Even so, Wells hated the fact that the mandarins in Washington could walk away from a man who had just lost his granddaughter to a terrorist bombing. Abdullah wasn’t Lech Walesa or Nelson Mandela. His top concern was passing power to his son. But at least he was trying to make his nation freer, more tolerant. The United States theoretically wanted him to succeed. But not at the risk of a single barrel of oil.
The same attitude had led America to leave Saddam Hussein in power in 1990. Once Saddam had been evicted from Kuwait’s oil fields, he was no longer a threat to the United States, whatever his crimes against Iraq’s Shia and Kurds.
Even after everything he’d seen and done, Wells believed that the United States was generally a force for good. But the truth was that when oil was involved, American principles got fuzzy. So be it. Wells didn’t need Duto to authorize this mission. At least Shafer had given him the courtesy of letting him know where he stood.
“What’d he say?” Gaffan said. Wells explained.
“So if we go in, we’re on our own,” Gaffan said.
“That’s it.”
“What if Duto, somebody back home, knows something we don’t?”
“They know plenty we don’t. But none of it’s got anything to do with this.”
“You’re so sure of yourself, John. It’s not that easy for me. These guys get paid to make the tough calls. Chain of command. I look at you, I think of that line from that television show
“The tough calls? Let me tell you Vinny Duto’s priorities, in order. First, more power for Vinny Duto—”
“Power meaning what?”
“Meaning face time with the president. Operational control in Afghanistan and everywhere else. A bigger budget. Bigger voice on strategy. Bigger payday when he finally quits to run Lockheed Martin or whatever. Second, keep the lid on the disaster of the day — and if the lid comes off, make it SEP, somebody else’s problem. Third, and this is a long way back, do the right thing.”
“You’re pretty cynical, John.”
“I guess so. Arrogant, too. Duto says the same. The saddest part is he might even be right in the short run,” Wells said. “The United States might be better off for a year or two with Saeed running Saudi Arabia. But in the long run, the jihadis will be happy to have him. And Duto knows it, but he doesn’t care.”
Gaffan rubbed his forehead. Wells thought he was about to back out.
“I won’t hold it against you, you want to go home. Money’s yours either way.”
“No. I gave you my word, and I’m in.”
“A two-man chain of command.”
“Never been this close to the top.”
SO GAFFAN WAS STILL on board. But Wells had another problem: Should he caution the king that the United States no longer supported his reign? Even under normal circumstances, telling a foreign government about a secret American policy decision was illegal at best, treason at worst. This situation was even trickier. Abdullah was old and angry. What if he reacted to the warning by going public, denouncing the White House, cutting off Saudi oil? What if he arrested Saeed and gave the throne to Khalid? Plus, Abdullah and Miteb had given Wells millions of dollars. Wells was sure the money hadn’t affected his judgment, but others would surely disagree. Vinny Duto, for example.
On the other hand, Abdullah deserved to know that someone — almost certainly Saeed — had told the American government that he wouldn’t be king much longer. Wells decided to pass along that part of the message and to advise that Abdullah see the American ambassador in person to prove he wasn’t on his deathbed. Nothing more. With any luck, Abdullah would be smart enough to ask at the meeting if the United States planned to support him. He could judge the ambassador’s response for himself.
ON THE THIRD DAY, Wells stayed in the Palmyra, examining the overheads and planning the attack. Gaffan made another run to Beirut. For seventy-six thousand dollars in cash, he bought a used thirtyone-foot Cranchi from the friendly folks at Chehab Marine. The Cranchi was a speedboat disguised as a pleasure cruiser, with a sharp prow, a narrow white hull, and a spiffy racing stripe. Its cockpit sat four. Belowdecks, it had a cabin where two people could sleep as long as they didn’t mind getting to know each other. Its twin engines had been upgraded to put out two hundred thirty horsepower, enough to get the boat to forty knots on full throttle. Equally important, it had a one-hundred-forty-gallon fuel tank, for a range of three hundred miles, easily enough for Cyprus. The boat would be valuable insurance if they had to leave Lebanon fast. Better safe than sorry, especially since they were spending money that came out of the ground. Wells had gotten into the habit of thinking about prices in terms of oil. The Cranchi ran one thousand barrels, give or take.
The dealer at Chehab didn’t ask why an American had showed up at his showroom to buy a speedboat with wads of cash in rubber bands. He didn’t ask what Gaffan planned to do with the Cranchi. And he was more than happy to recommend a quiet harbor south of Tripoli where Gaffan could dock the Cranchi, no questions asked. He even sent a driver to pick Gaffan up from the harbor and bring him back to Beirut after Gaffan piloted the Cranchi there. The Lebanese were known for their friendliness, especially to anyone who paid list price.
Gaffan came back to Baalbek at around ten p.m. An hour later, Shafer sent the overheads with the truck missing. The next morning, the desk clerk got nosy, and Wells realized they needed to move.
AT NIGHT THE BEKAA showed its teeth. The tourists went back to Beirut and the hash farmers got to work. Hashish was marijuana’s more potent cousin, made from the resin of cannabis plants, nearly pure THC — the active ingredient in marijuana. To make hash, farmers threshed cannabis leaves and stems through wire screens, separating a sticky resin. They dried it into a moist powder and pressed the powder into sweet-smelling bricks and wrapped the bricks in thick blue plastic to keep them fresh.
During the Lebanese civil war, the Bekaa became the world’s top hash supplier. Lebanese Red was famous in Amsterdam cafes. The government cracked down during the 1990s, but the trade never disappeared entirely. It had surged since 2006, when the Israeli invasion strengthened Hezbollah. Publicly, the group claimed that it didn’t support hash farming, but that it couldn’t stop poor farmers from growing cannabis to survive. In reality, hash was second only to payments from Iran as a source of income for the Party of God.
Under the watchful eyes of Hezbollah militiamen, the trade ran smoothly. Farmers brought bricks to warehouses in Baalbek and Hermel, receiving three hundred to five hundred dollars per pound. Black-clad soldiers guarded the depots and monitored loads. Growing hash in the valley without Hezbollah’s approval was a crime punishable by death. The hash was hidden in crates of tomatoes and hauled to the coast for shipping to Europe — or flown to Turkey and Cyprus on eight-seat prop planes from the bumpy airfield at Rayak. Some even went south to Israel. The Israeli army and police hated the fact that their stoners enriched Hezbollah. They ran television ads showing the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, popping out of a bong, an evil genie made of smoke. Still, the trafficking continued.
The hash trade complicated Wells’s plans. A late-night firefight would make the local farmers twitchy. They’d call Hezbollah’s militia or show up on their own, locked and loaded. To keep the raid quiet, Wells and Gaffan would have to use their silenced pistols on anyone they came across. They couldn’t offer warnings, so they ran a real risk of killing civilians if Wells and the NSA had made a mistake and this farm turned out to be the Lebanese equivalent of a Boy Scout camp.
A HALF-MILE FROM THE front gate, Wells left the Honda in a ditch and grabbed his gear from the cardboard box on the back of the bike. He slung the AK over his shoulder and tucked a spare magazine and flashlight into a long pocket inside his windbreaker. He threaded the silencer onto the pistol and slipped it into his belt. With the silencer attached, the pistol would be a slow draw, but Wells had no other way to carry it. He tucked wire clippers and plastic handcuffs and a butterfly knife into the top pockets of his cargo pants. The bottom pockets were already stuffed with clothesline and electrical tape. A trainer at the Farm — his name lost to Wells now — had made a mantra of clothesline and electrical tape.
