51

 

The King’s Palace

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

In the end, Nash decided he could at least ask his best data mining engineers to take the list of mobile numbers given him by the Saudi monarch and see what they produced. What he would ultimately do with that information once they’d done their work was an altogether different question entirely.

Nash knew, in his heart, that the Saudi monarch was fishing. They had no idea, really, what threats lurked beyond the confines of the palace. The Arab Spring revolts had shaken every dictator or ruler to their very cores.

The revolts were pure chaos. They had no leaders. They were never planned and took sudden, unexpected, random courses of action.

Yet they’d toppled leaders in any number of countries. Saudi Arabia—and Iran, to a lesser degree—had appeared to be immune from such revolts. Until now.

Natal had granted Nash access to his team in New York in a second conference room. He was certain his calls and Internet access were being monitored, so he was circumspect in both his call to his staff as well as the mVillage follow-up e-mails he received as his world-class data engineers went through the list.

Nash was proud of his team. They’d built a novel, first-of-its-kind method of combing through massive stores of data across multiple sites and systems. When given a set task, the system could produce needlein-a-haystack answers. The engineering team, all of them geeks of the highest order, had affectionately named their system after Frodo, the bearer of the One Ring of the Dark Lord from Tolkien’s masterpiece. There was no special reason, really, for the name. They all just loved Frodo and were huge fans of The Lord of the Rings.

Through word of mouth alone, their data-mining service had been quietly adopted by several of the intelligence-gathering agencies in Washington. Nash and his team didn’t talk about this publicly, largely because they didn’t have to. The mVillage network was privately owned. They answered only to the venture funds that had started the enterprise.

So, given a defined data set like the list of mobile telephone numbers and tasked with finding threads and connections, the data-mining team and system would produce certain results. And they did, within the hour.

His lead data-mining engineer called Nash on his mobile. “We’ve found what you’re looking for,” he said when they’d connected.

“Careful,” Nash said. “Remember that this call is probably monitored. Imagine what the transcript looks like in a cable, the kind that we comb through for threads.” He could almost see his lead engineer smiling on the other end.

“Understood. So how should I give you the information?”

“Give me the simple, top-line summary now, over the phone. But be careful.”

“Okay, it’s this. Mostly, there’s nothing there.”

“What do you mean—nothing?” Nash asked. “They’ve been monitoring these mobile numbers for quite some time.”

“They’re worthless,” the engineer said. “That’s what I’m telling you. That’s our highest-level, top-level algorithm. It’s all random, meandering threads with no obvious cross-links. There’s no conspiracy, no leadership, no coordinated effort to oppose the Saudi rulers. The numbers don’t follow any discernible patterns. We just don’t see it.”

“How can that be?”

“I’ll tell you how,” the engineer said. “Nearly all of the numbers they gave you are either of students or family members so far removed from any seat of power or government authority that there’s no way they could have any influence. It’s all just noise. That’s what our system shows.”

“So there’s really nothing there?”

“Well, there is one thing, but it’s more of an interesting, potentially significant artifact. There isn’t enough there to really give anyone something to go on.”

“Try me.”

“The one common thread that we could find was the Saudi National Guard,” the engineer said.

“The White Army?”

“Yes, we found a permanent, consistent thread in the data that clearly connected the Saudi’s White Army with al Qaeda, Iran, and even North Korea—”

“Hold that thought,” Nash said quickly, cutting him off. “I’d like to go over that with you, but not over the phone.”

“Should I send you an e-mail?”

“No, not that way,” Nash said. “Do you remember the SIM card application we’ve been working on?”

“The man-in-the-middle application, the one that overrides some of the SIM card functions from one mobile device to another?”

“Yeah, that one,” Nash said. “I have the encryption software loaded on my mobile. So can you send me your thoughts over that direct SMS system?”

The engineer paused. “Outside the data network system?”

“Yes, with no archive capability,” Nash said.

“So it will be local once you’ve received it?” the engineer said.

“Which means I can delete it once I’ve received it.”

“I understand. You know I’ll send it to you in bite-sized chunks, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But I don’t see any other option.”

“Got it,” his lead engineer said. “You’ll have it shortly.”

Nash looked at the short bursts of information several minutes later. He’d just hit the DELETE button on the damning information about the highly unusual connections the data-mining team had connected to the Saudi White Army when Natal burst through the door to the second conference room. Nash was doing his best to process the information. Given what he’d just read, he’d need to be extraordinarily careful in the next few minutes.

Natal closed the door behind him and faced Nash. “Man-in-themiddle?” he asked without preamble.

“It’s just something our team has been working on,” Nash said, choosing to ignore the fact that Natal and his team had heard every word of his private conversation with his lead engineer. “It’s nothing fancy. Sort of like software that runs on an individual mobile device.”

“So you received information from our list of mobile numbers?” Natal said.

“Yeah, and you know that they came up with nothing,” Nash said, choosing not to play games with the Saudi minister of the interior. Natal already knew what his engineer had shared with him—except the data bursts that had been sent, encrypted, to his mobile device and then deleted.

“But they most certainly did not come up with nothing,” Natal said evenly. “We both know that. Your team found connections to the White Army that protects the royal family and the holy sites in Mecca and Medina.”

Nash didn’t blink or look away. “So it would seem,” he said simply.

Natal nodded. “I will presume that you are not about to share that information with me. So I am going to make an educated guess or two. First, you found connections to General Fahd, the former head of the White Army, who is now in Aqaba. Second, you found connections between White Army leaders at various levels and some of those mobile devices on the list—perhaps to government leaders in some of the towns that are planning to take part in this so-called Day of Anger. Am I close?”

“As you said, those are educated guesses,” Nash responded.

“Very well. And I can also hazard that your team found some connection to the royal family, to those who are within the palace compound. Perhaps even to me,” Natal said, his eyes boring into Nash’s. “Do I have that about right?”

“You do command the White Army,” Nash answered. “I would imagine that all roads, in one fashion or another, lead back to you in the kingdom. Intelligence has a way of doing that.”

Natal clasped his hands before him. “Yes, that’s accurate, to a point. There’s a lot that ultimately lands on my desk. But that’s far different than saying that something begins there.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“No, I guess you would not,” the minister said. “So I am going to report to the others what your team found and what you have been willing to share with me.”

“But I haven’t really shared much, Prince Natal,” Nash said.

“Oh, you’d be surprised at what you’ve managed to reveal to me. And for that, the kingdom will be in your debt.” Natal got up to leave.

“Am I free to go?” Nash asked.

“I will let you know shortly,” Natal answered. “It depends on how the information I deliver to the king is received.”

He left as quickly as he’d entered. Nash knew he only had seconds before his access to the outside world would be cut off. He typed a command into his mobile furiously. Give White Army/Natal info to NSA right away, he wrote to his lead engineer, using his encrypted, direct SMS software. He hit SEND and watched as it successfully made it out.

The cell signal on his mobile device faded an instant later. Nash was alone again in the bowels of the king’s palace.