The Secret Soldier

But the king remained a mystery. Was he a genuine reformer? Wells couldn’t tell. Still, he was glad he had stayed the night to find out exactly what Abdullah and Miteb wanted. By the time he turned off the laptop, the hotel grounds were nearly silent. Miles out to sea, yachts glimmered. A breeze filled his living room with the scent of cypress and pine. Overhead, the stars glowed. Even without the virgins — and Wells suspected that virgins were tough to come by in the south of France — this place was close to Paradise. Here, eternal life seemed not just possible but actually desirable. Wells lay on his five-thousand-dollar-a-night-bed and closed his eyes and wondered at the world that had somehow come to him.

The Maybach picked him up the next morning. This time Miteb sat in back as classical music played. The king wasn’t in the car. Wells couldn’t help feeling disappointed. He’d wanted to see Abdullah again.

“Good morning, Mr. Wells.”

“Good morning, Prince.”

“My brother sends his apologies. He’s not well this morning.”

“Nothing too serious, inshallah.”

“At our age, everything is serious.” Miteb pushed a button, and the music stopped. “Do you think your friends are tailing you?”

“The agency? I doubt it. Out of sight, out of mind. Anyway, they know enough to leave me alone.”

“You’re used to having your own way.”

“Coming from a prince, I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“Let’s say it’s both. And what about you? Will you report this meeting to the CIA?”

Wells didn’t answer. In truth, he hadn’t decided.

“You’re still loyal to your country.”

Guilty, Wells thought. For better or worse. “If this is a back-channel plea for help from the United States, you’d be better off asking directly,” he said.

“It’s not. We can’t have America involved.”

“Prince, I still don’t know why I’m here. I assume it’s related to the attacks last week, but you haven’t even said that.”

“My brother and I have a mission for you.”

“An entire army reports to you, and you need me.”

“We can’t depend on the army for this. It’s not in our land.”

“Your mukhabarat, then.”

“But as we told you yesterday, that’s precisely the problem. The muk belong to Saeed and Mansour. Do you think this pleases us? To ask an American we don’t know for help?”

“Start at the beginning. Why me?”

“I’ve known Pierre Kowalski many years. He’s supplied the National Guard with weapons. He gave me your name. But he said we’d have to talk in person to convince you.”

“How can you and Abdullah come here without anyone knowing?”

“There’s a physician in Nice who treats Abdullah. Saeed thinks he’s here for medical treatment.”

Wells wasn’t so sure. “But don’t Mansour’s men manage your security?”

“The king chooses his traveling companions. And if he wants to leave his security behind and go for a drive in his Mercedes, he can. Anyway, I think Saeed and his son prefer us outside the country. This way, they can talk to the other princes, campaign against us.”

“Is that what’s happening?”

“Not openly. But yes. It’s complicated and simple at the same time.”

“Tell me.”

“You heard Abdullah yesterday. He wants Khalid on the throne. His eldest son. It’s stuck in his head. He can’t let it go. And it’s creating a big instability.”

“It’s not how the system is supposed to work.”

“Correct. The first generation should have preference. That means Saeed. And if not Saeed, then the princes should come together to make the decision.”

“So how can Abdullah win?”

“Because this problem will come very soon, anyway. Saeed is almost eighty. Even if he takes over from Abdullah, he has only a few years to rule. And once he and Nayef are gone, the first generation will be gone and the country will be just where it is now. The next generation is too large. How can we choose? Two hundred grandsons of Abdul-Aziz can claim the throne.”

“Still. Why not let Saeed take the throne, put off the problem?”

“Because if Saeed is king, he’ll undo all the good that Abdullah has done.”

“You expect me to believe that Abdullah is some great force for democracy.”

For the first time, Miteb seemed irritated. “I want you to understand our society. You know what happened in 1979?”

Wells was glad he had read up. “The Grand Mosque.”

“Yes. Our clerics, they’re very powerful. And most of them, they only read the Quran and the hadith, nothing else. They know everything about Islam, nothing about the rest of the world. Sheikh bin Baz was our most senior cleric until he died in 1999. His most famous fatwa, in 1966, he said that the Quran proves that the earth doesn’t go around the sun. The earth is the center and the sun moves around it, he said.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yes. He only changed his mind in 1985, and do you know why? Prince Sultan was on the space shuttle and came to him and said, ‘Sheikh, I saw it. The earth rotates and the sun is still.’ And that convinced him. This is our society, you see. And Abdullah must move slowly. But Abdullah’s a good king. He’s a good man, and kind, and he wants more openness. The people trust him. He’s moving us in the right direction. Not like Saeed.”

“Tell me about Saeed.”

“So in 2002, in Mecca, a school for girls caught fire. These schools, they’re mainly old apartment buildings, not really schools, because we have so many children and not enough schools. This one, someone was cooking in the kitchen and an electric plate caught fire. It was a small fire, but it spread. There were eight hundred girls inside, more. Not just Saudi, but from Pakistan, Nigeria, everywhere. And there was only one staircase to get out. The girls started to panic. Then the religious police came. You don’t remember this?”

“I was in Pakistan at the time, the North-West Frontier. Didn’t get much news.”

“So the muttawa”—the religious police—“came, and you must imagine, this is Mecca, they are even more conservative there than anywhere else. They blocked the entrance to the school. They wouldn’t let in the firefighters. And they would only let out the girls who were wearing abayas. They made the other girls go back. The firefighters and the civil defence said, ‘This is not the time to enforce these laws.’ But while they argued, the school was burning. The girls were stuck inside. Screaming, ‘Let us out! Let us out!’ They started to jump out the windows. By the time the firefighters got inside, fifteen of them died and fifty were terribly hurt. Little girls. A tragedy. And the newspapers wrote about it. Saudi newspapers criticizing the religious police and calling for an investigation of the school. It had never happened before. And Abdullah and I, you understand, we welcomed this.”

“But not Saeed.”

“Not Saeed. Not Nayef, the interior minister, either. After a few days, Nayef called all the newspaper editors in. He told them it was time for the investigations to end. And once the interior minister tells you to stop investigating, you stop, or you go to jail. And he said that the muttawa had not blocked the gate and that they had behaved properly. He said they were there to make sure that the girls didn’t face ‘mistreatment’ outside the building. And Saeed — Saeed went even further. He called the muttawa ‘heroes.’ ”

“Abdullah couldn’t get involved?”

“At the time, he wasn’t the king. And the religious police, the clerics, they don’t think this fire is a tragedy. Because to them, the girls shouldn’t be in school at all. So the fire is Allah punishing them. And Saeed and Nayef, I’m not sure whether they believe that, but they know the clerics do.”

“They sound like sweeties.”

“Then, a few months later, Nayef said that the Saudis weren’t the ones who hijacked the planes on September 11. The Americans shouted so much that he took it back. But Saeed not only repeated it — he made a