pillaging the land.”
Prince Nasir laughed despite himself. He took another sip of coffee and then said, “Sir, the Achilles’ heel of the Saudi King is not the ability of the military to fight. It’s his ability to pay them.”
“But he has all the money in the world, flowing in every month to achieve that,” replied the President.
“But what if he didn’t?” said Prince Nasir Ibn Mohammed.
“What if he didn’t?”
“You mean someone takes all the oil away from him?” said the President. “That sounds most unlikely given all those armored brigades and fighter jets.”
“No, sir. What if the oil was taken out of the equation? What if it simply no longer flowed, and the King had no income to pay the armed services? What then?”
“You mean, supposing someone destroyed the Saudi oil industry?”
“Only for a little while,” replied the Prince.
Pierre St. Martin, the Foreign Minister of France and a hopeful future President, stood beside a large portrait of Napoleon placed on an easel on the left-hand side of his lavish office. Before him stood Monsieur Gaston Savary, the tall saturnine head of the French Secret Service — the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE), successor to the former internationally feared SDECE, the counterespionage service.
The two men had never met before, and the elegant Monsieur St. Martin, was, quite frankly, amazed that he had been ordered to his office at this ungodly hour in the morning, apparently to converse with this…this spy from La Piscine — the kind of man patrician politicians in London refer to as Johnny Raincoat.
La Piscine was the government nickname for the DGSE, derived from the proximity of the bleak ten-story Secret Service building to a municipal swimming pool in the Caserne des Tourelles. Savary operated out of 128 Boulevard Mortier, over in the twentieth arrondissement; that was about as far west as you could possibly go and still be in the City of Lights. It is not the kind of neighborhood in which you’d expect to locate an urbane Foreign Minister. The suave and expensively tailored St. Martin had never been to La Piscine.
Nonetheless, they had both been ordered to the sumptuous offices on the Quai d’Orsay by the President of France himself. And the current resident of the Elysee Palace was due there in the next few minutes.
St. Martin, who had spent the night at the apartment of one of the most beautiful actresses in France, was a great deal more irritated by the intrusion into his life than Savary.
Both men were around the same age, fiftyish, but the Secret Service chief was a lifelong career officer in undercover operations. For him the call in the middle of the night was routine. No matter the time, he was instantly operational, and he had been for ten years responsible for the planning of black operations conducted on behalf of the government of France, using both military forces and civilian agents.
A lithe, fit, and slightly morose man, Savary had even taken part personally in various French adventures. He would, as ever, admit nothing, but he was reputed to have been operational in the attack and subsequent sinking of the Greenpeace freighter in Auckland Harbor, New Zealand, in July 1985. Interference with the Pacific nuclear tests conducted by France?
“Would you like to remove your raincoat?” asked the Foreign Minister. “Since we are shortly to be in the presence of our President.”
Savary, without a word, took the coat off and slung it over the back of a near-priceless Louis Quinze chair, owned originally by the Duchess of Bourbon, the King’s sister, for whom the massive next-door Palais Bourbon had been built. Stormed and captured by the mob during the Revolution, today the former private residence served as the French Parliament, but retained its original name, Bourbon. It was a reminder of the blistering pace in opulence that those old French aristos had set for the Saudi royal family to emulate.
St. Martin stared at the spy’s raincoat over the back of the late King’s chair, and…well, winced.
He pressed a small bell for the butler to bring them some coffee, but his prime purpose was to get rid of the garment owned by
“I don’t suppose you have the slightest idea what this is all about?” he said.
“Absolutely none,” replied the intelligence chief. “I just received a phone call from the Palais Elysee and was told that the President wished to see me in your office at five-fifteen A.M. Here I am,
“My summons was exactly the same. My mobile phone rang at one-thirty A.M. God knows what this is all about.”
“Maybe
“Not, I hope, on the United States.”
Savary smiled for the first time. But just then their coffee arrived, for three, as requested. St. Martin had the butler pour just two cups and asked him to hang Savary’s raincoat in the hall closet.
Almost immediately a phone rang on his enormous desk and a voice announced that the presidential car had arrived at the portals of the Foreign Office. Pierre St. Martin poured the third cup of coffee himself.
Three minutes later he was most surprised to see that the President was entirely alone: no secretary, no aides, no officials. He closed the door himself and said quietly, “Pierre, Gaston, thank you for coming so early. Would you please ensure that our discussion is conducted entirely in secret. Perhaps a guard outside the door.”
St. Martin made a short phone call, handed the President a cup of coffee, and motioned for everyone to be seated, the President on a fine drawing room upright chair, the Secret Service chief on the Louis Quinze number lately occupied by his raincoat, while the Foreign Minister himself retreated behind his desk.
“Gentlemen,” said the President, “approximately two hours ago, one of the most important Princes in the Saudi Arabian royal family left my residence to fly home in a French Air Force jet to Damascus, and then in his own aircraft to Riyadh. His visit with me was so private, so confidential, not even the most senior staff at the Saudi embassy here in Paris were aware of his presence in the city.
“He came not just to inform me that the financial excesses of the Saudi Arabian ruling family would shortly bankrupt his country, but to propose a way out of the problem — to the very great advantage of himself, and indeed of France.”
St. Martin swiftly interjected, “Doubtless inspired by that young Saudi Prince who nearly sank the
“I think partly,” replied the President. “But the problem of thirty-five thousand princes, all members of the family, spending up to a million dollars a month on fast living has been vexing the reformist element in the Saudi government for several years. According to my visitor, the time has come for that to cease.”
Savary spoke for the first time. “I imagine he mentioned that the Saudi King is heavily protected by a fiercely loyal Army, Air Force, and Navy. So an overthrow of that part of the family is more or less out of the question.”
“Indeed he did, Gaston. He mentioned it in great detail. And he pointed out that the only person in the entire kingdom who could pay the armed services is the King, who receives all the oil revenues of the country and pays all the bills for his family.”
“So the armed services would be most unlikely to turn against him,” said Savary.
“Most unlikely,” agreed the President. “Unless for some reason the vast revenues from the oil fields ceased to exist.”
“And the King could no longer pay them, correct?” said Savary.
“Precisely,” replied the President.
“Sir, I have no doubt you are as aware as I am that those Saudi oil fields are guarded by a steel ring of personnel and armaments,” said Savary. “They’re just about impregnable — understandably, since the whole country is one hundred percent dependent upon them, from the richest to the poorest.”
“Well, we have not reached that point in the conversation yet, Gaston. But I would like to inform you, in the broadest possible terms, what the Prince was proposing.”
“I, for one, am paying keen attention,” said Pierre St. Martin.
“Excellent,” replied the President. “Because the information I am about to impart might be of critical importance to our nation. His Highness, Prince Nasir — you need know nothing more of him — proposes the
