Until the events of recent weeks the Minister for Defence and Aviation was reputed to be a pragmatist with both feet solidly planted in the American camp. Even when the United States had reduced its military presence in Arabia to half-a-dozen companies of clerks and guards for their three strategic war stores depots; he had never conceived of a day when the Kingdom’s very existence would be called into doubt and the Americans would do…nothing.
Nothing was exactly what the United States seemed to be doing as Red Army tanks rolled into Iran and Iraq. At first he had not believed the intelligence reports, mistrusted what his people had been telling him every bit as much as what he was hearing from the British Ambassador. Like Crown Prince Faisal, he too bristled with indignation, humiliated to have to accept the presence of Royal Air Force V-Bombers on his soil because no matter how many times the US State Department offered ‘guarantees’ in respect of the ‘territorial integrity of the Arabian Peninsula’, as the war in Iraq rumbled ever closer to the borders, the airspace, and the waters of the Persian Gulf through which practically all the Kingdom’s oil was exported to the outside world, words no longer counted for very much. He and every other member of the government he felt like he had been duped by the Americans; his honour had been besmirched. He had trusted the Americans and they had, by failing to immediately send troops, aircraft and ships to ‘guarantee the territorial integrity’ of his country, insulted and betrayed the entire ruling family.
Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud tried very hard to veil his anger as he studied the faces of his hosts.
It was one of those quirks of circumstance that while not a fluent Saudi speaker, the British Ambassador, fifty year old Sir Colin Tradescant Crowe found himself almost by accident, admirably qualified to be his country’s safe pair of hands in the worst of all possible times in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The son of a diplomat father he had been born in Yokohama, and educated at Stowe School and Oriel College, Oxford where he had acquired a first class degree in history before taking up a posting in the Diplomatic Service in Peking between 1936 and 1938. Thereafter, he had served in Shanghai, Washington DC and Tel Aviv before returning to China during the Korean War. In Peking in the early 1950s British diplomats were fair game for so-called Chinese ‘volunteers’; and Crowe’s brother-in-law had been arrested and executed on trumped up charges of conspiring to murder Mao Zedong in 1951.
Crowe was one of those indefatigable never say die stalwarts of the old diplomatic corps; thus it was hardly surprising when he was appointed as the prospective Chargé D'affaires in Cairo in 1957, a post he was only able to take up two years later in 1959 when diplomatic relations were resumed after the debacle of the Suez Crisis of 1956. It was largely down to Crowe that full diplomatic relations were finally restored between London and Cairo in 1961. His reward had been to be sent to New York as the United Kingdom’s deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a position rendered redundant by the Cuban Missiles War and the host nation’s unilateral decision to withdraw from that crippled institution in February 1963. Needless to say he had not been overly surprised to be handed the poison chalice of repairing diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia — broken since 1956 — the previous year. A modest, calm, very patient man with a gentle sense of humour he could be scathingly dismissive of ‘old school’ colleagues and ‘time servers’ who still behaved as if Britain still ruled the waves and that there was actually such a thing as ‘the Empire’. Here in the Kingdom his tact and charm, and for want of a better word — his transparent ‘decency — had mended many fences and enabled him to form new working relationships. Crucially, within the upper echelons of the Saudi Royal Family Crowe was seen as a man with whom the Kingdom might do business.
However, the man standing at the British Ambassador’s shoulder was — his reputation apart — an unknown quantity to Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud.
It was said that Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson, since December of last year the British Foreign Secretary and one of that woman Thatcher’s ‘inner circle’, had once been ostracised by his superiors for his anti-American stance and the man’s wife was, of all things, a famous novelist!
Of only average height, balding and in appearance older than his fifty-nine years, the dapper, suited Englishman stepped forward and nodded his head in a cursory bow.
“Thank you for altering your schedule at such short notice to do us the honour of meeting with us at this place, Your Highness,” Tom Harding-Grayson said in halting Arabic.
“You speak our tongue, Sir Thomas?”
“Not so well as I did in my younger days I fear, Your Highness. It is many, many years since I was last in this part of the World.”
Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud gestured for his interpreter to step forward. There could be no scope for misunderstandings today.
“I am here today at the request of Crown Prince Faisal,” he declared. “He met Secretary of State Fulbright yesterday. It was not a satisfactory meeting. Our American ‘friends’ wish to ‘sell’ us arms and to assure the Kingdom of their undying ‘support’, and have sought assurances that the war supplies deports at Jeddah and elsewhere will be ‘respected’. This last matter I personally found to be most curious.”
He waited for his interpreter to translate.
And looked the British Foreign Secretary in the eye.
The other man met his hawkish stare without blinking.
Sir Colin Crowe coughed politely.
“Might I suggest we retire to comfortable chairs, Your Highness?” He suggested.
He led the others to chairs around a low table. Viciously strong, bitter coffee was served in small cups and then the exchange resumed as if there had been no interruption.
“With respect,” Tom Harding-Grayson observed, “the status of the war supplies depots is a thing which ought to preoccupy the United States, Your Highness.”
“How so, Sir Thomas?”
The Englishman did not so much as bat an eyelid.
“Because my generals and air marshals want the contents of those depots so that they can better assist your armed forces in the defence of your borders, sir.”
There was a deathly silence.
It went on for ten, fifteen, twenty or more seconds.
“My forces,” the Minister of Defence and Aviation said dangerously, “are perfectly capable of defending the holy soil of the Kingdom.”
The British Ambassador raised his coffee cup to his lips, thought better of it and replaced cup and saucer carefully on the table.
“At this time,” he observed, “we do not think it is the Soviet intention to immediately invade the Kingdom, Your Highness. However, we do think that the enemy’s ultimate strategic objective is to command the waters of the Persian Gulf, to occupy most of Iraq and Iran, and to eventually expand his sphere of influence in the region to encompass the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. It is also our assessment that it is the Soviet intention to seize or destroy all the oilfields of the region.”
“That’s madness!” Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud exploded.
Tom Harding-Grayson shook his head.
“With respect, sir. He who controls two-thirds of the World’s oil has his hands around the throat of the whole World.”