Countdown to Mecca

by Michael Savage

  “We’re live.”

  43

  Jack extended his hand to meet the fair, small hand of the prince. “Your Excellency.”

  “Mr. Hatfield, a pleasure to have you with us.” The prince placed Jack’s hand between both of his. His eyes held Jack’s, and he smiled broadly. “You are hungry, I hope.”

  “We are,” admitted Jack, “but I never eat on duty. I hope you understand.”

  “Ah, well, perhaps we will tempt you with something besides.” The prince raised his hand.

  Jack expected him to click his fingers, but he did nothing so gauche; he quickly lowered his hand. Moments later, two men entered from a door next to the elevator carrying two trays of pastries. A third trailed a few steps behind with coffee and tea. The prince was playing a game Jack knew very well. It was difficult to be hard-hitting with a croissant hanging out of your mouth. Jack passed on the pastries, even though they looked and smelled as if they had just come from the kitchen of a master baker. The prince, however, chose a few while complimenting Jack on his cable show.

  “I was particularly taken with the one on the effects of depleted uranium,” he said, “which included stock footage of the war to liberate Kuwait.” He snuggled back in his seat like Jack had seen Eddie do on the boat. “It’s an issue not many people face, yet you addressed it in a comprehensive manner.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said, concentrating on appearing just as easy-going as the prince. He wanted the man to feel that he had the upper hand, to be comfortable, but he reminded himself that was just what Riad was—a man. They were boxing—more than boxing, really. An interview like this was an elaborate dance.

  “You have been to Riyadh before?” asked the prince.

  “Briefly,” said Jack. “I’m afraid I’ve never been here long enough to really enjoy the city.”

  “But I did not know this.” The prince looked as if he were surprised. “I should have had a guide meet you at the airport, and given you a tour.”

  “That would have been wonderful,” Jack answered honestly. “But I’m here on business and my schedule is tight. As I’m sure yours is as well.”

  “Of course, of course.” The prince reached over and took a pineapple tart from the tray. Jack noted that the delicacies even included the sugar-free, low-fat, no-dairy baked goods that he favored. Hardly a coincidence, he was sure. The prince must’ve had a research team that put Jack’s to shame—even at the height of his success on Truth Tellers.

  “I want to say, before we begin, that I appreciate that you took this time for me,” said Jack. “You’ve been so generous.”

  It was a nod to propriety that he begin with a compliment. The prince acknowledged this with a slight, grateful nod. But Jack was not finished. He wanted to know how seriously this guy took himself.

  “Though I have not seen much of your country,” he went on, “I cannot imagine anything more splendid than this residence. The building itself is a treasure.”

  The prince appeared to be suddenly, very slightly on guard. Two compliments when one would have sufficed? His smile belied any suspicion he might have as to Jack’s motives.

  “Yes, it is quite majestic.” The prince leaned forward conspiratorially. “Much nicer than the ministry offices.” The prince smiled. He seemed to be mocking himself—a tactic, Jack thought, to make him appear more humble and therefore likable. So he’s suspicious of suck-ups, Jack thought. He might not be as easy to manipulate as Jack had hoped.

  Doc knew what Jack was doing and his mouth twisted as if to say, “You’re wasting time.” The prince put down his tea, signaling it was go time.

  “So, you are here to talk about nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

  “Weapons of mass destruction,” Jack clarified.

  “Ah,” said the prince. “I assume that you are against them.”

  “I’m neither for nor against, to be honest.”

  The prince leaned back with an expression of mild surprise that quickly shaded to appreciation.

  “You are indeed an honest and very unique man,” he commented. “Certainly unique among Americans. What I have found is that those whose countries have weapons of mass destruction do not want them for others, and vice versa.”

  Jack thought back to the days-ago discussion with Sol Minsky. “Power is not to be feared in the hands of one with integrity.”

  The prince raised his hands as if in prayer. “You speak the truth.”

  “Which brings me to this, Prince,” Jack went on. “Nuclear weapons are still a big deal around the world, yet nuclear power has lost favor in my country and many others. Nonetheless the Kingdom plans to build sixteen new nuclear reactors. Why is that?”

  Prince Riad al-Saud smiled. “We have great, and growing, electrical needs—eight percent more each year. And there are some notable difficulties imposed by climate on other forms of power.”

  “And what about nuclear weapons themselves? Are you, like Iran, publicly opposed and privately for their development?”

  “The question has no relevance, since the reactors cannot produce material that creates weapons,” answered the prince.

  “They could be adapted.”

  “Not easily, as Tehran has learned at great cost. In our case, there are safeguards we have insisted upon, overseen by international inspectors.”

  “So apart from the difficulty, there’s no interest in developing a bomb or weapons of mass destruction?” asked Jack.

  “None.”

  “Even if Iran managed to build one?”

  “Iran will not,” said the prince.

  “But let’s assume, for the sake of this discussion, that Iran did build a device of some kind. Would Saudi Arabia feel threatened?”

  “No one really frightens us,” said the prince mildly. “We are not the West, Mr. Hatfield. I know what is going on in my realm. Do I look like a man who has fears?”

  He was relaxed, and Jack knew that the Saudis had secret police, the Al-Mabahith, second to none.

  “Of course,” the prince went on, “circumstances can change. If they do, we have an adequate military to deal with problems.”

  “With American help.”

  “If America is willing. Who can tell if you will always be willing?”

  Touché, thought Jack. “How do you feel about Pakistan’s repeated attempts to develop their own weapons?”

  “Will you be running through each nation, Mr. Hatfield?”

  “Sir, with your indulgence, Pakistan is a unique case,” Jack said. “There were loans from your Kingdom,” he said carefully. “It’s said in some places that Saudi Arabia paid for the entire development of the weapons.”

  The prince took a knowing sip of tea. “It is true.”

  Jack seemed surprised. “You’re admitting, Prince, that you funded Pakistan’s program?”

  The prince smiled. “Mr. Hatfield, I was merely referring to your comment, ‘It is said.’ Nothing more.”

  Jack smiled inwardly at the prince’s theatrical timing. “If I may, it’s also said that if there were a crisis, the Pakistanis would be obligated to give some of their weapons to the Saudis.”

  “Our brothers in Islamabad may be generous,” the prince said mildly, reaching for another pineapple tart, “but I doubt that generous.”

  “And so,” Jack quickly summarized, “if you’ll forgive my pressing the matter, there does appear to be a need for Saudi Arabia to develop its own WMDs. Because of Iran, and the unreliability of allies. Including the United States.”

  “There are many moving parts in your conclusion,” the prince said. “But I would agree that some people might believe that.”

  “At the risk of pressing you on an issue you seem reluctant to discuss, are you one of them who believes that Saudi Arabia should have a bomb?”

  “Candidly, Mr. Hatfield, I believe that Saudi Arabia should have at its disposal any means necessary to protect itself, just as every civilized nation should.”

  “Sir, is there a Saudi p
rogram to develop a bomb?”

  The prince was unfazed. Jack wasn’t surprised. The question did not exactly come from left field.

  “You Americans have no idea of the threat we face,” he said. His tone remained calm. He looked straight into the camera. “You see our country, you think sand and oil. Two things. We are faced with a Shia empire across our northern border, from Iran to the Mediterranean. You invaded Iraq. What is it now? A satellite of Iran. A new Persia. As you feared in one of your books written during Bush’s mistake. And Syria—you start a war, the Iranians finish it. Now they seek a bomb. And what should we do? Sit here without defenses?”

  Jack let the statements lay in the air for a few silent seconds. The prince wasn’t the only one with a sense of theatrical timing. “So that’s a yes.”

  “No.” The prince remained calm and seemingly forthright. “We do not have any program to develop a nuclear weapon or any device of similar capabilities. We have signed the international treaties saying that we won’t. That is on record.”

  “You have nothing near Yanbu?”

  “The port? No.”

  “Can I inspect any place I want?”

  Prince Riad al-Saud gave him a quizzical look. “Are you a one-man United Nations?”

  “Two-man,” Jack said, indicating Doc.

  The prince smiled at that. “I see. You will forgive the affront,” he said to Doc.

  Doc nodded.

  “If you have nothing to hide, then surely I can go anywhere I want,” said Jack. “You don’t mind that.”

  “Permission to travel anywhere in the country is not mine to give,” said the prince. “Other ministries are in charge of security.”

  His first major deflection, Jack thought. “So how can I ascertain that, as you imply, there is no secret facility in the mountains north of Yanbu.”

  The prince’s gaze shifted from the digicam’s lens to Jack’s eyes. “I have just told you there is no such facility.”

  “Nothing near Yanbu, in the hills.”

  “There is nothing.” The prince’s face was outwardly calm, but his eyes seemed suspicious. He was either the finest actor Jack had ever seen, or honestly taken aback. Jack didn’t know which, nor did he care.

  “I’m afraid there is.”

  Silence fell. Silence stayed. The prince looked at Jack. Jack looked at the prince. Doc continued to video, silently. Jack waited, wondering if the prince would leave, or call his guards, or even throw the remainder of his tea in Jack’s face.

  Finally the prince spoke quietly. “Where did you get such information?”

  “I was there myself, earlier today.” More silence.

  The prince’s gaze shifted briefly to the camera.

  “Already loaded everything on a cloud storage site,” Jack said.

  “I assumed as much,” the prince said. “But that is not what I was thinking.”

  “Oh?”

  “I would very much appreciate if you would show me this evidence,” Riad al-Saud said. The prince was back in command. It was not a request. It was an order.

  Jack motioned for Doc to show him what they had. Doc was smart enough to only show him the non-battle footage. He showed him only the video he had took when they were watching from the top of the hill.

  When Doc thumbed off the playback, the prince did not sound shaken or angry. But he did seem very serious. He didn’t even bother to try pretending that the location on the video could have been anywhere in the Middle East. The mountain positioning didn’t lie.

  “What will you do with this footage?” he asked flatly. “You know your so-called media will not care.”

  “Our so-called government might,” Jack countered.

  “My government might as well!’ Riad exclaimed in a rare moment of total candor, surprising everyone—perhaps even himself. “I can assure you, Mr. Hatfield, I have no knowledge of this so-called base, but I can also assure you that will not be true much longer.”

  He stood smoothly, strongly, his hands shaking as if he were keeping them from balling into fists with only a great show of willpower. Jack and Doc watched him silhouetted against the sunset filling the windows. “I truly thank you for bringing it to my attention, but now I believe you have another interview to conduct, do you not?”

  Jack could see that the prince was holding himself back from running out of the room, booming for his staff. “I do indeed,” he agreed sharply, deciding to end their encounter as the master of understatement. “Thank you, your Excellency.”

  “No,” the prince said, already withdrawing. “Thank you.”

  And with that, he was gone like a sirocco across the Sahara.

  44

  “Thing is, I believe him.” Doc said as he took one of the bottles of water from the limo fridge “I don’t think they have a program.”

  “What?” Jack snorted, sprawled on the backseat.

  “Look at the video,” prompted Doc. “Tell me he’s not surprised when you mention Yanbu.”

  The prince was either kind enough to let them use the Bentley, driver and all, for the ride to Brooks’s hotel. Or the original instructions had been to let them use the vehicle all day. It made no difference either way. The two men were back in the limousine and they were going to talk freely, bugs or no bugs.

  “Whose site could it possibly be, if not the government’s?” Jack wondered. “Maybe it’s a different branch? A shadow organization in the Saudi hierarchy?”

  “That’s not the way these guys work,” Doc maintained, then almost emptied the water bottle with one long pull.

  Jack snorted again. “Well, I think at least Prince Riad doesn’t work that way. Which is why I had you show him the video in the first place. Considering what we’re up against, I realized we needed all the support we could get—and not just from half a world away. What do you think they’ll do once they swarm over the site?”

  “Make the same conclusions we did,” Doc rumbled, taking another swig of much appreciated water. “Foreign intrigue on Saudi soil. They will not be happy, but I doubt they’ll blame the messengers. We’re the ones who brought it to their attention. Don’t you think they would have kept us there if he really did know about the site?”

  Jack frowned, and then slowly nodded. He looked down at the video playback in his hand. The prince said there was a threat; the prince denied that they had a program; the prince maintained he knew nothing about the secret facility. Jack raised his eyes to the limo’s ceiling and sighed, feeling more conflicted than he ever had in his entire life.

  The city outside the Bentley’s windows was glittering like it had rained diamonds, but the glitz of Riyadh held no pleasure for Jack Hatfield. Even though he was about to have dinner with a true American hero, he couldn’t help feeling that, appearances aside, he was truly heading into the heart of darkness.

  The Four Seasons was another luxury hotel in an all-star building—the “bottle opener” as Jimmy had called it when they first arrived in Riyadh. There was security, but nothing like what they’d encountered with the prince. One of the general’s aides met them in the lobby and took them to a private dining area. Doc had left his weapon in the limo this time, but wasn’t searched.

  “Figures,” he grumbled, the video camera in his hands as they walked through the corridors.

  General Thomas Brooks sat in a private room, at a small, white-table-clothed set-up for two, with a broad, friendly, welcoming smile on his face. He was in full uniform, with every pin, star, ribbon, and badge imaginable gilding his shoulders and chest like armor.

  “Ah!” he said as if seeing a Warhol at a flea market. “Jack. So good to see you!” No “Mr. Hatfield” for Brooks. He behaved as if they were already the best of friends. He took Jack’s proffered hand in both of his, looked him straight in the eye, then enthusiastically motioned for Jack to sit down. As he sat himself, he looked up to Doc. “Can we get you a seat as well, Mr. Matson?”

  “That’s okay,” Doc demurred. “I’m good.”

 
; “On the basis of what we could find of your record, Mr. Matson,” the general replied, “I’d say you are indeed. Jack must be proud to have you as a colleague.”

  Doc and Jack shared a quick glance. They shouldn’t have been surprised that Brooks had done his homework, but it was rarely stated so baldly. Going for that “we’re all just bosom buddies here” vibe, Doc realized.

  “I’m just his cameraman today, General,” Doc said. “Don’t mind me.”

  “Very well,” Brooks said. “But anytime you need anything, just say it.”

  “Will do.”

  And with that, Brooks brought his full attention, and full force of his personality, back on Jack. He was charming during the meal, regaling Jack with stories of his early days in the army, and then a rambling history of corruption and culture in the Middle East and the world. He ate and drank lustily, almost as if it were his last meal. That, alone, made Jack a little queasy. He ate little and avoided the coffee completely. His stomach was sour enough as it was.

  “Twenty years ago,” Brooks lectured, “Shia and Sunni coexisted more or less peacefully. Now the two branches of Islam are at each other’s throats, regularly blowing each other up in Iraq, Syria, Egypt. It was tempting for us in the Western powers to take a hands-off approach: let the two sides destroy each other. Certainly, in the short term, that seemed like a wise move: if the main branches of Islam were busy killing each other, they would leave the West alone.”

  Brooks took a moment to eat some more, then returned to his subject, waving a fork for emphasis. “But this strategy missed the deeper current: Islam in general was becoming more and more radicalized along tenets of the religion that demanded absolute purity of belief, and preached intolerance toward anyone who did not share that belief. To put it simply and bluntly: if a coreligionist should be killed, what was the fate of someone who did not share even the outward trappings of that religion?” He only paused for a nanosecond, then answered his own question. “Annihilation.”

  They started in on dessert before Brooks carried on. “It was commonly, but mistakenly, thought that internecine war left the victor fatally weakened. But history has shown that was incorrect in the majority of cases. Countless historical examples—France under Napoleon is an easy one for Westerners to grasp—showed that, on the contrary, victors were extremely dangerous to outsiders. Whether Sunnis conquered or Shia dominated, once victory was assured, the triumphant forces will turn their eyes, and their weapons, to the West.”