Hunter Killer (2 page)

TUESDAY, MAY
5, 2009
KING KHALID INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
SAUDI ARABIA

The black Cadillac stretch limousine moved swiftly around the public drop-off point to a wide double gate, already opened by the two armed guards. On each wing of the big American automobile fluttered two pennants, the green-and-blue ensigns of the Royal Saudi Naval Forces. Both guards saluted as the instantly recognizable limo swept past and out toward the wide runway of terminal three, the exclusive enclave of Saudia, the national airline.

Inside the limousine was one solitary passenger, Crown Prince Nasir Ibn Mohammed, deputy minister of the armed forces to his very senior cousin Prince Abdul Rahman, son of the late King Faisal. Both sentries saluted as Prince Nasir went by, heading straight for the take-off area where one of the King’s newest Boeing 747s was awaiting him, engines idling in preparation for take-off. Every other flight was on hold until the meticulously punctual Prince Nasir was in the air.

Wearing Arab dress, he was escorted to the outside stairway by both the chief steward and a senior naval officer. Prince Nasir’s own son, the twenty-six-year-old Commodore Fahad Ibn Nasir, served on a Red Sea frigate, so his father was always treated like an Admiral wherever he traveled in the kingdom.

The moment he was seated in the upstairs first-class section, the door was tightly secured and the pilot opened the throttles. The royal passenger jet, reveling in its light load, roared off down the runway and screamed into the clear blue skies, directly into the hot south wind off the desert, before banking left, toward the Gulf, and then northwest across Iraq, to Syria.

He was the only passenger onboard. It was almost unheard of for a senior member of the royal family to travel alone, without even a bodyguard. But this was different. The 747 was not going even halfway to Prince Nasir’s final destination. He used it only to get out of Saudi Arabia, to another Arab country. His real destination was entirely another matter.

A suitcase at the rear of the upstairs area contained his Western clothes. As soon as the flight was airborne, Prince Nasir changed into a dark gray suit, blue shirt, and a maroon print silk tie from Hermès, complete with a solid-gold clip in the shape of a desert scimitar. He wore plain black loafers, handmade in London, with dark gray socks.

The suitcase also held a briefcase containing several documents, which the Prince removed. He then packed away his white Arabian
thobe
, red-and-white
ghutra
headdress with its double cord, the
aghal
. He had left King Khalid Airport, named for his late great-uncle, as an Arab. He would arrive in Damascus every inch the international businessman.

When the plane touched down, two hours later, a limousine from the Saudi embassy met him and drove him directly to the regular midday Air France flight to Paris. The aircraft already contained its full complement of passengers, and although none of them knew it, they were sitting comfortably, seat belts fastened, awaiting the arrival of the Arabian prince.

The aircraft had pulled back from the Jetway, and a special flight of stairs had been placed against the forward entrance. Prince Nasir’s car halted precisely at those stairs, where an Air France official waited to escort him to his seat. Four rows and eight seats, that is, had been booked in the name of the Saudi embassy, on Al-Jala’a Avenue. Prince Nasir sat alone in 1A. The rest of the seats would remain empty all the way to Roissy–Charles de Gaulle Airport, nineteen miles north of Paris.

They served a special luncheon, prepared by the cooks at the embassy, of curried chicken with rice cooked in the Indian manner, followed by fruit juice and sweet pastries. Prince Nasir, the most devout of Muslims, had never touched alcohol in his life and disapproved fiercely of any of his countrymen who did. The late Prince Khalid of Monte Carlo was not among his absolute favorites. The great man knew, beyond any doubt, of the antics of that particular deceased member of his family.

They flew on across Turkey and the Balkan states, finally crossing the Alps and dropping down above the lush French farmland that lies south of the forest of Ardenne, over the River Seine, and into northwest Paris.

Again, Prince Nasir endured no formalities nor checks. He disembarked before anyone else, down a private flight of stairs, where a jet-black, unmarked French government car waited to drive him directly to the heavily guarded Elysée Palace, on Rue St. Honoré, the official residence of the Presidents of France since 1873.

It was a little after 4
P.M
. in Paris, the flight from Damascus having taken five hours, with a two-hour time gain. Two officials were waiting at the President’s private entrance, and Prince Nasir was escorted immediately to the President’s private apartment on the first floor overlooking Rue de l’Elysée.

The President was awaiting him in a large modern drawing room, which was decorated with a selection of six breathtaking Impressionist paintings, two by Renoir, two by Monet, and one each by Degas and Van Gogh. One hundred million dollars would not have bought them.

The President greeted Prince Nasir in impeccable English, the language agreed upon for the forthcoming conversation. By previous arrangement, no one would listen in. No ministers. No private secretaries. No interpreters. The following two hours before dinner would bring a meaning to the word
privacy
that was rarely, if ever, attained in international politics.

“Good afternoon, Your Highness,” began the President. “I trust my country’s travel arrangements have been satisfactory?”

“Quite perfect,” replied the Prince, smiling. “No one could have required more.” The two men knew each other vaguely, but were hardly even friends, let alone blood brothers. Yet.

The door to the drawing room was closed, and two uniformed military guards, summoned from the exterior security force, stood sentry in the outside corridor. The President of France himself poured coffee for his guest from a silver service laid out on a magnificent Napoleonic sideboard.

Prince Nasir complimented the President on the beauty of the piece and was amused when the President replied, “It probably belonged to Bonaparte himself—the Palais de l’Elysée was occupied by Napoleon’s sister Caroline for much of the nineteenth century,”

The highly educated Arabian Prince loved the traditions of France. He not only had a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from Harvard, but also a
maîtrise
(master’s degree) in European history from the University of Paris. The knowledge that Bonaparte himself may have been served from this very sideboard somehow made the coffee taste all the richer.

“Well, Your Highness,” said the President. “You must tell me your story, and why you wished to have a talk with me in this most private manner, at such very short notice.” He was of course keenly aware of the traditions of highborn Arabs: talk about almost anything else for a half hour before tackling the main subject.

Prince Nasir knew that time was precious at this level. The balding, burly politician who stood before him had, after all, an entire country to run. The Prince decided to speak carefully, but with heavyweight intonations.

“Sir,” he said, “My country is in terminal decline. In the past twenty years the ruling family—my own—has managed to spend over a hundred billion dollars of our cash reserves. We are probably down to our last fifteen billion. And soon that will be ten billion and then five billion. Twenty years ago my people received a generous share of the oil wealth that Allah has bestowed upon us. Around thirty thousand dollars per capita. Today that figure is close to six thousand. Because we can afford no more.”

“But, of course,” replied the President of France, “you do own twenty-five percent of all the world’s oil…”

Prince Nasir smiled. “Our problem, sir, is not the creation of wealth,” he said. “I suppose we could close down modern Saudi Arabia and all go back to the desert and sit there allowing our vast oil revenues to accrue, and make us once more one of the richest nations on earth. However, that would plainly be impracticable.

“Our problem is the reckless spending of money by a ruling family that is now corrupt beyond redemption. And a huge percentage of that expenditure goes on the family itself. Thousands and thousands of royal princes are being kept in a style probably not seen on this planet since…well, the Bourbon royal family’s domination of your own country. I have stated it often enough. Saudi Arabia is like France before the Revolution.
Monsieur le Président,
I intend to emulate your brave class of warriors of the late eighteenth century. In my own country, I intend to re-enact that renunciation of the rights of the nobility.”

The President’s early left-wing leanings were well known. Indeed he had risen to power from a base as the communist mayor of a small town in Brittany. In a previous incarnation, this particular French President would have stormed the gates of Paris in the vanguard of the Revolution. Prince Nasir realized the word
Bourbon
would elicit instant sympathy.

The President shrugged, a deeply Gallic gesture. And he held out both hands, palms upward. “I knew of course some of the difficulties in Saudi Arabia…but I put it down mostly to your closeness to the Americans.”

“That, too, is a grave problem, sir,” replied Prince Nasir. “My people long for freedom from the Great Satan. But this King is a vigorous globally ambitious man, aged only forty-eight, and under him it would be impossible. We are bound up with the infidels so tightly…even though the majority of Saudis wish devoutly they could be once more a God-fearing nation of pure Muslims. Not terrorists, just a religious people in tune with the words of the Prophet, rather than the grasping material creeds of the United States.

“I tell you this, sir. If Osama bin Laden suddenly materialized in Riyadh and ran for President, or even King, he would win in a landslide.”

The President of France chuckled. “I imagine there are many Saudi Princes who would not agree
exactement
with your views,” he said. “I don’t imagine that young man who almost sank the
Queen Mary
last week would have been…er…too
sympathique
.”

“He most certainly would not,” said Prince Nasir, frowning.

“He is a prime example of the endless corruption in my country. There are now thirty-five thousand members of the Saudi royal family, all of them drawing up to one million dollars a month, and spending it on private jets, ocean-going yachts, gambling, alcohol, and expensive women. And if it goes on, we are in danger of becoming a godless Third-World country. To stand in one of our royal palaces is to watch something close to the fall of the Roman Empire!”

“Or the British,” countered the Frenchman, again chuckling.

“More coffee from Napoleon’s sideboard?”

Prince Nasir had always liked the French President, and he was extremely glad to know him better.

“Thank you,” he said. The two men walked across the room toward the silver coffeepot. They were already in step.

“Well, Your Highness, you are outlining to me a very sad state of affairs. And I agree, if I were the Crown Prince of such a nation I, too, would be extremely exercised by the situation. But to the outside world, Saudi Arabia looks very much like the one constant in a turbulent Middle East.”

“That may have been so twenty years ago, but it is most certainly not so today. It is my belief that this corrupt ruling family must be overthrown, and its excesses removed, the lifestyles of the Princes terminated. And the colossal spending on military hardware from the United States ceased forthwith. Everything has to change if we are to survive as the prosperous nation we once were.”

The Prince rose to his feet and paced across the room and back. “Remember, sir, as a nation we are not yet eighty years old. The active members of this family are just a generation, maybe two, from men who grew up in goat-hair tents and followed the rhythms of the great desert, from oasis to oasis, eating mainly dates and drinking camel’s milk…”

“You are surely not advocating a return to those days?” asked the President, smiling.

“No, sir, I am not. But I know we must return part of the way to our Bedouin roots in the desert, to the written creeds of the Prophet Mohammed. I do not wish to see our sons spending millions of dollars on Western luxuries.
“Wallahi!”
he exclaimed.
By God!
“What could that boy Khalid possibly have been doing with those cheap women on a yacht fit for a President, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, having just lost more than a quarter of a million dollars in the casino at Monte Carlo? I ask you that. What could he possibly have been doing with such a lifestyle?”

“Very probably having the most wonderful time.” The French President smiled. “But I do of course understand. It plainly is not right that there should be thousands of these young men ransacking the Saudi Treasury every month, at the expense of the people. I think you are very probably correct. Something will soon need to be done. Otherwise the people will rise up against the King, and you might be looking at a bloodbath…as we had in Paris in the eighteenth century. And by the sound of it, equally justified.”

Prince Nasir sipped his coffee. “The problem is,” he said, “our King is quite extraordinarily powerful. Not only does he pay all of the family’s bills—none of the young Princes ever sees a bill, for anything. Every charge they incur goes directly to the King, from all over the world. “But he also controls the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy, plus all of the security forces. Only he can pay them. And they are loyal to him alone.”

“How large is the Saudi Army these days?”

“Almost ninety thousand—nine brigades, three armored, five mechanized, and one airborne. They’re supported by five artillery battalions, and a separate Royal Guard regiment of three light infantry battalions. The armored brigades have almost three hundred highly advanced tanks, the MIA2 Abrams from the United States. Of course, one of our armored brigades is entirely French equipped.”