The Secret Soldier

CHAPTER 18

“MY BROTHER SAYS I’M DYING. IS HE A PROPHET? DOES HE SEE THE future? What a gift it must be. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Not even Saeed. To see your own death. And then what do you do? Sit in your bed and count down the days? And your wives and your children and your children’s children? Shall you watch them die, too? Better to gouge your eyes and live in darkness than see all that.”

Abdullah’s rant began even before Kurland reached his chair, the Arabic pouring out of him as Rana struggled to keep up with the translation. They were in Abdullah’s massive palace in the desert just north of Riyadh. The king had summoned Kurland that morning, telling him only that they needed to meet immediately.

Abdullah finished his speech and coughed into his hand as if he’d just run a marathon. Kurland settled himself in his chair, a leather recliner that didn’t match the room’s eighteenth-century French furniture. He wondered what he was meant to say. When they’d met at Abdullah’s desert ranch, Abdullah had shown Kurland the spotless cages that housed his prize falcons, proud, long-feathered birds. The king had been smiling, almost playful. He’d laughed when a big brown camel — an ill-tempered beast that had won two races in Dubai — nipped at Kurland.

Abdullah was still alive, but the smiling man from the ranch was gone. The king’s face had melted into itself, crumpled like crushed wax paper. His body was heavier, and yet he seemed smaller and weaker. Kurland thought of Humpty Dumpty. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. And the biggest surprise of all, he was alone, though two guards and two translators waited in the gilded corridor outside. Abdullah must have forbidden them.

Kurland tried to deflect the king’s rant with a joke. “I don’t know any prophets. Maybe I need new friends.”

“Are you asking me to smile? After what’s happened to my granddaughter?”

“I’m asking — I’m thanking you for giving me the chance to offer my country’s condolences about Alia’s death.”

“Is that why you think you’re here?”

“I’m here because you wanted to see me, King.”

“You’re here because of my brother. The prophet. King Saeed. Abdullah is dead and long live Saeed. Did you bow to him? Did you kiss his hand? Kneel before him to tie his shoes?”

Kurland thought back to his conversation with Saeed. Saeed had implied that Abdullah was too ill to govern. Though he hadn’t explicitly said that he planned to take over even before Abdullah died, the implication was clear. The Kingdom had gone through similar transitions before. Abdullah himself had governed as crown prince after King Fahad suffered a stroke in 1996.

Kurland wanted to reassure Abdullah. But he couldn’t choose a side in this battle. Two days before, he’d received instructions from Washington: The United States would take no position on succession in the House of Saud. Not officially, not unofficially. “You’re still king,” he said. “That’s how I see you, and that’s how America sees you.”

Abdullah ignored Kurland’s watery words, set off on another journey in Arabic. “I must be jealous of Saeed. He lives in the future, I don’t even see the past anymore. Did he flood the room with tears when he told you of my fate? Did he tell you the throne would be his? That he would mount it like a whore even before my corpse cools?”

“The United States respects the process by which your kingdom picks its leaders,” Kurland said. “We expect that other nations won’t interfere with our elections. Similarly, we don’t interfere with yours.”

Even to him the words sounded dry, mechanical. No surprise. But when he’d practiced them on the ride up, he hadn’t expected them to be so misaligned with the king’s mood. Abdullah was unfurling an epic of tragedy and betrayal. Kurland was reading from a position paper drafted by GS-15s in Foggy Bottom.

“Say what you mean. Whether I’m king or Saeed or someone else, the United States doesn’t care.”

“Of course we care. But our relationship with the Kingdom is long-standing, and whoever is king, we will respect Saudi interests.” Whoever had written these words should be flogged, Kurland thought. He quickly added, “King, I don’t know what’s passed between you and Saeed, but for what it’s worth, your brother didn’t say you were dying.”

“No?”

“He said you weren’t well. And that whoever ruled Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom would be a great friend to the United States.”

“‘A great friend to the United States.’” Abdullah’s voice was steady now, the madness in his eyes gone. “He’s as honest as a snake, my brother. Did he tell you about his other great friends? The clerics who preach jihad every Friday. The men who blow themselves up in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that sound like a friend?”

“Is Saeed funding the insurgencies?”

“He’s too keen for that. He closes his eyes while imams shovel money to these men who kill your soldiers.”

“You don’t stop him?”

“You think I haven’t tried.”

Abdullah closed his eyes, slumped in his overstuffed chair. Rana reached for him, but Kurland shook his head and they waited in silence. After a minute, the king opened his eyes. “I’ve forgotten my manners. Would you like some coffee? Or juice?”

“If you’re having something.”

Abdullah picked up the handset of the antique phone beside him. Almost before he’d hung up, his steward emerged with a tray of coffee, orange juice, and French pastries. Kurland sensed that the king needed a few minutes to gather his strength.

“What do you think of my country, Mr. Ambassador?”

Hardworking would be too obvious a lie, as would friendly, Kurland thought.

“I haven’t seen as much of it as I would have liked. The security situation. But the people I’ve met, they’re polite, thoughtful. Hospitable. Pious, I suppose. Like certain Americans. Mainly Southerners.”

“You think you understand Saudi Arabia?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t say so. Sometimes I don’t even think I understand America.”

“America’s easy to understand. America is on the surface. Here everything is buried. You don’t have any idea what’s happening.”

“Tell me, then.”

To Kurland’s surprise, Abdullah did. About his plans to make his son king, the fury he had stirred in Saeed and Mansour. About the split in the family he caused.

“This has been going on since last year and we haven’t heard of it?”

“You do need new friends, Mr. Ambassador. But most of the princes feel it’s in their interest to hold their tongues. Once they’ve made a decision, they’ll want a strong king, and that will be impossible if the world knows our house is divided.”

“But you’ve broken that secrecy. You’ve told me.”

“My reasons don’t matter.”

“Even so, I’d like to know them.”

Abdullah didn’t answer. The silence stretched, and Kurland sat back and waited. Pressing the king to speak would be a terrible mistake, he thought. Beside him, he sensed Rana’s breathing change, heard Rana’s fingertips drum against his legs. Kurland tilted his head fractionally, trying to catch Rana’s eyes and convey the message: Not a word. Not a sigh. He’s got to talk on his own. And if you screw this up—

“When they attacked Alia, they went too far,” Abdullah said suddenly.

Kurland needed a moment to parse the words. “You think your brother was behind the bombing in Jeddah?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“What would he gain?”

“Look at me!” The words were a plea as much as a command. Abdullah lifted his right hand and watched it quiver. “If Saeed sees my death, he’s not far wrong. He’s stronger than I am. More ruthless.”

Abdullah squeezed his fingers together to hide their trembling and rested his hand on his lap. “Saeed is more ruthless than I am, and more ruthless than you could ever be, and he’s going to win. And there’s nothing you or I can do about it.” His voice had fallen to a whisper. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.

“Can you prove he was involved? Because if you can—”

“Of course I can’t.”

“But she was his grandniece, too—”

“Americans always believe in kindness. When you leave here, drive back to that prison you call an embassy, take a detour. Drive into the desert. Tell me what kindnesses you see there, Mr. Ambassador.”

Kurland knew he shouldn’t be angry at this half-mad man. But he couldn’t help hating Abdullah a little. “That’s what you called me here to say.”

“And to ask you a question.”

“Whatever you like.”

“Suppose I could prove that Saeed had killed my granddaughter. Would it matter? To the United States of America?”

“It would matter.”

“Would it?” the king said again. “Would it mean anything at all?”

“Yes.” Kurland hoped he was right.

“SO I GUESS WE’RE not following the king’s advice?” Rana said, as the convoy swung south onto the highway that ran from the palace toward downtown Riyadh.

“Hmmm?” Kurland was still trying to understand what Abdullah had said about Saeed. Would the prince use terrorists to attack his own family? These men had everything to lose from a civil war, everything to gain from keeping the Kingdom stable. Maybe Kurland was naive, but he thought they’d be rational enough to make the compromises necessary for a peaceful transition.

“Going into the desert. His object lesson.”

In fact, they were heading back to Riyadh and the embassy. Kurland, Rana, and Maggs rode in the second Suburban, the third vehicle in the convoy. Maggs had moved Kurland out of the lead Suburban, explaining that he didn’t want to be predictable. Maggs and Kurland sat side by side in the middle seat. Rana and a marine corporal were in back, with two more marines up front. Two Saudi police cars cleared traffic ahead of the convoy, sirens screaming, while an armored Jeep from the king’s private security detail brought up the rear. Saudi drivers were famously aggressive, but even they stayed away from this rolling mass of iron.

“Yeah, we’ll skip the desert,” Kurland said. Though part of him wanted to see what the king had meant. Walk in the heat until he collapsed.

“I have to say attacking Alia was brilliant. Shows the princes nobody’s safe. And takes out a progressive voice, a woman, someone who can speak to America and Europe. And it’s pushing Abdullah over the edge at this moment when he’s fighting with Saeed for control. Three for the price of one.”

“Could Saeed have been involved?”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m not saying directly. But he’s the defense minister. He’s got intel on her protection. Maybe he or Mansour gave that to somebody who didn’t like her. When we saw him, he didn’t seem too upset she was gone.”

“Okay. Abdullah’s furious that Alia died. Wants someone to pay. He and his brother, they’re rivals, hate each other. And Abdullah’s blaming Saeed. But why would Saeed take that risk? I don’t see it. And I promise you that’s what Foggy Bottom will think. They’ll say this proves that Abdullah is too old and we can’t trust him anymore.”

“What if we’re looking at it backward?” Kurland said. “What if Saeed is just crazy? What if he’s waited forever to be king, and he can’t stand the idea that Abdullah wants to skip him?”

“You’re letting your dislike for Saeed color your thinking.”

“Maybe. But there’s something I don’t get. The family’s kept this to themselves. We didn’t have a clue.”

Rana hesitated. “True.”

“So Al Qaeda probably doesn’t know, either. Or Hezbollah. Unless they have better intel into what’s happening in the monarchy than we do.”

“Which is unlikely, sure.”

“And when was the last time the Sauds had this kind of internal struggle?”

“Not since the early sixties,” Rana said. “When King Saud was drinking himself to death and his brothers exiled him.”

“Almost fifty years ago. So why now? The other bombings, sure. But Alia? Like you said, that was a surgical strike at Abdullah. If the terrorists aren’t getting tipped from inside, how could they know exactly the right time and way to hit him?”

“Coincidence,” Rana said. “They’d planned awhile, and they had a chance at Princess Alia and they took it.”

“I hate coincidence.”

The convoy passed a massive construction project, hundreds of cranes working on half-finished apartments and office towers, part of the campus of Princess Noura University for Women. The royal family was spending more than eleven billion dollars on the school, part of its effort to funnel oil wealth into creating a sustainable society. Past the campus, northern Riyadh came into focus, concrete houses and mansions and mosques jumbled close behind high walls. In a city where summer temperatures topped one hundred twenty degrees, outdoor space was not a priority. The houses were built nearly to the edges of their lots. Kurland tried to imagine living inside one. He couldn’t. “You think you understand Saudi Arabia?” Abdullah had almost sneered when he said the words. No, Kurland thought. But maybe that was his own failure—

THE AMBUSH BEGAN WITH what seemed to be an accident.

A panel truck sliced across the highway right to left, tires squealing, leaving streaks of rubber across the asphalt. It smashed sidelong into the van leading the convoy, pummeling it against the center divider, putting a foot-deep gash in the van’s armored frame. And then it blew up—

A half-second later, a Toyota 4Runner pulled up beside the first Suburban, eighty yards ahead of Kurland’s vehicle—

And disappeared in a bright orange fireball that cut through the Suburban’s armored windows and twisted it onto its side and incinerated the marines and embassy staffers inside—

THROUGH THE SUBURBAN’S SMOKED-GLASS windshield, Kurland saw the truck hit the van and explode. Then everything happened at once.

Twin shock waves came at them up the highway, and the Suburban reared back like a horse trying to buck and then landed hard, its massive shocks rattling, and sped through the intense heat of the 4Runner’s fireball—

And accelerated, pushing Kurland into his seat, and swerved into the center lane and then halfway into the right lane as the driver, who’d been through three roadside bombs in Iraq, tried to get them out of the kill zone—

The sergeant in the passenger’s seat grabbed the tactical radio mounted to the Suburban’s dash. “Charlie Four, this is Charlie Six—”

Metal clacked on metal, and Kurland looked back to see the lance corporal in the back jamming his M-4 through the firing port in the truck’s liftgate with one hand while shoving a shotgun into the port over the left rear wheel well with the other, as yet another SUV closed in on them—

Maggs yelled “Down!” and pushed Kurland’s head onto the seat, and Kurland couldn’t see what was happening anymore — and the shotgun exploded from the seat behind them, both barrels—

The Suburban shook with a crash that snapped Kurland’s head into Maggs’s body armor, the contact coming from the front, the passenger side, and pushing the truck left into a skid—

The sergeant whispered, “We are hit—” And Kurland didn’t understand why he was whispering and then realized that the shotgun had temporarily deafened him—

Kurland squirmed up, needing to see if he couldn’t hear, and saw Maggs grab the pistol on his right hip and shove it through the port on the door beside him and fire at the Toyota that had crashed into them—

Two neat round holes appeared in the Toyota’s metal skin and a third in the driver’s-side window, and the driver, a small man in a white thobe, ratcheted forward and his arm came off the wheel and the first spurt of blood flowered on his shoulder—

The marine behind them muttered, “RPG incoming,” and Maggs shoved Kurland down — and this time the explosion happened behind Kurland, a searing wave of heat and glass—

The Suburban lurched sideways and down, and Kurland felt as much as heard a terrible grinding as its back half scraped along the pavement—

They ground to a stop, and in the silence Kurland heard another sound, a low grunting from the backseat, not even human, a dying animal, and he tried to sit up, but Maggs was holding him down, and Maggs said to someone, “Chase units, tac team, gotta get him out—”

And Kurland forced himself up. Whatever happened next, he wasn’t going to his slaughter with his eyes closed.

TO SAVE WEIGHT, THE steel armor at the back of the Suburban was only a half-inch thick. The rocket-propelled grenade ripped through the plate like tissue paper. Its next stop was Lance Corporal Ray Wade. The grenade shattered his Kevlar body armor and tore open Wade’s ribs and poured lightning into his heart and lungs, killing him instantly.

By taking most of the explosion, Wade saved four of the other five men in the Suburban. Rana, his seatmate, was less lucky. Shrapnel tore open his face and neck, and one jagged piece chopped through his skull and cut into the arteries around his brain, causing massive internal bleeding. He died, but not soon enough. For thirty seconds he lay guttering in agony, whispering in words beyond translation, a language only he could understand, until a merciful unconsciousness took him.

KURLAND SAW ALL THIS as he sat up. Saw the bodies behind him. Saw that the jihadi in the Land Cruiser was dead. Saw that they had stopped on the highway, smashed against the center median.

He unbuckled his belt, stepped out of the Suburban. He stood between the truck and the median. The road was strangely empty. A few hundred yards back, the carcasses of the first two vehicles in the convoy smoldered. Behind them, two panel trucks formed a V that blocked the highway and the breakdown lane. A Jeep sat in front of the panel trucks.

As his hearing returned, Kurland picked up horns honking and shots rattling. The noise was coming from behind the trucks, which he realized now had intentionally created a roadblock to split the convoy.

He turned the other way, south. Not far ahead, the two Saudi police cars that had been their escorts burned wildly. Kurland had never been a soldier, but even so, he could see how carefully the attack had been planned. Nearly a dozen vehicles must have been involved, and at least twice that many jihadis. And they seemed to want to take him alive. Otherwise, they would have blown up this Suburban like the others.

Maggs pushed out of the Suburban and grabbed Kurland’s arm. Kurland twisted away. “Enough. I’m a big boy.”

“I am trying to save your life. Get down. Now.” Maggs pointed at the roadblock, and Kurland saw that the Jeep was heading toward them, two jihadis standing, bracing themselves on the roll bar and holding automatic rifles. The two marines scrambled out of the Suburban. One took a knee at the back corner of the Suburban and braced his rifle against his shoulder. The other pulled himself onto the SUV’s roof.

“Have to sit tight,” Maggs said. “Take these guys out and wait for the cavalry.”

Kurland nodded. He heard sirens now, distant but closing. The Saudi police had faced terrorist attacks in Riyadh before. They would be here soon, first in ones and twos, and then by the dozens. So Kurland followed Maggs forward and hid beside the Suburban’s wheel. Maggs squatted low himself and reached for his cell phone, as the marines started to fire short bursts.

Kurland closed his eyes and prayed for the chance to see his wife again.

THE LEAD SUBURBAN HAD carried the radio and satellite uplinks that provided secure connections to the embassy. But everyone inside the lead Suburban was dead. Maggs was stuck trying to call embassy security into his cell phone.

Twice he punched *55, his pre-programmed speed-dial for embassy security. Twice he got an Arabic voice chirping at him. Either the Saudis had already shut down the network or the volume of calls had overwhelmed the local towers.

Even so, the deputy chief of security should be getting the embassy’s Black Hawk up and putting the tactical response team together. All the vehicles in the convoy were equipped with GPS transceivers that continuously broadcast their locations to the embassy. Even without a distress call, the ambush would have been screamingly obvious from the fact that the convoy had suddenly stopped in the middle of a highway.

But the security team would need at least ten minutes to get the bird in the air, and another five to get here. Maggs checked his watch. The ambush had started just five minutes ago. They were going to have to defend this position awhile. He drew his pistol and edged a few feet up the median so he cleared the front of the Toyota, whose wrecked grille formed an open jaw with the Suburban. From here he could cover the Jeep if it drove past them and looped back from the south. With the two marines covering to the north, they’d finally established a defensible position.

Maggs looked over the median. Astonishingly, on the other side of the highway, the northbound side, the traffic was still flowing. But it was slowing by the second as drivers stopped to gawk at the apocalypse across the road. Then he heard the sirens screaming north up the other side of the highway, saw blue lights flashing in the distance. Maybe the Saudi cops would get here quicker than he had expected.

WHEN THE JEEP GOT to two hundred yards, the marines opened up, short, controlled bursts that dug holes in its windshield and hood. The Jeep accelerated, and the two men in back stood and braced their AKs on the roll bar and fired on full automatic. The Jeep blew by as the marines kept shooting. Nobody hit anybody. No surprise. Shooting at a vehicle moving obliquely past a static post was next to impossible. A quarter-mile south, the Jeep slowed and began a tight right turn across the empty highway.

Maggs squeezed his Glock between his hands, wishing he had something more potent. The Jeep stopped, came forward two car lengths, then stopped. Maggs didn’t understand why the jihadis were hesitating. They had planned the ambush brilliantly. But they seemed to have run out of momentum. Maybe they hadn’t counted on facing three armed men at this point and didn’t have enough guys left to make the final assault.

The sirens on the other side of the highway got louder. So did the explosions behind the two panel trucks. If the jihadis wanted Kurland, they’d have to move soon, Maggs thought. As if the jihadis had suddenly reached the same conclusion, the Jeep accelerated toward the Suburban. Maggs retreated behind the corner of the Suburban’s armored grille. The marine on the roof twisted himself around so he was now facing south, toward the Jeep. “Wait!” Maggs yelled. “Let’em close!”

The Jeep closed to two hundred yards, one hundred fifty, one hundred, the jihadis firing high and wild, rounds dinging off the Suburban’s armored windshield and grille—

At eighty yards, the marine on the roof opened up, full auto this time, a burst that shattered the windshield. The driver was low in his seat, and Maggs couldn’t tell if he’d been hit. The Jeep skidded to a stop, its tires squealing. The driver jumped onto the pavement, holding his stomach.

Maggs took his time and squeezed off three shots that caught one of the guys standing in the back in the chest. His arms came off the roll bar as though he was trying to do a jumping jack, and he fell off the Jeep and thudded against the pavement. The guy next to him jumped down and crawled behind the Jeep and fired three shots that banged off the median a couple feet from Maggs.

THEN THE CAVALRY SHOWED up, in the form of two white Chevy Tahoes on the northbound side of the highway, blue bar lights flashing, sirens screaming, their front doors carrying the open-eyed logo of the Saudi police.

The Tahoes stopped across the median from the wreck, and their doors opened and four officers wearing body armor over their blue uniforms poured out. One yelled something in Arabic, and two of the others pulled out a pair of over-under double-barreled shotguns from the second.

Maggs turned, wishing he spoke Arabic, wanting to avoid friendly fire. “Hold your fire—” he yelled, wondering as he did how they’d had time to get into their body armor — and realizing too late that these weren’t cops at all, that they were terrorists, part of the ambush—

As one of them jumped onto the median and fired twice at the marine on top of the Suburban. Even the marine’s Kevlar couldn’t protect him from the shotgun’s fury, which nearly split him in half at the waist. Almost simultaneously, a second terrorist fired at the marine on the back corner of the Suburban, catching him in the neck and dropping him instantly—

And the third turned his shotgun at Maggs. Maggs lifted his pistol and fired wildly, his shots catching the jihadi in the neck and twisting him sideways—

But the jihadi was already pulling the trigger. A torrent of steel tore through Maggs’s arm and shoulder, a left hook from a giant wearing razor-studded gloves. Maggs fell against the Suburban and tried to raise his hand to return fire. Nothing happened. He looked down to see his arm hanging limply from its socket and his blood pouring down the side of his Kevlar vest. He knew he was dead, had to be, weaponless and useless, and he couldn’t do anything but watch as the jihadis reached for Kurland, who had been hiding like Maggs told him and was just now realizing what was happening—

Maggs was slipping to his knees, filling not with pain or even fear of death but with fury, fury at himself for getting played, fury that these murderers had taken out a convoy, beaten a squad of marines, and were kidnapping the man that Maggs had sworn to protect—

Maggs tried to stand but couldn’t, he could barely hold himself on his knees, and all he could do was watch as the two fake cops, uncops, pulled a hood over Kurland’s head and jammed cuffs on his wrists and shoved him across the median—

Even as he watched, the light faded from the world. And the pavement rose up to meet him, and the darkness poured down his throat at a million miles an hour until Maggs didn’t feel anything anymore.

BUT THE AMBUSH DIDN’T end there, not for Kurland. Men grabbed him and pulled a hood over his head and threw him into the back of the Tahoe. He tried to scream, but the hood muffled his voice and he felt someone cutting at his suit and the creamy white shirt he’d worn to meet the king, a shirt Barbara had chosen for him, Brooks Brothers, one of her favorites. Barbara. Something jabbed into his arm, a pinprick at first and then deeper, an angry bite. Kurland yelped, but soon the pain faded and he felt the liquid warmth spreading up his arm and into his chest and neck, and though he tried to fight, he couldn’t.

As he slipped into twilight, he found himself back in Abdullah’s stateroom, and the king shook his head and said, “I warned you. Saeed, Saeed, Saeed”—the words sounding oddly clipped, as if the king were one of the Three Stooges, King Stooge, funny, the warmth spreading through him now like a blanket. And Kurland wondered idly who would report on the meeting. Who would tell Barbara what Abdullah had said? Because she needed to know. No, not Barbara, Barbara wasn’t his boss, Barbara was his wife, his boss was—

But he couldn’t remember. And so he slept.

CHAPTER 19

THE WORLD HAD PAID ONLY GLANCING ATTENTION TO THE ATTACKS in Bahrain and Riyadh. Even Princess Alia’s killing received just a few minutes on CNN.

Graham Kurland’s kidnapping provoked a very different reaction.

The ambush took place at two p.m. in Saudi Arabia, six a.m. in Washington. Within three hours, Arab news channels reported that terrorists had attacked a highway in Riyadh with multiple car bombs. Western news outlets rapidly picked up the story, though no video was available, only a few grainy photos from cell phones. Then, at eleven a.m., Bloomberg News sent a flash note to its terminals: “PENTAGON SOURCES CONFIRM AT LEAST TEN MARINES DEAD IN RIYADH ATTACK.” In three minutes, the price of oil rose two dollars a barrel and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped one hundred and fifty points.

At 11:20, the Associated Press reported that the attack had targeted an American embassy convoy. Just past noon, Fox News reported that Graham Kurland, the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was in the convoy. Asked for a statement, the White House declined comment but said the president would hold a press conference at one p.m. In two minutes, oil rose another five dollars a barrel, and the Dow dropped three hundred points more. Wall Street traders knew that presidents didn’t interrupt their schedules without good reason. And a good reason rarely meant good news.

OF COURSE, AS AMERICA and the world would learn at one p.m., the reality was even uglier than the rumors. Among the government officials who already knew, Vinny Duto summed up the prevailing sentiment: “The fuck just happened?”

The words both question and statement.

At the time, Duto was in his office with Ellis Shafer. Duto wasn’t surprised that Shafer and John Wells were smack in the middle of this mess. He knew he shouldn’t blame them, but he couldn’t help himself. They brought doom wherever they went. Like that old joke about how lawyers were like nuclear missiles.

“You know how lawyers are like nuclear missiles?”

“The other side has theirs, so you have to have yours. They sit in their silos, doing nothing all day except costing you money. And once you use them, they destroy the world.”

Typical of Shafer to step on the joke, not even let him tell it. “That’s you and Wells right there. A couple of lawyers.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Vinny. On any level—”

“Why did you get involved with this?”

“I remind you. Since it’s all in writing, anyway. Wells called me from Cyprus three days ago. Soon as I hung up with him, I called you. And gave you his strong recommendation that you put a team into Lebanon. You should have put it together, swallowed your pride, gotten everybody on board.”

“It would have been easier if he hadn’t hit the camp already under the orders and pay of the Saudi government.”

“Be sure to rehearse that speech before you give it to the inevitable congressional commission that investigates this nightmare, Vinny. Get it just right. Because you’re gonna be under oath. And your version is so far from the truth that even you may have a hard time selling it. Did you call me to help you prepare your defense? Early for that, methinks. Since we don’t even know if Graham Kurland is alive or dead.”

“I hope he’s dead. For his sake.”

“He’s not dead. They went to a lot of trouble to get him alive.”

Duto knew Shafer was right. Knew also that he needed to focus on the problem at hand and not the fallout, which was months, if not years, away. But he couldn’t let it go quite yet. His reflex for blame avoidance was too well developed.

“If State had used a chopper—”

“Black Hawks get shot down, too. Convoys are daytime protocol. As you know. Why don’t you stop wasting time and get me up to speed?”

So Duto choked down his considerable pride and told Shafer what he knew. At least fifty Americans, ten Saudi police officers and civilians, and fourteen terrorists were dead. Dwayne Maggs, the embassy’s head of security, had barely survived and was in surgery at a military hospital outside Riyadh. At best he would lose the use of his right arm.

Worst of all, Kurland was gone. Saudi cops were canvassing the homes and streets around the highway, on the off chance that he had escaped and was hiding. But more than six hours had passed since the ambush. No one believed they’d find him. He’d been kidnapped.

The secretary of state had already asked Saeed and Abdullah to let FBI into the Kingdom to aid the investigation. Neither man had responded yet, but the bureau was flying agents to Dubai on the assumption that the Saudis would soon agree. Meanwhile, the muk was providing hourly updates to the CIA station chief in Riyadh.

The muk reported that witnesses had seen Saudi cops drag a hooded man from Kurland’s Suburban into a police vehicle on the northbound side of the highway seven to eight minutes after the attack began. Cell phone photos confirmed the timing. The problem was that no Saudi officers had reached the Suburban for fourteen minutes. The obvious conclusion was that the cops who’d taken Kurland were fake.

But the Saudis had no cameras on the highway north of the ambush site. No one knew what had happened to the SUVs. The muk figured the kidnappers had stowed them and transferred Kurland to another vehicle. Muk officers and National Guard soldiers were setting up roadblocks across Riyadh and highways around the Kingdom. The checkpoints had created massive traffic jams, but the police hadn’t found anything yet. Riyadh had been placed under an eleven p.m. to five a.m. curfew that night, with the curfew to be widened to other major Saudi cities by the next night if Kurland wasn’t found.

“What about helicopters? The kid told Wells that there was a helicopter pilot at the base.”

“I think they’ve shut down civilian air traffic.” Duto punched a text message into his BlackBerry. “I’ll have Lecaine double-check.”

Meantime, the embassy was in lockdown, Duto said. Barbara Kurland, the ambassador’s wife, had tried to leave the compound — destination unknown — when she was told what had happened. She became hysterical when the marines stopped her. The embassy doctor had sedated her. She was resting in the infirmary for now. The president had spoken with her, promising to do everything he could to rescue Graham. He’d asked her to fly out so she could wait in Dubai or Berlin, but she’d refused. The president had ordered that she not be moved against her will.

The president had also ordered the army to transfer two Delta squads from Baghdad to the embassy. They would arrive by midnight. They didn’t need Saudi permission to enter the Kingdom, because they were technically coming in as a defensive replacement for the marines killed in the attacks. They wouldn’t be legally allowed off the embassy grounds. The White House counsel was trying to figure how many laws the squads would be breaking if they left the grounds to rescue Kurland, but for now the consensus was that they should be used only as a last resort. If they killed Saudi civilians in an attempted rescue, they’d worsen the situation. And they had no armored vehicles and only one Black Hawk, so as a practical matter their range was limited to Riyadh.

The CIA and the other three-letter agencies were combing their databases for sigint, comint, humint, geoint, or just plain int that might lead to Kurland. But the kidnappers appeared to be operating independently of Al Qaeda and every other known terrorist group, and the attacks in the last month had come as a surprise. So no one expected much, not right away.

“We’ll find them,” Duto said. “It’s too big an operation to hide. Too many vehicles. Too many guys, and they didn’t all get blown up. Some of them will talk, whether they want to or not. Hopefully the bad guys will milk Kurland for a while, try to build the tension, work the press. Give us a chance to catch up.”

“I don’t think so. He’s a depreciating asset. They’re smart, they turn up the pressure quick. Make it ugly.”

Duto didn’t want to argue the point. They’d find out soon enough. “What about Wells?”

“Far as I know, he’s still in Cyprus.”

“He hasn’t called you?”

“I’ll remind you. He no longer works for us. And we’ve dealt with his efforts to work with us ham-handedly. By ‘we,’ I mean you. By ‘ham-handedly,’ I mean—”

“I know what you mean. We gave him the overheads, didn’t we?”

“And told him to use them at his own risk. And you’ve been stringing him and Gaffan along about covering them with the Lebanese. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made other plans before this happened. They may be in transit.”

“Find him, will you? Tell him the situation has changed, and if he’s got any intel on this we’d like it. And that of course we’ve got his back with the Lebanese.”

“Sure you don’t want me to threaten him? Tell him he’s been a bad boy and if he doesn’t help, he’ll get a warning letter?”

Duto wanted to reach across his desk and grab Shafer by his dandruff-specked collar. “I recognize the reality of the situation. You’re smart, you won’t rub my face in it. And if Wells won’t come in himself, at least have him drop off the kid somewhere — Meshaal, isn’t that his name? — so we can talk to him.”

“Yes, suh. Soon as possible, suh.”

“Prick.”

“Takes one to know one.”

THE PRESIDENT OF THE United States was congenitally unsuited to express anger. Enemies called him icy, friends calm. For better or worse, he kept his usual tone at the press conference. He could have been reading recipe ingredients:

He finished in twenty minutes and didn’t take questions.

SAEED WATCHED THE SPEECH from his giant palace in north Riyadh, a few kilometers from Abdullah’s. Islamic calligraphy covered the walls of his study. Rare eighteenth-century copies of the Quran filled its shelves. Saeed never forgot that the House of Saud was Islam’s ultimate protector. Besides, the clerics liked them.

When the president walked off the podium, Saeed stepped onto his terrace. He’d returned the president’s call a few minutes before, during the conference, knowing that the man would be unreachable. He wanted to delay talking to the Americans as long as possible, until he had some idea what they knew, and if Abdullah had told them about the camp in Lebanon. They would have to let in the FBI, but Saeed hoped to keep the team as small as possible. His men needed to find Kurland before he was killed — or, even worse, tortured for the world to see. Saeed could only imagine how the United States would react to that kind of provocation. Arabs paid a high price when they underestimated America, as Saddam Hussein had learned.

During the day, a white umbrella bloomed automatically from a flagpole on the terrace to ward off the sun. The Saudis had installed thousands of similar umbrellas at Mecca, to protect worshippers. Now the sun had set and the flagpole was naked, giving Saeed a clear view south, toward central Riyadh. A dozen police helicopters buzzed over the concrete city, noisy and irritating as wasps. Without a target, they were useless. But the Americans at the embassy were surely reporting to Washington every few minutes, and Saeed and Mansour wanted their men to seem busy.

The overnight curfew was equally hopeless. The kidnappers had gotten a three-hour head start before the muk pieced together what had happened, easily enough time to shift Kurland into a fresh vehicle. From there they could have driven him into the desert or one of the smaller towns in the Najd. Searching the desert would be impossible. Saudi Arabia was a vast country, nearly as big as the United States east of the Mississippi. And if Kurland was still in Riyadh, he was no doubt locked in a safe house.

Meanwhile, crews were scraping the highway clean of the ambush, taking the broken and burned vehicles on flatbeds to an army base near the airport. Tonight the road would be repaved and repainted. Saeed knew they might be destroying forensic evidence. He didn’t care. He wanted all trace of this madness gone. He wished he could erase it from his mind as easily. How had he allowed his son to lead him down this path? He didn’t even know the name of the man running the operation, the man who must have betrayed them. Greed and age had made him a fool. Now, too late, his mind was sharp. He was fully awake. If you don’t test the depth of the water before you dive, you won’t get to test it once you’ve drowned, the fishermen on the Red Sea said. He and Mansour were in deep now.

He heard steps and turned to see his son. An idiotic smile creased Mansour’s face, as though he still believed he could charm Saeed into accepting his reassurances. “Father. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be inside? We can sit—”

“Tell me the name of the man behind this.”

Mansour hesitated.

“Now.”

“Ahmad Bakr. He was a major in the National Guard. He was living in Suwaidi, but he’s gone.”

“You’re sure it was him and not Ibrahim.” This was General Walid Ibrahim, the man who had recruited Bakr and served as the cutout for Mansour.

“I think so.”

“You think so.”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you ever meet Bakr?”

“Of course not. I told Ibrahim what I wanted him to do, and Ibrahim told him.”

“It seems he didn’t listen. Where he’s from?”

“Tathlith. I’ve sent three men down to talk to his family. But they haven’t seen him in years. Ibrahim and I knew of two of his hideouts in Suwaidi, but we’ve raided them already, and they’re empty. Obviously, he’s planned this for a very long time.”

“Obviously. And your stupidity and your royal arrogance obviously blinded you to the obvious.” Saeed raised a hand, pinched his son’s cheek—

“Father—”

Pinched harder now, twisting and digging into the soft flesh until half-moons of blood boiled up. Mansour raised a hand to grab his father’s wrist but pulled back. When Saeed finally let go, Mansour bowed his head and licked his lips.

“Where’s he gone, this man Bakr?”

“I don’t know yet. He must have put together a new safe house, skimmed the money I sent to put this together.”

“How much money?”

“About eleven million dollars.”

“You gave this man eleven million dollars.”

“I thought Ibrahim was tracking it—”

“Forget it. Did Bakr know you were behind the orders?”

“No. I’m sure. Ibrahim never told him. And the money was untraceable. I tell you, father, we’ll be all right. We’ll find him.”

“You tell me?” Fury had come easily to Saeed his whole life. “I let you do this because I thought you were man enough. But Abdullah was right. You’re a child. I never should have let you play with men. You understand, if the United States sends in its army, it will be a catastrophe. For us and the Americans both. And if this man Bakr betrays us publicly, we’ll lose everything. If that happens, I’ll take you into the desert and shoot you in the head myself, leave your corpse to bake. Or perhaps Abdullah will pull the trigger. His last act as king. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now start again. Tell me what you know. Everything.”

But Mansour didn’t know enough. All along, his main concerns had been secrecy and deniability. He had never taken seriously the possibility that Bakr might betray them, that Bakr might have a will of his own. Classic royal arrogance. He knew the names of Bakr’s senior lieutenants, but he’d never met or spoken to any of them.

“Call Ibrahim. Tell him he’s needed tonight. And then have the Second Directorate pick up his family. His father, brothers, sons.”

“The Second Directorate.” The Second Directorate was the mukhabarat arm that dealt with internal subversion. Saudis sometimes called it the “Torture Directorate.” Though never loudly.

“Bring them to muk headquarters. I’ll tell Ibrahim where they are. Then he’ll give us the answers we need. If he has them.”

Mansour turned to leave. “There’s one last thing, father. The camp in the Bekaa that Bakr ran was attacked three days ago.” Mansour spoke quickly now, as if he feared another eruption. “I only learned about it this morning. I was going to tell you this afternoon, but then the ambush—”

“What happened?”

“Everyone in it was killed.”

Saeed tried to process this new disaster. “Could this man Bakr have done it himself? To cover his tracks?”

“It’s possible, but I don’t know why he would. He could have closed the camp himself, dismissed everyone quietly, if he didn’t need them. This attack made a lot of noise. The Lebanese police are investigating, and they have suspects. Two Americans.”

“John Wells.”

“I’m not sure, but one of the photos looks like him.”

“They haven’t released it publicly?”

“No. I think the Americans are pressing them to keep it quiet.”

“For the first time in my life, I’m glad I’m old,” Saeed said. “If I were young, I couldn’t keep myself from hurting you, Mansour. I warned you about Wells.”

“Yes, father.”

“Do you see what this means? If this man Bakr is as big a fool as you, the Americans may already have connected the camp to the attack on Kurland, and us to the camp. Or Bakr may be waiting to tell the world that we’re paying him. What would you like me to tell the president, then? Yes, we financed this bombing in Bahrain and assassinated the princess, but of course we didn’t attack your ambassador. We would never do that. Even though the same man is behind all the attacks. And he’s a former officer in our own army. Do you think the Americans will believe that?”

“I understand, father.” Mansour had called Saeed father more in the last ten minutes than he had in the last ten years.

“I’m so glad you do, my son.”

“What should—”

“Give me some time. Maybe I’ll find a solution. Anything else you’ve forgotten to tell me?”

Mansour shook his head.

“Call Ibrahim, then. And leave me. I need to think.”

BAKR’S HEZBOLLAH GENERAL HAD told him about the attack in Lebanon the morning after it happened. The news worried Bakr greatly, especially when he heard that Americans were involved. How had they found him? He wished he could go back to the Bekaa and see for himself what had happened, but he had no time.

He reminded himself that no one important was still in Lebanon, and that as far as he knew, he’d removed any information that might point to his safe houses in Saudi Arabia. The camp didn’t even have computers anymore. He communicated with Talib only by cell phone. When he learned of the attack, he switched to a new prepaid phone and made his men do the same.

Bakr figured he would be safe for a few days at a minimum, probably weeks or months. The Americans wouldn’t attack inside Saudi Arabia without asking permission, or at least telling the Saudi government in advance. He could count on General Ibrahim — and Ibrahim’s hidden masters — to warn him if the Americans got close. After all, until now he’d done everything they’d asked. And they had no idea of what he was planning next.

So he went ahead with his preparations for the ambush, positioning men and vehicles, finishing his safe house, making sure his lieutenants understood every detail. From his years in the National Guard, he had a good idea how the muk, the army, and the Guard would react. Since the terrorist attacks of 2003, the Sauds had invested tens of billions of dollars improving their police and Special Forces. They would begin by closing roads and imposing a curfew. Within a few days, they would be searching entire cities house to house.

Still, government bureaucracy and mutual distrust between the Interior Ministry and the National Guard would slow the initial response. Bakr figured they would need several hours before it shut the highways and airports. By then, he’d have Kurland hidden.

His enemies had a huge advantage, though. Mansour knew who he was, knew about the Bekaa and about the safe houses in Suwaidi. They would quickly track the vehicles and explosives and weapons he’d used in the ambush. They even knew the names of some of his men. And they would respond with overwhelming force. As carefully as he’d hidden his connection to the house he planned to use as a prison, as carefully as he’d built the cell inside, Bakr knew he wouldn’t have long before the muk found him.

But he didn’t plan to wait.

THE CALL FROM THE Diplomatic Quarter came sooner than Bakr had expected. He briefly wondered if he should let this chance go, wait until all the pieces were in place. But he realized that he’d be worse than foolish to pass up this opportunity. He might never have another. So he’d ordered his men into battle.

Thanks be to Allah, he’d succeeded. Of course, the attack hadn’t gone perfectly. Once they’d recovered from their initial shock, the Americans had fought hard. One of the ambassador’s guards had killed his best lieutenant. But the bombs had done their work, and Bakr would always remember the shock on the ambassador’s face as he realized that the police who’d come to save him weren’t police at all.

After he bundled the ambassador in the back of his Tahoe, he drove north from Riyadh. He’d passed the turnoff to the king’s palace and watched Jeeps and Humvees flood south onto the highway, sirens screaming. He couldn’t help but smile. All those reinforcements for a battle that had already ended. Two booms tore the air behind them, two pillars of black smoke reached the sky, the last of Bakr’s bombs, the two panel trucks that had blocked the road. They would add to the confusion.

Forty kilometers north of Riyadh he turned off the highway, headed west, and reached a wadi between dried, crumbling hills. A small aquifer ran beneath the land here. Recently, wealthy Riyadhis had bought plots in this valley and become gentleman farmers, installing wells to feed plots of cucumbers and oranges that loved the winter and hated the summer. Before Riyadh’s bourgeois had found it, the valley had been home to a brick factory, now abandoned.

Bakr and his men left the Tahoes in the factory’s garage and moved the ambassador to the trunk of a white Mercedes sedan. Then they drove southwest to an abandoned date farm in a wadi deep in the Saudi desert and waited for nightfall. Now Bakr was about to make his final move. The transfer was risky, and arguably unnecessary. But the police would never expect it. And Bakr believed with all his heart that Allah wouldn’t let him fail in this mission. “Come on,” he said to the pilot. “It’s time.”

Together they carried the ambassador’s limp body to the helicopter.

AT FIRST KURLAND WASN’T sure he was awake at all. He opened his eyes, but the world around him didn’t change. He couldn’t find a hint of light. Then the day came back to him, scene by scene, as though he was watching a slideshow in his mind. The meeting with Abdullah. The ambush. The car bombs. The men grabbing him. Maybe he was having a nightmare. Once or twice he’d dreamed of attacks on the embassy.

“Wake up,” he whispered.

But he was awake, he knew. He felt the chair under him and the bite of the cuffs on his wrists. His mouth was dry and clotted from the sedative they’d given him. He thought he’d been unconscious for at least twelve hours, probably longer. His body ached, as though he’d been handled and moved roughly and repeatedly.

He tilted his head left and right, trying to make sense of his surroundings. The walls were several feet away. The air was cool, not too stuffy, and he heard the faint hum of ventilation. Despite its darkness, this was a cell, not a tomb.

Time went by, he wasn’t sure how much. The darkness terrified him, the darkness and the anticipation. His heart thumped wildly, and he warned himself to relax. He concentrated on controlling his breathing and pulse. Pretty ironic if I die before they can kill me. Though it might be for the best.

He heard the grind of metal on metal. A hatch above slid back. An overhead bulb flicked on, and Kurland saw the cell around him, maybe fifteen feet square and nearly as deep. It had a concrete floor and walls, and in place of a ceiling were big metal plates, one with a hatch cut into it. He was chained to a chair near the back. In place of a ladder, simple steel rungs had been mounted on the front wall.

A man climbed down, a bag over his shoulder, his face unhooded. He was Saudi, early thirties, short, with brown eyes and the thick legs of a baseball player.

Kurland remembered a lesson from the cursory survival training that State provided its ambassadors, cursory because no one believed an ambassador could be kidnapped. Don’t panic if your captors are hooded. Hoods may mean they don’t want you to see their faces because they plan to free you and don’t want you to recognize them later. Until now, Kurland hadn’t understood the corollary of that proposition: If they’re not wearing hoods, they don’t care if you see their faces. Because they’re not planning to free you.

Kurland thought back to the hour of advice he’d gotten in that conference room in Foggy Bottom: Build a rapport. Establish your common humanity. Don’t panic. Don’t make threats. Don’t push them for personally identifying details. Answer whatever questions they have. Don’t lie. Try not to give up classified information, but don’t worry if you do. Look for clues to where you are. Consider possible escape routes. The tips struck him as worse than useless. His captors, whoever they were, had destroyed a convoy of marines to get him. They were going to do what they liked.

But he was going to follow one rule, no matter what: Don’t beg. Begging was counterproductive, the survival expert said. It widened the gap between captive and captor by reminding the captor of his power. Kurland promised himself that even if he had an ironclad guarantee that begging would save his life, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t give these murderers the pleasure.

Easy enough to say now.

The Saudi brought out a camera and a tripod. Seeing the camera loosened Kurland’s bowels. Nothing good would happen on camera. The man set up the camera, taking his time, and then reached again into his bag—

And pulled out bottles of Coca-Cola and water, and two pieces of pita bread. Despite his fear, Kurland felt a tremor of anticipation. He hadn’t realized until now that he was famished. The man uncuffed Kurland’s hands and gave him the water bottle. He left the Coke and the food against the wall behind him. Kurland wondered if the water might be spiked with something but couldn’t keep himself from drinking.

He had never tasted anything so good. He sipped slowly, trying to savor each mouthful. He wasn’t sure whether to drink it all at once or save some, but the question answered itself. Before he could stop himself, he’d finished. He carefully put the empty bottle down next to his chair. “Thank you.”

To Kurland’s surprise, the man responded. His voice was soft, his accent vaguely English. “You’re welcome.”

“What’s your name?”

“Don’t be silly.”

Kurland could have asked any number of questions: Where am I? How long have I been here? And, of course, What do you plan to do with me? But the cool way the man had said “Don’t be silly” stopped him. He felt as if his captor had warned him with those three words that the ground rules were obvious, that if he pressed too hard he would be mistreated, and that if he behaved they’d be fair. The warning was a lie, of course. By definition, these men could change the rules on him anytime, treat him however they wanted for any reason or no reason at all. Still, Kurland felt better than if the man hadn’t spoken at all.

“We have a speech we want you to make.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Please don’t argue. We just want you to say a few words, and then you can eat. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

“No.”

“Your wife will want to see you’re all right.”

Barbara. Kurland was ashamed to realize that he’d forgotten her these last few minutes. She must be terrified. A place beyond panic. Even if he was already dead, he had to hang on as long as possible for her.

“What is it you want me to say?”

CHAPTER 20

EVEN FROM FIVE MILES OFFSHORE, THE CRISIS WAS UNMISTAKABLE. Graham Kurland had been kidnapped a day earlier. Now police and National Guard helicopters circled low and slow over downtown. A Saudi navy destroyer sat at anchor outside the harbor, broadside to the city, its radar winding slowly. Wells wasn’t sure what good the destroyer would do in finding Kurland, but he didn’t have to worry about it. He and Gaffan had their own escort, two Saudi National Guard speedboats armed with.50-caliber machine guns. They were bound for Abdullah’s giant palace on the Red Sea.

Gaffan steered the boat between two jetties and into a basin outside the palace’s high gray walls. An officer in a khaki dress uniform waved them toward a pier, as a machine gun tracked their progress from a turret atop the wall.

“Happy to see us,” Gaffan said. He brought the boat to a bobbing halt by the pier, and Wells hopped out.

“Good to be back on solid ground.”

“Is that where we are?” Gaffan said.

The officer stepped toward them. “Salaam aleikum.”

“Aleikum salaam.”

“I’m Colonel Gharib. Your passports, please.”

Wells handed them over. Gharib flipped through them, nodded at Meshaal.

“Who’s this?”

“We found him in Lebanon. We’re bringing him home.” Meshaal shrank backward, toward the cruiser.

Gharib shook his head at the explanation, but all he said was, “This way.” They followed him into the compound through heavy black gates. A golf cart waited. Gharib waved them in and motored south, past date palms and the largest swimming pool Wells had ever seen. The southern edge of the compound held buildings that looked to be staff quarters and infrastructure. Wells picked up the faint odor of a sewage treatment plant. Gharib stopped outside a windowless one-story building, unlocked the door, motioned for them to go inside. “You wait here—”

“There’s no time—” But the door had already closed, and the dead bolt thunked shut from the outside.

THEY’D SAILED FROM CYPRUS two afternoons before, less than two days after reaching the island. Within twelve hours of their landing, Wells knew they couldn’t stay long. The local papers reported that the police were investigating three men who had attacked a couple on a deserted beach and stolen their car. And the boat they’d ditched had a Lebanese flag and registration. The cops had no doubt already asked the police in Beirut for help in tracking it down.

Soon enough, the Lebanese would discover Gaffan’s name on their ship registry and connect the boat to the attack in the Bekaa. Then the Cyprus police would be after them for murder. Cyprus wasn’t big enough to hide them from a full-scale manhunt. As the Mossad agents who had recently assassinated a Palestinian guerrilla leader in a hotel in Dubai had learned, international passports, databases, security cameras, and facial matching software had made black ops harder and harder to pull off cleanly.

The Dubai police had now issued bulletins for the Israelis involved in the hotel killing, including photos, aliases, and in many cases real names. Of course, the Mossad agents had carried out the assassination on Israeli government orders. They were safe from extradition as long as they stayed in Israel. They could even travel on diplomatic passports without too much hassle, though they would be wise to avoid connecting through Dubai.

But Wells and Gaffan couldn’t count on government protection. So far, the CIA hadn’t stepped up for them. “Still waiting,” Shafer said, when Wells called him the night after they landed.

“Ellis. Maybe I haven’t been clear enough about what we found.” In fact, Wells had told Shafer exactly what he’d discovered, the passports, manuals, and fake uniforms. Even “42 Aziz 3,” the mysterious code he’d found in the notebook. “You need to get it in the system so you and the NSA can look it over.”

“Then leave it at the embassy. And the kid, too.”

But doing that would cost Wells his only leverage. He needed a guarantee that the CIA would provide clean papers for him and Gaffan, or even a presidential finding that would backstop the killings as acts of war justified under U.S. law — no different than drone strikes in Pakistan.

“You know I can’t. Not until we have a deal.”

“It’ll happen, John.”

“When?”

“Soon. I don’t know.”

“Duto’s enjoying letting me twist, isn’t he? Never gets old for him.”

Shafer’s silence was answer enough.

THEY COULDN’T COUNT ON Abdullah for help, either. Wells had hoped that in a worst-case scenario they could stay in the king’s palace in France while they planned their next move. The morning after they landed, Wells called Kowalski.

“Tell him we found the place we were looking for.”

“I hate to tell you. I don’t think he cares. Our mutual acquaintance”—Kowalski meant Miteb—“says that when his granddaughter died, it knocked the fight out of him.”

Wells thought of the way Abdullah had acted in Nice. The king had been furious, desperate to put his son on the throne. Alia’s killing should have made him angrier. Not broken him. “That’s not possible.”

“Our friend was surprised, too. Said he expected the opposite. But you know, a man who’s nearly ninety, a shock like this — nature takes its course. Even the tallest tree falls eventually.”

“Spare me the circle-of-life wisdom. Just give me Miteb’s number so I can talk to him directly. I should have had it from the get-go.”

WELLS COULDN’T HELP FEELING personally betrayed. He’d risked his life and Gaffan’s for the king. Now Abdullah was dismissing Wells like a servant who had outlived his usefulness.

Wells told Gaffan what Kowalski and Shafer had said, their legal limbo.

“You think it would get this messy?” Gaffan said.

“Truth. I wouldn’t have gotten you involved if I had. I thought we’d be okay, even without Abdullah. Or without the agency. Didn’t count on us losing both. Guess I’m too used to having janitors.”

“So we’re looking at murder charges dogging us forever?”

“I don’t think so. In the end, Duto’ll thank us for hitting these guys.” Wells wished he was as certain as he sounded.

“I’ll have to make space in my cabinet for all the medals we get.”

“Exactly. But it may take a couple days. And I don’t think we want to be stuck here while we wait.”

The next question was where to go. And how to get there. Wells could use his last clean passport to fly out. But Gaffan and Meshaal couldn’t count on clearing airport security. Their best answer looked like another cruise. At noon on their second day in Cyprus, they went shopping. Money wasn’t a problem. They still had the million dollars that Wells had left for Gaffan in the safe-deposit box, and Cypriot boat dealers were as friendly as the Lebanese to cash buyers.

For three hundred thousand dollars, they picked a forty-nine-foot cruiser with all the trimmings, satellite television and phone, a fancy autopilot, and enough fuel tanks to get them to Cape Verde and then across the Atlantic. The boat was new, so they didn’t have to worry about the air-conditioning. It even had three cabins, so they wouldn’t have to share.

The Saudi money greased everything. By late afternoon, the cruiser was fueled, insured, titled, and ready to go. It even had a name inked on its hull in six-inch black letters: Judge Wapner. Gaffan had insisted. Wells could almost hear the announcer’s stern warning: Don’t take the law into your own hands….

“Very nice,” Meshaal said, as they boarded.

“Glad you approve.”

“Are we going to Gaza? Finally?”

“Maybe not right away.” Wells could not imagine what the kid had made of the last seventy-two hours.

They headed south, toward the Suez Canal, at a steady twenty knots. They couldn’t get through the canal until morning, so they had no need to speed. The cruiser more or less steered itself. As the Cyprus coast disappeared behind them, Wells decided to take another look at the stuff he’d found at the farmhouse. He spread the passport and manuals and notebook on a teak table in the rear of the cabin. He and Gaffan read in silence. Meshaal joined them a few minutes later. “What’s this?”

“From your camp. Any of it look familiar?”

Meshaal flipped through the passports. “We had to give them in. Is mine here?”

“Yes. I’ve got it. For safekeeping. What about this?” Wells held up the green notebook from Talib’s bedroom. Meshaal shook his head. “Does the phrase forty-two Aziz three mean anything? Some kind of code?”

“Not to me.”

“But your leader called himself Aziz.”

“But the way you say it, it sounds more like an address. In Buraydah, the town near where I grew up, there’s King Abdul-Aziz Boulevard.”

The kid might have just paid his freight. Wells had been thinking of the phrase as a code. But every village in the Kingdom must have had a road named after Aziz. “Do you know where it might be?”

“The three at the end… Some Saudi cities have a system where the numbers start again in each district. Or it could be a city with three different roads named after Aziz. Or even a building with three floors.”

“That’s good. Thank you, Meshaal.”

They leafed through the papers as the boat chugged south but found nothing more of consequence. Around midnight, Gaffan and Meshaal headed to their bunks. Wells turned out the cabin lights and called Anne. They hadn’t spoken in a week, since he left Cyprus for Lebanon.

“John.”

“Lovely lady.”

“‘Lovely Rita, meter maid.’”

“You’re way too young for that song.”

“I’m on a Beatles kick. Very retro. Though to be honest, I don’t get why everybody thought they were so great.”

“Once upon a time, they were bigger than Jesus. John Lennon said so himself.”

“We’ll find out in a couple thousand years. I don’t even think they’re bigger than The National anymore.”

“The who?”

“Not The Who, either. Those guys fill stadiums.”

Wells smiled in the dark. He’d missed talking to her. “Who’s on first.”

“They came to see me, John.”

“I hate to start this again, but who?”

“They said they were FBI, but I’m not sure. They wanted to know if I’d heard from you, if I knew where you were.”

“I hope you told them the truth. On both counts.”

“I did. Yes and no.”

“Then it’s fine. If they’re agency or FBI, they can’t hurt you as long as you’re honest.”

“I wish I could see you.”

“I wish I could see you, too. I wish you were here. You’d be having fun with this.” Parts of it, anyway, Wells didn’t say. Maybe not the part where I killed the six guys.

“Are you in trouble, John?”

“The usual.”

“These guys said you were in serious trouble.”

“I’d call it the usual. Maybe a little more. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Pulled over a drunk on Main Street two nights ago—”

“You’re never going to let me live that down—”

“No, wait. And I swear, by the time I got him in the back of the cruiser, he told me I looked great in the uniform, and that if there were more girls in the bar like me he wouldn’t have gotten himself arrested, because he’d still be there.”

“Sounds like a real charmer. You give him your number?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t remember it. I have so many phones now. He was cute, though.”

“I’d better get home soon.”

“You’d better.”

BY SIX A.M. THEY had docked at Port Said, the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. While Egyptian land surrounded the canal on both sides, they didn’t need Egyptian visas to pass through it. According to international law, the Suez was open to vessels of any nationality, even during wartime — a rule meant to discourage any country from blockading or bombing it.

Normally, boats had to wait at Port Said for at least twenty-four hours, but thanks to a liberal application of Saudi cash, the Judge Wapner avoided the usual delays and hitched onto the morning’s southbound convoy. An Egyptian pilot came aboard to steer them behind a half-dozen ships stacked high with containers. The canal had no locks. But to keep the big ships from damaging its banks, the convoy crawled along at eight knots. Traveling a hundred twenty miles would take fourteen hours. They would reach Suez, the city that marked the southern end of the canal, around midnight.

The pilot spent his time sipping tea and smoking. He asked no questions about them or what they were doing, and Wells didn’t volunteer. The canal was as flat as a lake and smelled stale, almost fetid. Desert spread endlessly on both sides, its monotony broken only by low concrete pillboxes on the west side, defenses against the increasingly unlikely possibility of an Israeli attack. Egyptian soldiers popped out to wave as the cruiser passed.

“They don’t see too many ships like this?” Wells said.

“No.”

Just after sunset, the desert fading from gold to black, the Egyptian’s cell phone beeped. He listened for a moment, hung up. “Turn on the television,” he said. “There’s been a big terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. The president of the United States is talking.”

They watched the press conference in silence until it ended. Wells didn’t understand why Shafer hadn’t called already, until he remembered Shafer didn’t have his new phone.

Wells motioned for Gaffan to go downstairs.

“We have to go in.”

“To Cairo? The embassy?”

“Jeddah. The Kingdom. If Abdullah helps us, we can get in without the Defense Ministry knowing. The agency will give us stuff they won’t give the Saudis.”

“How can you be sure they’ll work with us at all?”

Because when a crisis hits this hard, guys like Duto know they have to try everything to fix it. Or at least look like they’re trying. If that means bailing us out of a few murder charges, they will. Especially since they should have already.

Aloud, Wells said only: “I know. Trust me.”

“It’s worked great so far.”

Wells called Shafer.

“Where are you?”

“The Suez Canal. Heading for Jeddah.” Unfortunately, Jeddah was seven hundred miles south of the southern end of the canal. With the ship at full throttle, they’d arrive sometime the next afternoon.

“The Saudis have closed their borders.”

“I think we can get in. Abdullah has a palace on the Red Sea.”

“So what’s your plan?”

“Did the NSA find anything that matches forty-two Aziz three?”

“No.”

“Have them run it again. And the NGA, too. This time for a street address.” Wells explained what Meshaal had said.

“So it could be anywhere in the country? That narrows it down.”

“Do it, Ellis.”

“All right.”

“What’s happening back there?”

“Nothing good. They’re moving two Ranger companies from Baghdad to Kuwait tomorrow. On your side, there’s an Airborne battalion on its way to Incirlik”—an air base in Turkey.

“A battalion, Ellis?” An Airborne battalion meant seven hundred soldiers and armored vehicles delivered by parachute. An Airborne battalion meant an invasion, more or less.

“The feeling is that if we have to go in, we better go in hard.”

“Please tell me you’re sending in a team to check out the camp. Even if it is three days late.”

“Yes. But remember Kurland only got hit six hours ago. We’re sorting through a lot of moving parts. We can’t even be a hundred percent sure it’s the same guys. Not yet.”

“You’re right, Ellis. This has nothing to do with the terrorists Gaffan and I just found. Another highly trained jihadi squad just started operating inside the KSA. A coincidence.”

“All I’m saying is the stakes are too high not to check everything.”

“While you’re checking everything, how about you and the NSA run the names and passport numbers I’m about to give you, see if they go anywhere?” Wells read off the names from the camp.

“We will,” Shafer said. “There is one problem with your theory that the guys from the camp are behind this. Especially if Saeed is funding them. It makes no sense. It’s suicide for the Sauds if we connect them to the kidnappers.”

“I think the jihadis took Saeed money and got ambitious. The camp looked like it was running pretty much on its own. And if I’m right, and this is a rogue op, Saeed isn’t in control. If you were playing Red Team”—the enemy force—“how would you cause maximum chaos?”

A long pause. Then Shafer said, “I think I’d take my hostage to a place where trying to rescue him would start a religious war.”

“Mecca.”

The theoretical ban on non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia was real in Mecca. The Saudi government enforced an exclusion zone that extended past the city’s borders. Driving from Riyadh to Jeddah, non-Muslims had to take a highway around the city.

“Or Medina”—which had a similar ban—“but especially Mecca, sure.”

“The kid we captured, he told me that some men in the camp went to Mecca.”

“But how would they get Kurland past the roadblocks?”

“Helicopter. They fly him in tonight, low, the Saudis will think it’s one of their own patrols.”

“Clever, John. We’re picking up a lot of confusion right now, lot of birds in the air. And then, if I were playing Red Team, I’d make it ugly. Do something terrible to Kurland. Unforgivable. The Staties say he’s a nice guy, by the way. Maybe I’d even make it clear he’s in Mecca. Almost dare the United States to come after him.”

Wells thought of the way that the man called Aziz had tortured Meshaal’s friend. Imagining him doing something unforgivable to an American ambassador was easy.

“So we’re heading for Jeddah. If Abdullah okays it, we’ll land at his palace. If Kurland is in Mecca, we’ve got as good a chance of finding him as anyone. We can blend, speak the language, and Mecca’s only forty miles away.”

“Let us pick you up, chopper you in, save you some time.”

“I’d rather get in quietly.”

“Your choice. By the way, Duto said your problem with those murder charges, it’s solved. Out of the goodness of his heart, he said.”

“Nice of him. You hear anything, let me know. Otherwise, we’ll call you from Jeddah.”

WELLS HUNG UP, CALLED the number that Kowalski had given him for Miteb. The phone was silent for several seconds, beeped as if it were being forwarded, fell silent. Wells was about to hang up when a man answered.

“Hello.” The voice unmistakably Miteb’s.

“Prince. This is John Wells.”

“Mr. Wells. Thanks be to God that you called. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to this man. I met him twice, you know—”

Wells needed to keep the old man focused. “Prince. I’m arriving tomorrow in Jeddah. With another American. It’s important your brother send someone to meet us so that we can dock at his palace and come into the Kingdom directly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want Prince Saeed to know we’re here.”

“Right. Of course.” Miteb coughed, the sound as faint as a bare branch creaking.

“Promise me you’ll do that.”

“I promise. I’ll tell my brother.”

“How is he?”

“After Alia died, I thought he’d given up. Now he’s angry again. It’s Bedouin tradition”—Miteb coughed again, harder—“you open your tent to a stranger, and he’s safe. Always. Once he leaves, he can be your enemy, you fight, kill him, but while he’s inside, he’s a guest. Mr. Kurland was our guest.”

“We’ll find him.”

“Inshallah—”

“Inshallah. But first you have to let us in. And arrange a car and weapons.”

“Give me until tomorrow morning, and I will.”

AND MITEB HAD. WELLS didn’t know if Abdullah had ultimately okayed the decision to let them in — or even if Abdullah knew they were coming. Miteb hadn’t said. Wells wondered if he’d have the chance to speak with the old king again. Abdullah deserved a more dignified exit than the one he was facing, but then the men who’d kidnapped Kurland weren’t much interested in the king’s dignity.

Just past noon, with the boat still one hundred fifty miles north of Jeddah, the voice of the Al Jazeera anchor quickened. “We’ve just learned that Ambassador Kurland’s kidnappers have released a video. We’re going to review it”—by which she meant make sure nobody’s chopped off his head—“and then screen it for you.”

Less than a minute later, the screen cut to Kurland. “My name is Graham Kurland.” His face was pale, his voice weak. But he appeared unharmed. He sat on a wooden chair, his legs chained but his arms free. Behind him was a black banner with the Islamic creed, the shahada, embroidered in gold.

“Until yesterday, I mistakenly believed I was the American ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I now understand that relations between the United States and the people of Arabia are impossible. My country is imperialist and filled with Zionists and infidels. It is time for the United States to free the people of the Arabian peninsula. I call on America to take five steps. First, it must ban its citizens from coming to Arabia, with the sole exception of Muslims completing the hajj. Second, it must no longer buy any product from Arabia, including oil. Third, it must immediately withdraw its soldiers from Iraq, Afghanistan, and all other Muslim lands. Fourth, it must end all aid to Israel. And fifth, it must close the concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay. Only then can the United States reach a pure and lasting peace with Islam.”

Kurland coughed, wiped his mouth. “An ambassador is supposed to understand the place he lives. I wasn’t a very good ambassador. I hid in my embassy. Now I see the true anger that the people of Arabia feel toward the United States. I wish I had known before.” He shook his head slightly, as though he wanted the world to know that he didn’t believe a word he’d said. “Barbara, I love you. Good-bye.” The camera closed on him, on his weary face and terrified eyes. We all know I’m going to die, they said. Let’s just make it quick.

The screen faded to black and, after a moment, lit again. Kurland was gone. A masked man stood before the banner. “As you can see, the ambassador remains unhurt. We call on the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to respond to all five of our requirements by noon tomorrow. If they do not, action will be taken.”

WELLS MUTED THE TELEVISION. The kidnappers’ strategy was clear. Asking the United States to impose an embargo on Saudi Arabia and stop supporting Israel? The demands were deliberately absurd. If the kidnappers had asked — for example — that all Saudi prisoners be released from Guantánamo, a face-saving compromise might theoretically have been possible. But these conditions left no room for discussion.

Of course, the kidnappers knew that. They didn’t want drawnout negotiations. They didn’t know how long they could hide Kurland. They would milk the situation for a few days, get as much publicity as possible, then murder him. After that, most likely, they’d say that they were acting on the orders of senior members of the House of Saud. And they’d have the evidence to prove it. How could the United States allow them to stay in power? It had attacked Iraq for much less.

“It’s crap, isn’t it?” Gaffan said. “This is just an excuse for them to do what they want. What they’re going to do anyway. Cut him up.”

Wells’s phone rang.

“You saw?” Shafer said.

“I saw.”

“Believe it or not, I have good news. The NSA may have a hit on forty-two Aziz three. They say it could be an address in southern Jeddah.”

Thank you, Meshaal. “Why?”

“They checked every address matching forty-two Aziz, looking for phone or e-mail contact between the numbers that you gave them as well as other numbers and e-mail addresses they’ve developed. They said there’s a suspicious pattern between cell tower sites around an Aziz street in south Jeddah. Also an Internet node there. But before you get too excited—”

“Yes?”

“The pattern is weak. The house numbers are messy, and they estimate only a forty percent probability of a match. But nowhere else in the country is even close to that.”

“‘Messy’?”

“Their word.”

“We land in four hours. We’ll take a look.”

“I’ll call you when I get more.”

“Ellis. If we find him—”

“You have carte blanche. And assume no backup. There’s two Delta squads in Riyadh, but they’re confined to the embassy. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

NOW THEY WERE STUCK in limbo at Abdullah’s palace. Wells wondered if they’d been betrayed even before they arrived, if Saeed’s hold over Abdullah ran this deeply. But surely Abdullah controlled his own palace security.

An hour passed. The front door of the house was locked from the outside. The back door had a push-bar alarm like those that blocked fire stairs in office buildings. They could get out, but they’d be stuck on the palace grounds, with no car or weapons or identification. Wells figured they were better off waiting. His handset required a line-of-sight connection to the satellite, and the house had no windows. So they watched Al Jazeera, which had nothing new to report.

“This is Saudi Arabia,” Meshaal said. “Why did you bring me here? You’re not from Sheikh bin Laden.”

“True.”

“Let me out of here.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I need to use the bathroom.” Meshaal ran for the back door. Wells vaulted over the couch, grabbed him, dragged him back.

“You have my word, Meshaal. No one will hurt you.”

“Why would I believe you? You only lie to me.”

“If we wanted to hurt you, we would have. But we’re going to go very soon, and you’re going to wait here and do what you’re told. Yes?”

“I don’t suppose I have a choice.”

“No.”

Another half hour passed before the door swung open and Gharib walked in. “He stays,” the colonel said, nodding at Meshaal. “You come.”

Gharib led them to an unmarked two-story building, unlocked a door, waved them into an empty office. Gowns and leather sandals were spread across a table. A smaller table held their passports, two cell phones, a paper bag stacked with riyals, and car keys. Glock pistols, two M-16s, bullet-resistant vests, and extra ammunition filled an open gun cabinet.

“Take what you need,” Gharib said. “There’s a Jeep outside. It’s clean. Civilian registration. Once you leave, you won’t be allowed back.” He handed them two identity cards. “These say you’re Egyptian, not Saudi. That seemed safer. They’ll work for hotels and police checkpoints.” He nodded at the phones. “Those have my numbers pre-programmed. If you bump into Guard soldiers and there’s trouble, have them call me. The muk, too, though that’ll take longer to get sorted out.”

“And if we run into trouble with the other side?”

“Then I guess you’ll be making videos, too. Anything else you need?”

“Silencers. Handcuffs or flex-cuffs. A bunch of plastic bags, just simple ones from grocery stores or places like that. A roll of electrical tape. And maps of Jeddah and Mecca.”

“The Jeep has a GPS.”

“I’m not sure how accurately I can program it in Arabic.” Wells also wasn’t sure he wanted the National Guard to know where he and Gaffan were going.

“Most of my maps are in Arabic.”

“Even so.”

Gharib disappeared, returned with everything Wells had asked for.

“What about Meshaal?” Wells said.

“He’s our problem now.”

“Go easy on him. He doesn’t know anything.”

“We’ll take care of him.” Gharib’s hard, black eyes weren’t reassuring. He could have meant almost anything, and Wells didn’t have time to ask.

“Thank you for your help.”

“You’re Muslim, Mr. Wells.”

“Yes, colonel.”

“Then God be with you. I hope you can see the Kaaba when all this is done.”

“Inshallah.”

“Inshallah.”

CHAPTER 21

AFTER KURLAND MADE THE VIDEO, THE KIDNAPPER LET HIM PISS IN a bowl and then cuffed him to the chair and left. Kurland thought about his speech. The demands were too outlandish to be meaningful. This was political theater, meant to lead inexorably to a bullet in his head. Or worse, a knife to his neck.

His hands were locked together behind his back. He shrugged his shoulders and squeezed his hands together, trying to loosen the cuffs. After five minutes, he gave up. He’d done nothing but pull a muscle in his forearm. The cuffs around his ankles were even tighter. But he was no escape artist. He was a sixty-two-year-old man who shot ninety from the middle tees on a good day. Maybe when they moved him, if they moved him. He wasn’t being defeatist. He wasn’t resigned to his own death. More than anything, he wanted to get out of this room alive. But he couldn’t, not on his own.

Kurland had always grounded himself in reality, one reason that his company had avoided the worst of the housing bust. During the bubble, his competitors marched west on I-88 into Kane County and even De Kalb, bidding wildly for Illinois farmland. Their land costs doubled and tripled, and they found themselves having to charge three and then four hundred thousand dollars for houses that a few years before had cost half as much. Kurland asked himself, when the three-percent-down loans stop, who’s going to buy these prairie palaces? In 2005, he’d cut way back on new land purchases. His managers had howled. No new lots meant no new houses. They were putting themselves out of business. But he’d been right. Since the crash, Kurland Construction had picked up plenty of cheap land at bankruptcy auctions. The business was just waiting for him to come home.

If he ever did.

Enough. He didn’t want to think about his own doom. He wasn’t very religious, never had been, but he appreciated the Serenity Prayer. Cheesy but effective. The wisdom to know the difference. He closed his eyes and saw his wife playing tennis, her long brown legs under her skirt. She smiled sideways at him as he walked across the court for a kiss and a coffee. If he could keep her beside him, he’d be all right, whatever they did to him.

ABDULLAH RESTED ON HIS bed, propped up against overstuffed pillows, his swollen stomach ballooning out of a white silk robe. He couldn’t keep his temperature right anymore. Hour by hour, his flesh was ignoring his protests and leading him away.

But not yet. Not until this abomination was settled.

The Bedouin were renowned for their hospitality. The desert was a foe more lethal than any man. So a tribesman’s tent was a place of peace, an escape from the sands. Centuries of custom dictated that hosts treat visitors with honor. Only a dog snarls at a guest, the tribesmen said. The fact that Kurland had been taken while traveling back from Abdullah’s palace made matters worse. When Miteb gave Abdullah the news, the king’s face flushed with shame.

Abdullah had spoken briefly to the president early that afternoon, expressing his condolences, promising that he and his men would do whatever they could to find Kurland. The two men agreed that the kidnappers’ demands didn’t bear discussion. But the conversation was strained. “Terrorism is a scourge of us all,” Abdullah said.

“Yes,” the president said, speaking through a translator. “Especially state-sponsored terrorism.” A warning, deliberately vague.

Neither man mentioned the camp in Lebanon. John Wells must have told the Americans about it, Abdullah thought. But he didn’t know if they’d raided the camp, or what evidence they’d found, if they’d tied the kidnappers to Saeed and Mansour. Abdullah couldn’t ask, and the president had no reason to say. No doubt he wanted to reveal as little as possible, keep his options open.

“The FBI director tells me that visas for all our agents will reach Dubai within the hour,” the president said.

“Yes. Dubai’s only two hours by air from Riyadh. They’ll be here before sunset.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s already taken too long. There can’t be any more delays. We’ll need full access to any evidence you develop. And we want the right to interrogate witnesses on our own if necessary.”

“I understand.”

“So can I count on your cooperation?”

“Yes.” Under other circumstances, Abdullah might have objected. But he was done helping Saeed and Mansour defend themselves from the Americans. If Saeed didn’t want these agents poking around on their own, he would have to tell the president himself. Most likely, Saeed would offer his full cooperation and then Mansour would make sure that the agents saw only what he wanted.

“Good. Please understand, whether you cooperate with us or not, we’re going to find the truth.”

“We have nothing to hide.” The king couldn’t remember the last time he’d told such an obvious lie. But it was for his country. He didn’t know what else to do.

“And when we capture these men, we intend to try them in the United States.”

Now Abdullah had to object. “If they’re Saudi citizens and they’re arrested here, they’re subject to our justice system. My own people died in these attacks, too. And believe me, we’re perfectly capable of enforcing our laws against these men.”

The president was silent for few seconds. “Let’s say that the issue of trials can wait until we capture these men.”

“Agreed. And now I have a request for you. Can you promise me that these soldiers in Kuwait and Turkey won’t be used in my nation?”

“They won’t be used against you, King. I can’t promise they won’t be used against the kidnappers.”

“That’s what those men want, Mr. President. For the world to see American soldiers marching through our cities, blowing up houses with tanks and helicopters.”

“It’ll be our last alternative.”

“At least tell me you won’t send them to Mecca or Medina. You must know—”

“I understand the sensitivities. So do our generals. We’ll do our very best to avoid unnecessary provocation.” The president had gone out of his way not to make any promises, Abdullah thought. “But you must know that we will do everything necessary to bring this man home alive.”

“So will we.”

“Good. Then we agree. I hope the next time we speak, the circumstances are happier.” Without waiting to hear Abdullah’s answer, the president hung up.

SINCE THEN, THE HOURS had dragged interminably. Miteb reported that the muk had found two abandoned Chevy Tahoes painted with police logos northwest of here. They had traced the vehicles to a giant auto auction held east of Riyadh three months before. The name on their registrations corresponded to a man who had died a year before. Another dead end, for now.

Tomorrow the Guard would begin patrolling Riyadh and other major cities. But Abdullah knew better than to expect a miracle. The Guard was an army, not a police force. Unless its soldiers happened to see something unusual at a checkpoint or on patrol, they wouldn’t find Kurland on their own. So once again, Abdullah found himself dependent on Saeed and Mansour and the mukhabarat. He still hadn’t spoken with Saeed since the ambush. He dreaded the idea.

And as if Saeed were monitoring his very thoughts, at that moment his phone rang. “It’s time for us to talk. Alone.”

The brothers hadn’t been alone in the same room for eight years, since the other princes anointed Abdullah as King Fahad’s successor. Even two years ago, Abdullah would have relished this confrontation. But he was no longer sure he had the strength. “What do you want?”

“Not on this phone.”

“Come to my palace, then.”

Abdullah wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and sleep. Instead he called Hamoud and asked for a pot of strong black coffee and his robes.

AN HOUR LATER, THEY stood face-to-face in Abdullah’s study. Saeed and Abdullah, Abdullah and Saeed, the twin foundations of the House of Saud. The king forswore the kisses and hugs and greetings: “What have you done?”

“I didn’t order this, Abdullah.”

“These men belong to you.” Abdullah sat down heavily.

“I tell you I don’t know the men who did this. Attacking Americans, it’s suicide.”

“Mansour, then.”

“Mansour wants to be king. Not to live in a cave with Osama bin Laden.”

“Then who?”

“They acted on their own. But I have good news. Progress. We’ve found the name of the man in charge—”

“Of course you’ve found it. You were behind him all along.”

Saeed laughed, the sound tight and gravelly. As if the laugh had reminded him of his habits, he pulled a shiny red packet of Dunhills and a gold lighter from his pocket. He lit up a dose of cancer and sucked in deep.

“Don’t you know we’re the same, Abdullah?”

“Not even the same blood.”

“Fool yourself, then. Two old men who can never give way. If you hadn’t been so pigheaded, demanded Khalid as king, this would never have happened.”

“Is this why you came here? To blame me?”

“Don’t you want to hear where the investigation stands?”

“I want to hear that you’ve found this ambassador alive. Then we’ll figure out how to deal with the men who kidnapped him.”

“It’s not so simple.”

And we come to the real reason for your visit, Abdullah thought. Saeed sat beside Abdullah on a plush green silk couch. The brothers stared at each other in silence, the only sound Abdullah’s breathing, heavy as a steam engine.

“My brother,” Saeed said. “When you met with Kurland before he was attacked that day, what did you tell him?”

“Of you. What a snake you were. He didn’t need convincing. I told him I suspected you in the attack on Alia. Our own blood, and you slaughtered her.”

“I tell you I didn’t know Alia was going to die.”

Abdullah would have dealt whatever life he had left, months or years, for one day of strength. One day to squeeze the truth from his brother. But Allah didn’t offer such trades. “Sit beside me and lie to my face.”

“I need you to see our position.”

“I see. If we don’t save Kurland, we can’t survive.”

“And if we do save Kurland, what then? He’ll go home and tell them everything.”

“Good. The Americans can have you. And Mansour into the bargain.”

“And what happens then? You think the Americans say to the world, ‘Saeed bin Abdul-Aziz, he’s behind this. But his brother King Abdullah and the rest of the princes, the rest of these billionaires in their palaces, we love them. More than ever.’ No. We’re all together now, my brother.”

“You’ve brought this on us.”

“And I am trying to save us.”

Finally, Abdullah saw what Saeed was planning.

“You want to let Kurland die? Let the kidnappers kill him?”

“I want to find him.”

“But he’ll die in the rescue.”

“Along with the kidnappers.”

“Graham Kurland was my guest. Our guest.”

“These stupid rules. We don’t live in the desert anymore, Abdullah.”

Everything that Abdullah hated about Saeed in two sentences.

“Snake, scorpion, those words are too fair for you. There’s nothing living in you.”

“Insult me all you wish, Abdullah. The situation doesn’t change.”

“Even if I agreed with your plan. And I don’t. It’s too late. He probably called the secretary of state as soon as he got in his car.”

“No. He’d have waited to get back to the embassy. That kind of conversation, he would have wanted a secure line.”

“Even if you’re right, the Americans must know already. I told someone else.”

Saeed stubbed out his cigarette. “John Wells.”

How do you know about that? Abdullah almost said. But of course Saeed knew. He had moles everywhere, including in Abdullah’s security detail. His spies were the reason that Abdullah had gone to Wells in the first place.

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.” Abdullah wondered if Saeed knew he was lying, if Saeed knew that Wells was inside the Kingdom. “But again, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure Wells told the Americans of my suspicions. He needed their help to attack that camp in Lebanon where your man trained his assassins.”

“I tell you he wasn’t my man—”

“One day to squeeze you,” Abdullah murmured.

“What?”

“You’ll kill Wells, too, then? If you come across him.”

Saeed shrugged, as if Wells’s fate was beneath his notice.

“You can’t control this, Saeed. That simpering son of yours left a trail a thousand feet wide. The Americans will find it. Even if Kurland and Wells are dead. Our only chance, God willing, is to find the ambassador and give him back and kill the terrorists. And plead for mercy.”

“No.”

And then Abdullah understood the final piece. Saeed knew he couldn’t escape if Kurland got out alive. This argument that Kurland could give them evidence they didn’t have was only half true. If Kurland lived, the Americans would be relieved. They might even be willing to take Saeed in payment for the kidnapping instead of demanding the entire family. But if Kurland died, it would be all or nothing. The family would have to stand as one and hope that the Americans couldn’t put together the evidence. Saeed was trying to expand his crime, make it so great that he couldn’t be brought to account without bringing down the entire House of Saud.

“You’d risk us all to protect yourself and Mansour. Three hundred years of our family.”

“It’s the only way.”

“And you expect me to abet your crime.”

“Make sure that if the National Guard finds the ambassador, my men are notified. Immediately.”

“Go, Saeed. Take your poison from my house.”

EVERY BALL BARBARA HIT went over the embassy wall. Kurland watched from the baseline. He told her to relax, but she wouldn’t listen, didn’t seem to hear him at all. And then Roberto began to instruct her, in Arabic, his voice low and guttural—

All at once Kurland realized where he was. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep. Maybe an after-effect of the sedative they’d given him. Maybe sleep was the only sensible response to this place.

The light above clicked on. The hatch pulled back. Two men climbed down the metal rungs, both carrying bags, the second also holding a steel stepladder. The first was the one he’d seen before, the one who’d made him read the speech. The second had broad shoulders and deep-set unsmiling eyes and a nose that had been badly broken many years before. Kurland pegged him as a commander. Maybe the commander.

The second man said something in Arabic. “The major wants me to ask how you’re feeling,” the first man said.

“I’ve been better. Have you had any word about your demands?” Kurland figured he might as well humor these men, pretend they had a chance of getting what they’d asked for.

“I’m sorry to tell you that it appears they’ve been rejected.”

“Already?” You’re lying, Kurland thought. He didn’t have a good sense of time in here, but he knew he’d been asleep only four or five hours at most. He’d made the video an hour before he fell asleep. So a full day couldn’t have passed since the release of the video. And however insane the demands were, the White House wouldn’t reject them until the last moment of the deadline. Probably not even then. The president would delay as long as he could, to give the CIA and the Pentagon the most possible time to find him.

A bilious dread rose up Kurland’s throat. These men had only one reason to lie. And that was to justify — to themselves, to him, to Allah — whatever they were about to do.

The translator unzipped his bag, took out the tripod and camera he’d used earlier, along with another bottle of Coke. “Would you like?”

“No, thank you.”

“You should drink. You’ll need your strength.”

The fear crept out of Kurland’s throat and into his mouth, as real and bitter as month-old milk. He thought of Barbara sitting with him at Wrigley Field. She didn’t like baseball, but she humored him a couple of times a year, the same way he humored her at the Art Institute galas. She wouldn’t let him beg. He wouldn’t beg.

The translator set up the tripod and camera as the commander put the stepladder beside Kurland’s chair. Now that the ladder was next to him, Kurland noticed that it had some unusual features. Its feet were welded to heavy metal plates. And two notches were cut into its top step.

Despite, or because of, his fear, Kurland found himself semi-calmly puzzling over the ladder’s purpose. Its meaning. I’ll take Obscure Torture Devices for one thousand dollars, Mr. Trebek. Were they planning a poor man’s hanging? What was a poor man’s hanging, anyway? He felt his breathing get shallow. No. He couldn’t lose his cool. They hadn’t even touched him yet.

THEN THE COMMANDER SPREAD the contents of his bag on the cell’s concrete floor. He turned toward Kurland and waved his hand over them like a magician unveiling his best trick. Six items lay on the ground. Five were merely frightening. The sixth was terrifying.

A fat hypodermic needle. A thick gauze bandage. Two sturdy steel clamps. A tourniquet.

And a circular saw, big and mean, its steel teeth shining brightly under the overhead bulb.

“You don’t want to do this.” Kurland kept his voice even. “You don’t have to do this. Let’s talk about this.”

The commander answered in a long stream of Arabic.

“Would you like to know what he’s saying?”

“Okay. Yes.” I’ll buy every second I can.

“He says that for two generations the United States has stolen the oil that belongs to the people of the Arabian Peninsula—”

“We haven’t stolen it, we paid for it—”

The translator slapped Kurland’s face with five stinging fingers, ending the argument. “Again. He says that for two generations the United States has stolen the oil that belongs to the people of the Arabian Peninsula. He says that the whole world knows this crime, and that the only reason no one stopped you is your army and your air force and all your tanks and bombs. He says that America is a thief.”

The commander pulled latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them on his strong, brown hands. When he was satisfied with their fit, he spoke again.

“He asks if you know the penalty in sharia”—Muslim law — for theft.

“No.” Though Kurland did.

“It is amputation of the hand of the thief.”

“I’m not a thief.”

“Your country is. This is the law. This is justice.”

Kurland nodded, as if they were in the middle of the sanest conversation he’d ever had. “Justice. So I’m to have my hand amputated. For the sins of the United States. He’s going to do it. And you’re going to videotape it. And then you’re going to upload it or FedEx it or whatever to Al Jazeera so the whole world can watch.”

“Correct. Are you left-handed or right-?”

“Right.”

“Then the major will take your left.”

“Kind of you.”

The translator either didn’t recognize the sarcasm or ignored it. He and the commander had a rapid-fire conversation in Arabic. “We’re going to give you morphine to make you sleepy and make the operation easier.”

“I don’t want any morphine.”

“You do. Believe me.” He reached down, picked up the needle.

Behind his back, Kurland squeezed his hands together, clenched and unclenched his fingers. His left hand. He’d better get as much use of it as he could. “At least wait for the deadline to pass.” He couldn’t believe he was negotiating this way, as if the end of the deadline would somehow justify what they were planning to do to him. But those extra hours sounded more than pretty good about now.

“We both know your country won’t agree. This way, the next video will be ready as soon as the deadline passes.”

“I applaud your understanding of the demands of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Though I guess I won’t be applauding anything much longer.”

If the translator understood the joke, he didn’t smile. He uncuffed Kurland’s arms and recuffed his right hand to the chair leg. The commander grabbed Kurland’s left arm with his thick gloved hands and pulled it around the chair and slapped it against the ladder’s top step, the metal cool under his forearm.

Kurland didn’t resist. He’d wondered sometimes when he saw the brief announcements that a death-row prisoner had been executed, why didn’t the guy resist? Why didn’t he fight instead of walking to his fate like a sheep? But now he knew. His own dignity was all he had left. And his voice.

“No religion justifies this. No law. You know that, right? You’re just a couple of psychopaths with a saw. And whatever your plan is, whatever you’re hoping to accomplish, it won’t work, it’s going to end with both of you dead, sooner, not later—”

The translator put a hand over Kurland’s mouth, squeezed his nose shut. “Keep talking and there won’t be any morphine. You won’t like that.”

The commander moved Kurland’s arm until his wrist was dangling just off the edge of the ladder. With the translator’s help, he slid the vises into the notches and wound them tight around Kurland’s forearm, squeezing the muscles and the bone against the ladder’s top step. And then squeezed tighter still, pinching the skin, immobilizing Kurland’s arm well and truly.

The commander tied the tourniquet around Kurland’s biceps and tapped the crook of Kurland’s elbow until the vein rose. He aspirated the needle to make sure the morphine was free of air bubbles and slid it deep into Kurland’s vein and sank the plunger. After the prick of the needle, pleasure flowed into Kurland’s arm. Despite his knowledge of what was about to happen, he couldn’t help but ride away on the rush that filled his body, as if the room and the very air he breathed were warm and liquid. His head lolled forward, and he sighed, and all the pressure left him. He hoped for an overdose. Better to die this way than from a bullet.

He didn’t die, though. And the peace didn’t last. The translator put the camera on the commander, and he spoke for a minute in Arabic. No doubt the same justifications he’d just given Kurland. Then he pulled on a surgical mask and goggles — goggles, as if he were about to prune a tree — and picked up the saw.

Its scream filled the room, and tears streamed down Kurland’s cheeks. No, Kurland said. Don’t. It was time for the cavalry, time for men in American uniforms to burst in and end this madness. Time and past time. He wouldn’t complain at their tardiness—

But the cavalry didn’t come. Only the commander, crossing the room in four slow steps. Kneeling beside the ladder. Lining up the protective housing around the saw’s blade with the edge of the top step. Sliding the saw forward and backward, making sure the blade was where he wanted it. All the morphine in the world couldn’t help Kurland now. His fear and adrenaline had burned through it. Even in the commander’s tight grip, the saw was vibrating madly, shaking the ladder, shaking Kurland’s poor left arm.

Kurland clenched his tongue—Don’t beg—and closed his eyes—

And the commander pushed the saw forward and cut.

CHAPTER 22

WELLS DROVE ALONG THE BLAST-PROOF WALL OF ABDULLAH’S PALACE, slabs of concrete fitted together as closely as a starlet’s capped teeth. When the wall ended, he and Gaffan found themselves on the coastal cornice, the Red Sea to their right, flat and black. They were headed for a seedy neighborhood in south Jeddah, near the port.

The police had put Jeddah under an eleven p.m. to five a.m. curfew. But the deadline was more than three hours away. For now, traffic was heavy. They passed a half-dozen hotels before the road swung inland to accommodate another palace. Near its entrance, four police cars blocked traffic. A cop waved Wells over. Another put a flashlight in his eyes. “Identification?”

Wells handed over their identity cards. The cop looked them over, shined a light through the Jeep. “Make sure you’re home by the curfew.”

“Yes, sir.”

They turned left, onto a wide avenue that ran through an upscale commercial district, big-box electronic stores and BMW and Mercedes dealerships. Wells made a block-long loop, four straight right turns, the quickest way to pick up surveillance. But they seemed to be alone. “We have any friends?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Me either.” Wells drove on, to the elevated highway along Jeddah’s east side. At first glance the road could have passed for the 405 in Los Angeles or the 10 in Houston, four smoothly paved lanes in each direction, sometimes five, surrounded by brightly lit office buildings and industrial parks and oversized malls. Yet the traffic had a strangely caffeinated quality that Wells had never seen in the United States. He didn’t think it was related to the kidnapping. Nearly everyone tailgated. Everyone sped. All the drivers were men, of course, mostly in their teens and twenties. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go except drive in circles burning cheap gas, hamsters on an asphalt wheel. The House of Saud stifled their creative and political and sexual energy. Islam was their only outlet. No wonder they blew themselves up so often.

After fifteen minutes, Wells turned right at a massive cloverleaf, passing a soccer stadium as he headed west, toward downtown. Soccer qualified as an acceptable public activity in the Kingdom, even if it did expose the players’ legs. The highway ran through miles of empty lots waiting to be developed and a sign for a “Psychic Disease Hospital,” which somehow sounded gentler to Wells than a psychiatric hospital. A mile southeast of downtown, Wells pulled off. After another roadblock, he drove under the highway into a grim warren of concrete and brick.

IN SAUDI ARABIA, AS in the United States, the poorest urban neighborhoods lay on the fringes of downtowns. They’d left the opulence of Abdullah’s palace behind. The streets were potholed, narrow, and dark, the overhead lights burned out. The stench of sewage filled the Jeep, and some of the houses sat on concrete blocks. The Saudi government had budgeted billions of dollars to build a proper drainage system for Jeddah, but the money had mysteriously disappeared into the pockets of the men who ran the city. Not for the first time, Wells wondered about Abdullah. The king’s concern for his subjects wasn’t obvious in this part of town.

For now, though, the Kingdom’s problems ran deeper than succession. If Kurland’s kidnappers began to torture him in public, the United States and Saudi Arabia would be hard-pressed to avoid war. Time was short. Wells pulled over, called Shafer. “We’re in.”

“And free of unwanted baggage?”

“Think so. What have we missed?”

“The muk found the fake cop cars that took Kurland. The betting now is they’re hiding him in the desert. Most of the passports you gave us are from guys in the Najd. Those families are getting their doors kicked in tonight.”

“Any word on the helicopter?”

“I passed your theory to NSA and NGA, but they didn’t get anything. The Saudis haven’t let us put up drones. We’re stuck with satellites and AWACS”—air force radar jets. “Tough to find one helicopter in a million square miles.”

“So it’s still in play. They could have brought him this way.”

“Yes, but unless you get some evidence, it’s not a priority. We have eighty FBI agents in Riyadh now. They’re mainly trying to keep an eye on the muk. Theoretically, they can chase their own leads, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“What about Lebanon?”

“We hit the camp this afternoon. Burned to the ground. Actual words of the Delta major in charge were: ‘Like a nuke hit it.’ We’re asking the Syrians to lean on Hezbollah, get them to open up, but our leverage there is limited. To put it mildly.”

Wells understood. No doubt the attack on Kurland had thrilled Hezbollah, along with its backers in Syria and Iran. Those two countries would love nothing more than for the United States to invade Saudi Arabia.

“Meantime, the Airborne and the Rangers are sitting tight,” Shafer said. “Treasury and the NSA are trying to follow the money, looking to connect the camp with, how do I put this nicely, government sources in Saudi Arabia. So far they haven’t found anything. Until they do that, the president has ordered that official policy is to assume that this attack is the work of independent non-state actors. His words.”

“‘Independent non-state actors.’”

“Think Brad Pitt.”

“You know what I like about you, Ellis? You always make time for a joke, brighten my day. And if we do connect the princes to the kidnappers?”

“No decision yet.”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“Exactly right.”

“So. Summing up. The FBI’s in Riyadh. The Airborne’s in Turkey. The muk are knocking heads five hundred miles from here. No useful intel since yesterday.”

“Correct, correct, correct, and correct.”

“And we’re still on our own in beautiful Jeddah, the jewel of the Red Sea.”

“Just the way you like it.” Shafer clicked off.

Wells was about to drive on when a police helicopter swung low overhead, its spotlight slicing left to right, catching a mosque’s minaret before finding the Jeep. The light held them for fifteen seconds, filling the windshield with its dead white glare before moving on. When it was gone, Wells eased the Jeep back onto the road.

AS HE DID, THE cell phone that Wells had gotten at the palace trilled.

“This is Miteb.” The prince’s voice was low, hard to hear. “My brother asked me to call. He says you must be careful. He says the muk aren’t to be trusted.”

Tell me something I don’t know, Wells didn’t say. “He have anything specific? Do they know the names we’re using?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“The names on our ID cards. Do the muk know them?”

A long pause, as if the prince was struggling to comprehend the concept of the national identity cards his family made its subjects carry. “I don’t think so. I think it’s more a general warning to do with Saeed. That he sees you as a problem. But I don’t think he knows you’re here, not yet. The place where you came in, that’s a good place.”

“All right. If anything changes, let me know.”

“Please find our friend.”

“We’re trying.” Wells hung up.

“What was that?” Gaffan said.

“Nothing good,” Wells said, and explained.

“This keeps getting messier, doesn’t it?”

“Quickest way to solve it is to find Kurland.”

“True dat.” Words that earned Gaffan a sidelong look from Wells.

BUT EVEN FINDING 42 Aziz proved more difficult than Wells expected. The street grid was as sloppy as an undercooked waffle, and Gaffan had trouble with the map. They doubled back twice before Wells spotted “Aziz Street” painted crudely on a black sign screwed into a brick wall. To the left, toward downtown, a mosque sat beside three barred storefronts.

Wells turned right, deeper into the slum. The houses were small and mean, their lights peeking through barred windows. Concrete blocks, a rough parody of the walls protecting Abdullah’s palace, hid their front yards. A stray dog trotted into the Jeep’s headlights before turning tail and disappearing between two oil drums that overflowed with trash.

Wells didn’t see anyone on the street or in the yards, but he did spot a couple of small groups of men on rooftops, talking and smoking. Many of these houses didn’t have air-conditioning. After a day baking under the Saudi sun, they could be unbearable. The rooftops were like front porches in the nineteenth-century South, a way to escape the worst of the heat. But the curfew and the helicopters were keeping most people inside tonight.

“If I were Aziz, I’d be mad they named such a lousy street after me,” Gaffan said.

“He’s got plenty of others to choose from. Anyway, he’s dead.”

“You think they could be keeping Kurland here? Seems almost too quiet.”

Wells understood what Gaffan meant. The neighborhood was poor but not chaotic. Wells guessed most of these houses were filled with the migrant laborers who did the menial jobs the Saudis wouldn’t. In times of crisis, they would buckle down and hope to be ignored. Armed men would stand out. Apparently, the police were making a similar calculation and focusing their attention on neighborhoods where jihadis had a stronger presence.

Six blocks on, Aziz Street dead-ended at an electrical substation. Wells made a U-turn, pulled over beside a house better lit than its neighbors, knocked heavily on the front gate. A man stepped out. He was too dark to be Saudi. Indian, probably. “Salaam aleikum.”

“Aleikum salaam.”

“I’m looking for number thirty-eight Aziz.”

“This is number eighty-one. Thirty-eight is that way”—the man pointed toward downtown. “And on the other side. Near the mosque.”

The location made sense. The mosque would draw traffic, helping to hide the jihadis’ coming and going. “Is the mosque number forty-two?”

“No, maybe thirty-two, thirty-four.”

“Do you go there?”

The man was no longer interested in the conversation. He backed away with slow, careful steps. “Good luck, mister.”

WELLS ROLLED TOWARD THE mosque’s narrow minaret. Four buildings down from the mosque, a twentysomething man sat on the flat roof of a two-story house, his legs dangling over the front. He could have been trying to cool off. But he didn’t seem relaxed. He shifted his attention up and down, from the helicopters to the Jeep and back. To the northwest, the center of the city, a shot clipped the night, a big high-caliber round. Then another. The kid popped up, looked toward the downtown office buildings.

Wells drove without slowing, past the house, the mosque, and the storefronts. Three blocks on, the street hooked right, then merged into a grimy avenue. “You think it’s the one with the guy on the roof?” Gaffan said.

“I think we need to find out.” Wells swung onto the avenue, past a long, low warehouse, and then turned right and right again, circling the warehouse. Aziz Street was three blocks down.

A police helicopter picked them up again. Wells slowed. It slowed, too. It was barely two hundred feet up, its rotor wash rattling the Jeep’s windshield. Wells didn’t see how they could get close to the house with the helicopter on them.

Then he had an idea. He drove past the mosque, didn’t turn onto Aziz. Halfway down the next block, he pulled over. The chopper stayed on them.

“I’m getting out. I’ll walk to the next corner, go left. You loop past the warehouse again, come back, park a block past the house on Aziz. Don’t rush it. Let the chopper stay with you. If he follows me instead, I’ll keep walking this way. In that case, make the loop, come back, pick me up a couple blocks down.”

“You want to use the copter to distract the kid?”

“I’ll go in the back of the house. He’ll be focusing it. Give me a couple minutes, let the chopper get bored and peel off, then come in the front.”

“What if it doesn’t get bored?”

“Come in the front anyway. Worst case, we’ll go out the back, ditch the Jeep.”

“Worst case, they close off the neighborhood and trap us.”

“They’re spread thin. They’re running roadblocks all over the city and they have no reason to focus on us in particular.”

Gaffan shrugged, conceding the point. “You gonna take your rifle?” They’d stowed their vests and M-16s in the spare tire compartment but kept their Glocks under their seats.

“No.” Wells reached under his seat for his pistol and silencer, slipped them in a white plastic bag imprinted with a cartoon chicken and the logo of Al Baik, a chain of popular fast-food restaurants in Jeddah. “Nobody ever thinks the guy holding a bag of chicken is a threat.”

Wells stepped onto the street. The spotlight fell on him with almost physical force. Gaffan shifted into the driver’s seat, and the Jeep rolled off. Wells shuffled along the curb, as if he had nowhere to be—I’m just a guy heading home to eat some fried chicken in my concrete living room. The helicopter hesitated, its light shifting between Wells and the Jeep. It decided on the Jeep and moved away.

As the helicopter’s noise faded, Wells heard another half-dozen shots echoing from downtown. The police were busy tonight. No doubt the roadblocks had snared more than one unlucky criminal. Wells turned left on the nameless street just past Aziz. The chopper circled away, following Gaffan. Wells had a partial view of 42 Aziz, enough to see that the sentry on the roof was watching the helicopter. He walked past an alley that dead-ended at the back-right corner of the house. Two blocks up, he turned, paced back, timing his steps against the slow rotation of the spotlight tracing Gaffan. His window was narrow at best. In a few minutes, the police in the helicopter would either call in cars to stop the Jeep or find another target.

Then the spotlight twisted away, toward downtown. A problem. Either the helicopter had broken off contact or Gaffan had gotten lost somehow. Either way, Wells had to go in now, while the sentry was still distracted.

He jogged into the alley, the gown bunching around his legs. A step before the wall, he jumped up. In one motion, he laid the Al Baik bag atop the wall and wrapped his hands around the rough concrete. He dug in, pulled himself higher, all those push-ups paying off, and crawled on top of the wall. A dog barked from somewhere across the street, but the rest of the neighborhood stayed quiet.

The house had a small concrete yard littered with plastic water bottles. A Honda motorcycle was parked in the corner, hidden from the street. Heavy shades covered the windows, allowing only faint light into the yard. A television inside played what sounded like an Arabic news channel. Wells pulled the Glock from the bag and jumped down. He landed on a plastic bottle and pitched forward, his fingertips grazing the concrete before he pulled himself up as nimbly as a running back keeping his knee off the turf. The bottle skittered behind him. The television muted. A man inside the house said, “What was that? Go check.” Then yelled, “Usman? Did you see anything back there?” From the roof, a voice yelled, “No, Hassan!”

“Check again. Make sure.”

Wells had a problem now. Killing these men wouldn’t be difficult. But he still didn’t know if they were the right targets. He had no proof that 42 Aziz Street was connected to the kidnappers — or even that this house was actually 42 Aziz.

Narrow alleys ran along the sides of the house. Wells picked his way to the back-right corner and flattened himself against the rough concrete. The house was twenty feet high, and the guy on the roof, Usman, would have to lean almost straight over the corner to see him. Wells unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into the front-right pocket of his gown. He shifted the Glock to his left hand, holding it by the barrel now, high across his chest. The footsteps on the roof creaked closer. The back door snapped open and scraped against concrete. Wells pulled back his head and listened as the man in the house stepped into the yard. On the roof, Usman paced.

“I don’t see anything,” the man in the yard said.

“Me either,” Usman said.

The man in the yard walked toward the corner where Wells was hiding. Wells waited, waited, then spun left, popping out from the alley. He swung the Glock with his left arm, a downward clubbing backhand, quicker than a looping right hook and nearly as powerful. The man’s eyes opened wide, and he tried to raise his own pistol—

But Wells drove the corner of the Glock into the left side of the man’s temple, the soft spot just above the eye. The man grunted and sagged sideways. Wells stepped up and swung his right fist into the man’s belly. The man grunted again, his breath rushing out of him, giving Wells a whiff of the curried chicken he’d eaten that day. He dropped his pistol and toppled forward. Wells got under him and held him and hit him once more with the butt of the Glock to be sure he was out. He was skinny, maybe one hundred fifty pounds. Wells lowered him easily and laid him on the ground. In a couple hours, he’d wake up feeling like a car had run him over. But he would wake up.

The guy on the roof, Usman, yelled, “Is everything okay?” Wells shifted the pistol to his right hand, ran inside, found himself in the kitchen, a small, tidy room that also smelled like curried chicken. “What’s going on?” someone at the front of the house said. Hassan, the third jihadi. Wells ducked toward the refrigerator. Hassan lumbered through the house and stepped into the kitchen holding a big black pistol in a two-handed grip.

Wells grabbed Hassan’s hands and forced up the pistol. Hassan pulled the trigger, and the gun fired uselessly into the ceiling. Wells lifted his right leg and stomped down on Hassan’s foot. Wells was wearing ankle-high black motorcycle boots. Hassan was barefoot. Three of his metatarsals snapped with a crack nearly as loud as the pistol shot a moment before. He dropped the gun and fell sideways and screamed. Wells let Hassan hit the floor and then kicked him in the chin to shut him up. His eyes rolled back in his head and two teeth popped out, sticky red with candy-cane blood. This one would wake up feeling like a truck had run him over.

Usman, the guy on the roof, was left. “Hey. What’s happening?” he yelled down. Wells waited to be sure no one else was coming, then stepped through two stifling rooms and strode up the stairs. He stopped at the top step. A corridor ran the length of the second floor. At the back of the house, a rickety spiral staircase led to the roof.

Wells moved down the corridor as the door to the roof opened. He hid himself in a foul-smelling bathroom as Usman ran down the spiral stairs and into the hall. When Usman had passed, Wells stepped out. “Raise your hands.”

Usman stopped, looked over his shoulder at Wells. Wells raised the pistol and Usman stretched his arms over his head. His hands were empty.

“On your knees.” Usman hestitated, then ran for the front stairs. Wells aimed low, at his ass, and squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The pistol’s silenced shot was no louder than a gassy belch. Usman screamed and stumbled forward, sliding onto his knees.

“Hands up.”

Again Usman raised them.

“Where’s the ambassador?”

“What ambassador?”

The answer was a confession. Everyone in Saudi Arabia knew what had happened to Kurland. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” Usman braced himself, stood, stumbled for the stairs. Wells lifted the pistol and shot him again twice, high and lethal in the back. Usman grunted and flopped against the wall and slid down, a slow, ungainly death. Blood dripped out of his mouth when Wells flipped him over. He tried to speak, but Wells couldn’t understand his mumbles. Already Wells regretted the fury that had made him pull the trigger. Dead men tell no tales.

Wells left him, searched the upstairs rooms. In the front bedroom, he found two AKs, a Quran, a week of Saudi newspapers, and a tattered Victoria’s Secret catalog tucked under a mattress, the saddest piece of not-quite-pornography Wells had ever seen. A closet held a half-dozen thobes in various sizes and jeans and long-sleeved shirts neatly folded on top of a hard orange plastic case. Wells swept the clothes aside, picked up the case, and carried it into the bedroom. It wasn’t heavy. He clicked open its oversized black latches. He found a basic medical kit, the kind a paramedic might carry — gauze and bandages and scissors, latex gloves, masks, bottles of pills and tubes of antibiotic, a thermometer, and a stethoscope. The supplies all appeared a couple years old. Wells wondered if something more interesting was hidden inside. He turned the case over, emptied it, but didn’t find anything.

In the bathroom, he found three passports hidden in a plastic bag taped to the back of the toilet. Wells relaxed slightly when he found that they all had recent Lebanese entry and exit visas — near-certain proof that these men were jihadis who had trained at Aziz’s camp.

“Ambassador? Ambassador Kurland? Can you hear me?” he yelled in English. But the house was silent. When he returned to the front steps, Usman was dead. Wells checked his pockets, found only a cheap disposable Nokia. A burner. He turned it on, flipped through it, but the registry was empty. Either the call logs had been deleted or it had never been used. He stood up as he heard a woman singing downstairs in Arabic, the voice startling him until he realized it was a ringtone.

Inside Hassan’s gown, Wells found another phone, a disposable Nokia identical to the one he’d taken from Usman. Hassan grumbled semiconsciously as Wells took it. Its monochrome screen showed a 966 number, the Saudi area code. Wells let it ring until the call went to voicemail. A few seconds later, the mailbox icon lit up. Wells pushed 1, listened to a man saying, “Hassan. No package tonight. We’re not finished yet, and it’s too close to curfew. I’ll bring it tomorrow. You’ll have plenty of time. Peace be with you, brother.” Wells riffed through Hassan’s pockets but found only a Honda motorcycle key, presumably for the bike behind the house.

Footsteps in the alley pulled him up. He drew his pistol, hid himself against the wall beside the kitchen door. “John,” Gaffan whispered. “You there?”

“Yeah. Long time no see.”

Gaffan walked in. “I’m sorry. I got lost.” Gaffan nudged Hassan’s broken foot. “Looks like you handled things.”

“Let’s get the other one inside, shut the door.”

Wells and Gaffan put the two jihadis Wells had immobilized on their stomachs, cuffed their hands and legs. The first jihadi, the one whom Wells had pistol-whipped, breathed slowly and unevenly. Wells filled a plastic jug with lukewarm water from the tap, poured it over the guy’s head, got only a few guttural mumbles. He peeled back the guy’s eyelids. His pupils constricted slowly. Wells had hit him in just the wrong spot, and he had a very severe concussion or slow bleed from a skull fracture. Skull fractures were becoming a specialty for Wells. Either way, the guy was useless to them. He needed real medical care, and it would be days before he could answer any questions. Only Hassan was left.

Wells refilled the jug, poured water over Hassan’s head. Hassan shifted uncomfortably, opened his eyes, closed them quickly. Wells nudged his right foot. Hassan groaned and scrabbled sideways and stared up hatefully. Wells pushed him up so he was braced against the cabinets, and pulled over a chair and sat beside him. He hoped that a mighty helping of fear would do the trick. He didn’t want to have to hurt this man. The Midnight House was fresh in his mind.

“Hassan. You need help. For your foot. We can get you help.”

Hassan said nothing. Wells showed him the phone, the missed call. Hassan shook his head. “Who’s this? Who called you?”

“Water. Please.”

Wells got him a glass, tilted it to his lips. Hassan drank, cleared his throat in a low growl — and spat a runny mix of drool and phlegm and blood. It barely escaped his lips, slid slowly down on his chin. A tooth rolled out of his mouth and down his gown. “It was your mother. She wanted to screw. I said no.”

Wells grabbed Hassan’s cheeks, squeezed his ruined face. “Tell us where he is.”

“He’s in hell. Where he belongs.”

Wells knelt beside him, reached for his foot. Hassan looked away. “What’s in the package?”

“Your father’s balls.”

“You’re going to make us hurt you.”

“Do whatever you like.”

But Wells found he couldn’t do anything. He wasn’t sure he could break this man with pain, and even if he could, he didn’t want to try. He reached into his pocket for his pistol, put the silencer to Hassan’s head. “I’m going to give you three seconds.”

Hassan closed his eyes and mumbled the shahada, and Wells put the pistol away without even starting to count. Mock executions might not be physically painful, but they were still torture.

“I’m Muslim, too,” Wells said. “And this is wrong. This isn’t what Muhammad would have wanted.”

“Now you tell me what it’s like to be Muslim. You find a hundred ways to be a fool.” Hassan grinned crooked and bloody. “Dance for me now. Dance for me and I’ll tell you where he is.”

Wells squeezed his fists and fought his very strong urge to shoot Hassan in the head. “We’re going to find him. And you’re going to die.” Hassan shook his head, and Wells punched him in the stomach. Hassan slumped down onto the floor of the kitchen. Even so, Wells couldn’t help but feel that Hassan had bested him. He reached for electrical tape and slapped it over Hassan’s mouth so that he wouldn’t have to hear the contempt in the man’s voice anymore.

A tug on his shoulder pulled him up. Gaffan. Wells had been so focused on Hassan he’d forgotten Gaffan. “Forget it,” Gaffan murmured. “Nobody can break a guy like that in ten minutes. Not you, not anyone. Now what?”

“Go over the house, find what I missed.”

But they didn’t find anything. The place seemed to be a cutout, a depot for men and messages to pass. Wells wondered if the “package” in the voicemail referred to Kurland himself.

Wells listened to the message again, realized something else. It was just ten p.m. now. The curfew didn’t take effect for another hour. So the caller wasn’t in Jeddah. He was somewhere nearby but not close enough to come here with only a few minutes before curfew. One city, forty miles east, fit that profile better than any other. “Is the Jeep close?”

“Just up the block.”

“Then let’s go.” Wells took one last look around the kitchen, opened the back door.

“Where to?”

Wells pulled the door shut behind them and they left 42 Aziz behind. “Mecca.”

CHAPTER 23

MECCA. UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, WELLS WOULD HAVE BEEN excited at the chance to see the heart of Islam. Christianity and Judaism had holy sites, of course — the Wailing Wall, Mount Sinai, Bethlehem. But no faith was as closely tied to a single spiritual center as Islam was to Mecca.

Muhammad had been born in Mecca, lived in Mecca when he received the prophecies that led him to preach, been forced from Mecca in fear and returned in triumph. Five times a day, 1.5 billion Muslims turned toward the Kaaba, the black stone at the heart of the Grand Mosque, to pray. The hajj, the spiritual journey to Mecca, was a central tenet of Islam. Millions of Muslims came each year. Their numbers would have been even greater if the Saudi government had not limited the size of the pilgrimage to control stampedes. Meanwhile, non-Muslims were barred even from setting foot in Mecca. “Oh you who believe! The idolaters are nothing but unclean, so they shall not approach the Sacred Mosque,” the Quran’s ninth verse said.

Yes, it was true that Muhammad had once commanded his followers to pray toward Jerusalem. He’d changed the direction of prayer to Mecca after falling out with the Jewish tribes in Arabia. And yes, it was true that many scholars believed that Muhammad had made the hajj part of Islam mainly to placate Mecca’s merchants. Even before Islam existed, Mecca had profited from pilgrims visiting the Kaaba.

No matter. Wells didn’t have to believe in the literal truth of every word in the Quran to feel the pull of the place. When he faced the Kaaba to pray, he imagined a billion whispered prayers coming from all over the world, from every direction, from worshippers of every color. Pleas of fear, hope, redemption, and revenge, dreams great and small, vows to honor and to love, all melding at the Grand Mosque into one holy message that only God could hear.

UNFORTUNATELY, AS A PLACE to live, Mecca left much to be desired. Home to almost two million people, the city was dust-clogged and overcrowded. Most Saudi cities dealt with their rapid growth by spreading into the desert. Mecca didn’t have that option. It lay in a valley ringed by low mountains. Unable to expand horizontally, it had occupied every square inch of space in the valley and then grown vertically. Office towers and apartment buildings now hemmed in the Grand Mosque from all sides.

The mosque itself looked very different than it had fifty years before. To handle the crush of hajj pilgrims, the Saudi government had repeatedly rebuilt and expanded the structure. The mosque was now the world’s largest, with gleaming white marble galleries surrounding a central plaza that held hundreds of thousands of worshippers. The Saudis had also expanded the city’s network of walkways and pedestrian tunnels to ease the traffic jams that occurred every hajj as pilgrims traveled between the mosque and their temporary homes in tent cities outside Mecca.

Mecca’s congestion offered endless hiding places for Graham Kurland and his kidnappers — assuming Wells’s hunch was right and they were in the city. For now the call Hassan had received was his only clue. He grabbed his sat phone, called Shafer. “I have a number for you. Saudi. Probably a disposable phone. Used twenty minutes ago. Can NSA do anything?”

“If it’s on, probably. If not, I don’t know. It may take a while. Depends on the carrier, how much cooperation we’re getting.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. How hot’s the number?”

“Maybe very.”

“Those two words don’t go together. What happened at the house?”

“One KIA, two WIA.”

“One what KIA?”

“I’m reasonably certain he was hostile.”

Shafer was silent.

“He wasn’t friendly, that’s for sure.”

“If you’re wrong, you’d better hope the king likes you. Not much we can do if you killed a Saudi civ on Saudi soil.”

“Just tell the FBI to get a team to the house. Tonight. One of the wounded is in bad shape.”

“Sounds like you had yourself a fun time.”

“It was unavoidable.” Aside from the guy I shot in the back. “I need that trace, Ellis. While I was there, somebody called, left a message. I think it’s related.”

“Give me the number. And the number of the phone that received the call.”

Wells did.

“I’ll let you know soon as I hear.”

The Jeep slowed as they approached a roadblock at the entrance to Highway 5, the road connecting Jeddah and Mecca. The cops running the roadblock weren’t cops. Half of them carried M-16s and wore Special Forces uniforms. The others were muk in black shirts and pants. They waved Gaffan over, put a floodlight on the Jeep. Wells kept his arms low by his sides. He’d noticed flecks of blood on the cuffs of his gown. On a close search, they’d be obvious.

Gaffan handed their identity cards to a Special Forces officer. He looked them over, then called the muk to check them out. Wells wondered whether Mansour had already learned the names on their cards.

“You should be home,” the muk barked. “Where are you going?”

“Mecca.”

“Mecca? Why tonight?”

“We have a job tomorrow. Cleaning a house. We didn’t want to get caught in the traffic in the morning.”

The muk shined a flashlight over the Jeep. “I don’t see any supplies for cleaning.”

“They’re all at the house.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The owner lets us sleep on his roof.”

“Where?”

“It’s on Abdul-Aziz Road. Two kilometers from the Grand Mosque.”

The muk handed back their identity cards. “Drive fast, then. You only have thirty minutes, and if you get stopped at the western roadblock, they may make you sleep in the car and wait until the morning. Or they may arrest you.” He handed back their identity cards, waved them on.

“Thank you, officer.”

“Next—”

Gaffan sped off. “Abdul-Aziz Road,” Wells said.

“Figured it was a safe bet.”

THE DESERT TOOK OVER, the land as dark and flat as an ocean. If not for the glow of Jeddah behind them, Wells would hardly have believed he was traveling between two multimillion-person cities less than fifty miles apart.

His sat phone rang. “Our friends say the number traces to western Mecca,” Shafer said.

“You have a street? An address?”

“They’re still working that. They may need you to call it again.”

“I thought—”

“It’s not Verizon. They can’t just ask nicely and get the location. And these disposables are tricky. Believe me when I tell you they’re pulling out the stops. They’re basically giving the Saudi telecom system an enema as we speak.”

Five minutes later, Shafer called back. “They’re ready. They say if you can get that phone up, they can get to the specific tower.”

“How long do they need?”

“Thirty seconds. A minute would be better. But do it soon. They say that the way they’re spooning data, they could take down the whole system.”

“‘Spooning.’”

“It’s a technical term.”

Wells reached for Hassan’s cell. Thirty seconds. If he screwed up, he’d not only blow his chance at finding the house, he might provoke the kidnappers into killing Kurland. Could he sound enough like a native Saudi to fool them? He murmured phrases to himself, smoothing his accent. They were halfway between Jeddah and Mecca now, rolling east at ninety miles an hour. As he watched, the cell’s reception shrank to a single bar.

“Pull over.”

“What about the curfew?”

“Just do it.”

Gaffan slowed down, edged to the side of the highway. Wells called the 966 number, keeping his hand over the microphone. After three rings, a man picked up.

“I got your voicemail,” Wells said quietly. “But we may have a problem—”

“Hassan. I can’t hear you—”

Wells took his fingers off the microphone. “Better?”

“A little.”

“Usman says a helicopter’s circling.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Hold on—” Wells covered the microphone. “Usman—” He imagined himself on the first floor of the house, running to the roof. He waited, watched the call timer move past forty-five seconds, fifty. “I’ll call you back.” He hung up. He’d stretched a handful of sentences into a fifty-eight-second conversation. In a few minutes he’d send a calming text to the man on the other end. False alarm. Everything’s fine. See you tomorrow.

“Let’s go.”

THEY FLEW UNDER THE signs for the bypass highway that non-Muslims were required to take around Mecca. Wells wondered what would happen if they were arrested inside the city’s borders. Gaffan wasn’t Muslim at all, and a Wahhabi judge might find Wells’s commitment to the faith lacking. So they had the muk and the kidnappers against them, and now the religious police, too.

The highway was nearly empty now, three lanes of freshly paved asphalt. Gaffan pinned the Jeep’s speedometer at an even one hundred sixty kilometers — one hundred miles — an hour. The land around them was still featureless, but ahead a halo of city lights rose behind a low mountain range. Then the road turned, and through a gap in the hills Wells saw a massive skyscraper towering over the city and the hills around it.

“What is that?” Gaffan said.

Incredibly, the Saudi government had built a massive office and hotel complex beside the Grand Mosque. The development was centered on a two-thousand-foot skyscraper, the second-largest in the world, topped by a gigantic clock modeled on London’s Big Ben. Each of the clock’s four faces was one hundred fifty feet high — the size of a midsized office building — and had at its center the Saudi palm-and-crossed-swords logo. On its face, the complex was an awful idea, a giant commercial center on top of a sacred religious site. And architecture critics agreed that the buildings were ugly and ponderous, much too big for the site, their bulk worsened by their lack of glass. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s largest skyscraper, was a more-than-two-thousand-five-hundred-foot needle into the sky, a soaring monument to modern design and engineering. The Mecca tower was an overgrown Lego block.

But the Saudis weren’t fools. And despite their wealth, they weren’t inclined to build skyscrapers. The tallest buildings in Riyadh were less than half the size of this building. The princes had placed the complex where they did to remind the world that the glory of Islam and the glory of the House of Saud could not be separated. They’d knocked down a historic Ottoman Empire fortress to build it, ignoring the protests of the Turkish government, delivering the message that Mecca would never again belong to the Turks. From its heights, the skyscraper flashed the call to prayer five times a day, its green and white lights glowing over Mecca and the desert. It was a gift from the princes to proclaim the might and majesty of Islam. The symbolism was as simple and overwhelming as the Saudi flag.

Wells was starting to explain all this to Gaffan when his sat phone rang. “I have something for you.”

“Please tell me it’s an address.”

“Not quite. But we have it down to two blocks in a neighborhood called Hindawiyyah. Good news is there aren’t any apartment buildings. It’s all residential. Medium to big houses. A good place to hide someone.”

“What’s the street?”

“It’s called Shahab. The expressway turns into a road called Umm al Qura”—Mother of Villages, Mecca’s historic title—“which goes right to the mosque. Shahab’s off Umm al Qura, about twelve hundred meters after the expressway ends. Right-hand side. The hot zone is four hundred meters down, give or take.”

“‘Give or take.’”

“There’s a radius around the cell towers. Our friends played some games with the signal to triangulate, but they could only get to within about a hundred meters. A circle with a two-block diameter. Maybe thirty houses in all.”

“Ellis. We can’t start randomly kicking in doors. If that’s all you’ve got, you better call the FBI.”

“Mecca’s out for the FBI. Unless somebody repeals the Quran.”

“The muk, then.”

“Bad idea for lots of reasons. Including the fact that we’d have to tell them about forty-two Aziz.”

“So it’s just us?”

“It’s just you. But I have good news, too. Fresh overheads. You have Internet access?”

“No.”

“Get someplace that does.”

“Ellis. The curfew starts in ten minutes. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to town before they close the city. The muk are looking for us. Pretty soon they’re gonna have the names on our identity cards. We don’t have time to sit back, boot up, check Gmail—”

“Then I’ll walk you through them.”

“You want to describe satellite shots to me over the phone?”

“Unless you have a better idea.”

The Jeep slowed. Wells looked up to see another roadblock, this one on the edge of the city. “I have no ideas at all.” He hung up, stuffed the phone under the seat.

THEY CLEARED THE ROADBLOCK, drove east on the Umm al Qura, toward the skyscraper that loomed over the Grand Mosque and the rest of the city. Like Jeddah, Mecca felt besieged, its streets empty, helicopters sweeping downtown and the ridges of the hills to the north and south.

“What now?” Gaffan said.

“Find this street, Shahab, and get deep into the neighborhood. Past the hot block. Find some place where we can pull over and I can talk to Shafer without getting us arrested.”

The streets in Mecca were better marked than those in the Jeddah slums. At 10:59 p.m., Gaffan turned into an empty lot and nosed the Jeep behind a dumpster. If the rest of the neighborhood was any guide, the lot would soon be home to yet another giant concrete mansion. They were two blocks from the hot zone the National Security Agency had found. If they stayed here too long, someone would call the police, but for now the helicopters were closer to downtown and most of the police were at roadblocks rather than on patrol. They had a few minutes. Wells called Shafer.

“You’re there?”

“Yes. I don’t see how this can work, but talk.”

“First, make sure we’re talking about the same place. Four blocks in, at the corner, there’s a three-story house that reaches almost to the edge of the lot, with a green minibus parked in front—”

“Yes.” They’d driven past that house maybe a minute before. Sitting in an office in Virginia, six thousand miles from these streets, Shafer could see over walls and into backyards invisible to Wells. The science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke had said it best: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

For fifteen minutes, Shafer described cars, yards, fences, garages, trying to find the clue that Wells needed. “Next”—Wells would say when Shafer had exhausted a property’s possibilities. “Next—”

And then Shafer said it.

“This one’s not on Shahab. Half a block down, looks like new construction, a garage behind it. Parked in front of the garage, I see a motorbike, small, and what looks like an ambulance—”

“Say again, Ellis.” Wells thought of the paramedic case he’d seen at 42 Aziz.

“In back. There’s a vehicle, maybe five years old, you know, a cargo van, white, red stripes and the red crescent logo on the side and brackets for a light bar on top, but I don’t actually see the light bar. Smaller than an American version, but an ambulance is pretty obvious, right?”

“Does it have a name, a hospital, anything like that?”

“I don’t see one.”

“What else?”

“The wall on this one is maybe eight feet, a little higher than the neighbors, nothing special. Nobody outside, nobody on the roof.”

“Any pipes coming off the house or the garage, any signs of ventilation?”

A pause. “Could be a vent off the left side of the garage. I can’t tell for sure.”

“Ways in and out?”

“Nothing obvious. It’s a fortress. The front gate’s solid, and the top of the walls is studded with glass. You can’t see it from the street, but it’s there. There’s no alley in back. You think this is it, John?”

“It’s our best shot.” By “best,” Wells meant only.

“’Cause it’s gonna be tough. Too bad that ambulance isn’t running. You could call nine-one-one, get them out of the house.”

Nine-one-one. Get them out. The words triggered an idea. “Maybe we can.”

WELLS HUNG UP, TOLD Gaffan about the ambulance.

“You know, it’s probably coincidence.”

“What if I can prove it’s not?” Wells explained his plan.

“That’s the best idea anybody’s had since this whole thing started.”

So Wells reached down for the cell phone he’d taken from Usman.

CHAPTER 24

CUTTING OFF KURLAND’S HAND HAD TAKEN LESS THAN A MINUTE. After hitting bone twice, Bakr found the groove of Kurland’s wrist and pressed the saw forward. Kurland tore at the vises, but their grip held him tight. He screamed, but Bakr couldn’t hear him over the shriek of the blade. After the first surge of blood coated the floor, Bakr was surprised how slowly it came, thin, unsteady dribbles.

When the operation — as Bakr thought of it — was done, Bakr picked Kurland’s hand off the floor and stuffed it into a plastic bag. He wanted it for a keepsake, if nothing more. He wrapped Kurland’s stump in cotton gauze and strapped it to Kurland’s chest. Then he tugged Kurland’s mouth open and poured a half-dozen Cipro pills down his throat. Bakr didn’t know if Cipro would help, but he didn’t much care. Kurland had only two or at most three more days to live, anyway. Probably for the best. His eyes were dead already.

Before Bakr left the cell, he gave Kurland another hit of morphine to calm him. Still, Bakr had to be careful. Between the shock and the pain, too much morphine might send Kurland over. Bakr intended a messier and more public death for Kurland, an on-camera beheading. When he was done, Bakr would tell America and the world how the Saudi government had supported him. He’d have dates and bank accounts, evidence that the United States couldn’t ignore. He imagined the response in Washington. The Americans had already invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Now they would do the same to Saudi Arabia. In turn, the Muslim world would rise against them. And Bakr would lead the battle. This was his destiny, the reason Allah had saved him that day on the dune.

AFTER WATCHING THE DIGITAL video of the amputation on his laptop, Bakr decided he needed to make two versions of his propaganda tape. The raw footage was too graphic. Even his stomach turned as he watched Kurland’s hand hanging half off the stepladder with the saw digging in. He wanted to enrage the Americans, not sicken them. He would post the uncut video only to a few jihadi websites.

With the help of Abdul, his translator, Bakr recut the video to focus on the minutes before and after the cutting. He included a glimpse of Kurland’s face and a longer cut to the gauze-covered stump to prove the tape was real. At the end of the video, he made an explicit threat to execute Kurland in twenty-four hours if his demands weren’t met — and explained that the Saudi government had sponsored him, with the details to be revealed after Kurland’s death.

Bakr planned to get this video to the world’s news channels the same way he had delivered the first tape. Abdul would drive a freshly burned DVD to Hassan’s safe house in Jeddah. From there, Hassan would copy it and upload it to a site run by a Finnish company that specialized in anonymous Internet hosting. They’d used a Russian company for the first video. Then they’d call Al Jazeera and CNN and give them a link to download the video. Bakr knew that the Americans had amazing abilities to monitor the Internet. He wanted to be sure that they couldn’t track these transfers anywhere near him.

But he took too long cutting the second video. The curfew turned into a problem. So he told Abdul to let Hassan know that they’d deliver the video in the morning. Technically, the deadline for Bakr’s demands wouldn’t pass until noon, and Bakr wanted to wait until after the deadline to post the video. Of course, the United States would never agree to his demands, but waiting would look better. In any case, the video would be online by late tomorrow afternoon, and the United States and Saudi Arabia would be on the edge of war.

Abdul called Hassan. “He’s not answering.”

“Leave a message, then.” Bakr wasn’t worried. Hassan might have been on the roof, watching the neighborhood. Or even on the toilet. “If we don’t hear from him, we’ll call back later.” From a different cell. Since the raid on his camp, Bakr had become even more cautious about his phones and e-mail accounts. He never used the same phone twice in a row, and he turned them off whenever he wasn’t using them. E-mail he tried to avoid entirely, although he couldn’t always.

Sure enough, a half hour later, with the video finally finished, Hassan called Abdul back. But Abdul spent most of the call shouting into the phone. “What did he say?” Bakr asked after Abdul hung up.

“I couldn’t hear very well. Something about a helicopter. He’s worried. I asked him for details, and he said he’d get Usman, and after a few seconds the phone disconnected.”

“Lots of helicopters out tonight.”

“I tell you, he sounded upset. Not like himself.”

There were only four of them in the house: Bakr, Abdul, Ramzi, and Marwan. The last two were in their mid-twenties and did the menial work, running errands and cooking and watching Kurland’s cell. Bakr wasn’t worried about Kurland escaping, but he did fear that Kurland might try to hurt himself, stop him from making the video.

“Come on,” Bakr said. “Let’s talk to the infidel.”

A MINUTE LATER, THEY stood beside Kurland. The ambassador’s skin was pale and slack. His breaths came fast and shallow. Bakr put a thumb into Kurland’s right nostril and tugged until Kurland came awake.

“Did you tell them where we are?” Bakr said, Abdul translating. Kurland shook his head. Bakr moved his hands up Kurland’s face. “Tell me. Or I’ll put out your eyes.”

Now Kurland giggled quietly. The sound he made was not noise as much as the idea of noise. “I believe you might. Wouldn’t even need the saw. Just get your thumbs in and push. You fool. How could I tell anyone anything? I don’t know where we are.”

“He says no,” Abdul said. “He says he doesn’t know where he is, anyway.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Yes.” Abdul didn’t want to translate exactly what Kurland had said. He had no wish to see Kurland’s eyes rolling loose, staring up at him from the floor of the cell.

“Fine, then.”

“They coming for you?” Kurland said. “Is that it? Coming to get you?”

“Tell him I’m going to cut his throat. The next time I see him,” Bakr said. Abdul hesitated. “Tell him,” Bakr repeated. So Abdul did.

“Good,” Kurland said. “It’ll be a relief.”

THEY HAD JUST LEFT the cell when Abdul’s phone buzzed with a text from Hassan. “False alarm. All clear.” Yet Bakr wasn’t relieved. The message should have had the code “66” at the end to prove it was real. It didn’t. Maybe the stress had caused Hassan to forget, though Bakr had drummed the necessity for the codes into his commanders.

Bakr stepped outside, paced slowly around the house. Could the muk or the Americans be on their way? Bakr couldn’t imagine how. Hassan didn’t know the house’s exact location. No one did, except the four men inside it. And nothing connected Bakr to it. He’d rented it months before, paying cash, from a man who owned a dozen houses in Mecca. Anyway, the announcers on Saudi 1, the official television network, had said that the muk were focusing their search on the Najd and Riyadh. The announcers might be lying, trying to hide the truth about the search. But Bakr didn’t think so. He had been very careful. And the neighborhood was quiet. The streets were empty, and the helicopters well away.

He was safe. They were safe. He was sure. Almost.

Inside, he picked up another phone, called Hassan. But the call went directly to voicemail. Hassan’s cell was off. What was happening in Jeddah? He wished he could send Abdul to check, but the curfew made travel impossible. They would have to wait until the morning.

Ten minutes later, Abdul’s phone buzzed again. This time the message came from Usman, not Hassan. “At Ramada Shubaika. Room 401. Come soon. No more messages.” The Shubaika was a neighborhood in north-central Mecca, a couple of kilometers away, reachable on back roads. Even with the curfew, Abdul or Ramzi could probably get there on a scooter. But Bakr didn’t understand how Usman had gotten to Mecca. Barely fifteen minutes before the curfew, Hassan had said that Usman was on the roof in Jeddah. And if something was really wrong, why had Hassan texted the all-clear?

Nothing made sense. Unless Hassan had already been captured when he called, and Usman had somehow escaped and gotten here. Bakr stared at the Nokia’s screen: “Come soon. No more messages.” He didn’t fully believe the words, but he was afraid to ignore them. He couldn’t go himself, and he couldn’t chance losing Abdul. But Ramzi… and if something went wrong, if this turned out to be a trap, Bakr was certain that Ramzi wouldn’t be afraid to martyr himself.

“Ramzi,” Bakr called. “Come here.”

CHAPTER 25

WELLS LAY PRONE BESIDE A CONCRETE WALL, WATCHING THE HOUSE where he hoped Kurland was hidden, waiting to see whether his bait would draw the jihadis. He was just a few feet off the road but well hidden from the houses on both sides, thanks to the high, unbroken walls that lined the street. And he’d hardly heard a car since the curfew started. The muk were in a mood, and no sane Saudi wanted to anger them.

Glass scratched at Wells through his thin gown. Dust coated his mouth and throat. Yet Wells couldn’t pretend that he didn’t enjoy this hunt. Growing up, he’d spent more than one November Saturday sitting with his dad on the forested flanks of the mountains outside Hamilton, waiting for deer and elk to bring their brimming bodies close. Hunting was as close as they came to bonding. Though his father hadn’t talked much, on those hunts or anywhere else. Most surgeons didn’t. A noisy operation was a troubled operation. Surgery was a strange way to spend a life. Surgeons saw the hidden damage time wreaked, blocked arteries and collapsed lungs. Inevitably, they grew to think of their fellow humans as broken machines. They cultivated their own inhumanity to cut with perfect dispassion. Yet a successful surgery was a kind of miracle. While Wells, whatever his philosophical musings, was a kind of anti-doctor, bringing death wherever he went, a one-man appointment in Samarra. Not for the first time, he wondered what his father would make of him.

So he lay on his stomach, staring at a gate two hundred feet away, in a hunt exactly like and exactly unlike the ones he’d known as a boy. Gaffan was a block back. Wells hoped someone came out in the next few minutes and made going in easy. He was tired of playing hunches. In Lebanon and again in Jeddah, they’d been forced to attack without knowing if they had the right target. This time, he wanted to be sure.

SOMEWHERE BEHIND THE GATE, an engine croaked to life. It was gaspowered and no more than a couple hundred CCs. It had to be the motorbike that Shafer had seen on the overheads. Wells stood, held his pistol loose. He’d left the M-16 in the car, figuring on silence and speed instead of maximum firepower. He was flush with the wall and certain that no one in the houses could see him.

The bike rumbled around the house, stopped at the gate. Two men murmured in Arabic, and the gate squeaked open sideways. Wells crossed a driveway, one house between him and the scooter. Behind him he heard the Jeep’s engine turn over and crank up. He silently cursed Gaffan. No. Noise could only hurt them.

Behind the gate, a man said, “What’s that?” and another said, “Should I go, then?” and the first said, “Hold on,” and the gate stopped squeaking. Wells ran, ran as best he could with his bloodspattered gown bunching around his legs. He heard the gate squeak again, only now it sounded as though it was closing—

He got to the corner of the house. The gate was rolling forward, two feet between its front edge and the wall. Wells angled toward the wall and spun nimbly inside the gate—

Which slammed closed behind him as he got inside. He saw two men. One sat on a motorbike five feet from Wells. The other stood at the far end of the gate, maybe twelve feet away. “Hey,” the man on the bike said. Wells lifted the Glock and shot him twice in the chest. The silenced rounds sounded like distant fireworks. The man’s mouth opened, and his hands came up and he fell off the back of the bike, his legs still squeezing the saddle—

Wells turned toward the second man, who was coming at him, running, and got one shot off too high and missed. Now the guy was on him, four feet away, and Wells saw the knife in his hand. Wells pulled the trigger again, and the round caught the guy in the left shoulder and twisted him sideways. The guy stumbled, and Wells stepped aside and arched his back like a toreador and let the knife slide by. When the guy had fallen into the wall, Wells raised his arm until the tip of the silencer was almost touching the back of his head and shot him twice, even though once would have worked just fine. The top of his skull exploded, and his brains and blood splattered onto the concrete.

From the house, a voice yelled, “Ramzi! Marwan! What’s happening?”

BAKR WAS IN THE kitchen, making a pot of tea, when he heard the commotion, the unmistakable puff of a silenced pistol. Even before he asked the question, he knew. They’d gotten here somehow, the muk or the Americans. He didn’t understand how they had tracked him, but the answer no longer mattered. He still had time to kill Kurland. And then to escape with his video camera and lay out the evidence that proved the princes had supported him. “Come,” he said to Abdul. The camera and knife were on the kitchen counter. He grabbed them and ran.

WELLS HEARD THE JEEP outside the gate. He didn’t have time to open it. Gaffan would have to get in on his own. Wells ran for the front door and then changed his mind and angled toward the driveway in back. He ducked low as he passed two barred windows. At the back-right corner of the house, he stopped. The ambulance was parked across a short apron of asphalt, in front of a big windowless garage.

He stepped into the yard between the house and garage. Through a barred window, he saw the kitchen. A pot of tea steamed on the stove, but the room was empty. The back door into the house was open a few inches. Wells listened for footsteps but heard nothing. Had they gone upstairs? They wouldn’t keep Kurland on the first floor. But Arab houses rarely had basements.

Then Wells remembered the cell in Lebanon that Meshaal had described. He ran for the garage, fearing that he was already too late.

BAKR AND ABDUL CLIMBED into the cell. They wouldn’t have time to make a proper video, but they could still put the camera on the stepladder and record the moment when Bakr cut off Kurland’s head.

Kurland stirred as they reached him. His skin was gray, his eyes red and inflamed, as if his body had responded to the amputation by giving up its defenses against infection. He said something Bakr didn’t understand and stuck out his tongue. He smelled like an open sewer, his insides rotting. Bakr didn’t understand how Kurland had gotten so sick so quickly. But no matter. Bakr set up the camera on the stepladder, its top step now coated with dried blood. “Tell him the Americans haven’t met our demands and the time for his execution has come,” he said to Abdul.

“Do we have time?”

“Do it.”

Abdul spoke. Kurland responded with two words that needed no translation.

“Ask him if he wants to convert to Islam.”

This time the answer was three words.

“Fine, then. Tell him that by coming to the Arabian Peninsula, he’s broken Islamic law, and that he’s rejected the opportunity to save himself by converting. Tell him the penalty is death.”

THE GARAGE WAS A big concrete shed, three car-sized bays wide. Wells tried to lift the front doors, found them locked. He ran to the windowless door on the side of the garage, pressed on its steel handle. It, too, was locked. He wondered if the men inside were waiting, standing inside the door with their rifles poised. Forcing your way into a room without covering fire was an all-time no-no. But he needed to keep coming. So far, the sirens weren’t any closer. Help — if the Saudi police qualified as help — was a ways off.

Wells put the tip of the silencer to the edge of the door, just above the handle. He angled it diagonally down and squeezed the trigger twice. By his count, he’d fired seven rounds here, and three at the house in Jeddah. He still had nine rounds left. Which ought to be enough.

From somewhere inside the garage, a man shrieked.

KURLAND OPENED HIS EYES. They were back. They were talking. The big one talked in Arabic, and the little one translated. That was how it went. But whatever language they spoke, they were beasts. They’d taken his hand. His left hand, with his wedding ring. Too late, he’d realized his ring was gone. He wished they’d taken his right. If he was going to die in this little room, he wanted to die wearing his ring.

Now they were back for the rest of him. He knew even before they spoke. They didn’t offer him water or Coke or anything else. No fake courtesies. Not that he wanted any. They seemed rushed. They made their speeches, their psychotic justifications, and ignored his curses and came at him. The big one holding a knife that must have been a foot long, with a black handle and a gleaming serrated edge. Kurland was afraid now, more afraid than he’d ever been, but angry, too. He wanted to see Barbara again. His kids. And grandkids. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to die. Though no one ever did.

Fine, then. He would die. But he didn’t plan to make it easy. Dignity didn’t matter to him anymore. His skin burned and his skull throbbed and his swollen tongue filled his mouth like a loaf of bread. They’d taken his dignity when they took his hand. So when they got close he shook his arm free of its sling and pushed the tip of the stump against the wall behind him—the pain—

He screamed. And dug his heels into the floor to rock the chair off its back legs, and leaned forward and toppled over, feeling a ridiculous surge of triumph as the floor rose toward him—

THE SHRIEK BROKE OFF. Then started again, this time resolving into a man’s voice, words in English: “No, you don’t, you bastards—” Wells pushed open the door and came into the garage in three big sideways steps, holding the Glock in a two-hand grip, keeping his shoulders forward and down to make himself a smaller target. All useless if someone was waiting inside, but he had to try. He looked side to side—

A Toyota Camry, a shovel, a pick, a humming electrical generator, empty water bottles, an orange first-aid kit that looked like the twin of the one he’d found in Jeddah. No jihadis. He ran around the Camry and saw two flat metal plates, big, the ones that utility workers used to cover the holes they made when they dug up streets. A crude hinged hatch had been cut into the front plate. The hatch, two feet square, was unlocked. And open.

The hole was about twelve feet deep. Wells peeked down, saw metal rods embedded in the wall that seemed to serve as a crude ladder. But the hatch was too narrow and the cell too deep to allow him to glimpse the entire space below. Unless he squatted down and put his face to the hatch, he couldn’t see Kurland or the kidnappers.

BAKR COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT Kurland had knocked over his chair. Crazy American. He and Abdul flipped it up, ignoring Kurland, who was yelling and waving his stump, blood leaking from the gauze. Bakr reached for his knife, but Kurland thrashed his head sideways so he couldn’t get a clean stroke. Bakr tried to grab his chin, but Kurland snapped his jaw like a wild dog. “Get the morphine,” Bakr said to Abdul. The syringes were in the first-aid kit, in the garage.

“We don’t have time—”

“I want the video to be clean, not this screaming—”

“The video, the video, you’re insane—”

“Do it!”

WELLS HEARD THEM YELLING and backed away from the hatch and dropped onto his hands and knees. They didn’t know he was here. For the first time, he thought he might succeed. He was far enough from the hatch that the jihadi climbing out wouldn’t see him, close enough to be able to kill the guy cleanly. “This is stupid,” the man below said. His feet pounded on the metal rungs, rising step by step—

The man’s hands emerged and the top of his head, thick black hair. He rose through the hatch as if he were materializing from empty space, a magic trick. He swung his head around, defenseless. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose as he saw Wells, and Wells leaned forward and put the tip of the silencer to his forehead and pulled the trigger and blew off the top of his head with a 9-millimeter kiss—

And gravity had its way with his corpse and sucked him back into the cell. Wells stood up, knowing he had only one chance. He stepped toward the hatch, and without hesitating put his hands at his sides and stepped through the hole like a kid jumping off the high dive—

He fell through. Halfway down he caught his shoulder on one of the rungs embedded in the wall. He twisted sideways and wrenched a knee as he landed. He stumbled forward over the legs of the man he’d killed. He braced himself against the wall, without a shot—

ABDUL FELL THROUGH THE hatch, dead, and before Bakr could fully register what was happening, another man plunged into the cell, wearing a bloodstained gown, a pistol in his hand. The man landed awkwardly and fell forward, toward the side of the cell, and Bakr looked at him and then at Kurland, and knew what he needed to do—

WELLS TURNED HIMSELF AND raised the pistol, but he was late, too late—

BAKR SCREAMED “ALLAHU AKBAR!” and drove the knife into Kurland’s belly, a killing stroke, Bakr knew, even as the man in the corner finally got his pistol up and the rounds tore at him, two in his arm and two more in his chest and a marvelous black warmth filled him—

WELLS FIRED UNTIL HE had no ammunition left and pushed himself up and hobbled across the cell. The blood splashed out of Kurland and pooled on the concrete. Bakr had torn through the big arteries in his stomach. Wells knew he couldn’t do anything, but he knelt before Kurland and pressed his hands to the wound and tried to stanch the flow. “I’m sorry,” he said. Kurland’s eyes were closing, but he locked on Wells when he heard the English.

“American?”

“Yes.” The blood seeped around the knife blade, around Wells’s hands.

Kurland’s eyes drooped. “Stay with me,” Wells said. He pushed harder. Kurland groaned.

“My ring. My wife. Ring.”

Wells saw the stump, the left hand missing, and understood. “Your wedding ring.”

“Tell her—” Kurland’s breath came fast. His voice was a whisper.

“Tell her—” Wells said.

“Tell her I fought.” His head slumped forward, and he was gone.

WELLS CLOSED HIS OWN eyes and leaned against the wall in a room with two men he’d killed and a third he’d failed to save. He would have world enough and time to consider how he could have saved Kurland. What he should have done differently. What his next move would be. Whether Saeed or someone else needed to pay for this atrocity. For now, he closed his eyes and sat in silence for eternity, or a minute or two. Until he heard someone in the garage above.

“John,” Gaffan yelled. “You in here?”

“Down here.”

“We clear?”

“Clear.”

Gaffan’s footsteps clanked over the plates. “Everything okay?”

“No,” Wells said quietly. “It’s not even close.”