government and in the armed services took only a short time to realize the extent of the financial crisis that loomed.

Throughout that morning and into the early part of the afternoon, vast sums of money were being wire- transferred to French, Swiss, and American banks. Entire families were preparing to leave, many of them driving toward the northwest borders, which led into Jordan and Syria.

And the real trouble had not even begun.

Colonel Gamoudi continued his tour of the city, sensing with every turn of the wheel the turmoil among the population. In his opinion, this situation could explode. There were alarm bells ringing not just in the shattered portals of the big banks but also in the mind of Jacques Gamoudi.

He could see two main threats to the operational plans of Prince Nasir: (1) the mob was about to burn down the entire city; and (2) if things did not improve rapidly the King would consider calling in the Army from the military cities to restore order. The Army was still loyal to the royal family. That would put Gamoudi’s own operation completely out of the question. However many rebels, anarchists, and al-Qaeda fighters he had, his dozen or so tanks and brigade-strength armored vehicles would be no match for the entire Saudi Army and Air Force.

Jacques Gamoudi could not wait until Thursday or Friday to launch his attack. This was all happening far, far sooner than anyone had previously thought.

He ordered his driver back to the Dir’aiyah base and, once there, called a staff meeting for 2200. Meanwhile, he took his cell phone out beyond the ruins and into the desert. He walked for ten minutes, fast, along an ancient camel route. And when he was quite satisfied that there was not a sound coming from anywhere, he punched in the numbers to a private line in the heart of the Commandement des Operations Speciales (COS) complex in Taverny, north of Paris.

He used the veiled speech they had agreed upon for an emergency: “I wish to speak to the curator, s’il vous plait.”

“The curator speaking.”

“This party has started early and it’s getting out of control. I think we should get moving at least a day early, maybe two days early. Can I have your agreement to proceed as I think fit?”

“Affirmative. I’ll leave our friends in the south to you.”

At which point the twenty-second conversation ended abruptly. Gen. Michel Jobert replaced his receiver. And Jacques Gamoudi pushed the button to end the conversation and walked slowly back to the garrison in the desert ruins.

The phone call had been critical, vital to the operation, and tactically sound — it would govern the entire French-Saudi alliance for the next forty-eight hours.

But it was a mistake, as Jacques Gamoudi knew it could be when he took the risk.

SAME DAY, SAME TIME JOINT SERVICES SIGNALS UNIT ISLAND OF CYPRUS

This was a very secret place. It was the United Kingdom’s listening post in Cyprus (JSSU), located at a place called Ayios Nikolaos, up in the hills north of the military base in the UK sovereign territory of Dhekelia, southeast Cyprus.

Here at the crossroads of east and west, British Intelligence operated a hub from which they intercepted satellite messages, phone calls, and transmissions emanating from all over the Middle East. To the north lay Turkey; to the east Syria, Israel, and Iraq; to the southeast Jordan and Saudi Arabia; to the south Egypt.

JSSU was manned by the cream of British electronic interceptors from all three services, the majority from the Army. They maintained a constant watch, monitoring communications around the clock, every one of their operators a highly qualified linguist trained purely to make literal translations of intercepted messages and conversations as they were transmitted.

The satellite communications intercept ran the gamut — faxes, e-mails, coded messages in 100 languages — the majority of the data being recorded on a long-running tape for later analysis. Particularly interesting conversations, however, were written down by the listening operator as they were spoken, and then immediately translated.

The electronic outpost in southeastern Cyprus was regarded as a priceless asset by British Intelligence, and in turn by the National Security Agency in Fort Meade. Because JSSU was part of the fabled British Intelligence operation in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). If Cyprus was the jewel in the crown of GCHQ, in turn GCHQ was the jewel in the crown of Britain’s espionage industry, which cost $1.5 billion a year to run.

It was from Cyprus that terrorists’ combat communications were first breached, from tiny Nikolaos where they hacked into bin Laden and his henchmen in faraway Afghanistan. The U.S. National Security Agency willingly pooled all of its intelligence with Cheltenham, where the 4,000-strong workforce operated in blast-proof offices under an armor-plated roof. It was a huge new building, absolutely circular, with a round center courtyard. They called it the Doughnut.

That particular Monday had obviously been a pandemonic day, with the Saudi oil fields destroyed and a zillion cell phone calls being made all across the Middle East. In fact, it was probably the busiest day in the Cyprus listening post since the Egyptian Second Army rampaged across Israel’s Bar-Lev line in 1973. Only now, as the evening abated and the riots died down and businesses and banks closed, did satellite communications begin to slow up. Cpl. Shane Collins, a twenty-eight-year-old signals expert from one of the British Army’s tank regiments, was at his screen in the Nikolaos ops room checking the traffic, which was, naturally, mostly in Arabic. He was just having his first cup of coffee of the evening when he heard a message that absolutely caught his attention. He wrote down nothing, but listened carefully, knowing it was being automatically recorded on that specific frequency.

The voice was French. Very French. Le Conservateur? La fete? En avance? Corporal Collins pressed his Listen Again button and carefully wrote down the full transcript, noting the brevity, the lack of any personal greeting, or even recognition.

He knew some French but not sufficient to be sure. He punched the brief sentences into his computer and transmitted them to the translation section on the next floor. Within five minutes it was back:

This party has started early, and it’s getting out of control. I think we should get going at least a day early, maybe two days early. Can I have your agreement to proceed as I think fit?

Affirmative. I’ll leave our friends in the south to you.

It was all in French. Both ends. And while Corporal Collins could not activate a trace to establish where the phone call had emanated, he immediately called over his duty Captain and reported that he had had a conversation on the satellite that was plainly more than just a personal call.

The Captain agreed that the call was unusual. And he lost no time in passing the text straight back to GCHQ in Cheltenham for detailed analysis. It was 2130 in Riyadh, 2030 in Cyprus, and 1830 in Gloucestershire, England.

The Middle Eastern Desk, deep inside the Doughnut, put an immediate trace on the satellite, searching for the start point of the call. They established a line on the frequency, which stretched back from Cyprus, across the Lebanon coast, south of Damascus, through Jordan, and straight through Saudi Arabia, bisecting Riyadh and the central desert, and ending somewhere down in the Rhub al Khali, the Empty Quarter.

Somewhere along that line, a Frenchman had activated his cell phone to…someone. GCHQ then put out a tracer to other listening posts to try to locate a different “line” that would bisect their own, revealing the location of the French caller. No one was surprised when another listening post in northeast Africa came up with one. The lines bisected each other around twenty miles north of Riyadh.

The Cheltenham analysts asked their computerized system to make several trillion calculations in five minutes, and quickly established that this was not a code but, rather, veiled speech. “The curator” was and would remain unknown, but the experts were certain this had military overtones.

Corporal Collins had sensed it. The analysts inside the Doughnut agreed with him. No greeting, no good-bye. This was a signal, not a conversation. One piece of information — the party started early and might get out of control. One question — can we go early? One answer — yes.

But, go where? What party? Did this refer somehow to the uproar currently going on in Riyadh? If so, who wanted to get involved? Had the JSSU tapped into al-Qaeda’s command headquarters?

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