“At least,” he said, “I can say I died on the side of the angels.”
The motorcade was less than ten minutes from the palace.
Sa’id gazed out the window at the conundrum that was Riyadh — some of the world’s oldest and largest and most beautiful mosques stood alongside some of the world’s sleekest and most expensive skyscrapers — when something caught his eye. It was coming in fast from the right. It was a huge truck, an oil tanker of some kind, running a red light and barreling through the intersection ahead.
The lead car in Sa’id’s motorcade tried to swerve, but it was too late.
The sedan hit the side of the eighteen-wheeler at almost seventy miles an hour. The fireball that erupted could be seen and heard throughout the capital as two more security cars plowed into the tanker right behind the first.
Sa’id could feel the searing heat from the enormous explosion. For a moment he was convinced he was going to die as well. The driver of their Rolls-Royce slammed on the brakes and spun into a 180-degree turn as machine-gun fire erupted from all sides.
“Left, left, go left!” shouted Sa’id’s lead bodyguard, but two vans suddenly pulled into the alley, cutting off their best way of escape.
The driver again slammed on the brakes, sending Sa’id crashing into the partition dividing the front and back seats and shattering the glass in the process.
“Emerald Palace, this is White Tiger—we are under attack.”
“Say again, White Tiger?”
“I repeat, we are under attack two blocks south of the King Abdul Aziz Centre. Requesting immediate backup and air-extraction team, over.”
But waiting for help to arrive wasn’t a serious option, and they all knew it.
Hooded men jumped from the vans and began charging them, firing machine guns as they ran. Round after round smashed into the bulletproof glass. The men were less than twenty yards away and coming fast.
Three Mercedes SUVs screeched to a stop nearby. A dozen Saudi security agents jumped out and returned fire, but Sa’id knew it wasn’t enough.
“Go back, go back!” Sa’id yelled to his driver, his face covered with blood.
The driver threw the car into reverse. He gunned the engine and peeled down another side street.
The armored Rolls-Royce flew around a corner.
Neither the driver nor the occupants saw the trap coming. In a garbage can on the curb were fifty pounds of plastic explosives, linked by a short orange detonation cord to a small green cell phone just waiting for a call.
When it came, the force of the massive explosion blew out the windows of the Rolls and flipped the car onto its side, where it, too, exploded, killing everyone inside.
8
“Dr. Mordechai, welcome to Babylon.”
The two men met at the front entrance to the presidential palace and greeted each other with a simple handshake. What struck Mordechai first was how remarkably fit the new Iraqi president was for a man of seventy-four. He had intensely dark eyes, a long and weathered face, and a salt-and-pepper beard, but though he wore the traditional white robes of the region, Mordechai knew this was no ordinary Arab ruler.
Mustafa Al-Hassani was widely considered the intellectual grandfather of the Iraqi freedom forces. For decades — by day — he had been a beloved professor of Arab literature and poetry at one of the most prestigious universities in Baghdad. But by night he had steadily emerged as one of the shrewdest political strategists in the modern Middle East. He had conceived a vision of what Iraq could be without Saddam. It burned within him. He had vowed not to rest until a new regime was born, and then he set about to build a movement worthy of his dreams.
So on a cold, dark night in the winter of 1979, Al-Hassani had gathered three fellow professors at his home. Over thick, dark coffee and sweet cakes and pastries, he explained his plan. Each of the men signed on immediately, and together they founded the Iraqi National Alliance. The INA would serve as an underground agitator for free speech, freedom of the press, and free elections. It would identify, recruit, and train a network of like-minded students and professors throughout Iraq — a force dedicated to the proposition of overthrowing the Ba’ath Party. It would make contact with Iraqi exiles and dissidents in London, Paris, and even the U.S. If possible, it would accept money from the CIA and British intelligence. And it would plan for the right moment to strike.
During the 1980s, as the Iran-Iraq war raged and Saddam looked invincible, Al-Hassani published three books of what appeared to be ancient Babylonian poetry. In fact they were coded manifestos providing detailed instructions to those interested in a democratic revolution on how to find copies of the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence hidden in Iraq’s public libraries, and how to form cell groups and banned book clubs to study the lives and methods of revolutionaries in other countries.
Each of Al-Hassani’s books became a runaway black market best seller in outlying cities like Mosul and Kirkuk and Al Najaf. But when one thin volume of the trilogy and a handwritten copy of the key to decoding it wound up in the hands of Saddam’s son Uday in Baghdad, Al-Hassani’s cover as a professor was blown. On a bitter cold night in the winter of 1989, Al-Hassani was arrested by the secret police and thrown into one of Saddam’s gulags known as Abu Ghraib. There he was tortured without mercy for three straight years. He fully expected to be executed, but then something happened that would change the course of history. The United States Marines stormed the prison one day, and Mustafa Al-Hassani was suddenly a free man in an Iraq no longer controlled by Saddam Hussein.
Within months of his release, Al-Hassani was named a member of Iraq’s provisional government. He ran for Parliament in the country’s first democratic elections, where he not only won but was soon elected by his peers to serve as the speaker of the parliament. And then, following the tragic assassination of Iraq’s first president, Al-Hassani suddenly found himself serving as the country’s new leader. It was the dream he had refused to stop dreaming all those years in prison, and now — incredibly — it was real.
“Come, come, my friend; follow me,” Al-Hassani insisted.
Mordechai did as he was told.
“I happen to know this is not your first time in my country,” the Iraqi continued. “The files I have been reading from Saddam’s Mukhabbarat intelligence agency have been quite fascinating, more like a novel than real life. From what I gather, you have spent quite a bit of time crisscrossing through this land. But I suspect this is your first time to Babylon, and certainly your first time inside one of our great palaces. Please tell me I am not wrong.”
Mordechai couldn’t help but laugh. The man had done his homework. He would love to get a look at those files, and he’d love to know what else Al-Hassani knew about him, but at this point there was no point denying the basic facts.
“It has been many years, but you are correct, Your Excellency,” Mordechai said. “I have been to your country before, but it was never my privilege to step foot in any of your impressive palaces.”
“I am relieved,” Al-Hassani said with a smile, “though for today I will not ask you if you were ever in our Osirik nuclear reactor before it suffered such an untimely accident.”
Relieved, Mordechai wondered why this man hadn’t been appointed the country’s president from the outset. He was as charming as he was shrewd.
“Are you fond of roasted lamb?” the Iraqi asked.
“One of my favorites,” Mordechai assured him.