Then Mansour had sketched his plan, the step-by-step process of provoking Abdullah, of ratcheting up the Kingdom’s instability until Abdullah would have no choice but to overreact.
Five years before, or even one, Saeed would have stopped his son. This is madness, he would have said. There’s no need. But his patience was exhausted. And the bell rang: Mine. Mine. Mine.
NOW THE ATTACKS HAD begun.
On at least one level, they had succeeded. Abdullah was furious. At Princess Alia’s funeral, he hardly spoke. He sat beside Saeed, fists clenched, his legs twitching under his robe. Saeed didn’t believe Abdullah would be able to control himself much longer. Already, he’d nearly accused Mansour of treason. And when he exploded to the other princes, his accusations would rebound against him. Without evidence, he would sound insane. The family would have to rally around Saeed.
And yet. Saeed wished he hadn’t chosen this path. Mainly because of Mansour. When he’d agreed to rely on his son, the balance between them had shifted. The irony was not lost on him. In his quest for absolute control, he’d given power to his son. And overconfidence was Mansour’s great weakness. He was nearly fifty but had a young man’s arrogance. He had grown up in a world of supreme luxury and privilege, protected by Saeed’s power. He didn’t realize that even perfect plans could come apart.
A thought that reminded Saeed of another potential complication.
“What about the American? Wells?”
“We’ve lost him for now. Abdullah and Miteb can’t possibly have told him anything. And he doesn’t even work for the CIA anymore.”
Saeed knew about John Wells. Years before, Wells had stopped a nuclear bomb from going off in America. The incident was never publicly disclosed, but Saeed had heard of it because a jihadist Saudi princeling had financed the operation. Afterward, the CIA had given the Saudis proof of the prince’s involvement. To quiet the Americans, Mansour’s men had killed him in a staged car accident. But it was Wells who had found the bomb and killed the men who’d built it. Wells spoke Arabic, and he’d fought in Afghanistan. Saeed didn’t want him within one thousand kilometers of this operation.
“You need to find him,” Saeed said now.
“All right, father. We will.”
FIVE MILES SOUTH, AHMAD Bakr sat against the wall of a mosque that was really nothing more than a one-room box with suras stenciled on the walls. Midday prayers had just ended.
Day by day, he was closing his camp in Lebanon and bringing his men to Saudi Arabia. Some flew from Beirut. Others drove overland through Syria and Jordan. In a few days, he’d have everything he needed for the third operation. This time he didn’t expect any congratulations from the general. No, this operation would come as a surprise to Ibrahim — and whoever was behind him.
Bakr’s phone buzzed. A blocked number.
He stepped onto a crowded street that stank of baked sewage and week-old meat. The buildings around him were only a few years old and already crumbling, rusty rebar poking from their concrete. This was Suwaidi, a gigantic slum in southern Riyadh, home to hundreds of thousands of immigrants and unlucky Saudis. The Riyadh police rarely ventured into Suwaidi, never at night.
Bakr flipped open his phone. “One hour. The gold souk.”
The gold souk sounded glamorous. It wasn’t. Wealthy Saudis shopped for jewelry in Dubai or London. The souk was a run-down warren of shops selling gold-plated necklaces and silver earrings. Bakr arrived early and wandered the stalls, making sure no one had followed him. The sergeant showed up five minutes late. He wore a plain white thobe and a nervous smile. Bakr put an arm around him and steered him to an empty café two streets from the souk’s rear entrance. They sat in a corner at a bruised Formica table. The room smelled of burnt coffee, and flies buzzed over the sugar bowls.
“Show me,” Bakr said.
The sergeant passed over a palm-sized digital camera. He worked on the north entry gate at the Diplomatic Quarter. “These are from today.”
“No one saw you take them?”
The sergeant shook his head.
“Tell me again how it works.”
“We get a call ten minutes before. Maybe fifteen. Telling us to be ready for a special convoy.”
“Always the same gate?”
“Not always. But mostly they prefer my gate. There’s less traffic. Then they give us another call a minute in advance. They’re so arrogant. Like it’s our only job. We clear the cars, make sure they have a path, and they come through. Fast. They’re very concerned about getting hit on the way out.”
“Then?”
“Police cars wait outside, and the convoy picks them up and then they go.”
“And how can you be sure it’s him?”
“If he’s involved, it’s five vehicles at least. Big ones, thick armor. Today it was a van at the front and the back and three Suburbans. You’ll see in the pictures. And like you told me, I made sure I was on the gate when they came through. And I saw him. You can’t see it in the pictures, not through the glass. But I did.”
Bakr waited, but the sergeant didn’t give him the last, vital piece of information. So, finally, he asked: “Which car?” Mentally adding, You fool.
“Sorry. Second vehicle. The first Suburban. Middle row, left side.”
“You’re sure.”
“A thousand percent.”
CHAPTER 13
BEKAA VALLEY, LEBANON
THE BEKAA WAS REALLY TWO VALLEYS.
The southern half, nearer Beirut, was densely populated and fertile. A half-dozen rivers supported farms and light industry. On day trips, tourists visited vineyards and the ruins at Baalbek. In Zahlé, which had eighty thousand people and was the largest town in the valley, Muslims and Christians lived together, their churches and mosques practically side by side.
North of Baalbek, the valley looked different. Water was scarce and precious. The people were entirely Shia, and mostly poor. The twin mountain ranges, the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, pulled away from each other. The land between grew dry and wild. Herds of sheep wandered across rocky hummocks. Roads turned to gravel without warning.
In the north, Wells felt very much at home.
HIS RIDE FROM CYPRUS had gone smoothly. Wells sat on the deck as Nicholas and his men smoked in the cabin and argued in Greek. At one a.m. Wells called Gaffan on Nicholas’s satellite phone, confirming that Gaffan had arrived and passing along the GPS coordinates for the landing.
Two hours later, five miles off the Lebanese coast, Nicholas cut the cruiser’s lights. “You’re captain the rest of the way.” Nicholas nodded at the rubber raft tied loosely to the deck.
The raft was six feet long, five feet wide, with a rusted outboard engine at its back. It was made of black rubber, with a yellow patch sewn onto its right tube. Someone had drawn a smiley face on the patch. The smiley face failed to reassure. Wells felt a flutter in his stomach. He wasn’t a great swimmer. He hadn’t had much chance to learn, growing up in Montana. Was it possible he was… scared?
But nothing scared him. Not bullets or grenades or nuclear bombs. And since nothing scared him, he couldn’t be scared now. So, good, he wasn’t scared. He was irritated. Because drowning would be an irritating way to die after everything he’d survived, and if this raft sank, he’d probably drown. Not scared. Irritated.
Wells was glad to sort that question out.
“Don’t be frightened,” Nicholas said. “If I wasn’t sure you’d make it, I wouldn’t let you go. You think I want you to drown, your boyfriend bothering me? It’s simple. We drop it in. You get in, push the red button, the engine starts.” Nicholas handed Wells a plastic yellow Garmin GPS, the landing position flashing a black X. “Aim at that.”
“Simple.”
“And one more piece of advice.” Nicholas pointed at the dim lights along the coast. “See that red light? On the left? That’s Syria. Stay away from the Syrians. They’re not nice. Otherwise, no problem. Smooth water. A big bathtub. It takes about an hour. Very flat co
ast, low draft, you ride right to the beach.”
“And when I get there I leave the raft?”
“For a hundred thousand dollars, I can buy a new one.”
Wells spent the five-mile ride promising himself he would take swimming lessons when this mission was done. But Nicholas was right. The trip was easy. The eastern Mediterranean was as dull as a lake, the waves no more than two feet. The raft rocked lightly as Wells navigated toward the X, keeping a hand on the wooden box where his weapons were packed.
An hour later, he was a half-mile from shore, close enough to hear the occasional hum of engines on the coast road. The beach ahead was empty and unlit. Even so, Wells was exposed. The moon was low in the sky, but starlight shone off the water. The shore was flat and ran straight north-south, no nooks or crags to hide behind.
No wonder Nicholas had insisted on staying out to sea. Three hundred yards out, Wells revved the outboard, trying to close quickly. He needed a muffler. Fortunately, this stretch of coast was lightly developed, probably because of its nearness to Syria, which had a habit of invading Lebanon.
Fifty yards from shore, Wells cut the engine to just above idle, let the waves carry him in. He didn’t see Gaffan. But as he reached the beach, a Jeep pulled off the road and flashed its headlights. Gaffan stepped out. Wells hefted the crate from the raft. “I brought you a present.”
THEY LOADED UP, HEADED south. After a mile, Gaffan turned left, inland, passing between citrus groves. “Hit a checkpoint on the way up,” he said.
“Army or police?”
“Couldn’t tell. Either way, we should ditch that crate.” Gaffan parked beside a building that looked like a garage for farm equipment and cut the headlights. Wells stepped out, listened for dogs or traffic, heard neither. He popped the trunk, pried open the crate, pulled out their arsenal: AKs, pistols, grenades, ammunition, silencers.
“Nice.”
“I checked it on the boat. It’ll do.” Wells transferred the weapons to a canvas bag, stowed the bag in the Jeep’s spare tire compartment, tossed the tire and crate in a ditch behind the garage.
He checked his watch. Five a.m. Another night gone. Working for the agency had downsides, but it meant quick access to vehicles, safe houses, and identification. Wells would have gotten from France to Lebanon on a fresh passport in hours instead of days and had a pistol and sat phone waiting.
“It’s a lot slower when you’re on your own,” Gaffan said, as if reading his mind.
“Yes and no. On a government ticket, we’d have to check in with the head of station, get an in-country brief—”
“I know you’re supposed to do those things. But did you ever actually, John?”
“I didn’t always.”
“Ever?”
“I can’t remember.”
“I’m picking up some bad habits from you.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
They headed south toward Beirut on the coast road. The checkpoint was south of Tripoli. The paramilitary police looked them over, waved them through. “If they ever stop us, play the stupid American,” Wells said. “Touristico. They are always ready to believe it. Definitely don’t let on you know Arabic.”
“Roger that. So when we get to the Bekaa, what are we looking for?”
Wells had spent the ride from Cyprus mulling that question. “We know it’s a big operation, a bunch of guys. It’s been going a while. That credit card’s four months old. And it’s got to be more than just a crash pad. The logistics don’t work. These ops are happening two countries away.”
“So a full-on training camp? A base?”
“At least a house where they plan missions. Maybe just a few guys, maybe a couple dozen.”
“All Saudi.”
“Hezbollah run the Bekaa. They’re Shia, and Iran’s behind them. Maybe Abdullah and Miteb have it wrong and this is an Iranian operation to destabilize the Saudi government.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Abdullah, he’s old, angry, but he’s smart. His brother, too. If they think this is coming from inside their family, then I believe them. And the guy I saw in Italy, he was Saudi, not Iranian.”
“Anyway, what would the Iranians get out of it?” Gaffan said. “They’ve got their own problems.”
“True. Figure it’s Saudi-run. Even so, they can’t operate here without Hezbollah. They must be paying for protection. Which means if we make too much fuss, we’ll have a problem.”
“Will your friends help?”
“Don’t count on it.” Wells recounted his last conversation with Shafer. “Duto probably wants to see what we find before he decides to bail us out.”
“He’d do that?”
“He’d enjoy it. Any case, we’d best find them quick, before Hezbollah figures out we’re looking.”
“Then hit them?”
“Depends on the target. If it’s fortified, no. But if we can get in and out without waking the neighbors, maybe.”
“So how do we find them?”
“That’s a very good question.”
* * *
BEIRUT LOOKED LIKE A cross between Miami, San Francisco, and Baghdad, a hilly, densely packed city with a waterfront promenade — and every so often a bombed-out building as a reminder of the civil war that had raged from 1975 to 1990. Wells and Gaffan rented two rooms in a Sofitel in East Beirut, the Christian quarter, to shower, shave, and nap.
By noon they were up, following a highway that rose into the mountains. The Bekaa’s farms and vineyards were closer than they seemed. Lebanon was a bite-sized country, one hundred fifty miles from tip to tail but less than fifty wide.
At the crest of the highway, uniformed soldiers manned a checkpoint, backed by an armored personnel carrier under camouflage netting. A soldier waved the Jeep over. “Identification,” he said in Arabic.
“Excuse me?” Gaffan said in English.
“Identification. Passports.”
Gaffan handed over his passport, Wells his driver’s license.
“Your passport, please,” the soldier said in English.
The passport was a problem. Specifically, the lack of a border entry stamp in the passport was a problem. The agency specialized in handling these details.
Wells tried to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, captain, I left it at the hotel.”
“Which hotel?”
“The Sofitel. In East Beirut.”
“And why do you come to Lebanon?”
“Tourists. We’re headed for Baalbek.”
“You should—”
“The ruins—”
“Shh! I know. You should have your passport.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t thinking.”
The officer flipped through Gaffan’s passport again, held Wells’s driver’s license close to his face. “Next time make sure you bring it,” he said. “You’re not in America. This doesn’t mean anything here.” He handed back the passport and license, waved them on.
They were halfway down the mountain before Gaffan spoke. “Captain was a nice touch.”
“Yes, but. This is going to be a problem, these checkpoints. Best travel separately, so if I get taken out, you don’t.”
IN ZAHLÉ, WELLS BOUGHT the first motorcycle he saw, an air-cooled Honda CB650, old but in good shape, worth maybe one thousand five hundred dollars. Wells paid twice that without blinking, another two hundred dollars for a helmet. Then he and Gaffan rolled north-west, toward Baalbek.
Hezbollah territory started east of Zahlé. Yellow and green flags hung from streetlights and telephone poles, proclaiming the group’s slogan: “Then surely the party of God are they that shall be triumphant.” Ten-foot-tall posters displayed larger-than-life photographs of Hezbollah’s leaders, heavy, scowling men wearing long black robes. On billboards, a pale white horse danced across an oddly lunar landscape. The horse symbolized the twelfth imam, and the billboards called the Shia to the festival of Ashura, which commemorated the death of Hussein Ali, the grandson of Muhammad and t
he third Shia imam. In the Bekaa, party, state, and religion were one.
Baalbek lay almost halfway up the valley. The town had grown around the remains of the Temple of Jupiter, built by the Romans about two hundred years after the birth of Christ. Its size was actually a sign of weakness, a futile effort to stop the new religion: Look at this shrine and know that our gods are stronger than your Messiah. But the majesty of a single God had overwhelmed the Roman pantheon. Wells wondered why Hezbollah had based itself here. Probably the group’s clerics viewed the temple as a simple tourist attraction, acres of meaningless stones.
North of Baalbek, traffic on the road thinned. The vineyards disappeared, replaced by scruffy farms of tomatoes and lemons. Here and there, Wells saw concrete mansions, set hundreds of yards off the road and protected by high brick walls. The homes were three and four stories high and garishly painted in yellow and green. McMansions, Lebanese-style. Wells assumed they belonged to hash farmers and Hezbollah leaders. Any of them could have served as the safe house he and Gaffan were looking for.
Farther north, the farms vanished. To the east, gray-brown hills rose toward the Syrian border. To the west, the Lebanon Mountains disappeared beneath low clouds. Qaa, the last village before Syria, was really just a mosque, a few houses, a small grocery store, and the gas station that had shown up on the credit card that the NSA had traced. Wells rode until a blue sign announced, “Syria 1 KM,” then made a U-turn and waited for Gaffan to follow.
At the gas station, Gaffan filled up the Jeep. “What are we doing, John?”
“They don’t teach recon in the army anymore?”
“This is Jamaica all over again. Worse. This valley is fifty or sixty miles long, twenty wide. A thousand square miles. We’re looking for one house. No way do we find these guys without comint”—communications intelligence—“or imagery. Even with a helicopter we might miss them.”
“Wrong. First. The camp’s around here. Not in the south.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because the credit card was used here. If you’re in Zahlé, you wouldn’t drive up here. And if they have a camp, they need space.”
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