82

 

THE SUPER-YACHT, ZEPHYR, FRIDAY EVENING

Sheikh Ali sat with Gabriel Messenger in the large stateroom. A wind had blown up and the yacht pitched slightly. Sheikh Ali had instructed the captain to motor downwind, minimizing the disruption to his guest, who he knew suffered from seasickness. Despite that kindness, Messenger looked pale and his face was pinched. In his black trousers and black shirt, he looked more ascetic priest than venture capitalist.

The golden coffee cups lay before them, empty, sides stained dark. The sweet smell of the shisha pipe hovered in the room, almost alive, like a visiting spirit borne round the room by the air conditioning that the Sheikh loved.

They covered much Falcon business before the Sheikh asked his main question.

“Zeus. And the meteorologist. What news?”

Messenger nodded. “Gwen Boudain is proving invaluable,” he replied, enthusiasm overcoming his latent queasiness. “I’d say she has boosted our rain yield by close to six percent. That’s very sig—”

“I know it’s significant,” cut in the Sheikh in a rare show of temper. “It’s more than significant. It’s impressive.”

Messenger sat in silence, his wordless reaction to the insult.

The Sheikh looked away, calculation in his eyes. It was a full minute before he turned back to Messenger. The German was used to his silences, and to his very occasional outburst of temper. He had seen much worse. He knew just to wait, to let the storms pass.

“We need to press on with the next parts of the plan,” Al Baharna declared at last.

“Gwen thinks she can get more still out of Zeus,” Messenger said quietly, steepling his hands. “She says there’s one input she’s still struggling with.”

“Keep pushing her.”

“I will.”

“In the meantime, I think it’s time to start acquiring farmland. Marginal farmland wherever we can, subject to the minimum humidity requirements.”

“What’s our budget?” asked Messenger, eyes quickening.

The Sheikh paused, brain scrolling through his assets. He should call Marcel, get a current tally. He gazed out at the sun, which was dipping into the water in a blaze of red, setting fire to the waves. He knew to the closest fifty million. That would do.

He turned back to Messenger.

“Let’s start with one billion US,” Al Baharna said levelly.

Messenger kept his face impassive. Inside his blood raced.

“I’ll get Kevin and Peter identifying the targets,” he replied equally levelly. He wondered if the Sheikh had so much money that it merely bored him, or if like many of those who dealt in astronomically large sums he depersonalized it for rationality’s sake, reduced it to a number so that the power of it would not seduce, so that the emotions of it would not cloud clarity.

“Is she happy, with you? Satisfied?” asked the Sheikh.

Messenger frowned, tilted his head, wondered what he’d missed.

“With Falcon!” exclaimed the Sheikh. Messenger further wondered what had upset Al Baharna. The Sheikh seemed unusually febrile.

“She seems to be. Been smiling a lot recently, so yes, I think she’s happy. Sometimes she looks like she’s just sucked a lemon, like she doesn’t want to be there, in Falcon, but it passes. She’s unused to the constraints of corporate life. But her work is excellent and I tell her as much.”

“Good. Keep her happy. She is essential to our plan.”

Messenger nodded. “Perhaps I’ll give her a bonus…”

“Do that. And please allow me to add one of my own.” The Sheikh paused. “Let’s say a million dollars. Five hundred from each of us.”

Messenger thought that the Sheikh threw money like punches.

“That’s a big kickoff,” he said. “We don’t want her to get enough money to want to leave.”

The Sheikh laughed, a mirthless sound. “She won’t leave! You know how it is with money, Gabriel. The golden rule, I call it. You hook someone on an amount they had previously only dreamed of. Then they get used to it. They need a bigger dose. So you feed them a bit more, and they get used to that. Once they take the first hit they keep on coming back for more. It’s a very rare person who can break the habit. I’ve never met one who could.”

Messenger felt a twist of distaste. The Sheikh had no compunction in using his wealth to corrupt. Messenger had seen it too many times firsthand to doubt.

“She has her Oracle to be financed, does she not?” continued Al Baharna. “That will keep her on the leash.”

“Yes,” replied Messenger frowning. “She does. She’s been working hard on that too.”

“What’s the latest prognosis on the Niño?”

“Roaring in. Far as I can gather.”

“Excellent!” exclaimed the Sheikh, clapping his hands together. He rose to his feet, signifying that the audience was over.

Messenger rose too, shook the Sheikh’s hand, and headed for the helicopter and his ride home.

Sheikh Ali watched him go. He paced the deck in the falling night, seeking to walk off his restlessness, the source of which he had tried and failed to identify. The pacing did not work.

“Hussein!” He yelled to one of the polo-shirted patrollers. “Meet me in the gym.”

Hussein, a fellow Saudi Shia, was known for his ruthlessness, whether in training his master or in following his orders to kill. The Sheikh knew Hussein could assuage his restlessness, at least for a while.

One hour thirty minutes later, Al Baharna finished his grueling exercise regime. He nodded a curt farewell to Hussein, then he left the cool grays of his customized gym for the warm splendor of his cabin.

He stripped, dropped his clothes on the heated marble floor of his bathroom, eyed his naked body in the mirror; privation and rigorous exercise had honed him to a wiry strength. He was pleased, even though he recognized in it the sin of vanity.

“Zakharf ad dunya wasawis ash Shaitan,” he murmured to himself—the adornments of the world are the whisperings of Satan. But the feverish training was prompted by more than mere vanity. As the days neared what Al Baharna thought of as Nemesis for the Californians, he trained as if he were personally going to war. It made him feel connected, not just the mastermind with the money. He smiled. It would seem it was all going according to plan.

It was time for a woman. The workout had charged his physicality, replaced one form of restiveness with another. He felt the urge, the warmth in his belly going lower. He thought of the pretty meteorologist, wondered how she would be lying under him, naked. Might it be worth an attempt to seduce her, before she became redundant? Of course, if there were any question of her talking, of her going to the police with what she knew, or thought she knew, then seduction too would be redundant, but the Sheikh disliked coercion, it was inelegant and usually beneath him.

He pulled open the glass shower door, suddenly froze. His own complacency hit him. He knew enough of the affairs of commerce, and of jihad, to be aware that whenever you thought things were going according to plan, they rarely were. Things seldom went according to plan.

He closed his shower door, pulled on a heavy toweling robe, padded through to his private sitting room, took a seat at his desk. He would normally have preferred to have the ensuing discussion face-to-face, but the urgings of his instinct allowed no delay.

He picked up his phone, the one with the Telsey encryption, and dialed The Man. They exchanged codes by text message. The background beeping on their handsets ceased, confirming the encryption was in place. Only then did they speak. The algorithms rolled, shrugging off all attempts of interception as they had been designed to do. For the first fifteen seconds of the call, they worked. Then, due to a mixture of skill and the plain luck that furnishes many triumphs, they failed to work and the call was intercepted.

At the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the intercept was downloaded and saved.