Keys to the Kingdom (22 page)

Rosinski turned to face him. Her colour had returned to normal but she was still aroused by his presence. She was wondering whether she was having the same effect on him but there was no evidence of it. Disappointment gripped at her throat. She was a big girl who had handled her fair share of heartache. But right now she was a lonely, big girl and Arthur Worley was the best looking thing she’d clapped eyes on in a long time.

She said, ‘We Americans always forget that you people have been wandering around Arabia for a hell of a long time. While your grandfather was screwing some poor Arab out of a priceless piece of art, my grandfather was slaving for some fat-assed landowner in Katowice. You must have Saudi Arabia in your blood.’

‘I was born here,’ Worley said casually. ‘May I offer you a refill of your tea?’ It had been more than ten years since Worley had a female companion. Rosinski was a good-looking woman but she was also a lonely women. And sometimes lonely women jumped at possibilities that in normal circumstances they would avoid. According to his doctor he was on the edge of a mental breakdown and about to be booted not only out of Saudi but possibly out of the Service. He was not a prize catch. But he was also lonely. Put two lonely people together and you never know what might ensue.

‘No thanks,’ she moved to the settee in the middle of the room and sat down. ‘You’re not married, are you?’ Dumb question, she told herself as soon as the words had left her mouth. Jesus, every man in the world dreads being asked whether he’s married or not by an available female. Dumb, dumb  question.

Worley smiled. There was straightforward and straightforward, he thought. ‘No,’ he sat in the club chair opposite the settee. He slipped into his well-practised response pattern. ‘Ours is not a life conducive to marriage. Few people in our line of business achieve a balance between career and marriage. Most of my lady friends were happy enough to escape the final entanglement with me. What about you? Is it Mrs Rosinski or Miss Rosinski?’

‘At my age it’s Mizz Rosinski,’ she smiled trying to take the heat out of the situation. She was thinking of one of the songs from the ‘King and I’. As far as she could remember it was called ‘Getting to know you’. Relax, she told herself. Don’t push for it and maybe it will just happen. Concentrate on why you’re here. You’re a professional and so is Worley. Let’s try to keep it on that level. ‘I was married to a rat fink called Joey Sabulski. His idea of marriage was that while I was away on assignment, he was free to play the field. I came back from a particularly nasty visit to Haiti to find him in flagrante with my next-door neighbour. After that Joey had to find alternative accommodation. Luckily there were no children. Anyway you can call me Mary Jo. Did you know that you’re in Who’s Who? I looked you up, Ampleforth and Oxford, entry into the British Civil Service. You learned Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in Shemlan. After that, postings in several Arab countries, four books on different aspects of Arab politics. You’re quite the intellectual. Not a typical spy.’

‘Maybe not by American standards.’ Worley was impressed. She had looked him up and come alone to his quarters. He loved the way Americans can put themselves out there. It was so un English. ‘And anyway I don’t consider myself to be a ‘spy’. I’m an intelligence officer. The Embassy gathers a large amount of intelligence and I sift it. One of our more famous Ambassadors to Saudi defined my job as ‘putting oneself in the mindset of the Arabs and not becoming an Arab or behaving like one but to be able to predict or judge how Arabs would react in certain circumstances’. I think that definition just about covers it.’ Worley decided to do a bit of probing himself. ‘You and Clark Gilman don’t seem to be on very good terms.’

‘You could say that,’ Rosinski was beginning to enjoy this session. Worley was good-looking, articulate and intelligent. He was all the things that she had been missing since her arrival in Riyadh. She really needed to know whether he was trustworthy and she hadn’t quite reached that point. ‘The ‘Company’ and myself are about to break our relationship. I’ve been gauche enough to bring a sexual discrimination case against my employer.’ She saw Worley’s eyebrows raise and she smiled. ‘Not that kind of sexual discrimination case. I was probably the only recruit who wasn’t raped on my induction course. What I am is a damn good intelligence officer. I’ve given everything to the ‘Company’ but I kept bouncing off that ‘glass ceiling’. I was in line for station chief and there wasn’t a single asshole at the ‘Farm’ who could have denied that I deserved it. Except that, as a woman, I never got invited to the after-work drinking sessions or the golf outings. So I didn’t land the job. That was when I decided that enough was enough. I brought a ‘Jane Doe’ case against the ‘Company’ and we’re just about to settle. The job here in Riyadh is by way of punishment. That’s why Gilman and the rest of the gang at the station treat me like a pariah.’

‘You Americans are so litigious,’ Worley sipped his tea.

‘Maybe you’re right but there aren’t many jobs where you have to submit yourself to an annual lie detector test. I could take the imposition of the test but what I objected to was the interrogators getting off on questions like ‘How do you like it best?’ or ‘Did you ever have it in your ass?’ I bet they didn’t ask their male colleagues questions like that. Anyway, that was only the tip of the iceberg. I tripped when I lost out on a promotion to a total incompetent. That was when I decided that banging my head off the glass ceiling wasn’t good for my brains.  I’m not the only sister who’s going to take the bastards for a bundle.’

Worley could see the fire in Rosinski’s eyes. He was thinking that if the ‘Firm’ ever instigated an annual lie detector test many of his colleagues would have found themselves in severe difficulties. But being the British Secret Service, the questions on sexual proclivity would be designed to be as anodyne as possible. It was ironic that the British Secret Service had taken to women as a duck takes to water. The ‘old boy network’ had been the basis for recruitment since the Second World War. But since then women had certainly been allowed to make their mark in the Service. He could perfectly understand the frustration of a woman who was bloody good at her job but who had to watch her male colleagues moving smoothly ahead of her in the hierarchy. He glanced at his watch. The Ambassador was probably already into the Scottish malts in order to calm his nerves. 

‘And what can I do for you, Miss Rosinski, eh, Mary Jo?’ Worley asked.             

This was crunch time. She still hadn’t formed a full picture of Worley. He was probably the only single guy that she had met in Riyadh who hadn’t hit on her. But did that qualify him to look after Princess Nadia if she had to fly the coup suddenly. Her choices were limited and time was getting short. Here goes nothing, she thought. ‘I’ve got a problem,’ she began. ‘You remember when I met you at the party some weeks ago?’

Worley nodded.

‘At that time I mentioned that I had picked up some information on a new Ikhwan group,’ Rosinski continued. ‘Both you and Clark thought that I was talking through my ass. But I wasn’t. When I arrived in Saudi I knew the scene. Gilman was to keep me on ice while the U.S. legal system ground on. In America a case can go for months or for years. This was the perfect place to park me. It’s a male society where women can’t travel around alone. I can’t even sit behind the wheel of a car without being arrested. Hell, I can’t even get out of the compound unless there’s a man somewhere around. Somebody back at the ‘Farm’ sure as hell is a clever bastard. I’m parked where they can keep an eye on me and I’m forced to accept it because that’s the way things are in Saudi Arabia. As far as intelligence work is concerned, they had me in a box. The only Saudi males that want to talk to me are the ones who want to get into my pants.’ She smiled when she noticed Worley redden. ‘These are the kind of guys who get lower grades than women at their Ivy League colleges but who, as soon as they land in this God forsaken desert, start to think that there’s nothing only fluff between women’s ears. Now, I’m really on ice. I can’t move without having one of my male colleagues in tow and I can’t do my job because I have no access to ‘sources’. So I should lie back and wait until my legal eagle sorts things out with the ‘Company’. I can sit by the Embassy pool every day like the other wives and amuse myself by trying to work out the guy with the biggest dick. Except that’s not my style.’ She hesitated for a moment. This was the point of no return. The point where she handed over her ‘source’. ‘So I stumbled onto the only source of local intelligence that nobody else bothered to tap. I started to cultivate the local women.’ She had expected him to react but Worley’s face remained impassive. ‘Most people think that as soon as women put their feet on Saudi soil their brains automatically switch off. The Saudi men think that not only do their brains switch off but their ears cease to function. The more I entered into the local female society the more I saw the potential of these women as intelligence ‘sources’. Over the past few months I’ve developed a relationship with one woman in particular. This woman has passed information to me that there is a group that her husband belongs to that is planning a coup against the Al Saud leadership,’ She looked for a reaction on Worley’s face but again there was none. But why should there be. He had probably heard this kind of story before. ‘The group appears to be pretty well organised.’

‘Are you going to give me a name?’ Worley asked. His interest was complete. He already knew that Rosinski was no fool. Now it appeared that she might really have stumbled on to something important. He had never made a count of the number of dissident Saudi groups but there had to be at least twenty. Some were based on region, while others were tribal in composition. Several had a religious agenda. Both the Service and the Saudis had infiltrated these groups and were aware of their nature and membership.

‘The leader of the group is Prince Kareem,’ Rosinski said knowing that she was going to go the full nine yards with Worley.

Worley could not stop showing his disbelief on his face. Kareem was one of the rising stars of the Al Saud family. He had recently been appointed to a senior position in the Defence Ministry working directly with the Crown Prince. Worley had heard nothing of his involvement with dissident groups and if Rosinski’s information was correct, there was a major new player that he certainly hadn’t picked up on.

‘According to my source,’ Rosinski continued. ‘Prince Kareem was behind the assassination of Prince Mishuri. The assassination itself was carried out by a Palestinian.’

Worley felt a sense of disappointment. He wanted her to say that a Caucasian was behind the assassination. He wanted someone to confirm that Gallagher was mixed up in what was happening in Saudi. ‘That makes sense. But not from a coup point of view. Mishuri was a close confident of the Crown Prince. His death will leave a gap in the government that Kareem could very easily fill. The Al Sauds have never been above political assassination to forward themselves.’

‘I’m quite aware of that,’ Rosinski said. ‘Gilman has me on ice but I do get to read the local reports. The Prince Kareem business is completely outside the family situation. And it’s bigger, much bigger. They want to bring down the House of Saud and replace it with an Islamist, militant government. My source is very scared of such a result.’

‘I presume that you’ve shared this information with your superior.’

Rosinski laughed. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. I tried to talk to Gilman a couple of weeks ago but he left me in no doubt that first, he didn’t believe a word I was saying and second, he didn’t give a damn. That’s why I’m here. You’re the only other person I can confide in.’

There was something coming. Worley could feel it but he would let her get it out in her own good time.

‘Do you have a name for the Palestinian they imported to assassinate Mishuri?’

‘Not really. But my source did pick up a name during one of her husband’s meetings with his buddies, Abu Ma’aath. The gang seemed pretty wound up about the guy, whoever he is.’ She watched the colour drain from Worley’s face. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.

‘Abu Ma’aath,’ he said when he could speak. ‘You’re sure about that name?’

She could see that the name had a very profound effect on him. The colour was gradually coming back into his face but every muscle in his body appeared tense.

‘As sure as I can be. You obviously recognise it. I’ve shown you most of mine. Now it’s time for you to show me some of yours.’

Worley was stunned. It was what he had hoped for. It was complete confirmation that he had been right. Gallagher was alive and had, at least, been present in Riyadh at some point. He could feel a vein throbbing in his temple. He wanted to rush out and begin scouring the streets like a parent looking for a lost infant. But he knew that such an exercise would prove futile. It was time he faced some facts. Connally had been right. He was dealing with a vicious killer who could stay underground until he needed to act. He had no idea of what Gallagher’s agenda might be or of how he figured in this obviously wider Ikhwan plot. It might be frustrating but he would just have to keep his eyes and ears peeled. And that was where Rosinski and her asset would prove invaluable.

Rosinski clicked her fingers. ‘You back with me?’ she asked. She wanted to know what the hell had affected him so badly. ‘Are you going show me what you’ve got?’

Worley took a deep breath. ‘Okay. This is a long story so prepare yourself. It begins in Ireland twenty years ago.’ He started from the beginning. From the day that he heard that Robert had been abducted from a pub in Crossmaglen and never to be seen again. He told her about the life and times of Patrick Joseph Gallagher trawling his mind for the details of the files he had examined in London and he finished with the fact that he had seen Gallagher in Riyadh several weeks ago. ‘Every intelligence agency in the world has Gallagher dead and buried in Afghanistan. Yet I saw him in Riyadh and your ‘source’ has heard his nom de guerre spoken by a group who are planning a coup. This is probably one of the most dangerous terrorists who ever lived. Okay now we’ve shared our information. I want Gallagher and I want him badly. You and your asset are the only leads I’ve got so I’m with you on this.’