The Secret Soldier (17 page)

But Bakr and his men could stop Abdullah, Ibrahim said. Their attacks would reveal the opposition to Abdullah and Khalid. Many princes didn’t want Khalid to be king. The attacks would show them that the future of the House of Saud was at risk. They would force Khalid into exile and make Abdullah step down. A true guardian of the faith would take over.

“Can that really happen?” Bakr said.

“We’ll take control. And establish a new caliphate.”

 

 

WITH IBRAHIM’S MONEY, BAKR
had built the most powerful jihadi group since the early days of Al Qaeda, before the American response to September 11 forced Osama and his men into hiding. Besides the suicide bombers who had gone through his camp in Saudi Arabia, Bakr had trained almost fifty men in close combat at his base in Lebanon. These were soldiers, ready to attack a well-guarded palace or oil refinery. With surprise on their side, and the willingness to martyr themselves, they had a good chance of overcoming a defensive force three times as large.

His first attacks had proved as successful as could have been hoped. With a dozen men, he’d killed almost one hundred people and disrupted crude oil shipments all over the Gulf. Bakr should have been ecstatic, especially with another attack coming.

Instead he couldn’t shake his fear that Ibrahim was using him. Over time, Bakr had realized how little he knew about Ibrahim’s plans. Ibrahim refused to tell Bakr which princes were backing them. Nor would he reveal the details of who would ultimately rule. “Too much information is dangerous,” he said. “For both of us.” Bakr wondered whether Ibrahim simply wanted to replace one branch of the royal family with another. Ibrahim’s story about Khalid sounded like palace intrigue, princes conspiring. Bakr didn’t want thieves replacing thieves. He wanted the House of Saud uprooted from its foundations.

As bad as the secrecy was Bakr’s suspicion about Ibrahim’s faith. Certainly the general
seemed
to believe. When Bakr prayed with him, he spoke his
rakat—
prayer verses—easily and correctly. Yet he’d told Bakr that he had only once performed the
hajj,
the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the five pillars of Islam. The Quran itself said, “
Hajj
is the duty that mankind owes to Allah.” Certainly, a Muslim was required to conduct
hajj
only once. But with his wealth and power, Ibrahim could have performed
hajj
many times. Bakr himself had undertaken the pilgrimage three times. He didn’t understand why Ibrahim wouldn’t have chosen to go more than once.

Of course, Ibrahim was far busier than Bakr. And every Muslim slipped up and broke the ritual laws once in a while. But Ibrahim lacked something deeper. In his heart, Bakr felt the destiny that Allah had chosen for him
.
He felt Allah’s power. Praying was an honor and a pleasure, not a duty. The thought of God warmed him like the sun. He felt the same spirit in other true believers. But not in Ibrahim. Ibrahim spoke the words, but he never sounded convinced. If Bakr hadn’t believed so fervently, he might not have noticed. But he did. And so he did.

Bakr knew he might be wrong. Only Allah could know Ibrahim’s heart, the ripeness of his faith. But what if he was right? Why then had Ibrahim spared him, instead of arresting him when Gamal betrayed him years earlier? The answer must be that Ibrahim had always planned to use Bakr to seize power. Bakr imagined how Ibrahim saw him. A zealot from the most religious region of the Kingdom. A rabid dog to be unleashed when Ibrahim saw fit. Then tossed aside.

But if that was Ibrahim’s plan, the general had miscalculated, Bakr thought. With Allah’s guidance, Bakr had devised his own plan. He would use the soldiers that he had trained in a way that neither Ibrahim nor the men behind him would ever expect. He would do more than trade one branch of the Kingdom’s ruling family for another. He would free Arabia entirely from the tyranny of the Sauds. And if the strategy worked as Bakr intended—as
Allah
intended—it would draw the United States onto the Arabian peninsula, provoking a final confrontation between America and Islam.

 

 

BEFORE THAT BATTLE COULD
take place, Bakr faced a thousand obstacles. But as he sped north through the Bekaa to his camp, he felt confident, almost serene. For as the Prophet Muhammad—peace be upon Him—had said, “Whoever fights so that the Word of Allah is held high, he is in the way of Allah.” Yes, Bakr’s enemies were mighty. But Allah was mightier. And as he had since that day on the dune, Bakr knew beyond doubt that Allah was with him.

THE VILLA WAS AS RIDICULOUS AS WELLS EXPECTED, WITH A PRIVATE
pool and a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Wells decided to swim, then realized he didn’t have a bathing suit. Or a change of clothes. He called the concierge.

“Give me your measurements. One of my men will pick up what you need.” Wells did.

“And how much would you like to spend, monsieur?”

“For a shirt and pants and a shaving kit? A hundred euros, I guess.”

A faint throat-clearing told Wells that he had guessed wrong.

“Five hundred?”

More throat clearing.

“Up to you, then. Just put it on the room.” Wells hung up, reached for his cell, remembered that the battery was dead. He picked up the room phone again, called New Hampshire. Long distance at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Another couple barrels of Saudi crude down the drain.

“John?”

“None other.”

“I tried to call. Your phone was off.”

“I didn’t have it for a while.”

“But you’re okay.”

On the slopes below the villa, the cypress trees glowed in the sun like a dream by van Gogh. “Could say that.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“I’m in the south of France. The biggest risk I’m running is that I’ll slip getting into the pool. And I think I just spent two thousand dollars on a shirt and pants.”

“I hope they’re nice. The shirt and pants, I mean.”

“I expect they will be. I’ll take a picture for you.”

“Can you tell me who they are, the people you’re with? Or what they want?”

Wells looked at the phone. Open line. He ought to keep operational security. “Wish I could, but not now. I’m not sure you’d believe it anyway. I’m not sure I do. How are you? How’s Tonka?”

“You put me first. That’s sweet. We’re both fine.”

“Anything happening?”

“I did arrest a couple of drunks on Main Street last night, but I know that doesn’t count for much.”

Wells supposed he had that coming. “Anne. I promise. We’ll come here one day. You’d like it.”

“That would be nice.” Though she didn’t sound convinced. “Be careful in the pool, okay? Those things can be deadly.”

“Noted.”

 

 

THE CLOTHES ARRIVED AN
hour later, linen pants and a blue silk shirt and pure white swim trunks. They didn’t have labels. But they looked expensive. They felt expensive. They even smelled expensive. Wells tried them on and hardly recognized himself. The man in the mirror looked as sleek and shiny as a peacock looking for a mate.

The trunks were even worse. They fit tighter than boxers. When Wells cinched them, he had the odd sensation that he was molesting himself.

The phone trilled. “Are your clothes pleasing, monsieur?”

“Pleasing? They’re—” Wells wanted to say
absurd
, but went with “very nice.”

“Can I help you with anything else?”

“Actually, yes. A laptop.”

“I’m sorry, sir. We have an executive center in the hotel, but we don’t keep laptops for guests—”

“Then buy one.”
Can’t cost more than the bathing suit,
Wells thought.

“Yes, sir. Shall I put that purchase on the room also?”

“You shall.”

The Saudi soldiers Wells had met in Afghanistan were undisciplined and lazy, quick to boast but slow to the front lines. Wells had rarely talked to them, and he realized now how little he knew about Saudi Arabia. Before his next meeting with Abdullah, he wanted to learn. If he were still in the agency, he could have gone to the analysts at the Near East Desk or even called to the frontline operatives in Riyadh. Instead he would be reduced to Googling. Like the civilian that he was
.

The laptop arrived just as he finished his swim. It didn’t come with a receipt, and he didn’t ask what it had cost. Heads of state and billionaires must live this way. They never paid for anything. Their accountants settled up later.

Wells booted up, got online. He expected to read for only a couple hours, but the more he learned, the more fascinated he became.

ABDULLAH’S LINEAGE DATED BACK
to 1744, when a fundamentalist cleric named Abdul Wahhab allied with a minor Arabian ruler named Muhammad ibn Saud. At the time, Islam had become an almost polytheistic religion. Many Muslims prayed to spirits, a practice that the prophet Muhammad had banned a thousand years before.

Wahhab demanded that Muslims follow the Quran literally and that lawbreakers face harsh penalties. Around 1743, he ordered an adulterous woman stoned to death. Because of his strict views, Wahhab was forced from his hometown of Uyayna. Looking for protection, he asked Saud if he could live in Diriyah, the village that Saud ruled.

Saud agreed to shelter Wahhab to write and preach. Over time, Wahhab’s sermons attracted a growing audience, who called themselves Wahhabis. They pledged allegiance to Saud, forming a potent army. They fought under Saud’s flag: a green cloth with the
shahada,
the Islamic declaration of faith, in its center. Beneath the
shahada,
a curved white sword. The flag symbolized Saud’s vision, combining the glory of Islam with the might of the state. Wisely, Saud never demanded religious leadership for himself, leaving that role to Wahhab.

With the Wahhabis as his soldiers, Saud conquered the central Arabian peninsula. After he died, his sons followed. By 1810, the Sauds controlled most of Arabia. Then the Turkish army used modern weapons to roll them back. In 1818, the Turks captured Riyadh and brought Abdallah, Saud’s great-grandson, to Istanbul, where he was executed. For the rest of the nineteenth century, the House of Saud remained in oblivion.

Then it roared back.

In 1902, Abdul-Aziz, Saud’s great-great-great-great-grandson, took Riyadh in a surprise attack. At the time, Abdul-Aziz had only a few dozen soldiers. But over the next two decades, he followed the same playbook as his eighteenth-century ancestors, harnessing religious zeal to conquer Arabia. The
Ikhwan—
Arabic for “brothers”—formed the core of his army. The
Ikhwan
were Bedouin so religious that they disliked even looking at non-Muslims, and they massacred their enemies without remorse. Abdul-Aziz could barely control them, but their brutal reputation helped him. Opposing cities surrendered to him without fighting on the condition that he keep the
Ikhwan
away.

In 1924, Abdul-Aziz’s forces took Mecca. The following year, he reached Jeddah and the Red Sea, completing his conquest of the Arabian peninsula. For the second time in two centuries, the House of Saud ruled Arabia. But the
Ikhwan
were not ready to quit fighting. Their leaders turned against Abdul-Aziz, saying that he had allied with the British and was insufficiently religious. But Abdul-Aziz no longer needed the
Ikhwan.
He built a new army from more loyal tribes. Using machine guns and cars from the British, he put down the rebellion. And in September 1932, he officially created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Its flag was the same green banner that Sauds had fought under since the eighteenth century.

 

 

ABDUL-AZIZ DIED IN 1953.
His sons had ruled ever since, inheriting the world’s biggest fortune. As oil prices soared in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia became one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The princes’ wasteful ways became legendary in Europe, but plenty of money stayed inside the Kingdom. A Saudi saying held, “If you didn’t become rich during the days of King Khalid”—who ruled from 1975 to 1982—“you will never be rich.” By 1979, the average income in Saudi Arabia was higher than in the United States.

The windfall didn’t last. In 1982, a glut of oil caused the price of crude to plunge. For most of the next two decades, it stayed below twenty dollars. The Saudi economy cratered. The princes still lived richly, but by 2000 the average Saudi made just one-fifth as much as the average American.

Then another oil boom began, as demand for oil soared in China and India. Prices rose and rose, topping a hundred forty dollars a barrel in 2008. Even after the recession of 2009, a barrel of crude traded around eighty dollars. At that price, Saudi Arabia earned almost a billion dollars a day selling oil. Every two months, the House of Saud raked in as much cash as Bill Gates had earned in his entire life. Of course, most of that money went to keep the government running. All Saudis received free education and health care. Gasoline was heavily subsidized. And the Kingdom had no income taxes.