“Yes, m’lady.”
Pat linked her arm into Sir Jeff’s again and got him moving toward the stone stairs that descended from the wall-walk into the castle courtyard. The first black limos were arriving. “Now smile and prepare to welcome all of these important people to our stately manor.”
3
SCOTLAND
IBRAHIM BILAL WAS FIRST out of the minivan when it pulled off a narrow farm road and into a brush-obscured driveway three miles away from the castle. A few scruffy Highland cattle grazed around him but there was no other sound. He pressed a button on his wristwatch and started the attack countdown and called for the others. “Out! Quickly now. Quickly!”
Four more men dismounted, all wearing insulated smoky branch camo overalls and strong climbing boots and with their faces smeared with NATO camouflage paint sticks. They hauled open the rear doors of the small truck, handed around backpacks and strapped them on. The loads contained only radios, water, some snacks, dry socks and shoes, and a complete change of clothing. Holstered pistols with a single spare clip apiece would be their only personal weapons. Very soon, every ounce would count.
The rest of the cargo was pulled out, then they covered the vehicle with a ten-by-twenty foot mottled mesh camouflage net and branches were used to erase the tire tracks. That done, they helped each other add the new loads, grunting with effort as they distributed several hundred pounds of additional weight among the five of them, using the backpacks to take some of the weight and better balance the loads across their shoulders. “Life isn’t easy,” Bilal joked. “Go now.”
Moving at the head of the column, he took them through the cows toward a small hill at the far west end of the pasture. A helicopter roared high overhead and passed beyond the crest, with its bright landing lights pushing columns of white through the gloom. Bilal looked at his wristwatch as he walked. Right on time.
“I NEVER THOUGHT I’D see this day,” the American secretary of state, Kenneth Waring, told Sir Jeff as the sleek helicopter touched down with barely a wiggle. The engines were shut down and the blade slowed its spinning.
“It is the inevitable outcome of the extremely difficult work by dedicated men and women of good will over many years,” Cornwell replied. His hands were moist from nervousness.
“Sir Jeff, your work behind the scenes was vital in this final stage of the negotiations. I doubt that we could have done it without your assistance. You know so many influential people and they all trust you to be an honest broker. Believe me, that sort of reputation is rare today.”
Jeff was uncomfortable with compliments. He felt he had just done his duty, keeping all of those hard-headed politicians and diplomats going in private meetings when they all had conflicting agendas. They had been arguing for years and Jeff had helped nudge them toward a decision. “The danger comes over the next few months, while the heads of the regional governments try to keep the fanatics under control.”
“Jeff, if anybody can pull this off, it is Prince Abdullah. Either he is successful or we probably get another century of Middle East misery.”
They were not the only ones having doubts.
PRINCE ABDULLAH, THE SAUDI ambassador to the United States, looked out from the window of his helicopter and saw the eager faces of his hosts and the big blue wall of the old castle. He knew that when he stepped from this aircraft, he would be changing the world and in a fleeting moment of fear, wanted to order the pilot to take off again, to rush him back to the airport so he could fly back to Washington and resume his normal and familiar routines. Let this burden fall on other shoulders.
The prince was in his early forties, tall, handsome, and athletic, and had been groomed for this role since he was a boy. Highly intelligent, multilingual, and experienced both as a soldier and a diplomat, he might never be king, for he was not the monarch’s eldest son, but the family had molded Abdullah into their version of an enlightened, modern political figure. If forced to evolve into a democracy, he would be the prince who could run for office, although that plan had also fallen into ashes in this turbulent time. His new reputation, historic as it might be, would not win him many voters.
Abdullah had reviewed the diplomatic cables and the latest news while on the flight across the Atlantic. There was unrest at home, which had been expected, for to have Saudi Arabia sign an official peace treaty with Israel carried huge risks. The nation where Islam’s most holy cities of Mecca and Medina were located was switching sides, a monstrous development in the view of religious fundamentalists who championed a stern theocracy. Blind hatred for Israel was a bedrock belief for millions of Muslims. Violence had blossomed in dozens of places.
The royal family in Riyadh saw things differently than the imams and mullahs. Egypt had made a similar agreement with the Jewish state forty years ago, withstood the ensuing political storms, and prospered. To survive in the tumultuous twenty-first century, the Saudis also needed to make political adjustments. Controlling one-fifth of the world’s known oil reserves was no guarantee of a stable long-term existence because the product was only that, a product to be sold. It was a finite resource and would either run dry or, more likely, be overtaken by other energy sources and the nation could disintegrate right back into the desert sands from which it had come, having been rich and powerful for only a few generations. Hatred of the Jews had outlived its usefulness. National survival was at stake.
Abdullah let the helicopter’s spinning blades come to a complete stop before a bodyguard opened the side door. To allow the powerful rotor wash to whip his regal robes like laundry on a line was unacceptable. The British foreign minister, the American secretary of state and Sir Geoffrey Cornwell welcomed him and they all left the gleaming helipad for a reception area in which Israeli Foreign Minister Nathan Simhon stood waiting.
Then Simhon, with a genuine smile, unexpectedly broke protocol and stepped forward to shake hands with the prince and a private photographer recorded the historic moment.
“Mr. Foreign Minister, we shall be great friends!” declared the prince.
“We all look forward to that,” responded Simhon. “I am honored to be signing the letter of intent with you tomorrow.”
LADY PAT WAS INTRODUCED to the prince as the evening’s hostess, and stepped between the two men to lead the group into the huge banquet hall, a corridor of stone and tapestries and ancient weapons that maintained the castle theme. A massive oak table ran almost the entire length of the room. Sir Jeff escorted the wife of the Israeli ambassador, a gorgeous brunette who had once been an actress.
Delara Tabrizi took her notebook and her PDA and retreated to her basement office, which was serving double duty as a storage area for spare parts for the event’s beefed-up communication center. A bank of color television screens was aligned along the wall and she could watch things unfold while directing the cooks, waiters, and various staff members. Delara allowed herself a smile of sheer joy. It felt like only yesterday that she had barely escaped from Iran with her life and she knew this historic moment would not please the mullahs. However, it pleased her greatly.
The reception was running smoothly and everything was on schedule, so she touched up her makeup before heading back upstairs to retrieve Sir Jeff and get him out to the helipad to greet the Egyptian foreign minister, whose helicopter was making its final approach.
She noticed a member of the prince’s entourage whisper to Sir Jeff, who pointed to a side door, and the man immediately relayed the comment to the prince. Delara suppressed a laugh. All of this hullabaloo, peace treaties and history coming together, and the main guy had to go to the bathroom.
