The Alexandria Connection (25 page)

‘Have you seen enough, Davis?’

‘You bastard!’ Davis had gone white.

‘Rachel will show you the way to your guesthouse. Dinner will be at eight,’ said Crowley, ‘where we’ll be joined by my wife, Lillian, and Pastor Shipley.’

‘You’re staying in one of two guesthouses,’ Rachel said, as she led the way across the patio at the rear of the house on to a sandstone pathway and across a beautifully manicured lawn.

‘What’s that in there,’ Davis asked, pointing to a collection of buildings shaded by tall, gracious oak trees.

‘That’s the fitness centre . . . Olympic pool, sauna, Jacuzzi and a massage studio, along with a conference centre.’ It was rarely used by Crowley, except to entertain.

‘I can get a massage?’

Not your sort of massage, Rachel thought. ‘Of course. Or if you prefer, beyond the fitness centre are two tennis courts and an eighteen-hole championship golf course, where the professional will fit you out for shoes and clubs.’ A small army of gardeners and horticulturists kept the golf course, tennis courts, hedges, rose gardens, vegetable garden and greenhouses in immaculate condition.

‘Crowley has his own professional?’

‘Mr Crowley doesn’t do things by halves, Governor Davis,’ said Rachel, as they reached the first of two opulent guesthouses. The price tag for Crowley’s estate had never been published, but Rachel knew it dwarfed Los Angeles’ US $125 million Fleur de Lys estate, Miami’s Casa Casuarina and New York’s CitySpire Penthouse. Rachel opened the door and stepped back to allow Davis access.

‘Care for a drink?’ he said, placing his arm around her waist.

‘Let’s get one thing clear right from the start, Governor Davis,’ Rachel said, removing his arm. ‘Between now and the first Tuesday in November, you and I are going to be spending a lot of time together, and that time will be purely –
purely –
on a professional basis.’

‘Ah, Carter. I trust you found everything in your accommodation to your liking.’ By dinner, any trace of the real Sheldon Crowley had disappeared, and he radiated hospitality and diplomacy. ‘Let me introduce my wife Lillian,’ he said. Lillian was dressed in an impeccable Aquascutum black silk twin set, and black Stuart Weitzman shoes studded with diamonds. Her ample neck was adorned with a string of Paspaley pearls, harvested off the west coast of Australia from the rare
Pinctada maxima
oyster. Known for producing the world’s finest pearls, the original baroque string was of such rare quality it had taken several years to compile. They were complemented by Paspaley pearl earrings set in twenty-one-carat rose gold.

‘Delighted to meet you, ma’am,’ said Davis, still not sober despite a two-hour nap.

‘And this is Pastor Shipley,’ continued Crowley. ‘Matthias has been part of the family for years now.’

‘Delighted, Pastor,’ said Davis. Looking slightly uncomfortable, he took the pale-faced pastor’s outstretched hand.

‘Sheldon tells me you’re planning on running for president,’ Shipley said, as they repaired to the smaller, more intimate of Ploutos Park’s two dining rooms. The Italian suite featured high-backed silver chairs finished in gold brocade. The large table was inlaid with silver and gold and supported by four cherubs carved out of stone. Two huge oval mirrors hung above matching sideboards.

‘I haven’t announced it yet,’ said Davis, ‘but Sheldon has been very generous with his suggestions and support.’

Rachel maintained a neutral expression, but she was surprised by Davis’ sudden change of heart. Was it the threat of exposure, she wondered, or had Davis genuinely reconsidered? Whatever the reasons, Rachel had no doubt that the perks of office would feature prominently in Davis’s acceptance.

‘Where do you think your appeal to the voters will lie?’ asked Lillian, keen to get to know a little more about the candidate her husband had so suddenly announced.

‘For the last three years, as the governor of Montana, I’ve run on a platform of faith and family. Montanans don’t wear their religion on their sleeves but leaving aside the natives, they’re mainly Catholic and Protestant. A platform of faith has served me very well, both as a compass for my personal life, and for guidance in making the crucial decisions that affect everyday Montanans.’

Rachel observed her new charge with interest. Davis was now clearly back in political spin mode, and if he’d managed to pass the bullshit test in the rough and tumble world of Montana, perhaps he might be able to bamboozle the broader American public for long enough to gain the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But it would depend on him keeping his dick in his pants, and that might be a big ask.

‘We’re basing Governor Davis’s campaign on jobs and the economy. The issues that matter most to ordinary Americans, but I’m under no illusions as to the importance of the evangelical Christian vote,’ said Rachel, ‘and to that end, any support you can provide will be greatly appreciated, Pastor.’ Rachel was acutely aware of Karl Rove’s strategy to mobilise the Christian Right behind George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Without that evangelical support, Al Gore would have been president.

Pastor Shipley seemed deep in thought, and he didn’t reply immediately. ‘Yes . . . Sheldon has already raised this with me, and I am of course, very happy to help,’ he said finally, turning to Davis. ‘A campaign slogan of “Faith and Family” is fine for the average voter, but there are around forty million evangelical Christians in this country, and they’re a little more discerning. If you are to gain their support, Carter, it will depend on your
personal
relationship with Christ our Saviour, and if you’re elected as our president, they will expect you to have God at the centre of your administration. Your administration must define itself by its Christian morals and ethics.’

Rachel groaned inwardly. It was going to be a
very
hypocritical campaign. But in the face of the likely Democrat candidate, the impressive Hailey Campbell, she knew they needed Pastor Matthias B. Shipley on board.

‘I will organise a meeting of a thousand pastors whose influence stretches across this entire country and beyond – pastors like Bobby Calhoun, who runs the American Christian Broadcast Foundation. He reaches over seventy million Americans through his television and radio programs, and he’s a very powerful man to have on side in an election campaign.’

The same Bobby Calhoun who had described Islam as an evil religion, Rachel mused, and had declared Hurricane Katrina ‘God’s retribution on the wickedness of New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama’. An already weird state of politics in America was about to get a whole lot weirder.

Y
ousef dozed in the front seat of the first of the two Bedford trucks, both loaded with Pakistani sheesham logs, a timber of the rosewood genus, known for its unique grains, and much prized by the furniture manufacturing industry. The convoy had left the outskirts of Quetta before dawn, following the long, straight desert highway west toward the border with Iran. To the north the rugged, bare granite of the snow-capped Chagai mountains marked the border between Baluchistan Province and Afghanistan. Every so often, a lonely blue sign would announce the distance to the next small town, with the inevitable mosque and flat-roofed stone houses in an otherwise featureless desert.

It wasn’t until late afternoon before Yousef was suddenly alert. The truck slowed, and they entered Taftan, the last town before the border with Iran, a few hundred metres further on. The highway was littered with rubbish, and a goat herd was unhurriedly moving his animals from the highway toward the town square. They skirted the truck park on the Pakistan side and joined thirty more semi-trailers, queued at the Iranian border town of Mirjaveh and the crossing of the rail line from Quetta to the first major Iranian town, Zahedan to the west.

Colourful portraits of the bearded Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, were painted on the sides of the buildings. Here the dirt streets were clean. Barbed wire stretched into the foothills of the mountains to the north. To the south, a heavily fortified three-metre-high wall was under construction, running from Mirjaveh across 700 kilometres of desert to the town of Mand. Coupled with berms, ditches, and forts, it was designed to deter illegal immigrants and to stop the flow of drugs.

Yousef smiled to himself. With over four million users out of a population of 73 million, Iran, he knew, had the highest rate of opiate addiction in the world, and if the Ayatollahs thought they were going to stop the import of drugs with a three-metre wall, they were kidding themselves. The narcotics came from an area referred to as the ‘Golden Crescent’, an area that overlapped Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, and despite the Infidel spending more than US $7 billion trying to eradicate it, production had steadily increased. The Infidel was not very clever, he thought. Poppy growers in Afghanistan could get up to US $200 for a kilogram of dry opium, compared to forty cents for a kilogram of wheat. Of the world’s annual production of over 9000 tonnes of opium, over 75 per cent came across the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where it was processed into heroin and then exported back to Iran and on to Europe. Yousef, for one, applauded. Much to the chagrin of the Infidel, opium was one of the key sources of finance for both the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The truck queue inched forward, and it was over two hours before Yousef was asked for his papers by the Iranian security guards.

‘Get out of the truck,’ the guard ordered.

Captain Kazaz pulled up the computer file for the 300 000-tonne supertanker
Leila
, a Lebanese flagged tanker in the Port Control Centre at Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil port. He logged into the Terminal Ship Information System and checked on
Leila
’s history. Unlike some others, the supertanker was well maintained, although he made a mental note to check whether a minor deficiency, a faulty auxiliary pump, had been repaired since her last visit. Saudi Arabia’s massive sea-island oil terminal was located just to the north of Dammam, the capital of the Eastern Province, the largest of Saudi Arabia’s provinces and the most oil-rich area in the world. Ras Tanura meant ‘cape oven’, and it was aptly named. A searing heat enveloped the peninsula that protruded into the Persian Gulf.

Kazaz paused to take in the mass of consoles and control screens, the heartbeat of the state-of-the-art Vessel Traffic Management System, which at any second provided the exact position, bearing and approach and departure speeds of the massive tankers. He checked the wind speeds, currents, tide and the weather. Of greatest concern was the wind, and today it was blowing at 25 knots from the north-west. All ships, especially large tankers, acted like a sail. The wind blowing at 90 degrees on the
Leila,
a tanker 320 metres long with a height of 25 metres, would create a force of some 85 tonnes, but the
Leila
’s bow thrusters were rated at 2000 kilowatts, which would provide 27 tonnes of thrust. Each of Ras Tanura’s four tugs, equipped with precise Voith-Schneider propulsion units, provided an additional 50 tonnes of thrust, and Kazaz was confident he had plenty in reserve should there be any trouble.

The 60-metre-high control tower swayed in the wind, and Kazaz looked north, toward the maze of pipes, cracking towers and storage tanks that defined the vast oil refinery. To the east, long piers jutted into the turquoise waters of the gulf. The south pier consisted of four berths capable of handling smaller 45 000-tonne tankers. It was here that a mere 80 000 barrels were loaded on to a small oil tanker in May 1939, the very first Saudi crude from the world’s largest reserves. A little further up the coast, the north pier extended nearly two kilometres into the gulf. It had a capacity to berth six tankers simultaneously, but was still limited to tankers under 135 000 tonnes. To accommodate the massive ultra large crude carriers, or ULCCs, of 500 000 tonnes, four sea islands had been built in the gulf. The supertankers had a draught of over twenty metres, and were over four football fields in length. Backed by massive pumps, huge four-foot-diameter submarine pipelines delivered up to three million barrels of crude oil to these giants of the sea.

Saudi Aramco had originally started life as a joint American–Saudi venture in 1933, when the first King of Saudi Arabia, ibn Saud, granted a prospecting concession to American oil concerns. When oil was discovered in 1938, the company became known as the Saudi Arabian American oil company, or ARAMCO. After a long and bitter fight over royalties, the largest oil company in the world was finally nationalised in 1980, and brought under the direct control of the House of Saud and myriad princes, the lavish lifestyles of whom were an anathema to the likes of Jamal and Yousef.

Kazaz made a final call to the
Leila
’s agent to ensure customs and clearances were in order. He took the lift down to the car park and drove the short distance to the north pier where the
el-Alat 9
, one of four pilot boats, was waiting to take him out to the
Leila
.

‘
Abqaiq, Manifa, Najimah, Tanajib –
are you in position, over?’

The four tugs acknowledged in turn and Kazaz assigned them positions running alphabetically from fore through to aft. That made it easier for him to remember where each tug was attached.

‘This is the pilot, estimate your location in ten minutes, over.’

‘
Leila,
roger . . . rope ladder is in position on the starboard side.’

‘Make a run along the hull,’ Kazaz ordered when he reached the tanker, towering above him. He checked
Leila
’s draft. The hull markings were registering 20.5 metres, close to the maximum of 21 metres. The helmsman brought the pilot boat alongside and Kazaz swung on to the ropes in one practised movement.

‘
Shukran
 . . . thank you,’ said Kazaz, and he climbed sure-footedly to the deck high above him, where Abdullah Hadid, the master of the
Leila
, was waiting.

‘
Ahlan wa sahlan
 . . . welcome on board,’ the short, wiry master said, extending his hand, a look of relief on his face. Despite his twenty years experience as a ship’s master, Hadid was never comfortable in the close confines of a port or terminal where he was unsure of the currents and where the shipping lanes were crowded. Together, they signed the ship’s register and commenced the pre-unberthing safety check with a tour of the tanker’s vast deck, checking on mooring lines and anchor cables. Kazaz ensured that the Chiksan arms, the marine loading arms that enabled the crude to be pumped into the huge tanks, were safely disconnected and stowed on the sea island. Satisfied, he stepped into the
Leila
’s elevator with the captain and rode up seven storeys to the bridge, above which flew a red and white flag, indicating the pilot was on board.

English was the international language of the sea, and having ascertained that Captain Hadid, along with the
Leila
’s chief engineer, could communicate well, Kazaz familiarised himself with the layout of the bridge: the chart table, radars and helmsman’s position, and the repeater dials, and then he briefed Hadid on the plan for unberthing.

‘The wind is from the north-west at 25 knots, and the current is running at one and a half knots, so we’ll use that to help ease the stern away from the aft dolphin,’ Kazaz explained, while he waited for the four tug captains to confirm they were secured.

‘Standby engines, single up lines,’ he ordered. Kazaz walked across to the port wing of the big bridge and watched the dolphin crews cast off all but the essential mooring hawsers at the bow and the stern.

‘
Leila
stern . . . let go aft . . . port twenty . . . dead slow ahead.’ Kazaz listened while his orders were repeated back to him. ‘
Manifa, Najimah, Tanajib,
half astern.’ On the bridge of the stern tug,
Tanajib,
the meter registering the strain on the line touched 80 tonnes and the stern of the huge tanker slowly swung away from the aft dolphin.

‘Bow, this is bridge, let go for’ard . . . midships . . . dead slow astern . . .
Manifa . . .
come around to port.’

The massive tanker eased out into the channel and the four tugs, like attentive sheep dogs, responded instantly to Kazaz’s measured commands. When manoeuvring a behemoth like this, Kazaz knew well that slow was good, and degree by degree, the monstrous bow, nearly 300 metres for’ard of the bridge, came around onto a heading for the narrow and treacherous Strait of Hormuz.

‘It is sheesham timber,’ Yousef explained to the Iranian Mirjaveh border guard, who seemed to be having difficulty reading the invoice. ‘Two truckloads destined for a furniture shop in Bandar Abbas.’ Yousef knew that if the border guards checked, they would find that Sheesham Furniture Bandar Abbas was a registered business, but eventually they would discover it was a shell company. ‘They make very good furniture there,’ Yousef added with a smile. The guard relaxed a little, walked around both trucks and returned a short while later with the paperwork stamped and approved.

Yousef settled back into the front passenger seat of the Bedford and the convoy headed north-west on Highway 84, across the Kavir-e Loot desert, where the temperature of the sand could get as high as 70˚C, and on toward Zahedan, an Iranian desert city of half a million people. The air temperature had climbed and a heat haze shimmered off the desert on either side of the road.

Yousef connected his laptop through a satellite link, opened up the stamp website and logged in under the username of ‘Ledifni’.

‘Have just acquired a US #231 1893 Columbian Commemorative stamp,’ he posted, together with the image of the American Bank Note Company’s two-cent stamp. ‘A much-desired boost to my collection . . . it is giving me a great deal of happiness.’

An hour later, the Bedford trucks ground their way past flat-roofed houses toward the centre of the city, where a large crowd had gathered near the Ali Ibn Abi Talib Mosque, chanting
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
Three bodies swung in the breeze beneath a makeshift gantry, suspended from thick ropes around their necks. Yousef could hear the governor shouting through loud speakers. Two days before, an explosion had rocked the centre of the city.

‘Let this be a lesson! These terrorists have been corrupt on earth. They have waged war against God, and they have acted contrary to national security! They were agents of arrogance . . . agents of arrogance!’ the governor warned. It was a term the clerics used to refer to the United States. ‘There is no doubt they were hired by the Great Satan to disrupt our lives!’

Yousef directed the driver to take a side street that led to one of al Qaeda’s safe houses, where the two Toyota four-wheel drives were fuelled and ready to go.