Anne Marie looked, and she could see it low in the distance. “We’re at minimal staff, at the moment. And actually we’re on the way back to—”
The connection was broken and for a moment Anne Marie considered ordering the captain to speed up and change course directly for Monaco, because for whatever reason the Saudi was coming out here to speak with her would not be pleasant. It was even possible that some of the important Saudi princes who’d secretly invested in the MG were getting pressure from the king to bail out, which would destroy the fund so that the remaining power hitters would be coming to Anne Marie for answers.
She’d sent Felicity ’s helicopter back to Monaco with the last of her guests, so the ship’s landing pad was empty and she couldn’t make that excuse.
Make an end run, Senior had advised. Well, if ever there was the time for something so dramatic it was now.
She picked up the ship’s phone lying on the table beside her and ordered the captain to come into the wind, slow to idle, and prepare to board a helicopter.
Almost immediately the ship turned toward the southeast and slowed down. One of the crewmen came out of a hatch onto the landing pad two decks up and just aft of the bridge, and Anne Marie followed him up.
Within just a couple of minutes the sleek Bell 429 twin-tailed corporate helicopter with the Saudi coat of arms, a palm tree above crossed scimitars, flared opposite Felicity ’s starboard quarter and the pilot slid to a hover a few feet above the helipad and set down. It was a slick bit of flying, but the royals had the money to hire the best.
A rear door opened and al-Naimi, dark, sleek, slightly built, but with the characteristically large Saudi nose, dressed in Western business clothes, beckoned Anne Marie to join him.
“Tell the captain to hold here,” she told the crewman, and ducking low she hurried across to the helicopter and climbed aboard. As soon as the door was closed and she’d secured her seat belt, the pilot took off and headed south.
Al-Naimi was a cautious man who never spoke about anything of consequence if he were in an environment that wasn’t directly under his control. There could be, and in fact were, microphones and video cameras concealed in every compartment of the yacht. Sometimes Anne Marie found that it was in her best interest to see and hear what was going on with her guests. The surveillance and recording equipment had come in handy on several occasions, and Anne Marie knew al-Naimi well enough to figure that the man had to know, or at least suspect as much.
They’d first met five years ago in Dubai when Anne Marie had begun to attract the interest of several Saudi princes. The GIP had vetted her and the fund, and al-Naimi had come around to introduce himself. They’d met on several other occasions, at cocktail parties, and once in Monaco aboard a yacht owned by one of the royals. And their meetings had never really been friendly, nor had al-Naimi ever been cold, just neutral. But Anne Marie had been warned a couple of years before by her friend in the UAE’s Ministry of Finance that she should always be on guard against al-Naimi’s wrath.
“Do nothing to anger this man,” she’d been told.
Now it was impossible to tell from al-Naimi’s expression what his mood was. And Anne Marie thought that was an ominous sign. The professional poker player who held a straight flush had the same impenetrable look in his eyes.
“I’ll not keep you long, Ms. Marinaccio,” al-Naimi said conversationally. “I’ve just come to make a trade with you. One that you may not refuse, and the details of which are not negotiable.”
Anne Marie just nodded. She had no idea where this was heading, except that she felt as if she were in the biggest danger of her life.
“I want no denials from you, no excuses, no explanations. We know about your Iraq oil development fund, and the names of our royal family members who have invested in the fund. For the moment we will take no action to stop you, though officially we cannot approve. You understand.”
Anne Marie started to say yes, but al-Naimi gestured for silence.
“We also know of your investments in certain Chinese business ventures, and we approve. In time these will bring a good return. But we also know that your fund is heading for trouble because of the problems in the American mortgage market — some of which you helped create. High gasoline and diesel prices at the pump stopped people from driving, airlines raised their rates, and the cost to ship a standard container of products across the Pacific went from three thousand to nine thousand dollars, eliminating profits.”
“One hundred and fifty dollars per barrel was the breaking point,” Anne Marie said.
“Which is why you will help us raise the light sweet crude to three hundred dollars, perhaps four hundred per barrel.”
Anne Marie almost laughed, but she thought better of it.
“We want you to make gasoline and diesel fuel far too expensive to use merely for transportation,” al-Naimi said. “You will do this in such a way that my government cannot do, even with the help of the new al-Quaeda.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The U.S. and eventually China will switch to electrically driven means of transportation, and your fund will encourage this.”
Anne Marie spread her hands. “It’s already happening. There’ll be more nuclear power plants, solar farms, and T. Boone Pickens is pushing wind farms and natural gas.”
“You will make those efforts unpalatable to the public, first in America and then elsewhere. Electricity will be generated by oil, which will be purchased from us, and from your Iraqi oil fields.”
“I don’t have that power.”
“Perhaps not alone, but you will find a way. Make nuclear power unsafe. Another Three Mile Island could be arranged. Our trade will begin there. Later you’ll concentrate on coal.”
“It will take time.”
“I’ve spoken with certain investors who will give you the time you need. We understand such things.”
“In trade for what?” Anne Marie asked.
Al-Naimi picked up a handset and ordered the pilot to return to the yacht. He looked at Anne Marie as he might have looked at a child. “For your life, of course, Ms. Marinaccio. Could there be any better medium of exchange?”
* * *
Felicity put in at Monaco and Anne Marie took her Gulfstream IV back to Dubai that evening, landing at the Dubai International Airport at dawn where she was picked up by her limo and brought to her in-town residence, the penthouse at the Marina.
After she’d dismissed her bodyguards, she went out to the balcony where one of the house staff brought her a pot of Earl Grey with lemon, and she looked out over the waterfront, starting to get busy now. She’d gotten a few hours sleep on the airplane, but she was still dead tired, only she couldn’t shut down her mind. She was three thousand miles from the Med where al-Naimi had issued his warning, and it seemed like a lifetime.
Her decision would pit her either against the Saudi intelligence apparatus, in which case the MG would almost certainly go under and her life be put in jeopardy, or against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in which case she would need plausible deniability. Nothing could point in her direction. Though what the Saudis wanted would probably still be impossible — four hundred dollar oil for electrical generation would put an untenable burden on the American economy. It was something that al-Naimi and whoever was directing him did not understand. Of course China and a rapidly emerging India could soon take over from the Americans, but it was the transition period that bothered Anne Marie.
In the end, there was no decision. Not really. Once she’d started down this path there’d never been the possibility of getting out cleanly, no matter how much she’d talked herself into believing she could. It was oil, after all, which had its tendrils in just about every corner of the planet. Almost no place on earth was free of needing it.
At noon, she finally telephoned Wolfhardt. “I’m back.”
“I heard. Trouble?”
News traveled fast, and her chief of special projects had ears everywher
e, including a satellite feed from the surveillance equipment on Felicity, aboard the Gulfstream, and inside her penthouse here, in Monaco, and her house on the Palm Jebel Ali man-made islands in the bay. He would know about al-Naimi’s brief visit to the ship, but not what they had talked about in the air, though he knew what was going on more than anyone else in the fund, and was putting two and two together.
“I have a job for you, this one could be the biggest yet,” Anne Marie said. “Get us a tee time.”
“Already have. Two o’clock.”
* * *
The Majlis eighteen at the Emirates Golf Club was the best in Dubai, green fairways snaking in and around the desert sand dunes, and it was the first grass course in the Middle East. Before then golfers played in what amounted to eighteen-hole sand traps.
Wolfhardt was waiting outside the pro shop with a cart on which he’d already loaded his own and Anne Marie’s clubs. He was a short, stocky man of fifty-six, with broad, powerful shoulders and a round, almost cherubic face that had fooled more than one person who wanted to believe a man’s smile was a mirror to his soul. In fact Wolfhardt was as ruthless as he was brilliant; driven, he’d once admitted, by some inner demon. He was a sociopath by birth, a killer who only valued money as a way of keeping score on his “jobs,” as he called his assignments.
Since joining the MG he’d seldom pulled the trigger himself. Instead he’d arranged the hits, and sabotage and suicide bombings, with an exquisite precision he’d learned from the Russians at the KGB’s School One outside of Moscow, from years of direct experience in the field, and from retraining at the Dzerzhinsky KGB Higher School and the Red Banner Yuri Andropov KGB Institute, both in Moscow.
He’d never been married, so far as Anne Marie knew, though from time to time he would disappear to somewhere in Europe, usually for no more than one week, and each time he came back it was clear he’d shed a little of his tension. But Anne Marie never asked about Wolfhardt’s personal life or where he went and why.
“Good afternoon, Gunther,” Anne Marie said, sitting down on the passenger side.
“Good afternoon,” Wolfhardt replied, very little German accent in his deep bass voice.
He drove down to the first tee where they had to wait five minutes before the foursome ahead of them chipped on to the green. Play today would be slow, but Anne Marie didn’t mind. Wolfhardt would either accept the assignment or he’d refuse. It wouldn’t be about money, it would be about personal consequences, and before he agreed he would first have to see the entire operation as well as its aftermath in one seamless piece, with nothing reaching back here. Not simply plausible deniability, but complete and total distance, not so much as the hint of any connection, and Anne Marie thought it might take some time to bring Wolfhardt to that point.
The afternoon was desert hot and airless, but the golf cart was air-conditioned, and the small cooler just behind the seats held an ice-cold bottle of Krug and one crystal glass for Anne Marie and a bottle of Evian for Wolfhardt.
Both of them were indifferent golfers, though no matter how poorly Anne Marie played, she always managed to beat Wolfhardt, though they never actually kept score.
And Wolfhardt always kept his silence at times like these when it was obvious Anne Marie had something important on her mind. Nor did Anne Marie ever speak until she had worked out her approach. No cocktail party small talk, no banter between friends. This was strictly business.
Until the difficult 434-yard par-4 eighth hole, which required a long but precise drive uphill if there was to be any chance of reaching the tiny, sharply sloped green in two. Most golfers were happy to walk away with a double bogey, because even in two strokes it often took four putts to put it in.
They had to wait again for the foursome ahead of them, and Anne Marie poured a glass of champagne. “The job I have for you will be difficult,” she began. “There will be consequences even more far-reaching than nine/eleven.”
“The Saudis?”
Anne Marie looked at him, and for the first time wondered if the East German had become too powerful, too all-knowing, maybe omnipotent. But there was no way out now.
“Al-Naimi came out to see me. They want four hundred dollars per barrel.”
“They’d lose the American market,” Wolfhardt said. “Anyway what do they think we could do about it? You said another nine/eleven.”
“The U.S. is switching to an electrical economy, or at least one that’s hybrid, and eventually it’ll catch on elsewhere. Europe first, eventually China and India.”
“Nukes are back in, and wind and solar power are getting the press. What do the Saudis have in mind, because crashing airplanes into places like the World Trade Center or the Pentagon wouldn’t help. Even if they destroyed the White House or—” Wolfhardt stopped in midsentence and an odd, calculating, even thoughtful look came into his round face. “Impossible to stop all that. There’s plenty of natural gas, especially in the U.S. for the interim until the new nuclear plants come online. That’ll be their main source.”
“They want oil-fired power plants.”
Wolfhardt smiled, obviously knowing what had been suggested to Anne Marie, and appreciating the grand sweep of the project. “Consequences indeed.”
“We’ll start with the nukes. Make them even more unpalatable then they were after Three Mile Island.”
“Or Chernobyl.”
“Can it be done on a large enough scale to make a difference?” Anne Marie asked, hopeful for the first time since she’d left Felicity in Monaco.
Wolfhardt shrugged, most of his attention elsewhere, planning, looking ahead, balancing odds, risk management. His concentration was one of the traits, besides his intelligence, experience, and ruthlessness, that had attracted Anne Marie.
“Nuclear power stations are vulnerable, especially in the States,” he said, almost dreamily. “A nuclear accident would be difficult but certainly not impossible. Their Homeland Security is a joke. Even though they have some good people working for them, no one takes anything seriously. Their eyes are in the sky, not on the front door.”
“Americans are leery of nuclear power. We need to make them frightened enough to be willing to shut them down, even when they know they need more electricity.”
Wolfhardt focused. “It’ll take more than an accident.”
“Two, or three.”
“Public sentiment. The public has to be swayed in a very large way by someone who is very good. Someone trusted to tell the truth.”
Anne Marie didn’t understand, and Wolfhardt could see it because he went on.
“Within a couple of years after nine/eleven Americans had already begun to resent security measures at the airports. They’d forgotten. You’ll need to find someone with the means to keep in everyone’s mind that nuclear power means death. Someone who can make it a cause. Someone charismatic, because if all you convince are the Greenpeacers and not the man and woman on Main Street, you will lose.”
Anne Marie didn’t need to give the suggestion any thought: she knew who was right for that job. The man who had the power, the connections, the means, the will, and the ability — as well as the motivation.
The golfers ahead of them had taken their second shots and were heading up to the green.
Anne Marie nodded, confident finally that she had found the means for her salvation, or at least the end run that would give her time to work her way free and escape with her money and her life intact. “I have just the man for that part. Can you manage yours?”
“Of course,” Wolfhardt said. “Like you, I have just the man. But as you warned, there will be consequences.”
“There are consequences to everything we do.”
PART ONE
Fourteen Months Later
ONE
Brian DeCamp, forty-three, slender with thinning sand-colored hair, unremarkable in looks and stature, parked his rental Ford Taurus next to a tour bus in the visitors center of the Hutchinson Island Nuclear Power Plant on Florida
’s east coast eighty miles north of Miami. It was a few minutes before noon on a sunny day, but driving up along A1A, the highway that paralleled the ocean, he’d not really noticed the beaches or the occasional stretches of pretty scenery. Instead he’d mentally prepared himself for what was coming next.
Prepare first, shoot second, and you might just live to return to base. Never underestimate your enemy. Kill whenever, wherever the chance presents itself. Take no prisoners. Show no mercy. Wage total war, not police actions.
He’d learned those lessons from his days as a young lieutenant in the South African Defence Force’s Buffalo Battalion.
The Battalion’s primary mission had been to fight a brutal unconventional war behind enemy lines in Angola. And he’d been damned good, so that when he finally walked away seventeen years ago when the South African government had betrayed the unit by disbanding it and disavowing its tactics, he’d been one of the most decorated and youngest full bird colonels in any South African unit.
And he’d been a bitter man because he’d been forced to leave the intense camaraderie and esprit de corps of men who had shared the fighting and violent deaths with a sense of purpose; the holy zeal for the motherland, for the empire.
In the end the Battalion’s ideal had arisen from a letter a Roman centurion had written to a cousin back in Rome when the center began to fall apart: Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire. If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on the desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!
He got out of the car and headed across to the low building called Energy Encounter that served as the facility’s visitors center and he was still surprised at how easy it had been to get permission for a tour of the plant, though it had taken him the better part of the year to put everything together before he’d applied. It was silly, actually, after 9/11, for Homeland Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration to be so lax with such vulnerable targets that had the potential for destruction and loss of lives a hundred times worse than the World Trade Center.
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