“Yes, Dennis,” texted Dmitri Huda. “I’m downstairs.”
HRH’s father Fatih bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was the second-richest man in the Middle East. He built a fortune after being exiled from the Kingdom.
This exile followed the parking-lot execution of Misha’al bint Fahd bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
Fatih bin Muhammad was a convenient scapegoat for the assassination.
It was said that he encouraged delusions of romance in Misha’al.
He was given the riyal equivalent of $200,000.
He was kicked the fuck out.
He traded off the family name, got into construction and concrete, and used that money to diversify his holdings. When he had established his fortune, he decided to do what all people do when they want to legitimate their place in the hierarchy of global evil.
He wrote a book.
First published in French as Le chemin du conquérant arabe: les leçons d’un prince saoudien, an English translation appeared in 1999 AD under the title The Conqueror’s Path: Business Lessons from a Saudi Prince.
It was a CEO-style autobiography married, awkwardly, with Fifteen Lessons that Fatih bin Muhammad had learned through the ups and downs of doing business on an international scale. Each lesson was expanded with historical parallel and floating anecdote.
Il Principe meets Trump: The Art of the Deal.
It sold in small numbers until references began appearing in the songs of well-known hip-hop artists, who adopted the book’s maxims of worldly success into anthems of global capitalism.
Sales exploded.
Fatih bin Muhammad became The Conqueror.
One of The Conqueror’s Fifteen Lessons, present in Le chemin du conquérant arabe, was the idea that a successful businessman, particularly if he comes from a place unfamiliar to his potential financial partners, must take up stratagems to evoke comfort in others.
Following this advice, HRH had adopted many names in different languages.
In Chinese, HRH was called 野生花卉, which meant Wild Flower.
In Spanish, HRH was called el Diablo árabe, which meant The Arabic Devil.
In Turkish, HRH was called Küçükkutsaldağ, which meant The Little Holy Mountain.
In German, HRH was called Der Meister der Weltschmerzes, which meant Master of the World’s Sorrows.
In English, HRH was called Dennis, which meant Dennis.
Dmitri Huda had commandeered a surface parking spot on Cambridge Street.
HRH came out of the Knafel Building.
HRH walked towards the car.
Dmitri Huda jumped out of the driver’s seat and rushed to the rear passenger door of the gun-metal 2016 AD Bentley Mulsanne.
“Dmitri! Play not the dogsbody!” cried HRH. “What do you take me for? Have I too lost the ability to walk? Must I next crawl?”
Dmitri Huda returned to the driver’s side door.
“Do you behold this complex, Dmitri?”
HRH pointed to a series of drab buildings on the other side of Cambridge Street.
“This august institution is the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.”
“I see,” said Dmitri.
“It is notable for its alumni,” said HRH. “Most prominent are the actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Followed only by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, who together orchestrated the bombing of the Boston Marathon. When news of the blasts reached my ears, it evoked salad days misspent in Cambridge. I sensed in my inner heart that the perpetrators would be revealed as local yokels. Only the trite provincialism of a Bostonian would suggest the Marathon as a target. Dmitri, if you wish to further your spiritual development, you should consider the occult principles of this complex. It always produces its monstrosities in pairs.”
HRH climbed into the back seat.
Dmitri Huda returned to the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“You know the location?” asked HRH.
“It’s in satnav.”
HRH opened the refrigerated bar.
Inside there was a vaporizer and a bag of marijuana.
“Is this indica or sativa?” asked HRH. “I will not suffer the mellow vibes of indica. Not tonight. I must invigorate with the lush and vibrant caress of sativa.”
“It’s sativa,” said Dmitri.
HRH vaped sativa.
HRH pressed a button, which deployed a bespoke Android tablet embedded in the reverse of the front passenger seat.
HRH engaged with the bespoke Android tablet.
HRH opened the YouTube app.
HRH streamed “Dark Avenger” by the American heavy metal band Manowar.
“Dark Avenger” played through the Naim audio system.
“Drive on, Dmitri,” shouted HRH over the 1,100 watts of pulsing metal power. “Bring me to my destiny!”
HRH’s destiny was an old factory in Waltham that had been gentrified into offices and loft apartments.
For a solid century, the building had manufactured watches. Now it crafted the aspirant lives of the haute bourgeoisie.
Dmitri Huda navigated the Bentley from Cambridge to West Cambridge to Watertown and through the other suburbs. It was that New England experience: the transition between multiple disparate landscapes in less than forty minutes of travel. Dense urbanity giving way to small-town life to post-industrial decay.
When they arrived at the old factory, Dmitri Huda idled in the parking lot.
“Remain here,” said HRH. “I am sure to stride forth, triumphant in my victory.”
HRH emerged from the 2016 AD Bentley Mulsanne with a rattlesnake suitcase under his arm.
Here’s something that Harvey Mansfield didn’t explain in the CGIS Knafel Building: HRH had been hipped to the possibility of a Doctorate in Philosophy at the LSE by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, famous for being the son of a lunatic dictator who blew up a passenger plane over Scotland and was beaten to death after hiding in a drainage pipe, had demonstrated how this possibility worked.
The vampire of the LSE sucked blood money.
Its conscience was soothed with paid holidays for the administrative staff and faculty, all the better to generate white papers and editorials in the Telegraph.
In terms of education, the metropolitan area was lousy with debauched Eton boys who would handle your coursework and dissertation.
They only asked what anyone asked.
Lucre, filthy lucre.
One needn’t spend much time in the Old Smoke, but it did help to make the occasional appearance. Besides, as Dr. Johnson had told Mr. Boswell, when a man tires of London, he tires of life.
And if, during his salad days, the stout erections of HRH’s penis had carried any information, it was that his corporeal form had yet to tire of life.
HRH managed his way through the old factory until he came to the fourth-floor apartment.
HRH knocked on the door.
A sex worker, who held a lease on the apartment, opened the door. “You must be Dennis.”
“Madame,” said HRH. “You have identified me with utter precision and laser focus.”
The sex worker moved from the doorway.
HRH passed into the apartment.
The sex worker led HRH down a small staircase to the apartment’s lower level, which housed a bedroom, a kitchen, and a living/dining space.
“You will please to remind me,” said HRH. “Did my assistant forward the funds through Venmo? Or must I be discreet in my placement of the requisite white envelope on your granite countertop?”
“We got the money,” said a male voice from the living/dining space.