“Oh, I know you aren’t happy with him, but I met with him on the plane. He’s fine. Good Navy officer. Wants to be a CinC someday. He’ll handle the Chinese,” the Secretary assured Kashigian.
“What if they don’t want to be handled?” the Under Secretary asked.
“They are in way over their head and they know it. The admiral, Tian-something, the Australian source, says that if it comes to a possible shooting war, they will back down because they don’t want to lose to us. Face, and all that. And right now they would lose. Maybe not in ten years, but, shit, they only just started with carriers a few years ago. They can’t take on the United States Navy. And besides,” Conrad said, stroking his chin, “remember, I have a surprise for them.”
“Let’s hope Tian-something is right, Mr. Secretary.” Kashigian smiled back. “I just don’t like to ever believe intelligence.”
“Fuck you,” said the Secretary of Defense.
The Second Scenic Overlook
George Washington Parkway
Fairfax County, Virginia
“I have confirmation on almost all of it now, Ray, and it all checks out, from what Ahmed gave me,” Kate said into the cell phone. “I’m about to meet a guy from Dominion Commonwealth Partners who is going to give me more.” She sat in the rented Ford in the parking lot off the parkway, looking down at the Potomac.
“Who’s the guy?” Ray Keller, managing editor of the New York Journal, asked. He was in his office on the 42nd floor, looking out on Manhattan.
“When I went out to Tysons Corner to this hedge fund’s office, they sent out this flack to deal with me. I didn’t get past reception, but I gave the flack my card. Then, two hours later, he calls and says he couldn’t talk there, but he has the answers to the questions I faxed them. Said he would meet me after work at the Second Overlook and give me the files,” she said, scanning her notes on her PowerBook.
“Well, at least he’s got a sense of the dramatic, or humor.” Keller laughed. “You do know that the Second Scenic Overlook was where some of the Watergate figures met Tony Ulasciewicz?”
Kate laughed, too. “No, I didn’t know that. But I know it’s just down the parkway from Turkey Run. Isn’t that where the conspiracy theorists say that Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster? Nut jobs.”
“Yeah, which reminds me, be careful. This is big stuff and I don’t like that your hotel room was broken into down in Houston, or that you thought those thugs were following you up here,” Keller said, using his deeper tone, which meant he was serious.
“Now who’s being dramatic?” she replied. “Listen, I want four columns above the fold when this runs. Here’s the first four ’graphs.” Kate read from the laptop, which was plugged into the car’s outlet,
Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad has been championing the return of the Saud family to their royal thrones in Islamyah. Now, in information obtained exclusively by the New York Journal, it is clear that Henry Conrad’s highly successful leveraged buyout (LBO) firm was funded almost exclusively with al Saud money. Much of the campaign contributions Conrad raised for the President also appear to have originated with the Saud family.
Over $2 billion was laundered from the Sauds to Conrad Conversion Partners. Conrad left the firm he founded to become Defense Secretary. The Saud money was hidden through layers of offshore firms and banks, as well as investment houses in the United States (see chart). The New York Journal has confirmed that the funds originated in al Saud accounts, although it is unclear whether the money belonged to the government or the royal family.
Late last year Senator Paul Robinson asked the Treasury Department to investigate which Saud funds in the U.S. were personal and which belonged to that nation. Many funds remain frozen, awaiting the results of the report. Robinson’s request, however, did not include the funds in Conrad Conversion because it was not known that they were Saudi monies. The Conrad Conversion funds are not frozen by the Treasury order.
Over $200 million donated to a series of political committees supporting the President were given by employees or investors in firms that were owned by Conrad Conversion. If those donors were acting as pass throughs for the former royal family, they may have been engaging in a criminal conspiracy to violate U.S. campaign financing laws. U.S. laws prohibit foreign contributions to U.S. campaigns. Violation of those rules is a felony.
Ray Keller responded with his usual line to reporters. “That’s close, Kate, but it’s going to need some polishing. When will you be back?”
“By the time I’m done with this source tonight, it may be too late to get the last shuttle up to New York. I haven’t even checked out of the Marriott yet, so I’ll come up first thing in the morning. Be in the office around eleven. See you then,” Kate said, stretching and realizing how tired she was from jet lag and all the running around she had done since she returned from the Gulf. A Park Police car drove slowly through the parking lot. She looked to her right, where, in the distance through the bare trees, she could see the Washington Monument, brightly lit, standing guard over America’s capital city.
But, Kate thought, it is really an active, investigating, questioning media that guards the capital against people like Conrad. Against people who put the welfare of their rich friends over the national good, people who would so easily send the children of the poor and middle class off to fight their wars instead of trying to solve the problems that cause the wars. Like the failure to find alternative energy. God, she thought, if I wrote that, they’d fire me. Her reflections on power were broken by flashing headlights in her mirror.
Kate Delmarco turned around to get a good look at the car. That was the car he had said he would be in, the gold Lexus.
She was about to get the proof that Dominion Commonwealth Partners was a hedge fund with twenty investors, all of whom ultimately were funded, through layers of fronts, by a Saudi government account. And every employee at DCP had made big donations to the same set of political action committees within a week of a special dividend distribution. If that isn’t foreign financing of a U.S. election campaign, she thought as she got out of the Ford, I don’t know what is.
Her blood raced in anticipation as the man got out of the Lexus.
The Hussein Mosque Naval Base
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Command (Pasdaran)
Bandar Abbas, Iran
“I will leave you here,” the Pasdaran general said.
“You do not participate in the prayers enough, General,” the cleric said, changing into a robe for the service he would lead.
“There is much still to be done,” he replied, tightening the lacing on his boot. “But you saw in the tour, they are ready to go into this battle, they are well trained and equipped.”
“I cannot judge such things.” The cleric’s voice was soft and his tone mild, unlike what it would be when he gave the sermon later in the hour. “That is why I place my trust in you. Just as I trusted our airplanes would perform their secret mission: kill the Americans, cast blame on Islamyah, and return home.”
The general straightened up, standing tall above the cleric. “It was a minor piece of the puzzle. It did not work perfectly, but the Americans are telling the world that it was a revolt in the Islamyah Air Force, a further sign of the chaos in that country. When the explosions take place in the Shi’a cultural centers in Islamyah tonight, it will add to the chaos, to the persecution of our religious brethren, whom we must then rescue.”
The cleric looked up from the Koran that was open on the table. “The American Navy base in Bahrain did not blow up. The American spy plane was not shot down. Both because Islamyah stopped them from happening. Have you thought that perhaps Islamyah has a spy in our midst, General?”
The general had not told him about the discovery made by the Foreign Ministry security staff. About the man who had downloaded sensitive documents, killed two security staff, and then committed suicide. The fingerprints they had found were those of a British spy, who was still at large. Not of a spy fro
m Islamyah.
“I can assure you that we have looked very hard and that there is no evidence of any such Islamyah spy,” the general said in a crisp military way.
The cleric moved toward the door of the anteroom. He adjusted his robes and placed the Koran in his right hand. He turned back toward the general. “I must pray for our forces. I must pray with our forces. For Allah to give us another victory!” With that, the cleric left the room, empty except for the general.
“We shall have another victory,” the general said. “I will give us that.”
15
FEBRUARY 22
Near the CSS-27
Missile Base, Al Juaifer
Islamyah
So many Chinese. What were they doing here in his desert? the guard wondered. What were they preparing for? And why in the name of Allah did he have to live among their filthy foreign ways? He sighed, his mind drifting. No one told him anything.
It was soon after dawn, and as the guard at the front gate sat musing, his reverie was interrupted by the sight of three columns of black smoke rising from behind the dune to the north. And then he heard the noise. It was like something screaming in agony, something made of heavy metal. His hand was on the telephone in the guard booth when the three M-1A2 tanks flew through the air above the dune and then crashed to the surface, creating a sandstorm below.
Stunned by the apparition, the guard stumbled out of the booth to join his colleague by the Humvee. The metal screeching noise was becoming unbearable as the giant tanks emerged from the sand and drove at the high chain-link fence around the missile base. With more screeching and black smoke, the tanks flattened that section of fence, then a machine gun on the front of the closest tank turned and sprayed the guards and the Humvee with .50-caliber ammunition.
Men in green uniforms and khaki uniforms poured from the buildings in the camp as a klaxon sounded and voices from the speaker systems shouted in Arabic and Chinese. A large green truck moved between two rows of warehouse buildings, carrying two stages of a CSS-27 mobile missile. But one of the M-1 tanks was right on its tail and seemed to crawl up onto the truck’s flatbed. With a roar, the missile burst into a fireball, engulfing the truck, the tank, and a nearby building.
At the port of Jizan on the Red Sea, the guards saw the big helicopters coming in time to sound the alarm. The chief of the port police ordered his men to fire, yelling that the helicopters were American, painted to look like Islamyah’s army. He grabbed a machine gun mounted on a pickup truck and started to fire, and his men joined in a hail of bullets, shooting up at the approaching Chinook CH-47s. The lead chopper seemed to stop, then it burst in two in an orange flash.
The remaining Chinooks broke left, away from the port, and then a wave of smaller Apache AH-64 attack helicopters appeared. The port police could see the smoke as missiles left the rails of the Apache and rockets shot out of pods hung below their fuselages. Almost instantly, explosions erupted in the piles of shipping containers stacked high in the yard. The police chief looked behind him to see a Chinook whipping up debris as it hovered over a dock, troops rappelling down ropes out of its rear cargo door. Above the noise, the port police chief started yelling, “Surrender, surrender!”
In the basement of the Security Center, Abdullah bin Rashid’s deputies manned the telephones and radio consoles, fielding reports on the progress of the Protectors, as their combined army and national guard was now called. The reports were mostly good. The oil refineries and shipment facilities were secured. The religious police at the Two Holy Mosques had been quietly replaced. At the ports and airports where the additional Chinese were scheduled to arrive, patrol boats blocked the harbors, and tanks sat on the runways. The CSS-27 missile bases were now in the hands of the Protectors, and the Chinese guests well cared-for.
There was, however, fighting in the Hadramaut region near the Yemeni border, where the local army unit remained loyal to a governor tied to Zubair bin Tayer and his faction on the Shura. Also, when the Dhahran base commander had read out the communiqué about the change in the Shura membership, two F-15s had taken off and then strafed the field. A Navy patrol craft captain loyal to bin Tayer had ordered his sailors to lob rounds into an army facility near Jeddah.
The worst fighting, however, was in and around Riyadh. Bin Tayer had placed loyalists in several military and police units, and his brother, a colonel, was in charge of a regiment of infantry twenty miles north of the capital. The regiment had converged on an office, warehouse, and housing compound once built for an American defense contractor. It was walled and easily defended.
“It’s confirmed, bin Tayer is in the Vanilla compound,” an officer announced in Abdullah’s underground command post. “He’s got most of his Shura supporters with him, and he’s calling it a meeting of the Council. Their guys are well positioned to keep us out. We got two tanks burning from antitank missiles. We got a lot of casualties.” Abdullah stroked his beard.
“Bomb it, Abdullah,” General Khalid urged. “There is no need for us to take casualties. Just blow them up. I will order up a squadron of Tornadoes and it will be over.”
“No!” Abdullah yelled. “You are right, Khalid. Our boys should not take casualties. But neither should theirs. We are all brothers.” Then, walking toward his friend, Abdullah stood in front of the general and directed him, “Pull our boys back a bit. Then launch your Tornadoes, but have them drop their bombs outside the compound walls. What the stupid Americans called shock and awe. Then talk bin Tayer into surrendering.”
“I will do the bombing, Sheik, but who can talk bin Tayer and his Shura fools into surrendering?” Khalid asked.
“I will. I’m going over there,” Abdullah said as he went for the door. “Khalid, you are in charge. Ahmed, you are his deputy. And,
Ahmed, see that the scorpion gate videotape is ready for when I have arrested bin Tayer, and then call the Chinese Embassy.” Before anyone could object, Abdullah bin Rashid had left the command room. As he pulled his Range Rover up to the forward command post outside the rebellious compound, Abdullah could see Tornadoes circling in the distance. “What are they waiting for?” he asked General Hammad, who was leading the assault.
“For you,” Hammad said, smiling and signaling to an officer standing beside a radio-laden Humvee. Two minutes later, three Tornadoes swept in low, dropping bombs in front of and on either side of the compound. As the center Tornado pulled up, it was hit by a shoulder-fired rocket. Smoke trailed behind the Tornado, which disappeared from view. Then there was the noise of an explosion, and a black column billowed upward in the distance. “They just killed a pilot. So, do it again, Hammad,” Abdullah ordered. “Throw the bombs out forward of the planes. Don’t fly over the compound. And put the bombs inside the walls this time.” Four minutes later, two F-15s could be seen approaching over the city at low altitude. As they approached the forward command post, both Eagles seemed to stand on their tails, arch over, and begin to fly back in the direction they had come. Halfway up their short climb, a large bomb separated from each Eagle and arched in the opposite direction, toward the compound. Abdullah pulled General Hammad down behind the Range Rover. A second later the detonation shook the vehicle, and the roar continued on for several minutes.
When they looked up, the front gate and most of the front wall of the compound were gone. Fires burned in several places inside.
“You have been talking to bin Tayer’s brother, the colonel, inside?”
Abdullah asked General Hammad. “Call him back and tell him in four minutes the entire compound will be obliterated unless they
surrender. Call him. Now!”
Fifteen minutes later, General Hammad walked up from the communications Humvee. “The compound is secure. They all surrendered, and they have bin Tayer and the others in custody.” “They must be treated with respect,” Abdullah told the general.
“Let’s go see them.” The two men climbed into Abdullah’s Range Rover and drove into the compound, around chunks of wal
l and burning vehicles. “We will put them under house arrest. In the Saud’s desert villas in the south. Until the elections. Then they can run, make their case peacefully to the people. Maybe they will win.” An officer directed them to a large white villa in the center of the compound. Its windows had been blown out and curtains hung askew. Abdullah and his general met bin Tayer and three other Shura members being held by the guards near a fountain inside. Abdullah spoke first. “Zubair bin Tayer, I place you under arrest for conspiring with foreign agents, for planning to bring additional foreign troops into the country without the consent of the Shura, and for planning to put in jeopardy the welfare of the nation by introducing weapons of mass destruction into the land of the Two Holy Mosques.”
Bin Tayer spat at him. “It is you who will be arrested. For killing our citizens. For exceeding your authority as security chief.” “Zubair, we differ. Maybe in an election, the majority of the men and women of our country would agree with you, but I doubt—” Bin Tayer cut Abdullah short. “There will be no elections with women.” He brought something out from under his robes and pulled at it.
Time seemed to freeze—and then there was a roar, followed by more roars, and flashes inside the gleaming white villa. Guards ran in to find bodies strewn on the floor. Many, including General Hammad, were wounded, sitting up or leaning against the fountain.
Nine others were dead: the four rebellious Shura members, blown to bits from the blast of their four hand grenades. Four guards. And Abdullah bin Rashid.
Blood poured down General Hammad’s face; his eyes bulged out. He struggled to respond to an officer who had just run in to take charge of the scene. “Call the Center. Get me Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid....”
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