Countdown to Mecca (33 page)

Jack let the statements lay in the air for a few silent seconds. The prince wasn't the only one with a sense of theatrical timing. “So that's a yes.”

“No.” The prince remained calm and seemingly forthright. “We do not have any program to develop a nuclear weapon or any device of similar capabilities. We have signed the international treaties saying that we won't. That is on record.”

“You have nothing near Yanbu?”

“The port? No.”

“Can I inspect any place I want?”

Prince Riad al-Saud gave him a quizzical look. “Are you a one-man United Nations?”

“Two-man,” Jack said, indicating Doc.

The prince smiled at that. “I see. You will forgive the affront,” he said to Doc.

Doc nodded.

“If you have nothing to hide, then surely I can go anywhere I want,” said Jack. “You don't mind that.”

“Permission to travel anywhere in the country is not mine to give,” said the prince. “Other ministries are in charge of security.”

His first major deflection,
Jack thought. “So how can I ascertain that, as you imply, there is no secret facility in the mountains north of Yanbu.”

The prince's gaze shifted from the digicam's lens to Jack's eyes. “I have just told you there is no such facility.”

“Nothing near Yanbu, in the hills.”

“There is nothing.” The prince's face was outwardly calm, but his eyes seemed suspicious. He was either the finest actor Jack had ever seen, or honestly taken aback. Jack didn't know which, nor did he care.

“I'm afraid there is.”

Silence fell. Silence stayed. The prince looked at Jack. Jack looked at the prince. Doc continued to video, silently. Jack waited, wondering if the prince would leave, or call his guards, or even throw the remainder of his tea in Jack's face.

Finally the prince spoke quietly. “Where did you get such information?”

“I was there myself, earlier today.” More silence.

The prince's gaze shifted briefly to the camera.

“Already loaded everything on a cloud storage site,” Jack said.

“I assumed as much,” the prince said. “But that is not what I was thinking.”

“Oh?”

“I would very much appreciate if you would show me this evidence,” Riad al-Saud said. The prince was back in command. It was not a request. It was an order.

Jack motioned for Doc to show him what they had. Doc was smart enough to only show him the non-battle footage. He showed him only the video he had took when they were watching from the top of the hill.

When Doc thumbed off the playback, the prince did not sound shaken or angry. But he did seem very serious. He didn't even bother to try pretending that the location on the video could have been anywhere in the Middle East. The mountain positioning didn't lie.

“What will you do with this footage?” he asked flatly. “You know your so-called media will not care.”

“Our so-called government might,” Jack countered.

“My government might as well!' Riad exclaimed in a rare moment of total candor, surprising everyone—perhaps even himself. “I can assure you, Mr. Hatfield, I have no knowledge of this so-called base, but I can also assure you that will not be true much longer.”

He stood smoothly, strongly, his hands shaking as if he were keeping them from balling into fists with only a great show of willpower. Jack and Doc watched him silhouetted against the sunset filling the windows. “I truly thank you for bringing it to my attention, but now I believe you have another interview to conduct, do you not?”

Jack could see that the prince was holding himself back from running out of the room, booming for his staff. “I do indeed,” he agreed sharply, deciding to end their encounter as the master of understatement. “Thank you, your Excellency.”

“No,” the prince said, already withdrawing. “Thank you.”

And with that, he was gone like a sirocco across the Sahara.

 

44

“Thing is, I believe him.” Doc said as he took one of the bottles of water from the limo fridge “I don't think they have a program.”

“What?” Jack snorted, sprawled on the backseat.

“Look at the video,” prompted Doc. “Tell me he's not surprised when you mention Yanbu.”

The prince was either kind enough to let them use the Bentley, driver and all, for the ride to Brooks's hotel. Or the original instructions had been to let them use the vehicle all day. It made no difference either way. The two men were back in the limousine and they were going to talk freely, bugs or no bugs.

“Whose site could it possibly be, if not the government's?” Jack wondered. “Maybe it's a different branch? A shadow organization in the Saudi hierarchy?”

“That's not the way these guys work,” Doc maintained, then almost emptied the water bottle with one long pull.

Jack snorted again. “Well, I think at least Prince Riad doesn't work that way. Which is why I had you show him the video in the first place. Considering what we're up against, I realized we needed all the support we could get—and not just from half a world away. What do you think they'll do once they swarm over the site?”

“Make the same conclusions we did,” Doc rumbled, taking another swig of much appreciated water. “Foreign intrigue on Saudi soil. They will not be happy, but I doubt they'll blame the messengers. We're the ones who brought it to their attention. Don't you think they would have kept us there if he really did know about the site?”

Jack frowned, and then slowly nodded. He looked down at the video playback in his hand. The prince said there was a threat; the prince denied that they had a program; the prince maintained he knew nothing about the secret facility. Jack raised his eyes to the limo's ceiling and sighed, feeling more conflicted than he ever had in his entire life.

The city outside the Bentley's windows was glittering like it had rained diamonds, but the glitz of Riyadh held no pleasure for Jack Hatfield. Even though he was about to have dinner with a true American hero, he couldn't help feeling that, appearances aside, he was truly heading into the heart of darkness.

The Four Seasons was another luxury hotel in an all-star building—the “bottle opener” as Jimmy had called it when they first arrived in Riyadh. There was security, but nothing like what they'd encountered with the prince. One of the general's aides met them in the lobby and took them to a private dining area. Doc had left his weapon in the limo this time, but wasn't searched.

“Figures,” he grumbled, the video camera in his hands as they walked through the corridors.

General Thomas Brooks sat in a private room, at a small, white-table-clothed set-up for two, with a broad, friendly, welcoming smile on his face. He was in full uniform, with every pin, star, ribbon, and badge imaginable gilding his shoulders and chest like armor.

“Ah!” he said as if seeing a Warhol at a flea market. “Jack. So good to see you!” No “Mr. Hatfield” for Brooks. He behaved as if they were already the best of friends. He took Jack's proffered hand in both of his, looked him straight in the eye, then enthusiastically motioned for Jack to sit down. As he sat himself, he looked up to Doc. “Can we get you a seat as well, Mr. Matson?”

“That's okay,” Doc demurred. “I'm good.”

“On the basis of what we could find of your record, Mr. Matson,” the general replied, “I'd say you are indeed. Jack must be proud to have you as a colleague.”

Doc and Jack shared a quick glance. They shouldn't have been surprised that Brooks had done his homework, but it was rarely stated so baldly. Going for that “we're all just bosom buddies here” vibe, Doc realized.

“I'm just his cameraman today, General,” Doc said. “Don't mind me.”

“Very well,” Brooks said. “But anytime you need anything, just say it.”

“Will do.”

And with that, Brooks brought his full attention, and full force of his personality, back on Jack. He was charming during the meal, regaling Jack with stories of his early days in the army, and then a rambling history of corruption and culture in the Middle East and the world. He ate and drank lustily, almost as if it were his last meal. That, alone, made Jack a little queasy. He ate little and avoided the coffee completely. His stomach was sour enough as it was.

“Twenty years ago,” Brooks lectured, “Shia and Sunni coexisted more or less peacefully. Now the two branches of Islam are at each other's throats, regularly blowing each other up in Iraq, Syria, Egypt. It was tempting for us in the Western powers to take a hands-off approach: let the two sides destroy each other. Certainly, in the short term, that seemed like a wise move: if the main branches of Islam were busy killing each other, they would leave the West alone.”

Brooks took a moment to eat some more, then returned to his subject, waving a fork for emphasis. “But this strategy missed the deeper current: Islam in general was becoming more and more radicalized along tenets of the religion that demanded absolute purity of belief, and preached intolerance toward anyone who did not share that belief. To put it simply and bluntly: if a coreligionist should be killed, what was the fate of someone who did not share even the outward trappings of that religion?” He only paused for a nanosecond, then answered his own question. “Annihilation.”

They started in on dessert before Brooks carried on. “It was commonly, but mistakenly, thought that internecine war left the victor fatally weakened. But history has shown that was incorrect in the majority of cases. Countless historical examples—France under Napoleon is an easy one for Westerners to grasp—showed that, on the contrary, victors were extremely dangerous to outsiders. Whether Sunnis conquered or Shia dominated, once victory was assured, the triumphant forces will turn their eyes, and their weapons, to the West.”

Brooks lowered, and shook, his head. “In the meantime, the West was hollowing itself out. I will admit. I am alarmed by the cheapening of Western values—the parallel to Roman decadence is so overwhelming as to now be a clich
é
. The absurd morals of Hollywood have permeated America and Europe; they were now working their way through Asia at a rapid pace.”

Brooks leaned back, finishing the dessert and raising his coffee cup. He became almost wistful. “You know,” he mused. “In some ways, I don't blame the Muslims for wanting to stamp out the pestilence. Licentiousness and depravity undermines all human societies equally.” Then the general seemed to notice Doc and Jack, as if for the first time as individuals rather than a generic audience. He strove to find a happy ending to his tale. “Slowly, things started to change,” he said. “A few of us, a small core, worked very hard to get the service in the right direction. And from that acorn, a mighty oak…” He smiled, then glanced at his watch. “But you know all this. No matter. Shall we get started?”

“Absolutely.” Jack glanced at Doc, who'd been filming everything. “We can shoot right here.”

Brooks didn't seem to hear Jack's interjection. His face grew serious, as if his body had sprouted an instant mask, and he leaned in. “The greatest threat the West faces today is Islam.” He looked intently at the camera. “No doubt about it. There will be a war. Someone will use big, messy weapons first. Who? Iran maybe, or Al Qaeda.” He turned his eyes to bore into Jack's. “The who isn't important. The problem is what comes afterward. We need to have the will to see the battle through to the end. We need to stamp out Islam. It's the only option, really.”

Jack had been prepared for a fire-eating speech, but this took him by surprise. “What do you mean by ‘the only option'?”

“You know what I mean,” Brooks maintained. “You, especially. We have to go balls to the wall. This is a fight to the end. They aren't going to give quarter, and neither should we. That's what the lefties and liberals don't get. Sympathy won't work. Understanding won't work. Negotiation? They'll laugh at us behind our backs as they
stab
us in the back!”

“General—” Jack started, but there's was no staunching the flow now.

“The corrosion has already started. We let them multiply and fester and grow until they get strong enough. Look at Great Britain. The Muslims are reproducing in such numbers that, within a generation, they won't need a war to institute Sharia Law. They will simply vote it in. And that population will spread across Europe, across America. And somewhere along the way they will attack Israel. Israel will be first. That's my prediction. Maybe Israel will retaliate, maybe they will opt to strike first—weather the international censure to ensure their survival. Of course, in private, virtually every nation except a few in the Middle East will sleep a whole lot better.

“
If
they survive retaliation,” Brooks continued. “How much longer until Iran represents mutual assured destruction? Do you really think that the Syrians have turned over all their chemical weapons?”

Jack broke in. “Speaking of which,” he said, returning to the interview and intel he still wanted to acquire, “what about the Saudis?”

“What about them?” Brooks replied. He seemed startled to have been pulled from the soapbox where he was clearly very, very comfortable.

“Do you think they have WMDs?” Jack asked.

“I doubt it,” said Brooks dismissively. “The Saudis feel insulated by their oil. No one wants radiation or botulism in their gas tanks. The Saudis have been corrupted by their wealth and inbreeding. The ruling family has, not the rabble. They are as poor as ever. And, more dangerously, they are turning from secular cash to religious propaganda for solace and deliverance. Whatever happens,” he stressed, “whenever the masses revolt, we won't be strong enough to defeat them.” Then the general stopped, thought for a moment, smiled, and leaned back. “You see Jack,” he continued, seemingly the very voice of reason, “if we don't finish it quickly, it will continue for years, decades. Them wounding, maiming, and even crippling us. And every month, every week, every day, it will get worse. Killing us with a thousand small slashes—the ancient Arab way. And the longer we wait, the worse it will get because our enemy will become more powerful. The war has to happen now. Don't you see? The sooner the better, radical Islam has to be eliminated. You've said so yourself.”