Brian Haig - The Capitol Game

His father, however, drew the line over a photograph of Ali in Entertainment Weekly , a leering smile on his lips, a bubbling flute of champagne in one hand, the other planted firmly on the rather skinny fanny of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated sluts, which said something. The girl was only sixteen. Worse, she was made up to look only thirteen. Ali was crushed. For eighteen years he had lived the life of dreams. The idea of returning home, to a hot, sandy, dry country, to give up his American mansions, his powerful dedication to scotch, to live in a barren land without booze or blonde women-he’d developed a particular longing for golden hair-sickened him. He sent a long letter home, an elegantly worded missive telling his father to screw off.

But after the king threatened to cut off not only his inheritance and lifestyle emoluments, but also his head, Ali decided his affection for his family was calling him.

Bellweather and Walters had by now fallen onto their rear ends. Emitting a series of loud grunts, they were trying their damnedest to wrench their legs and knees into the same cross-legged stance as the Saudis.

His features twisted with pain, Bellweather asked, “You got a call from President Cantor?”

“Yes, yes,” Ali said with a quick wave. “Billy mentioned you have something interesting for us. Something quite lucrative.”

The moment Ali returned home, he had begged his father for a position in the Kingdom’s Ministry of Finance. High, low, didn’t matter. With his contacts and unscrupulous friends, he swore he could do a world of good for Saudi investments overseas. The king had a different idea and instead threw him in a Wahhabi-run rehab facility to dry out. A prison would’ve been more merciful, and less dreadful. Ali found himself in a small, unadorned room with only a bed and prayer mat, trapped in the middle of the desert with nobody but other spoiled and depraved reprobates for company.

He nearly went mad. It was such a steep drop from his former life. After a long, horrible two years of staring at white walls, of interminable sermons on faith and abstinence, of prostrating himself in prayer throughout the day, while he secretly dreamed of booze and blondes, Ali finally got his chance. He wrote a long rambling letter to his father swearing he was cured. A newly purified servant of Allah, he was now anxious to get out and make serious amends for his many sins. His timing couldn’t have been better. With oil prices shooting through the ceiling, the royal family was suddenly awash with cash. Gobs of it, many, many billions of Western money, was flooding the small kingdom. Black stuff was pumped out, rivers of green stuff flowed in.

Finding safe places to park all that cash had become a mammoth problem.

But at long last, after two horrible years of unmitigated misery, his father gave Ali the chance he had dreamed of, an opportunity to escape and make frequent trips to the West.

Over the wretched course of those two pathetic years, the only thing that had kept Ali from hanging himself in his cell were all the wild fantasies he stored in his head and replayed over and over. He developed a mental catalog; things he had done, things he would like to do again, new things he’d like to try. The time had come, at last, to indulge every last one of his preserved fantasies.

However, the man seated to Ali’s right, Bellweather knew, was a former imam and an iron-willed zealot, dispatched by the king to keep a tight rein on his forty-third son and be sure he didn’t lapse back into his nasty old habits. The temptations of the West were strong, and Ali obviously had a few willpower issues.

“How much did Cantor tell you?” Bellweather asked.

“A little. Something about a liquid you will squirt on your tanks and jeeps.”

“He told you what the polymer does?”

“More or less.”

“Are you interested?”

“More or less,” he repeated in that maddeningly opaque Middle Eastern way. In Arabland, apparently the words “yes” and “no” would draw a lightning bolt from the heavens.

“Then let me update you,” Bellweather suggested. He quickly proceeded through an energetic explanation of the polymer, a hilarious story about the dashed hopes of the GT 400, and the state of play in getting a defense contract. He made it sound like a gold mine-which it was-and a sure thing-which was drawing closer to reality every day.

Ali and his watchdog made loud slurping noises as they pulled tokes from the hookah. Ali listened politely but appeared only mildly interested.

Walters sat quietly and let Bellweather handle the pitch. Walters secretly loathed Arabs. His family name had been Wallerstein before he got it legally changed. He had aunts and uncles in Israel. A few cousins in the IDF. He wanted nothing to do with these Bedouin schlemiels, except for their money; about that he had absolutely no qualms.

“So now you want to sell us a piece,” Ali suggested the moment Bellweather finished.

“That’s the general idea, yes.” No fuller explanation was asked for, or indeed necessary. CG never put its own money on the line. They developed a project or takeover target, then quickly invited others to share the financial burden and gains. The financial term was “leverage,” shorthand for accumulating capital and spreading the risks of failure across multiple parties. In this case it meant buying all the influence that CG’s powerful group of insiders and power-peddlers could muster in the hunt for profit.

CG, however, carried it to absurd lengths. This was the secret to its success, the basic principle its founders had always preached. No matter how enticing the gamble, do it with other people’s money. They took funds from New York, Geneva, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Taipei, Moscow, really from anyone with deep pockets and the willingness to accept their stark terms. The source of the money made no difference. But the Saudis had long been their most frequent investor.

There was good reason for this. Billy Cantor, the former president and now CG board member, had during his time in office done the Saudis a few quiet favors. He had squelched several embarrassing inquiries that ranged from bribing American officials to some fairly egregious SEC violations. When several of the Saudi royals visited Las Vegas, and engaged in a wild bash that led to allegations they had kidnapped ten showgirls and treated them like a private harem, he had signed a secret order allowing them to jump on planes and flee home.

Then, after sixty American soldiers were butchered in a horrifying terrorist bombing at a U.S. air base outside Riyadh, with strong hints of government involvement, he had ordered the FBI and CIA to bring home their investigators and call it quits.

He did these favors not out of love for the Saudis. Truthfully, Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians-all those semi-dark people looked so much alike to him. He was well aware, though, that his long life in politics was grinding to a sad close. He had so little to show for it.

He’d been such a miserable president, with so few accomplishments to write or brag about afterward. No, he wasn’t likely to get rich off speeches and books, like the others of his ilk. With his heavy lisp and oversize tongue, he’d never been a good orator anyway. Even Nixon-Nixon!-had made a large fortune peddling books.

Sadly, the sum total of Billy’s insights and ruminations about statecraft or good governance could barely fill a two-page article. And after his regrettable attempt at reelection prompted a record landslide for the other side, it was clear the nation just wanted to forget him. So he’d spent his last months in office stuffing in as many favors to rich, unpopular countries and greedy defense contractors as he could get away with.

Now those old favors were paying back a thousandfold. The Saudi royal family came when Bill Cantor called. They had few fans in America, and a president, even a former one, even one with such a lackluster record and astounding level of unpopularity, was worth whatever he cost.