Randy shakes his head. “See, the problem here is that you’re talking to me as if you have leverage—”
“I can give you information on dozens of international incidents over the last decade. Assassinations of numerous public officials. I can tell you who hired me for each job. I will assist your investigations. I will testify before whatever tribunals. I will do all this as long as my child is born in America and adopted by my brother. I will tell you about every job I’ve ever carried out.”
Randy is still playing his role as the man with the upper hand, but she can see a change in his expression.
“Including this job,” she says.
Chapter
123
I walk through the east door of the Oval Office into the Rose Garden, Augie alongside me. It’s muggy outside at this late hour, a threat of rain in the air.
Rachel and I used to stroll through the garden every night after dinner. It was on one of those strolls that she told me that the cancer had returned.
“I’m not sure I ever properly thanked you,” I tell him.
“No need,” he says.
“What are you going to do now, Augie?”
His shoulders rise. “This I do not know. We—Nina and I—we talked of nothing but returning to Sukhumi.”
That word again. That word is trending, as they say, on the Internet right now. I will see that word in my nightmares.
“The thing that is funny,” he says, “is that we knew our plan might be unsuccessful. We knew Suliman would send someone after us. We didn’t know what you would do. There were so many…”
“Variables.”
“Yes, variables. And yet we always spoke as if it was going to happen. She talked of the home she wanted to purchase, a half mile from her parents, not far from the sea. She talked of the names she would give our children someday.”
I hear the emotion in his voice. His eyes shine with tears.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You could stay here,” I say. “Work for us.”
His mouth twists. “I have no…immigration status. I’ve not…”
I stop and turn to him. “I might be able to help out with that part,” I say. “I know a few people.”
He smiles. “Yes, of course, but—”
“Augie, I can’t let this happen again. We got lucky this time. We need more than luck going forward. We need to be far more prepared than we were. I need people like you. I need you.”
He looks away, out over the garden, the roses and daffodils and hyacinths. Rachel knew every kind of flower in this garden by name. I only know them as beautiful. More beautiful, right now, than ever.
“America,” he says, as if considering it. “I did rather enjoy the baseball contest.”
It’s the first real laugh I’ve had in a very long time. “Baseball game,” I say.
Sunday
Chapter
124
Your Highness,” I say into the phone to King Saad ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia as I sit at my desk in the Oval Office. I raise a mug of coffee to my lips. I don’t ordinarily drink coffee in the afternoon, but after two hours of sleep and the Friday and Saturday we just had, ordinary is long gone.
“Mr. President,” he says. “It seems as if you’ve had an eventful few days.”
“As have you. How are you doing?”
“I suppose an American would say that I escaped by the skin of my teeth. But in my case, it is almost literally true. I am fortunate that the plot was uncovered before they could carry out an attempt on my life. I am blessed. Order has been restored in our kingdom.”
“Ordinarily,” I say, “I would have called you directly after hearing of the plot. Under the circumstances—”
“There is no need to explain, Mr. President. I fully understand. You’ve been briefed, I take it, about my reason for calling.”
“My CIA director told me, yes.”
“Yes. As you know, Mr. President, the Saudi royal family is a large and diverse one.”
That’s an understatement. The House of Saud numbers in the thousands and has many branches. Most family members have little or no influence and simply receive fat checks from oil revenue. But even among the core group of leaders, numbering somewhere around two thousand, there are branches and hierarchies. And, as there is in any family and any political hierarchy, there is plenty of resentment and jealousy. When Saab ibn Saud jumped over a lot of heads to become the next king, there was more than enough of both to fuel and fund the scheme that brought us all to the edge of disaster.
“The members who attempted the coup have been…discontented with my rule.”
“Congratulations, Your Majesty, for your massive understatement and for catching the conspirators.”
“It is to my great embarrassment that such plans were able to blossom and flourish without my knowledge. Right under my nose, as you would say, and I was unaware of it. It was a lapse in our intelligence that, I can assure you, will be corrected.”
I know the feeling of missing something that’s right under your nose. “What exactly was their plan? What did they want?”
“A return to a different time,” he says. “A world without a dominant America and thus a dominant Israel. They wanted to rule the Saudi kingdom and rule the Middle East. Their intent, as I understand it, was not to destroy America so much as weaken it to the point where it was no longer a superpower. A return to different times, as I said. Regional dominance. No global superpower.”
“We’d have so many of our own problems that we wouldn’t bother with the Middle East—that was the thinking?”
“However unrealistic, yes. This is an accurate description of their motives.”
I’m not sure how unrealistic it was. It almost happened. I keep thinking the unthinkable—what would have happened had Nina not installed the stopper, the keyword to disable the virus? Or, for that matter, if she hadn’t given us the peekaboo to tip us off in advance? What if there hadn’t been a Nina and an Augie? We would never have known it was coming. Dark Ages would have become a reality. We would have been crippled.
Crippled, not killed. But crippled would have been enough, from their perspective. We would have been far too concerned with our troubles at home to worry much about the rest of the world.
They didn’t want to destroy us. They didn’t want to wipe us off the face of the earth. They just wanted to knock us down enough to force our withdrawal from their part of the world.
“We have been successful in our interrogation of the subjects,” says the king.
The Saudis permit a little more leeway in their “interrogation” techniques than we do. “They’re talking?”
“Of course,” he says, as if it were obvious. “And naturally we will make all this information available to you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“In summary, Mr. President, the members of this splinter group in the royal family paid the terrorist organization, the Sons of Jihad, a tremendous sum of money to destroy the American infrastructure. This included, apparently, hiring an assassin to eliminate members of the Sons of Jihad who had defected from the group.”
“Yes. We have the assassin in custody.”
“And is she cooperating with the investigation?”
“Yes,” I say. “We’ve reached an understanding with her.”
“Then you may know what I am going to say next.”
“Perhaps so, Your Highness. But I’d like to hear it from you anyway.”
Chapter
125
Have a seat,” I say inside the Roosevelt Room. Ordinarily we’d do this in the Oval Office. But I’m not having this conversation in the Oval Office.
He unbuttons his suit jacket and takes a seat. I sit at the head of the table.
“Needless to say, Mr. President, we were elated with the results from yesterday. And we were grateful that we could be a small part of your success.”
“Yes, Mr. Ambassador.”
“Andrei, please.”