Blowback

For their part, the Saudis were notorious for filtering Internet content. Their Internet Services Unit (ISU) operated all the high-speed data links that connected the country to the international Internet, and all web traffic in Saudi Arabia was forwarded through a central array of proxy servers at the ISU, which decided what users could and could not have access to. Citing the Koran, the Saudis claimed to be preserving their Islamic values by blocking access to any materials that contradicted their beliefs or might influence their culture. All this while they smoked, drank, did drugs, and whored around in foreign countries. The hypocrisy of it all would have been amusing if the net effect wasn’t so lamentable for the average Saudi citizen.

Even though the Saudis had the technology to block access to certain Web sites, Reynolds knew they didn’t have what it took to crack encrypted e-mails. Despite all the billions in sophisticated military hardware Uncle Sam had sold his Bedouin buddies over the years, encryption was the one area, thank God, the U.S. had refused to do business with the Saudis in. In fact, America hadn’t been too keen on Internet filtering, and along with the help of the NSA, the CIA had created a back door for its operatives in Saudi Arabia who needed a secure way to access the Net. They had placed a digital trapdoor in the last place the Saudis would ever look for it. As Reynolds logged onto the ISU’s homepage, he smiled at the irony of choosing the eunuchs’ locker room as the perfect place to hide the spermicide.

He surfed through the proxy servers over to his Saudi-sanctioned e-mail account and read a string of briefings from his roving security teams who checked in on Aramco’s wells, refineries, pumping stations, and various other operations throughout the kingdom. Satisfied that his own house was in order, he decided to see how the house of Saud was faring and opened the e-mail containing the watered-down daily threat assessment. As usual, it was only mildly interesting and not very informative. Reynolds poured himself another cup of coffee and began to whistle We’re off to see the wizard, as he carefully wove his way through the firewalls and layers of security that protected the Saudi Intelligence Services’ data. It was time to peek behind the palm frond curtain.

One of the Saudi ruling family’s biggest fears, and the reason Reynolds held the position he did, was that its state oil company, Aramco, was incredibly vulnerable to attack. With so much infrastructure above ground and unprotected, American forecasters had prognosticated that it would only take a small, well-organized band of saboteurs to completely decimate Saudi Arabia’s oil production capabilities, push the al-Sauds from power, and create a worldwide domino effect that could send oil prices soaring over $100, or maybe even $150 a barrel. Geopolitical, social, and economic upheaval would immediately follow. Stock markets would collapse, and civilization would be thrust into a modern version of the dark ages from which it might not ever recover.

It was no wonder Reynolds had nightmares. Saudi Arabia had over eighty active oil and gas fields and more than a thousand wells. There was no way he and his men could be everywhere at once. There had been small, amateur efforts at sabotage in the past, more nuisances than anything else, but it was the “what if” big one that everyone was worried about.

The only way to prevent a major attack was to keep an eye on those most likely to commit one, and that’s exactly what the Saudi Intelligence Services’ agents were supposed to be doing. The problem, in Reynolds’s opinion, was that most of them, including Faruq, weren’t even worthy of the envelopes used to mail their paychecks.

Reynolds downloaded the real daily threat assessment and then cherry-picked e-mails and memos that had flowed between the kingdom’s various intelligence branches over the last twenty-four hours. As he read, something unusual caught his eye.

Over the last two years, Reynolds had compiled his own terrorist watch list. Almost all of the list’s distinguished honorees were radical Muslim fundamentalists from the militant Wahhabi sect, and all were young men the Saudi Intelligence Services currently had under surveillance. The report he was seeing now, though, gave him a strange sense of déjà vu. He had read this same report somewhere before. But how was that possible? He had to be imagining it. Tailing subjects and writing up daily reports were two of the few things the Saudis actually did correctly.

Accessing his removable drive, Reynolds opened the folder he had created for the surveillance subject in question-a young Saudi militant named Khalid Sheik Alomari-and pulled up his previous surveillance reports. It took the security consultant over twenty minutes, but he eventually found what he was looking for. Six months ago, the Saudi agent tailing Alomari had filed the exact same report, verbatim.