The Phoenix Affair

  *****

  Paul Cameron emerged on the street level two blocks away from his hotel and moved westward, away from it, for one hundred yards. Checking behind himself for traffic, he abruptly crossed Rue Rivoli making a careful scan of the north sidewalk in the direction he’d come. He was not being followed. Relaxing now, he made his way toward his hotel on the Rue Jean Lantier.

  The evolution to move Brigadier Fahd’s family had gone well enough. He’d arrived at the hotel in Ste. Germaine at around ten o’clock in a Chrysler Town and Country minivan taxi, which he thought was ironic but very practical. He’d sat in the car for three minutes or so on arrival, chatting with the driver and making a good sweep around the hotel to look for any watchers. There were none.

  Fadia received him with both joy and caution: she was uncomfortable in the company of another man without her husband present, but she’d remembered him fondly from War College. Mohammed was clearly irritated about this breach of family protocol, but in the end they were all bundled into the van and delivered at the Hotel du Vieux Saule in the Marais District, north of the river Seine.

  Fahd had been there for forty five minutes, and he’d arranged the rooms to accommodate the family. The hotel was classically Parisian: small, old, but well appointed and clean. It was five stories with a small lobby and patisserie on the ground floor, just around the corner from the ancient Carreau du Temple on Rue d. Picardie. Cameron left them there at nearly eleven, running on empty after a very long day.

  Now he walked through the door of the Grande Hotel du Champagne, greeted the night clerk and retrieved his key. He made his way to the tiny elevator which bounced noisily to the third floor. Finding his room, he undressed quickly and fell into bed and a deep sleep. He was snoring loudly five minutes later, dreaming a strange dream of young Arab men eating onion soup au gratin among the dunes of some faraway desert.

  VIII. Saudi Arabia

  Ali bin Fahd al-Auda could see the outskirts of the town of al-Ha’il in the crisp, hard-cold air of early morning in the desert. In the middle and back seats, four of his brothers and sisters were still asleep. “Good,” he thought. He looked again in the rear view mirror. A hundred meters behind, an identical black GMC Suburban followed, driven by his nineteen year old cousin, Saad, and carrying the other four children of General Fahd bin Turki al-Auda.

  It was the end of a long, hard drive. They’d left their home in ad-Dhahran on the coast of the Arabian gulf at midday yesterday, as his father had ordered. The route took them straight for Riyadh, four hundred fifty kilometers across the open desert of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the repository of nearly one third of all the world’s known reserves of oil. The two vehicles, each bearing the sticker of his father’s rank on the lower windscreen, had passed without remark through the three highway checkpoints. In Riyadh they’d stuck to the highway through town until they passed north of the Diplomatic Quarter in the northwest of the city, then they’d taken the al-Buraydah road north stopping for gas, maghrib prayers, and a poor dinner in the village of al-Majma’ah. By the time they’d got there he was beginning to relax. Nobody was obviously following them, indeed there hadn’t been a car behind them for at least twenty miles by the time they’d stopped. From Majma’ah the road became narrower, and they could no longer drive at the nearly one hundred miles per hour that was usual on Saudi highways, and it had been a very dark night. But, now they were here, al-Ha’il, to be welcomed and protected by the powerful al-badawiyyah, or Bedouin tribe of the al-Auda to which they belonged.

  Ali was honored to have taken the lead in his older brother’s absence, especially since he was only seventeen and cousin Saad was nineteen. He was not so honored that his judgment was clouded, however. Ali understood the danger his father had described, and he was anxious to get his brothers and sisters into town to the rambling family villa, enclosed in the walled compound that held the homes of his uncles and their families. He passed the first buildings on the outskirts of the town he knew so well from his many summers here, and he turned at the first left as he’d agreed with Saad last night. Saad powered straight on for three blocks, then turned left as well. He’d gone three blocks West along a street lined with small shops when he passed a cross street, and saw Ali’s Suburban waiting at the sign as expected. Saad slowed as he passed, taking a long, hard look down the street behind Ali, looking for anything suspicious. Nothing. He punched the accelerator and the 454 V-8 roared, accelerating the big SUV quickly back to one hundred kilometers per hour. Ali saw him go, but waited, counting slowly, and when the time was right he accelerated smoothly away turning left, falling in behind Saad about three hundred meters back. They were clear. Saad would lead them to the compound now.

  In another ten minutes they arrived at the gate, on the north edge of town on a small hill. The wall was ten feet high, the gate a set of double doors of heavy steel painted to match the sand-colored stucco of the outer wall’s covering. The nearest neighboring house was half a kilometer to the west, there was another a kilometer east on the other side of a wadi that was always dry except after a hard winter rain. To the north was the open desert, here mostly hard, flat ground strewn with bits of flint, very occasionally a small dune of fine, brown sand, and a surprising number of hardy Joshua trees that somehow managed to eek out a prosperous living from the arid land. A hundred miles further north the world was a continuous sea of shifting sand. Another hundred miles along a desert track one struck the Tap Line Road running along the border with Kuwait, Iraq, and then Jordan. The road followed the Trans-Arabia pipeline that had once transported Saudi oil all the way to the port of Sidon, in Lebanon, and from there to Europe. That had of course ceased in 1967 when the Israelis had cut the line where it passed through the Golan Heights, but one could still use the excellent road from al-Rafdha four hundred fifty miles northwest to Amman, Jordan.

  Ali and Saad got out of the Suburbans simultaneously and approached the locked gate. Ali went to the left-hand gate post and pressed the button on the electric intercom, which only worked about half the time, but he was an optimist. Saad went to the right and found the doorbell switch, giving it several quick pushes to see if he could get anyone inside to wake up and let them in. They converged at the middle of the gateway, shielded from the road by the two vehicles, and waited.

  “Sabah ilkhayr, ya Ali” Saad said quietly, “Good morning, oh Ali. How was your night?”

  “Sabah innur, ya Saad”, replied Ali, “Good morning, Saad. It was a long drive, but the younger ones slept after dinner, thanks be to God.” He looked at the gate, which sat cold and immobile and closed, no noise from inside the house. “Do you think they are still at prayer?”

  Saad checked his watch: five o’clock, and he looked at the growing light of the morning. That was it. They had been too far outside of town to hear the call to fajr prayers as the first light of dawn told the difference between a gray thread and a white one in the palm of a muezzin’s hand, but that would have been only ten or twelve minutes ago, not more. The family was very likely at prayer in the small mosque at the north end of the long drive that split the compound into two even halves.

  “I think they must be, cousin,” Saad said at once. They looked at each other. Neither had thought of praying on the drive, not since dark last night; they were too eager to get here and away from the open road. But now, without a word, they turned a little south of west, toward the holy city of Mecca and the Qa’aba of Abraham, and together they began to chant softly, “Allahu akhbar, Allahu akhbar, Allahu akhbar . . .” and from there they fell into the comforting rhythm, occasionally on their knees with foreheads pressed to the ground, at other times standing with hands clasped in front.

  In another ten minutes they were finished, and both felt refreshed. Now they each tried the electronics again, the intercom and the doorbell, hoping to catch someone moving about before everyone went back so sleep for the ninety minutes that remained before the whol
e compound would awaken again to prepare for the day.

  They waited again, and just when they were beginning to wonder if something was very wrong, there was a voice from the other side of the gate, gruff and demanding, a little threatening.

  “Peace be upon you,” the voice growled, “who comes to disturb the peace of our home at this hour? If you are a brigand I will shoot you.”

  Saad and Ali both grinned, then mouthed “Great-Uncle Majid” in unison. Uncle Majid thought himself the patriarch of the family, mostly because he was the oldest living member at seventy-eight. He was no longer straight and tall, strong and threatening, but his voice still commanded respect that was due him at his age, and he had the courage of a desert lion.

  “Uncle, it is I, Ali bin Fahd. I have the rest of the family in the cars, and cousin Saad is here. Let us in, Uncle.”

  There was a noise of surprise from the old man, then steel grated on steel as the bolt moved. The hinges gave a loud shriek when the old man opened the door just enough to peer through at the boys outside, but he did not show himself. The wary old bedu stood back from the gate and waited for the others to show themselves; he cradled an AK-74 assault rifle in his leathery hands. But he saw Ali and knew him at once, Saad, too. Lowering the weapon he came forward with his arms wide to hug them both, the three of them yammering away the multitude of Arabic greetings that were required, expected, and gladly rendered on such occasions.

  “Your father, my brother’s son told me to expect you today, oh Ali, but I did not expect you so early. The men and I have just come from the mosque, the women are going back to bed. Are you all here?”

  “Yes, Uncle” Ali replied, a little urgently. “The rest are in the cars outside. Help us to open the gates, let’s get them inside before anyone sees that we’re here.”

  “God is great” the old man said. He stood back while the two young men opened the gates wide, then they drove through, dismounted and closed and locked them. Uncle Majid got in beside Ali.

  The compound was in two halves, west and east, and in between was a long, straight drive that divided them. Here, near the gate, the drive was surrounded by a semicircle of grass fifty yards in diameter with a line of palm trees along its edge. The drive went the length of the compound, nearly 200 yards, where it ended in a wide circle before the mass of the north wall. At the apex of the circle was the mosque, but to the left and right of this were the garages, each with its own door, enough for ten cars in all. The compound was two hundred yards wide as well. Along each side of the drive was a strip of grass, trees planted at intervals along the way, and then a concrete walk. Along the walk on each side ran a wall, and these walls concealed the private gardens of each villa, so that each nuclear family had its own privacy where its women could move about un-veiled in the green space. There were four villas on each side of the compound.

  They stopped the vehicles in front of the second villa on the left. All the buildings were identical, three stories of stucco and marble, with what looked like stone balusters on balconies below the second-floor windows in the front of the houses. These were actually concrete, as were the walls of each building, the floors, and the roofs. Indeed, concrete was the preferred building material in Saudi Arabia: wood was much too scarce to build with. It was a horrible irony, however, that for concrete the Saudis had to import sand and aggregate. Saudi sand is too fine to make concrete, and there is not nearly enough stone, either. It was just as well. A concrete house was cooler than anything else, and even here it would reach one hundred and five degrees on most summer days.

  They began waking the other kids, ranging in age from thirteen down to little Saud who was six. The second house on the left was that of the Fahd al-Auda family, and Ali opened the door in the wall to allow his brothers and sisters to walk through, cross the garden, and enter the house through the front door. Saad carried Saud piggy-back style; Uncle Majid had the twin girls Aisha and Aina by the hands. The rest walked, all were chattering away, very pleased to be at their summer home, in the cooler, drier air of the central plateau of Arabia, but mostly just pleased that they’d left school two weeks early and would not be going back until the next term.

  Everyone knew their rooms, they had not packed much, so there was not much to do to move in. In a short while everyone was back asleep, all except Ali, Saad and Uncle. The three men gathered in the great living room, the majlis room where men gathered to talk and drink tea and eat dates in the evenings. Ali made tea, and brought it out of the kitchen with the flat Bedouin bread he’d bought the night before when they stopped for their prayers and supper. There was no fuul, or hummus, but the bread would be enough while they talked.

  “We will people here to help around the houses this afternoon, Ali. They are good people, Muslims, praise be to God, and they have served the family for five years.” Uncle Majid was proud of the family’s wealth.

  “Good, Uncle,” Ali said. “I do not know when my father returns from Europe. What news do you have from him?”

  “None, but they are in no danger. Now that you are here everyone is safe.” He munched on a piece of the bread, sipped the tea. “Those filth out there,” he waved southward, “are not Muslims. The Prophet, Peace be upon Him, tells us that it is wrong for the Muslims to usurp the power of their government. We have a king, and a government, only the King can declare jihad. But why would he, why should he? These Americans have done us no harm, most of them are Christians, are they not, Saad? People of the Book! Weren’t you born there? Have not my nephews Fahd, and your father Isa, may God keep him in Paradise, been there many times? Were these Americans not good to you every time? They were, or I would have heard of it, by the Grace of God. No, we have no quarrel with them, and they have done God’s work, ridding the Iraq,” he waved north, “of that pig Saddam, may his bones rot in the hell of swine’s offal he deserves. These people are vermin, these that you met in the desert, Nephew, to threaten or attack or even kill other Muslims. They will not come here, we are the al-Auda.” He sipped the tea and took more bread.

  Saad was not so sure. When he thought of it, he was still shaken by what he’d seen at the desert camps, especially the third one. The Mullahs had been passionate, the Afghanis, Saudis who had been in the jihad against the Russians in the old days, were hard men, their eyes cold, distant, frightening. They talked of war, killing, nobody was innocent, nobody immune. They were serious, dangerous people, and many of the other boys who had come seemed to think the same way. They were not as convincing, not as hard, not as trained, and they had not killed yet. But many of them would when their time came, of that he had been sure. He shivered a little. The Al-Auda tribe had been more or less supreme in this part of Arabia for nearly two thousand years, but times were changing. The police here were mostly from the tribe, but they were armed, if at all, with automatic pistols, and most of the time they were not loaded. Most families kept guns for hunting, but nothing heavy. Saad had never been in the army, he was too young, and he did not want to be. But he could understand that if any of those Afghanis came to Ha’il looking for them, they would come with guns, grenades, explosives, and hate, and they would kill. It would not be pretty if it happened. Still, they were safer here than they could be anywhere else in the Kingdom, at least until Uncle Fahd returned. He would know what to do, or would have already done it. “God keep us” he thought.

  Turning to Uncle Majid, he gestured at the AK. “Uncle, I didn’t know you had such a thing. Where did you get it?”

  The old man smiled broadly, revealing two brilliant rows of perfect, white teeth, his dark brown eyes flashed. “Nephew,” he said, “we are the Al-Auda, the Abu Tayii. Our people have kept this land for as long as anyone can remember, before the time of the Prophet, Peace be upon Him. We did not do it with camel’s milk, we have always been armed.” A little of the fire appeared to dim, but the eyes still gleamed with something like anticipation. “We have everythin
g we need in the armory under the mosque.” He hefted the AK. “Many of these, many bullets, a few grenades, even a few fine swords.” At this the smile split his face, his right hand clenched in a fist, and the fire in his eyes was bright and terrible.