The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(65)

“So it was Hanifa, not Omar, who was trying to reach me?”

“Yes,” answered Gabriel. “And it was Hanifa who convinced Omar to walk into that consulate. She blames herself for his death. Almost as much as she blames you.”

“She danced on my grave after I abdicated.”

“She had a right.”

“She should have told me Reema was in danger.”

“She tried.”

Khalid had grown weary of reading the long article on a computer screen and was sitting at the table in the adjacent conference room with a printout. Several pages lay on the carpet at his feet, where he had tossed them in anger.

“If she hates me so much, why did she agree to give you Omar’s magnum opus?” He snatched up one of the pages and, scowling, reread it. “I can’t believe he dared to write these things about me. He called me a spoiled child.”

“You are a spoiled child. But what about the rest of it?”

“You mean the part about the Tsar being behind the plot to overthrow me?”

“Yes, that part.”

Khalid plucked another page from the floor. “According to Omar’s sources, it began after my last visit to Washington, when I agreed to spend a hundred billion dollars on American weaponry instead of buying the arms from Russia.”

“Sounds plausible.”

“It sounds plausible, but it isn’t accurate.” There was a silence. Then Khalid said quietly, “In fact, if I had to guess, the Tsar probably made up his mind to get rid of me much sooner than that.”

“Why?”

“Because he had a plan for the Middle East,” replied Khalid. “And I wanted no part of it.”



They returned to the owner’s suite. Outside on the windblown terrace, Khalid fed Omar Nawwaf’s story into the flame, one page at a time. When at last he spoke, it was of Moscow. He made his first trip there, he reminded Gabriel needlessly, a year before he became crown prince. He had just released his economic plan, and the Western press was hanging on his every word. He could get the CEO of any company in the world on the phone in a matter of minutes. Hollywood was head over heels. Silicon Valley, too.

“They were days of wine and roses. Salad days.” Mockingly, he added, “I was the most interesting man in the world.”

The agenda for the Moscow visit, he explained, was purely economic. It was part of Khalid’s effort to secure the technology and investment he needed to transform the Saudi economy into something other than the world’s gas station. In addition, he and his Russian hosts planned to discuss means of shoring up the price of oil, which was bumping along at about forty-five dollars a barrel, an unsustainable level for the Saudi and Russian economies. Khalid spent the first day meeting with Russian bankers, and the second with the CEOs of Russian technology companies, who left him deeply unimpressed. His meeting with the Tsar was scheduled for ten a.m. on the third day, a Friday, but it didn’t begin until one in the afternoon.

“He makes me seem punctual.”

“And the meeting?”

“It was dreadful. He slumped in his chair with his legs spread wide and his crotch on full display. Aides interrupted us constantly, and he excused himself three times to take phone calls. It was a power play, of course. Head games. He was putting me in my place. I was the son of an Arab king. To the Tsar, I was nothing.”

So Khalid was surprised when, at the conclusion of the frozen encounter, the Tsar invited him to spend the weekend at his palace on the Black Sea. Among its many luxurious appointments was a gold-plated indoor swimming pool. Khalid was installed in his own wing, but his aides were scattered among several guesthouses. There was no evidence of the Tsar’s wife or children. It was just the two of them.

“I will admit,” said Khalid, “I did not feel altogether safe being alone with him.”

They spent Saturday morning relaxing by the pool—it was high summer of 2016—and in the afternoon they went for a sail. That evening they dined in a cavernous cream-and-gold chamber. Afterward, they walked to a tiny dacha atop a cliff overlooking the sea.

“And that,” said Khalid, “was when he told me.”

“Told you what?”

“The master plan. The blueprint.”

“For what?”

Khalid thought about it for a moment. “The future.”

“And what does this future look like?”

“Where would you like me to begin?”

“Since it’s the summer of 2016,” said Gabriel, “why don’t we begin with America.”

The Tsar, said Khalid, had high hopes for the American presidential election that fall. He was also confident Washington’s days as the hegemon in the Middle East were nearing an end. The Americans had blundered into Iraq and paid a high price in blood and treasure. They were eager to put the entire region, with its intractable problems, in their rearview mirror. In contrast, the Tsar had prevailed in the fight for Syria. He had ridden to the rescue of an old friend and in the process sent a signal to the rest of the region that Moscow, not Washington, could be counted on in times of trouble.

“He wanted you to jettison the Americans and become a Russian ally?”

“You’re thinking too small,” answered Khalid. “The Tsar wanted to form a partnership. He said the West was dying, in part because he was doing his best to sow social division and political chaos wherever he could. He said the future lay in Eurasia, with its massive supplies of energy and water and people. Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran . . .”