Mountjoy brought the matter up when the three of them were discussing the drilling preparations and the oil-strike scheme, Bentner dubiously, Gloriana with anxiety and Mountjoy with aplomb.
"Drilling will start in a week," he said. "We must expect a fortnight or so of drilling operations before we can announce that we have struck oil. There's some kind of heavy mud that has to be poured down an oil well when oil is discovered and we've had to order a few tons of that just to save face. My understanding is that it counteracts the pressure with which oil naturally gushes out of the ground and gives the driller and his crew time to get the Christmas tree in place."
"Christmas tree," exclaimed Gloriana.
"It's not a real Christmas tree," Mountjoy said. "It's a name given by drillers to an arrangement of pipes and valves by which they control the oil when it comes out of the ground. The first control, as I understand it, is obtained by the heavy mud of which I spoke. This is only a stopgap proceeding employed while this arrangement of pipes and valves and bypasses called a Christmas tree is put in place."
"But what we'll really have is a well full of some kind of heavy mud—right?" asked Bentner.
"Correct," said Mountjoy.
"I'm asking because those two Swiss whom I had for dinner the other night seem to think otherwise," said Bentner.
"I'm glad to hear that," said Mountjoy. "It confirms that they are indeed the two worst geologists in Switzerland. But I would like to inform Your Grace right now, and you too, my dear Bentner, of another scheme which I have felt it necessary to put in hand and to which I trust you will have no objection.
"While I was having my initial discussions with Birelli he made the elementary point that the Soviet Union is seeking to take possession of the oil-producing Persian Gulf nations by pressure from the outside and by subversion from within which would overthrow the present sheikdoms.
"I'm afraid he rather bored me with this particular analysis, for it has been the policy of Russia, whether under the Tsars or under its present regime, to dominate the Persian Gulf nations for the past two hundred years. But he went on to make the further point that no nation dare go to war over possession of the oil-producing nations of the Near East, for to do so would be to destroy the oil supplies which make them valuable to the world. This is childish thinking."
"Makes plain sense to me," said Bentner. "Without the oil those Arab countries are no use to anybody but camels."
"It makes plain sense to you because you do not realize how heavily the Western world depends on Persian Gulf oil, and by comparison, how little those supplies matter to Russia and her satellites, who get all the oil they need from their internal supplies. The West dare not go to war to secure the Near East OPEC nations. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, would gain, not lose, by such a war. Supplies for the Western world would be wiped out for perhaps ten or fifteen years, wrecking their whole economy. The supplies of the Soviet Union would scarcely be touched. Certainly their economy would scarcely be upset. The collapse of Western capitalism is the avowed aim of the Soviet. That aim would be moved very closer to achievement by a war cutting off the Persian Gulf oil flow."
"Wouldn't the Western world oil supplies be destroyed for all time?" asked Gloriana.
"No, Your Grace. The heaviest bombing will not destroy the underground reservoirs, only the refineries, storage tanks, wells and pipelines. You are too young to recall the heavy Allied bombing of the Romanian oilfields in the Second World War—oilfields which are now in full production and supplying the Soviet Union."
"Still don't see where we come in in all this," Bentner said.
"We perform one simple act," Mountjoy explained. "We make the Arabian states safe against attack by supplying them with a nuclear deterrent—the Q-bomb."
"Brilliant," said Bentner, who hated the Q-bomb. "I'll be glad to get rid of that thing."
"Heavens," Gloriana cried, dismayed. "It's terribly potent. Are you sure you can trust the Arabs with it?"
"It can destroy Europe and Russia too," said Mountjoy calmly. "Yes. I am sure we can. The Arabs need it, in view of the Soviet threat, far more than we. The only trouble is that I can't get any of them to take it—or rather to send representatives here for a discussion about it. I've written to half a dozen Arabian nations, including Muscat, indicating strongly what I have in mind, and I haven't received a single reply. I may have to go to the Arabian peninsula myself. To Kuwait, perhaps, or Iraq, though I would prefer to deal with Saudi Arabia as being the most powerful."
Gloriana frowned. This was a terrible responsibility. "Bobo, we're supposed to guard the bomb for others," she said.
"Your Grace, I have given this long and deep thought," said Mountjoy. "The original need for our guardianship—to establish nuclear peace among the nations—has now largely been met. Nuclear peace has been established by the appalling destructive power of the weapons which both sides possess. I might add that the proliferation of nuclear power stations, in my view, is also in itself a safeguard against war. Those nations possessing such stations, alarmed as they have been over the malfunction of one small valve, are surely not going to risk the hazard to their population of those power stations being bombed. No, the proper use of the Q-bomb now is to protect Western oil supplies. In the hands of the Saudi Arabians it will act as a powerful deterrent against the invasion of that country and its OPEC neighbors by the Soviet Union; they will never be invaded or bombed by the United States. But how to get the Arabian States even to reply to my letters—that is the real problem."
"I think I can help," Gloriana said.
"You can?" Mountjoy cried, surprised.
"Yes. Remember when Mr. Birelli was here and you sent me to Nice?"
"I do."
"I didn't go," Gloriana said. "I went to Paris instead. Nice is full of stuffy people at this time of the year and there is nothing to do there. In Paris I met a very nice man—at a discothèque."
"At a discothèque?" Mountjoy cried. "Surely Your Grace did not go to one of those places!"
"Yes I did," Gloriana said. "It was lots of fun. I haven't had any fun really since Tully died."
"You danced?" Mountjoy asked. His view of discothèque dancing came close to orgiastic ritual.
"Oh, Bobo," said Gloriana. "Of course I danced. It was fun. And I met this very nice man. He gave me his card." She opened her handbag and fumbled in it and took out an oblong of chaste pasteboard which she handed to Mountjoy.
Mountjoy fixed his monocle firmly in his eye, as if this would somehow absolve the card of whatever improprieties it represented, and stared at it for several seconds.
" 'Sheik Ali Muhmad Ibn Saud,' " he read aloud and then, dropping the card on his lap, he stared at Gloriana in surprise.
"You met Sheik Ali Muhmad Ibn Saud?" he asked. "In a discothèque? In Paris?"
"Yes," said Gloriana. "He danced very well—and he was educated at Eton. He was also an Oxford blue."
"Eton? Oxford?" echoed Mountjoy. And then, not quite as hopefully, "Discothèque?"
"Oh, Bobo," Gloriana said. "Dancing didn't end with the fox-trot and the Viennese waltz. It developed. It isn't so much a social thing now. It's a fun thing."
"So was the Viennese waltz, for those who knew how to get the most out of it," Mountjoy said. "Tell me, Your Grace, did the Sheik know who you were?"
"Of course," Gloriana said. "He has six wives, you know. It isn't his fault. It's his duty to his people. He has to have lots of children."
"Yes," said Mountjoy meditatively. "I remember his grandfather. I think he had a score of wives and sixty or seventy children. A highly patriotic man. Of course, one has to say this for it, that the grandfather's multiple marriages produced stability in a state which had been previously a hotbed of intertribal warfare. He did not er…make any suggestions regarding yourself?"
"He said he would like to add me to his list of wives, but he did not expect me to accept. He was very polite about it. He saw me back to my hotel and said that if at any
time I was in need of help, I had only to contact him."
"Hmmm," said Mountjoy and looked somewhat more attentively at Gloriana. She was still a young woman, hardly more than in her middle forties. A mere child in fact. She had an excellent figure and an open, smiling, mischievous face. She rose and walked to a bureau containing a bowl of her favorite fruit, pomegranates, and Mountjoy, seeing the grace of her movement, the flowing lines of her figure, the elegance with which she stepped, raised his hand to the corner of his mouth and curled for a moment an imaginary mustache. Bentner glanced at him and nodded his head slightly.
"Your Grace," said Mountjoy when Gloriana returned with her pomegranate, "I think it might be in the interests of the world if you got in touch with this young man and asked him to pay an unofficial visit to Grand Fenwick. I shall see that he is suitably accommodated in the castle and closely watched. You need have no fear."
"Oh, Bobo," said Gloriana. "You're such an old-fashioned darling." And she kissed him on the top of his head.
CHAPTER XV
Sheik Ali Muhmad Ibn Saud arrived in Grand Fenwick a week later and charmed everybody. He was a slimly built man in his mid-forties, of medium height, with a nose like a hawk and eyes which changed from soft devotion to sword-bright anger in a moment. He moved with the grace of a cat and he had about him at all times three enormous Arabs in flowing robes, impassive as statues and capable, it seemed, of mayhem or murder without the slightest show of emotion.
Gloriana called them the Three Terrors.
But the Sheik attracted everybody by his personality. He was deeply read in Western literature, knowledgeable on Western art and yet had a light sense of humor which made him the most agreeable of companions.
Mountjoy had hoped to start serious talks with the Sheik the day after his arrival. But instead he got the same treatment which he himself had devised for Birelli. The Sheik managed to keep him at a polite, good-humored distance and spent the greater part of his time with Gloriana. This made Mountjoy very nervous and Bentner too, for they had known Gloriana since she was a child and felt protective toward her. Polished sophisticate that he was, Mountjoy began to exhibit all the symptoms of a suburban father whose daughter is constantly out late—and Gloriana was constantly out late.
The Sheik had no need to be concerned about money, and had arrived in France in his own plane, a DC-10 equipped like a hotel, and in Grand Fenwick in his $100,000 custom-built Maserati which had been sent ahead to await him and now gleamed in the straw of a disused stable. He took Gloriana for a three-day cruise on his yacht in the Mediterranean, driving to Cannes. Although Mountjoy was also invited, he got terribly seasick and was hardly in touch with what was going on. On return to Grand Fenwick, Gloriana and her Sheik went to Paris for two days, and when they got back, Mountjoy took Gloriana aside and gave her a lecture on propriety.
"He's just great fun to be with," said the Duchess. "There's nothing more to it than that. I'm quite safe. Remember he has six wives."
"That's exactly what I am remembering," said Mountjoy. "A man with one wife may become devoted to her. But a man with six wives is likely to become devoted merely to women in general. I'm sure I don't have to talk to Your Grace about the—"
"Really, Bobo," said Gloriana. "Remember I was married ten years. There isn't really much that you have to warn me about."
Mountjoy sighed. "You're a very beautiful woman, Your Grace," he said.
"Perhaps," said Gloriana. "Sometimes it's a nuisance being a Duchess. However, I do not forget that I am a Duchess and have a responsibility to my people which I must put before my personal wishes. Freddie is sympathetic. He has the same thing."
"Freddie?" said Mountjoy.
"That's what they called him at Eton. He prefers it to Ali Muhmad Ibn Saud. He's really very nice, Bobo. I wish you could get to know him better."
"So do I," Mountjoy said. "After all, I did invite him here so we could talk of matters of some importance."
"About the Q-bomb and this oil business," Gloriana said. "I don't think you'll have too much trouble. I've softened him up a bit. I think he'll take the Q-bomb. As a favor."
"As a favor?" cried Mountjoy. "I'm offering him nuclear parity with the Soviet Union and the United States and he thinks he's doing me a favor?"
"They don't think like we do," Gloriana said. "They think that being in possession of a huge percentage of the world's oil resources they already have the equivalent of the Q-bomb, though it is economic in nature. Also there's the problem that if any one Arab state has nuclear arms, the others might regard that as a threat to them. So it would have to be owned in common and that's difficult because some don't really trust the others."
"Eton," pondered Mountjoy, shaking his head. "I always held that Winchester was the better school in which to Anglicize foreign students."
"Of course, it would be different if I accepted Freddie's offer of marriage," Gloriana said. "I'd be his seventh official wife and he has a lot of concubines. But I would be his chief wife—or at least that's what he says now. And I could live in Grand Fenwick, just occasionally visiting his kingdom. But as the chief wife and a ruler in my own right there would be a compact between Grand Fenwick and Saudi Arabia and the—"
"Outrageous," Mountjoy cried. "I cannot permit Your Grace to become a pawn in the power politics of the Near East, a chattel to be disposed of in marriage for the benefit of some Arabian despot."
Gloriana eyed him thoughtfully. Was it possible that he was beginning to slip? Was it possible that his keen, informed, subtle mind was being infected by senility of which the first symptoms were his worries over her relations with the Sheik and his seeming inability to anticipate the Arab point of view on nuclear armament?
But Mountjoy soon put those fears to rest.
"You might mention to…er, Freddie," he said, "that I have received a communication from Kuwait and Oman and Iraq each expressing an interest in sending a diplomatic mission to Grand Fenwick."
"Have you?" said Gloriana, very surprised.
"Yes," said Mountjoy smoothly. "From the Three Terrors in fact. Each separately and secretly. It appears that they serve more than one master." He gave a slight smile and added quietly, "Freddie, apparently without his knowledge, has brought his brother Arab states with him. But I'd like to deal with Freddie first." Gloriana was still staring at him in disbelief when he bowed and left.
An hour later Freddie the Sheik, as Mountjoy was beginning to think of him, sent a message by the bodyguard representing Kuwait asking whether he might have a formal interview with Mountjoy after dinner. Mountjoy replied that he would be honored to have the Sheik as his dinner guest and they could talk later. He had inquired of the kitchen staff and discovered that Freddie did not require a special menu, and they had an excellent meal together from which the Three Terrors were excluded. Freddie politely refused wine and contented himself with many cups of black coffee, sweet as molasses.
"I have been watching events in the Moslem and Arab nations for some fifty years," said Mountjoy suavely, "and they have arrived at the point which I expected: the Persian Gulf peoples, if you will excuse so generalized a phrase, are in peril of being seized by the Soviet and brought under their dominance. I expect, Your Excellency, that you have yourself foreseen this threat and laid plans to meet it. I would like to be of what service I can in discussing your plans and helping to further them."
"To have an offer of both counsel and aid from so distinguished a statesman as yourself is extremely gratifying," said Freddie. "May I ask in commencing that you review the situation as you see it and I can then, perhaps, add such details to complete the picture as may not have come to your notice."
Mountjoy reviewed the situation. The world supremacy of the OPEC nations, particularly those situated around the Persian Gulf, had made them a prime target for annexation by the Soviet Union. The anti-American moves in oil-rich Iran, and the Soviet adventure into Afghanistan, against which no countermove of strength had been made by the United St
ates, undoubtedly encouraged the Soviet planners to believe that if they moved militarily into the Arabian nations, the American response might be equally ineffective. Against an overt threat, the Arabian countries, however modern their armies, could not make effective resistance since they lacked nuclear power. It was not the actual use of nuclear power but the threat of its use which had preserved peace among the world's nations for so long.
In this situation, the real salvation of the Arab nations was to have nuclear potential of their own. Grand Fenwick could offer them that potential with the Q-bomb. It need never be used; in fact it must never be used. The fact that it was in the possession of the Arabian nations would be sufficient to protect them. It would make them independent of the patronage-profit of others. It would preserve their self-respect. As for internal dissension fomented against the present regimes, that would be a matter they could best handle themselves and one to which they were undoubtedly attending at the present time.
"We of Grand Fenwick take a great risk in making this offer," Mountjoy concluded. "I have no need to point out to you that if an internal revolution, instigated by the Soviet or any others, were successful, then the Q-bomb (which, I will add parenthetically, is still far more powerful than any fission or fusion weapon yet devised) would fall into the hands of the revolutionaries. However, we must be and are prepared to accept that risk."
When the Count had concluded, Freddie said, "You will allow me to point out that the Q-bomb, however potent it may be, is an outdated weapon in that it is only a bomb. It has to be dropped from an airplane—a ridiculously easy target these days—instead of being delivered by a supersonic intercontinental rocket."
"It doesn't have to be delivered at all," said Mountjoy smoothly. "All you have to do is explode it right where it lies. The effect would be to destroy on the instant most of Europe and Russia."
"Ourselves as well," said Freddie.
"It is a characteristic of atomic warfare that there are likely to be no survivors," said Mountjoy. "That is what makes the threat of atomic warfare so excellent a guarantor of peace."
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