The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(13)

“‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’”

Gabriel nodded thoughtfully in agreement. “A perfect example of a tyrant making his wishes abundantly clear. Henry spoke the words, and a few weeks later Becket was dead.”

“Should Khalid be removed from the line of succession?”

“If he is, it’s likely someone worse will take his place. Someone who will undo the modest social and religious reforms he’s put in place.”

“And if you learned of a threat to Khalid? What would you do?”

“We hear things all the time. Much of it from the mouth of the crown prince himself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your client is the target of aggressive collection by the Office and Unit 8200. Not long ago, we managed to hack into the supposedly secure phone he carries around. We’ve been listening to his calls and reading his texts and e-mails ever since. The Unit also managed to activate the phone’s camera and microphone, so we’ve been able to listen to many of his face-to-face conversations as well.” Gabriel smiled. “Don’t look so surprised, Sarah. As a former CIA officer, you should have realized that once you went to work for a man like Khalid bin Mohammed, you could expect no zone of privacy.”

“How much do you know?”

“We know that six days ago, the crown prince placed a number of urgent calls to the French National Police concerning an incident that took place in the Haute-Savoie, not far from the Swiss border. We know that later that same night, the crown prince was driven under police escort to Paris, where he met with a number of senior French officials, including the interior minister and the president. He remained in Paris for seventy-two hours before traveling to New York. There he had a single appointment.”

Gabriel removed a BlackBerry from the breast pocket of his jacket and tapped the screen twice. A few seconds later Sarah heard the sound of two people conversing. One was the future king of Saudi Arabia. The other was the director of the Nadia al-Bakari Collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“Do you know how to reach him?”

“Who?”

“The man who produced this painting without so much as a photograph to guide his hand. The man whose name should be right there.”

Gabriel tapped pause. “I had breakfast with my prime minister this morning and told him in no uncertain terms that I want nothing to do with this.”

“And what did your prime minister say?”

“He asked me to reconsider.” Gabriel returned the BlackBerry to his pocket. “Send a message to your friend, Sarah. Choose your words carefully to protect my identity.”

Sarah removed her iPhone from her handbag and typed the message. A moment later the device pinged.

“Well?”

“Khalid wants to see us tonight.”

“Where?”

Sarah posed the question. When the response arrived, she handed the phone to Gabriel.

He stared gloomily at the screen. “I was afraid he was going to say that.”





9

Nejd, Saudi Arabia


The plane that delivered Sarah Bancroft to Israel was a Gulfstream G550, a ninety-six-foot aircraft with a cruising speed of 561 miles per hour. Gabriel replaced the flight crew with two retired IAF combat pilots, and the cabin crew with four Office bodyguards. They departed Ben Gurion Airport shortly after seven p.m. and streaked down the Gulf of Aqaba with the transponder switched off. To their right, ablaze in the fiery orange light of the setting sun, was the Sinai Peninsula, a virtual safe haven for several violent Islamic militias, including a branch of ISIS. To their left was Saudi Arabia.

They crossed the Saudi coastline at Sharma and headed eastward over the Hejaz Mountains to the Nejd. It was there, in the early eighteenth century, that an obscure desert preacher named Muhammad Abdul Wahhab came to believe that Islam had strayed dangerously from the ways of the Prophet and the al salaf al salih, the earliest generations of Muslims. During his travels throughout Arabia, he was horrified to see Muslims smoking, drinking wine, and dancing to music while dressed in opulent clothing. Worse still was their veneration of trees and rocks and caves linked to holy men, a practice Wahhab condemned as polytheism, or shirk.

Determined to return Islam to its roots, Wahhab and his zealous band of followers, the muwahhidoon, launched a violent campaign to cleanse the Nejd of anything not sanctioned by the Koran. He found an important ally in a Nejdi tribe called the Al Saud. The pact they formed in 1744 became the basis of the modern Saudi state. The Al Saud held earthly power, but matters of faith they left in the hands of the doctrinal descendants of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab—men who despised the West, Christianity, Jews, and Shiite Muslims, whom they regarded as apostates and heretics. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda shared their view. So, too, did the Taliban and the holy warriors of ISIS and every other Sunni jihadist terrorist group. The toppled skyscrapers in Manhattan, the bombs in Western European train stations, the beheadings and the shattered markets in Baghdad: all of it could be traced back to the covenant reached more than two and a half centuries ago in the Nejd.

The city of Ha’il was the region’s capital. It had several palaces, a museum, shopping malls, public gardens, and a Royal Saudi Air Force base, where the Gulfstream landed shortly after eight. The pilot taxied toward a quartet of black Range Rovers waiting at the edge of the tarmac. Surrounding the vehicles were uniformed security men, all armed with automatic weapons.