The Scorpion's Gate (14 page)
Ahmed sensed there was guilt in Abdullah about this past. His tone was the one he had used when explaining to their father that he had dented the car. Ahmed tried to shift the conversation from his brother’s role to his own current interest, the Iranians. “And you met Qods people in bin Laden’s camps?”
“No, no. They were never visible. If you were good at something special and they trusted you, Khalid would send you to Iran for advanced training with Qods or with Mugniyah’s Hezbollah people. Dr. Zawahiri had an office in Tehran and went there a lot, from the days when he ran Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Many of the brothers came to the Afghan camps by flying to Tehran, where the Qods people got them through immigration and sent them on their way by bus to the border,” Abdullah recalled. “But the fact that Qods was helping al Qaeda with money and training was never to be spoken about, because even the President of Iran did not know. And, of course, the Americans did not.”
Ahmed shook his head in amazement. The Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force really was a service within a service, reporting only to the big ayatollah, the Iranian supreme leader. “What happened, Abdullah, between you and al Qaeda? Why did you break with them and start your own movement inside our country?”
Abdullah shrugged, as if to say that the answer to that question was well known, or should be obvious. “After 9/11, I broke off from bin Laden. I thought they had gone too far, killing innocent people. Then, after the Americans invaded Iraq, I went to Iraq and worked with that crazy man Zarqawi for a short time. Why? For the same reason our uncle fought in Afghanistan. For the same reason I opposed the al Sauds. To get the foreign troops out. I participated, I learned, and then I led so that we could be our own nation, a great nation, not an American military base, not one family’s money machine.”
Ahmed was so proud of his brother, who had seen the excesses and mistakes of the others and forged his own movement to free his homeland. There was also something of a parallel with al Qaeda in what Abdullah had done, because Abdullah had done the hard work of operations and let theoreticians like Zubair bin Tayer be the public face of the movement. “And you succeeded,” Ahmed added.
“Yes, but right now we are weak. The Sauds took our money.” Abdullah returned to one of his current themes, financing. “The Americans have frozen most of it, probably so they can claim it for themselves. But with what they have, the Sauds are buying trouble for us. They want to come back and rule again, and kill me and all the council. I don’t know how much time I have before they do that. Every day I get reports.” Ahmed looked up and their eyes met. Abdullah pointed with his head toward one of the bodyguards.
Abdullah continued, “I accept many things in the Shura that I do not personally agree with, things I do not think will be good for the future of our people. I accept them for now because we are weak and cannot have internal divisions that our enemies, what you call your scorpions, will exploit.”
Ahmed thought for a moment and then replied, humbly, “I know the only right I have to speak on these issues is that our father’s blood flows in both of us. I have not earned a say, as you have.
“But I do love this land and I do love you and I do not want to see your efforts go to waste. If you do not stop your enemies on the council now, they will shape Islamyah in a mold that will harden fast. Then they will come after you, because you are not part of what they want to build. And what they want to build will weaken Islamyah and attract my scorpions in droves, especially if they try to get the nuclears.” Ahmed reached across the table and squeezed his brother’s forearm. “If you think you are going to get killed, die for something
you
believe in, not for what
they
believe in.”
you
believe in, not for what
they
believe in.”
Abdullah put his right hand gently on top of the vise grip that Ahmed had placed on his left forearm. “So is that your prescription, Doctor, that I should get killed?”
“No, my care is seldom that lethal to my patients.” Ahmed smiled. “My prescription is early prevention. The new army would follow you, and you already run all of the police. Use that power while you have it. Use it for the good of our people. They have not yet been fully liberated. If the people are with you, really with you, they will keep the scorpions away.”
“Inshallah,”
Abdullah said as he embraced his brother. The two men walked back into the Golden Tulip, holding hands. The bodyguards went with them, in front and behind. On the table in the patio, they left the remnants of the mezza and the
hammour.
Abdullah had placed the blue UN report inside his robe.
Abdullah said as he embraced his brother. The two men walked back into the Golden Tulip, holding hands. The bodyguards went with them, in front and behind. On the table in the patio, they left the remnants of the mezza and the
hammour.
Abdullah had placed the blue UN report inside his robe.
“Come upstairs with me and meet my team that has been spending all day looking at the Aramco books. Tell them some of your theories.” Abdullah guided them toward the elevator. Off the main dining area of the rooftop restaurant was a private room with a floor covered in carpets and pillows. An incense burner in the corner let off a sweet smell. When Abdullah entered the room, the men who had been sitting in a circle on the floor smoking water pipes all rose to their feet.
Abdullah walked the circle formed by his men, shaking hands and kissing cheeks, introducing them one by one to his brother, the doctor-spy. “So you have examined the security of our oil company and you have examined its books,” he said, seating himself on the floor amid a pile of pillows. “What have you found? Did the Sauds suck all the oil out and take it with them to California?” A servant brought Abdullah a fresh water pipe and helped him light it.
“No, Sheik, even the Sauds could not steal it all,” Muhammad bin Hassan replied, evoking the laughter of the men. He had been a partner in a major accounting and consulting firm in London, and had returned after the revolution at the request of the man with whom he had played football as a boy in Riyadh, Abdullah bin Rashid. “Our declared reserves are 290 billion barrels. Another 150,000 to 200,000 lie in the fallow fields.”
“I’m sure that’s a lot, ’Hammad, but what does that
mean
? How does it compare with everyone else?” Abdullah asked as he exhaled the apple-flavored tobacco smoke.
mean
? How does it compare with everyone else?” Abdullah asked as he exhaled the apple-flavored tobacco smoke.
“It means we have over one-third of the world’s remaining oil, another third is elsewhere in the Gulf, and the final third is spread around Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria. But ours is the cheapest to produce. It just comes bubbling up from right below the sand. Russia and America have to spend huge amounts to find it in their countries and raise it from under the ice or on the bottom of the sea. It is their demand and their cost of extraction that has driven the price to ninety euros a barrel. Our oil is also cheap to refine, whereas so much of the rest of the world’s needs costly refinement.
“The current rates of consumption are also in our favor. China and America each import over ten billion barrels a year and climbing. Here is the key: almost every other oil producer has pumped all the cheaply extracted oil and can see the day when they will have pumped it all. At our current rate of production, we have over another hundred years of oil. When everyone else has run out, we will still have plenty for ourselves and plenty to sell.”
There were smiles around the room, except for Ahmed, who looked to his brother for permission to speak. “Ahmed, what do you think of this good news?” Abdullah asked.
“With respect to Muhammad, I am not sure that it is actually good news,” he said tentatively. The smiles froze.
“Let’s not talk of today and tomorrow,” he went on. “Let’s imagine us back in our grandfather’s time. Let’s say he was a camel dealer, which he actually was, Abdullah’s and my grandfather. If there had been a pestilence among the camels elsewhere and they had all died, and he still had his camels in good health, would he not fear that the other tribes would come to steal them?” There were nods around the circle.
Ahmed warmed to his tale. “And unknown to our grandfather, there would also be those abroad who would see this as an opportunity to import Land Rovers and teach the other tribes to drive them instead of camels. So even if Grandfather fought hard and spent a lot of money defending his camels, in a little while no one would want them because they would all have Land Rovers and Mercedes.” The men laughed.
“So what is your point, Ahmed, you who drive a BMW these days, I am told?” Muhammad asked, looking at Abdullah.
“Your scorpion fears: go ahead, brother, explain them to us,” Abdullah encouraged.
“My point is that the remaining oil will attract all sorts of scorpions, like America and China. We will be a target and a pawn in many games. Meanwhile, some of the other countries will finally be developing alternatives to oil, and after they have waged war in our land to get their oil, they will not need the last fifty years’ supply. It will be worthless, like camels.”
“Camels are not worthless!” one man called out in protest.
“Ahmed, I respect you as a doctor but not as an economist,” Muhammad shot back. “They have been fooling around with alternatives for years. Their hydrogen fuel cells for cars take more energy to make the same power than gasoline-burning cars. They can’t fly their planes or sail their ships on hydrogen or solar power. Nuclear power creates radioactive waste that is dangerous. The American oil imports have gone up at almost two percent a year and the Chinese at over ten percent a year.”
“Perhaps, ’Hammad, but Ahmed is right that if we end up being the only country with a large amount of oil, the scorpions will come for it,” Abdullah said slowly as he stirred the ash of his tobacco.
“But that is where you come in,” Khaleed said. “You are now in charge of our defenses and I have complete faith in you. As a defender at football, I could never get by you to shoot on goal,” Khaleed teased, sensing that the conversation had grown too serious for this time and place.
“If only our enemies were as easy to block as you were, Muhammad,” Abdullah joked back. “But maybe we should ask the doctor to develop a new scorpion trap like that American thing for the roaches—what is it?”
“The Roach Motel,” one man offered in English. “They check in, but they don’t check out.”
“Yes, but we don’t
want
them to get in, Jassim, that’s the point” Abdullah replied, laughing. “Ahmed, what we need you to develop is a gate to keep them out, a scorpion’s gate.” All the room laughed at the sheik’s humor, and as they did, Abdullah playfully threw his arm around his brother and whispered to him. “Think about it. I will think about what you said, about the UN report. You give me a plan.”
want
them to get in, Jassim, that’s the point” Abdullah replied, laughing. “Ahmed, what we need you to develop is a gate to keep them out, a scorpion’s gate.” All the room laughed at the sheik’s humor, and as they did, Abdullah playfully threw his arm around his brother and whispered to him. “Think about it. I will think about what you said, about the UN report. You give me a plan.”
The room settled down. “Now, Jassim, let’s hear your report on the security of the oil infrastructure and then we’ll talk about the workers who have replaced the Americans,” Abdullah said, laying out the rest of the night’s agenda.
U.S. Central Command Headquarters
MacDill Air Force Base
Tampa, Florida
“
A
ttention on deck,” the sergeant barked as the CinC, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command, entered the darkened war room. Forty-two officers, including admirals and generals, stood up from their seats in the little amphitheater. On the twelve large flat screens in front of them, computer displays showed the current status of forces in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, from the top of the world in the Hindu Kush Mountains to the bottom at the Dead Sea.
A
ttention on deck,” the sergeant barked as the CinC, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command, entered the darkened war room. Forty-two officers, including admirals and generals, stood up from their seats in the little amphitheater. On the twelve large flat screens in front of them, computer displays showed the current status of forces in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, from the top of the world in the Hindu Kush Mountains to the bottom at the Dead Sea.
“Be seated,” U.S. Army four-star general Nathan Moore mumbled, as he dropped down into the oversized chair reserved for the CinC. There was a shuffling and scraping sound as the officers were seated and pulled their chairs forward to the desklike countertops in front of each row. “We are delighted to be joined today by the deputy chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Marshal Fahmi. Welcome, sir. We look forward to this week’s Combined Planning Conference and, more important, to the largest Bright Star exercise yet. Please, begin.”
The basement Command Center of the United States Central Command was in a nondescript office building on an Air Force base sticking out into Tampa Bay. When Central Command was formed in 1981 to coordinate the few U.S. forces in the Middle East, no country in the region would permit America to create a headquarters for the command. In frustration, the Pentagon had temporarily placed the headquarters at an F-16 base in Florida. Special Operations
Command had also moved its headquarters onto the base. Now, three or four wars later, the F-16s and other flight activity at MacDill AFB had gone, but CENTCOM was still there. It also now had a sophisticated “forward” headquarters in Qatar and a naval headquarters in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf (or, as the Pentagon calls it, the Arabian Gulf ).
As a young Air Force officer walked to the podium, the CENTCOM logo (an American eagle flying over the Arabian peninsula) faded from the main screen and was replaced by a large weather map. What followed was a lot like the weather report on the International Edition of CNN. “Heavy rains continue in Mumbai...Six inches of snow in Kabul... Eighty-two and sunny in Dubai... Five-foot seas off Alexandria . . .” The audience, heads down, were examining their briefing books.
Next up was an Army one-star general, the J-2, head of CENTCOM’s intelligence branch. Because of the presence of the Egyptians, the intelligence briefing was short, devoid of the usual close-up satellite pictures the J-2 called “Happy Snaps” or the juicy intercepted messages with which he liked to punctuate his morning briefings. “And now to Bahrain,” the J-2 said as a picture of the ornamental main gate of Brad Adams’s headquarters flashed onto the main screen. Adams thought he could hear eyeballs click as, he was sure, everyone in the darkened theater looked at him. “Investigation continues into the identity of the terrorists who hijacked the liquid natural gas tanker
Jamal
in an apparent attempt to explode the ship inside the CENTNAV Administrative Support Unit, Fifth Fleet Headquarters. Initial reports indicate the hijackers were Iraqis, otherwise unidentified. Defense Intelligence in the Pentagon speculates that they were working for the Riyadh regime called Islamyah....”
Jamal
in an apparent attempt to explode the ship inside the CENTNAV Administrative Support Unit, Fifth Fleet Headquarters. Initial reports indicate the hijackers were Iraqis, otherwise unidentified. Defense Intelligence in the Pentagon speculates that they were working for the Riyadh regime called Islamyah....”
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