The Scorpion's Gate

by Richard A. Clarke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Maybe,” Rusty replied.

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

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

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

  “Some would, yes,” Rusty echoed.

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

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

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

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

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

  8

  FEBRUARY 12

  The Homa Hotel

  Tehran, Iran

  Brian Douglas woke to his wristwatch alarm at five-thirty. He dressed quickly in a set of old clothes he had bought years ago in Tehran. He had removed the labels, in case anyone asked how a first-time visitor had such clothing. On top of them, he donned a worn overcoat and a hat typical of the Tehran street in winter. He walked down the stairs from his fourth-floor room and exited by the door near the kitchen, avoiding anyone monitoring the lobby.

  The traffic had already started up, even before six o’clock, even before the sun. The green buses and orange taxis coughed their contribution to the day’s smog. The sky was low, heavy, and gray. The snow from three days before had turned to brown slush or short whitish walls where the plows had pushed it up. The air smelled wet and of diesel.

  He walked quickly, checking discreetly to see if he had a tail, past the Brazilian Embassy. Then he turned and headed toward Park

  Mellat and the Metro. The park dated from the 1960s, when it was begun as an English garden. Now its evergreen trees were a rare, pleasant sign of life in midwinter.

  The Metro station looked like a concrete bunker from outside, but inside it was bright, clean, and filled with color. Modern art covered the walls in the ticket hall. The escalator down to the platform was enclosed in a brushed-steel tube, and the platform itself was broad and well lit. Few people were waiting for the train, but it came quickly. Douglas smiled as the cars’ arrival reminded him that the Metro trains in Tehran were emblazoned in red, white, and blue.

  He went only one stop and got off at the major switching point for the three subway lines, Imam Khomeini Station. Its grandeur reminded him of Moscow’s palacelike subway. The magnificent new airport and the sparkling Metro were certainly unlike the beleaguered Tehran of the eighties and nineties. The oil wealth of the twenty-first century was beginning to be invested in modern infrastructure.

  Now the morning rush was beginning in earnest. People moved quickly and in growing numbers. Douglas went up a stair to the main level. Shop stalls lined the hallway, selling flowers, pastries, tobacco, and magazines. He went to the last stall. As he bought a newspaper, he discreetly looked up at the men who ran the newsstand. The father was there. Still there.

  Brian waited to pay the older of the two men behind the counter. With his head down, looking at the magazines, Brian Douglas asked in Farsi, “Do you have the Baghiatollah Azam medical journal?”

  After a moment, the older man behind the counter spoke softly as he placed the change on the countertop. “No. For that you have to go to the university bookstore. Do you know where it is?” “Yes, thank you, it’s on Mollasadra,” Douglas said in a Tehran accent, and was quickly gone down the corridor and into the enormous crowd now filling the main hall of the terminal. A gray man among so many, he blended immediately and disappeared.

  At eight o’clock, a groggy-sounding Brian Douglas answered the hotel’s wake-up call on the third ring and asked, in English, what the weather was like. At nine, he joined Bowers in the breakfast room.

  Office of the Secretary of Defense

  The Pentagon, Suite E-389

  Arlington, Virginia

  “Ever been in there before, Admiral?” the sergeant asked. Adams shook his head no.

  “Biggest desk in Washington, maybe in the world. Goes back to the first SECDEF in the 1940s. Job got to him. Went loony, they say. Checked into Bethesda and didn’t check out. Jumped out the window from his room on the top floor of the tower. At least that’s what I heard.”

  Adams was not really listening to the receptionist in the Secretary’s outer office. He was wondering why he was there. After the Bright Star planning conference in Tampa, he had flown to Washington to check in with friends in Navy Headquarters. It was always good to show your face there once in a while, to learn the corridor gossip, who was going to be promoted, who was getting what assignment. Now that he was a three-star admiral, his promotion options had narrowed. There was a chance that he would make it to four-star, to head up one of the Unified Combatant Commands like Pacific Command, PACOM. The Commander in Chief Pacific, CinCPAC, was nicknamed the Viceroy because he was Washington’s proconsul in the Pacific. You needed to be more visible in Washington than he had been, however, to have a real shot at that job. You needed to have spent time on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on...

  “Admiral Adams?” an Air Force officer asked, breaking Brad Adams’s self-assessment. “Major Chun, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Please come with me.”

  Adams followed the young officer to a small, windowless office in what was apparently the second layer in the enormous suite that housed Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad and his immediate staff. Adams knew that the full Office of the Secretary was a small agency with over two thousand employees. They sat on top of a pyramid of over a million civilians and almost two million military personnel in the department. At the base of that pyramid were over five million “private sector” employees of defense contractors. The man inside these walls made decisions that affected every one of those eight million people, and many more beyond.

  “Admiral, I am awfully sorry, sir, but it does not look like the Secretary will be able to see you this afternoon, sir. There has been a last-min
ute change in his schedule, happens all the time, he had to go to the White House this morning, and then his hearing with Appropriations got shifted . . .” Major Chun babbled from behind a small desk piled high with folders and stacks of papers.

  “Major, stop,” Adams said softly, raising his right palm. “Back up, son. Why was I asked here in the first place? I was up the hill at Navy Headquarters at BUPERS when I get a call from an aide in the CNO’s office, all excited, saying I need to get my ass over here ASAP. Major, I have never even met the Secretary before or even been on the third deck of the E Ring.”

  Major Chun rolled his eyes and laughed. “Admiral, I am just a butt boy around here. I do what the colonel tells me. He does what the milaide, General Patterson, tells him. And the general, sir, he does what SECDEF or Secretary Kashigian tells him. It all flows downhill, sir, if you will excuse my French.”

  “Major, I haven’t always been an admiral. In another lifetime, when I was younger than you are now, I was flag aide to CinCPAC in Honolulu. Never saw the sun. Never went to the beach. Might as well have been in Kansas.” Adams smiled, remembering why he had always tried for ship assignments after that.

  “Yes, sir, Admiral. Well, sir, all I know is that you were on the first schedule this morning, supposed to have an audience—I mean, a meeting with SECDEF. Just you two and Mr. Kashigian. But now there is no time left because he is flying out of here tonight for the NATO ministerial meeting in Turkey. So instead, I am supposed to take you downstairs to get a briefing and then manifest you for the flight to Turkey tonight. Guess you’ll talk on the plane.”

  Adams’s mind raced. A private meeting with the Secretary of Defense could mean an interview for a four-star job, but the Navy had not nominated anyone yet. It was too early in the year. “Turkey, huh? Well, I was going to fly commercial back to Bahrain tonight, so I guess at least Turkey is in the right direction. What’s the briefing?”