SEVEN
PROLOGUE
Baghdad, Iraq, April 2000
Tariq Riyadh stared into the face of a madman and felt rage building. Everywhere he turned in the city, his birthplace, his home, it was the same. Saddam Hussein’s damnable face, his arrogant smile following Riyadh and his fellow countrymen as they went about their lives, trying to coexist with a murderous dictator who cared more about power than people. For years, Riyadh had watched as Saddam ground Iraq, a resource-rich, well-educated society, under his boot heel, killed its people with impunity, made Riyadh’s homeland a polarizing force on the geopolitical landscape.
All that changed this night.
The still-warm desert breeze blew over Riyadh’s face, tousled his salt-and-pepper hair. He stared at the painting of Saddam erected on a neighboring building and smiled at his enemy. The paintings, monolithic testaments to Saddam’s arrogance and narcissism, dotted the country, as innumerable as grains of sand in the desert. Like his fellow countrymen, Riyadh suffered daily under Saddam’s mocking glare, through the ever-present paintings, through the eyes of the Republican Guard, through Saddam’s network of spies, all ready to kill for the slightest treachery, real or perceived.
Riyadh knew his first order come morning would be to tear down the paintings, bring them together in a pile and burn them in a huge funeral pyre marking the passing of an oppressive regime.
He squeezed his left arm against his rib cage, grateful for the reassuring bulk of the Beretta 92-F he carried in a shoulder holster. If all went according to plan, he’d use the weapon only once, a single shot into the dictator’s face, watch fear replace Hussein’s smugness. Change history with a single squeeze of the trigger.
Riyadh smiled and excitement tickled his insides. He stood on the balcony of his apartment, watched as troop carriers, soldiers and citizens milled about him ten stories below. If he shut his eyes and listened, Baghdad sounded like any other teeming metropolis at night. Honking horns, sirens, relentless footsteps, voices—all were audible even at this height. Perched several stories above it all, he couldn’t feel the fear, the repressed anger that gripped the country, gnawed at it like a cancer. It was the righteous anger of an oppressed people, a people with no voice because it had been stolen by a despot.
Riyadh wanted to rule Iraq, to transform it into a progressive state that other countries would marvel at, perhaps even mimic. And he would get his chance to do just that. The Americans’ promise had been explicit—with Saddam gone, Riyadh would step in as Iraq’s president, run the government until Iraq stabilized and then the people would choose their own leader in democratic elections. Pride surged through Riyadh as he realized he’d bring freedom to his people and they would love him for it. He had no doubt they would do the right thing, elect him as president. Over and over.
The impending revolution also would make him a rich man. Unbeknownst to the Americans, Riyadh had been in contact with the Russians and the French, via their intelligence agents, and they had agreed to secretly buy oil from him. He’d undercut the OPEC countries, reduce their clout in world affairs, give rise to a new power in the Middle East. And if he lined his pockets in the meantime, then who was to complain?
Riyadh heard footsteps from behind and turned. A tall man with close-cropped, blond hair and a ruddy complexion stepped from Riyadh’s well-appointed penthouse onto the terrace. Obviously a Westerner, the man had been traveling as a journalist, had even filed stories under the byline Daniel Gibbons for Liberty News Service. Riyadh knew better. Liberty News Service was a ruse, a part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s massive overseas propaganda machine. And Daniel Gibbons was really Jon Stone, a CIA agent.
“It’s almost time,” Stone said. “Come inside. We need to talk.”
Riyadh nodded. Lighting a cigarette as he moved, he stepped inside the apartment, closed the sliding-glass door behind him. A rush of air-conditioned air hit him, cooling the sweat that had formed on his brow and down his spine. He loved his country’s dry, hot climate. But as a member of Iraq’s parliament and the son of a wealthy oil family, he also enjoyed the comforts of air-conditioning. Another man stood in the room with Stone, a mirror image of Riyadh, minus his graying hair, the crow’s feet etched into the corners of his eyes, the soft middle from too many dinners with Iraq’s political elite.
“My brother,” Riyadh said, “it is so good to see you.”
“And you,” Abdullah Riyadh stated.
Stone fell heavily into a chair, causing it to slide back a few inches. Riyadh stared at him and, with great effort, kept his expression neutral. He found Stone boorish, overbearing. Stone, though well educated, lumped all Arabs into a single pile and regarded it as he would dung. In Riyadh’s mind, Stone had seemed an unlikely man to coordinate a coup in the Middle East. Despite the man’s shortcomings, though, he had pulled together the operation with an attention to detail, an efficiency that elicited a grudging respect from Riyadh. Indeed, he was a social clod, but a strategic genius.
Stone’s upper lip curled into a sneer as he spoke. “You two done having old home week, or do I have to waste more time before we can get down to business?”
