Keys to the Kingdom

by Bob Graham

  He slowed and moved into the left lane. Stopping, Tony snapped on the emergency light and turned to her. “Terri, I will never be able to repay you for what you did to get to the truth.”

  Wordlessly, she reached over and gave Tony a kiss on the cheek.

  “I know it sounds strange, but in a way, Talbott’s assignment is a gift. It forces me to do something other than wallow in my own grief. It’s given me the hope that I’ll find some purpose for Carol’s life and,” he choked, “her death.”

  Tony reclined in his seat, his head pressed against the headrest and his eyes squeezed tight. He remained that way for several minutes. Eventually regaining his composure, he restarted the car and continued north.

  From the 101 in L.A., he took the Wilshire exit for the crosstown slog to the La Mar condominiums. James Levy, a Georgetown classmate and tennis teammate who had ridden the Southern California real estate tide to a minifortune and was now trying to hold on, had offered the unit to Tony for his L.A. stay.

  It was 7:30 when Tony parked in the underground garage. Together he and Terri rode the elevator to the thirty-third floor.

  Unit 3302 was the embodiment of Levy’s successes. More than twenty-five hundred square feet of elegance stretched over two floors with a panoramic view of Century City and the L.A. Country Club golf course. Furnishings represented the eclectic tastes of a top Beverly Hills decorator.

  Terri and Tony were both weary. She showered first in the top-level bathroom. As she prepared to step out she admired her lean muscled body projected on the mirrored stall.

  On the stopover at her apartment, one of the necessities she’d chosen was a transparent negligee. She didn’t want him to have any mixed signals about her desires tonight.

  Tony waited in the opulent, first-level living room. He put down the Chivas as Terri slithered down the stairs.

  Rising, he wrapped her in a gentle embrace, his hands clasped behind her lower back. They kissed, their lips lingering.

  Tony released his hold, picked up the scotch, and moved alone to the floor-to-ceiling glass window looking out on the sea of early evening lights.

  Turning, he gazed at her for several moments. “Terri, you are beautiful.”

  She looked down demurely, while savoring the tingling sensation in her thighs. He took a full swallow of his drink and moved toward the flowered sofa in the center of the room.

  He motioned her to the sofa, and as he put his right arm around her shoulders, she began nibbling, nuzzling his ear as Tony continued. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation in the car. Maybe one of the things that affected my relationship with Carol was that we became too physical too soon.”

  Terri pulled back. Her tongue withdrew and went dry.

  “We both wanted to say with our bodies that our distinctly different backgrounds, upbringing, color—didn’t count. But of course they did. If we had not rushed our decision to live together, maybe she wouldn’t have been in the position she was that Tuesday morning. I don’t want to repeat that mistake with you. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Terri admitted, “but I respect you. I don’t know if we can have a successful relationship, but I want to give us the best chance to find out.”

  Tony raised his hands to her cheeks and gave her an affectionate kiss. They disengaged.

  “You may not believe it, but this is harder for me than for you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Terri responded, “but I’ll follow your pace. I’ll take the master suite upstairs. You use the second bedroom down here.”

  Tony and Terri were sitting in the L.A. office of the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, on the sixth floor of the Federal Building at 11000 Wilshire Boulevard. She was reading the L.A. Times. He was reviewing notes for his imminent presentation.

  Jeff Nussbaum rushed into the reception room, exhibiting the same high energy as he had when he was a linebacker for Brown. Rep tie askew, the thinning hair atop his six foot, two frame even more untamed than the last time Tony had seen him, Jeff shook hands with Terri and waved Tony to follow him into his office.

  Tony noticed that Jeff’s office was on the same floor as the U.S. attorney, a sure sign he was on the career fast track. Following up on Mark’s comments, Tony had studied Google news on the Chinese spy case and now congratulated Jeff for his doggedness.

  “But we didn’t reserve thirty minutes with the boss to discuss this; he already knows more about that than he would want.” Looking at his watch, Jeff took Tony by the arm into the adjoining office. “Make it as sharp and clean as you can.”

  Jeff introduced Tony to Randolph Edgar. His reputation as a straightdown-the-line prosecutor had been fogged by the China case and recurring newspapers’ speculation that he was considering a run for governor when the president left office.

  Tony had prepared PowerPoint slides that explained the situation in heightened granularity, beyond what he had told Jeff the previous Saturday. “Sir, I attempt to avoid overdramatization, but these facts cry out that thousands, maybe millions, of lives are at stake and that Americans are the most at risk. There are still many missing pieces to the puzzle, but the picture is beginning to fill in.”

  Tony divulged what he had learned the previous day in San Diego. “It is urgent that we know what role the Peninsular group has been, and is, playing. We need to know and we need to know now.”

  Tony was deflated when Edgar responded, “This is a very sensitive matter. I’ll have to send it up the flagpole and let you know the higher-ups’ decision as to where to go.”

  Terri dropped Tony at LAX and headed back down to San Diego. The departing kiss was warm but not as passionate as the night before. Waiting at gate D-40 for Delta 78 back to Dulles, Tony received a call from the professor. “Mr. Ramos, I have considered the alternatives and would recommend a mutual friend of mine and bin Laden’s, Mr. Yazid Sonji of Kuala Lumpur. I believe you have made his acquaintance.”

  OCTOBER 3

  Port of Aden, Yemen

  The twenty-foot container of Ramallah olive oil had arrived at the port of Aden by truck. For three days the cargo was parked on the sprawling and dusty landside lot awaiting the arrival of the Petronius, the newest ship in the fleet of the Greek maritime titan Aristotle Stephanous.

  Ships like this 195,000-ton product of the Chinese shipbuilding yard south of Shanghai had long since eclipsed the size capable of traversing the Panama Canal. Its life would be spent transporting fifteen thousand containers per trip from the Middle East and Asia to the U.S. West Coast and returning with a new load.

  Aristotle Stephanous himself had come to launch its maiden Pacific crossing. From his position near the site where, almost to the day, years earlier, an al-Qaeda suicide squad had attacked the destroyer USS Cole, Stephanous watched as the Ramallah container was lifted 140 feet above the dock and placed in Bay 13 slot K7.

  Three hours later he was proud but vaguely discontented as his newest prize eased into the Gulf of Aden. From his lavish stateroom, he viewed the receding port.

  OCTOBER 10

  Aramco Oil Facilities, Eastern Saudi Arabia

  In the interminable game driven by security, economics, and national pride through which the supply of petroleum from the world’s largest producer was managed, the faucets should have been at full throttle. A day earlier, West Texas light crude had sold for $119 a barrel. The global thirst for oil, the absence of any intention on the part of the largest customer to institute a policy of energy restraint, and the uncertainties unleashed at the Indian-Pakistani border had daily pushed the oil market to new highs.

  Luke Simmons had a central role in reopening the faucet. An expatriate for twenty-three years from Lubbock, Texas, he was responsible for the second-largest oil-processing facility in the kingdom, which prepared petroleum for the long journey to the refineries in the consuming nations of the world.

  Operations had been down for fifty hours. Luke worked without rest to bring the massive plant back on line. A
s he inspected the valves in the most confounding unit of the plant, he felt a strong gust of hot wind on his back. Before he could turn, he was knocked from his feet and enveloped in a hundred tons of collapsing steel and concrete.

  The cloud could be seen from Riyadh, three hundred kilometers to the west, and from Abu Dhabi, almost twice that distance to the east. Petroleum was spewing like a thousand Old Faithfuls, settling over the dead body of Luke and his as yet uncounted colleagues.

  The news reached halfway around the world. Fox interrupted its ten o’clock political roundtable to announce the consequences:

  “The disruption occasioned by the nuclear attack on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil production center has driven the price of oil in overnight trading to $135 a barrel. Oil experts have identified the obvious—the primary beneficiary is Iran.”

  OCTOBER 11

  Long Beach

  The older man wasted no time on pleasantries as he paced across the ornate carpeting. “Well, it seems to be over. Our misjudgments and the actions of people we trusted have taken us to the endgame. Roland, what do you think we should do?”

  Roland Jeralewski stared silently at the Pacific for several moments. He turned to the older man with tears in his eyes. “Mr. Chairman, I agree with your assessment. As successful as we’ve been in maintaining our distance and covert status, with what has happened in Mumbai and Aramco, those temporary victories are almost certainly going to be stripped away.”

  “So what happens next?” the older man asked grimly.

  “I believe the next attack will be on our homeland. Since the early weeks after that tragic Tuesday in 2001, our friends in the White House have given as their ultimate defense for continuing the disastrous policies in Iraq and Afghanistan that the U.S. has avoided another attack. In my opinion, the fundamental reason for this is not that the terrorist enemies have been weakened; by every standard they are stronger. Rather, it is what bin Laden says. He has consistently followed the strategy that in order to maximize global chaos through terror, every attack must be more lethal than the last. Up until September 19, he had not demonstrated the capability to exceed 9/11. Now he has done it twice. There is no question in my mind that the U.S. is next, and sooner rather than later.”

  Privately pondering the significance of what he had just said, Roland paused to collect himself. “We must do everything in our power to keep that from happening. We must identify the people in our government who can develop a plan outside the official line and join in a common effort to avoid an American apocalypse. That should start with ...”

  The door to Roland’s office was flung open.

  Jeff Nussbaum and ten officers in uniform entered. “Mr. Jeralewski, I have a search warrant issued by the magistrate for the Central District of California. I would appreciate your cooperation by providing us with your pagers, cell phones, keys to your desk, and computer passwords.”

  For two men accustomed to command, it was a moment of truth, mixed with unreality. The chairman read the magistrate’s document as he had hundreds of others, but none with the personal consequences of this warrant. Jeralewski handed over his iPhone to Nussbaum.

  Amidst the confusion of more than a hundred law enforcement officers sealing the offices, herding employees into the conference room, confiscating personal communications devices, and readying for a microscopic search, the television in the reception room broadcast Fox News at noon:

  “The young man has utterly failed in his first test of leadership as the presumptive next president of the United States. His twelve hours of silence since the nuclear explosion in the oil center of Saudi Arabia has emboldened our most violent enemies. There are reports of thousands in the streets of Tehran cheering the attack against the Saudi Sunnis. Oil is now selling on the world markets at $163 a barrel.”

  OCTOBER 13

  Washington, D.C.

  Tony was met in the State Department lobby by two unscheduled visitors: Roland Jeralewski and Laura Billington.

  Having canceled his nine o’clock appointment, Tony led them to the fifth-floor conference room. Jeralewski seemed distantly familiar. Tony had seen photographs of him taken at various Washington high-society festivities. But his eyes were on Laura—why was she here?

  All three were too stressed for small talk; Jeralewski took the initiative. Describing what had happened the previous day, in an emotionchoked voice he said to Tony, “Mr. Ramos, my colleagues and I are responsible for what, in retrospect, can only be described as actions contrary to the best interests of our country. The U.S. attorney’s office will soon have all the documentation. But there is nothing we can do about the past at this point. What we are here for is to offer our assistance in avoiding even further death and violence.”

  “You can start by filling me in on what happened,” Tony directed.

  Jeralewski hesitated, then nodded and began. “Within a month of the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War, while still in government, I attended a meeting with other U.S. officials at the Jeddah residence of the king of Saudi Arabia. He was enraged that our government had given considerable assistance to Saddam Hussein in the fulfillment of his nuclear aspirations. The king demanded the same consideration. We tried to dissuade him, but it became clear he was adamant. We withdrew to Washington for consultations at the highest levels of our government.

  “In the course of these discussions, we were informed of an arrangement the king and a British defense contractor, BAE, had reached in 1988. In exchange for the sale of thirty-five-billion pounds’ worth of Tornado fighter jets and ancillary equipment, BAE agreed to a more than three-and-a-half-billion-pound ‘facilitation fee’ to various Saudi officials, principally the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Mahmood al-Rasheed.

  “Realizing that our term in office could terminate in a few months—and it did—we speculated that if the facilitation of seventy-one Tornados was worth over three billion pounds, how much higher was the value of access to the bomb? When we returned to Jeddah, we told the king he would have full U.S. assistance in making his kingdom a nuclear state if he would divert what amounted to ninety percent of the BAE payment to an account we would designate and control.”

  The information was almost unbelievable, and yet it made perfect sense. Jeralewski was the third confirmation of the 1991 Jeddah palace arrangement, the king’s grandson Zaid al Swainee and, two weeks before, Samrat Nasir, having provided the first two. Each participant at that fateful February 1991 meeting had provided an additional perspective. Each contributed to the converging confirmations necessary for an intelligence officer to convert suspicion into truth.

  Tony interrupted: “Whatever Saudi ethics might be, would it not be unethical and illegal for the U.S. government to accept such payments? Who is the ‘we’ in your last sentence?”

  “Of course it would,” Jeralewski confirmed. “The ‘we’ was various members of the previous administration, under the cover of Peninsular. The king agreed—over the kicking and screaming of the ambassador, I might add—to the arrangement that other than a pittance for the ambassador, all future payments would be directed to the Peninsular account at a New York bank. The kingdom began the project almost immediately, using U.S. or U.S.-trained scientists and materials provided under the supervision of an American physicist of foreign descent. The flow of funds to our account commenced in October of 1991. Our assistance continued until the project was completed.

  “There were, of course, conditions that went along with this arrangement. We insisted that none of the material produced from this project was to go outside the control of the kingdom without our explicit approval. The king concurred. For our part of the bargain we would use all our governmental authority and influence to keep the existence of our agreement and the project secret.”

  “How successful were the parties in keeping those commitments?” Tony asked.

  “Until this summer, the king had kept his part of the bargain. For our side—in spite of the political difficulties after 9/11 caused by the
literally dozens of investigations that sniffed around the edges of the project, not only in the U.S. but elsewhere—with the help of our political friends we were able to keep it under cover. Now the king’s ‘indiscretions’ with bin Laden will hurl our agreement into the headlines. I would label it a failure.”

  Jeralewski’s shoulders drooped with the weariness and resignation of a condemned man.

  Since the explosion of the 777 in Kuala Lumpur, Tony had suspected there was a greater motivation for the U.S. cover-up of the Saudi involvement in 9/11 than anything Senator Billington had contemplated. This was the first hard confirmation from the U.S. side of the partnership. The puzzle pieces were falling into place.

  “Are you saying that the reason for all the 9/11 cover-up had nothing to do with 9/11 itself?”

  “The previous administration and, to a slightly lesser extent, this one have been built on secrets, keeping the American people uninformed so they could be manipulated,” Jeralewski said. “But the scale of the cover-up was driven by the realization that if the Saudi project and our participation and profit from it had been known, the president would never have survived the next election.

  “In Great Britain, internal investigators were about to open up the BAE case. Prime Minister Tony Blair shut it down, saying that relations with an important strategic ally were at risk. Most assumed that was Saudi Arabia. Blair, in fact, was referring to the U.S. and the consequences of the disclosure of the project for our government. With the governments of both countries reeling from the Iraq war, you can imagine what the disclosure of this scheme would have meant on each side of the pond.”

  “I have a final question. Why is Ms. Billington with you?”

  “We had an arrangement by which she provided us with certain ‘services.’”