-paid job were his only objectives when he had received his degree. But he had been lied to. For more than two years he had sat at home watching television while the Al Sauds and the Americans strutted around his country. He was as well qualified as any of the foreigners but the companies still employed the white devils in place of Saudis. Now he would have a hand in changing all that. It was time for the disillusioned to voice their contempt for the regime. His heart began to beat faster as the truck approached the airport on the outskirts of the city. He had driven this road many times on practice runs. Every move he made had been rehearsed and re-rehearsed many, many times before. There could be no room for error. He knew that he would surely die if he were to be caught. He saw directly before him the building that housed the soldiers. Beyond the buildings were lines of sleek F-15 Fighters. How he longed to be able to fly one of those marvels of engineering. But that was a privilege reserved for the Royal Family and their close friends. The people who had betrayed his generation sat in their palaces while their younger relatives swaggered in their Air Force tunics. The fools had no idea of the well of hate they had developed from the rape of his country. The bomb in his truck would put an end to their swaggering. He blinked the sweat from his eyes. His heart was pounding so strongly that he thought it might burst through his chest. He sucked in hot air to his already burning lungs. Another glance in the mirror as he steered the tanker towards the building. He tried not to think of the Saudi soldiers who lay sleeping in the building that was his target. For many weeks he had forced his mind to consider the carnage he knew he would create as something that had to be done to release the stranglehold of the Al Sauds on his country. His journey was almost over. As he pulled into the parking lot across the road from the soldiers’ compound, he begged God to allow the soldiers to die peacefully.

The two soldiers guarding the Air Force compound blinked through the early morning light as the tanker came trundling towards their position. Off to their left stood the strangest gate, a Royal Saudi Air Force Panavia Tornado IDS 765. The plane had been used at the gate since the first Gulf War. It had run out of fuel but the pilots had refused to be refuelled by a US plane containing a female crewmember. The plane had crashed in the desert and had been recovered and used as a gate for the Dhahran Air Base. The corporal picked up his clipboard and looked at the list of arrivals at the base. There was no sign of a tanker shipment but that meant nothing. He had been in the Saudi Army long enough to recognise the incompetence of the officer class. He watched as the tanker swerved perceptively as it approached on the long black asphalt road. The driver must be falling asleep, the corporal thought absentmindedly. He moved his feet and concentrated on the approaching vehicle. The tanker lurched again and swung across the road. It began to slow and appeared to head for a point in the chain-link fence that surrounded the airport. The corporal moved away from his post towards the centre of the road fascinated by the imminent accident. As the tanker careened towards the fence, the corporal became aware of the Mercedes following it. Something was terribly wrong. His danger antennae began to come alive and he screamed at the soldier at the gate to sound the alarm. He scarcely had the pistol at his side out of its holster when the tanker hit the chain-link fence and continued on towards the blockhouse housing the cadets.

‘Sound the alarm,’ the corporal shouted through suddenly dry lips. The soldier behind him began to move towards the gatehouse but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion in the corporal’s eyes. He watched aghast as the tanker slowed and then stopped. The Mercedes travelling behind it slewed to a stop beside the driver’s side. He knew that his duty was to run towards the tanker and to try to stop what was about to happen but some life preserving force within him froze his feet to the ground where he stood. He watched as a body flung itself from the cab of the tanker and jumped into the waiting Mercedes that immediately sped back down the road from whence it had come. The tanker sat silently for a few moments. There was a sudden almighty flash and the corporal felt the air rush past him like a strong gust of hot wind. The windows in the gatehouse imploded and sand swirled through the air cutting into his eyes. His ears were ringing from the noise of the explosion and when he had cleared his eyes he saw that the blockhouse housing the cadets no longer existed.

FINANCIAL TIMES

Unusually High Trading Volume on the Crude Oil Market

Both NYMEX in New York and the International Petroleum Exchange in London are reporting unusually high trading volumes in the crude oil futures market. Prices for futures contracts normally stiffen as the winter season approaches but the high level of trading has pushed the price of six months crude to $175 on NYMEX and $174.80 on IPE. The level of trading has surprised most analysts who foresaw a price drop in anticipation of the UN lifting sanctions and permitting Iran to trade its oil on the international market.