Brad Thor - Blowback

But while the al-Sauds might have liked what Reynolds brought to their side of the table, their deputy minister for state intelligence had been shown up by the American and never intended to let it happen again. Ergo, no real substantial intel ever flowed in Reynolds’s direction.

Reynolds had diplomatically discussed Faruq’s lack of cooperation with the Saudi Royal Family, and things had gotten better for a while, but they always seemed to recede to their current, frosty state of affairs. That said, Reynolds hadn’t become one of the CIA’s top operatives and wasn’t being paid such a big consulting fee for being lazy or stupid, and so he used his skills to bore as far as he could into all of his host country’s intelligence agencies. Within forty-five minutes every morning, he had a better handle on what was going on both inside and outside of their borders than they did. Truth be told, his picture was probably more accurate than if the Saudi intelligence agencies had been one hundred percent cooperative with him. Reynolds had always joked that he liked his intelligence like he liked his oysters-raw, with nothing added to enhance the flavor. The last thing he wanted was other people clouding his view of the landscape by trying to impress him with their take on things.

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.

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.