28

 

A SUPER-YACHT, MOORED OFF SAN DIEGO, SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Sheikh Ali Al Baharna sat in his stateroom aboard his two-hundred-and-eighty-foot yacht, Zephyr, currently moored off San Diego. The yacht was all sleek modernism, but the Sheikh could have stepped forward from any of the past fourteen centuries. Part of it was the juhayman, the facial attitude of his Bedu forbears, one of harshness, of disapproval. In company, he had to remind himself to wear his Western mask. Part of it was his clothing: he wore the traditional flowing white kandoora, and the ghutra, the white headdress, secured with a black akal. Part of it was the timeless scent that clung to him, the oil-based oud of his perfume, narcotic almost. It mixed with the spicy scent of the bakhoor frankincense which glowed in a mabkhara burner in the middle of the room.

The detritus of a game of backgammon lay before him and his guest. He took a sip of cardamom-flavored coffee served in a small golden cup. He was an elegant man. His moves were graceful as he waggled his hand, signifying to the uniformed waiter who hovered with the ornate golden Arabic coffeepot that he wanted no more. Three cups a day. Never more.

He laid down his cup on a mahogany side table and lounged back on the sofa. His unusually tall body was lean, the result of self-deprivation and a punishing exercise routine. He looked more like his Bedu forebears than did many of the modern Arab merchant princes, whose bodies, genetically long inured to a minimal diet in the deserts, had grown fat with the plenty brought by oil. Those close to him knew the asceticism wasn’t born of vanity, but of al-jihad al-akbar, the greater jihad, the internal jihad sanctioned by the Koran. He waged his own internal war against the temptations of the flesh.

This was a war of many battles, and during his young manhood, when he had studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford University, he had lost those battles. He had drunk alcohol with women who were free and with women for whom he paid. He had taken drugs. He had forsworn his five-times-daily prayers. He had been the despair of his father, who feared Allah and the wrath of the ruling Al Saud family perhaps in equal measure. With good reason.

Sheikh Ali and his father were Shia Muslims, from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where the country’s huge oil wealth gushed from the ground. His father had built the family fortune from modest means. He had been a driver for Aramco, the state oil company, and had quickly seen the opportunities for supplying the burgeoning oil industry. The ruling Al Sauds were keen to throw a few carrots to the Shia, who, despite being in the majority in the Eastern Province, were in the minority in Saudi as a whole and were routinely discriminated against by the Sunnis. So the Al Saud, ever pragmatic, keen to stabilize the Eastern Province, had granted the substantial trading concessions which allowed Sheikh Ali’s father not just to prosper, but to build over his lifetime an empire. On his death, his eldest son, Ali, had taken over his mantle and, with shrewd investments and some spectacular insider trading, had magnified the fortune.

He had also come back to the ways of Allah. Three things had wrought this: the first was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and with it the arrival of half a million infidel Crusader American troops in the Holy Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; the second was the realization that the Al Saud were, despite their prodigious wealth, never going either to defend the purity of the Kingdom and Islam, or enfranchise the Shia in the Eastern Province. The third thing was meeting the radical preacher, Sheikh Haider Al Jibrin, in San Diego, when Ali al Baharna went there to do his Masters in Economics.

And so merciful Allah had brought him back to the holy life that was real life. For many years now he had been following his path, still waging jihad, internal jihad, he was keen to remind his friends and acolytes. Only the chosen few knew the true extent of his wider jihad.

His eyes might have suggested it. They had a distant focus that seemed to see paradise, and they shone with an unflinching certainty that his was the way, his was the right and the just path, no matter how many innocents were slaughtered along the way.

His own private library might have revealed some of his philosophy—it was a history of armed struggles from the War of American Independence to the Partition and the emergence of Pakistan as a separate nation. History was littered by precedents, by terrorists and freedom fighters becoming legitimate. He liked the quote that treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper none dare call it treason. The same would be true of jihad. Once the Holy War had been won, the warriors would be hailed and sanctified as the legitimate government.

And thanks to the only vice he could not conquer, his desire to make money and more money still, though he had more than he could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes, he could prosecute that Holy War, arm the warriors. To cover his tracks, he was careful never to meet with the Jihadis in public. He had no need to. His money met them and spoke for him. And if the price of waging jihad was consorting with infidels, it was a price worth paying. They were tools. To be used and eliminated if and when necessary. So he drank his coffee and he smiled his smile.

“What news on Project Zeus?” he asked, a faint rolling of his “r” giving his otherwise Oxford-honed English an exotic lilt.

“We’re testing it,” answered his guest with just a flicker of caution. Sheikh Ali, despite his approval, both explicit and implicit, always made him feel uncharacteristically hesitant, as if every question might be a trap.

“And?”

“We are perfecting it.”

“What you are trying to say is that it is not perfect yet. That you are not ready to push the button, as it were, yet.”

Hesitation. The trap. Truth the only way out. “Correct.”

“So what’s delaying you?”

A sudden and most unfortunate death, thought the man. He said, levelly: “I feel Zeus isn’t giving us all it could. It’s done well, but I think it could do so much more.”

“So rectify it.”

“I’m planning on that. I’m planning on drafting in our new recruit to assist.”

“Which new recruit?”

“A woman. A specialist in weather prediction. In storm prediction. She says that a Niño is coming, and with it might come a superstorm.”

Sheikh Ali’s eyes widened with interest. He leaned forward, popped a date into his mouth, chewed reflectively.

“An oracle.”

The man laughed. “You’re psychic! That’s the name of her model.”

Sheikh Ali waived off the compliment with a sweep of his arm. You didn’t need to be psychic when you had informants.

“Can we trust her?” he asked, the veneer of charm falling from his eyes, revealing a flash of what the other man knew to be there, just preferred not to see.

“Sure we can. She’s what it says on the label. Academic, loves surfing. Dead parents, killed in car crash in Peru. And it’s her subject. She’s a resource we’d be foolish not to use.”

“Fine. You trust her, so let’s use her. Let’s speed this thing up. I’m keen to get a return on my investment.”

The Sheikh waited until his guest had departed. He waited until he heard the roar of the helicopter blades, until the sound had dissipated over the limpid ocean. Then he moved from the stateroom into the privacy of the office that adjoined his bedroom. There, looking like the modern businessman he was, he made a call. Unlike many but not all modern businessmen, he used a cell phone with hardware and software encryption. He was sophisticated, he took no chances.

He used a Telsey encrypter, a Spanish system known to have no back door or remote access. The system used a rolling code algorithm, which made it very difficult to intercept. But not impossible. Certain top level decryptors used by various agencies in the US could on occasion break it, although breaking it once on a single conversation did not mean that they could break it again. Much depended on luck.

But the Sheikh believed it was secure. He did not tolerate mistakes. In himself. In others. The Telsey was his favored encrypter of the many he owned, protecting his conversation, he believed.

He dialed The Man’s encrypted phone, established the two-way encryption, then began to speak.

“The pretty meteorologist,” he murmured, “is about to be inducted into the inner sanctum. She may be trustworthy, she may not be. Power corrupts, but so do secrets. I want an insurance policy taken out on her, to ensure she knows when to stay silent, to ensure she plays by the rules. Find out who she cares about. Her parents are dead, but there must be someone she loves. Identify them in case we need to use them for purposes of encouragement.”

“Full Pattern of Life study?”

“You’re the security expert. Do what is necessary.”

The Man smiled his dazzling smile. He would enjoy this. “I’ll need four of your men; I’ll add in one or two women I use occasionally, for blending-in purposes. I’ll put together a full surveillance team, establish her exact routine, lifestyle, connections. I’ll run it for three weeks, give or take.”

“My men are yours. For as long as you need them. I have plenty well trained up onboard. We cannot afford any more mistakes. Another body might attract undue attention, might deflect us from the path.”

“Don’t worry. No one’s found the other body. We’re clean.”

No, thought Sheikh Ali, neither he nor the infidel circumstances forced him to use, would ever be clean. No amount of blood could ever wash away the old sins. Expiation was all he could hope for. A partial balancing of the scales.