The Scorpion's Gate

6

“Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid,” the Bahraini border police officer said, reading Ahmed’s new Islamyah passport at the entrance to the causeway leading from Bahrain. Ahmed remembered when there had hardly been any formalities at the causeway at all. The revolution that had thrown out the al Sauds had changed all of that. “How long will you be gone, Doctor, and what is the purpose of your trip?” the border guard asked in Arabic while eyeing the dashboard computer screen on the new BMW.

“Back tomorrow. Family emergency, Officer,” Ahmed replied courteously. The officer scanned the passport into a computer. Ahmed noticed in his rearview mirror that a television camera was pivoting to image the rear license plate of the BMW. Another camera was looking at him through the windshield. The officer waited a moment. The computer in the gatehouse booth beeped, and the officer then pressed a button on a handheld device. The V barrier, a metal plate that had been raised in front of the car, dropped, a green light flashed on, and Ahmed was on his way for the 16-mile drive across the causeway.

Border control at the Islamyah checkpoint was much swifter. Here he flashed the special green-and-gold passport that his brother had given him and was waved through. After arriving back on dry land, he turned east and drove fifteen minutes to the al Khobar Corniche and the Golden Tulip, the hotel next to the Aramco building.

Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, now totally owned by the Islamyah government, had not changed its name. Everything else, he noticed, seemed to have new designations. The signs saying King Fahd Causeway, King Khalid Street, Prince Turki Street, had all been removed or painted over. He could see the new pattern. They were being named after the early caliphs, who had succeeded one another as leader of the Umma after the death of the Prophet. It was now the Abu Bakr Khalifa Causeway, Umar I Street, Muawiyah Abu Sufyan Street, and Yazid I Street. There would be no roads named after the early Shi’a caliphs, like al Hasan and al Husayn, he thought, even though the local residents here in the Eastern Province were overwhelmingly Shiites.

The encrypted e-mail from his brother had said that he would be at Aramco most of the day, reviewing security for the massive oil infrastructure, but would join him at the Golden Tulip for an early dinner. At six o’clock, one of Abdullah’s bodyguards came to Ahmed’s room to escort him to a private patio off the pool barbecue area.

As the waiters were setting a small mezza for two, Abdullah strode in. “My heroic doctor,” he said, grabbing his younger brother. Ahmed lightly kissed each of his brother’s cheeks in a sign of friendship and respect. Four of Abdullah’s bodyguards moved into positions around the patio, their backs to Abdullah, looking out.

“Even the troublesome ones on the Shura Council agreed that I should congratulate you for your hand in uncovering the Persian plot to blow up the American base. We would certainly have been blamed. Now even the White House spokesman admits that those on board were Iraqis.” Abdullah scooped up some baba ghanouj. “So which Iraqis were these, do you know yet?”

“What I think and what I can prove are two different things,” Ahmed began. “The instinct in me says they were from the martyr brigade that the Iranian Rev Guards have been training, but we do not yet have the proof. The Iranians involved left Bahrain on several small boats and left no trace that they had ever been there. Abdullah, these Iranian Qods Force people are very good at what they do.”

“Yes, yes, they are. And for now it is in our interest to make sure they do not succeed. We must keep the King on the throne in Bahrain,” Abdullah confided. “Yes, yes, I know he is from a royal house, but he has been fighting corruption, bringing the people into the decision making. If he were thrown off the throne, what would replace him, Ahmed? Just another Iranian puppet government like Baghdad, no friends of ours,” the Islamyah security chief said, jabbing the table with his index finger. “We voted this morning to resume secret funds transfers to the Bahraini government, for social projects and jobs in the poorest Shi’a communities.”

The sun had set and a slight cool breeze blew in from the north. Two waiters lit heating lamps and then withdrew to leave the sheik alone with his guest. “Then the Shura is better behaved than last we talked?” Ahmed asked.

“Seldom.” The waiters now brought the entrée of grilled hammour, grouper fish. Abdullah slowly cut the fillet with a fork. “There is a strong faction, led by Zubair bin Tayer, who want strict enforcement of Sharia rules, and to keep all women in their homes, you know the list, and then,” Abdullah said, throwing his fork on the table, “then they also want us to export the revolution, bring Wahhabism to all Islam, grow strong enough to confront the infidels. These are the ones who pushed to complete the Chinese missile project. Now they say we should have nuclears for the missiles. From China, Korea, or Pakistan, or build our own.”

Ahmed was aghast. He put both hands on the table, almost as if to steady himself. “Brother, these were all mistakes of the Sauds. That way leads to stagnation or worse. Surely the people will not support this in the election.”

Abdullah said nothing, then looked into Ahmed’s eyes. “They also do not want to have the election, or perhaps only one election ever, to approve their rule. Only approved Islamic scholars would be allowed to vote after that.”

“One man, one vote, one time,” Ahmed said softly, almost to himself.

“What?” his brother asked.

“It is what the Americans said about the elections in Algeria: only men could vote, and they would only be allowed to vote once — they would give up their right to ever vote again. That cannot happen here!” Ahmed said.

“The Americans!” Abdullah spit. “The Americans think democracy solves everything. It took them over a hundred years to allow all their people to vote, the poor, women, the blacks. Has it solved their problems? They waste so much time and fortune in their elections. It is a game to them and they never stop playing at it. And are their results so different? We overthrew hereditary rule here. They still have it: fathers followed by sons, wives seeking to replace husbands.

“They have three hundred twenty-five million people and how many ruling families?” Abdullah asked, waving his hand. “Do they not have poverty, do they not make their people pay for doctors, for university, in the supposedly richest country in the world?

“Then they think they are so superior that they must reshape the Arab world in their ghastly image. How? By bombing our cities, killing our women and children? Locking up our people forever? Raping them?” Abdullah said, repeating a rant Ahmed had heard before.

“With respect, it is not about our becoming like the Americans,” Ahmed responded. “It is about what was promised to our people: more freedom, more progress, more opportunity, participation, ownership of their country.” Ahmed was using phrases that he had heard his brother use before the revolution. “It is about not being like the Sauds. They held back our people by spending the people’s oil money exporting their Wahhabist view of Islam, which many of our own people do not follow. They spent it buying expensive arms from the Americans, the British, the French, the Chinese. They threw away our sisters’ skills and closed the doors to their secret family meetings.

“Did you, brother, fight, and did you take lives, so that some new Sauds could arise to keep our people as second-class citizens?”

Abdullah was staring at him, but Ahmed could not stop. He had wanted to say things like this to him for so long. “Yes, I have lived in North America, but I have also been to Germany and Singapore, to medical conferences in China and Britain. Things are invented there. Technology and pharmaceuticals. What have we invented in the last thousand years? The world is leaving us behind because we have tied this Wahhabist brick around our ankles. Our scholars study only the Koran, which is good, but we need only so many Koranic scholars in a generation.”

Ahmed pulled a blue book from beneath his robe. “This UN report is by Arabs. It is about how we measure up to the rest of the world. Not well. The winners in the modern world are knowledge societies, countries that put an emphasis on learning, sharing information, doing research.

“Look at these numbers,” he said, paging rapidly. “Two percent of our people have Internet access, compared with ninety-eight percent in Korea. Five books are translated into Arabic a year per million people, compared with nine hundred translated into Spanish. Even in our own language, we publish only one percent of the world’s books. One out of five books published in Arabic is on religion. We spend less than one-third of one percent of our GNP on research. Maybe this explains why one out of four of our university graduates leave the Arab world as soon as they can. We do not create knowledge; we do not import knowledge. We import finished goods. This is not the way of the modern world, which is leaving us in the dust.

“You can be modern and Islamic. The Islamic scientists I met in Canada, Germany, and America are devout. Islam is the fastestgrowing religion in America! No one prevents Muslims there from following the teachings of the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him. Besides, the Prophet never taught that we should convert or kill the Christians and Jews. And if we tried, even if we took centuries, we would only devastate this little planet in the process. Does Allah want that? The nuclears, if we get them, will cause the ruin of our country.

“If you let these people on the council have their way, we will continue to be slaves of our own oil, able to do nothing but watch as what Allah put in the ground comes out of it. And the money we get from it will continue to be wasted in supposedly ‘religious’ follies. We are not a country, we are an oil deposit! And if that is all we are, others will come, the scorpions will come for their food, their precious black liquid. They will keep us enslaved, buying everything we need from them, including weapons which we do not need.

“We could instead use our wealth to join the twenty-first century, to revive the time of greatness when Arabs invented mathematics, astronomy, pharmacy, and the other sciences. You could do that, brother.” Afraid he had gone too far, Ahmed stopped abruptly and hung his head, averting his eyes from the continued silent stare from Abdullah.

Somewhere in the hotel, a television was on. Ahmed could hear a news program and also the roar of the gas flame in the heater above his head.

“Do you think, little brother, that while you were skiing in the snows, dancing in the clubs, that I was risking my life, hiding in basements, killing men I had never met, to create a society in which our people would waste their lives? Do you?” Abdullah’s voice rose with the question, then sank to a whisper. “I did terrible things, for which I pray Allah will forgive me, but when I read the Koran I am not sure he will. Right here in Khobar in 1996, while you were almost still a baby, I was in a cell that helped the Hezbollah and the Iranian Qods attack the U.S. Air Force base here.”

This was the first time Ahmed was hearing this story, the first time that his brother had lifted the curtain on his vague, earlier terrorist life. “Qods,” Ahmed asked, “these are the men who were trying to blow up the American Navy base in Bahrain. You worked with them?”

“No, I worked for Khalid Sheik Muhammad, who was bin Laden’s operations man. Because I thought that he wanted to kick the foreign troops out of our country,” Abdullah admitted, reluctantly. “Khalid was asked by the Qods people to have some of us lend a hand with an operation that they were planning in Khobar, against the foreign base. So I helped them set up at a farm not far from here. Khalid said we owed the Qods a lot, so I helped.”

Ahmed was afraid to say anything that would stop his brother from continuing. Nonetheless, he had to ask, “What did al Qaeda owe Qods?”

Abdullah was quiet, as though he was calling up the memories from a corner of his brain that he had not recently visited. “I met bin Laden, met with his brains, Dr. Zawahiri, and his muscle, Khalid Sheik Muhammad. Osama himself was not as important to operations as those two. They used him as the symbol, the unifier. I went to Afghanistan to see them. Why? Because they were the only ones really opposing the al Saud monarchy. No one else was doing anything to get these leeches off our people. I was not opposed to monarchy. I know England and the small Gulf states have good monarchies, but we did not! The Sauds were stealing, holding our people back. They let foreigners set up their own military bases in the land of the Two Holy Mosques, not to help us but to protect the oil for themselves!”

Ahmed sensed there was guilt in Abdullah about this past. His tone was the one he had used when explaining to their father that he had dented the car. Ahmed tried to shift the conversation from his brother’s role to his own current interest, the Iranians. “And you met Qods people in bin Laden’s camps?”

“No, no. They were never visible. If you were good at something special and they trusted you, Khalid would send you to Iran for advanced training with Qods or with Mugniyah’s Hezbollah people. Dr. Zawahiri had an office in Tehran and went there a lot, from the days when he ran Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Many of the brothers came to the Afghan camps by flying to Tehran, where the Qods people got them through immigration and sent them on their way by bus to the border,” Abdullah recalled. “But the fact that Qods was helping al Qaeda with money and training was never to be spoken about, because even the President of Iran did not know. And, of course, the Americans did not.”

Ahmed shook his head in amazement. The Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force really was a service within a service, reporting only to the big ayatollah, the Iranian supreme leader. “What happened, Abdullah, between you and al Qaeda? Why did you break with them and start your own movement inside our country?”

Abdullah shrugged, as if to say that the answer to that question was well known, or should be obvious. “After 9/11, I broke off from bin Laden. I thought they had gone too far, killing innocent people. Then, after the Americans invaded Iraq, I went to Iraq and worked with that crazy man Zarqawi for a short time. Why? For the same reason our uncle fought in Afghanistan. For the same reason I opposed the al Sauds. To get the foreign troops out. I participated, I learned, and then I led so that we could be our own nation, a great nation, not an American military base, not one family’s money machine.”

Ahmed was so proud of his brother, who had seen the excesses and mistakes of the others and forged his own movement to free his homeland. There was also something of a parallel with al Qaeda in what Abdullah had done, because Abdullah had done the hard work of operations and let theoreticians like Zubair bin Tayer be the public face of the movement. “And you succeeded,” Ahmed added.

“Yes, but right now we are weak. The Sauds took our money.” Abdullah returned to one of his current themes, financing. “The Americans have frozen most of it, probably so they can claim it for themselves. But with what they have, the Sauds are buying trouble for us. They want to come back and rule again, and kill me and all the council. I don’t know how much time I have before they do that. Every day I get reports.” Ahmed looked up and their eyes met. Abdullah pointed with his head toward one of the bodyguards.

Abdullah continued, “I accept many things in the Shura that I do not personally agree with, things I do not think will be good for the future of our people. I accept them for now because we are weak and cannot have internal divisions that our enemies, what you call your scorpions, will exploit.”

Ahmed thought for a moment and then replied, humbly, “I know the only right I have to speak on these issues is that our father’s blood flows in both of us. I have not earned a say, as you have.

“But I do love this land and I do love you and I do not want to see your efforts go to waste. If you do not stop your enemies on the council now, they will shape Islamyah in a mold that will harden fast. Then they will come after you, because you are not part of what they want to build. And what they want to build will weaken Islamyah and attract my scorpions in droves, especially if they try to get the nuclears.” Ahmed reached across the table and squeezed his brother’s forearm. “If you think you are going to get killed, die for something you believe in, not for what they believe in.”

Abdullah put his right hand gently on top of the vise grip that Ahmed had placed on his left forearm. “So is that your prescription, Doctor, that I should get killed?”

“No, my care is seldom that lethal to my patients.” Ahmed smiled. “My prescription is early prevention. The new army would follow you, and you already run all of the police. Use that power while you have it. Use it for the good of our people. They have not yet been fully liberated. If the people are with you, really with you, they will keep the scorpions away.”

“Inshallah,” Abdullah said as he embraced his brother. The two men walked back into the Golden Tulip, holding hands. The bodyguards went with them, in front and behind. On the table in the patio, they left the remnants of the mezza and the hammour. Abdullah had placed the blue UN report inside his robe.

“Come upstairs with me and meet my team that has been spending all day looking at the Aramco books. Tell them some of your theories.” Abdullah guided them toward the elevator. Off the main dining area of the rooftop restaurant was a private room with a floor covered in carpets and pillows. An incense burner in the corner let off a sweet smell. When Abdullah entered the room, the men who had been sitting in a circle on the floor smoking water pipes all rose to their feet.

Abdullah walked the circle formed by his men, shaking hands and kissing cheeks, introducing them one by one to his brother, the doctor-spy. “So you have examined the security of our oil company and you have examined its books,” he said, seating himself on the floor amid a pile of pillows. “What have you found? Did the Sauds suck all the oil out and take it with them to California?” A servant brought Abdullah a fresh water pipe and helped him light it.

“No, Sheik, even the Sauds could not steal it all,” Muhammad bin Hassan replied, evoking the laughter of the men. He had been a partner in a major accounting and consulting firm in London, and had returned after the revolution at the request of the man with whom he had played football as a boy in Riyadh, Abdullah bin Rashid. “Our declared reserves are 290 billion barrels. Another 150,000 to 200,000 lie in the fallow fields.”

“I’m sure that’s a lot, ’Hammad, but what does that mean? How does it compare with everyone else?” Abdullah asked as he exhaled the apple-flavored tobacco smoke.

“It means we have over one-third of the world’s remaining oil, another third is elsewhere in the Gulf, and the final third is spread around Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria. But ours is the cheapest to produce. It just comes bubbling up from right below the sand. Russia and America have to spend huge amounts to find it in their countries and raise it from under the ice or on the bottom of the sea. It is their demand and their cost of extraction that has driven the price to ninety euros a barrel. Our oil is also cheap to refine, whereas so much of the rest of the world’s needs costly refinement.

“The current rates of consumption are also in our favor. China and America each import over ten billion barrels a year and climbing. Here is the key: almost every other oil producer has pumped all the cheaply extracted oil and can see the day when they will have pumped it all. At our current rate of production, we have over another hundred years of oil. When everyone else has run out, we will still have plenty for ourselves and plenty to sell.”

There were smiles around the room, except for Ahmed, who looked to his brother for permission to speak. “Ahmed, what do you think of this good news?” Abdullah asked.

“With respect to Muhammad, I am not sure that it is actually good news,” he said tentatively. The smiles froze.

“Let’s not talk of today and tomorrow,” he went on. “Let’s imagine us back in our grandfather’s time. Let’s say he was a camel dealer, which he actually was, Abdullah’s and my grandfather. If there had been a pestilence among the camels elsewhere and they had all died, and he still had his camels in good health, would he not fear that the other tribes would come to steal them?” There were nods around the circle.

Ahmed warmed to his tale. “And unknown to our grandfather, there would also be those abroad who would see this as an opportunity to import Land Rovers and teach the other tribes to drive them instead of camels. So even if Grandfather fought hard and spent a lot of money defending his camels, in a little while no one would want them because they would all have Land Rovers and Mercedes.” The men laughed.

“So what is your point, Ahmed, you who drive a BMW these days, I am told?” Muhammad asked, looking at Abdullah.

“Your scorpion fears: go ahead, brother, explain them to us,” Abdullah encouraged.

“My point is that the remaining oil will attract all sorts of scorpions, like America and China. We will be a target and a pawn in many games. Meanwhile, some of the other countries will finally be developing alternatives to oil, and after they have waged war in our land to get their oil, they will not need the last fifty years’ supply. It will be worthless, like camels.”

“Camels are not worthless!” one man called out in protest.

“Ahmed, I respect you as a doctor but not as an economist,” Muhammad shot back. “They have been fooling around with alternatives for years. Their hydrogen fuel cells for cars take more energy to make the same power than gasoline-burning cars. They can’t fly their planes or sail their ships on hydrogen or solar power. Nuclear power creates radioactive waste that is dangerous. The American oil imports have gone up at almost two percent a year and the Chinese at over ten percent a year.”

“Perhaps, ’Hammad, but Ahmed is right that if we end up being the only country with a large amount of oil, the scorpions will come for it,” Abdullah said slowly as he stirred the ash of his tobacco.

“But that is where you come in,” Khaleed said. “You are now in charge of our defenses and I have complete faith in you. As a defender at football, I could never get by you to shoot on goal,” Khaleed teased, sensing that the conversation had grown too serious for this time and place.

“If only our enemies were as easy to block as you were, Muhammad,” Abdullah joked back. “But maybe we should ask the doctor to develop a new scorpion trap like that American thing for the roaches — what is it?”

“The Roach Motel,” one man offered in English. “They check in, but they don’t check out.”

“Yes, but we don’t want them to get in, Jassim, that’s the point” Abdullah replied, laughing. “Ahmed, what we need you to develop is a gate to keep them out, a scorpion’s gate.” All the room laughed at the sheik’s humor, and as they did, Abdullah playfully threw his arm around his brother and whispered to him. “Think about it. I will think about what you said, about the UN report. You give me a plan.”

The room settled down. “Now, Jassim, let’s hear your report on the security of the oil infrastructure and then we’ll talk about the workers who have replaced the Americans,” Abdullah said, laying out the rest of the night’s agenda.

“Attention on deck,” the sergeant barked as the CinC, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command, entered the darkened war room. Forty-two officers, including admirals and generals, stood up from their seats in the little amphitheater. On the twelve large flat screens in front of them, computer displays showed the current status of forces in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, from the top of the world in the Hindu Kush Mountains to the bottom at the Dead Sea.

“Be seated,” U.S. Army four-star general Nathan Moore mumbled, as he dropped down into the oversized chair reserved for the CinC. There was a shuffling and scraping sound as the officers were seated and pulled their chairs forward to the desklike countertops in front of each row. “We are delighted to be joined today by the deputy chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Marshal Fahmi. Welcome, sir. We look forward to this week’s Combined Planning Conference and, more important, to the largest Bright Star exercise yet. Please, begin.”

The basement Command Center of the United States Central Command was in a nondescript office building on an Air Force base sticking out into Tampa Bay. When Central Command was formed in 1981 to coordinate the few U.S. forces in the Middle East, no country in the region would permit America to create a headquarters for the command. In frustration, the Pentagon had temporarily placed the headquarters at an F-16 base in Florida. Special Operations

Command had also moved its headquarters onto the base. Now, three or four wars later, the F-16s and other flight activity at MacDill AFB had gone, but CENTCOM was still there. It also now had a sophisticated “forward” headquarters in Qatar and a naval headquarters in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf (or, as the Pentagon calls it, the Arabian Gulf).

As a young Air Force officer walked to the podium, the CENTCOM logo (an American eagle flying over the Arabian peninsula) faded from the main screen and was replaced by a large weather map. What followed was a lot like the weather report on the International Edition of CNN. “Heavy rains continue in Mumbai…Six inches of snow in Kabul… Eighty-two and sunny in Dubai… Five-foot seas off Alexandria…” The audience, heads down, were examining their briefing books.

Next up was an Army one-star general, the J-2, head of CENTCOM’s intelligence branch. Because of the presence of the Egyptians, the intelligence briefing was short, devoid of the usual close-up satellite pictures the J-2 called “Happy Snaps” or the juicy intercepted messages with which he liked to punctuate his morning briefings. “And now to Bahrain,” the J-2 said as a picture of the ornamental main gate of Brad Adams’s headquarters flashed onto the main screen. Adams thought he could hear eyeballs click as, he was sure, everyone in the darkened theater looked at him. “Investigation continues into the identity of the terrorists who hijacked the liquid natural gas tanker Jamal in an apparent attempt to explode the ship inside the CENTNAV Administrative Support Unit, Fifth Fleet Headquarters. Initial reports indicate the hijackers were Iraqis, otherwise unidentified. Defense Intelligence in the Pentagon speculates that they were working for the Riyadh regime called Islamyah….”

Sensing the tension in the room, the CinC interrupted. “Let me just say this about that, ah, episode: Admiral Adams’s team did an outstanding job stopping this attack, outstanding. Those SEALs and Marines… and, ah, of course, the Coasties who died, Captain Barlow, where is he?” The CinC looked around in the dark for the Coast Guard liaison officer. “Tremendous job. Thousands of lives saved. This is how to do force protection. Admiral,” he said, looking down the row of seats to where Adams sat with an Egyptian navy officer on his left, “you should be proud of how you trained your forces, drilled them, planned, so that you could get that sort of outcome without you even being there. Well done.”

Adams swallowed. “Thank you, sir.” As the director of operations, the J-3, an Army two-star general walked to the podium to begin the Bright Star Exercise briefing, the officer on Adams’s right slipped a folded note under the Fifth Fleet commander’s briefing book. Unfolding it, Adams read, “Was that a compliment or a reprimand?” The author, Marine Major General Bobby Doyle, was the new director of policy and plans, the J-5. He had also gone to the National War College with Adams five years earlier, where the two had competed for the class tennis trophy. Doyle had won.

“As you know, sir, the Bright Star series of U.S.-Egyptian exercises began in the early 1980s… ” The J-3 was proudly showing a short documentary film of the early exercises. He finally moved on to the plans for the upcoming operation. “Largest ever, incorporating amphibious and airborne insertions of multiple brigade-size American units, supported by bombers from CONUS and tacair from the carriers,” he said, pointing to symbols that were appearing on the large map of the Red Sea on center screen, “marrying up with Egyptian armor divisions and moving inland….”

Adams had scribbled on Doyle’s note and passed it back: “And the horse you rode in on.”

Reading the reply, Doyle peeled another page off the CENTCOM notepad on his desk and scribbled for what Adams thought was a long time. The J-3’s briefing was now diving down into details no one needed to hear: “… sustained desert operations…two hundred and forty thousand tons…”

Finally, Adams discreetly opened Doyle’s second volley, “U/me, Dinner, 2100, Colombia restaurant, Ybor City, already made resev. Civvies. Meet there.” Adams chuckled, thinking what the night would be like and whether his liver was up to it.

“… Stryker armored vehicles, which will be offloaded from rollon/roll-off ships…” the J-3 droned on.

A shaft of light stabbed into the theater command center as a door was opened from the basement corridor in the rear of the complex. Adams craned his neck to see who had shown up late, because whoever that was would certainly get the CinC’s wrath now or later. “Right this way, Mr. Secretary…” a young woman from Protocol was saying. A civilian picked his way down the row to an empty seat at the CinC’s left. No one stood, and the briefing was not interrupted, until the CinC realized that his guest had shown up. “Ah, Mr. Secretary, ah, let me introduce you to Marshal Fahmi here, who…” The J-3 halted while the VIPs in the room chatted.

Adams turned to Doyle and mouthed the words, “Why is he here?”

Doyle responded with a quick note reading, “Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Kashigian = Dr. Evil.”

“Okay, okay,” the CinC said, hitting the microphone in front of his seat with his index finger, “let’s resume. General, you were saying that that fuel…” Adams felt an overwhelming wave of jet-lag fatigue and wondered how he would make it until a nine o’clock liquid dinner with Doyle. To stay awake, he stabbed his left palm with a pencil with the CENTCOM logo on it.

Climbing out of the taxi on 21st Street a little before nine o’clock, the commander of the Fifth Fleet could have been a vice president for sales, in town for a convention downtown. He was alone and in a polo shirt that revealed a paunch. Usually he traveled with aides and bodyguards. Back in the States and in civilian clothes, he could be just like anyone else, not a three-star admiral.

In the lobby, the maître d’ spotted Adams as soon as he came through the door. “Admiral, thank you for joining us. Right this way. General Doyle is already here in the Patio Room.”

Adams was trying to figure out how he had been identified by someone who had never seen him before, but the host gave him no opening to ask. “Not busy this early in the week, so some of the rooms are closed, but you’ll have a very private table just behind the Dolphin.” They entered a bright Spanish-styled courtyard with a skylight roof as he continued, “A copy of a fountain found in the ruins of Pompeii. If you’ve never had it here before, I highly recommend our paella Valencia…” Adams spotted Doyle seated, chomping on a cigar.

“I think you’re in violation of the smoking regulations, Dr. Evil, is it?” Adams kidded the trim Marine and gave him a fake punch as he sat down.

“You kiddin’ me, boy? Ybor City is the home of cigars. They used to make a quarter billion a year here. Billion. Rolled on the thighs of virgins,” Doyle said, producing a Cohiba from a leather cigar holder for Adams. “For after dinner. Smuggled from behind the lines in Cuba. You know last time we really invaded Cuba, this was where the U.S. Army massed. Rough Riders and all, here in Ybor City, where the rail line from the north stopped.”

“Illegal cigars. Now I really will have to put you on report,” Adams replied, taking the cigar. “Shall we try the paella? I hear it’s good here.”

Forty minutes later, Adams was feeling full, but the wine had given him a second wind. Suddenly, there was music, and flamenco dancers came in through three of the four doors into the Patio Room. Doyle moved his chair around to sit next to Adams, apparently so he could watch the dancers, but as the music covered their conversation, the Marine asked, “You see anything odd about this Bright Star?”

“Well, I gather it’s blowing the entire CENTCOM exercise budget for the year, plus some extra money from the Joint Chiefs,” Adams replied, watching the lead dancer. “Why?”

“Why? ’Cuz it’s like my cock, it’s real goddamn big, that’s why.” Doyle chuckled. “No, really. This exercise is too big, too unnecessary, too real.”

Adams took his eyes off the dancer for a moment and glanced at the Marine, who continued, “While you were snoozing during the briefing today, swabbie, General Ballsucker was ticking off some very interesting data. They’re bringing enough shit with them to conduct two weeks of sustained combat operations. Why the hell they doin’ that shit? You know how much it will cost to lift all of that out there?”

Adams stopped looking at the dancer altogether. “You tell me.” “I got the questions, boyo,” Doyle said, leaning in closer to Adams. “Why do we and the Gypoes need to do a combined op? We expecting Libya to come across the Sahara to steal the fuckin’ Sphinx? “Why on the double-secret-handshake map of the exercise I saw yesterday is your battle group not gonna be in the Red Sea at all and instead is fanned out like a picket line in the Indian Ocean, huh, buddy?

“Why is Dr. Evil down here for this exercise-planning conference this week instead of up in D.C. polishing the SECDEF’s shoes, or whatever he usually strokes for him? I’ll tell yah: because Dr. Evil and his friends from these think tanks believe the U.S. military are just a bunch of chess pieces that they can move around to implement their globaloney theories. They don’t understand that we chess pieces bleed, while they’re yukking it up on some bullshit Fox talk show.

“And get this: why are my friends in SEAL Team Six playing the role of the reconnaissance force in the exercise and why does the team chief have detailed maps of the coast around Jeddah and Yanbu in his room at the BOQ? Got it now, Einstein?”

Adams was trying to find his way through General Doyle’s logic. “SEAL Team Six is a national asset. It shouldn’t be in some regional exercise like this.” The admiral squinted at his old friend. “Jeddah and Yanbu are in the Red Sea, but that’s the wrong side of the Red Sea, that’s…” Now he realized what the Marine was saying. The flamenco dancers ended their number with a flourish. “Oh my God!” Adams let loose, just as the music ended.

“Jes, jes. Dey are bedy good,” a waiter replied.

After paying the check, the two flag officers walked down 7th Avenue, in civilian clothes, smoking their Cohibas. “You really think they’re going to invade Saudi Arabia? Home of the Two Holy Mosques?” Adams asked. “The Islamic world will go nuts!”

“I do. I think Secretary Conrad really thinks we can reinstall the House of Saud. They’ve had us going over the Lessons Learned from the Iraqi Occupation. Why? So we don’t make them again when we occupy Islamyah?” General Doyle asked, chomping on the cigar.

“Bobby, the Iraq occupation almost ruined the Army and Marines. It stretched them thin and it totally busted the National Guard and Reserves. Recruitment has never come back. We got seven thousand kids who are now veterans without legs or with missing eyes and we got nothin’ for it,” Adams said, feeling the anger rising in him. “I served there. So did you. I had buddies killed, and for what? Because we had a SECDEF then who didn’t think it out, had no plan, put in too few troops. You think the American people are going to stand for that again? No way.”

Doyle stepped off the sidewalk, into the doorway of a store that had closed. “Why do you think they’re doin’ it this way? You think if Conrad or the President went to the Congress and said let’s invade and occupy another Arab country, they’d get one vote for it? Shit, they’d more likely be impeached.” The Marine spat out a piece of the cigar. “That’s why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. We will just happen to have an invasion force off the Saudi coast when, hell, I dunno, somethin’ gonna happen. Maybe the Gypoes are in on it, too. Maybe they’re comin’ with us like in ’90, got me?

“But I do know this. I went into Fallujah with my brigade in ’04 and I saw what we did. You know the three-star Marine in charge of all of us jarheads in Iraq recommended against assaulting the city, ju’ know that? They didn’t have no WMD there. They weren’t hiding Saddam or Osama. When we went inta Fallujah the second time, we fuckin’ leveled the place. City a quarter million people, gone-ski. Did we fuckin’ think that would make us popular? No wonder you got Iraqis still trying to blow up your headquarters in Bahrain.

“You know, we were gonna pay for that whole little escapade by getting some deal for their oil. Wha’d they do? Blew up their own pipelines, storage tanks, the whole infrastructure. We go into Saudi, they’ll self-immolate, too. Then no one will have any fuckin’ oil. Move to Florida, that’s what I say. It’s nice here, in the winter.”

Doyle moved close to Adams and placed a finger on the admiral’s chest. “I still remember Dorian Dale, my G-3. His mom worked herself almost to death putting that man through Howard, her and ROTC. He coulda been the next Colin Powell, ’cept he got his head blown right off his shoulders in Fallujah, right off. Blood squirted all over. Why? Because some set of lunatics from a think tank escaped and took over the Pentagon, that’s fuckin’ why.” Doyle exhaled. “We can’t let that happen again. We gotta stop this shit, Adams. It’s our duty. It’s our duty to our troops. It’s our duty to our country as military men.”

Adams looked away, then back at his friend. “Bobby, all my life since I was seventeen I have saluted and followed orders, including some pretty stupid fucking orders. At this point in my life, if I tried to step out of line I would probably seize up,” he whispered. “We have a system in this country. The military is under civilian control. Maybe they make mistakes sometimes, but they get paid for looking at the big picture and some of them get elected. Nobody elected us.

“The President, Secretary Conrad, these are smart guys who see a lot more info than we do. Having a big exercise of Islamyah right now to scare them into not messing with us, that makes sense to me.

“Besides, Bobby, what you’re talking about sounds like doing something, I don’t know what, but something that violates the UCMJ. That’s not just giving up the next promotion, it’s giving up everything, not just for us but for our wives, family. I got both kids into Penn because of the legacy thing. That’s a hundred thousand a year worth of scholarships and loans.”

They stepped back out onto the sidewalk. Adams talked with his head down as they moved down 7th. He sensed Doyle was feeling let down. “Okay, Bobby, supposing you’re right about this invasion?” The admiral spoke carefully. “Does the CinC know? What could we do to stop it if you wanted to? You can’t even prove they’re gonna do it.”

“The CinC? Nathan Bedford Moore?” Doyle said sarcastically. “I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t know. But his number-one priority is number one. He sees Secretary Conrad making him the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He ain’t gonna buck the tide. Hell, he’s invited Conrad out to see the so-called exercise, be on the USS George H. W. Bush bobbing up and down in the Red Sea with the troops.

“I don’t know what to do, Adams. I plumb don’t know,” the Marine said, looking up at the admiral. “That’s why I had to talk to you: because you’re the only one I can trust about this, and I thought you’d know what to do.”

The admiral stared at Doyle without knowing what to say. Then he pulled out his half-finished Cohiba and threw it onto the brick street and ground it under his heel. He looked back at Doyle. “There was a motto over the gate at college. I think it was from Hannibal, the general with the elephants who almost beat the Romans. It said ‘Inveniemus Viam aut Faciemus.’ We will find a way, or we will make one.”

Doyle put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Well, buddy, you faciemus better.”

Across 7th Avenue, a civilian-looking couple kissed on the sidewalk. They were actually both master sergeants assigned to a littleknown unit from Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia, the 504th Counterintelligence Battalion.

“Well, I can see why they call it Table Mountain — it’s flatter than a flounder,” Brian Douglas mused aloud, looking out the top-floor window and stretching after the long flight from London. “Magnificently beautiful city.”

“That’s why I love this location, it has such a nice view,” Jeannie Enbemeena replied as she came back into the room with a handful of papers. She was a thirty-something, short, and highly attractive black woman from Natal who had been with SIS for six years. For two years she had been running the small South Africa regional services and support office for British intelligence, out of a Cape Town property with no obvious connection to the embassy in Johannesburg. “Never been here before, Mr. Douglas?”

“First time. I’m an Arabist, you know,” he said, taking the false documents that Jeannie handed him. “What do you do, Ms. Enbemeena, may I ask, when you are not creating legends and playing hostess for wandering Arabists?”

“I keep an eye on the Malay mosque down the street. We’ve tied some of the regulars there to an al Qaeda spin-off that was plotting to blow things up in KL and Singapore. The lot here did a small bombing spree two years ago at the American Express and Barclays”—she smiled—“but I went to school in Durban, and our boys there did a good job on your papers and back story. I would believe it. You are now Simon Manley, recently in the fruit-and-nut business and seeking a reliable and cheap source of pistachios. Where else but Iran, pistachio capital of the world?”

“And how does Simon the nutter get from here to there?” Brian chuckled.

“We fly you to just outside Durban on an air taxi we own, no questions asked. Then you will be driven to the main Durban airport, where you catch the once-a-week flight on Emirates to Dubai, have a two-hour layover in the duty-free, and then Iran Air to Tehran, where Marty Bowers meets you on the other side of Customs,” Jeannie said, reading from her notes.

“Marty who? Meets me? I am operating solo on this — no one from the Tehran station is even to know I’m in country!” Brian exploded at her.

“Cease fire!” she shot back. “Jesus, mate, don’t kill the waitress for the chef ’s faux pas. London told us to send someone from Durban base who could be part of your cover story, to be there just in case, precisely because you won’t be going into the embassy or seeing any one of the boys and girls who work at the station there. “Marty Bowers’s regular cover is that he runs an import warehouse in Durban. We’ve made him one of the investors and partners in Manley Fruits and Nuts. He will not get in your hair at all. He’ll probably spend most of his time as a tourist. London orders.” Her smile returned.

“London.” Brian Douglas sighed. “Only London could come up with Manley Fruits and Nuts, the perfect oxymoron. Is Simon Manley’s passport and picture in the South African government’s database?”

“Of course, we have hacked all of their databases and inserted your life story. Now, then, Simon Manley, you are bald with a monk’s collar of gray hair and you have brown eyes and glasses,” Jeannie said, walking into the next room. “So if you will follow me, Mr. Manley…”

Two hours later, the full head of sandy hair was gone, the newly exposed scalp was tanned, the blue eyes had become brown, with tortoiseshell frames for the glasses, and slight bits of flesh-colored material had been attached to the nose and ears with a powerful epoxy resin glue. When Brian Douglas emerged from the back room where the disguise technician had worked wonders, Jeannie Enbemeena was startled. “Goodness, why it truly is Simon the nutter,” she said. “I don’t have a need to know, but may I ask why we had to do all of this to you? You were, if I may say so, a rather goodlooking man.”

“You’re right. About the part that you don’t have a need to know,” Brian said while rubbing his suddenly bald head. “But there is some chance that Tehran has my face on file, and with the new facematching software that’s commercially available, they just might figure out who I really am before I depart. That would be bad for the nuts, in more ways than one.”