The House of Saud ruled with the support of the Wahhabis, and the monarchy in turn allowed them to spread and enforce the tenets of our beliefs.” He turned to face the imam. “It appears that the religious leaders are no longer satisfied with that longstanding arrangement.”
There was a rumble of private discussions around the table for a minute before the oil representative again spoke. “All of us are worried about the future,” he said. “Saudi Arabia is not Iran. The citizens will not accept a totalitarian theocracy, nor rule by the
The imam was sweating beneath his robes. “There are proper groups already in place to make this decision. Why should just the six of us tell the rest of the nation what to do?”
The colonel slapped the table. “Yes! We have the Consultative Council and the
Prince Aziz sighed: “I have thousands of cousins in the royal family and all of them would like to ascend. Even me. But we can haggle later. Right now our people need a king and our military needs a leader in order to quell this rebellion. If you are all satisfied with the House of Saud, please, just pick somebody!”
The powerful executive from the oil industry concurred. “This tawdry rebellion threatens to swallow us all. We need to stabilize this situation fast or risk having some outside force come in to seize our production facilities. If that happens, our very lifeblood will be under the thumb of international supervision for many years to come. Our most precious resource will be beyond our control.”
The imam had his own instructions from the leaders waiting in the mosques. “There is much more to consider than the oil and money,” he stated with a cold glare. “If it is the Will of Allah, praise be unto him, that a new kind of government is rising to save our nation, then we are all bound to obey.”
The tribal sheikh stared at him. “You would let a foolish thug like Ebara take over? I will tell you here and now that the
“Then let us choose,” someone said. “Who among the grandsons? I put forth the name of Prince Abdullah, who is easily the most qualified among those in the true bloodline.”
The imam became stiff in outrage. “The ambassador to the United States? That disgraceful man was about to sign a peace treaty with the Jews!”
“He was following the decision of our government,” the colonel reminded him. “Our country has never fought Israel and let’s hope we never do. Many in our generation are tired of hearing sermons about how the Jews are to blame for everything that goes wrong. The military has no objection to Abdullah. Does anyone else have a nomination?”
“Prince Abdullah has the diplomatic and military experience to take over. We can live with him.” The man from the oil sector settled back into his chair. The tribal sheikh agreed.
“That is our decision, then,” said Prince Aziz. “It is unanimous, is it not?”
“I shall inform the Grand Mufti of your suggestion,” the imam said. “His decision will be rendered after appropriate thought.”
That was too much for the sheikh, a man known for his fiery temper. He rose from his chair, his eyes darkening and the muscles of his jaw quivering with barely suppressed fury. He was a man of the desert, a Wahhabi Bedouin, a tribe that never hesitated to purify the wishes of the Prophet with the blood of enemies. Violence was part of his heritage and he brooked no respect for preachers. He pulled back his robe and a jeweled dagger glittered in his belt. “That is not good enough. You are stalling. You will take this to the Grand Mufti as the choice that he must endorse immediately! Or, perhaps you may not go back at all. Perhaps I should cut off your ears and give you a better reason for not hearing what we have all decided? We can always send another messenger.”
The colonel rose. “I believe the sheikh and the imam have a few private matters to discuss. I would be honored if the rest of you would join me downstairs for some coffee.” They all walked out, closing the door behind them.
Five minutes later, the imam came stumbling down the stairs and went through the group without a word, his face pale and his fingertips shaking. The sheikh followed, a sneering smile on his dark face. “It is now unanimous. Tomorrow we announce a new king.”
27
INDONESIA
JUBA WATCHED THE TELEVISION news on the 42-inch flat plasma screen, mentally keeping track of the score. The bodies were piling up and he was winning easily. The House of Saud had been decapitated, the country was temporarily leaderless and that sanctimonious weird preacher, Mohammed Ebara, was busily stirring the religious pot. Everything going as planned.
Using the remote control, he replaced the chattering news people with the Web site of a private Swiss financial institution that served only very wealthy customers. The money was piling up in his private account, and more than enough was available to pay the people he had hired to continue the pressure. Slowly, slowly, he would stoke the fire with unexpected strikes throughout Saudi Arabia. The fighters were already in place, just waiting for him to release them. It was a tight schedule that eventually would build to a crescendo of violence.
The complicated scheme did not provide him with the same instant thrill as in the old days, when he pulled the trigger on his sniper rifle and could watch a bullet strike home and a target die in his scope, but he had moved beyond such things as routine assassinations. The stakes today were so much higher, and the overall effects of his work were so much more important!
The achievements so far called for a bit of private celebration and he opened the seals of red wax on a new square bottle of Jewel of Russia vodka, a new brand distilled from wheat and rye. He poured and raised the glass in an imaginary toast to the old philosopher-scientist Isaac Newton, who had figured it all out many years ago with his first law of motion: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
The royal family of Saudi Arabia had been paddling comfortably on their underground sea of oil. Juba pictured himself as the external force needed to change that.
He had done a lot of homework before putting the final plan together. In the tumultuous inner circles of the Saudi royal family, there had always been plots and counterplots about which prince of the House of Saud should be the actual ruler. In 1975, the sitting monarch was shot to death by his nephew. For Juba, a simple assassination would not have been good enough. He wanted something spectacular, a showy attack that would paralyze the confidence of the people and open the door for a government takeover by Muslim extremists. By the time he was through, the whole country would be moving backward in time. The vodka was tracing a pleasant burn down to his stomach when a maidservant softly announced, “Your guest has arrived, sir.”
An Indonesian man stepped through the wide entranceway to the mountain mansion. He was of middle age, with black hair retreating on the high forehead and a belly that pushed hard against the buttons of his shirt. With narrow shoulders, Muhammed Bambang Sukarnoputri was shaped like a pear.
“Governor. It is good to see you again.” Juba shook hands with the smaller man and led him to a comfortable area with overstuffed chairs. They made small talk until the maid returned with a tray of fruit and juice for the pious provincial governor, who did not drink alcohol. Juba had only a glass of chilled water.
Officially, the Indonesian government kept religion out of its politics, although the country was 88 percent Muslim and Juba had found it simple to cultivate powerful allies. On the far side of the mountain on which he lived was a government weather research facility that secretly fed him all of the electrical power and telecommunications and scientific support that he could possibly use. With his own computer network feeding from those secure grids, Juba was guiding the upheaval in Saudi Arabia, half a world away, and the TV reports were flashing across the big screen.
“This television coverage reminds me of the make-believe carnage in American movies about the end of the world,” said Sukarnoputri. “Your work has been astounding.”
