The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(109)

I chose not to identify the radioactive poison wielded by my fictitious Russian assassins. Its deadly properties, however, were clearly similar to polonium-210, the highly radioactive chemical element used in the November 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a dissident former Russian intelligence officer living in London. Britain’s feeble response to the use of a weapon of mass destruction on its soil undoubtedly emboldened the Kremlin to target a second Russian living in Britain, Sergei Skripal, in March 2018. A former GRU officer and double agent, Skripal survived after being exposed to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. But Dawn Sturgess, a forty-four-year-old mother of three who lived near Skripal in the cathedral city of Salisbury, died four months after the initial attack, a collateral casualty in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war on dissent. Not surprisingly, Putin ignored a request by the woman’s son to allow British authorities to question the two suspected Russian assassins.

There is no such thing as the Royal Data Center in Riyadh, but there is something very much like it: the ridiculously named Center for Studies and Media Affairs. Run by Saud al-Qahtani, a courtier and close confidant of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the center obtained its initial arsenal of sophisticated cyberweapons from an Italian firm called Hacking Team. It then acquired software and expertise from the Emirates-based DarkMatter and from NSO Group, an Israeli company that reportedly employs veterans of Intelligence Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence service. According to the New York Times, DarkMatter has also hired graduates of Unit 8200, along with several Americans once employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Indeed, one of DarkMatter’s top executives reportedly worked on some of the NSA’s most advanced cyberoperations.

Saud al-Qahtani oversaw more than the Center for Studies and Media Affairs. He also led the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, the clandestine unit responsible for the brutal murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist and columnist for the Washington Post. Eleven Saudis face criminal charges in the killing, which was carried out inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Saudi officials have claimed, among other things, that the operatives acted unilaterally. The CIA, however, concluded that the murder was ordered by none other than Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Not for the first time, President Donald Trump disagreed with the findings of his intelligence community. In a written statement, he repeated Saudi claims that Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood before seeming to absolve MBS of complicity in the journalist’s death. “It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event—maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.” The president went on to say: “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

But Saudi Arabia is not a democracy with entrenched institutions. It is one of the world’s last absolute monarchies. And unless there is another change to the line of succession, it will be ruled, perhaps for decades, by the provenly reckless Mohammed bin Salman. My fictitious Saudi crown prince—the Western-educated, English-speaking KBM—ultimately was a redeemable figure. But I’m afraid Mohammed bin Salman is probably beyond restoration. Yes, he has delivered modest reforms, including granting women the right to drive, long forbidden in the backward-looking Kingdom. But he has also imposed an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent unparalleled in recent Saudi history. MBS promised change. Instead, he has delivered instability to the region and repression at home.

For now, the U.S.-Saudi relationship appears frozen, and MBS is trotting the globe in search of friends. China’s Xi Jinping entertained him in Beijing in early 2019. And at a G20 summit in Buenos Aires, MBS exchanged an unseemly high five with Vladimir Putin. A source close to the crown prince told me the exuberant greeting was a message to MBS’s critics in the U.S. Congress. Saudi Arabia, he was saying, no longer had to depend only on the Americans for protection. Putin’s Russia was waiting in the wings, no questions asked.

A decade ago, such an implicit warning would have been toothless. But no more. Putin’s intervention in Syria has once again made Russia a power to be reckoned with in the Middle East, and America’s traditional friends have taken notice. MBS’s father, King Salman, has made a single overseas trip. It was to Moscow. The emir of Qatar embarrassed the Trump administration by stopping in Moscow on the eve of a visit to Washington. Egypt’s al-Sisi has visited Moscow four times. So, too, has Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East, is hedging its regional bets. Putin’s Russia is too powerful to be ignored.

But would a Saudi leader ever break the historic bond with America and tilt toward Russia? A version of the tilt has already begun, and it is Mohammed bin Salman who is leaning Moscow’s way. The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia was never based on shared values, only on oil. MBS knows full well that the United States, now a major energy producer, no longer needs Saudi Arabian petroleum the way it once did. In Putin’s Russia, however, he has found a partner to help manage the global supply of oil and its all-important price. He has also found, if need be, a source of weapons and a valuable conduit to the Shiite Iranians. And perhaps most important, MBS can rest assured his new friend will never criticize him for killing a meddlesome journalist. After all, the Russians are rather good at that, too.





Acknowledgments