“And you put all this in your famous analytical blender and get what, Rusty?” Senator Robinson asked, staring into his glass.
“I don’t know, and that’s what bothers me. I feel like — what did they say in the Star Wars movie? — ‘there’s a disturbance in the Force.’ ” MacIntyre waved the fingers on both hands as if conjuring up the Force.
“Well, Obi-Wan, what are you going to do about it?” the Senator said, rising and going for a refill.
“For starters I’m flying over to London tonight to see what I can stir up. They always tell us more in person, stuff they are hearing but can’t put into a liaison report to us for whatever reason,” MacIntyre said, waving off more bourbon. “And they just seem to have better analysts than we do. I’m trying to find out what that ingredient is that they have so I can inject it into our new little Intelligence Analysis Center.”
“Good idea to go to London about now, but why not keep going and drop in on some of our friends in the Gulf? They always know more than they put in writing, too,” Senator Robinson said, moving behind his desk. “Besides, there’s a guy out there I want you to get to know. Brad Adams, runs the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain. Did a year with me up here on some sort of officer development program when he was a captain. We stay in touch. He has, well, some of the same concerns we do about the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. I’ll tell him you’re coming.”
“Okay.” Rusty accepted that his trip to London just became much, much more.
“But tell me, Rusty, do you believe this Islamyah Shura Council will really give up power to freely elected officials? Hell, these are the guys who killed some of the Saudi royal family in their coup. Some of their supporters were al Qaeda, fought us in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“Senator, we have lots of reporting that there is a rift in the Shura Council between the jihadists, who want to export the revolution, and those who want to modernize and democratize Islamyah. It’s always that way with a revolution. After a while there is a struggle among the revolutionaries, just like in the French Revolution, the Russian…”
Senator Robinson looked at the map of the Middle East on his wall and thought out loud, “Well, you’re right, Rusty, it was a relatively bloodless coup, all in all. There’s no line of royals at a guillotine. Most of the Sauds escaped to the U.S. on their private planes. The whole thing was over in three days because so much of the Saudi military was in on the coup, the revolution. And so far, all they have really done to piss us off is to eject our defense contractors.”
“Senator, it was us, the United States, that froze their bank accounts here after the coup and then stopped shipping military spare parts for the weapons we had sold the Sauds.” MacIntyre felt he could be frank with his old boss, and so continued on. “By placing a unilateral economic embargo on them, we made it illegal for U.S. companies to buy Saudi oil. It was only then that they nationalized one hundred percent of Aramco and broke the contracts to sell oil to America. We did it to ourselves.
“Besides, sir, the Saudi government was no barrel of laughs either. They beheaded people, they denied women rights, they funded all sorts of terrorist-related Wahhabi schools and charities before 9/11 and even after. There were literally several thousand royal princelings, and corruption was rampant.”
“Look, I know all of that, Rusty,” Paul Robinson sighed. “Now the royal Saudis have taken up residence in the finer parts of Los Angeles and Houston. They’re throwing their money around, getting involved in American politics. Or should I say more involved? The Bushies were always in bed with the Sauds.
“You can’t report this, Rusty,” the Senator said, leaning forward and tapping with his finger like a woodpecker on MacIntyre’s knee, “but I had one of those exiled royal sons of bitches in this room, this very room, two months ago saying he had twenty-five million dollars in an offshore account that he would transfer control of to me if I would back an intelligence finding to authorize covert U.S. action to topple the Islamyah regime and reinstall the Sauds.”
Rusty whistled in amazement. “Shit, Senator…You could have him arrested for that.”
“I know, but I would have had no proof,” Robinson said, leaning back into his chair.
“So what’d you do?” Rusty asked. He had known Paul Robinson for sixteen years, since the now-Senator had hired him as a junior staffer for his House office right after Rusty had graduated from Brown. The Senator was as honest as any man he had ever met and hated dishonesty of any kind, intellectual, financial, political. Corruption just really pissed him off. Robinson had first risen to national attention on a subcommittee that investigated financial fraud in U.S. thrift savings banks.
Senator Paul Robinson had pushed through the creation of the Intelligence Analysis Center because, he said, he and the executive branch were not getting intellectually honest reporting. When the center came into existence and the Director of National Intelligence selected Ambassador Sol Rubenstein to run it, the Senator had told Rubenstein that his confirmation hearing would go a lot faster if he picked Rusty as the first Deputy Director of the IAC.
When Rusty learned that had happened, he’d called the Senator and thanked him, but joked, “You know I was doing well with this Beltway Bandit firm. You just cut my salary by two-thirds.”
“Don’t try that on me, Rusty,” Robinson had replied. “It’s not about the money. Not for you. Not for me. Never was. It’s about honest government, and I’ve been feeling like Diogenes down here trying to find someone who will do some quality, honest intelligence analysis. You’re it.” There was no way that the Senator would let a bribery attempt go by, like the one the Saudi had tried to pull.
“Well, Russell, I did not call the FBI and report the son of a bitch. But I did slip an amendment into the Omnibus Appropriation that requires the Treasury Department to keep all royal Saudi assets in the U.S. frozen until Treasury files a detailed report with us on whether the funds are really personal or should be considered national assets of the people of their country. We then have a hundred and eighty days to review the report, and that period can be extended upon request of any chair of any committee of relevant jurisdiction in either house,” the Senator replied as a Cheshire cat grin spread across his face. He really was a legislative master. “So that’s how I helped them. How can I help you, Rusty, as you go gallivanting around Europe and the Middle East?”
“Not like that, Senator,” Russell said, still laughing at the legislative maneuver. “I haven’t been out to the Gulf region for a while. What can you do, sir? Just keep your eyes and ears open, especially with your friends on Armed Services.” MacIntyre rose and went for his overcoat, which was lying on the leather couch. “And watch my back.”
“Always do, Rusty, always do.” The two shook hands and then embraced. “And give my best to that lovely, lefty wife of yours,” the Senator said, smiling.
“I’ll need to give her something. Right now she’s probably sitting outside in her car waiting to take me to Dulles, and freezing,” MacIntyre said, walking toward the door.
“Then get your ass in gear, boy.” The chairman laughed, flicking his wrist. “Go, go. Never leave a pretty lady waiting in the cold.”
Sarah Goldman was feeling cold at the moment, in more ways than one. Their drive out the Dulles Airport Access Road together was more taxing on MacIntyre than negotiating with the Brazilian intelligence service (which he had done three months before, hoping to learn what one of South America’s leading spy agencies really knew about the Hezbollah presence in the “triangle area” near Uruguay).