47

 

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The knock at the hotel door was insistent. Nash looked over at the clock on the nightstand. It was still early. Morning prayers hadn’t even been called yet.

He grabbed a jacket, pulled his pants on over the briefs he always slept in, then answered the door. He was greeted by two Saudi soldiers in full combat gear. One wore his helmet. The other wore a simple cloth cap. Both were dressed in drab olive. Both carried guns.

“Mr. Nashua Lee?” one asked.

“Yes, I’m Nash. Can I help you?”

“You are to come with us.” The first soldier took a step forward into Nash’s hotel room.

“Come with you? Where?” Nash asked.

The second soldier stepped into the hotel room and reached for Nash. “We have a car outside.”

“Hey! Wait just a minute,” Nash said, trying to keep the fear he felt from his voice. “I’m an American citizen. I need to know where you’re taking me.”

“We know who you are, Mr. Lee,” said the first soldier. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Under whose orders?” Nash glanced over his shoulder. But there was no escaping these two. His room was twenty stories above ground. And even if he could get by these two, where would he go?

“That’s not your concern,” the second solider said.

“I think it is.” Nash’s voice rose. “I need to know where you’re taking me, and who sent you. Why am I being taken, against my will, by Saudi military forces?”

“We are not military,” said the second soldier. “We are with the Saudi National Guard.”

“The National Guard?” Nash asked, confused. “You protect the royal family?”

“Among other things,” said the first soldier. “But please, we need to go. I have my orders to secure you and take you to the palace.”

Nash knew little about the inner workings of the kingdom but enough to realize that if two soldiers from the White Army were here to take him, it was under the direct orders of the royal family. The Saudi Arabian National Guard—the White Army—was small in number and served only the royal family.

They were the elite internal security forces that served as a separate military force inside the kingdom. They protected the royal family and were also charged with protecting the holy places of both Medina and Mecca. They were essentially the king’s private army.

“The palace?”

“Yes, we will be going to the king’s palace. Now, please, I must insist.” The solider took another step into the room.

Nash took a deep breath. Okay, this isn’t so bad, he thought. These are the king’s men. They aren’t military. I’m not being arrested. But what?

“Can I grab a couple of things?”

“Yes, but do so with haste,” said the first solider. “I must have you at the king’s palace within the hour.”

“Okay, fine.” Nash located both his mobile phone and his iPad, stuffed them into his backpack, and slipped on some shoes.

“Are we ready?” asked the second soldier.

“We are,” Nash said.

The first soldier wheeled and left the room.

“After you,” said the second soldier.

Nash followed the first soldier. He considered the possibility of bolting once he was in the hallway but then thought better of it. No, I’ll see this out, he thought. They know who I am. And I can always reach out to someone if I need to. I haven’t done anything wrong.

They left the hotel lobby quickly. It was still dark outside. Only one car, a black SUV, was parked in the circle out front. They opened a rear door and beckoned to Nash to enter. He slid in and was joined by the two soldiers on either side of him.

“So who am I going to see?” Nash asked.

“We’ll be there shortly,” one of the solders answered.

“So you won’t tell me.”

“Very soon, Mr. Lee. Please. Be patient. It won’t be long.”

Nash fell silent. The streets of Riyadh were empty at this time of morning. They rode in silence along King Fahd toward the palace.

Despite the circumstances, Nash couldn’t help himself. Once they’d entered the grounds of the king’s palace, which spread out over nearly a square mile, Nash stared at the myriad stone walkways, water-ways, and pink buildings flooded with light. It was a stunning sight.

Nash was whisked inside once they’d arrived. The soldiers led him down one corridor, through another, and then, finally, to a rather ornate, somber conference room. There were no windows in the room, just a long table ringed by a number of comfortable leather chairs.

The soldiers left him there and closed the door behind them. Nash heard a click. He wondered whether they’d locked him in. Not that it made any difference at this point. It wasn’t as if he was going to run from the place and try to escape.

He was somewhere within the bowels of the king’s palace. He had no hope of finding his way clear. He’d need to find out their game and talk his way through it.

Nash pulled out his mobile while he waited. Not surprisingly, he had no service available. He scanned for an available wireless network. There was nothing there as well. So there’s no hope of contacting anyone from here, he thought.

He was strangely calm. He didn’t precisely feel like a prisoner— even though he was here, in this room, largely against his wishes. There was a sense of exhilaration, as if he were about to learn something momentous.

At times like these, Nash had long ago learned to rely on that still, small voice he’d listened for intently for much of his young, adult life. Life is a gift, Nash believed, and you either live it with that in mind, or you live in fear and constant worry. Nash had always chosen to live a life of implicit meaning. And if that meant he took days such as this in stride, then so be it.

The door to the conference room opened after a nearly ten-minute wait. Three elderly men dressed head to toe in flowing white robes entered. A member of the White Army tried to join them in the room, but the eldest of the men motioned for him to remain outside. One of the others closed the door.

Nash studied the three elderly men. While he’d never met them, he knew them from the many pictures he’d seen in the press. This was the infamous triumvirate that had ruled the kingdom for years—King Faisal, Crown Prince Saud, and his brother, Prince Natal, who commanded the White Army and the intelligence services. Nash was taken aback. He stood to greet the visitors.

“King Faisal,” Nash said. “I am honored to meet you. But I am also somewhat surprised at the manner at which I was asked to come here to this meeting.”

Faisal held up a hand that shook slightly with some sort of palsy. The man was in his mid-eighties, and his age was showing. “Yes, I regret the inconvenience,” the king said. “But there simply wasn’t time for niceties. We could not afford the luxury. We required your services urgently, and this seemed the best way to reach you.”

“By sending White Army soldiers to sequester me from my hotel room?” Nash asked. His voice, though, was calm and steady. He knew now that he was not in physical danger. What else might take place was difficult to see, but it would require only his wits.

Natal started to speak, but the king gestured for him to remain silent. “Again, my apologies, but I felt it was best,” Faisal said.

“But surely, you could have called my office and requested a meeting,” Nash said. “I would gladly have arranged to meet with you.”

“Yes, and it might have taken days.”

“I would have answered your call immediately, King Faisal.”

“I appreciate that, but we couldn’t take that chance.”

“Why?”

“Because,” the king said, “we only have a matter of hours to make decisions, and we need to command every resource at our disposal.”

“And I am a resource?” Nash asked.

“To be honest, yes, you are,” Natal said forcefully, unable to remain silent any longer.

Nash glanced at the minister of the interior—a man well known as a hard-liner within the royal family. Nash instinctively decided to be on his best behavior in his responses to Natal.

“How so?” Nash asked.

“Because your mVillage network has information that we need quite urgently,” Natal said. “And—”

“And we wish to impress upon you the great need right now,” the king interjected. “We have firm information that war is about to reach inside the kingdom, and we must respond quickly and aggressively.”

“Fine, but what does that have to do with me—and the mVillage network?” Nash asked.

“There is an opposition army forming—something participants within your mVillage have called the ‘Free the Kingdom Army’—and it is being led by a former general in charge of the White Army who is living in exile in Jordan,” the king said.

Nash shrugged. “All right, but I still don’t see how I can help. People use mVillage to float all sorts of things. That’s nothing new. So I ask again, why have you brought me here?”

The king glanced at Natal and then at the crown prince. Saud nodded, and Faisal continued. “We would like to provide you with a list. And from that list, we would ask that you provide us with a record of information that was shared or disseminated from those on that list.”

“A list?” asked Nash. “What sort of a list?”

The king looked at Natal, who handed a manila folder to him. Faisal slid the folder across the table toward Nash. “You will find a list of mobile telephone numbers inside. This is the list that we must look through quickly. We require specific sets of information, all of which we are quite confident that your mVillage network can provide us.”

Nash tried not to turn white as he opened the folder. At any other time, Nash would have stopped the conversation and asked to phone his general counsel’s office. Other world leaders had asked his company to provide confidential, private information. But they’d always done so in a formal process, with lawyers involved.

But that didn’t seem to be an option here. Nash knew, without asking, that he would need to make a decision here, in this conference room, without his lawyers. And he already knew the answer he would give. He simply could not, under any circumstance, provide the information these rulers were demanding of him. It was not possible—even if it meant he would be imprisoned.

It was a slippery slope when a global information network like mVillage gave up personal information to authorities. China had consistently threatened his company over the years. Nash, and his company, had never given in to the Chinese demands for either curbs on information dissemination or to requests for private information from the network.

“King Faisal,” Nash said quietly as he scanned the list of mobile telephone numbers, “you know that I cannot grant your request. I simply cannot reveal personal information from the network. And I cannot provide you this record that you speak of. I can’t.”

“Please,” the king said quickly. “I understand your position. It is one we’ve heard many times, from others who have access to great stores of information. But I would ask you to consider this and the position we now find ourselves in. We are, at this very moment, under threat of attack from at least three different directions.”

“That we know of,” Natal offered.

“Yes, that we know of,” the king said. “There was the attack at Aramco…”

“Which was well documented by the press,” Nash interjected.

“Yes, it was,” the king said. “But we still do not know who was directly responsible. We know the groups that carried it out. But we do not know the root, the source. That is what we must find. From there, we may be able to discern the true nature of the threat at our doorstep.”

“And you think mVillage can help you with that?” Nash asked.

“We are quite certain of that,” the king said. “We have had the list of mobile numbers on your list under limited surveillance for some time. But there is only so much we can learn from that surveillance. The true value is contained in the information within your system. By comparing certain words and trends—”

“Again, with all due respect, King Faisal, I am not able to do that,” Nash said firmly. “I cannot reveal private information from the network. Not for you and not for any other government leader.”

“Then let me rephrase the request,” the king continued somberly. “We know of the groups and the nature of the attack at Aramco. What we are trying to ascertain, from the records and data within your network, are the original source of the very first calls to action that went out to certain numbers on that list. From there, we will be able to ascertain root causes.

“But just as importantly, we are trying to determine how coordinated this attack is with movements in two other parts of our country. There are forces at move against one of our holy sites, and we have heard rumors of a coming war on yet another front.

“We must swiftly determine if these are all isolated events— or whether they all have the one, same root cause. We believe evidence of that root cause is contained within the information, data, and records from these mVillage mobile numbers on the list you have before you.

“So what I am asking is this: If we provide you with a road map of items that we would ask you to search, would you be willing to consider the request? And should you find links or connections, would you be willing to provide us with that information? You may keep the personal records safe. We are merely asking for some corroboration of trends, connections, and root causes.”

“So you wouldn’t ask me to turn over any personal data? We’d do the meta-search ourselves? You’re not asking us to turn over the data— only confirm links or connections we might find?”

The king smiled. “Precisely. It is a simple request. Nothing more than that.”

Nash shook his head. “It is most definitely not a simple request. But I will consider it.”

“Wonderful.” The king extended a hand. “If you do choose to discuss this further with us, Natal has assured me that he will meet with you alone, and that any information you convey to him will be held in the strictest confidence.”

“And if I am unable to provide you with the information you need at the end of our own search, then what? Will I remain a prisoner here?”

“You are our guest here at the king’s palace,” Faisal said. “We hope that you spend your time wisely and make judicious decisions.”