The stampede of Wahhabis didn’t slow until the pile of dead bodies grew so high it formed a wall. Eventually, the human wall blocked the flow of protesters and directed them away from the police line and back down the street toward the mosque and the exploded cars. The frightened and confused surviving protesters then melted into the side streets. In their wake, they left hundreds dead and thousands wounded. The street was littered with blood-spattered white-kandura-clad Wahhabi bodies and khaki-uniformed police.
The Saudi government immediately shut down all communications, including all cell service and the internet. The story was too big and had too many witnesses to suppress. Person-to-person communications were all it took for word to get out that the government was slaughtering the religious. Among the Wahhabi community, there was only one response to the atrocity: Jihad. Saudi Arabia was at war with itself.
Chapter 15
London, UK
Prince Turki bin Talal Abdulaziz met his guest in his estate office in London. He sat across from Mustafa Abbas, his Lebanese attorney and fixer. The two men were drinking tea at the coffee table next to the window. Prince Turki, a germaphobe, who disdained eye contact with subordinates, ignored Mustafa, and gazed at the raindrops as they pelted the outside window.
“What news do you have of my children? I’m unable to contact anyone in Saudi,” the Prince asked.
“Plans are in motion to get them out. The National Security detail that was watching them has been re-tasked because of the crisis. The MOI, Special Forces, National Guard, and the Army are all fully engaged in security operations. We’re going to smuggle them out in a helicopter to a waiting yacht.”
“Will that be safe?”
“Yes, the aircraft will be cleared to an offshore oil rig. It will be a minor route diversion; nobody will notice.”
“When will this happen?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What’s the situation inside the Kingdom?”
“Chaos. The plan worked better than expected.”
“Will the King retain power?”
“For now, but the only way he’s going to quell the demands of the people will be to stop with the reforms. He may even need to appoint a new Crown Prince.”
“Is that a possibility?”
“Yes, although so far it has only been discussed.”
“Keep me informed on the movement of my children.”
Realizing he was being dismissed, Abbas stood and led himself out of the room. The Prince did not even bid him farewell, much less shake his hand. Here he was saving the man’s family and he was not even given the courtesy of a goodbye. He was summoned and dismissed like a dog. Abbas had been working for the Prince for over twenty years. He’d been a faithful servant for all of that time, though—he had to admit—less out of loyalty and more because the Prince paid well; Abbas had a big family and an expensive lifestyle. The economy in Lebanon had been horrible for too long, and without the patronage of the Prince, his prospects were bleak.
Being entrusted to convey the money and the message to the Prince’s operatives in Saudi who planted the car bombs had changed things. Having advance knowledge of a huge upheaval in Saudi Arabia that was destined to cause a huge spike in oil prices presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Abbas. After considering the economic impact of the plot the Prince was hatching, he developed his own plan. He borrowed against every asset he had and put it all in a long position in the oil futures market.
Following the massacre last night in Riyadh, the price of oil had already risen twenty percent. Martial law, widespread protests, and riots were going to shut down the Saudi economy even further and drive the prices even higher. Before the crisis was over, he was betting oil prices would more than double. Abbas was only days away from becoming a very wealthy man. His involvement in the plot to destabilize the Saudi government and create a diversion to rescue the Prince’s children was the greatest opportunity of his lifetime. Despite the boorish treatment from the Prince, he walked out of the stately mansion into the grey skies and London rain in a bright and cheery mood.
Chapter 16
Eleuthera, Bahamas
After a thorough exam in a German hospital, I booked another charter and flew Cheryl to Eleuthera, Bahamas. I have a beach house near Governors Harbor, and I thought it would be the ideal place for Cheryl to recover from her injuries.
“I think you want to spirit me away to a desolate island because you don’t want people to look at me and mistake you for a woman beater.”
“Only a few days ago I was being accused of being a child beater. Accusations of smacking you around would be a step up for me.”
“This has been a rough assignment,” she said with exasperation.
“It has, because there’s no handle, just a lot of smoke with nothing we can grab onto to fix things.”
“And your solution is to hide away in your lair.”
“We rescued the lady Doctor. The missions to recover the book and take out Omer were aborted, which leaves us with nothing to do. It’s rest and recover until something breaks. This is the best place for rest and recovery.”
“You make a good point.”
“Of course I do.”
“Now what?”
“Now I go surfing and you rest.”
I changed into my 2mm body glove wetsuit and went out to the garage and picked out a surfboard. I walked out toward the beach, past the pool and the two guesthouses. Once I got past the line of palms, I stepped onto the soft sand of the beach. The beach in this part of Eleuthera is a dusty pink; it’s the most beautiful sand in the world. The conditions were excellent for early August, with swells six feet high and thirteen seconds apart. I jumped into the water and worked my way out past the break.
I’d been out splashing around in the surf for more than three hours. The sun was beginning to set when I decided to take my last run. The waves had been slowly increasing in size as the tide came in. I sat on my board looking east in search of my next ride. The sun was low and reflected orange against the turquoise-blue Bahamian waters. I waited until the swell was almost on me, and then darted toward the shore, paddling furiously. I felt the board lift and begin to drop. I popped up into a standing position, left foot forward, and rode the fall. I banked left away from the break, extended my left hand, and felt the wall of water as it curled around me as I channeled through the tube. I could feel the water closing in on me, and I turned hard left away from the beach to jump the wave and escape the wall of surf that was crashing down all around me. Not my brightest idea, because all that accomplished was to flip me upside down. The force of the wave spiked me straight down into the water. My head bounced against the soft sand below the surface before the remaining power of the surf tossed me around like I was in a washing machine.
Eventually, I surfaced and pulled the leash attached to my right leg and retrieved my board. I climbed on and paddled toward the shore. When I reached the soft pinks sands of the beach, I walked unsteadily toward the house trying to find my equilibrium. It was dark by the time I entered the house through the back deck. Cheryl was sitting with Maria at the table. Maria is a Filipina woman who looks after the house, along with her husband, Jonah.
“We were wondering if you were ever coming back,” commented Cheryl.
“The conditions are amazing for this time of year, so I took full advantage of it.”
“I can see that; you’re staggering from exhaustion.”
“I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I need a legitimate reason to stagger. But first, a shower.”
“I told Maria we would walk next door to Tippy’s for dinner.”
“Did you forget that I was keeping you under wraps until you no longer posed a threat of getting me arrested for domestic assault?”
“I want to go out, Pat. I’m feeling caged.”
“OK, then how about we take the Priest? He’s good conversation and I can use him for cover.”
“I haven’t seen Father Tellez all day.”
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“I’ll find him. He’s probably still mourning Colombia’s World Cup showing.”
“That was weeks ago.”
“He used to play for the National Team. Soccer people are very sensitive about such things.”
The three of us got a table next door at the restaurant. Tippy’s is perhaps the only beach bar in the world that insists on table reservations. It’s always packed, even offseason. It was a Saturday night, they had a band playing live, and the crowd was lively.
I ordered a Holy Mackerel Ale and a bottle of Chardonnay for Cheryl and the padre. I went with my default pasta and shrimp for the main and conch salad for an appetizer. I was so hungry and focused on the bread that I didn’t pay any attention to what Cheryl and Father Tellez ordered.
“I’ve been following the reports in Saudi. The death toll from the violence is over ten thousand,” Cheryl said.
“Yet another religious war killing the masses. Let’s all hold hands and sing John Lennon’s Imagine.”
“Imagine is a terrible song. Really, it’s not religion killing those people,” Father Tellez added.
“It kind of is; the religious conservatives are fighting the moderates,” I said.
“That’s an oversimplification. There is more to the unrest than religion. Economics and social injustice are major factors. Although, I agree it was the shame of many of the world’s Muslims rejecting Saudi and praying toward Jerusalem that set the faithful off,” Cheryl added.
“Who would do that? Who would light such a match in the Middle East knowing the pain and suffering it would cause?” asked Father Tellez.
“That’s what David Forrest and I are working on right now. Who would benefit from the actions that have taken place? The strife and the violence? We’re looking at political and financial benefits, ways to measure them, and ways to trace them to individuals,” Cheryl said.
“That seems like an impossible task. The numbers are too huge,” I replied.
“This is where Dave Forrest and his supercomputer and artificial intelligence comes in. He has an incredible capacity to gather all the data and sift through it at amazing speeds,” Cheryl said.
“If he’s doing all the work, why did you use the collective, ‘we’?” I asked.
“I identify the possible benefits and suggest ways to measure it. Dave finds ways to gather the data and analyze it. We make a good team, even thousands of miles away from each other,” Cheryl said.
“I thought you and I were a team,” I said.
“Now that I’m beat up and ugly, I know you don’t want me anymore,” Cheryl said.
“I told you that was just temporary. I’ll only ignore you until you get your looks back. You know I’m not that superficial. Ask Father Tellez, he’ll vouch for me.”
“No, I won’t vouch for Pat. He’s a very bad man, the worst kind of sinner. Very shallow. You’re very perceptive to realize this,” Father Tellez said to Cheryl with a grin.
“In a matter of days your eyes will be un-swollen, your lips unsplit, and you’ll be hot once again. I’m not worried,” I said.
“And once that metamorphosis happens, you’ll be happy to put up with my geeky hypothesizing on how to find the bad guy behind the madness in Saudi. But, let me guess, until then, you need to concentrate on beer and food, because you’ve worked up a huge appetite on the water,” Cheryl said in a mocking tone. We all laughed.
“You know me too well,” I said.
The next morning, I woke up alone. It was before six and Cheryl was gone. I went looking and found her in my office on the top floor of the house. She was curled up on the couch drinking coffee, watching the sunrise over the Atlantic side of the island.
“Why did you leave?” I asked.
“I had an idea,” she said.
“What idea?”
“What we talked about last night. Who benefits. What if we search for people who made financial trades on commodities affected by what is going on in Saudi at the moment? Tens of thousands are being killed, and oil prices are above one hundred dollars and heading higher. What if we search for the people who demonstrated knowledge of what happened before it happened, and created positions in the futures markets to take advantage of the insider information?”
“A person would have to be pretty stupid to create this kind of chaos and then leave a financial trail from trying to benefit from the misery.”
“Nobody’s going to leave an obvious trail.”
“There are too many exchanges in the world trading oil futures, not to mention the ETFs and other financial instruments that move up and down with the price of oil.”
“I’ve been talking to David Forrest and he’s working on it.”
“Do you think this will lead somewhere?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“Let’s go to Paphos and link up with David. Whatever he finds is probably going to take us to the Middle East or Europe. Might as well get a head start.”
“Schedule a plane. I’m ready now,” Cheryl said.
“You look really turned on by all of this. Beyond those hideous wounds, I can almost see my former super-hot girlfriend,” I said.
“Have you always been such a Neanderthal?” Cheryl asked.
“No, believe it or not, there was I time when I couldn’t even bench press 315, but then, thank God, I hit puberty.”
“Hopeless,” Cheryl whispered under her breath as she left the room.
Chapter 17
Paphos, Cyprus
We touched down at Paphos International in a charter. It only took a minute to get through passport control at the lone passenger terminal. When I stepped out of the terminal, I was blanketed by the heat and humidity Cyprus is known for in the summer. A black Suburban pulled up to the curb and Migos hopped out to grab our bags. He gave Cheryl a hug, and with uncharacteristic restraint didn’t say anything about her injuries. We hopped into the vehicle for the short ride to the airport cargo area where Trident leased a hangar that was shared by Clearwater.
“We’ve been busy making renovations. Since you got rid of the second plane, we have a lot more room to work with. We’ve added a small gym, a full kitchen, and a really nice break area with a big screen, couches, a full espresso bar, and a pool table. You’re gonna love it,” Migos said.
“Is everyone here?” I asked.
“No, the Mali delivery is running late. They were supposed to land two hours ago but got delayed in Bamako International.”
“What was the problem?” I asked.
“Refueling was late. Because of maintenance problems, only one fuel truck was working to service the entire airport.”
“Mali is a disaster even by African standards. But we can’t refuel before getting to Mali because we can’t risk the cargo getting confiscated by another African Nation. There aren’t a lot of good options in Mali’s neighborhood,” I said.
The Trident Hangar is huge. When I originally leased the space, I needed room for two C130s and fifty thousand square feet to store cargo away from prying eyes. Trident has only one contract and that contract is to deliver military supplies to whomever the CIA tells us to deliver them to. These are all black programs supporting US interests throughout the Middle East and Africa. We have a second hangar in Darfur Air Force Base in the United Arab Emirates. The goods we ship that come from the US and Europe needing export licenses are earmarked for UAE, and then once we deliver them to Abu Dhabi, we divert them to their final destination. What we do is highly classified, and illegal as hell. When we started, all of our supplies went to the Kurds and to other rebel groups fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Now that ISIS is almost a thing of the past, we do less than half of the deliveries we did at our peak. At the moment, most of our shipments are going to Chad, Mali, Syria, and Iraq.
The big hangar doors were closed. Migos parked outside and we entered through a regular door on the side of the hangar. Migos swiped his card and placed his hand on the biometric scanner to open the heavy steel interior door. The
hangar was cool and dry. The spaces for the C130 and the cargo holding area were empty. Two Little Bird helicopters were parked in the load-out area. Next to the Little Birds was a 7.5 meter rigid inflatable boat, two armored SUVs, a couple of small dune-buggy-like vehicles, and a line of steel cabinets thirty yards long filled with the latest tactical equipment on the market. The hangar in Paphos doubled as the staging area for the direct-action missions Trident was occasionally tasked to perform by the Agency.
We walked toward the back of the hangar and entered the office space that was sectioned off for Clearwater. Cheryl designed and decorated the Clearwater offices and they reflect her tastes. The lighting is dim, with lots of reds and dark rich mahogany and teak. The art is Asian, mostly landscape watercolors with a few interesting jade sculptures. The dramatic contrast between the Clearwater and Trident operations doesn’t stop with the décor. It’s the cerebral versus the physical. I don’t have to tell you where I belong.
Migos disappeared as Cheryl and I walked into David Forrest’s office. Dave is an academic, the head of the University of Edinburgh’s Computer Science Department, and one of the world’s leading authorities on Artificial Intelligence. I met him when he was developing an underfunded aerial reconnaissance AI joint research project between the British Government, his University, and his own private company, called GSS. Clearwater is a joint venture between Trident and GSS. Clearwater makes a sizable profit every year tracking—and sometimes finding—lost commercial shipping boats. Clearwater also serves as the intelligence element for Trident. David’s computer skills and Cheryl’s intelligence background have proven themselves on many occasions.
Despite his new-found wealth, David Forrest hasn’t changed. He’s still the disheveled, portly college professor with a cliché tweed jacket and a pipe that rarely leaves his touch. Although, he did concede to Cheryl’s Asian-themed high-tech office décor. On his wall, he had installed a fake picture window with a video screen displaying a Scottish highland vista. Cheryl once told me that the only reason David spends so much time in Paphos is because, at the University in Scotland, they recently began enforcing a rule prohibiting smoking in the office. At Clearwater, he could smoke his pipe as much as he wanted. The scent of Captain Black tobacco was in the air as Cheryl and I sat down on the two chairs arrayed in front of his desk.
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