The Scorpion's Gate (2 page)
The van barreled past the Hilton and Sheraton hotels, where police officers and security guards scurried about the entrances erecting barricades in case they were the next to be hit. The van sped past Number 21 Government Avenue, site of the Kutty, the British diplomatic compound in Bahrain since 1902.
Alec and Brian nodded with appreciation as they saw the Gurkha guards, with their foot-long kukri knives and the Belgian folding automatic weapons, ready for action, lining the street in front of the embassy. They were members of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, headquartered in Brunei. These short soldiers were some of the few Nepalese left who still served as part of the British army, a tradition that dated back almost two centuries. Alec had helped train the 2nd Battalion when Whitehall had decided the Gurkhas would protect British embassies in the Gulf. “Silent, ruthless, dangerous little men,” said Alec as the van continued down Government Avenue past the embassy. “They’d give their lives if they had to, to protect the Kutty.”
As soon as they heard the bomb blast, the Station began implementing the response plan for a terrorist action, bypassing the British Embassy, a possible target for a follow-on attack, and moving senior station staff to a clandestine facility off-site.
The Bedford slowed as it turned left onto Isa al Kabeer Avenue, just past the embassy, and headed to a compound two blocks down on the right. As it made the turn, Brian looked out the slit in the backdoor window and saw three Bahraini army Warrior armored vehicles lumbering, black smoke snorting up from their exhaust pipes. The Warriors moved to the front of the Foreign Ministry building across Government Avenue. At the precise second that the Bedford reached the gray metal gate of the Al Mudynah Machine Works compound, the covert home of the backup station, a 15-foot-high gate moved aside. The van dashed forward into the courtyard and then braked hard. Armed men rushed around the vehicle. Seconds behind them, a British army medic in civilian clothes slid open the side door of the van and scrambled inside. He tended to Brian Douglas’s head wound before the station chief got out.
Brian’s number two, Nancy Weldon-Jones, was standing next to the van as he emerged. She flinched as she saw the bandage on his head. “No need to worry, Nance. I’m going to live.” He paused and looked at the asphalt. “Unfortunately, Ian isn’t.” Then he looked up again. “Now, then, what’s the report?”
“I got on to Admiral Adams over at the Navy base,” Nancy said. “There’s dead Brits and Americans, maybe a dozen each. Three times that many in local staff and guest workers. We think it was a truck bomb, probably an RDX mix over ammonium perchlorate.” She offered her arm to Douglas, but he shook his head and stepped forward. She continued her report: “A drive-by shooting followed, just as the rescue workers showed up. Word is that the drive-by shooter was in a Red Crescent wagon. An American Under Secretary for something-or-other was on an upper floor. Of course, the lucky bastard was unharmed. He wasn’t in the lobby café because he had them open up the al Fanar Club on the roof for a private little breakfast with somebody.”
With Alec urging them forward, gun in hand, the station chief and his deputy crossed the yard and went inside the white concrete-block building. “Okay, Nance, but we know first reports are usually wrong. Any claims of responsibility?”
“Not yet. No need, really. There’s no question it’s Bahraini Hezbollah, otherwise known as your friendly Iranian Rev Guards and their lovely Qods Force boys.” Qods Force, or Jerusalem Force, was the covert action arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. “Is London up on secure vid yet?” Douglas asked as he forced himself slowly up the stairs to the station’s backup communications center.
“Up and waiting. You should have the Big Four: the director, her deputy, chief of staff, and . . .” She smiled. “The ME division chief.”
“Ah, good, what could we do without the ME division chief?” Douglas asked sarcastically. Roddy Touraine, nominally his immediate supervisor, seemed to delight in making Brian’s professional life miserable.
Brian and Nancy made their way through two vault doors to a room within a room, its walls, floor, and ceiling made of heavy see-through plastic. Exhaust fans buzzed loudly in the walls. The “boy in a bubble” room was just large enough for the plastic conference table that filled it. Attached to the far wall was a 42-inch flat screen showing the crisp image of a far more elegant conference room, complete with wood paneling and a china tea service. Just sitting down in her pale blue chair at the head of that table in Vauxhall Cross was Barbara Currier, director of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
As soon as she sat down, the director began the meeting. “Douglas, you look an awful mess. My deepest sympathies about Ian Martin. I will ring up his wife as soon as we are done here. We will, of course, take care of her.” Currier took a cup of tea being offered to her by ME Division Chief Touraine. “Do we understand, Brian, that this is the beginning of an overt destabilization effort directed against Bahrain by the new rulers in Riyadh?”
“I agree it’s unlikely a one-off, Director,” the station chief said as he looked into the camera above the monitor, “unless they had it out for someone specific, perhaps that visiting American dig. No, I would advise Whitehall that this is the start of something, but not in our view inspired by Riyadh. More likely Iranian-inspired and intended to get the little king here to kick out the Americans from their Navy base.”
“Will King Hamad fall for that, Brian?” asked Currier’s chief of staff, Pamela Braithwaite, who had been chief of staff for three directors of SIS.
“Not bloody likely, Pam. They’re a savvy group here. They may be close to the Americans, but they can and do think for themselves.” Douglas leaned back, running his fingers through his unkempt hair and adjusting the bandage. “I think what we have here is the opening of a new terror wave in Bahrain, controlled by Tehran. And remember,” Douglas continued as he glanced at some papers that his deputy slid in front of him, “the Shi’a are in the majority here, even though the king’s government is largely Sunni. Iran has seen that as a potential weakness here for years. Failed every time they tried to exploit it, but haven’t given up.”
Douglas saw his nemesis, SIS Middle East Division Chief Roddy Touraine, lean into the camera’s frame of view. “With all deference to our heroic and, I see, bloodied station chief, I think in the thick of it, as it were, Director, that he overlooks the obvious. This is not an Iranian attack. It comes across the causeway from Saudi. The Riyadh crowd wants to make sure King Hamad doesn’t let the Yanks use this little island as a base for operations against their fledgling little caliphate.”
“Whoever it is, Director,” Douglas responded, his face reddening, “we will give all assistance to the king here, but we shall not be alone in that. The Americans won’t abandon this place. The little Gulf states are all that they have left after the fall of the House of Saud and the creation of Islamyah, coming right after their pullout from Iraq. The Yanks are like sandwich meat spread thin onto the Gulfies between two very big hunks of hostile bread, Iran and Islamyah.”
In London, Barbara Currier shook her head in sadness. “Kicked out of Iran in ’79, politely pushed out of Saudi in ’03, invited to leave Iraq by their Frankenstein in ’06. Then the fall of the al Sauds last year. Now they are just hanging on in the region, with only the little guys to help them: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates, Oman. And how long can they hang on there?
Sic transit gloria imperi.
Just ask us.” She paused at a noise coming from the Bahrain end of the conference call. “What was that?”
Sic transit gloria imperi.
Just ask us.” She paused at a noise coming from the Bahrain end of the conference call. “What was that?”
A long, low rumble shook the bubble room in Bahrain. The exhaust fans seemed to cough. From London, Currier could see on her flat screen that someone who had just entered the room in Bahrain was bending over Brian Douglas, whispering something. Douglas had his hand over the microphone. He spoke briefly to those around him, and then he looked back up at the camera.
“The attack on the Diplomat was not a one-off, Director. The noise that you just heard was the sound of the Crowne Plaza, down the street from the Diplomat, pancaking.”
Near the As Sulayyil Oasis
South of Riyadh
Islamyah (formerly Saudi Arabia)
South of Riyadh
Islamyah (formerly Saudi Arabia)
“T
hat white smudge on the black of the night is the backbone of our galaxy,” Abdullah said softly. The two men lay back on the pile of pillows and pondered the infinite sky. The galaxy was bright above the desert, far from the lights of the city and the flares of the refineries. Abdullah sat up on the carpet and smoked the apple-flavored tobacco of the hubbly-bubbly. Except for the gentle gurgling of the water pipe, no sounds broke the stillness that covered the rolling sand.
hat white smudge on the black of the night is the backbone of our galaxy,” Abdullah said softly. The two men lay back on the pile of pillows and pondered the infinite sky. The galaxy was bright above the desert, far from the lights of the city and the flares of the refineries. Abdullah sat up on the carpet and smoked the apple-flavored tobacco of the hubbly-bubbly. Except for the gentle gurgling of the water pipe, no sounds broke the stillness that covered the rolling sand.
Ahmed rose and walked toward the embers of their fire. “You are such a poet, brother, but you try to change the subject.” He stirred the charred wood. “The Chinese are no different from the Americans when their troops were here,” he said as he spat into the dying fire. “They too are infidels.”
“Yes, they are infidels, Ahmed, but without the Chinese weapons, we will lie naked before our enemies. Many of our American weapons do not work anymore, without the American contractors and spare parts. My brothers in the Shura aren’t always right, but they may be right about this. We may need those weapons, and the Chinese must be here to make them work until we can.”
Ahmed shook his head in disagreement, prompting his brother to continue. “We must have weapons to deter our enemies. The al Sauds have bought important Americans to help get themselves back on the throne. The Persians stir up trouble among our Shi’a and those in Bahrain. And the Persians now have nuclear weapons on their new mobile missiles.” Abdullah stood up and walked slowly toward his younger brother. “We will keep these few Chinese inside the walls, deep in the desert.” He stared down at the remaining hot coals. “They will not stain our new society. The Chinese need the oil; they will stay in line. Besides, it is done. The missiles are here now.”
The two men walked away from the fire pit, with its semicircle of carpets and pillows, heading up to the crest of the dune. Below them the desert was bathed in the dim blue light of the stars and the halfmoon. “You know, Ahmed, the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him, camped very near here, just at that oasis. And our grandfather used to come here as well. Both of them loved the beauty of this place.”
He grabbed his brother’s arm, turning him to look into his eyes. “I did not come all this way just to be bound in chains again. While you were in Canada learning to cure people, Ahmed, I was learning to kill them. I personally slew al Sauds last year, and before that, in Iraq, I attacked their American masters. I am not going to hand our nation back to those swine, or anyone else. Allah, the merciful and compassionate, has given us the mission to create Islamyah from the fetid carcass that was Saudi Arabia.
“Those so-called Saud princes sit in their unclean mansions in California, drinking and dancing as they count the money they have stolen from our people. They buy whores in the American Congress to deny us the parts to make our American weapons work. They bribe the Jewish reporters to whip up support for invading us. They connive with the greedy British diplomats to spy on our embassies and steal our papers.
“They will stop at nothing until they have regained control of this land. Even now, the al Sauds, and those criminals in Houston who help them, are hiring assassins to kill all of us on the Shura. The Persians, too, infiltrate agents into Dhahran and the rest of the Eastern Province, pretending to champion the Shi’a.”
Abdullah released his grip on Ahmed. He loved Ahmed, younger, taller, with the deep brown eyes of their late father. He wanted to persuade him. “But what we have done now may not be enough. What do both the Americans and the Persians have that lets them think they can intimidate our infant nation? You know the answer. It is the bomb of Hiroshima—the killer that turns the sand into glass and poisons the land for generations. If we resist, they will char our cities and incinerate our people, so they can again steal the oil beneath our sands. That is why, Ahmed, my so-called friends on the Shura Council think we need our own bomb.”
Ahmed did not back down. “What about the Pakistanis? The al Sauds gave them the money for a bomb. You found the records yourself. The Pakistanis will defend us.”
Abdullah turned and began walking slowly back down the hill to the camp. “Yes, perhaps, Ahmed, but the only thing that concerns the Pakistanis is India. They say the right things about Islam, but they will keep their few weapons to scare the Hindus. The Pakistanis cannot be relied on. Besides, their missiles are primitive. We need more than a few little Pakistani arrows.”
A low cough and then a high-pitched whine stirred beyond the next dune. A wisp of sand flew above it into the desert night. The helicopters were starting. It was time to return to the city.
“So why did we come here tonight, Abdullah? I doubt that it was just to stare at the heavens and reminisce about Grandfather.” Ahmed was seven years younger and four inches taller than his brother. He had marked his twenty-ninth birthday only two weeks ago, when he had returned home after eight years in Canada, ending his residency early, because Abdullah had become a member of the new ruling Shura Council. And Ahmed wanted to be part of his big brother’s team now, just as he had wanted to play football with Abdullah and his friends twenty years ago. Since his return, Ahmed had pressed his brother on how he could help him with the new government of their country. But each time the answers were vague.
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