by Jeff Nesbit
As Elizabeth left the checkpoint, she looked off to her left. More American military convoys moved slowly in the distance. While no one said much about it, she knew from her many conversations with friends that one of the highest priorities for Israel was to secure facilities in and around Beersheba while the peace talks were underway in Washington and elsewhere.
At the top of the list was an oil pipeline that ran through the Negev desert and connected Ashkelon on the Mediterranean and Eilat. The pipeline, which had been built and co-owned by Iran once, was a crucial piece of the national infrastructure in Israel. Securing its safety was paramount to the Israeli authorities.
As Elizabeth drove toward the brand-new Palestinian compound, she wondered if all of this wasn’t just a dream—one that would disappear when the dust settled.
Time would tell.
04
Dulles International Airport
Washington, DC
“Madame Secretary, I’m sorry, but I have my orders,” the hapless aide said politely at the other end of the line. “The information is contained at the highest levels, on a need-to-know basis. As soon as I have clearance, I will certainly inform you.”
“And you don’t think I have a need to know?” Secretary Moran asked the aide, a colonel who now served the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I’m about to meet with a Saudi prince who was obviously the target of a terrorist attack—on our own soil—that we narrowly prevented. And you don’t think I have a need to know why it happened?”
“It’s not what I believe,” the colonel explained. “But I have my orders.”
“I understand,” Moran said evenly. She had learned long ago to keep her anger in check, but it wasn’t easy at times like this. “But I’ll tell you what, Colonel. I’m going to ask you to put this call on hold. I want you to walk across the hall and ask your boss a simple question. Do I hear the information from the joint chiefs, or do I hear it from President Camara five minutes from now?”
“Madame Secretary, I don’t think you need—”
“Go. Ask the question. I’ll be here when you come back on the line.”
Secretary Moran handed her cell phone to her aide, Katie Devlin, who’d been listening to one side of the conversation discreetly from a couple feet away. “Here—hold on to this for me until he comes back on the line. His name is Colonel something-or-other. I’m heading back out onto the tarmac to greet the Saudis.”
“Madame Secretary, shouldn’t we wait until they tell us it’s clear?” Devlin asked, even as she pressed the phone up to her ear to listen in.
“I don’t care at this point,” Moran said. “Let them stop me. I intend to meet with the Saudis.” She whirled and moved through the double doors to head back outside. Her internal security detail scrambled to keep up with her.
Katie Devlin smiled. This toughness, this resoluteness, was what she most admired about her boss. The detail would detain Secretary Moran briefly before she made her way out to the Airbus 380, but she would get her way sooner rather than later and manage to greet the Saudi prince on the tarmac.
There was an audible click on the cell phone Katie was holding as the aide to the joint chiefs chairman came back on the line. “Madame Secretary, if you can hold for a moment, I have General Alton on the other line. He would like to talk to you about the situation.”
“Hold on,” Katie said, but it was too late.
General John Alton came on the line. Alton was the first army general appointed vice chair of the joint chiefs stationed at the White House to serve the president directly. “Madame Secretary, they’ve relayed your concerns to me—”
“General Alton,” Katie interrupted nervously, “the secretary of state is about to meet with the Saudis. She handed her cell to me. My name is Katie Devlin. I’m one of her aides.”
“Of course, Ms. Devlin,” the general said smoothly, without missing a beat. “I’ll wait, if you’d like to see if your boss is available. Or I can call back.”
“No, no. Let me see if she can talk right now.”
Katie hustled through the double doors, but she was too late. Secretary Moran had managed to shake loose from her detail and was striding purposefully across the tarmac to greet the Saudi prince and his delegation planeside.
“General Alton,” Katie said, “it appears that Secretary Moran is going to greet the Saudis planeside in a few seconds. She’ll have to get back to you.”
“That’s fine,” General Alton said. “But perhaps I can help clarify things somewhat. It would be helpful if the secretary had this information prior to her meeting with the Saudis.” He paused. “As I understand it, Ms. Devlin, you have clearance? Top Secret, I believe?”
“Yes, I do,” Katie said, hurrying across the tarmac to catch up with her boss.
“Well, then, if you could relay the following to Secretary Moran, I’d be grateful. But please be discreet. I’d prefer it if this information remains with the secretary.”
“Certainly.”
“You witnessed the two military aircraft that engaged shortly before the Saudi plane landed?”
“Yes,” Katie said. “They seemed to come out of nowhere and then fired missiles at something on the ground.”
“A target directly in the flight path of the Saudi plane, is that right?”
“Yes, it appeared to be right under the plane as it was landing.”
“Ms. Devlin,” the general said slowly, “we just stopped a terrorist attack aimed at the Saudi plane. We received credible information and confirmed it right before the plane was scheduled to touch down at Dulles. Those planes destroyed two MANPADS on the back of a truck that were about to fire at the Saudi plane.”
“MANPADS?” Katie asked.
General Alton chuckled. “‘A man-portable air defense system. They’re surface-to-air missiles. They can be fired from the shoulder or mounted on the back of a pickup. In this case, it appears these were set up on the back of a truck. The gunner was about to use optical line of sight to guide both missiles at the Saudi plane.”
Katie tried not to gasp. “The gunner? You mean a person?”
“Yes, Ms. Devlin, there was a gunner, a person, at the back of the truck. We don’t know if he drove the truck there, parked, and then moved to the back of the truck to fire the weapons, or if there were more with him. We’re analyzing the satellite photos, before and after. But our initial assessment is that there was only the one person who drove the truck there and then moved to the back to guide the surfaceto-air missiles.”
“This…MANPAD. Is it a defensive system?”
“They’re designed as defensive systems,” General Alton clarified, “but they can be used to target low-flying aircraft. You need line of sight, and the aircraft has to be well below twenty thousand feet. As you saw for yourself, that Saudi plane presents an awfully big target.”
“And it was landing when your jets intercepted. So…this gunner? Do we know who it might be?”
“Not yet,” General Alton said. “But we’ll know soon enough. We know that al Qaeda in Yemen has been talking about something like this for weeks, which is what we’d locked on to. But we only confirmed the real threat right before the plane landed.”
Katie took a deep breath. “General, is it possible this person, this gunner, was an American citizen? If so, that would change everything.”
“I seriously doubt we’re looking at an American. But as I said, we’ll know soon enough.”
“Who would do such a thing? And how could they get weapons like that into this country?”
“Ms. Devlin, it’s conceivable to bring a shoulder-held surface-toair missile across the border with Mexico on the back of a truck, to answer your second question. And who would do such a thing? Clearly, someone who has their sights set on the Saudis and the House of Saud.”
Katie nodded to herself. She knew al Qaeda in Yemen had nearly assassinated the Saudi prince, who was the head of intelligence. They’d made no secret of their intent to pursue terrori
sm against the House of Saud. But taking the fight to American soil? That was new.
There could be only one answer. Someone within the House of Saud knew of the emerging succession plan—and didn’t like it. More specifically, they didn’t like the Saudi prince, Muhammad al Faisal, who was about to meet with the Americans, and had chosen an opportune moment to target his Airbus 380 when it was in vulnerable airspace.
Prince Muhammad al Faisal, the governor overseeing Mecca, was about to move up in the House of Saud. Katie’s boss had been in discussions with the Saudi royal family for months. A succession plan was emerging in the House of Saud, one that would shuffle the deck and bring both a new foreign minister and a defense minister into the picture, a new crown prince, and, ultimately, a new king of Saudi Arabia.
While she could only guess at this point, Secretary of State Jennifer Moran had told Katie she was certain she would learn today that Saudi King Faisal had decided to allow a change in the power structure.
Aging Saudi Crown Prince Saud bin Abdul Aziz would make way for his brother, Prince Natal, who would be named the new crown prince for a time. It was a risky but necessary move for the House of Saud. Natal was the long-serving minister of the interior who’d always taken a hard stance against Israel—which played well domestically but less so outside of Saudi Arabia.
But Moran had told Katie that the House of Saud was making moves that would lead to royal stability in the long term. Even as Natal was moving up, Crown Prince Saud would name his son, Ahmed bin Sultan, as the new defense minister. Meanwhile, the current foreign minister would shortly name his younger brother, Abdul al Faisal, as the new foreign minister. It had been a long road from the days of a previous king, Abdullah, who had long ruled the kingdom.
Muhammad al Faisal, who currently ran the foundations, philanthropies, science centers, financial investments, oil enterprises, and other assorted domestic operations for the House of Saud, would become the new Saudi minister of the interior—and the obvious crown prince in waiting. Muhammad al Faisal would almost certainly become the king of Saudi Arabia at some point soon.
The House of Saud was a byzantine network, Katie knew, and you could never be certain your assumptions were correct about any of the sons and grandsons who ruled the kingdom. But her boss had an uncanny sense of timing and intuition about these things. And if Secretary Moran said Prince Muhammad al Faisal would become the king, then that was good enough for Katie.
“So how much of this should I relay to Secretary Moran? And what can she tell Prince Muhammad?”
General Alton hesitated only briefly. “The prince needs to know that we kept those missiles from being fired at his plane,” he answered firmly. “Have the secretary tell him that we will debrief him and his government more fully once we have all the details in hand.”
“Got it.” Katie had almost reached her boss.
“And Ms. Devlin, I don’t think I need to impress on you that we are not going out of our way to tell anyone about the true nature of this threat or what we averted?”
“I understand, General. A few of us saw what happened, but I doubt anyone could grasp what it all meant. It happened so quickly.”
“We are preparing a standby statement. But we’ll release it only when—or if—there’s any press inquiry.”
“And if no one in the media hears about it or asks about it?”
“Then it didn’t happen, Ms. Devlin,” the general said. “It won’t be the first time an incident such as this simply did not happen.”
05
Dammam, Saudi Arabia
It began with a rumor.
They’ve sent troops to the university, someone posted from his private account on the mVillage network.
They’ve put students from Dammam University in jail, another quickly followed on his own mVillage account.
An instant later, a third posted a video on mVillage that had been captured with a mobile device. Showing Saudi soldiers using force to halt a protest by dozens of “Young Turk” students in a public square in Qatif, the video was mischaracterized as a new effort to imprison religious Shi’a students from Dammam University.
But no such effort was underway at Dammam. Students there knew nothing of any such protests or arrests. It was merely a rumor.
Nevertheless, the video went viral immediately on mVillage. Mobiles lit up across Arabia with news that the Saudi’s White Army internal security forces, under orders of the crown prince, had arrested and imprisoned young Shi’a students from Dammam.
More mVillage reports emerged, claiming that the Saudis intended to execute one or two of the students as part of their “iron fist” approach to halting even the beginning of any Arab Spring revolt that had rocked Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and nearby Bahrain.
This, in turn, fanned the flames of dissidence among the many disaffected Shi’a youth across Arabia who’d grumbled privately against the Sunni Wahabi rulers in the House of Saud for years.
These students had never bought in to the theory of the “notables”— the time-honored system of bestowing wealth and some measure of power to certain Shi’a families in cities with significant Shi’a populations, like Dammam and Qatif—that the House of Saud had so expertly deployed to keep the small Shi’a minority in Saudi Arabia in check.
These students—even those whose parents were part of the favored “notables” granted status by the Saudi ruling family—had no interest in being part of such a charade. They wanted recognition, the right to say their prayers in public, and some sort of representation in the Saudi system of government.
There were no Shi’a mayors or governors anywhere in Arabia. There were no senior Shi’a military officials. Even the Shi’a schools were devoid of Shi’a leadership. The principals of every Shi’a school for girls were Sunni and therefore connected to the Sunni monarchy that had ruled Saudi Arabia from its inception. The Day of Anger is upon us, someone finally posted on mVillage.
That phrase caught fire immediately. There was already a sense of urgency and excitement in the air since they were only a little more than a month away from the start of Hajj. Pilgrims all over the world were making their way toward Mecca.
Within minutes, the planning for a “Day of Anger” resonated with those who trafficked in such things across the mVillage network. Chaotic, wildly unorganized, organic efforts to spur such a day of protests in Qatif, Dammam, Medina, Mecca, and Riyadh spread like a virus across mVillage.
One student happened to notice that the ritual “day of cleaning” of Kaaba in Mecca was about to occur. It seemed convenient. So without consulting anyone, he simply proclaimed this day as the Day of Anger. It made some sense. Kaaba was the single largest symbol of religious authority in the kingdom. So why not tie a day of protests to the same day they cleansed Kaaba?
No one was in charge. No one understood what the final aims were. There was no manifesto, no call to arms, no demands of the House of Saud, no clear path to toppling the royal family and the monarchy of Arabia.
There was only a phrase, a mischaracterized video, and years of pent-up anger from a largely lower-class Shi’a minority that had been subjected to years of oppression from the monarchy. But that was the only fuel necessary for the Day of Anger notion to leap from mobile to another mobile in an mVillage network that had only begun to take root in the kingdom.
This will be our time to rise up against the oppressors, a Shi’a student at Dammam University wrote as he ate a sub sandwich in the cafeteria. He had a class in forty-five minutes and time to kill. Largely because he was bored, he surfed the network’s deep library of images for a symbol that might be fun to post along with his messages.
First, he came across the unofficial flag of the Tea Party movement in America that cropped up in rallies—an image of a coiled serpent with the words DON’T TREAD ON ME beneath it. That was too weird and not relevant, the student quickly decided. Plus, the Tea Party in America was dominated by the old, not the young.
Then he found an image t
hat struck him—the flag of the kingdom of Hejaz. It was simple, with a red triangle off to the left—or to the west on a compass—with black, green, and white bars crossing the flag horizontally. The point of the triangle—or the tip of the spear, perhaps—pointed at the heart of the green bar.
In a couple minutes of surfing the network, the student discovered that the Hejaz had once used the flag as their symbol for the Arab Revolt, early in the twentieth century. A nearly identical flag had later emerged as the modern Palestinian flag.
Throughout the twentieth century, rulers in other parts of the Middle East had used the colors of the Hejaz flag. Faisal, the king of Iraq, had tried them. The colors eventually came to be known as the unofficial pan-Arab colors—should a day ever arrive when there was a reemergence of a pan-Islamic caliphate that crossed country borders and resembled the old Ottoman Empire.
The kingdom of Hejaz disappeared in 1925, when an Emir drove the Hashemites out of Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born in its wake. The current Saudi monarchy—the House of Saud—had planted their family name across Arabia and erased all traces of the old kingdom of Hejaz that had once been centered on the western coast of Arabia and the Hejaz mountains.
The ancient history of the Hejaz mountains was intriguing to this student. New archaeological research, combined with enhanced satellite imagery, had identified an ancient river that had once originated in the Hejaz mountains on the western coast of Arabia and made its way north and east through the Arabian desert, terminating at headwaters near what was now Kuwait.
A couple of obscure scholars proclaimed with absolute confidence that this “Kuwait River”—which had likely gone dry due to regional climate changes in about 3500 BC—was the very ancient “Pishon River” identified in the second chapter of the Old Testament’s book of Genesis.
