Twelve Days (10 page)

NINE DAYS . . .

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

T
he first king of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz, had procreated with a stallion’s vigor. His progeny continued the tradition. Sixty years after Abdul-Aziz’s death, more than a thousand men and women could claim him as a grandfather.

But General Nawwaf bin Salman was more important than most. The eldest son of the Defense Minister, he commanded the Saudi missile arsenal, more than a thousand Chinese-made Dongfengs that could reach any target in Iran or Israel. And as part of his job, Nawwaf ran the Saudi nuclear program.

Though
program
was not quite the right word. The Saudis had given billions of dollars to Pakistan to help that country build a nuclear arsenal. In return, Pakistan’s generals had promised that if Iran built a nuke, they would hand over a half-dozen bombs. The result would be the Persian Gulf version of mutually assured destruction, two sworn enemies with the power to obliterate each other’s capital. Both Pakistan and the Kingdom denied the deal.
We have enough trouble with the North-West Frontier,
Pakistan’s Defense Minister told the Secretary of State.
You think we
want to take a chance on the Arabs, too? We give the Saudis a bomb and it winds up in Washington, we know you blame us.

Maybe. In June 2008, American satellites had spotted a massive construction project at a military base near the village of al-Watah, one hundred seventy miles west of Riyadh, the center of the Arabian desert. In summer, the area was one of the most unpleasant places on earth. Temperatures topped one hundred thirty degrees. Even Bedouins stayed away. Yet the Saudis had evidently decided the project couldn’t wait. Construction moved fast. After a few weeks, the satellites picked up the outlines of missile launchpads and fortified bunkers.

The Saudis already operated two other missile bases, but al-Watah attracted the attention of the CIA’s Near East analysts. Its bunkers were set fifteen meters deep into the desert’s stony soil. Their concrete walls were six meters thick. Putting so much effort into a storage site for conventional warheads made no sense, especially given the base’s inhospitable location.

The agency and the White House watched the site with alarm, waiting for the armored convoys and helicopter flights that would signal that Pakistan had made good on its promise. But they never came. In fact, after rushing to build al-Watah, the Saudis never used the base. Only seventy men lived in its garrison, guarding the perimeter and opening and closing the empty bunkers twice a day. The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that the base was a bluff of sorts. The Kingdom wanted to show the world that its military could handle nuclear weapons without actually committing to them.

Wells understood the reluctance. Nukes would be the ripest of targets for al-Qaeda’s jihadis. Plus the Saudis preferred to outsource their national defense to the United States. For seventy years, the Kingdom had depended on the American military to protect it, most notably when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. The biggest Saudi oil fields were a short tank ride from the Kuwaiti border. Even so, the Kingdom’s primary contribution to the conflict had been teaming up with Kuwait to
cut a $36 billion check to cover the majority of the cost of the war. Like the United States Army was nothing more than a for-hire force.

But Wells planned to let that bit of history be. He hadn’t come to the Kingdom to discuss Saudi-American codependency or ask for a guided tour of al-Watah. Instead, he hoped that General Nawwaf might lead him to the source of the highly enriched uranium. Given the Saudi interest in nuclear weapons, someone sitting on a private stockpile of HEU might have approached the Kingdom as a potential buyer before turning to Duberman.

The trip was a long shot. But Wells’s only alternative was to sit in Zurich while he waited for Kowalski to set up a meeting with Mikhail Buvchenko. Instead, as soon as Kowalski’s driver dropped him at the Zurich airport, Wells called a Riyadh number whose true owner was known to only eight people. It rang the personal mobile phone of His Majesty Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Prime Minister and King of Saudi Arabia.

—

Years before, Abdullah had asked Wells to find a Saudi terrorist cell. The King feared he could not trust his own security forces because other members of the royal family supported the jihadis. After the mission, Abdullah promised Wells the Kingdom’s lifelong support. Wells had already called in the chit twice. He didn’t like asking again, but under the circumstances the chance seemed worth taking.

“As-salaam aleikum.”
Abdullah answered this phone himself. As far as Wells could tell, he enjoyed having the chance to be a normal human being in this tiny way. He had a throaty smoker’s baritone, a Saudi Jack Nicholson. The vigor in his voice hid the fact that the King, born in 1924, had entered his tenth decade.

“Aleikum salaam,
Your Majesty.
”

A pause. Despite his age, Abdullah’s mind and memory were intact. Wells imagined him looking at the phone, sorting through possibilities.

“John Wells?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry to bother you—”

“No matter.”

Not quite the same as
no bother
. “With your permission, I wish to come to Riyadh. To put a question to one of your nephews. A general.” Wells spoke formally now, conscious of just how rough his Arabic sounded.

“I have more than one nephew who’s a general.”

“Nawwaf bin Salman, sir.”

Abdullah didn’t speak. Wells wondered if he’d overreached somehow.

“Where are you now?” the King finally said.

—

From Zurich, Wells flew to Rome, where he caught an overnight Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Riyadh. Saudia—as the airline was known—had the quirks of the country it served. It was at once deeply religious and highly status-conscious. The 777 jet included two prayer rooms, one at the front of the plane for first-class passengers, one at the rear for everyone else.

The pilots were Saudi, but the flight attendants were Filipino women. Male Saudis considered working as cabin crew beneath their dignity, and no Saudi woman would ever be allowed a job where she could mix so closely with men. No alcohol was available, and every flight began with a prayer in Arabic:
Bismi-Allah wa al-Hamduli-Allah . . . In the name of Allah, Praise be to Allah, Glory to Him who made this transport for us, as we could never have created it.

The words both comforted and disconcerted Wells. Arabic was the language of his time undercover in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For better or worse, those years had hardened him into the man he was now. He had fought alongside jihadis who hated the United States. Though he never accepted their beliefs, he admired their endurance and fearlessness. They weren’t fools, most of them. They fought knowing that they could
never overcome the United States. They would have been wiser to focus their energy on the corrupt regimes closer to home. Yet their choice had a certain peculiar logic: America was the devil, and fighting the devil was the highest calling, even if only Allah could overcome him.

So the jihadis were brave and tough. Callous and cruel, too. They cared little for the lives of the civilians around them, less for any enemy unlucky enough to fall into their hands. Facing a foe with overwhelming advantages, they used deceit as a tactic. They fought without uniforms or front lines, picking off one or two soldiers at a time, then disappearing. But was Wells any different? He had lived with these men for years, pretended to be one of them. All along he’d hoped to destroy them, and he’d killed more than one in cold blood. He had come back from those mountains almost a decade before. Yet he still couldn’t talk about what had happened there. Not with Shafer, not with Anne, not even with Exley. He couldn’t find the words, in any language. He circled that time in his mind like a plane trying to land in heavy fog. A psychiatrist would probably say he had post-traumatic stress disorder, but Wells didn’t plan to ask.

In the cabin around him, heavy-legged men in white robes and leather sandals settled back in their seats. Wells wondered what these Saudis would make of him, an American who had taken their religion as his own. In theory, Islam was the most equal of faiths. Becoming Muslim didn’t require approval from a priest or rabbi. Anyone who read the Quran with honest effort could join the
umma,
the worldwide community of believers.

Yet the Saudis had a way of making other Muslims feel like outsiders. Blood, language, and land joined the Gulf Arabs to Islam. They could trace their lineage to the original tribesmen who had supported Muhammad. The Quran was written in their native tongue. Their country included Islam’s holiest sites. Their very flag included the
Shahada,
the Islamic creed:
There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

No, Wells knew how they’d see him: misguided at best, a faker at worst.

He closed his eyes as the jet leveled off and found himself dreaming of the Kaaba
,
the forty-three-foot-high cube at the heart of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, tall black granite walls set on a marble base. The Kaaba protected
al-Hajar al-Aswad,
the Black Stone, a smooth piece of obsidian that was sometimes thought to have come from a meteorite. The people of Mecca had believed in the stone’s mystical powers even before Muhammad brought Islam to them. Now it marked the spiritual center of the religion. Muslims faced the Kaaba when they knelt to pray.

Wells had been to Mecca, yet he hadn’t seen the Grand Mosque. The failure seemed to summarize the contradictions of his life.

In his dream, he finally arrived at the Kaaba. But he’d made a mistake. Pilgrims were supposed to circle the cube counterclockwise. He was walking the wrong way, squeezing through the crowd. He tried to turn but found he could only march forward. Bodies pinballed off his, bouncing him side to side. At first the other pilgrims didn’t notice. Then one yelled:
Imposter!
The cries spread:
American! Apostate!
Men linked their arms to form an unbreakable wedge. They jammed Wells backward. He knew that if he stumbled the crowd would swallow him whole. Then a final jolt threw him on his back and the men around him roared—

“Sir? Sir?” The words in English, not Arabic.

Wells opened his eyes. A flight attendant leaned over him, her hand poised above his shoulder, close enough for Wells to pick up the scent of her too-sweet perfume.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’ve run into turbulence.” Indeed, the cabin rattled as the plane passed through dirty air. “You’ll need to buckle your belt.”

Wells latched his belt and closed his eyes. He hoped the Kaaba would return, that he could win some spiritual succor in his dreams at least. But it was gone. He spent the rest of the flight listening to the snores of the men around him.

His only consolation came from the back of the cabin, where two women whispered intimately in Arabic. Wells couldn’t hear their words, only the low lovely trill of their voices through the stale pressurized air. He wondered if they were sisters, wives to the same man, or both. He wished he could ask, but the question would have been beyond impolite.

—

Two men in the black uniforms worn by Abdullah’s elite guardsmen waited as Wells stepped off the Jetway at King Khalid Airport in Riyadh. Wordlessly, they led him to the front of a long immigration control line. A nervous customs officer hardly looked up before stamping his passport.

Outside the terminal, a cool, blustery wind rustled the date palms. Even Riyadh had winter. The men led Wells to a sleek black Mercedes limousine, where another uniformed officer waited. He ushered Wells into the limo as the two escorts stepped into a chase car, a black BMW sedan parked nose-to-tail with the Merc.

“As-salaam aleikum.”

“Aleikum salaam.”

“I’m Colonel Fahd Ghaith. Deputy Commander, First Special Division of the National Guard.” The Mercedes rolled off. Its windows were thick and bullet-resistant, and Wells guessed it had an inch or so of steel armor in its doors, too.

“None of this was necessary.”

“The King has asked me to ensure your trip is pleasant.”

“I appreciate that.” Though Wells feared the star treatment would only bring unwanted attention to his arrival. He watched through the back window as a third car pulled away from the terminal, a four-door white Nissan with a tinted windshield and a nick on the driver’s door. The windshield and the distance hid the faces of the driver and passenger.

“That one yours, too?”

Ghaith followed Wells’s gaze. “No. Are you concerned about it?”

“Should I be?”

“You’re His Majesty’s guest, Mr. Wells.”

Not exactly an answer, as they both knew. Terrorists had attacked the royal family before. They would be glad for a chance at Wells. The Mercedes and BMW followed the signs for the airport exit, the Nissan a few cars back. Lack of sleep and that dream about the Grand Mosque were probably making Wells twitchy.

Probably.

“General Nawwaf will see you this evening. Eight-thirty. His office is in the Ministry of Defense at the Riyadh Air Base. In the meantime—”

The Mercedes sped through a police checkpoint and accelerated onto Route 535, a crowded highway that ran southwest from the airport to the center of Riyadh. The chase car remained a few lengths behind, the Nissan still coming.

“A hotel?”

“His Majesty’s guests don’t stay in hotels. A small residence south of downtown.”

“Small residence?”

“Very modest. You’re still looking at that car?”

“He’s still there.”

“This is the main road from the airport. As you can see from the traffic. Nonetheless. I’d rather not have you worrying.” Ghaith turned to the front seat. “At the house in twenty minutes, Khalid. Let’s have your siren.”

A moment later, the limousine’s siren sang its high
Oo-oo, Oo-oo.
The traffic ahead cleared, and the Mercedes surged to fill the empty pavement.

Two minutes later, the limousine turned from 535 to Route 65, the main highway through central Riyadh. The Nissan had vanished. Wells relaxed as best he could, took in the city around him. Riyadh was flat, unapologetically ugly, and in the middle of a Shanghai-size construction
boom. With oil at one hundred dollars a barrel, Abdullah was expanding universities and hospitals and building a skyscraper complex for banks and a stock exchange. Inevitably, the new development was called the King Abdullah Financial District. Abdullah was a more democratic monarch than his predecessors, but his modesty had limits. He shared the Saud family fetish for spreading his name far and wide.