Blowback

Contrary to the picture of peace, prosperity, and stability most of the outside world saw, the house of Saud was circling the drain. A host of socioeconomic problems that ran the gamut from record deficits, high unemployment, and ultra religious conservatism to resentment of the kingdom’s rapid westernization, passionate hate for American troops on Saudi Arabian soil, and the decline in oil revenues as the United States began to open up Iraq’s oil fields all came together to create one of the most dangerous political climates ever in the history of the al-Saud monarchy.

Evident to anyone who cared to take a close enough look was the fact that the Saudi monarchy’s grip on power over the last two decades had been in precipitous decline. The foolish family policy of ignoring domestic problems in the hopes that they would simply go away had been shown time and again to be an ineffective and potentially suicidal approach to governance.

When challenged, though, the house of Saud did what most petty despots did-they struck back, and struck back hard. Under the pretense of national security and Islamic law, severe crackdowns would be initiated whereby dissidents, leaders of opposition groups, and anyone appearing even remotely threatening to the monarchy were imprisoned, tortured, and in many cases put to death.

It was little wonder then that the rulers of Saudi Arabia found it difficult to accurately gauge public opinion. No half-intelligent subject of the kingdom would ever dare answer a scientific survey or telephone poll honestly, so the house of Saud was forced to rely on a loose network of informants throughout all strata of Saudi society. The problem with the kingdom’s informants, though, was that often they reported back only what they thought their handlers wanted to hear. This made for intelligence of varying degrees of quality and reliability, but when analyzed alongside the work product of the only somewhat efficient Saudi intelligence officers, most of whom, including their deputy minister, had their heads so far up their asses you couldn’t even see their shoulders, it was barely enough to keep the monarchy’s finger on the pulse of the kingdom and stay in control of the country.

As an American, Reynolds had little respect for the brutal way in which the Saudis ran their kingdom, but it was their country. The thing he despised about them the most was that they were the region’s most earnest spin doctors. For example, in an effort to appear more Muslim, King Fahd had given up his royal title of His Majesty for Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in the Islamic world. One member of the Royal Family had even come up with some cockamamie scheme to bottle and sell water from a recently discovered spring beneath the holy city of Mecca, which supposedly once slaked the thirst of the prophet Muhammad himself. Reynolds didn’t buy any of it. Though there were some fairly religious members of the Royal Family, they were definitely in the minority. The family’s attempt to appear faithful was an absolute sham. Anyone who had heard stories or had seen first hand the debaucheries of Saudi princes who partied like there was no tomorrow, with absolutely no respect for the tenets of Islam, knew where the ruling family really stood.

To some extent, it was hard to blame them when even their ailing king didn’t set much of an example. On his annual vacation to his coastal estate in Spain, Fahd’s entourage included 350 attendants, fifty black Mercedes, and a 234-foot yacht, in addition to which he had $2,000 in flowers and fifty cakes delivered daily. With every move it made, the monarchy was shooting itself in both feet, but Reynolds couldn’t have cared less. It wasn’t his country. As long as the hefty deposits kept being made to his bank account, he’d keep doing his job. His primary concern, the one he was being paid so many petrodollars to see to, was that Aramco’s oil continued to flow unimpeded-thereby replenishing the coffers of the house of Saud.

Unscrewing the bottom of the souvenir.50-caliber sniper round sitting on his desk, Reynolds removed a forty-gig, portable USB flash memory drive from its hiding place and attached it to the back of his computer. Not only was the portable drive extremely fast when it came to transferring data, it also had the added benefit of leaving no trace on its host. With this special toy (a gift from one of his friends at Langley) he was able to safely encrypt and store any information he didn’t want lying around on his laptop’s hard drive. One could never be too careful in the kingdom.