The Scorpion's Gate

7

“That’s the LNG tanker over there, Mr. MacIntyre. The Japanese are flying in a new crew and hiring some heavy-duty tugs to pull her out. That’s pretty shallow water where she ended up.” Captain John Hardy, NAVCENT J-2, was talking into the headset mike and pointing at the LNG Jamal as the Osprey, the Navy’s V-22 tiltrotor, lifted off from the ASU helipad. The two enormous rotor were facing straight up, making the aircraft operate like a helicopter. It moved out over the water, shuddering as it transitioned from helo to aircraft, the giant rotors turning 90 degrees to a horizontal position. “The Pentagon tried to kill the Osprey program so often they ought to have renamed it the Phoenix,” Hardy joked, “but don’t worry, we’ve had thousands of hours of successful operations now and only six or eight crashes.”

“This is one hell of a windshield tour, Captain. Many thanks.”

“Well, the admiral said you come highly recommended, Mr. MacIntyre, and he said to tell you he was sorry he couldn’t be here when you arrived. He left you this personal note. I think it says he wants to see you when he gets back from CONUS, if you can wait around a couple days.”

The Osprey circled around the LNG. “She looks very well guarded,” Rusty MacIntyre said, hitting his push-to-talk button, which was dangling on the cord below his helmet.

“She is. Two Bahraini patrol boats and three of ours, plus divers, plus helos, plus a Bahraini army detachment on the shoreside approach. We’re not taking any chances. She’s still loaded with frozen gas.” Hardy seemed to shake as he mentioned the gas. “If they had blown her, the fireball would have taken out most of the base.”

“So who were ‘they,’ Captain? I’ve heard a few different theories,” Rusty said as the Osprey flew over the line of U.S. ships tied up at the dock below.

“The SEALs captured some of the terrorists alive. They were Iraqis, apparently seeking belated revenge for the U.S. occupation. Anyway, that’s what the Pentagon thinks,” Hardy replied carefully.

“But I hear they were Shiites, so they weren’t likely to be retaliating for Fallujah. Possibly working for the secret police, the new Iraqi Muhabarat?” Rusty suggested.

“Could be,” the captain said, looking over his sunglasses, which had slipped down his nose. “That’s what my source believes, the one who tipped me to the terrorist attack. She says it was definitely not Islamyah. In fact, she says it was Islamyah that told her about the attack. All I know is, the guys we caught were Iraqis.”

“Iraqi Muhabarat, which is under the tutelage of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its Qods Force…” MacIntyre said, looking down on the LNG tanker, now directly below the helo.

“Like I said, Mr. MacIntyre, could be, but the Pentagon thinks that they are Iraqis related to al Qaeda, related to Islamyah, even if you and I know there are no Shiites in al Qaeda of Iraq.” Hardy pushed his sunglasses back up.

MacIntyre looked straight at his tour guide. “Whoever it was, I suspect they will try again. Are you planning any new security measures?”

“Of course,” Hardy said, smiling. “We are also planning to put most of the force to sea soon for a major exercise. With the base pretty empty, they may hold off for a while.”

“Yeah, Bright Star, coming up this month,” MacIntyre said, letting the Navy intelligence officer know that he was privy to the plan. “Doesn’t it seem a little unusual to strip the Gulf of assets for an exercise in the Red Sea, especially if it’s the Iranians who are stirring things up here?”

“Above my pay grade, sir. Or, at least not my area of specialization,” Captain Hardy answered as the Osprey got up speed and headed out into the Gulf. Hardy stared out the side window of the V-22. “On the other hand, that ship out there in the haze is my area of specialization. She’s the Zagros, the Iranian navy’s big destroyer, Sovremenny II — class, made in Petersburg. Rigged out with antiship and antiair missiles, and all sorts of listening devices.” Hardy handed the pair of 7×35 binoculars to MacIntyre.

“That is a big ship,” MacIntyre said, focusing the glasses. “What’s she doing so close to Bahrain?”

“My educated guess is that she’s monitoring our communications, visually checking out the movement of our ships as they come out of port, and probably putting a few divers over the side with undersea sleds to check out the coast. Our SEALs chased a few away last week.”

“Checking out the Bahraini coast, Captain, underwater? Now, why would they be doing that, do you suppose?” MacIntyre asked, handing back the glasses.

“I hear we got SEAL Team Six doing the same thing over in the Red Sea for Bright Star. It’s what you do before you conduct amphibious landings. Make sure there’s nothing underwater that will hang up your landing craft.”

“The Iranians got any landing craft?” MacIntyre asked casually as the Osprey flew down the side of the Zagros and Iranian sailors on deck waved up at the funny-looking U.S. aircraft.

“Shitload of them. Karbala-class LSTs, homemade. Hovercraft. Semisubmersible gunboats. You name it.” Hardy smiled at MacIntyre. “They exercised all of them at once a few months back, successfully invading themselves. Their landings in Iran were unopposed.”

“So you’re saying they’re planning for landings in Bahrain? Any idea when?” Macintyre asked.

“I do intelligence, Mr. MacIntyre. That means I do capabilities, not intentions. Everybody wants Intelligence to be fortunetellers, but that’s not our job. But in terms of their capabilities, I’d say they should be at maximum readiness in a week or two.” Hardy let his words hang for a minute and then added, “But I don’t know what they have in their sights, sir.” The V-22 banked and headed toward the Qatari shoreline. “Off to our left is the world’s largest source of liquid natural gas, Qatar, also home to U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters. It’s a lot more valuable than Bahrain, but who knows, the Iranians may just be doing a drill, just like us.”

“Ms. Delmarco? Rusty MacIntyre. Sorry to be late,” he said, holding out his hand. “I was getting a little aerial sightseeing tour and kind of lost track of time.”

Kate was waiting at the bar. “That’s all right,” she said, closing a book. “It gave me a chance to finish. Here, you might want to read it, The World at Night, by Alan Furst. All of his books are about Europe in the late 1930s, about how average people, little people, know that a war is coming but they can’t do anything about it. They all get swept up in it. Pretty convincing stuff.”

“Maybe I should read it,” Rusty said, accepting the book. He tried to guess her age and thought she was about his own age, give or take a couple of years. She had a presence, style.

“So that was you in the Jules Verne contraption thing that landed at the Navy base a little while back? You do have courage. Yes, you can see a lot from up here.” Delmarco slipped off her stool. “I’m starving. Let’s get a table.”

The maître d’, who seemed to know Delmarco, seated the two at a corner table, where they could see in two directions out to the Gulf. “I understand you did see quite a lot up here recently,” Rusty said as the waiter appeared with menus.

“Yes, just lucky, I guess,” Kate said, smiling innocently. “It was one hell of a story. You must have been on live with CNN for over an hour. But it wasn’t just luck, was it, and you didn’t just happen to be at the bar here. You were the one who called Captain

Hardy with word that the attack was under way.” Rusty put down the menu and stared at Delmarco.

“Johnny has a big mouth. That sort of talk could get me killed,

Mr. MacIntyre.” Delmarco’s voice had dropped an octave. “Don’t blame Captain Hardy, I just guessed and happened to be

right,” Rusty almost whispered across the table. “When Brian Douglas suggested you were someone I should see while I was out here, I figured you were more than the usual American foreign correspondent. And I was right about that, too.”

The waiter brought a small mezza of tabouli, hummus, olives, feta, and baba ghanouj to start. A U.S. minesweeper made smoke and pushed off from a dock below.

“Well, I figure Brian Douglas is more than the usual British Embassy petroleum whatsit himself, especially if he knows the deputy director of… What is your title again, Rusty?”

“Intelligence Analysis Center. We’re the writers, the sifters, not the spooks. Brian and I met at a petroleum research conference in Houston last year,” MacIntyre tried lamely.

“Right,” she said sarcastically. “Where is he, by the way? He hasn’t returned my calls in days. I need to return something to him.”

As she spoke, Kate Delmarco took a small reporter’s notepad from her bag and placed it on the table next to her.

“Well, since you’ve already seen through Brian’s intentionally thin cover, he’s in London for a week or so. So what is it you were hoping to tell someone in a Western intelligence agency?” MacIntyre saw no point in continuing the charade and hoped his candor would buy him some credit with a reporter who appeared to have very good sources.

“Well, that was frank. Which is more than I can say for Brian when it comes to his job. Thank you, Rusty.” She wondered whether she had given away too much about her friendship with Brian. She wondered how much he had told the American. “The reason I knew the attack was under way was that I was told so by someone tied to Islamyah intelligence. And the reason I knew him was that I was introduced to him by a Dubai real estate mogul, whom Brian Douglas suggested I should get to know. In short, our mutual friend Brian must know that Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid over at the Salmaniyah Medical Center here is the brother of the head of Islamyah intelligence.

So why couldn’t he just tell me that straight out?”

MacIntyre paused, trying to follow the connections. “As I said, I am not an operational type. I write analyses, or rather, I have a bunch of really smart people who write analyses based on the things that people like Brian collect. So I can only assume… But I think it has something to do with deniability. What would Dr. Rashid have done if you called up and said, ‘Can I interview you? You were just outed as a spy by the British’?”

“He would have freaked.” Kate laughed. “You’re right. Instead, with the Dubai guy as our mutual friend, he has become quite a source for me. I’ve seen him a couple of times since the tanker hijacking. He’s worried. That’s what I would tell the mysterious Brian Douglas if he weren’t off in London.”

“Worried about what? That the Brits and the Bahrainis know who he is and what he’d doing here?” Rusty asked.

“Lots of things,” Delmarco said, looking at her notes. “That the Shura Council in Islamyah may do something soon, something really stupid that will provoke the Americans. That it’s dominated by fundamentalists who will continue some of the mistakes made by the Sauds. That his sources that keep tabs on the Iranians here think something big is about to happen. He’s a very nervous man, our doctor. I wouldn’t want him keeping an eye on me in the intensive care unit.”

“I’d like to meet him,” MacIntyre said.

“No way. Do you want to get me killed? ‘Excuse me, Ahmed, meet my spy buddy from Washington.’ I’d never hear from him again,” Kate said, closing her notebook and placing her napkin on the table.

Rusty MacIntyre took the napkin. “It’s amazing they use paper napkins in a high-class place like this,” he said, and tore it into four pieces.

“What…what are you doing?” Kate stammered.

MacIntyre held the pieces of the napkin in his right hand, moved his left above it, and then, looking straight at Kate, said, “I must see Ahmed.” He then pulled the napkin from his right hand and handed it back to Kate in one piece. She gasped. He grabbed the napkin back, ran it through his hands, and repeated, “I must see Ahmed.” What appeared from his right hand was a napkin in the shape of a rose. “I don’t believe it,” the reporter said, accepting the paper rose. “Excuse the parlor tricks,” MacIntyre said. “I just wanted to get your attention. Kate, if Ahmed’s right and things are about to happen in Islamyah and Iran, there may be no more time for niceties.

Besides, Brian isn’t coming back for a few days. I need to do this now. Tell Rashid that I’m your editor from New York, tell him I’m your older brother, tell him—”

“Nice try. Older brother. I like that. I have you by five years at a minimum.” Kate thought for a moment. “If I do this and lose him as a source, you’ll have to do some other magic trick to make it up to me, with material at least as good as I got from Ahmed. Deal?” “Deal. See if you can get him to meet me tonight,” MacIntyre urged.

“I’ll try, but he works late at the hospital.” She took out her mobile. “Are you staying here at the Ritz?”

“No. I have the guesthouse at the American ambassador’s residence. It’s…safer,” Rusty admitted, blushing slightly. As Kate Delmarco called Dr. Rashid and left a voice mail for him, saying that they needed to get together tonight if possible, Rusty MacIntyre checked the PGP-encrypted e-mail on his BlackBerry.

There were three messages and only four people knew the account.

One was from Sarah. She had to go to Somaliland to do a refugee survey and would be back in D.C. in ten days. The neighbor kid would look in on the cat. One was from Brian Douglas, suggesting they meet at Jaipur, a “dive curry house” on Dubai Creek in three days, when he would be on his way back from his “shopping holiday,” meaning his trip to Tehran. Even using encrypted e-mail, Brian was careful.

The third message caused him to focus:

“Hello? Sorry to interrupt…” Kate was saying. And then as Rusty looked up from the BlackBerry: “I left a message. If he calls back and agrees to meet my editor, I’ll call you.”

“What’s today’s date?” Rusty asked, distracted.

“February eleventh, here on earth,” Delmarco needled. “Right. Sorry. So — tonight. I really need to see him tonight.” A three-ship flight of Bahraini F-16s swept low over the port, headed out to the Gulf, out toward the Zagros.

“Simon, old boy. How was the flight? Bloody cold here compared to back home, i’n’ it?” a tall, broad man in a heavy overcoat said loudly as he approached Brian in the sparkling, high-vaulted glass cathedral that was the international arrivals hall. “Did Limpopo really beat us? God, you know, I leave Durban for a little bit and our team starts losing to the likes of Limpopo. Next we’ll be going down to the likes of Mpumalanga. Here, let me take that,” he continued boisterously. This, apparently, was Martin Bowers, of the SIS Durban base, playing the nut importer and partner of fellow South African Simon Manley.

Brian Douglas let his newfound friend take his bag. He looked about in amazement at the modern airport.

“Yes, it is a wonder, isn’t it, Simon? They tell me the old airport was a proper dump, Mehrabad with emphasis on the ‘bad.’ Glad we never had to use it,” Bowers continued as they pressed through the mob by the Customs door. “This is only about forty-five kilometers south of the city, so at this time of day less than two hours’ drive. After the traffic here, I’ll never complain again about Durban. That’s why I splurged and got us a driver for the run in: I couldn’t navigate us safely with these crazy drivers.”

Good, Brian thought, a hired driver taking two foreigners in from the international airport is likely to be on the hook to report to VEVAK, the Ministry of Intelligence Service. Let VEVAK know that the two white South Africans were not afraid to get a hired driver and that they spoke only about traffic, football, rugger, and pistachios. Someone trying to avoid VEVAK attention might take the crowded bus downtown; Simon Manley and Marty Bowers would never even think of VEVAK. Maybe Bowers is more than the oversized blowhard he played.

When they got in the car, Bowers started, “We’re staying at the Homa Hotel, which they say was once a Sheraton. Very nice and on the high street, or what passes for one — Valiasr, I think they call it. Now, let me tell you about Tehran…” Brian Douglas, now Simon Manley, tuned out of the explanation that was meant mainly for the driver to overhear. He thought instead of the Tehran he knew so well, the back alleys off the bazaar, the poor streets in the south of the city, the dead-letter drops in the mountain parks an hour north of the sprawling, polluted jumble that was now the capital of Persia, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

He thought of the network of Iranian sources that he had run successfully until, after he had moved on to the station chief Bahrain job, his best source in the Iran network had been shot dead on the street by VEVAK. Shot dead after depositing the plans for Iran’s new air defense system in a dead-letter drop in Baku two days before. Until then it had worked well, largely because it had not involved the British Embassy in Tehran. VEVAK kept close track of the entire embassy staff. His network of Iranian spies had survived because only Brian and a few in Vauxhall knew who they were and the meets were almost always out of the country: Ankara, Istanbul, Dubai, and, of course, Baku.

After the hit, London had ordered all contact broken until an assessment could be made of how the source had been compromised. They never had figured it out. Months went by and Brian had been posted to Bahrain as chief of station for the lower Gulf, including the posts in Doha, Dubai, and Muscat. Downsizing had forced SIS into having one senior officer for all four posts. Now, three years on, he did not even know if the members of the network were still alive, still at their old addresses, still in the jobs that had made them so valuable. Most important, he could not know whether they would still recognize the invitation to a meet. He thought of the cameras in the Border Control booth at the airport and subconsciously wiggled his newly shaped nose.

“So here we are, the Homa,” Bower said, breaking Brian’s reverie. “Owned by the airline, this chain is. Not really what we would call a five-star, but Iranian five-stars are the best they have. What we would think of as two-star.”

The room was simple and relatively clean. His window looked down on Vanak Square and did little to stop the noise of the incessant Tehran traffic below. He gave it a quick check for audio and video surveillance, without being too obvious about what he was doing. If they already knew who he was, the surveillance devices would be too good to detect. If they thought he was a South African nut buyer, there might be some lower-quality devices placed there on a purely random basis. The fact that he could not see anything told him he was either clean or under sophisticated monitoring.

He dined that night with Bowers at a place near Vanak Square, a place with a mix of locals and some foreign businessmen. The hotel doorman had recommended it. When they returned to the Homa, they approached the front desk. “Could you give me a wake-up call at eight o’clock tomorrow?” Brian asked in English. He turned to Bowers. “I’ll see you downstairs for breakfast at nine, since our first meeting isn’t until eleven.” Bowers had arranged to visit a pistachio exporter near the bazaar.

As he got into bed, Brian Douglas set the alarm on his wristwatch for 0530.

Russell MacIntyre looked at his watch again, impatiently. “I thought you said he would show up around eleven. It’s almost eleven-thirty.”

Kate Delmarco sipped her Tanqueray and tonic. “I said he gets off shift at eleven, assuming no one is dying on him. Chill. Anyway, people here work on a different rhythm of time. This isn’t Washington.”

“Miss Delmarco, my name is Fadl.” The young man had appeared out of nowhere. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that said “California University” with a map of California below it. “Dr. Rashid would like your guest to come with me. I will take you to him, sir.”

“Well, we both want to…” Rusty began.

“Just you, sir. Dr. Rashid was very specific,” Fadl insisted. “Not the woman.”

“Okay. Well, Kate, I’ll meet you at the Ritz later. I’ll call your room and we can meet at the roof bar.” Rusty wanted to make sure that somebody actually saw him later that night to know that he was all right. He hoped she understood what he was doing.

“And if I don’t hear from you by last call?” Kate asked, smiling. She was enjoying seeing MacIntyre squirm. She was actually surprised that he’d agreed to go with the young man he had never seen before.

“Call the place where I’m staying. Tell them to leave a light on for me.”

MacIntyre followed Fadl and climbed into a minivan, which pulled up as they made it to the curb. There were two more men inside. Fadl introduced them. “This is Jassim. He will pat you down. No guns, cameras, recording devices. You understand.”

Jassim looked closely at the BlackBerry and then removed its battery. “You will get it back when we return you to your ambassador’s residence, Mr. MacIntyre.” So much for being Delmarco’s editor from the New York Journal, thought MacIntyre.

His efforts to engage the three young men in conversation failed totally, even though at least two of them were apparently fluent in English. At least, he thought, there is no blindfold involved yet. Despite his ability to watch where they were going, Russell MacIntyre doubted he could reconstruct the route down alleys and side streets without street signs. Finally, the minivan stopped on a dusty back street lined with run-down apartment buildings. “He’s waiting for you,” Fadl said, pulling back the door.

“Where?” MacIntyre asked, looking down a barely lit pedestrian passage between the buildings directly in front of the van door.

“Over there. In the Mustafa Café,” Fadl said, pointing across the street in the other direction, where a storefront was lit and a small Pepsi sign glowed dimly, with the name of the shop written in Arabic below. MacIntyre got out and walked across the little three-way intersection to the store. One street was unpaved, dirt. On the others, the curbing was intermittent. The parked cars were old and beat-up. The street lighting was occasional. This was not the highrent district. As he pushed open the door, a little bell overhead rang to let the owner know someone had come in. It was a combination convenience store and café. Not the kind of place that would be open at midnight.

“Mr. MacIntyre, over here,” a man said from the farthest of the four tables along the wall. He rose and walked toward the American, holding out his hand. “Thanks for coming to my part of town. Hope you don’t mind. I am Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid. I understand you wanted to see me.”

They shook hands and sat down at the little table. Rashid was drinking a Pepsi and had a second bottle opened and a glass waiting for his guest. MacIntyre noticed there was no one else in the shop.

“Dr. Rashid, America has many intelligence organizations. I am from one of them,” MacIntyre said as he placed his business card on the table. He doubted many recruitments had been done quite this way. “Our job is not to run operations but to interpret information that others collect. Sometimes, however, when we are not getting the information we need, we go to the field ourselves to learn. I am here to learn, from you.”

Ahmed examined the business card and then dug out one of his own. It said he was “Attending Physician, Cardiology, Intensive Care Unit, Salmaniyah Medical Center.” Noticing Rusty’s smile as he read the card, Ahmed added, “And, as you know, my brother is Abdullah bin Rashid, a member of the Islamyah Shura. What would you like to learn about, Mr. MacIntyre?”

“About the Shura and how America could deal with it in a way that prevents a long period of hostility. I personally — and I stress this is just my belief — I personally think that our two countries could be reconciled. Unless, of course, the Shura is intent on adopting policies that will make it impossible for us.”

“What would those policies be, Mr. MacIntyre?” Ahmed asked stiffly, formally.

“Policies that enforce a strict Wahhabist approach, denying human rights, exporting terrorism. Policies that might involve the introduction of weapons of mass destruction, or restricting the export of oil to one market. But I am not here as a policy maker or negotiator. As I said, I am here to learn, Dr. Rashid.”

“You must come to a café on a dirty back street in Manama to learn about Islamyah because you cannot learn from your embassy in Riyadh. You closed it, out of fear and lack of understanding.” Ahmed shifted in his chair. “Very well. Here is what you must learn. The pronouncements of your government, particularly the Pentagon, make it sound as though you have not accepted what has happened in my country. The Sauds are gone from power, Mr. MacIntyre, and they took the people’s money with them. And your ministers consort with them to bring them back to the throne. This drives some on the Shura to look for ways to protect our country from America. It strengthens the hands of the faction who also want the Wahhabist policies you object to.”

MacIntyre spoke slowly, softly. “Dr. Rashid, I am not too sure I know all the factions in the Shura, but I do know that your brother, Abdullah, was a member of al Qaeda. I don’t know whether he personally killed any of my fellow Americans, but I can tell you that the presence of people in your government who are or have been terrorists makes it very difficult for our two countries to have normal relations.”

Ahmed stood up abruptly, his white robe swirling after him. He stood by the empty halal meat display container, folded his arms across his narrow chest, and looked down at the American. “You deal with Israeli prime ministers who were terrorist fighters, who killed British troops. You deal with Palestinian leaders whom you called terrorists earlier. You talk to the Irish terrorists in the White House. Let me ask you, was Samuel Adams, the man they named the beer after, was he a terrorist? My brother acted to free his country from an oppressive, illegitimate regime that was stealing the people’s patrimony. Yes, he had to associate with some unsavory people in the process. Have you never associated with unsavory people, Mr. MacIntyre?”

“I am sure the American government, which is now well into its third century, has made a lot of mistakes. It has also done more to promote democracy and human rights than any other world power since the dawn of time,” Rusty said, reflexively. “And Sam Adams was a patriot.”

Ahmed continued on. “My brother, sir, is a patriot. Abdullah saw the U.S. troops after your first war with Saddam, how the troops stayed in our country against your promise to leave after the war. He saw that the al Sauds were being propped up by America so that you could get access to the oil. You waste the oil, worse than anyone. You could do so many other things with all your technology, but you don’t really try, you give lip service to other energy sources. Why? Because you think you have special access to the biggest oil supply in the world. Let everyone else be efficient. Who cares what the al Sauds do with the money? Who cares if they mismanage the kingdom?”

MacIntyre turned to face Rashid and crossed his legs to appear relaxed, trying to defuse the tension. “There have been times when terrorists have renounced terrorism, particularly after they came to power or entered into peace talks. We would welcome that from the leaders of Islamyah. But I am also serious when I say that we do not know about factions and we may be doing things that help the wrong faction, precisely because we do not know who is who or what is going on in the Shura. Its meetings are not exactly broadcast on C-Span or al Jazeera. Maybe if we can open a way for us to talk, we will be better informed.”

Rashid unfolded his arms and walked over to the small table. “All right, Russell. Let’s talk.” He sat down and took a swig of Pepsi. “Because America acts as if it will subvert our regime to have a countercoup and Saud restoration, my brother’s opponents are talking with the Chinese. I noticed in the Washington Post last week that you have discovered the new Chinese missiles in my country. There are no nuclear warheads on them. But there are those in the Shura who might decide to get some, if they are pushed.

“Because America seized the al Saud assets but will not give them back to us, it is harder for my brother when he argues that imposing Sharia law and other Wahhabist acts will cause us to be rejected by the rest of the modern world. His opponents point out that we are already rejected, and unable to benefit fully from the technological revolutions. America keeps pressure on the Europeans to maintain economic sanctions on us.”

Rusty found the young doctor to be a strange mix, a highly Westernized doctor but also a spokesman for a radical Islamic government that had come to power by killing. He wanted to know more about him. “So, Dr. Rashid, are you telling me that your brother opposes using the Sharia religious law as the basis of the Islamyah legal system? That he opposes exporting the Wahhabist philosophy of hating non-Muslims?”

Dr. Rashid stood again and walked in a tight circle, thinking or trying to calm down before he spoke again. “So you don’t want us exporting Wahhabism? You mean like your friends the al Sauds did? What do you know about Wahhabism? Just that it’s linked in your mind to al Qaeda? Do you know that your so-called Wahhabists don’t even use that name, that phrase?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Rusty admitted, “but I did know the Saudis paid for building and operating mosques and madrassas— schools — in sixty countries, but made sure they all taught hatred of non-Muslims, death to Israel, death to America.”

Ahmed laughed. “ Not just hatred of non-Muslims. They teach hatred of Shi’a Muslims and even of the major schools of Sunni thought, because the Saudis consider them polytheists.”

Rusty was confused and it showed on his face. “Muslim polytheists? What do you mean? I thought monotheism was a central tenet of Islam.”

Dr. Rashid did not respond. He shook his head in disgust. Finally, he told Rusty why. “You haven’t a clue, do you? You come to our world and make demands about how we live, how our governments act, and yet you know nothing about our culture, our religion, our history.”

Rusty pushed back. “Listen, Doctor, I don’t have to be a historian of thousand-year-old religious disputes and trivia to know that it’s considered noble to kill Americans. Become a suicide bomber and you’ll have seventy-two virgins waiting for you in heaven. That’s not religion, that’s crap!” He heard his own voice, too loud, too confrontational. “Okay, so what more is it that you think I don’t know and should?”

Ahmed smiled. “Let’s start with the relations between the Sauds and Wahhabism. It’s not just that some of their kings took to it. Without Wahhab there might not even have been a Saudi Arabia.”

“You’re right. I would like to hear that story,” Rusty admitted, “and, yes, I probably should already know it.”

Dr. Rashid began slowly, as if teaching a child. “Almost three hundred years ago, the al Sauds were the largest family in an area around the little town of Diriyah in the Najd region, not far from Mecca. From a nearby town came Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. He preached a version of the teachings of Ahmed ibn Taymiyyah, a radical from five hundred years earlier. They both had what they called a pure Koranic interpretation, rejected by all four schools of Muslim thought.

“Wahhab convinced the al Sauds of his beliefs and that they should sally forth killing those who opposed those beliefs. They did, and consolidated power in their region, eventually taking Riyadh and slaughtering many.

“Wahhab’s daughter then married Saud’s son. The crossed swords in the Saudi royal seal belong to Sauds and Wahhabs. The Sauds have funded Wahhabist evangelism ever since.”

Rusty suddenly saw the pieces coming together. Why had no one in Washington ever told him this background? Wahhabism was as important to the Sauds as the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution was to some Americans, and about as recent. It was not some thousand-year-old dispute.

“Now, Russell, here is the great irony. Ibn Taymiyyah and the Salafis, including Wahhab, taught that it was the duty of Muslims to overthrow corrupt or irreligious governments. So bin Laden used a Salafist or Wahhabist theory to justify overthrowing the al Sauds, who had so promoted Wahhabism. Get it now?” Ahmed asked.

“I think I’m beginning to,” Rusty answered, carefully. “But your brother and his buddies who overthrew the al Sauds, and who worked with al Qaeda, aren’t they Salafis or Wahhabists?”

“Some of those in the anti-Saud movement are. Some are secularists. Some are what you would think of as mainstream Sunnis.”

Rusty had begun to realize that the Islamyah Shura Council was more riven than Washington had imagined. The differences in the anti-Saud coalition were profound.

Finished with his lecture, Dr. Rashid sat again near Rusty. “Okay, Ahmed. May I call you that?” MacIntyre said, sensing that the ice had been broken between them. Rashid nodded. “Ahmed, you’re right. We don’t know what we should. But we do understand international security, and you have people in your government who would lead you to ruin. And, yes, probably so do we. It’s up to people like us to help our two governments do the right thing. We have a lot of damage to repair, but first we have to stop any more from happening. If nuclear warheads show up in Islamyah, all bets are off. I know you know that. So if you think that is about to happen at any point, then we will need to think together about how we can prevent it from happening.”

There was a long pause. Rashid did not seem to be embarrassed that he was taking his time to consider how to reply. MacIntyre heard the old refrigerator’s motor clunk. Finally, the young doctor looked up. “If the Shura believed that Iran was about to do something against our country, they might reach out to Pakistan, or North Korea, or China, to get nuclear warheads for the missiles. They would do that only to checkmate Iran’s nuclear weapons. Is Iran about to do something, Russell?”

Now it was MacIntyre’s turn to consider his answer carefully. “We see signs that Iran’s military is exercising its intervention capabilities, but we do not know that they intend to use them. We exercise all the time, too. Nor do we know where Iran might act, if they do. Some of our analysts think that the Iranians might try again to go after Bahrain. Truth is, we don’t know.” As he said that, he thought about Kashigian. If the British knew that Kashigian had been in Tehran, maybe Islamyah did, too. Maybe Ahmed knew. He added, “At least, I don’t know.”

“You guys are in this mess because you still need our oil, after all these years,” Ahmed said, shaking his head in disbelief. “And because you haven’t come up with alternatives, you put my country more at risk, with everyone fighting over its oil. It’s your failure that’s causing this, you know that.”

“Maybe,” Rusty replied.

“I assume Ms. Delmarco told you it was my people who penetrated the Iranians here. That’s how we learned about their plan to hijack the LNG,” Rashid continued matter-of-factly. “From the penetrations we still have, we think they are planning an across-the-Gulf strike at the end of this month. We have to assume it is a strike on us, since an overt move against Bahrain would be an attack on the United States Navy.”

“And if the Shura believes that will happen, they will try to get nuclear warheads?” MacIntyre asked.

“Some would, yes,” Rashid replied. “And if the Americans think that Islamyah is about to get nuclear weapons, they would strike us?”

“Some would, yes,” Rusty echoed.

The two men in the dingy store-café stared at each other.

“Then we must stay closely in touch and think of ways we could stop these things if they were about to happen, perhaps later this month,” Ahmed said.

“Yes. We have also heard that something may happen this month. And on our calendar it is February, a very short month that is almost half over.”

They shook hands, almost warmly. Rusty emerged from the store to find the minivan gone and a Mercedes taxi waiting. He got in. “To the Ritz Hotel, sir, or the Ambassadors?” the driver asked in English.

As Ahmed bin Rashid emerged from the store into the dimly lit square, he was filmed by two men lying in the trunk of an old Chevrolet Impala across the street. They were U.S. military counterintelligence.