The Messenger

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Messenger is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table by Vincent van Gogh unfortunately does not exist, though the descriptions of Vincent’s final days at Auvers, and his relationship with Dr. Paul Gachet and his daughter, are accurate. Those well acquainted with the quiet backwaters of St. James’s know that in Mason’s Yard, at the address of the fictitious Isherwood Fine Arts, there stands a gallery owned by the incomparable Patrick Matthiesen, to whom I am forever indebted. The Vatican security procedures described in the pages of this novel are largely fictitious. Visitors to the island of Saint-Barthélemy will search in vain for the restaurants Le Poivre and Le Tetou.

Sadly, a central aspect of The Messenger is inspired by truth: Saudi Arabia ’s financial and doctrinal support for global Islamic terrorism. The pipeline between Saudi religious charities and Islamic terrorists has been well documented. A very senior U.S. official told me that, after the attacks of 9/11, American officials traveled to Riyadh and demonstrated to the Royal Family how twenty percent of all the money given to Saudi-based Islamic charities ends up in the hands of terrorists. Under American pressure, the Saudi government has put in place tighter controls on the fund-raising activities of the charities. Critics, however, believe these steps to be largely window dressing.

An example of Saudi Arabia ’s new commitment to stemming the flow of money to terrorist organizations came in April 2002. Eight months after 9/11, with Saudi Arabia besieged by inquiries about its role in the attacks, state-run Saudi television broadcast a telethon that raised more than $100 million to support “Palestinian martyrs,” the euphemism for suicide bombers from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The telecast featured remarks by Sheikh Saad al-Buraik, a prominent government-sanctioned Saudi cleric, who described the United States as “the root of all wickedness on earth.” The Islamic cleric went on to say: “Muslim brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy, neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?”