Hunter Killer

Colonel Bandar (Tank Commander, Revolutionary Army, Riyadh)

Israeli Connection

Ambassador David Gavron (Washington)

Agent David Schwab (Mossad, Marseille)

Agent Robert Jazy (Mossad, Marseille)

Daniel Mostel (Sayanim, Air Traffic Control, Damascus)

Key International Personnel

Cpl. Shane Collins (British Army electronics intercept operator, JSSU, Cyprus)

Sir David Norris (Chairman, International Petroleum Exchange, London)

Abdul Gamoudi (father of Col. Jacques Gamoudi)

Wives

Kathy Morgan

Shakira Rashood

Giselle Hooks, aka Giselle Gamoudi

European “Royalty”

Princess Adele (South London)

PROLOGUE

Prince Khalid bin Mohammed al-Saud, aged twenty-six, was enduring a night of fluctuating fortunes. On the credit side, he had just befriended a spectacular-looking Gucci-clad blonde named Adele, who said she was a European princess and was currently clinging to his left arm. On the debit side he had just dropped $247,000 playing blackjack in one of the private gaming rooms.

The casino in Monte Carlo was costing Khalid’s great-great-uncle, the King, around the same amount per month as the first-line combat air strength of the Royal Saudi Air Force. There were almost thirty-five thousand Saudi royal princes bestowing a brand-new dimension upon the word hedonism. Like young Prince Khalid, many of them loved Monte Carlo, especially the casino. And blackjack. And baccarat. And craps. And roulette. And expensive women. And champagne. And caviar. And high-speed motor yachts. Oh boy, did those princes ever love motor yachts.

Prince Khalid pushed another $10,000 worth of chips to his new princess and contemplated the sexual pleasures that most certainly stood before him. Plus the fact that she was royal, like him. The King would approve of that. Khalid was so inflamed by her beauty he never even considered the fact that European royalty did not usually speak with a south London accent.

Adele played on, with gushing laughter, fueled by vintage Krug champagne. She played blackjack as thoughtfully as a fire hydrant and as subtly as a train crash. It took her nine minutes and forty-three seconds precisely to lose the $10,000. When this happened, even Prince Khalid, a young man with no financial brakes whatsoever, somehow groped for the anchors as well as Adele’s superbly turned backside.

“I think we shall seek further pleasures elsewhere.” He smiled, beckoning a champagne waitress with a nod of his head and requesting a floor manager to settle his evening’s account.

Adele’s laughter carried across the room. But no one turned a head as the young Saudi prince blithely signed a gambling chit for something in excess of $260,000.

It was a bill he would never see. It would be added to his losses of other evenings that month, totaling more than a million dollars. And it would be forwarded directly to the King of Saudi Arabia, who would send a check, sooner or later. These days, later rather than sooner.

Prince Khalid was a direct descendant of the mighty Bedouin warrior Abdul Aziz, “Ibn Saud,” founder of modern Saudi Arabia and progenitor of more than forty sons and God knows how many daughters before his death in 1953. The young Prince Khalid was of the ruling line of the House of Saud. But there were literally thousands of cousins, uncles, brothers, and close relatives. And the King treated them all with unquestioning generosity.

So much generosity that the great oil kingdom of the Arabian Peninsula now stood teetering on a financial precipice, because millions and millions of barrels of oil needed to be pumped out of the desert every day purely to feed the colossal financial requirements of young princes like Khalid bin Mohammed al-Saud.

He was one of literally dozens who owned huge motor yachts in the harbors along the French Riviera. His boat, Shades of Arabia, was a growling 107-foot-long, sleek white Godzilla of a powerboat that could not make up its mind whether to remain on the sea or become a guided missile. Built in Florida by the renowned West Bay Son Ship corporation, it boasted five state-rooms and was just about the last word in luxury yachts. At least for its size it was.

The Captain of Shades of Arabia, Hank Reynolds, out of Seattle, Washington, nearly had a heart attack every time Prince Khalid insisted on taking the helm. And this was a reaction that did not abate even on a calm, open sea. Prince Khalid had two speeds. Flat out or stopped. He had five times been arrested for speeding in various French harbors along the Riviera. Each time he was fined heavily, twice he ended up in jail for a few hours, and each time the King’s lawyers bailed him out, on the last occasion paying a fine of $100,000. Prince Khalid was an expensive luxury for any family, by any standards, but he could not have cared less. And, anyway, he was certainly no different from all the other young scions of the House of Saud.

Slipping his hand deftly around the waist of Adele, he nodded to the other ten people in his entourage, who were gathered around the roulette wheel, playing for rather smaller stakes. They included his two “minders,” Rashid and Ahmed, both Saudis, three friends from Riyadh, and five young women, two of them Arabian from Dubai and wearing Western dress, three of them of European royal lineage similar to that of Adele.

Outside the imposing white portals of the casino, three automobiles — two Rolls-Royces and one Bentley — slid immediately to the forecourt, attended by a uniformed doorman from the world’s most venerable gaming house. Prince Khalid handed him a hundred-dollar bill — the equivalent of more than two barrels of oil on the world market — and slipped into the backseat of the lead car with Adele. Rashid and Ahmed, each of them highly paid servants of the King himself, also boarded the gleaming, dark blue Silver Cloud, both of them in the wide front seat.

The other eight distributed themselves evenly among the other two cars, and Prince Khalid instructed his driver. “Sultan, we will not be returning to the Hermitage for a while. Please take us down to the boat.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” replied Sultan, and moved off toward the harbor, followed, line astern, by the other two cars.

Three minutes later they pulled up alongside Shades of Arabia, which rode gently on her lines in a flat, calm harbor.

“Good evening, Your Highness,” called the watchman, switching on the gangway light. “Will we be sailing tonight?”

“Just a short trip, two or three miles offshore to see the lights of Monaco, then back in by one A.M.,” replied the Prince.

“Very good, sir,” said the watchman, a young Saudi naval officer who had navigated one of the King’s Corvettes in the Gulf Fleet headquarters in Al Jubayl. His name was Bandar and he had been specifically selected by the C-in-C to serve as First Officer on Shades of Arabia, with special responsibilities for the well-being of Prince Khalid.

Capt. Hank Reynolds liked Bandar, and they worked well together, which was just as well for Reynolds, because one word of criticism about him from young Bandar would have ended his career. The Saudis paid exorbitantly for top personnel from the West, but tolerated no insubordination directed at the royal presence.

Gathered in the magnificently presented stateroom, which contained a bar and a dining area for at least twelve, Prince Khalid’s party was served vintage Krug champagne from dewy magnums that cost around $250 each. On the dining room table there were two large crystal bowls, one containing prime Beluga caviar from Iran, about