Keys to the Kingdom (17 page)

Burfield thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I have thought of them but no, I haven’t felt their presence. At least I don’t think so. And I haven’t seen any dead terrorists lately either.’

‘I saw Patrick Gallagher as clearly as I can see you now. Look at the news from Riyadh. Something is about to kick off and I bet Gallagher is involved somehow.’

‘I have the greatest respect for you as a colleague,’ Burfield said in a fatigued voice. ‘You are one of the best operatives we have ever had in the Middle East. Your language skills are without parallel. But,’ Burfield paused dramatically. ‘You are not yourself at the moment. I don’t know whether it’s physiological as our doctor surmises or whether this sighting of the dead terrorist has flipped your brain. The bottom line is that sending you back to Riyadh poses a risk. I’ve never thought of you in that vein but our relationship with the Saudis is such that a loose cannon could ruin it. And a hunt for Gallagher could turn you into that loose cannon.’

‘Don’t make me beg,’ Worley said. ‘We’ve known each other too long for that. I need to go back to Riyadh and I need to finish this posting. Then I promise I will apply for early retirement. It’s only a few years anyway and I can always look forward to working for Tony Blair’s consultancy.’

They both smiled.

Burfield opened the file on the desk in front of him. ‘You have five and a half months left on the Riyadh posting. In order to agree to you continuing there I will need a post dated letter requesting your retirement at the end of the posting.’

‘You’ll have it,’ Worley said.

Burfield stood up heavily and extended his hand. ‘I may have just made the biggest error of my career, in which case I will be retiring alongside you.’

Worley was ecstatic. He gripped Burfield’s hand. ‘Thank you, old friend. I won’t let you down.’

‘Don’t make promises you possibly can’t keep,’ Burfield said.

After Worley had left his office, Burfield opened the file on his desk and looked again at the photos that had been taken in Belfast. They showed Arthur St. John Worley standing before the Gallagher home in West Belfast. A second photo showed him speaking with a well-known terrorist, Mary Gallagher and a third was of Arthur entering the house. He was convinced that Worley had had some kind of mental breakdown. His behaviour was totally irrational. He closed the file and stared at the photograph of his wife and children that sat on his desk. Being terminated by the Service would change their lives completely. The children’s education would be arrested and their cushy suburban life would be threatened. He would protect that life at all costs. Sooner or later he felt that he might be called upon to bury the knife in Arthur Worley’s back. He wouldn’t do it with relish but he knew himself well enough to know that when the time came he would not be found wanting.

CHAPTER 24

Riyadh

‘Hang in there. It’s almost over.’

Mary Jo Rosinski listened to the cultured Brahmin Boston accent on the other end of the line. She could imagine the Armani suit, the Brooks Brothers cotton shirt and the red braces. Her lawyer was a class act.

‘I was hoping it would be sooner,’ she said a note of despondency in her voice. ‘We’ve got them on the ropes,’ his voice was light and full of confidence. It was a very polished and professional performance from a lawyer who earned a great deal of money for doing what he did well. ‘They’ll settle shortly, believe me. There’s no way that they want this one to go to trial. They can’t take the publicity. The pay-off is just around the corner. Hang in there.’

‘Easier said than done,’ she said with resignation. When she had received the call from her lawyer she was hoping to hear that her suit against her employer had been settled and that she could make her way back to where she belonged. ‘Just get the damn thing finished.’

‘ASAP,’ the cheery voice on the other end of the line said. ‘I’ll be talking to you soon.’

She heard the click on the line but held the handset to her ear until she heard the second click. Somewhere in the main Embassy building a tape recorder had shut off. That bastard Gilman and his cronies were listening to every word she uttered. It was damn annoying but it was to be expected. She lay back on the bed. The hum of the air conditioner filled the room as she closed her eyes. ‘It’s almost over’. The words reverberated in her brain. She wished the damn case would finish so that she could leave this sand heap and get on with the rest of her life. She pictured Gilman and his ‘good buddies’ listening to her taped conversations and leafing through the missives from her lawyer. The ‘Company’ was probably picking up the poor sucker’s mail as soon as he dropped it in the box. She smiled at the thought of some agent cramped into the post box outside her lawyer’s office. No, that wasn’t the ‘Company’s’ style. They probably had someone in her lawyer’s office on the payroll to feed the papers to them as they came out of the laser printer. Some days she wondered why the hell she was bothering. Add to that the fact that she was having one hell of a difficult period and you had one very pissed off lady. Maybe Gilman had it right. God had made women the weaker sex and every time Rosinski had a bad period she had been convinced that God had definitely been a man. Today was going to be a day in the can. And the way things were shaping up to-morrow might be as well. Her Ikhwan research had hit the skids in a big way. She had read every word on Saudi terrorist groups that the ‘Company’ station had produced in the past five years and the message was always the same. The Al Sauds had the situation totally under control and the combined resources of the terrorist groups wouldn’t produce any more than a pinprick. This analysis came from the same guys who had examined the aerial photographs of Sadaam’s legions massing on the Kuwaiti border and came to the conclusion that there was no way he was going to invade. It was the same guys who fucked Colin Powell’s career by making him go before the UN General Assembly and swear that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction all over Iraq. She supposed that the fools hadn’t learned anything in the meantime. Gilman had spent the past twenty-four hours squirreled away as the head bull geese of the Saudi security apparatus tried to figure out who had taken out the Junior Oil Minister. She could have told them where to look but they would just ignore her. Something was about to go down and the assassination of a minor Prince was just the overture. The main event was yet to come and when it did Gilman and Company would still have their collective thumbs up their collective asses. The hum of the air-conditioner was making her drowsy. To hell with Gilman and to hell with Saudi Arabia. All she wanted was for the pain in the pit of her stomach to subside. She was beginning to give in to sleep when her mobile phone intruded. She stretched out and picked up the instrument.

‘Mary Jo, is that you,’ the voice of Princess Nadia came on the line.

‘Don’t say your name,’ Rosinski said quickly. ‘I know who it is.’

‘I called your office and they said you were ill,’ Princess Nadia’s voice was high and strained. ‘I hope that I am not bothering you but I need to see you urgently.’

‘You’re not bothering me. But it’s never a good idea to call me at the Embassy. You never know who might be listening. Do you want me to go to your place?’

‘Oh I didn’t think of that,’ Nadia said almost absentmindedly. Her voice was thin and shaky and devoid of its usual confidence. ‘No, you shouldn’t come near my house.’ There was panic in her voice.

‘Okay, calm down,’ Rosinski said quickly. ‘We’ll meet wherever you like. Only I think we should do it sooner rather than later.’ Rosinski wished that she hadn’t felt that she had to say that. She was feeling shitty and going to meet the Princess gave her the same feeling that she imagined that Jesus had in the Garden of Gethsemane.

‘Yes I would like that,’ the Princess sounded calmer. ‘Do you know the Al-Dairah Market?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come in from the Tamari Street side. I will be examining fabrics at the first stall.’

‘Give me half an hour.’ The pain in Rosinski’s stomach had subsided. Maybe all she had needed was a little action.

Rosinski stood on the outside of the Al-Dairah Market or
Souq
that was one of the biggest and most famous in Riyadh. She wore the longest and most modest dress and covered herself from head to toe in a thick abaya. Across the road two members of the hated mutawain, the Saudi religious police, watched her as she tried to envelope herself more fully in the shroud-like garment. If that son-of-bitch lawyer in Washington knew what she put up with in Saudi, he might just try to speed up her case. But he didn’t know and he was going to be paid however quickly the case was resolved.  She ignored the stares of the mutawain and crossed to the edge of the Souq. The original market had probably dated from the creation of the city in the nineteenth century and had consisted of a myriad of dirt floor stalls jumbled together along dark winding aisles all under a broad tin roof. This was the quintessential oriental bazaar with the smell of spices mingling with the aroma of incense burning in old wooden containers. The Souq was divided into two sections, the women’s Souq where only females could shop, and the male Souq forbidden to women. On the Tamari Street side where Rosinski stood was the entrance to the women’s Souq. She tried to pick out the form of the Princess among the hooded women who examined bolts of cloth on the trestle tables of the fabric shops. Above the tables, lengths of bright cloth hung from wires between the posts defining individual shops.

‘Mary Jo.’

She hardly recognised the woman who examined the bolt of cloth at the stall nearest her. Princess Nadia was covered from head to toe in a jet-black abaya and a rough leather mask covered her beautiful features. Rosinski was struck by the contrast between this shapeless amorphous creature and the Paris clad sophisticate who had entertained her at her home several weeks before.

‘Prince...,’ Rosinski began but stopped as a diamond-clad finger pinched her.

‘Come,’ Nadia said leading Rosinski further into the Souq. They passed through the fabric shops until they reached the spice and perfume sellers. Rosinski’s nose overdosed on the pungent aromas. Women crowded around the cosmetic and perfume dealers. Nadia hurried on with Rosinski in her wake. They passed stalls selling everything from sandals to scissors sharpeners. There was a roving vendor hawking fly nets for baby beds and a darum merchant selling the soft sticks that brush a Saudi’s teeth as he chews. Then they came to the first of the gold shops.

‘Here,’ Nadia said pulling Rosinski into the open doorway of a gold shop.

A man with the characteristic hooked nose of the Bedouin looked up from a display case glittering with rows of gold bracelets.

Nadia spoke in rapid Arabic to the man before pulling Rosinski after her into the back of the shop.

‘Quick,’ Nadia said pulling up the leather mask and showing her beautiful olive skinned face.

Rosinski noticed that Nadia’s eyes were red-rimmed from either tears or lack of sleep. The perfectly smooth skin that she had remarked in the villa at Sulaimaniya was lined.

‘We don’t have much time.’ She noticed Rosinski looking at the old man. ‘Don’t worry we can trust him. He is too afraid of losing my business to betray me. And it is clear that you are a woman. And what is there to fear of two women being together?’

Rosinski could feel the tension in the other woman. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘You’ve heard the news from Dhahran?’ Nadia asked.

‘Yes.’ Rosinski said.

‘Prince Mishuri has been assassinated,’ Nadia looked around furtively. ‘He was shot as he stepped from his jet at the airport.’

‘I know’ Rosinski said. She wanted to move the conversation along but she didn’t want to spook the Princess. A cramp gripped her stomach and she winced.

‘Are you OK?’ the Princess asked.

‘Time of the month,’ Rosinski replied. ‘Bad this time. Continue.’

‘He is,’ Nadia stopped and moved closer to Rosinski. Her voice dropped. ‘I should say ‘was’ one of the up and coming Princes. His father is one of the elder sons of Abdul Aziz. Mishuri would have been in line to become Crown Prince if he had lived.’ 

Rosinski had read her history of Saudi Arabia. ‘I’ve heard about his father. By all accounts he was a wicked old bastard. Isn’t he the guy that the film ‘Death of a Princess’ was based on.’

Nadia nodded.

‘What kind of a grandfather could personally chop off the head of his grand-daughter?’

‘You are very naive, Mary Jo, and so very Western. You people have no idea of the concept of
sharaf
. In our culture the honour of a man in his own eyes and in the eyes of his peers depends almost entirely on the
ird
, or sexual honour. The adultery of the granddaughter was the ultimate dishonourable act to every man in her family. For the men to regain their honour, the offending member of the family must be severed from the group. The sensitivity of our men to the
ird
is so great that our whole lives are dominated by it. Our clothes, the restriction on our movements, everything is designed to make it impossible for a woman to lose her sexual virtue. Her grandfather only did what any other Saudi male would wish to do. Except that he actually carried out the execution himself. Those who killed Mishuri knew exactly what they were doing by assassinating the son of one of the senior family members.’

The thought of a man executing his own granddaughter because she had lost her virginity filled Rosinski with loathing for the male sex. But there was something more than imparting the news of a Prince’s death behind Nadia’s insistence on a meeting.

‘You know who was behind the assassination?’ Rosinski asked.

‘Shush.’ Nadia placed an elegant finger on Rosinski’s lips. Then she glanced through a gap in the cloth. Small beads of sweat ran along her cheekbones as she pulled the cloth tighter together. ‘My God, Mary Jo, but I am so scared. Up to now it was a game that I watched with interest. I had become used to the posturings of my husband. In some ways he had become a comical character acting out the part of the devout desert sheikh. But now that it has begun I am no longer inclined to laugh. I want to run as far away from this accursed country as I can possibly get.’ She shivered. ‘For some time now I have been feeling that I am doomed. Last night I begged my husband for my passport and his permission to go to our villa in Spain. He treated my request with scorn. You see, Mary Jo, my husband and what he calls his ‘brothers’ are behind the assassination of Mishuri. I heard them planning it three nights ago. A stranger came to our house and I was asked to serve him. I only heard his name as Nasrullah. He was an Arab, but not a Saudi. He might have been Syrian or even Palestinian. But he frightened me. His eyes were not like those of my husband. No fire burned in them. How can I describe them? They were cold and impenetrable. I had no idea what was happening behind them. He was the one they had brought to silence the Prince. And that is only the beginning. You’ve got to help me, Mary Jo.’ Nadia began to sob.

Rosinski put her arms instinctively around the sobbing woman. Nadia shuddered with each sob. She could only guess at the depth of the woman’s sorrow. Nobody’s world was perfect but Rosinski had learned in the past few months that being a woman in Saudi Arabia was the pits. Sure, she had her own troubles but deep down she knew she could handle almost anything that life could throw at her. But it was easy for her to talk. Her passport was sitting in her desk drawer and she could hop on a plane to the US any time she felt like it. Nadia and her friends were trapped, virtual slaves to the men who bound them with the ancient code of
sharraf
. She wanted to help Nadia to escape but there was no way she could get her out of the country other than in the diplomatic bag. And there was no way the Ambassador or Gilman was going to go for that. Nadia continued to sob in her arms and she wondered what Gilman and his Saudi security pals would be up to at that particular moment. She was willing to bet that they would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Nadia was her trump card. Something big was going down and her connection with the Princess was going to put her right at the centre of it. The question was what was she going to do with her newfound knowledge. If she followed the book, she should hand Nasrullah and Prince Kareem over to Gilman. That would make her boss the ‘star pupil’ with the folks in Washington but it would do nothing for her personally. What the hell should she care? In a couple of weeks or so she would be out of here and lying on some Caribbean beach sipping rum punches while trying to fight off the attentions of some beach bum with a permanent bulge in his swimming trunks. That would be great for her but what about the woman she held in her arms.