Executive Power

Chapter Sixty
The armor-plated Mercedes limousine came to a stop in front of the north entrance to the West Wing. Two spit-polished marines stood at attention in their dress blues, one on each side of the door, like sentries to an ancient palace. Prince Abdul Bin Aziz stepped from the black limousine and buttoned his suit coat, while ignoring the reporters who were shouting questions at him from the lawn on the other side of the driveway. The cousin to the Crown Prince had left his keffiyeh back at the embassy. In fact, the only time he wore the traditional garb of his people was when he returned home or was forced to do so because of ceremony.

Over the last fifty-four years the Ambassador had spent more time in America than Saudi Arabia, which was fitting, since he'd been born at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. His early schooling had been handled by tutors and then at the age of fourteen he was shipped off to Philips Exeter Academy, the ultra-exclusive prep school in New Hampshire. After Philips Exeter it was on to Harvard for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Abdul Bin Aziz had a great affinity for America. More than anything, though, he admired his host country's secular approach to governance.

He had seen the true evil that could be perpetrated by men with deep religious conviction and it scared him. This was why he owned three homes in America and rarely allowed his children to return to Saudi Arabia. Prince Abdul Bin Aziz believed that in his lifetime the House of Saud would fall. It would be trampled by the very fanatics his relatives had supported over the years.

The ultra-orthodox Wahhabi sect of Islam had spread like an unruly weed across his country and beyond, choking out all forward and rational thinking, silencing all dissenters within and without the faith, and damning millions of people to a belief system that had more in common with the Stone Age than the twenty-first century.

And now, in this dangerous time, he was once again sent to the White House by his cousin, the Crown Prince, to try to appease the fanatics without slitting their own throats.