The Secret Soldier

to pick up surveillance. But they seemed to be alone. “We have any friends?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Me either.” Wells drove on, to the elevated highway along Jeddah’s east side. At first glance the road could have passed for the 405 in Los Angeles or the 10 in Houston, four smoothly paved lanes in each direction, sometimes five, surrounded by brightly lit office buildings and industrial parks and oversized malls. Yet the traffic had a strangely caffeinated quality that Wells had never seen in the United States. He didn’t think it was related to the kidnapping. Nearly everyone tailgated. Everyone sped. All the drivers were men, of course, mostly in their teens and twenties. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go except drive in circles burning cheap gas, hamsters on an asphalt wheel. The House of Saud stifled their creative and political and sexual energy. Islam was their only outlet. No wonder they blew themselves up so often.

After fifteen minutes, Wells turned right at a massive cloverleaf, passing a soccer stadium as he headed west, toward downtown. Soccer qualified as an acceptable public activity in the Kingdom, even if it did expose the players’ legs. The highway ran through miles of empty lots waiting to be developed and a sign for a “Psychic Disease Hospital,” which somehow sounded gentler to Wells than a psychiatric hospital. A mile southeast of downtown, Wells pulled off. After another roadblock, he drove under the highway into a grim warren of concrete and brick.

IN SAUDI ARABIA, AS in the United States, the poorest urban neighborhoods lay on the fringes of downtowns. They’d left the opulence of Abdullah’s palace behind. The streets were potholed, narrow, and dark, the overhead lights burned out. The stench of sewage filled the Jeep, and some of the houses sat on concrete blocks. The Saudi government had budgeted billions of dollars to build a proper drainage system for Jeddah, but the money had mysteriously disappeared into the pockets of the men who ran the city. Not for the first time, Wells wondered about Abdullah. The king’s concern for his subjects wasn’t obvious in this part of town.

For now, though, the Kingdom’s problems ran deeper than succession. If Kurland’s kidnappers began to torture him in public, the United States and Saudi Arabia would be hard-pressed to avoid war. Time was short. Wells pulled over, called Shafer. “We’re in.”

“And free of unwanted baggage?”

“Think so. What have we missed?”

“The muk found the fake cop cars that took Kurland. The betting now is they’re hiding him in the desert. Most of the passports you gave us are from guys in the Najd. Those families are getting their doors kicked in tonight.”

“Any word on the helicopter?”

“I passed your theory to NSA and NGA, but they didn’t get anything. The Saudis haven’t let us put up drones. We’re stuck with satellites and AWACS”—air force radar jets. “Tough to find one helicopter in a million square miles.”

“So it’s still in play. They could have brought him this way.”

“Yes, but unless you get some evidence, it’s not a priority. We have eighty FBI agents in Riyadh now. They’re mainly trying to keep an eye on the muk. Theoretically, they can chase their own leads, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“What about Lebanon?”

“We hit the camp this afternoon. Burned to the ground. Actual words of the Delta major in charge were: ‘Like a nuke hit it.’ We’re asking the Syrians to lean on Hezbollah, get them to open up, but our leverage there is limited. To put it mildly.”

Wells understood. No doubt the attack on Kurland had thrilled Hezbollah, along with its backers in Syria and Iran. Those two countries would love nothing more than for the United States to invade Saudi Arabia.

“Meantime, the Airborne and the Rangers are sitting tight,” Shafer said. “Treasury and the NSA are trying to follow the money, looking to connect the camp with, how do I put this nicely, government sources in Saudi Arabia. So far they haven’t found anything. Until they do that, the president has ordered that official policy is to assume that this attack is the work of independent non-state actors. His words.”

“‘Independent non-state actors.’”

“Think Brad Pitt.”

“You know what I like about you, Ellis? You always make time for a joke, brighten my day. And if we do connect the princes to the kidnappers?”

“No decision yet.”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“Exactly right.”

“So. Summing up. The FBI’s in Riyadh. The Airborne’s in Turkey. The muk are knocking heads five hundred miles from here. No useful intel since yesterday.”

“Correct, correct, correct, and correct.”

“And we’re still on our own in beautiful Jeddah, the jewel of the Red Sea.”

“Just the way you like it.” Shafer clicked off.

Wells was about to drive on when a police helicopter swung low overhead, its spotlight slicing left to right, catching a mosque’s minaret before finding the Jeep. The light held them for fifteen seconds, filling the windshield with its dead white glare before moving on. When it was gone, Wells eased the Jeep back onto the road.

AS HE DID, THE cell phone that Wells had gotten at the palace trilled.

“This is Miteb.” The prince’s voice was low, hard to hear. “My brother asked me to call. He says you must be careful. He says the muk aren’t to be trusted.”

Tell me something I don’t know, Wells didn’t say. “He have anything specific? Do they know the names we’re using?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“The names on our ID cards. Do the muk know them?”

A long pause, as if the prince was struggling to comprehend the concept of the national identity cards his family made its subjects carry. “I don’t think so. I think it’s more a general warning to do with Saeed. That he sees you as a problem. But I don’t think he knows you’re here, not yet. The place where you came in, that’s a good place.”

“All right. If anything changes, let me know.”

“Please find our friend.”

“We’re trying.” Wells hung up.

“What was that?” Gaffan said.

“Nothing good,” Wells said, and explained.

“This keeps getting messier, doesn’t it?”

“Quickest way to solve it is to find Kurland.”

“True dat.” Words that earned Gaffan a sidelong look from Wells.

BUT EVEN FINDING 42 Aziz proved more difficult than Wells expected. The street grid was as sloppy as an undercooked waffle, and Gaffan had trouble with the map. They doubled back twice before Wells spotted “Aziz Street” painted crudely on a black sign screwed into a brick wall. To the left, toward downtown, a mosque sat beside three barred storefronts.

Wells turned right, deeper into the slum. The houses were small and mean, their lights peeking through barred windows. Concrete blocks, a rough parody of the walls protecting Abdullah’s palace, hid their front yards. A stray dog trotted into the Jeep’s headlights before turning tail and disappearing between two oil drums that overflowed with trash.

Wells didn’t see anyone on the street or in the yards, but he did spot a couple of small groups of men on rooftops, talking and smoking. Many of these houses didn’t have air-conditioning. After a day baking under the Saudi sun, they could be unbearable. The rooftops were like front porches in the nineteenth-century South, a way to escape the worst of the heat. But the curfew and the helicopters were keeping most people inside tonight.

“If I were Aziz, I’d be mad they named such a lousy street after me,” Gaffan said.

“He’s got plenty of others to choose from. Anyway, he’s dead.”