The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel (21 page)

38

“You’re quite the diplomat,” I said as the call ended.

“Why do you say that?” the king asked, pressing a button on his desk and summoning a steward.

“I mean, you’re not convinced the president is being held in Dabiq.”

“Nor are you.”

“I’m not the one trying to convince the vice president to tread carefully.”

There was a knock on the door, and a steward entered with a fresh pot of tea. He promptly served us all, beginning with His Majesty, and then stepped out.

“You’re worried this thing with Jack Vaughn goes deeper than maybe anyone yet realizes,” I said when the king, the colonel, and I were alone again.

“I hope not,” the king replied. “But it’s too soon to rule anything out.”

“Because it’s possible the intel being shown to the VP could be compromised.”

“Perhaps.”

“Which could mean someone is trying to lure us into a fight in Dabiq when the president is elsewhere.”

“And Khalif.”

“But what if you’re wrong?” I countered. “What if they really are in Dabiq?”

“You just heard me. My men are ready to go into Dabiq if that’s where the evidence leads.”

“And if it’s ambiguous and you’re out of time and you have to make a decision?”

“We’ll follow the vice president’s lead.”

“Even if he’s wrong.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what friends do.”

“Stand with each other in a fight.”

“Absolutely,” said the king. “As I said, Martin and I go way back.”

“Back to his first Senate campaign, as I recall.”

“Longer.”

“Really
 
—how long?”

“He and his first wife came on a codel when he was a freshman in Congress,” the king said, using insider slang for a congressional delegation. “They came to meet my father. I happened to be home from boarding school for spring break. I was just a kid, but my father insisted that I join the group for dinner.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t remember exactly, but it was after the ’67 war. Things were tense. The Holbrookes were very pro-Israel. But they’d heard good things about my father. They wanted to take his measure, to see if there was a way to deescalate tensions, maybe even to make peace.”

“Did you ever think he’d one day be the VP?”

“Off the record?”

“Sure.”

“Then no. He was a bright guy
 
—don’t get me wrong. One of the smartest men I’d seen enter Congress. But to be honest, he seemed
to be more of a businessman than a politician. Very practical. Very pragmatic. A real can-do attitude. I thought he’d never make it in Washington. But what did I know? I was just a kid.”

“Of course, you didn’t think you’d one day sit on the throne either, did you?” I probed.

He shook his head and stared at the steam rising off the cup of tea in his hands. “Never. Never wanted it. Never sought it. Never even bothered to think it was something I needed to worry about.”

“Worry?”

“‘Uneasy lies the head . . . ,’” he said.

His voice trailed off, but there was no reason to finish. I got the allusion. He was referencing the title of his father’s memoirs, written in 1962. The title was a line from Shakespeare’s
Henry IV, Part 2
. I’d discovered the play and fallen in love with it in high school. I’d played the lead in college and still remembered every line.

The king sipped his tea. I sipped mine. Sharif said nothing. I held my tongue. If for only a moment, His Majesty was lost in thought and it was not my place to disturb him.

I thought about the significance of that line from
Henry IV, Part 2
: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Vice President Holbrooke didn’t wear a crown, of course, but he was finding out just how uneasy
 
—and how uncertain
 
—a position of power could be. I hoped for all our sakes he would make the correct decisions in the hours ahead.

“My father watched his own grandfather, my namesake, be assassinated in Jerusalem
 
—watched it happen with his own eyes,” the king said eventually, though not so much to me or to the colonel as to himself as he reflected on the almost-unbearable challenges of the dynasty into which he was born. “I grew up seeing one palace intrigue after another, things young boys should never have to see. And now my children are watching it happen all over again. Will such curses never end?”

It was a quiet for a bit. Then I asked him if the queen and his children were safe. He said they were. A moment later, he added that he had sent them out of the country. I asked where. He would not say. I suspected they were now in the States, but it did not seem appropriate to pry any further, so I let it go. Almost.

“And the crown prince?” I asked of his eldest son. “Where is he?”

“In there,” he replied, nodding to the door to his left.

“Getting some rest?”

“Well deserved,” he said.

“Much needed,” I added.

“Indeed.”

“May I change the subject?” I asked.

“Please.”

“The Egyptians,” I said, nodding in the other direction, back to the war room beside us.

“A wonderful people,” said the king.

“And the Saudis,” I added, “and the Emirates . . .”

“Family.”

“And yet the world is not used to seeing you all work together on military matters.”

“Or any matters.”

“Or any matters
 
—that’s true,” I agreed. “You have all had many difficulties with each other over the years.”

The king nodded.

“Pan-Arab unity was more of a dream than a reality?”

“Unfortunately. But things are changing.”

“How so?”

“For one, new leaders with new outlooks have emerged,” said the monarch. “For another, we find ourselves facing common enemies.”

“ISIS?”

“Of course, but not ISIS alone.”

“Iran.”

“That is a very sensitive subject,” he replied. “We are doing our best to maintain open and cordial relations with Tehran.”

“But it’s no secret that the Sunni Arab world feels the Shias of Persia could soon pose an existential threat.”

“Many believe this, yes.”

“Don’t you?”

“The Arabs face many challenges on many fronts.”

“You don’t want me to quote you directly about the Iran threat.”

“No.”

“Then off the record.”

He smiled grimly. “We face many challenges on many fronts.”

Given how much access he and his team were giving me, I was intrigued by how guarded the king was in his comments to me. I had earned a degree of trust, and that trust was growing, to be sure, but clearly there were limits; there were red lines beyond which I could not go. Not now. Probably not ever. I wasn’t a Muslim. I wasn’t an Arab. I wasn’t family. I was still an outsider, and a journalist at that. Monarchs didn’t typically get close to reporters, no matter from what part of the world they hailed.

“Is it fair to say that Israel is no longer considered the prime and central threat to the Sunni Arab community?” I asked.

“Off the record, that’s probably a fair statement
 
—as I said, things are changing. As new and very serious and immediate threats grow, people’s perspectives on past problems and conflicts tend to shift.”

“There appears to be a widespread reevaluation of Israel’s role in the region taking place among the Arabs
 
—at least among Arab leaders, though perhaps not entirely among the people,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s the right way to put it,” the king said. “I think it’s more a matter of priorities. A leader only has so many hours in the day. What is he going to focus on? Defending himself and his people from attack, from genocide, annihilation, subjugation at the hands of mortal enemies? Or planning to proactively, preemptively
attack another nation that is here to stay, that isn’t going anywhere? We face many challenges in our region. Poverty. Illiteracy. Economic inequalities. Tribal animosities. A lack of robust manufacturing. A lack of enough advanced, high-tech industries. I could go on, but you know the list. And the so-called Arab Spring was, I believe, a wake-up call for many leaders in this region. The people want us to focus on making their lives better. If we don’t, they may turn to revolution. They may turn to dark forces. So no one in this region has the time or energy or resources to wage an unwinnable war in an effort to remove an entire nation and people from the map. Only the extremists want this. The rest of us want to find ways to create peace and prosperity and opportunity for all the people of the region.”

“I hear you’ve become quite close to Wahid Mahfouz,” I said, referring to the new Egyptian president.

“We speak often,” he said. “We’ve spoken twice today.”

“You went to visit him in January.”

“And he came to visit me in June.”

“And . . . ?”

“And we are finding common ground.”

“You’re working closely together?”

“On many fronts.”

“Like what?”

That grim smile again. “Many fronts.”

I noticed the king glancing at the clock. I wasn’t going to have his attention much longer, and no matter what I tried, he remained so guarded.

“I hear Mahfouz is quite close to Daniel Lavi as well,” I added, wanting to see if I could get the king to give me some insight into rumors that the Egyptians were developing a close strategic relationship with the Israeli prime minister and his unity government.

“You’ll have to talk to Daniel about that,” he demurred.

“I hope to
 
—as soon as he recovers,” I said. “But something has
happened in the last few years. You and the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Emirates seem to be working quite closely together against ISIS, against Iran, and
 
—less noticed by most people
 
—with the Israelis.”

“This is a very sensitive subject.”

“But I’m not wrong.”

“The Egyptians have a treaty with Israel. So do we. You would expect us to be working closely together.”

“Not this closely.”

“Maybe not in the past, but new breezes are blowing.”

“The Egyptians have had a treaty with the Israelis since ’79, but after Sadat’s assassination, it was always a cold peace.”

“Certainly under Hosni this was the case,” the king said, referring to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

“Then came the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt.”

“A very dark time.”

“But now that the Brotherhood has been removed . . .”

“That’s a question for Wahid,” the king said diplomatically. “It’s an interesting story. But it’s not one for me to tell.”

“I understand,” I said, disappointed but not surprised.

I didn’t really need the king to confirm to me the significance of what I saw happening in the next room. A historic, extraordinary Sunni Arab alliance was emerging. The Jordanians, Egyptians, Saudis, and Emiratis were working together toward common goals and objectives. They were working with the Americans to launch a major military operation to attack ISIS, a Sunni Arab group, in the territory of Syria, an Arab neighbor, to rescue an ally, the president of the United States, who had just tried to complete a peace treaty between the Palestinian Sunni Arabs and the Jews of Israel. And behind it all
 
—arguably driving or at least accelerating this historic move toward unity
 
—was the specter of an even larger threat looming over the entire region: the prospect that the Shia Muslim Persians of Iran might be about to build nuclear weapons.

“Of course, you can’t write about any of this,” the king said out of the blue.

“Any of what?” I asked.

“The call with the vice president. The players you see in the room next door. The operation being planned for later tonight. These are all extremely sensitive.”

“Isn’t this why you brought me here?” I responded. “To tell these stories?”

“Not yet, not now,” the monarch said. “In a book, perhaps, years from now. I realize this is history and eventually it does have to be told, and I believe you will do a fair and honest job, Mr. Collins. But like a fine wine, it takes many years before it is ready to be sold and sipped and savored, does it not? Or so I’m told.”

It was an interesting analogy for a Muslim who wasn’t supposed to drink wine, but I think I got his point. Still, I needed a story. I needed to file something, and soon, and I said so.

“I’m not saying you can’t write anything,” the king clarified. “I’m just saying some things are particularly sensitive.”

I needed His Majesty to clarify what he meant, but just then the door to the war room opened. Prince Feisal stepped in, apologized for interrupting, and whispered something to the king, who immediately rose.

“Forgive me, Mr. Collins; something has come up,” he said with a new sense of urgency, and suddenly he was gone.

39

I glanced at the clock on the king’s desk.

It was now just after two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. Sixteen hours until the deadline. Less than three hours until the sun went down.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I can’t say,” said Colonel Sharif, reading an e-mail or a text on his phone, though from my angle it wasn’t clear which.

“Why not?”

“I really can’t say,” Sharif repeated. “We’d better go.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs,” he said. “I’m supposed to give you a tour of the base.”

“I don’t want a tour,” I said. “I need to go back in there.”

“Not right now.”

“Why not?”

“If I could tell you, I would. But I can’t. So let’s go upstairs, and we’ll come back when I get the all clear.”

“No, Yusef, this is completely unacceptable. This is precisely why the king brought me here, to cover this whole crisis from beginning to end.”

“I understand, Mr. Collins. But there’s been a development.”

“And you can’t talk about it.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“So where does that leave me?”

“Taking a tour of the base.”

“No,” I said again. “There’s no point and no time. If I can’t go back into the war room yet, then I need a phone and a computer and access to the Internet.”

“What for?”

I just looked at him for a moment, wondering if he could possibly be serious. “To do my job,” I said.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Sharif replied. “I’ll see what I can do.”

But I wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

“Yusef
 
—Colonel
 
—listen to me. Please. You don’t seem to understand. I’ve been as patient as anyone could expect. I’ve been arrested, imprisoned, and put in solitary confinement. I’ve been used to do a sting operation against the director of the CIA. I’ve had my phone taken away. I’ve had my computer taken away. I’ve been made to sign nondisclosure papers preventing me from writing about the biggest story of my lifetime. I’ve been brought to a top secret military base to sit in on high-level meetings with the military leaders of five countries but prevented from talking to my editors or even to my family. I get the sensitivities of the moment. And I get that you have a job to do. But so do I
 
—and I
have
to be in touch with my editors. I
have
to know what other people are reporting. And I
have
to file a story soon. Which means you have to help me
 
—or let me go.”

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Collins.”

“But you’re not going to help me.”

“I’m going to help you as best I can. But there will not be any communications off of this base until this operation to rescue the president is planned and executed. Period. Please understand
 
—I’m not trying to be rude. But the fate of our kingdom is on the line here, and I have my orders. Now, if you’ll follow me upstairs, I’d be quite grateful.”

The next thing I knew, we were riding the king’s private elevator back up to the ground floor. We rode in silence. I was livid but determined not to say anything stupid. There had to be something I could offer Sharif to get him to change his mind. But what? I had no ideas and no leverage.

When the elevator doors opened, we were met by the two MPs who’d brought us here in the first place. They asked us to step inside an armored personnel carrier that was idling in the garage, and soon we were heading back out into the storm, which had not let up one bit. If anything, it had intensified. The clouds were thicker, the sky darker, and the booms of thunder far louder than when we’d first headed down to the bunker. The base was no longer being pelted by hail, but the winter rains were coming down in buckets. Even with our high beams on and the windshield wipers going at full speed, visibility was limited at best, and I couldn’t help but wonder how this was going to impact the operation the king and the generals were planning down below.

“How long is it supposed to go on like this?” I asked our driver.

“They’re saying most of the night, sir.”

“Like this, or is it supposed to let up a bit?”

“Actually, they’re saying it’s going to get a lot worse.”

“How’s that possible?”

“I have no idea, sir. But that’s what they’re saying.”

“Is anyone still flying?”

“Not many. Last sorties went out about thirty minutes ago. Should be back soon. But we hear everything else is being grounded.”

This didn’t bode well for the president, I thought, but decided against stating the obvious. Instead, I changed the subject. “Any word on Agent Harris?” I asked.

Just then the colonel’s phone rang.

“Still in the infirmary, sir,” the MP in the front passenger seat said as Sharif took the call.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“Sorry, sir. We haven’t heard.”

“Could we take a few minutes and go see him?”

The driver shrugged. “I guess, if you’d like.”

“I would, very much,” I said.

Admittedly, my motives were less than humanitarian. Aside from General Ramirez and myself, Agent Harris was the only other American on the base. If it came time to bail out of the Jordanian orbit
 
—which I increasingly felt was the case
 
—Harris would be the key. I was fairly certain that if I asked him, he’d be willing to let me accompany him back to Washington. The Jordanians certainly couldn’t force me to stay on the base, operating under their rules of military censorship. And as intrigued as I was with watching all this unfold from the inside, if I couldn’t report any of it in real time
 
—and had to wait several years until I could even write a book about it all
 
—then there was no point staying.

But I wasn’t sure I wanted to head all the way back to D.C. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense to head to Tel Aviv instead. I very much wanted to see Yael for personal reasons, but I also thought I might have a better shot at being able to cover the unfolding saga in the region using my sources in Israeli intelligence and the IDF than I would by returning to the States. Of course, it now seemed unlikely that Harris and I could even get off the base before daybreak at the earliest. But hopefully we could be on the first flight out of Jordan once conditions permitted.

What’s more, I thought, Harris had a phone and thus access to the outside world. Perhaps he’d let me use it to call Allen and touch base with my family and catch up on the headlines.

Brilliant flashes of lightning repeatedly illuminated the desert skies. With each bolt, I saw more of the base and the tanks and APCs blocking every entrance and providing perimeter security. I felt bad for the soldiers standing guard in such terrible conditions but at the
same time was grateful they were out there. This base was one of the largest in Jordan, but we weren’t that far now from the Syrian border and the genocidal conditions that had emerged within. Nor were we so far from the border with Iraq and the murderous rampage ISIS was perpetrating there as well.

When the colonel finished his call, our driver glanced in his rearview mirror and asked if it was okay to head to the infirmary. But to everyone’s surprise, Sharif said no.