The Messenger

found the key on the mantel, used it to start the flow of gas, then ignited it with an ornamental match.
    “How many years do you give them, Gabriel? How long before the House of Saud collapses and the Islamic Republic of Arabia rises in its place? Five years? Ten? Or is it more like twenty? We’ve never been really good about making predictions like that. We thought the Soviet empire would last forever.”
    “And we thought Hamas could never win an election.”
    Carter chuckled mirthlessly. “Our best minds give them seven years at the most. His Majesty is prepared to spend that seven years playing the game by the old rules: provide cheap oil and pseudofriendship to us while at the same time paying lip service to the forces of Islam and bribing them not to attack him . And when it’s over, he’ll flee to his string of palaces along the Riviera and live out the rest of his days in a luxury that is too grotesque even to contemplate, hopefully with his head still attached to his body.”
    Carter lifted his palms toward the fire. “It’s not hot,” he said.
    “The logs are made of ceramic. Give it a minute to heat up.”
    Carter appeared incredulous. Gabriel drifted over to the window and peered into the street as a car rolled slowly past and vanished around the next corner. Carter gave up on the fire and returned to his seat.
    “And then there are those in the Royal Family who are willing to play the game by a different set of rules. We’ll call them the True Believers. They think the only way the al-Saud can survive is to renew the covenant they formed with Muhammad Abdul Wahhab two centuries ago in the Najd. But this new covenant has to take into account new realities. The monster that the al-Saud created two hundred years ago now holds all the cards, and the True Believers are prepared to give the monster what it wants. Infidel blood. Jihad without end. Some of these True Believers want to go further. The expulsion of all infidels from the Peninsula. An embargo on oil sales to America and any other country that does business with yours. They believe oil should no longer be treated as simply an unending pool of liquid money that flows from the terminals of Ras Tanura into the Zurich bank accounts of the al-Saud. They want to use it as a weapon—a weapon that could be used to cripple the American economy and make the Wahhabis masters of the planet, just as Allah intended when he placed that sea of oil beneath the sands of the al-Hassa. And some of these True Believers, such as the chairman and CEO of AAB Holdings of Riyadh, Geneva, and points in between, are actually willing to shed a little infidel blood themselves.”
    “You’re referring to Abdul Aziz al-Bakari?”
    “I am indeed,” said Carter. “Know much about him?”
    “At last accounting, he was something like the fifteenth richest man in the world, with a personal fortune in the vicinity of ten billion dollars.”
    “Give or take a billion or two.”
    “He’s the president, chairman, and lord high emperor of AAB Holdings— A for Abdul, A for Aziz, and B for al-Bakari. AAB owns banks and investment houses. AAB does shipping and steel. AAB is cutting down the forests of the Amazon and strip-mining the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. AAB has a Belgian chemical company and a Dutch pharmaceutical. AAB’s real estate and development division is one of the world’s largest. Abdul Aziz al-Bakari owns more hotels than anyone else in the world.”
    Carter picked up where Gabriel left off. “He has a palace in Riyadh he rarely visits and two former wives there he never sees. He owns a mansion on the Île de la Cité in Paris, a princely estate in the English countryside, a townhouse in Mayfair, oceanfront villas in Saint-Tropez, Marbella, and Maui, ski chalets in Zermatt and Aspen, a Park Avenue apartment recently appraised at forty million dollars, and a sprawling compound overlooking the Potomac that I pass every day on the way to work.”
    Carter seemed to find the mansion on the Potomac the most grievous of al-Bakari’s sins. Carter’s father had been an Episcopal minister from New Hampshire, and beneath his placid exterior beat the heart of a Puritan.
    “Al-Bakari and his entourage travel the world in a gold-plated 747,” he continued. “Twice a year, once in February and again in August, AAB’s operations go seaborne when al-Bakari and his entourage set up shop aboard Alexandra, his three-hundred-foot yacht. Have I forgotten