by Daniel Silva
The largest stipends are reserved for those privileged few at the top of the food chain—the sons of the Founder. He had forty-five in all, including Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. Before his elevation to crown prince, he received a monthly payment of $250,000, or $3 million per year. It was more than enough money to live comfortably, but not lavishly, especially in the Al Saud playgrounds of London and the Côte d’Azur. To supplement his wages, Abdullah siphoned money directly from the state budget or received bribes and kickbacks from Western companies wishing to do business in the Kingdom. A British aerospace firm paid him $20 million in “consulting fees.” He used a portion of the money, explained Gabriel, to purchase a grand house at 71 Eaton Square in Belgravia.
“I believe you dined there recently, did you not?”
Receiving no reply, Gabriel continued with his briefing. Abdullah, he said, was quite good at the other family business—the business of graft and theft—but in 2016 he got himself into serious financial trouble with a string of bad investments and questionable expenditures. He begged His Majesty King Mohammed for a few extra riyals to cover his living expenses. And when His Majesty refused to bail him out, he prevailed upon his next-door neighbor, the owner of 70 Eaton Square, for a loan. The man’s name was Konstantin Dragunov, better known as Konnie Drag to his friends.
“You remember Konstantin, don’t you, Khalid? Konstantin is the Russian billionaire who sold you this ridiculous boat.” Gabriel made a show of thought. “Remind me how much you paid for it.”
“Five hundred million euros.”
“In cash, right? Konstantin insisted the money be wired into one of his accounts at Gazprombank in Moscow before he would agree to leave the boat. A few days later he lent your uncle a hundred million pounds.” Gabriel paused. “I suppose that’s what it means to recirculate petrodollars.”
Khalid was silent.
“He’s an interesting fellow, our Konstantin. He’s a second-generation oligarch, not one of the original robber barons who looted the assets of the old Soviet Union after the fall. Unlike many of the oligarchs, Konstantin is diversified. He’s also quite close to the Kremlin. In Russian business circles it is assumed that most of Konstantin’s money actually belongs to the Tsar.”
“That’s the way it works for people like us.”
“Us?”
“The Tsar and me. We operate through cutouts and fronts. I’m not the nominal owner of this boat, as you call it, and I don’t own the château in France, either.” He glanced at Sarah. “Or the Leonardo.”
“And when people like you are no longer in power?”
“The money and the toys have a way of disappearing. Abdullah has already taken billions from me. And the Leonardo,” he added.
“Somehow you’ll survive.” Gabriel admired Khalid’s view of the Egyptian coast. “But back to your uncle. Needless to say, Abdullah never repaid the hundred million pounds Konstantin Dragunov lent him. That’s because it wasn’t a loan. And it was only the beginning. While you were engaging in court intrigue in Riyadh, Abdullah was doing lucrative business deals in Moscow. He earned more than three billion dollars in the last two years, all through his association with Konstantin Dragunov, which is another way of saying the president of Russia.”
“Why was he so interested in Abdullah?”
“I suppose he wanted an ally inside the House of Saud. Someone who was respected for his political acumen. Someone who hated the Americans as much as he did. Someone who could serve as a trusted adviser to a young and untested future king. Someone who might be able to convince the future king to tilt Moscow’s way and thus expand the Kremlin’s regional influence.” Gabriel turned and looked at Khalid. “Someone who might offer to rid the future king of a meddlesome priest. Or a dissident journalist who was trying to warn the future king about a plot to force him to abdicate.”
“Are you saying Abdullah conspired with the Russians to seize the throne of Saudi Arabia?”
“I’m not saying it, Omar Nawwaf is.” Gabriel drew Hanifa Khoury’s flash drive from his pocket. “I don’t suppose there’s a computer on this boat, is there?”
“Yacht,” said Khalid. “Come with me.”
There was an iMac in the suite’s private study, but Khalid had the good sense not to allow the chief of the Office to impale it with a flash drive. Instead, he led Gabriel down to Tranquillity’s hotel-style business center. It contained a half dozen workstations with Internet-connected computers, printers, and multiline phones tied into the ship’s satellite communications system.
Khalid sat down at one of the terminals and inserted the flash drive. A dialogue box queried him for a user name.
“Yarmouk,” said Gabriel.
“The camp?”
“Her parents ended up there in 1948.”
“Yes, I know. We have a file on her, too.” Khalid entered the name of the refugee camp, and an icon appeared.
“Omar,” said Gabriel. “The password is Omar.”
47
Gulf of Aqaba
The story was twelve thousand words in length and rendered in the free-flowing fashion of a reporter at large. Its opening scene described a chance encounter with an exiled Saudi prince in the lobby of a Cairo hotel. Over dinner that evening, the prince told the reporter a remarkable tale about a plot against his country’s future king, whom he described unflatteringly as “the most interesting man in the world,” a reference to a character in a Mexican beer commercial.
What followed was an account of the reporter’s rapid quest to corroborate what he had been told. He traveled far and wide to confer with his many regional sources—including to Dubai, where he spent an anxious forty-eight hours within easy reach of Riyadh’s secret services. It was there, in a suite at Burj Al Arab, that a prized source wove the disparate threads he had gathered into a coherent narrative. KBM, he said, had worn out his welcome inside the House of Saud. The White House and the Israelis were in love with him, but he had dispensed with the Al Saud tradition of ruling by consensus and was running roughshod over his kin. A palace coup, or something like it, was inevitable. The Allegiance Council was coalescing around Abdullah, mainly because Abdullah was desperately lobbying for the job.
“And, oh, by the way,” the source was quoted as saying, “did I mention Moscow Center is pulling the strings? Abdullah is totally in the Tsar’s pocket. If he manages to seize the throne, he’s going to tilt so far toward the Kremlin he’s likely to fall flat on his face.”
From Dubai, the reporter returned to Berlin, where he discovered that his wife, a journalist herself, had been communicating secretly with a member of the crown prince’s court. After much soul-searching, chronicled in the article’s final passage, he had decided to travel to Turkey to meet with the man who had driven him into exile. The encounter was to take place at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, at one fifteen in the afternoon.
“So it was Hanifa, not Omar, who was trying to reach me?”
“Yes,” answered Gabriel. “And it was Hanifa who convinced Omar to walk into that consulate. She blames herself for his death. Almost as much as she blames you.”
“She danced on my grave after I abdicated.”
“She had a right.”
“She should have told me Reema was in danger.”
“She tried.”
Khalid had grown weary of reading the long article on a computer screen and was sitting at the table in the adjacent conference room with a printout. Several pages lay on the carpet at his feet, where he had tossed them in anger.
“If she hates me so much, why did she agree to give you Omar’s magnum opus?” He snatched up one of the pages and, scowling, reread it. “I can’t believe he dared to write these things about me. He called me a spoiled child.”
“You are a spoiled child. But what about the rest of it?”
“You mean the part about the Tsar being behind the plot to overthrow me?”
“Yes, that part.”
Khalid plucked another page from the floor
. “According to Omar’s sources, it began after my last visit to Washington, when I agreed to spend a hundred billion dollars on American weaponry instead of buying the arms from Russia.”
“Sounds plausible.”
“It sounds plausible, but it isn’t accurate.” There was a silence. Then Khalid said quietly, “In fact, if I had to guess, the Tsar probably made up his mind to get rid of me much sooner than that.”
“Why?”
“Because he had a plan for the Middle East,” replied Khalid. “And I wanted no part of it.”
They returned to the owner’s suite. Outside on the windblown terrace, Khalid fed Omar Nawwaf’s story into the flame, one page at a time. When at last he spoke, it was of Moscow. He made his first trip there, he reminded Gabriel needlessly, a year before he became crown prince. He had just released his economic plan, and the Western press was hanging on his every word. He could get the CEO of any company in the world on the phone in a matter of minutes. Hollywood was head over heels. Silicon Valley, too.
“They were days of wine and roses. Salad days.” Mockingly, he added, “I was the most interesting man in the world.”
The agenda for the Moscow visit, he explained, was purely economic. It was part of Khalid’s effort to secure the technology and investment he needed to transform the Saudi economy into something other than the world’s gas station. In addition, he and his Russian hosts planned to discuss means of shoring up the price of oil, which was bumping along at about forty-five dollars a barrel, an unsustainable level for the Saudi and Russian economies. Khalid spent the first day meeting with Russian bankers, and the second with the CEOs of Russian technology companies, who left him deeply unimpressed. His meeting with the Tsar was scheduled for ten a.m. on the third day, a Friday, but it didn’t begin until one in the afternoon.
“He makes me seem punctual.”
“And the meeting?”
“It was dreadful. He slumped in his chair with his legs spread wide and his crotch on full display. Aides interrupted us constantly, and he excused himself three times to take phone calls. It was a power play, of course. Head games. He was putting me in my place. I was the son of an Arab king. To the Tsar, I was nothing.”
So Khalid was surprised when, at the conclusion of the frozen encounter, the Tsar invited him to spend the weekend at his palace on the Black Sea. Among its many luxurious appointments was a gold-plated indoor swimming pool. Khalid was installed in his own wing, but his aides were scattered among several guesthouses. There was no evidence of the Tsar’s wife or children. It was just the two of them.
“I will admit,” said Khalid, “I did not feel altogether safe being alone with him.”
They spent Saturday morning relaxing by the pool—it was high summer of 2016—and in the afternoon they went for a sail. That evening they dined in a cavernous cream-and-gold chamber. Afterward, they walked to a tiny dacha atop a cliff overlooking the sea.
“And that,” said Khalid, “was when he told me.”
“Told you what?”
“The master plan. The blueprint.”
“For what?”
Khalid thought about it for a moment. “The future.”
“And what does this future look like?”
“Where would you like me to begin?”
“Since it’s the summer of 2016,” said Gabriel, “why don’t we begin with America.”
The Tsar, said Khalid, had high hopes for the American presidential election that fall. He was also confident Washington’s days as the hegemon in the Middle East were nearing an end. The Americans had blundered into Iraq and paid a high price in blood and treasure. They were eager to put the entire region, with its intractable problems, in their rearview mirror. In contrast, the Tsar had prevailed in the fight for Syria. He had ridden to the rescue of an old friend and in the process sent a signal to the rest of the region that Moscow, not Washington, could be counted on in times of trouble.
“He wanted you to jettison the Americans and become a Russian ally?”
“You’re thinking too small,” answered Khalid. “The Tsar wanted to form a partnership. He said the West was dying, in part because he was doing his best to sow social division and political chaos wherever he could. He said the future lay in Eurasia, with its massive supplies of energy and water and people. Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran . . .”
“And Saudi Arabia?”
Khalid nodded. “We were going to rule the world together. And the best part was that he would never lecture me about democracy or human rights.”
“How could you refuse an offer like that?”
“Quite easily. I wanted American technology and expertise to power my economy, not Russian.” He was suddenly animated, like the KBM of old. “Tell me something, what was the last Russian product you purchased? What do they export other than vodka and oil and gas?”
“Wood.”
“Really? Perhaps we should begin exporting sand. That would solve all our problems.”
“Did you tell the Tsar how you felt?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How did he take it?”
“He gave me that dead-fish stare and told me I had made a mistake.”
“You and your father went to Moscow a few months later. You announced a deal to increase the price of oil. You also purchased a Russian air defense system.”
“We were hedging our bets, that’s all.”
“What about that ridiculous handshake in Buenos Aires? You and the Tsar looked as though you’d just scored the winning goal in the World Cup.”
“And do you know what he whispered into my ear after we sat down? He asked whether I’d had a chance to reconsider his offer.”
“What was your answer?”
“To be honest, I don’t remember. Whatever it was, it was obviously wrong. Reema was kidnapped two weeks later.” Khalid surveyed the mammoth vessel that was not really his. He was rubbing his hands together again, as though trying to remove a stain. “I suppose this means I’ll never be able to avenge her death.”
“Why would you say that?”
“The Tsar is the most powerful man in the world, never forget that. And that woman who led us to that field in France is almost certainly a Russian intelligence officer.”
“The man who detonated the bomb, too. But what’s your point?”
“They’re back in Moscow. You’ll never find them.”
“You’d be surprised. Besides,” said Gabriel, “vengeance comes in all shapes and sizes.”
“Is that another Jewish proverb?”
Gabriel smiled. “Close enough.”
48
Notting Hill, London
At half past five on a sodden London afternoon, Gabriel Allon, director-general of the Israeli secret intelligence service, swung the heavy steel knocker against the door of the safe house in St. Luke’s Mews in Notting Hill and was admitted by a boyish-looking man of forty who insisted on referring to him as “Mr. Mudd.” In the cramped sitting room he found Graham Seymour staring despondently at the television. Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster’s plan to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union in accordance with the wishes of the British electorate had just gone down to a humiliating defeat in the House of Commons.
“It’s the worst drubbing for any British leader in modern times.” Seymour’s eyes were still fastened to the screen. “Jonathan will no doubt have to face a vote of no confidence.”
“Will he survive?”
“Probably. But there’s no guarantee, not after this. If his government falls, there’s a good chance Labour will win the next election. Which means you will have to contend with the most anti-Israel prime minister in British history.”
Seymour went to the drinks trolley, a new addition to the safe house, and thrust a handful of ice into a cut-glass tumbler. He waved a bottle of Beefeater in Gabriel’s direction. Gabriel held up a hand.
“Nigel put a bottle of Sancerre in the fridge.”
“It’s a bit
early in the day for me, Graham.”
Seymour frowned at his wristwatch. “It’s gone five o’clock, for heaven’s sake.” He poured a generous measure of gin over the ice and topped it with a dash of tonic and a wedge of lime. “Cheers.”
“What are we drinking to?”
“The demise of a once-great nation. The end of Western civilization as we know it.” Seymour gazed at the television and slowly shook his head. “The bloody Russians must be loving this.”
“So must Rebecca.”
Seymour nodded slowly. “I see that woman in my sleep. God forgive me for saying this, but sometimes I wish you’d let her drown that morning in the Potomac.”
“Let her drown? I was the one holding her head beneath the water, remember?”
“It must have been awful.” Seymour studied Gabriel carefully for a moment. “Almost as awful as what happened in France. Even Christopher seemed shell-shocked when he got home. I gather you’re lucky to be alive.”
“So is Khalid.”
“We haven’t heard a peep from him since he abdicated.”
“He’s aboard his yacht off Sharm el-Sheikh.”
“Poor lamb.” On the floor of the Commons, Jonathan Lancaster had risen to his feet to acknowledge the magnitude of the defeat he had just suffered, only to be heckled mercilessly by the back benches of the opposition. Seymour aimed the remote at the screen and pressed mute. “If only it were that easy.” Drink in hand, he reclaimed his seat. “It’s not all gloom and doom, though. Thanks to you, I had a rather pleasant meeting with my minister this morning.”
“Really?”
“I showed him those Iranian nuclear documents you gave me. And then he promptly closed the file and changed the subject to Abdullah.”
“What about Abdullah?”
“How far does he intend to go to placate the religious hard-liners? Is he going to play the same old double game when it comes to the jihadists and terrorists? Is he going to be a force for regional stability or regional chaos? Mainly, my minister wanted to know whether Abdullah, given his close ties to London, might be inclined to tilt our way rather than toward the Americans.”
