Driving the Saudis

by Jayne Amelia Larson

  Although he was a genteel southerner, he didn’t speak laconically when he was addressing the troops. He was the only member of the security personnel who gave his lungs a workout. He barked loudly in rapid-fire bursts as he patrolled the ballroom in 4-foot strides. “Always say YOUR HIGHNESS. Never look ’em in the eye. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. You are not dismissed until they tell you so. You got that? Always check in to Alpha One Command Post with any unusual situations or difficulties, or Alpha Two Post, or Alpha Three Post, or Alpha Four Post. You got that? The family is staying in many different hotels. All in Beverly Hills. So there are many command posts. There is a security command post in each hotel. Always know your command post leader! You must know where everybody is staying at all times, even if they change hotels every night. Consider yourself warned, because they will change hotels!”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn’t know military speak. Alpha One Post? Command post? I learned later that each command post was a near-empty hotel room with a long rectangular table covered with computers, faxes, and other apparatuses I didn’t recognize, which were probably machines used by and to communicate with the Department of Defense. All the artwork was taken down, and the walls were plastered with whiteboards and maps. Along one wall was a bank of monitors with various views of the hotel elevators, hallways, and entrances. Each room had a thick electrical cable snaking out of it that was “Hollywooded,” secured with a thick layer of duct tape, along the edge of the hallway, where it disappeared into another room at the far end of the hall that emitted a low hum. The rooms had satellite phones, and there were daily reports from the U.S. State Department regarding risk and travel issues for the family that security monitored. Used room-service trays were often piled high in the corners of the rooms. A thin mattress was placed in the large party bathtub in the Alpha One bathroom, where the security could nap when not on rotational duty. Wow! I thought when I saw the room for the first time. I’m part of a Special Op!

  We were told that everyone in the family and the entourage had his or her own car and driver that was to be available around the clock, and that we should make sure that the cars were clean, stocked, and gassed at all times. That meant that if you had only a quarter tank of gas and your client decided spur of the moment that he wanted to go to San Diego (this happened with surprising frequency), then you had a serious dilemma. You couldn’t stop for gas with a client in the car. That’s like a waiter taking a restaurant guest into the kitchen and asking him to wait while his cappuccino is made. It is extremely bad form. I had to gas up at least once a day, often in the middle of the night, just to make certain that I was always operating with a half-tank or more.

  There’s no telling how higher education can pay off. My powers of association and discernment were now defined by a dire and constant need to fill up my vehicle’s gas tank. I became an authority on which stations within a 30-mile radius were open after midnight, well lit, and heavily populated. Those with a convenience store attached were the most desirable.

  Except for one male, who wasn’t a Saudi and didn’t mind if a woman drove him, I was permitted to drive only the Saudi women of the group, but I would also occasionally be assigned to drive the servants when the women didn’t require my services. Most of the other chauffeurs were assigned to drive only one person and stayed with that one person the duration of the detail.

  Stu said the family was here to do some shopping, so I assumed that my missions would be fairly straightforward. I knew all the ins and outs of the Golden Triangle, which encompasses all the best shops and restaurants in Beverly Hills, so I was looking forward to spending time on familiar turf that I’d traversed well and fully while driving the hotel courtesy car. But it turned out that the Saudi women had come to La-La Land for plastic surgery as well as shopping. They did, in fact, shop almost every day, sometimes all day. But if they weren’t shopping, they were in surgery. If they weren’t in surgery, they were shopping, or enjoying refreshments at a restaurant between shopping and minor surgery. Very rarely, they’d go to the movies and then sit outside to people-watch at a late night café in Westwood. They weren’t interested in museums, or the Venice Canals Artwalk, or the Japanese meditation garden at UCLA, or any other cultural activities of any kind, but they really knew and appreciated their high-end goods.

  Santiago, a chauffeur originally from Central America, was assigned to drive a teenage prince. The prince and I never formally met (I wasn’t introduced to any of the men). I only saw him from a distance occasionally, when he would nod politely to me. He was slender and very tall for his age, dressed neatly and conservatively, and usually all in white. I saw that he paid great attention to everything happening around him without remarking on it, and I could tell that he was very bright.

  This young prince always read books in the car. He was taking summer extension school classes at USC from morning until night, and Santiago said he went through a book a day while riding in the car. Besides one other princess, he was the only Saudi I ever met who read books. Some of the royals leafed through magazines, but I never saw anyone from this group with a book in hand or in any of their rooms. Santiago said he heard the young man talking about his great-great-great-grandfather, boasting that he was a noble and valiant warrior and that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia existed because his family reconquered lands that had been robbed from them. He was very proud of this fact, probably in much the same way that I am proud of my father for being a successful self-made businessman.

  The prince had regular assigned security who traveled with him at all times wherever he went, as well as an older Egyptian nanny who doted on him. I wondered why he needed a nanny at that age, but I was told that a nanny often stays until her charge is married in his twenties or even thirties and acts as more of a secretary or handler by that time. Santiago told me that the security and nanny would wait outside in the courtyard at USC with their eyes focused on the classroom door while the prince was in session. They would all have lunch together at midday in the school café. The nanny was always in charge of the money and paid for all of their meals as well as anything the prince might want to purchase on the way home.

  “The husband is not traveling with the princess on this trip,” Stu told us at the beginning of the training session. “But he will be receiving daily reports from the Saudi Army officers assigned to this very important detail. You got that? So he knows everything that’s going on at all times. There are other men traveling with the princess, sheikhs they call ’em, but they will not be socializing with the women, and they will never be taking meals with them. They do not spend time with the opposite sex. Separate living, separate sleeping, separate eating. That’s the way it’s gonna be here.”

  I noticed that I was the only one of the drivers writing anything down, and I questioned Sami about this. “No need, chica,” he said as he tapped his temple. “Gotta keep it all up here. Safer.” I put my pencil down then. I didn’t want to appear overly studious. It turned out that most of the information was incorrect anyway, or accurate for a short time only, and we were told very little in any case.

  Right from the beginning, we weren’t told the actual name of the family, just that they were Saudi royals. Nor were we told the full name of any of the members of the entourage, usually only a name that was reduced to something like “Cousin” or “Auntie.” The cryptic briefing extended to the details of the family’s stay as well, which were doled out sparingly on a need-to-know basis only. Regarding their arrival, we were told simply that they’d be coming soon, maybe the next day, or the next evening, maybe the day after that, and their day of departure might be sometime several weeks hence, or maybe more. Nor were we told how they might spend their days, where they might go, or whom they might visit. It would all be discovered during the course of the job. This was highly unusual in the chauffeur business. Before any of my previous jobs, I always knew the name of the client, where he lived, where he worked, where he was going, where he was goin
g after that, whom he was sleeping with, what medication he was on, whether he was a closet cross-dresser. That’s one of the perks of hiring a premier car service: it offers customized handling based on the details known about the client, which have usually been given to guarantee very personal attention. On the Saudi job, we’d be flying blind, and it was apparent that the family preferred it that way. None of the drivers in our group even spoke Arabic. I assumed that the family would have liked to have Arabic speakers who could translate for them, but I was told that they specifically didn’t want any drivers understanding what they might talk about in the privacy of the car. They spoke to us in English if they wanted to be understood. All of the royals spoke English well, especially when they wanted to make their wishes known.

  In general, chauffeurs hear everything that is said in the car if they care to listen, and even if they don’t. The accurate interpretation of even an overheard one-ended telephone conversation is also remarkably easy. Once I picked up a famous music producer and a friend of his after their weekend outing in Vegas. They came in on a private plane to Van Nuys Airport both reeking of marijuana and body odor and carrying several bottles of beer in their jacket pockets. The music producer was a burly bald man with bad skin and a wet mass of chest hair bursting out of the top of his shirt, and he wore a $2,000 suit that needed to be thoroughly dry-cleaned pronto. His frothing friend sitting in the car beside him hung on his every word like a happy sycophant. As the mogul reminisced about the weekend’s merriment, he repeatedly said things along the lines of: “Those chicks were hot, smoking hot,” and “I’ll do that bitch again anytime.” I thought he was charming. Then he received a cell phone call from someone he addressed as O.J., and O.J. was undoubtedly in some financial trouble. The producer had hesitated before taking the call and complained that “the guy will not leave me alone; ten times in the last twenty-four hours he’s calling me.” He then had to stay on the phone a long time to talk O.J. down, saying things like, “Man, I’m sorry, that’s rough, real rough, O.J., but I don’t have access to that kind of cash. I feel for you, man, but I told you, I just don’t have it. Yeah, I know, but you gotta think of somebody else, bro. I can’t swing it.” When he ended the phone call, the producer then did a play-by-play of the conversation for his buddy, so it was impossible not to know what had transpired. I practically had it memorized. By the time we arrived at the mogul’s McMansion in Calabasas, the cohorts had both fallen asleep and were snoring like bears, with the sycophant drooling on his friend’s suit jacket lapel. I couldn’t wait until they were out of the car.

  Stu reminded us to try to keep a low profile—we should be seen and not heard. We were not to ask questions of the royals unless absolutely necessary. It was considered rude and presumptuous to suggest anything to the royals or to try to anticipate their wishes. We were not to contradict them even when we knew there might be a problem with what they were requesting. For example, if they asked me to take them to the Beverly Center mall and I knew that it was already closed, I could not tell them so. I had to drive them to the mall in case, perhaps, they only wanted to do a tour of the parking lot while it was empty. I didn’t see the point in this.

  We had to be sure that our cell phones were charged up and accessible at all times, day or night. We were under strict orders not to talk on the phone for any reason if the client was in the car. This turned out to be impossible to sustain. The royals and the entourage repeatedly asked their chauffeurs to make phone calls for them on our own phones when they were in the car, and even handed us their phones to take calls while we were driving. Sometimes I had to juggle two or more calls at once, trying to find out information that they were demanding to know immediately, or to communicate with another group they wanted to join on an outing or to give another driver directions to meet up with us. It was round-the-clock royal ground traffic control. At first, I tried to pull the car over whenever they asked me to use the phone, but that was vetoed in short order.

  We were instructed always to wait for our clients within a block or two of where we had dropped them off. This also turned out to be problematic because often the person I was assigned to drive would hop in somebody else’s car and be driven to another location, without giving me any heads-up at all. Hours later, I might get a call from security demanding to know why I wasn’t with my client at Chanel on Rodeo Drive, when the last time I had seen her was when she was scarfing down pasta at the American Girl Café in the Grove mall. Normally clients tell you if they are changing plans; in fact, they actually want you to know where they are so that you can provide good service; it’s in their best interest to help you help them. On this job, I learned to tail whoever I was driving by making visual sightings of them at regular intervals throughout the day so that I could be sure to know where they were at all times. I felt ridiculous doing this, but it was the only way I could think of to maintain an accurate assessment of their whereabouts. Even so, I sometimes felt as if they were purposely trying to avoid being tailed or found out. It was kindergarten antics; a peculiar little palace game of hide-and-seek from the chauffeurs. But why?

  Stu had told us that the Saudi group would be staying in many different Beverly Hills luxury hotels, including the Regent Beverly Wilshire, the Four Seasons, the Peninsula, L’Ermitage, and the grande dame of them all, the Beverly Hills Hotel—occupying several floors of each. This is one of the few bits of information that turned out to be true. Most of the women stayed in one hotel, most of the men stayed in another, the eldest son of Princess Zaahira stayed with his male friends and staff at another, and several older important-looking men with mustaches (who were all driven in the pricey Bentleys that I saw at the airport pickup) stayed elsewhere. Various other family members were sprinkled over the Beverly Hills environs in private estates and compounds. There was no socializing among the men and women, not even for meals, although Princess Zaahira’s children sometimes visited her.

  I hardly saw the Saudi men, and they didn’t seek me out. Occasionally a tight cluster of them would stride in or out of the hotel at odd hours, talking gruffly and smoking as they walked, but none of them engaged me in conversation or even glanced my way. If we happened to arrive at the lobby elevator together, they’d invariably stand off to the side and I’d ride up alone while they waited for the next elevator car.

  4

  Where Are the Veils?

  At the airport, the Saudis breezed right through customs, just as Sami had said they would, even though I was told they had a chest full of American dollars. One of the guys at the FBO said it was $20 million: $1 million in stacks of hundred-dollar bills weighs about 20 pounds and fits into a 5-inch Halliburton attaché case. Twenty such cases would fit into a chest big enough to carry a large human body. That’s a lot of moola.

  “Every one of these Saudi groups comes with cases of cash,” said the guy from the FBO. “That’s the way they roll. They like to have stacks and stacks of cash, and they like to show it off. Some of them even come in on their own 747. Talk about a humongous plane. That’s some friendly skies.” He told me many of the planes have their insides completely gutted and redecorated to resemble the inside of the I-Dream-of-Jeannie bottle with plush velvet-tufted settees, king-size beds, 50-inch flat screen TVs, and Turkish baths with 14-carat-gold fixtures. One Saudi prince even owns a jet that houses a baby grand piano and a cocktail lounge. Playing the piano at 35,000 feet has some serious wow factor.

  Fausto hand-signaled to the chauffeurs to stay sharp and keep our eyes peeled as we waited for our passengers near our cars. As the royals started exiting customs, we all livened up. Several clusters of dark-haired, mustached, well-suited, but weary men walked out first. They moved with great focus and force but as if they were dragging boulders behind them, their shoulders prone forward with the weight. They immediately headed toward the Saudi officers gathered with the consul staff and conferred with them in husky whispered voices. They didn’t look at or speak to any of the chauffeurs.

  The wom
en exited separately, and as they started to trickle out I thought, Where are the Saudis? Where are the veils? I was expecting to see women coming out in black robes and head coverings, but the ladies coming out didn’t look like Saudis; they looked like a bunch of Brazilian hotties going nightclubbing. Many of the women were scantily clad in Versace, Gucci, and Prada with inch-long flashy fingernails, lustrous jet-black hair flowing down to their waists, and layers of perfect makeup in smoky tones. Could a flight from Rio have come in at the same time as theirs? I wondered. More women joined them, older and less audaciously dressed but still chic and modern. Behind them trudged another group of women, most of them dressed in traditional Islamic garb with covered heads and modest clothing. Many were very young and petite, with dark skin and no hint of makeup. They looked exhausted.

  As I made my way to them, thinking that they were the Saudi royals, one of the half-dressed, bronzed-up sexy chic ladies turned and spoke brusquely to them in Arabic. As a group, in sharp unison like a flock of draped birds, they flinched in response. I realized that the downtrodden-looking ladies were the servants and that the sexy chic women were the royals and their traveling entourage. The sexy chic women paraded past me without acknowledgment, but almost every servant woman smiled and dipped her head at me as she walked by. A few of them looked at me with puzzled expressions as if to say, Who is she? What is she doing here?

  I was puzzled too. I hadn’t expected the Saudi royal women to look so done up or so Westernized. An oil engineer I met told me that when he flies commercially from Riyadh to Paris, he invariably witnesses a spectacular transformation. “I’ll be in first class with a woman from Saudi Arabia seated next to me dressed in a long black cloak, black gloves, and black veil—the whole deal. I can’t even tell what she looks like, she’s so covered up. Sometimes even their eyes are covered, and they have black booties on, so no skin shows at all. Then the plane takes off, leaving Saudi airspace. She goes to the bathroom and then a minute later a glamour-puss in high heels and a short, short skirt takes her place. Chanel from head to toe. Same woman. She’s wearing the stuff underneath her cloak. This happens every time I fly. Sometimes there are a whole lot of them. They look like a dark cloud getting on the plane, and then they suddenly strip down, half-dressed and sparkly. And then you notice: Saudi women are good looking,” he said.