Just then the telephone rang.
“I have the satellite data you ordered, sir,” an officer from the National Security Agency said. “I’ll send it over now.”
“Do that,” Overholt said, “but tell me over the telephone where the Hawker went.”
“Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, sir,” the man said. “Arrived early this morning and remains there. We have a shot of the plane on the runway and the aerial tracks—that’s what I’m sending.”
“Thanks,” Overholt said and hung up.
Sitting back in his chair, Overholt reached in his desk drawer and removed a tennis ball. He began to bounce it against the wall. After a few minutes he began to nod.
Then he reached over and dialed a number.
“Research,” a voice answered.
“I need a quick overview on the Islamic faith and in particular sacred sites in Mecca.” Overholt had remembered something about a meteorite and Islam from a history class taken years before.
“How detailed and how soon?” the voice asked.
“Brief and within the hour,” Overholt said, “and find me an Islamic scholar inside the Agency and send him to my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
While Overholt was waiting, he bounced the ball against the wall over and over. He was trying to think like a parent with the ghost of a dead son clawing at his brain. How far would he go to revenge the death? How could he strike at the heart of the beast itself?
THE EMIR’S PALACE, sitting on a hill overlooking the Persian Gulf, was opulent. Surrounded by a high stone wall that housed a courtyard with garages, a large parklike grass area, and several pools, the palace grounds seemed surprisingly friendly—not like the drab and dreary edifices situated throughout much of Britain and Europe.
As the limousine pulled through the gate and headed around the circular drive toward the front doors, several peacocks and a pair of flamingos scattered. Off to one side, a mechanic dressed in a khaki jumpsuit was soaping off a Lamborghini off-road vehicle, while two gardeners were harvesting nuts from a pistachio tree nearby.
The limousine stopped in front of the door, and a man dressed in a Western businessman’s suit walked out. “Mr. Cabrillo,” he said, “I’m Akmad al-Thani, special assistant to the emir. We’ve talked before on the telephone.”
“Mr. al-Thani,” Cabrillo said, taking the man’s extended hand and shaking it, “pleasure to finally meet you. This is my associate, Peter Jones.”
Jones shook al-Thani’s hand and smiled.
“If you men could come this way,” al-Thani said, walking toward the door, “the emir is awaiting you in the drawing room.”
Cabrillo followed al-Thani with Jones on their heels.
They entered a large foyer with marble floors and a pair of arching staircases on both sides leading to the upper floors. There were several marble statues tastefully arranged around a large polished mahogany table in the center, with a massive floral arrangement on the top. A pair of maids dressed in uniforms bustled about, and in one corner a butler in black coat and tails was motioning at a workman who was adjusting a spotlight that pointed to a painting that looked like a Renoir.
Al-Thani continued past the foyer through a hallway that led into a large room with an entire wall of glass looking out on the water. The room had to be over eight thousand square feet, with numerous seating areas clustered around tall potted plants. Several plasma televisions were placed around the room, and there was even a grand piano.
The emir was sitting at the piano, and he stopped playing when the men walked in.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, rising.
Walking over to Cabrillo, he extended his hand. “Juan,” he said, “always good to see you.”
“Your Excellency,” Cabrillo said, smiling and turning to Jones, “my associate, Peter Jones.”
Jones took the emir’s extended hand and shook it firmly. “Pleasure,” the emir said, motioning to nearby couches. “Let’s sit over here.”
The four men took their seats, and as if by magic a waiter appeared.
“Tea and cakes,” the emir said.
The waiter disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.
“So what was the end result in Iceland?” the emir asked.
Cabrillo filled him in on the details. The emir nodded.
“If you men hadn’t been there and made the switch,” the emir said, “who knows where I’d be right now.”
“Al-Khalifa is dead now, Your Excellency,” Cabrillo said, “so that is one less worry.”
“Nonetheless,” the emir said, “I want the Corporation to do a full-scale assessment of my security and the threats to my government as soon as possible.”
“We would be happy to do that for you,” Cabrillo said, “but right now there is a more pressing matter we’d like to discuss.”
The emir nodded. “Please, by all means.”
Cabrillo started to explain.
47
THE THREE SHIPPING containers filled with poisoned prayer rugs sat off to the side of the cargo terminal at Riyadh Airport behind a chain-link fence that covered the space of several football fields. If the time had not been so close to the hajj, the rugs would have already been moved and unloaded. As it was, arriving late as they had, they had moved down the list in priority. As long as they were in place on the ground around the Kaaba the day before the start of the hajj, Al-Sheik would consider it a success.
Right now, the planner was concerned with more pressing matters.
Along with the prayer rugs, there were nearly one million plastic bottles of water that needed to be placed, ten thousand portable toilets to supplement those already at the site, six complete tented first-aid stations that would ring the perimeter, and ten thousand portable trash cans.
Boxes of printed flyers and memorabilia, complimentary Korans and postcards, and boxes containing tubes of sunscreen sat on pallets. Food for the pilgrims, six thousand brooms for the workers to use to sweep up the daily mess, portable umbrellas in case of rain. Twelve large crates of fans to be placed inside the massive structure around the Great Mosque for ventilation.
But Al-Sheik had nothing to do with the security arrangements.
That was handled by the Saudi Arabia secret police.
At a separate area of the air cargo terminal, trucks were already moving the security supplies to Mecca—a complete command-and-control facility with radios and live video capabilities; one hundred thousand rounds of ammunition and tear gas in case of disturbances; one thousand portable plastic handcuffs; forty trained dogs with pens, food, and extra leashes and collars; and a dozen armored personnel carriers, four tanks and thousands of troops.
The yearly hajj was a massive undertaking and the Saudi royal family footed the bill.
Al-Sheik stared at his clipboard then marked off a truck leaving the compound.
THE EMIR HAD been sipping his hot tea and listening to Cabrillo speak for nearly twenty minutes without interrupting. Finally there was silence.
“Will you allow me to indulge you with a short history of Islam?”
“By all means,” Cabrillo said.
“There are three important sites to the Islamic religion, two in Saudi Arabia, the third in Israel. The first and most sacred is the mosque of al-Haram in Mecca, where the Kaaba is located; the second is Masjid al-Nabawi, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, which has the tomb of Muhammad. The third is Masjid al-Aqsa, in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock, the site where Muhammad ascended on a horse to speak to Allah.” The emir paused and sipped his tea, then continued.
“The Kaaba is of critical importance to Muslims; it is the spot they pray toward five times daily. It is the very beacon of our faith. Behind the sheets that hang down over the sacred site of the Kaaba, inside the building itself, is a black stone that Abraham recovered and placed there many centuries past.”
Cabrillo and Jones nodded.