The Phoenix Affair

  *****

  A real Saudi desert camp is something to behold, and Saudi hospitality, Bedouin hospitality, is something even more to behold, particularly when the host holds his guests in very high esteem and wishes to show this in an unforgettable way. However, there are some things about the ritual that strike the novice as inconvenient or downright odd, as Ripley and Allen were about to discover.

  Emerging from their tent, they walked directly to the center of their rectangular compound where the large fire had burned down to a rosy glow of coals. Around the perimeter outside the tents flood lights shown down at the ground from atop their seven-foot stands. This gave the camp enough light to easily navigate, but it wasn’t as who should say “bright”. Quite the contrary—the light was diffuse enough, and dim enough, that it did nothing at all to diminish the cold, hard brightness of the stars in the sky that had long since lost any trace of the day.

  Around the fire there were four immense carpets, but no chairs. Ripley looked most uncomfortable at this development, but Cameron and Allen sat down where the General indicated, on his right in the place of honor. He was dressed as a desert Arab, in long white thob and checkered red-and-white shamak, as were the rest of the men of his household who were standing in their places. They shook hands and lapsed into small talk, Ripley catching all the English but none of the Arabic, which was about half the conversation. Since nobody seemed inclined to translate this for him, he lost interest in the tide of babble going back and forth around the fire and started to look around as his eyes got really accustomed to the light.

  There wasn’t any obvious “dinner” that he could see, although he could smell it cooking somewhere, probably behind him on the north side of the compound. Along the front edge of the carpet he was sitting on, nearest the fire, there was a series of plates, some empty, and on some there were raw vegetables: tomatoes, celery, carrots, something that looked like sliced radishes. A dish of a white creamy sauce of some kind, two dishes of some other kind of sauce or dip, he guessed, one looked like pureed vegetables a little chunky like salsa, the other looked like refried beans or bean dip or something, brownish and thick. Looking to the left of this one he saw a plate piled with what looked like flour tortillas but thicker, which he knew was the traditional flat bread that was a staple from the Turkey and the Levant right across Asia to China. But nowhere any meat, nothing that looked like a proper meal, he hoped that didn’t mean . .

  “Mister, ahh, Patrick, shall I say?” General Fahd was looking at Ripley. “Yes, Mister Patrick will probably be best for you. Please have some water . . .” a bottle appeared behind Ripley’s left ear and he reached for it with his right hand. And then Fahd said, “Where do your people come from in America, and where did they come from before that? I know it is a source of interest for most Americans to know their ancestors’ country of origin.”

  Ripley had to think about this a moment. As a rule, CIA people are pretty close when it comes to family details, regardless of who they’re talking to. On the other hand, he knew General Fahd and the Colonel were pretty close, so he could probably be trusted with just about anything. Then again, he wasn’t a big geneologist in any case, so that wasn’t going to be deep water where he was concerned. “Someone way back came from Ireland I guess,” he said with a shrug, “but nobody in my family talks much about those first people or where they came from specifically. There was a family farm in the mid-1800’s in the Carolinas somewhere, but I’ve never been there and it hasn’t been in the family since before I was born. Earlier in the 1900’s my grandfather was some kind of import-export merchant or broker, buying quantities of cotton and other stuff, maybe tobacco and the like, selling it in bulk to other companies overseas, and then I guess buying from the overseas people and selling their stuff on to companies in the US.”

  “Oh,” said Fahd, looking very interested and with a broad smile like he was about to make a very funny joke, “so he may have been the original discover of the “B to B” concept?” He chuckled to himself and switched over to Arabic to explain the quip to the rest of his men. This took longer than expected and drew no more than polite smiles, completely unsatisfactory compared to the English version.

  Ripley, however, thought it a good stroke, and he warmed to Fahd. “Yeah, General, I guess you could say that, but I think there were lots of guys doing more or less the same thing. Anyway, the trade pretty much evaporated in the Great Depression, so the business died and he died, too, in the late 30’s.”

  “And what did your father do, Mr. Patrick?” Fahd asked.

  “Oh, he was an Army officer, artillery, missed World War II but saw Korea, was in Vietnam very early on. Lives in . . .” Ripley stopped there on the verge of saying something he should never say.

  “Well, Bless Him,” Fahd said, covering the lapse. “And now I think we will have our first treat for the night. Gentlemen, let us have some coffee.”

  Two Arabs appeared, rather rougher looking men with leathery skins but good smiles. One carried a stack of small ceramic cups with no handles about an inch in diameter and about as deep. The other carried an exotic looking pitcher, roundish at the bottom but with a distinctive looking curve toward the middle ending in a narrower top. On one side was a long handle, which was how it was carried. On the other a long, narrow curved spout. The man with the cups began handing them out, beginning with Ripley on the end and moving along the lines around the fire, and behind him came the pot, which poured steaming hot liquid into the little cups. In the dim light Ripley could just tell that it was almost green, but most obvious was the smell. It was like nothing he’d ever smelt, the strangest collection of spices he could remember. He thought he smelled cloves, maybe cinnamon, but something else he could not name and had never smelled before.

  When everyone had a small steaming cup, Fahd raised his and said in Arabic, “Bismallah ar-rahman, ar-rahim”, “in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, we give thanks for our friends and for a safe journey thus far.” He tipped his little cup and drank it off at a single gulp. Everyone else did likewise, and Colonel Cameron looked at Ripley with a satisfied gleam. Doubtful, Ripley tossed his down.

  It didn’t taste as strongly as it smelled, but it was unusual. Not much like coffee at all. Strange. Bitter. He still couldn’t place the spice smell, but it sure didn’t taste like much. He looked back at Cameron for approval.

  The guy with the pot was back, and began pouring again with Ripley, who wasn’t sure he needed another but one look at Cameron’s raised eyebrows told him there was no choice. So the whole exercise was repeated, everyone downing another full little cup, and now here came the guy with the pot again. Ripley was sure he didn’t need a third—he could already feel something that felt like a caffeine buzz—and he looked at the Colonel. Cameron was holding his cup between thumb and index finger, and wiggling it side to side by twisting his wrist. Ripley did the same just as the coffee pot was tipping over the cup, and the man stopped before pouring a drop. He moved on, getting the same signal from each man, and behind him came the other guy collecting the cups.

  Cameron beamed at Ripley, Allen looked quite satisfied. When the cups were gone, the two guys came back with bowls, these turned out to contain a variety of dates.

  “These are Saudi dates,” it was the General speaking again. “There are about a hundred kinds I think, all different in texture, grown in our country. They are the gift of the desert, Mr. Patrick. Gentlemen, please help yourselves while we pour the tea.”

  The dates were awesome, and the tea came on metal platters in clear glass cups that reminded Ripley of miniature beer mugs. When everyone was served he lifted his cup to drink and gasped as he scalded his upper lip and tongue.

  The Colonel made a loud slurping sound and turned, grinning. “Second hottest substance known to man, Saudi tea. Right behind a chicken pot pie I think. Burn yourself, Mr. Patrick?”

  “Yes I did,” Ripley shot
back, “but this is really good, lot of sugar. What’s that other flavor?”

  “Mint,” Cameron said taking another sip. “General,” he added, getting Fahd’s attention. “I had a very good friend once in RSAF Logistics, Colonel Ali al-Asiri, perhaps you know him?”

  “Alas, I do not, Paul, but I have heard of him. He retired a few years ago as a one-star I think?”

  “That’s him. Anyway, back around 1998 or so he was working in Dayton as the RSAF Liaison, Colonel at the time, and he always had tea at his office. His secretary would make it from time to time, but usually he made it himself, and the gawa too. He showed me his own technique. Patrick, you don’t use tea bags, but rather loose tea, and you put that in the pot English style and pour boiling water over it to steep. The sugar has to be in that pot, too, so it gets immediately dissolved by the scalding water, and the mint leaves go in on top. The pot is built so all the solids are kept in by a strainer at the bottom. What you get out is this nectar of paradise,” this while holding up his half-empty cup. “I remember once Ali and I were having such a good talk that we went from his office straight to his apartment, where he promptly plied me with the two cups of gawa, except they were rather large cups, and then I drank three or four cups of tea and ate about a half a pound of dates. When I left after about two hours, I was shaking all the way home as I drove, I was so strung out on the caffeine and the sugar!” He dissolved into laughter as Fahd translated, and all the men laughed too.

  “I guess that explains why I already have the shakes,” Ripley added. “I don’t guess we plan on going to bed early tonight!”

  “Not much before one or two I should think,” said Fahd. “It’s going to be a beautiful night. More tea? Try this kind of dates, Mr. Allen, they have a unique, creamy texture and an unusual nutty flavor.”

  The three Americans dug into the dates and Fahd continued, “Did you notice the coffee, Mr. Patrick? What did you think of our gawa?”

  Ripley said, “Interesting,” without a moment’s hesitation. “Was that cloves, and cinnamon in there? What’s it brewed from, and is there another spice? It doesn’t taste like much, but the aroma is like what I would expect an ancient Middle Eastern marketplace or souq to smell like: exotic, spicey, mysterious. Really amazing, General.”

  Fahd smiled broadly and translated for the other Saudis, who looked in Ripley’s direction with increased interest and obvious approval, some smiling.

  “Excellent, Patrick, excellent. We see you have an appreciation for the sublime! We use regular coffee beans, what Starbuck’s might call ‘arabica beans’, perhaps you know it was we who first brewed it, and it was brought to Europe by your returning Crusaders? Anyway, we toast the beans lightly in a heavy iron pan, but they are still green when we put them, crushed not ground, into the pot of boiling water. That is why the coffee is greenish and not dark colored like you’re used to. And into that we do put cloves, a little cinnamon, but the real exotic is the cardamom—that is what gives the strong aroma that you so rightly say evokes the image of the souq. I have not been there, but I have read that the spice, which of course also came with the Crusaders back to Europe, is very often used in Scandinavian baking! We Arabs globalized your Viking ancestors long before you golablized us! Ha ha!”

  Ripley burst into a deep belly laugh, Cameron giggled, Allen slurped his tea and munched dates, Fahd translated, the tea pot went around again, the Saudis laughed and drank and talked. Then Fahd said, “Abdulkareem wishes to tell a story, gentlemen, but he does not speak English, so I will translate while he tells it in Arabic. Please, help yourselves to the bread and vegetables, the meal will be here soon.”

  “I have this story from my grandfather, and he from his grandfather and so on, it is a very old story. In truth, it is a riddle,” Abdulkareem’s broad smile flashed brilliant white, and all the Saudis smiled with him and nodded. “There was a wise man, very rich, who had three sons. Despite his wisdom, he was puzzled. He was very old, and he knew that soon he would die and he would have to leave his money to one of the sons. The trouble was, he could not choose. All the sons were good men, all were great warriors, captains of squadrons of cavalry. This was at the time when Salah ad-Din was Sultan of Egypt, Damascus, and al-Quds . . .” Fahd held up his hand, and questioned Abdulkareem in Arabic. “Gentlemen, he says his ancestor knows this story from the time of the Second Crusade, when the English King Richard tried and failed to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims, when the man you know as “Saladin” was ruler of Jerusalem, which in Arabic is al-Quds. I am amazed, this story is over 900 years old!”

  He nodded and Abdulkareem continued. “Well, anyway, the wise man was puzzled, but his time was short. One night he was entertaining one of his friends, a Frankish nobleman, and when their dinner was finished he discussed his dilemma with him. They talked long into the night, casting aside every suggestion, the Frank was certain it should be done in the European way, to the eldest son, in one way or another. But the wise man did not want luck of birth to hold his legacy, he wanted resourcefulness, intelligence, courage, and honor to prevail. The Frank grew frustrated as the night grew long, and finally he suggested that the man simply put his three sons against each other in a horse race. This was an interesting idea. But, said the father, if it is a simple race they will be tempted to cheat, or their rivalry will increase, there may be ill will, perhaps they will fight. And so, on they talked, until finally the wise man decided on the solution. He said to the Frank, “now I have it. It will be a horse race, but the inheritance will go to the son whose horse finishes last. But they will not know this until the starting time.” The riddle, gentlemen, is how can this be?”

  Abdulkareem was smiling, and went silent. Fahd looked first at him, then at the Americans, and he fidgeted. This was awkward. What kind of race would it be? He looked at Cameron and raised an eyebrow.

  Cameron caught on. “A difficult riddle, abu-Mohammed, my compliments to Abdulkareem. But it seems to me it will be a very slow race to last place.” He sipped his tea. “Indeed, unless the starting time was appointed by the father and could not be avoided, it might never start at all.”

  Fahd was translating, the Arabs nodding and talking. Ripley said, “Could it be a long race, or a race over a certain course so that none of them could see who was ahead until each had crossed the finish line?”

  Allen chimed in with another proposal, several others were offered in Arabic and translated, but for twenty minutes and another two pots of tea Abdulkareem smiled, shook his head, and polished his teeth with a 6 inch stick that he’d chewed on the end and used like a brush. Finally, out of ideas, the group fell silent, and Fahd said in Arabic, “Abu-Salah,” since AbdulKareem’s eldest son was named Salah, “we cannot guess your riddle! Well done!”

  Abdulkareem sat straighter and drank off the last of his tea cup. “Abu-Mohammed, it was simple. The race was run in the usual way, with only one exception. Each son had to ride another’s horse, do you see? Each son would have prepared his own horse for a race to win, and then he would find out at the last moment, and he would ride as hard and as fast as he could on his brother’s horse, hoping in the end that his own horse would fail and lose, and that his skill would triumph, and he would inherit! In this way, each would employ his best effort and skill, none would have cheated, and if he did, he would lose the money! Ha ha ha!”

  The Arabs burst into mirth again as Fahd translated, not sure the Americans would appreciate this complicated bit of Arab wisdom. When he was done he added, “Colonel Cameron is used to this kind of thing, gentlemen, but I will tell you this is typical of our kind of lessons. Perhaps you would call them parables or allegory. The more complex, elaborate, complicated, intricate, and ornamented a plan can be, the better. “Wisdom” in the old man in this case has a meaning that is particular in Arab culture, to some extent it means one gifted in creating plans that possess those attributes. This man was very wise indeed!”

/>   Tea gave way to lukewarm Pepsi and bottled water, bread and vegetables were eaten, more stories flowed back and forth in both languages and time flowed on without notice. Eventually Fahd looked beyond the circle of light into the darker void on the north end of the camp and nodded, whereupon the two leathery Arabs came forward with a platter carried between them, about four feet in diameter, and laid it in the middle of the circle of men. On it was a whole animal of some species neither Allen nor Ripley could identify, laying on a deep bed of rice that seemed faintly yellow in the dim light, the whole thing smelling of the same cardamom that spiced the coffee, and what Ripley thought might also be saffron.

  Cameron was looking carefully at the roasted creature, and eventually raised an eyebrow at Fahd. “Goat?” he asked.

  “Very good, Paul, very good. Yes, it is a goat. I find lamb a little tasteless for this kind of thing and too greasy. Patrick, Mr. Allen, don’t let him trouble you. Here is how we do it.” Fahd inched forward toward the platter and Cameron and the Arabs did the same, and then Fahd reached to the meat and ripped off a morsel with his right hand and ate it. “Then, gentlemen, you’ll find that the rice will stick together if you mold it in your hand, and you can eat it like this from your fist,” and he demonstrated. “Or, if you prefer, I believe the servants have some silverware somewhere.”

  Ripley was surprisingly not hungry, especially as he consulted his watch and discovered it was after eleven p.m. They’d been talking and snacking for over three hours. But, he sidled closer to the carcass and thrust in a hand, and began to eat as all the men did, and the flow of talk continued unabated.

  At a resting point some time later, Ripley waited for Fahd to finish chewing and asked, “General, were you serious when you said Abdulkareem knew that he had an ancestor that was with Saladin during the Second Crusade? That’s more than eight hundred years ago.”

  Fahd looked at him like he was an innocent child. “A little over nine hundred, and yes, Patrick, I’m sure it is true. You know, one of the things that makes you Americans unique in all the world is that you have a much different sense of history than most people on the planet. For most of you, not much matters that is older than about two hundred and fifty years or so, or at most four hundred years, the time the English first came to North America at Jamestown, I believe? But the thing is, even for most of the common people in Europe, the people who have always been tied to the land as farmers or herders from the deepest night of time, most of those people have been on the same land or in the same general neighborhood for at least a thousand years. Even in rural England it’s true, and certainly in Wales and Ireland, and let us not talk of the Scots of course. This is even more true for the Arabs of the Middle East. People forget that these people have all been here since before the time of Abraham, before Moses and all the rest. Religion has changed, governments and cultures have changed, empires and borders have ebbed and flowed. But many of the people have always been there, too small to be noticed by the great men, living on their land, changing as the times require so that they survive, and they remember many, many ancient things through stories. They are not much good to history, mind you, but they will have these memories that come down through tens, sometimes hundreds, of generations, and they are fiercely attached to the land of their fathers. It is their place, they know nothing else.” Fahd looked sad. “It is this, sadly, that confounds you Americans too often when you try, with the noblest intention in human history itself, to solve the problems in places you do not really understand. It is not that you are evil, or do not try, it’s just that your frame of reference is so fundamentally different, and . . .ahh, but I wander. Another piece of this delicious fine goat, Patrick? Perhaps you’d like one of the eyeballs—a real delicacy?”

  Ripley took another bite and a handful of rice, stared over the head of the man on the other side of the platter from him into the night sky of Arabia, and thought for a long time.

  XXIII. Paris/Buraydah/al-Ha'il

  Nearly midnight in Paris, and Henri Broussard was almost finished for the night. He was reading a report on the Boeing Company, chief competitor to Europe’s Airbus, and parts of this report he would forward to the latter’s executives within the next few days. It was a good report, with details of the Boeing proposal to sell its 777 and 787 jets to Qantas Airlines of Australia. The pricing data in the proposal, along with the details of side deals Boeing would make with the Australians would make it easier for Airbus to win the competition with its own jets, the A340, the A330 or perhaps the new super-jumbo A380.

  The phone rang and it was his assistant’s voice in the outer office, “Sir, you have a call from the embassy in Amman, Jordan. Will you take it tonight, or would you rather they call back tomorrow?”

  “Oh I’ll take it Michel, send it through.”

  A series of clicks and beeps as the call was connected, routed through the crypto devices, and the voice was now that of his station chief in Amman.”

  “Misseur le Director, good evening. I hope I have not disturbed you this late?” he said.

  “No, not at all, I was just finishing up for the day, but I’m pleased that you’ve called. I trust you have something for me on our American and Saudi friends there?”

  This was awkward, since in truth he had lost the Americans, but he did know where they were, or at least where they’d been. He decided to risk dissembling a little. “Director, the party left the American Embassy here this morning quite early. They mounted a diversion, drove around town in two groups for a while, and eventually one of these returned to the embassy and the other left Amman heading south and east.” This was all true of course, but he did not say they’d had no idea of that at the time, not at least until the group they were following returned as he’d described. But it seemed to be going well, so he continued, “We did not follow them far on the road east, Director, since there is only one place for them to go in that direction, and that is into Saudi Arabia. Our people here did not have the right visas to follow, so we let them go.”

  Broussard was silent, and the Chief in Amman grimaced as he waited for a storm he half expected, but only for a moment. When it didn’t come immediately, he pressed on, hoping it would not come at all if he could finish quickly. “However, our listening post in the embassy has the latest equipment, and we intercepted a cellular telephone call that was made from the Jordan-Saudi border crossing at al-Kaf. It appears an interior ministry policeman there made the call to report the transit of a group of Saudis, including the Air Force Brigadier and three Americans. That was about ten-forty-five local time this morning, thirteen hours ago. Do you have a map of Saudi Arabia within easy reach, director? I can wait while you find it, or I can describe where they are going for you.”

  Broussard was working at his keyboard, he would find the map, but the man might as well go on, and he said, “Please continue.”

  “Right, sir. Well, there isn’t much out there. The group will go east, make a few turnings, and then mount the Tapline Road that parallels the pipeline from the Persian Gulf oil terminals all the way across Arabia and Jordan to the Mediterranean. Once on the road, they go all the way to the Gulf, probably to Dhahran, Jubail, or Al-Khobar. The Brigadier is almost certainly stationed at the big Saudi Air Force Base outside Dhahran. We think the Americans are simply escorting him and his family back home. I think that means whatever their operation intended to do, they believe it is done, and they’re just winding things up.”

  “Well, if they’re done, they have a right to be. The al-Qaeda networks in three countries are more or less all in a wreck because of them.” Broussard thought for a moment, then asked, “Jean, do you have any theories, what do you think their objectives were, and do you think they did what they set out to do, or are they just shutting the operation down.”

  “No sir, no theory really. They seem to have had some really good information that they didn’t share with us, and all we got was the leavings here i
n Amman, and that only because we got to the airport Arab before they did. It was very close, they had an operative waiting, but our man . . .”

  “Yes, I know all that,” Broussard cut in. His own opinion was that that this General maybe had some small tidbit of information, made contact with the Americans, and they put this thing together quickly not really knowing what would happen or having any great expectations. They’d all been very lucky, really, but that was often the nature of intelligence. The big breaks made things happen, all you could do was to be ready to take advantage of them when they came.

  “Very well,” Henri said, “anything else, then? Any loose ends there in Amman?”

  “None director, our guest has been taken care of in the usual way.”

  The Amman people were efficient, anyway. You could still work that way in the East, and in Africa, it made things so much less awkward. “Bon,” Henri said, “goodnight, then.” He hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. He’d have to think about his next call to Anderson at CIA in the car on the way home. “Bloody Americans.”