And now he sat in his study with Colonel Jacques Gamoudi, sipping coffee and watching the Arab-language television stations to see how the disastrous news was playing out. Most commentators had put together a conspiracy theory that the oil industry had indeed been destroyed by persons unknown.
Of course al-Qaeda was an immediate suspect, but al-Qaeda was a shadowy organization without a titular head, without a headquarters, without known leadership. It was a seething internal mob, angry, determined, stateless, and malevolent to the rulers of the kingdom. And since it was funded as an organization mostly by Saudi Arabia, or at least Saudi Arabians, it was difficult to see why on earth al-Qaeda should have wanted to cut off the hand that fed it. Certainly the activities of the assault forces of the night had in half an hour brought the Saudi economy to its knees. The question was, who were the assault forces of the night? And why had they committed this apparently motiveless act of flagrant criminal aggression? Not to mention, what military genius had masterminded the assaults so brilliantly that they had treated the security forces as if they did not exist?
Prince Nasir and Colonel Gamoudi cheerfully watched the tortuous writhing of the commentators trying to find answers to questions that seemed unanswerable. Prince Nasir considered it a brilliant night’s work. And already, on television, there were constant calls to the King to speak to his people, to give them assurances, to point the way forward, to rally the Saudi nation. But right now the King was in shock. As were his principal ministers, and his Generals.
And on some of the English-language channels, political journalists were forecasting the end of the rule of the al-Sauds. Indeed they were forecasting the end of the Saudi economy, the total collapse of the currency, and the complete inability of the government to finance anything, now that the oil had apparently stopped flowing.
There was no word from the King, which may have been shortsighted on his part, since the nation was in the process of going bust. In fact there was no official word from anyone, until 1 P.M., when the Channel 2 newscaster handed over to a spokesman for the Government, who spoke rather angrily, informing the populace that there had been an attack on the oil fields and loading docks. But he said no details were available. Channel 3, run by Aramco, was understandably circumspect, revealing very little.
By far the best source of information was from the English-language stations in Bahrain and Qatar, which spent the morning interviewing anyone they could contact from Aramco. Slowly they pieced together the shocking truth that someone had launched a spectacular assault on the Saudi oil industry, coordinating stupendous bomb attacks, all apparently to explode within ten minutes of each other.
These stations were in constant communication with the London media, and by 11 A.M. they had camera crews heading by helicopter to the fires still raging on Sea Island and, to the north, the LPG terminal blowtorch. By 1 P.M. there were pictures of various Saudi oil infernos on their way around the world.
At 2 P.M. the first riots began in the capital city of Riyadh.
SAME DAY, 5:00 A.M. (LOCAL)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Lt. Cdr. Jimmy Ramshawe was very soundly asleep in his parents’ luxurious apartment in the Watergate complex, which he used as his home base. He and his fiancée, Jane Peacock, had been out late with friends and he had dropped her off at the Australian embassy at 2 A.M.
He was due in his office at the National Security Agency at 7 A.M., which did not leave much time for the amount of sleep he most definitely required. In Ramshawe’s opinion, midday would have been a better start time.
And when the phone rang at 5:01 A.M. he nearly jumped out of his pajamas. He jolted himself awake, instantly, like all naval officers, accustomed to the lunatic hours of the watch, and muttered, “Jesus, this better be bloody critical.”
The duty officer at the NSA chuckled and said, “Morning, Lieutenant Commander. There’s something come up I think you ought to know about right away.”
“Shoot,” said Ramshawe, copying the standard greeting of his great hero, the now retired Adm. Arnold Morgan.
“Sir, it appears that someone just blew up the entire Saudi Arabian oil industry.”
“They WHAT?” gasped Ramshawe, struggling to clear his head.
“Sir, I expect you’ll want to come in right away. I suggest you turn on the television right now and take a look at CNN. They seem to be on the case pretty sharply.”
“Okay, Lieutenant. I’m on my way. Try to contact Admiral Morris, will you? I know he’s on the West Coast, but he’ll want to know.”
“Right, sir. And by the way, it’s the biggest goddamn fire I’ve ever seen.”
Ramshawe hit the power button. The television was already on CNN, and on the screen he could see the blowtorch from hell, blasting into the sky above the top masts of an enormous tanker that was sunk amid the shattered remnants of a loading jetty.
“Jesus Christ,” said Ramshawe.
But then the picture changed to an area where the sea was on fire. Then it changed again, to the huge Red Sea refineries, all of them ablaze, still exploding, and showing no signs, yet, of dying down. The biggest fires of all, at the Abqaiq complex, apparently had not been photographed so far.
Jimmy Ramshawe sat up in bed in total astonishment, thoughts cascading through his mind, as he tried to pay attention to what the CNN commentator was saying. So far as he could tell, bombs had gone off in almost all of the principal operational areas of the largest business on earth. Whoever had done it, had coordinated a truly sensational attack. The guy on CNN was surmising that everything had exploded shortly after 4 A.M. Saudi time. And so far as anyone could tell, it was an internal matter, a “purely Arab thing.”
Jimmy Ramshawe knew of course, like everyone else, of the growing unrest in the kingdom, as currency reserves plummeted and each citizen’s share of the wealth beneath the desert floor dwindled by the year. He’d often been told by CIA guys that the Saudis were about two jumps from having the mob at the gates.
He turned the television up full volume and tried to listen while he took a quick shower. And the only copper-bottomed truth to emerge, at least in the terms required by a high-ranking intelligence officer, was that no one had the slightest idea who was responsible, nor why they had done it, and certainly not how they had done it.
The CNN commentator was concentrating on the consequences rather than the causes: the minor consideration of what happened now, when someone had knocked 25 percent of the world’s oil supply off the global market.
Ramshawe was not, at this stage, interested in the market. That, he thought, would ultimately come under the heading of “inevitable.” What exercised him was, who had done this and why?
He dressed rapidly, grabbed his briefcase, switched off the television, and headed for the underground car garage. When he reached the basement he made for the only item on this earth he actually loved as much as he loved Jane Peacock.
And there it was, the gleaming thirteen-year-old black Jaguar his parents had given him for his twenty-first birthday. It had been four years old then, with only 12,000 miles on the clock, having been previously owned by some elderly diplomat friend of his dad’s. Today it still showed only 42,000 on the clock, since Ramshawe took it out of Washington only two or three times a year.
He and Jane usually traveled in her car, a small, unpretentious, but brand-new Dodge Neon, which did thirty-eight miles to the gallon as opposed to the sixteen he got out of the Jaguar. He used the Jaguar mostly for work, gunning it along the highway from the Watergate complex out to Fort Meade every day. He loved the stubby stick shift and the surge of power of the engine, the way it hugged the corners.
And this morning he really put it through a hard training run. On near-deserted, dry roads and a mission of national importance. Jimmy hit ninety miles per hour on the highway and came barreling down the road to the main gates of the NSA like a rally driver, pulling up at the guardhouse with a squeal of well-maintained brakes.
The guard waved h
im through briskly, smiling cheerfully at the Aussie security officer, who drove like Michael Schumacher and sat at the right hand of the NSA Director himself, the veteran Adm. George Morris.
Jimmy drove straight to the main entrance of the OPS-2B building, with its massive one-way glass walls. Behind these, up on the eighth floor, was the world headquarters of the Admiral. Jimmy took advantage of a privilege he had, but rarely used, and hopped straight out of the Jag and signaled one of the guards to park it.
“Thanks, soldier,” he called cheerfully.
“No trouble, Lieutenant Commander. Gotta put those oil fires out, right?”
Ramshawe grinned. It was unbelievable how news, rumor, and distortion whipped around this place. Here, behind the razor wire, guarded by seven hundred cops and a dozen SWAT teams, the 39,000 staff members knew approximately a hundred times more than anyone in America about what precisely was going on in the world. Jimmy Ramshawe had long suspected each one of the 39,000 personnel briefed at least one person every ten minutes. The Fort Meade grapevine had long vines.
He reached the eighth floor, hurried into his office, and turned on the news. It was 0650, ten minutes before 3 P.M. in Saudi Arabia, and the fires were still raging. The news channel had essentially dealt with the blown loading docks in the big tanker ports and was now starting to concentrate on the inferno at Abqaiq.
No one had yet shone a spotlight on the critical importance of the smashed Pump Station Number One, but CNN had received pictures of the gigantic fire in the middle of the desert, as the gasoline, crude oil, and petrochemical refining towers and storage area continued to blast themselves into the stratosphere. No one, beyond biblical times, had ever seen anything like this before.
The commentator was still concentrating on the possible perpetrators and announcing (guessing) that al-Qaeda was somewhere in the background. But, of course, you couldn’t call up al-Qaeda and check with their press office. And there were numerous other groups of Islamic fundamentalists who might, possibly, have favored the destruction, then the rebuilding, of the world’s richest oil nation.
Indeed Prince Nasir himself, the fifty-year-old Crown Prince, had recently expressed such alarm over the situation in Riyadh that he had granted an interview to the London Financial Times. And in this, he had alluded to the possibility that someone, somewhere, might actually consider the destruction of the Saudi oil industry a cheap price to pay for the removal of the profligate ruling family, and a cheap price to pay for the removal of the status quo.
He had made further allusion to the fact that whatever else, it had nothing to do with him. But his heart was bleeding for the future of his ancient land. Very definitely. And, as a loyal courtier and a man sympathetic to the plight of his fellow citizens, it pained him to mention these unpleasant truths.
Right now, along with all the world’s media, CNN had not the slightest clue about what was going on. And as their reporters took flying leaps from one conclusion to the next, Lt. Cdr. Jimmy Ramshawe, who was, after all, paid to think not show off his knowledge on the television screen, switched on his big industrial-size computer and delved into his “Hold” file, the one that contained all the little unsolved puzzles that had intrigued him over the past couple of years.
He had no idea what he was looking for. So he just keyed in the word oil to see if there was anything significant. And out popped the memorandum he had written himself last November — the one about France buying oil futures and driving up the world price on the London Exchange, and indeed in New York.
The activities of France had more or less ceased during December, but nevertheless, Ramshawe had made notes from the observations of his two sources, both of whom had a well-gripped handle on world prices, and both of whom had expressed bewilderment as to why France was so anxious suddenly to acquire new and different oil supplies.
He located a website that elaborated on the Gallic energy anxiety but found little of interest there, save that France imported 1.8 million barrels of oil a day, mostly from Saudi Arabia. And by the look of the morning news, that was about to dry up in the foreseeable future.
“I wonder,” mused Ramshawe, “if everyone in the industrial world is about to have bloody kittens over this, with one exception…” He was thinking of course about the country that had already made other arrangements, and no longer cared whether Saudi Arabia had oil or not. Could the French have known what no one else knew?
Lt. Commander Ramshawe logged that as a possibility, but dismissed it on practical grounds as a bit too fanciful. It’s sure as hell too wild a theory to start ringing alarm bells. But it might be the only theory around…guess we’ll find out.
At 0800 he ordered some coffee and a couple of English muffins. He decided not to call Admiral Morris at 0500 on the West Coast, and elected instead to contact his pal Roger Smythson at the International Petroleum Exchange, in London.
Smythson answered his own phone from his office inside the Exchange, and with admirable British restraint, he told Ramshawe that so far as he could tell, the roof had just fallen in.
“Chaos, old boy,” he said. “Absolute bloody chaos.”
“You mean the buyers are driving the prices up?” said Ramshawe.
“Are you kidding?” replied Smythson. “By the time this place opened, every single person involved in the buying and selling of oil on the international market knew the Saudis were essentially out of the game.
“I mean, Christ, Jimmy! Have you seen the pictures? The loading docks are on fire, the terminals have been blown up, and the main pump station at Abqaiq has been destroyed. Even the manifold complex at Qatif Junction is smashed beyond repair. I’m telling you, whoever did this really knew what they were about.”
“You mean an inside job, perpetrated by Saudis on the entire nation?”
“Well, that’s the way it looks. And you can guess what the panic’s like here. Because, to people working under this roof, the words Abqaiq complex and pumping station, the Qatif Junction manifold, Sea Island, Yanbu, Rabigh, and Jiddah— they’re everyday currency to oil men. We know how important they are. We know if there’s a problem with any one of them, the world’s oil supply is in trouble. But Jesus! They’re all destroyed, and the price of Saudi sweet crude just went to eighty-five dollars a barrel, from forty-six dollars last night.”
“Has it stabilized?” asked Ramshawe.
“Let me check on the screen. No. It’s eighty-six dollars.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“None of us knows that until the Saudis make some kind of a statement. So far, they have not said a thing.”
“What about the King?”
“Not a squeak out of him. And nothing from the Saudi ambassador to Great Britain. No one knows what’s happening, and that makes the market so much worse.”
“Well, there’s not much we can tell you either,” said Ramshawe.
“We were waiting for word from our embassy in Riyadh. But nothing’s come through yet.”
“Hey, there is just one thing,” recalled Smythson. “You remember the last time we spoke — about the French buying up futures?”
“Sure I do.”
“Well, I kept an eye on that. And it was France, definitely. And they bought nothing from Saudi Arabia. But they went in strongly on Abu Dhabi oil, and Bahrain. They bought some from Qatar, and a lot from the Baku field in Kazakhstan, which is more expensive.
“You can’t help thinking, can you? Because that makes France the only player in the world market that does not care about this crisis. So far as we can tell, they scooped up around 600 million barrels over the next year or so, despite their longtime contracts with Aramco.”
Jimmy Ramshawe hung up thoughtfully.
MONDAY, MARCH 22, 3:00P.M.
RIYADH
The first riots after the collapse of the oil industry began in the Diplomatic Quarter of the city. A crowd of possibly four hundred to five hundred advanced on the U.S. embassy compound and began to hurl rocks at the walls.
It was not yet clear why the Americans were being blamed for the potential collapse of the Saudi economy.
U.S. Marine guards retreated and then spoke to the crowd, yelling through bullhorns for them to retreat or face a volley of gunfire. Saudi’s religious police were called, but ran into a hail of rocks and missiles from the crowd. The police commanders, accustomed to cooperating with the U.S., requested the Marines drive back the crowd with gunfire, but only over the heads of the raging populace.
The first volley had its effect. Most of the crowd turned and ran for their lives, but they reformed and gathered in front of the British embassy, shouting and chanting, “INFIDELS OUT…OUT! OUT! OUT!”
By now the Saudi rioters had acquired a few guns for themselves, which they began firing into the air, and finally threw a hand grenade into the embassy grounds. No one was hurt, but the local guards answered with real gunfire, and four Arabs fell wounded in the street.
The religious police had now summoned the National Guard in force. This was the historically loyal army, dedicated to serving and protecting the King and his family. It operated entirely separately from the regular Saudi land forces, and it accompanied the monarch wherever he went.
In Riyadh, the National Guard’s elite force was the Royal Guard Regiment, which once was autonomous, until it was incorporated into the Army in 1964. Nonetheless, it remained directly subordinate to the King and maintained its own communications network and a simple brief: to protect the King, loyally and at all times.
It was this small but well-trained force that arrived in central Riyadh with the religious police on that Monday evening. Armed with light weapons and armored vehicles, they advanced on the crowd and drove them back.
But now the rioting populace regrouped at the major downtown junction on Al Mather Street and began marching into the main commercial district. This was a fiery dragon unsure at what it should roar.
Ever since the early morning the dragon had been listening only to radio and television networks talking about the “national bankruptcy” of a nation with no resources for many years. The terror of abject poverty, the first they had ever known, had gripped every resident of Riyadh. And then, shortly after 3 P.M., a rumor swept through the city that the banks were closing, and may not open again that week.
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