The Empty Quarter

by David L. Robbins

  LB raised his third beer to himself.

  “That went well.”

  The opposite chair stayed out of alignment, a lingering mark of Wally’s vexation. LB thought to straighten it, when the seat was filled by the wide frame of young Lieutenant Berkowitz.

  The CRO arrived without a drink, on alert tonight. He pointed at LB’s beer.

  “You good?”

  “Yep.”

  The LT settled in. He looked around the canteen, taking it all in, the eagerness of a first deployment.

  “How’re you feeling, LB?”

  “Emotional.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  Berko grimaced, trying to decipher, then gave it up to slouch in the metal chair. Far behind him, another cargo plane revved for takeoff. The kid was broad shouldered, six feet and chiseled, with keen dark eyes.

  “I was asking about your wounds. That’s all.”

  “I know.”

  The cargo plane lumbered to the runway. In the canteen crowd, a woman saw someone she’d not crossed paths with in a long while and hugs flew around. Somewhere seven thousand feet up, four PJs leaped off a lowered cargo ramp into the blackness. LB took a swig, and Berko snapped his fingers.

  “Hey. I heard you wrestled in college.”

  “UNLV.”

  “That’s big-time. I was at Brooklyn College.”

  “Good.”

  “We should take it to the mat sometime. Be fun.”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Twenty-one years ago, LB had joined the military. For the first decade, most of the grappling he’d done had been to take men to the ground to silence or kill them; after that, to hold them in place to save them. LB cut his eyes at Wally and Torres, who’d resumed gazing at each other. And he’d done some of that. Not enough.

  “I’d cheat.”

  Berko nodded without understanding.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “You got time.”

  “For what?”

  LB ran a hand over the crown of his head, wondering how he might answer.

  “Nothing.”

  Berko winced, still confounded.

  “Sure. So why’re you sitting by yourself?”

  “Why aren’t I?”

  The young officer didn’t scoot his chair back to leave. Instead, in a manner that was not friendly or insistent but simple and loyal, he held his ground. Berko yanked a thumb at Wally and Torres.

  “What was that with you and Wally?”

  “You watching me, kid?”

  “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

  “Look, Lieutenant, that’s work. I’m not working right now.”

  LB tapped the table, trumped by himself. It felt low to say to Berko the same stinging thing Wally had said to him.

  “All right. Stay. But I’m drinking.”

  Berko dug into his hip pocket for a small leather case.

  “I’ll smoke. Cigar?”

  “You got two?”

  “It’d be rude to only bring one.”

  This was one of those raised-right kids. LB accepted the stogie and a light. The cigar would slow his beers, and the young officer distracted him from counting landings and takeoffs. Berko lit his own cigar, then leaned back to admire the stars with LB. The kid didn’t speak and blew smoke rings better than LB.

  “It was a joke. All I did was buy them a round.”

  “What’d you get?”

  “I sent Wally a rye, Coke, and cranberry.”

  “So?”

  “It’s a Dr. Pecker.”

  “That pissed him off?”

  “No. It pissed off Torres. You heard about that thing in the pool last week.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got her a Bloody Mary. I told the waiter to call it a Bloody Wally.”

  “That’s funny shit.”

  “I know.”

  The ember of Berko’s cigar glowed from a deep draw.

  “You and Wally know each other pretty well, then.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “We’ve been back-to-back as much as we’ve gone nose to nose.”

  “Kind of like brothers.”

  “Like sisters.”

  “How long?”

  “Close to twenty.”

  “Man.”

  “Since he was a fourth year at the Academy. I was an LT in the Rangers; he ran the school jump team. My squad stopped in for some high-altitude training. Wally jump-mastered for us. He was the best. Still is. Later on, I had some Spec Ops in Honduras. I requested him to jump us in. He did a good job. After he graduated, he joined the Rangers. Just as I was quitting for the GA.”

  “So he kind of followed you.”

  “Kind of.”

  Except that LB gave up his officer’s commission to become a PJ. Wally stayed an officer and became a CRO. And for the last thirteen years, he’d been LB’s CRO.

  “I’d heard you’d done that. Gave up being a captain to be a PJ?”

  “Where’d you hear it?”

  “At Indoc. Why’d you do it?”

  “What do they say at Indoc?”

  “No one knows for sure.”

  “Let’s leave it that way.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Berko mulled behind his cigar.

  “So I get it. You guys are tight. You were just kidding around with him and Torres.”

  “That’s all.”

  “But you understand. He was just standing up for her. Though I don’t think the major needs anybody doing her standing.”

  LB answered with his own long puff. He cocked his head, inviting the young lieutenant to stop right there. Berko gave no ground and planted an elbow on the table.

  “You’d have done the same thing. Same situation. You know, if someone upset your date. Even if they didn’t mean it.”

  LB had accepted the cigar. Now he couldn’t get rid of the kid.

  “No I wouldn’t. He’s a GA. One of us. She’s not.”

  Berko pursed his lips and let it go, but with a shrug that showed he really wasn’t.

  There’s more to life than being a PJ. That’s what LB read in the young officer’s slow fade back into the metal chair, the theatrical way he lifted the cigar to his lips. There’s other things to do with your time between deployments than spend it at Indoc training kids. There’s Berko’s nice Jewish parents and probably a pretty Brooklyn girl. Doc’s home filled with a wife and daughters in Vegas. Quincy’s cattle ranch in the Nevada highlands. Wally’s mom and dad, a sister in San Francisco, a date with Torres in Djibouti.

  LB bit the cigar and took the sweating third beer by the neck. He waved the back of his hand at all of this, everything young Berko did not say. What was LB supposed to do, apologize for saving lives? For training hard and pushing others to do the same? In the silence between him and young Berko who had saved no one and given nothing yet, the canteen raised more glasses and voices, the equatorial stars glittered, and more dark planes flew away.

  * * *

  10 Personnel Recovery Cell Coordinator.

  They recite the Qur’an and consider it in their favor, but it is against them . . .

  What I fear most is those who interpret verses of the Qur’an out of context.

  They will pass through Islam as an arrow passes through its quarry.

  Wherever you meet them, kill them.

  The one who kills them or is killed by them is blessed.

  They are the dogs of the People of Hell.

  A hadith of the Prophet Muhammad regarding those who pervert Islam for their own purposes

  Interlude<
br />
  The home of Prince Hassan bin Abd al-Aziz

  Riyadh

  Saudi Arabia

  Abd al-Aziz rapped a knuckle against one of the dozen video screens.

  “That’s him?”

  “Yes.”

  The guard opened a file folder on his desk. He plucked from it a black-and-white photo, a passport-style shot. The Pakistani held the picture up to the monitor so that the prince could compare the likeness; both the still and live images were of a short, hawk-faced, and slender man, beardless, with a beak nose and distrustful eyes.

  This confirmed the presence of Walid Samir bin Rajab from Jeddah in the prince’s waiting room.

  Abd al-Aziz had come the instant he was notified, an afternoon nap interrupted. The small, ragged chap on the screen rocked gently in a cushy chair, hands in his lap. He ate nothing from a tray of hummus, olives, and flatbread set near him in hospitality. He was dressed not like the Saudi he was, in white thobe and agal, but in a cotton tunic, futa skirt, sandals, and pakul hat, the traces of Yemen. Walid Samir bin Rajab seemed tense but in no hurry; he was surely aware that armed guards stood on each side of the doors in and outside of the reception room.

  “Has he been searched?”

  The security guard was a mustachioed man, chestnut dark and fat beneath a burgundy beret. The prince never spoke this guard’s name because it was Muhammad, and he didn’t like to attribute the Prophet to such a black and foreign fellow.

  “He had these on him.”

  The guard handed over a cheap flip cell phone, a compact Qur’an, and a USB thumb drive.

  “Anything else?”

  “He says he wants to speak with you.”

  The prince hefted the items.

  “Did he say why?”

  “Only that you will want to talk with him.”

  “Tell him I know that he’s here. Ask him to wait.”

  The guard flicked a switch, leaning his mustache close to a microphone.

  “Sayedi?”

  On the screen, bin Rajab got to his feet, blank-faced and ruffled. He bowed at the voice in the waiting room. The guard informed him of the prince’s words. Bin Rajab bowed again. He asked the camera for a bowl of water and towel to wash up.

  Abd al-Aziz tapped the monitor once more.

  “Search him again.”

  The prince traced a finger down the list, though he did not need to. He knew by heart the names of the Kingdom’s most wanted men, those who’d plotted or taken part in attacks on Saudi targets in or outside the country. The List of 85 was his profession. He maintained it, crossed names off, added new ones.

  Walid Samir bin Rajab. #34. Forger, recruiter, and trainer for al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. Involved in the fighting in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Planner for the 2006 suicide bombing of the Abqaiq oil refinery. Organizer of fighters for the Afghan war along the Syrian-Iraqi border. Planner for the 2012 suicide bombing of a militia funeral in Jaar, Yemen.

  Abd al-Aziz took the little thumb drive in his palm, weighing its nothingness. What was on it so that bin Rajab could say The prince will want to see me?

  Whirling to his laptop computer, he plugged the stick into a USB port. Immediately Abd al-Aziz ran an antivirus scan on the contents of the tiny drive. The scan came up clean.

  The drive contained only one file: alAziz$girls.xls.

  The prince bit his lower lip, scraping his front teeth through the thistles of his beard. He clicked on the file; a spreadsheet popped onto the screen.

  The header above the first column read: Accounts. Beneath it were listed the numbers of nine different accounts all belonging to Hassan bin Abd al-Aziz: four banking access numbers, one each in Scotland, the Emirates, Lucerne, and Grand Cayman; one stock brokerage in London, another in Tanzania; credit cards issued by private banks in San Francisco and Hong Kong; and the account number for the prince’s Amex Black Card.

  A second column bore the heading Payees. For each account, a collection of businesses was listed by date and withdrawal amount, extending over the past twenty-four months. The prince read the first few names: Top Hat in Toronto, Paradise in London, KingsMistress in Dubai and Paris, Jĭnshèn Nŭshén in Hong Kong. The list of escort services flowed well past the bottom of the screen, totaling close to £100,000. Abd al-Aziz did not follow the list to its end. He blanked the screen and yanked out the thumb drive.

  He’d been hacked. Someone, who? How?

  The prince balled both fists and let that be his expression of outrage. Anything more would do no good, a lesson long and hard learned in espionage. He glared into the compromised laptop as if into a black tunnel, at the unknown trespasser looking back at him. Who was it? Certainly not skinny bin Rajab; the little terrorist had a different set of skills. Who’d burrowed into his private computer? Who? What else had been stolen out of it? The prince’s mind raced with the contents of the hard drive, what more personal damage could be mined from it.

  Abd al-Aziz closed the computer, unable to look it in the face. He’d have it scrubbed, but until then, he couldn’t touch the keys. He slammed a fist on the desk, conceding himself one act of rage. A Tiffany lamp tipped, almost falling over, but righted itself. The prince wanted to clear his desk with a swipe of his arm, throw things, damage something. He put his hands in his lap before he could do this.

  In front of a mirror, Abd al-Aziz donned his mislah, the dark, gold-trimmed cloak of the Al Saud. He admired himself, a man of girth and value. He stood in his home office of stone pillars, marble floor, brown leather sofas and chairs, on an ancient woven carpet. His windows looked out on a palm-shaded swimming pool, beyond that to his cameras and walls, and to the cameras and walls of his powerful neighbors.

  He had a wife and mistresses and children. Many brothers and sisters, and a vast family beyond them. He had responsibilities to his cousin the king and to his nation. He possessed power and greatness.

  Bin Rajab had come to his house to threaten him with pilfered information. Or was it a threat? Why had he come here? Why deliver the thumb drive in person? What trade was he seeking?

  Calmed in his royal robe, Abd al-Aziz considered the cost. For his wife, the price would be jewels and promises. To his sons, an apology for his carelessness and a wink. The rest of the family and the press would get nothing but a stony denial and his own set of well-placed threats. The king would insist on discretion, and perhaps a temporary demotion. That would be the worst.

  Years ago, while still a young man, Abd al-Aziz had traveled the desert many times on camelback. A distant Bedu cousin took him to the far reaches of the Rub‘ al-Khali. On one such journey, a servant fell asleep in the saddle, spilled out, and broke his neck. He could not move his limbs. He asked to be shot. The cousin did this. After burying the servant, the Bedouins all agreed they would rather see a man dead than humiliated.

  Abd al-Aziz moved behind his wide desk. He chose to sit. He would not stand to shake hands when bin Rajab entered but would rise once their meeting was done and he’d gotten what he wanted.

  He opened the file on his desk to imply he’d been reading it. Beside this, he set bin Rajab’s cell phone and the little thumb drive. The prince touched a call button.

  First through the door came his personal security chief, Tariq, a burly fellow of Israeli blood, the hardest people on earth. Behind him shuffled bin Rajab, hands clasped and face turned down as if already walking down a prison corridor. Last came the prince’s secretary and nephew, Kemal, to take notes and learn.

  Tariq walked bin Rajab to a chair facing the desk. Young Kemal took a seat against the wall. Before the prince could speak, he was caught on the awful gaze of bin Rajab. The terrorist measured the prince like a man buying a knife. Bin Rajab was skimpier than he appeared on the monitor, an ascetic, judging little man. Reputedly he’d killed a hundred in his time. Abd al-Aziz had sent more men to thei
r deaths than that.

  The prince gestured to the plush chair. “Sit, please.” The desk between them was very old, heavy, and polished. It had belonged to Abd al-Aziz’s grandfather. On this desk was signed the order to behead Juhayman al-Otaybi.

  Bin Rajab folded into a leather chair that nearly swallowed him. Tariq stood behind him. Kemal set a notepad on his knees.

  With a finger, Abd al-Aziz flicked the little thumb drive forward as if it were a dead bug on his desk.

  “Where did you get this?”

  Bin Rajab pointed at the closed laptop. “Out of your own computer, sayedi. Of course.”

  The prince drew a deep breath to hold on to his calm. The long exhale rustled in his whiskers.

  “How?”

  “I do not know how, sayedi. The data stick was given to me.”

  “By whom?”

  “I did not know the man.”

  “Do you know what is on this drive?”

  “No, sayedi. I was told only that it was your sins. I doubt they are all there.”

  “Is this blackmail?”

  “No.”

  “Was there more stolen from me?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  “Has any of this been made public?”

  “No. But what will happen, I cannot say.”

  “Then why did you bring this to me?”

  “As a warning. As a gift. And it seemed the way to meet the prince.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To come home.”

  “You want to enter rehabilitation.”

  “Yes, sayedi.”

  “I see.”

  The prince spun the opened file around on the slick desktop. He laid a fingertip onto the List of 85, on top of #34, bin Rajab.

  “I know you’ve taken the bay’a to al-Qaeda.”

  “Yes, sayedi.”

  “You have blood on your hands.”

  “I have.”

  “Why should I let you return?”