The Strength of Stones

By Thomas Preisser

The action begins in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where thirty-something engineer Terry Wallingford has just lost his job, but doesn’t want to give up the good life of an American expat worker in Saudi Arabia. When a distinguished Saudi fellow invites him to a meeting in a smart downtown Riyadh hotel and offers him an unusual, but extremely lucrative, opportunity, he finds he can’t refuse it. That’s where Terry’s adventure begins.
Soon after accepting the stranger’s offer, Terry Wallingford’s life spins wildly out of control and events he never anticipated overtake him. What began as an interesting business opportunity ends up as a life and death struggle as Saudi federal police, along with several agencies of the U.S. government, step in to find out what’s going on, who’s behind it, and how to end it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312610200

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The Strength of Stones

The Strength of Stones

Thomas E. Preisser

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Edward Preisser, III

No part of this publication may be reproduced distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. All rights reserved under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

Cover photograph of Saudi Ministry of Interior:

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Edward Preisser, III

ISBN:   978-1-312-61020-0

The Strength of Stones is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is informed by my own experience in Saudi Arabia and in other places in the neighborhood. I have also been engaged in the study of international affairs--and I use the word study advisedly--and routinely involved with a multicultural group of friends with whom I have spoken about contemporary issues including those of the Middle East.

People advise new writers to write about the things they are familiar with, but who wants to read a novel with a Training and Development theme! You, who know more than I, will judge me on the content. If I have erred in some detail or another, I ask for your forgiveness. If I occasionally have an issue with narration, I ask for the same tolerance. Nobody needs to remind me that I am no Steinbeck!

I have always written—OpEd’s, Letters to the Editor, short pieces for my own amusement, training curricula, and other business writing projects. I have only just now finished my first novel, The Strength of Stones. I had great fun writing it, and I certainly hope you enjoy it. I have a follow-on book in the works based upon some of the characters in this one.

While I have written-authored a novel, I believe that calling yourself a writer-author takes at least two books, and it’s even more apt if they’re good. Writers like Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, Anne Rice, David Baldacci, John Grisham, and many others can talk about two book shelves, not two books. While I cannot imagine competing with their productivity, let alone their quality, I do plan to write as long as I think I have something interesting to say, and the motivation to continue.

Thank you for your interest in reading. I hope I have not ruined it for you.

Ted Preisser

Lone Tree, CO

October, 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I first want to thank those Saudis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghanis, and Indians who have been among my best friends and colleagues over the years. I hope this book helps people to think more clearly about the difficult world we all inhabit and must learn to share. Some may never learn that.

I have only one editor to thank—my daughter Meenakshi. She edits scholarly publications at the GIGA, in Hamburg, Germany, and was able to tell me arcane things that really helped me to improve this book. I didn’t always listen, especially about the occasional problems with the narrator’s voice, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t told. Thanks, Bean.

Alexander, my son, has been writing since he was a teenager, and I am envious of his compact style—he doesn’t show me as much as he tells me, but I’ve seen enough to know there’s an Elmore Leonard somewhere inside him. Hey, Big Al, pick up the phone, why dontcha!

Amita, my loving friend and wife—Her Sisyphus! Me Rock!--was ever encouraging, and only recently managed to roll me to the top of the hill. She ought to get lots more credit than I’m willing to give her because she’ll have to do it all over again for book 2.

My late mother, Bernice Preisser, always had my back, as did my late uncle and aunt, E.S. Goldman and Virginia Harris Goldman. They are irreplaceable, as are Ranbir and Nirmala Bhandari, the best in-laws I could imagine. Thank you all.

Dear friends like Kathy Jordan showed the way by publishing three books, while Meenu and Rajiv, hosting me in New Delhi, encouraged me to finish. Marlin Horseman, who read Part One, said, Well, Ted, when do we see the rest of it?

My Pittsburgh koomps and UMass bhaiyas and bahens are always there, along with newer friends and many colleagues who know that any boss who fires me can only look like a damn fool.

Finally, Professor Donald Adams, my Ph.D. advisor at Pitt, should happily note that I’ve finally completed something!

PROLOGUE

It’s Good to Be the King

Colonel Faisal al-Shammari, top operations cop at the Saudi Ministry of Interior’s General Directorate for Public Security, sat in his Riyadh office trying to figure out how much more time and budget to spend on prisoners pardoned by the king on his birthday. If he wants to let people out of jail, he ought to be a bit more discerning, thought Faisal. Some of these men are bad actors, not simply drunks. He was impatient and wanted this old Saudi custom be set aside, or at least modified. It was a new world, and improvements could be made. Faisal had done a training stint in Quantico six years earlier on an FBI program designed for foreign security officers, and he preferred a better organized Directorate than the one he worked under—also a less brutal one.

Abdullah, the current ruler of Saudi Arabia, was born on August 1, 1924, at least according to the Gregorian calendar. While political well-wishers from around the world send him Hallmark cards on August 1st, the king celebrates his own birthday based on the Hejira calendar, which is lunar. Theoretically, the king’s birthday could fall on any calendar date in the Gregorian year, but last year, 2013 CE, it fell on November 4th, which was the 29th day of Dhu’l Hijjah, 1433 AH, the anniversary of the date of Abdullah’s birth on the Islamic calendar. In 2014, the 29th of Dhu’l Hijjah will be in late October. He didn’t mind having two birthdays a year because it’s twice the balloons.

Overall seen as a good king, King Abdullah, in 2005, implemented a government scholarship program to send young Saudi men and women to study abroad in different universities around the world. The government provided tuition and other expenses for up to four years of study, and could be extended for post-graduate education. More than 70,000 Saudis studied abroad, mostly in English-speaking countries.

Abdullah was a liberalizing influence as king, but new traditions did not supplant old ones. And, Faisal thought, some of that education may unfortunately end up serving the advancement of terrorist activities, not that such exchanges should be stopped over a few extremists or lunatics.

What was not nearly so much fun was that, as one of the king’s benevolent birthday gifts, non-violent criminals whose crimes had been adjudicated were usually freed from prisons. For Colonel Faisal al-Shammari this was a two-edged sword. Faisal’s cousin Ibrahim was released from prison some twenty years earlier after, as a 21-year-old, he and his closest friend got drunk on siddiqui in the desert one night and, while driving home, hit a camel.

Hitting a camel is not like hitting a deer. Camels are not only bulky but tall, so they don’t bounce off your front fender. When you knock their legs out from under them the body comes crashing through your windshield. When car met camel and camel met windshield, Ibrahim’s friend met Allah. Ibrahim, who didn’t have a scratch on him, was taken to prison and waited there for the court to adjudicate the crime.

Ibrahim, in addition to grieving the loss of his dear friend, was worried that his friend’s family would ask for his life, as opposed to blood money, in return for the loss of their son, which is allowed under Islamic law. As it turns out, the court took the potential death sentence off the table because the qadi found the owner of the camel 5% liable for the accident for not adequately hobbling the beast, thus allowing it to wander onto the road and create the hazard in the first place. After Ibrahim paid the blood money to the family—some 200,000 Saudi riyals—he languished in prison until the king’s birthday, when he was released. That would not have been the case had the money not already been paid, of course.

People like Ibrahim were not Colonel Faisal’s worry, but among those non-violent criminals were a few serious troublemakers whose narrow interpretation of Islam led them to behaviors that the government saw as a political liability. Those who might share their sentiments about Afghanistan, Jerusalem, and even the government of Saudi Arabia itself were often actually muttawahs, the so-called religious police—the Wahhabis employed by the Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and Elimination of Vice—but their behavior was tightly controlled. It was the unaffiliated that worried Colonel Faisal, and among those unaffiliated was one Mustafa Abdulwahhab al-Ghamdi.

Mustafa Abdulwahhab al-Ghamdi was first investigated for his involvement in a 2004 bombing of a radio transmitter in downtown Riyadh. Faisal, a young federal officer who was attending a meeting at the Ministry of Defense that morning, still remembered how the walls shook when the blast went off. The bombers were hunted down and cornered while trying to escape the scene and, upon refusing to surrender to the police, were gunned down that very afternoon. Mustafa was implicated as a planner in that bombing but no evidence was ever found. He spent some time in prison under interrogation, but was soon released. That’s when Faisal first came to know his name, but he had heard his name many times since.

Mustafa, as an ongoing person of interest, along with others like him, ate up too much of Faisal’s precious resources. Mustafa was most recently released on the king’s birthday, having been originally detained for his involvement in recruiting young men to join the mujahideen to fight the Americans in Afghanistan, and those trying to establish ISIS. Mustafa was a hero to some people, so he could always count on finding enough money and shelter to launch another campaign.

Faisal, on the other hand, had to navigate the Saudi bureaucracy and felt, as each year passed, that he had to do more with less. Also, some of his colleagues over at the Ministry’s General Directorate of Investigation seemed to be as bad as Mustafa, torturing people, kidnapping people, holding them incommunicado, and more. Faisal’s only comfort was the rock solid belief that there were far more Saudis like him than like Mustafa, but since they don’t blow up radio stations to demonstrate their interest in social openness and modernization, the world saw only the others. If Mustafa models Islam, Faisal mused, why would anyone want to be Muslim?

*  *  *

Chip Donnelly, Director of Counterterrorism at the FBI, was also aware of Mustafa Abdulwahhab al-Ghamdi. Mustafa had been instigating for Islamist causes for a decade, mostly in Yemen, but it was Colonel Faisal al-Shammari who identified Mustafa for Donnelly some years ago when he was still Major Faisal, and on a training assignment to Quantico.

Donnelly liked Faisal from the start. FBI instructors were impressed with Faisal’s clear thinking, attention to detail, and professional demeanor. Donnelly, himself an observant Catholic though not quick to judge others, was gratified that Faisal did not see coming to the U.S. as an opportunity to squander the kingdom’s resources on booze and women, as is sometimes the case, though rarely with the men who came to Quantico.

Faisal represented his country and community well, and Chip Donnelly, who was responsible for teaching the occasional class on counterterrorism at Quantico, took this into serious consideration when he formally invited Faisal, via the Saudi Embassy in Washington, to extend his training program by six months to mentor him at FBI Headquarters. The Ministry of Interior sent a letter approving the extension, and Donnelly carved out office space for Mustafa close to his own office.

Faisal came to Donnelly’s mind because Mustafa’s name came across Donnelly’s desk in a routine political note about potential threats in the Middle East. Donnelly wondered what Mustafa had been doing since his release on the king’s birthday (silly damned idea, thought Donnelly), noting that this report put him back in Yemen. He laughed, thinking about how Faisal and his number two, Saleh al-Qattani—also a Quantico grad, and more cop than diplomat—would be relieved that Mustafa went back to Yemen, but troubled that he was now beyond their surveillance.

As a field officer during the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Chip Donnelly understood their problem with surveillance. You don’t want to have to watch hate groups and idiotic militias 24 hours a day, but you don’t want to lose contact with them either. Donnelly knew that Mustafa was only one of many bad actors the Saudis were tracking, but when they leave Saudi Arabia—especially for places like Yemen, Afghanistan, or Pakistan—you run the risk that something is being set in motion that you won’t understand before it’s too late.

Donnelly sat back in his chair. Terrorism is as much about single-mindedness and taking advantage of an opportunity as it is about planning and preparation, he mused. Donnelly thought the Taliban understood what their objectives are in the cultural environment in which they operate. Their sort of extremism was not, in Donnelly’s opinion, a political model that would work in any but the poorest States, like Pakistan and those wedged in between Russia and Iran.

Al-Qaeda is on the other end of the scale, planning and preparing for an attack for years at a time, and carrying it out in lands that are culturally alien to them. Pretty much everyone else is somewhere in the middle, except for ISIS, which sought to reestablish the caliphate and referred to their leader as the caliph. Since ISIS is not a group of terrorist cells, like al-Qaeda, nor was it operating in a specific cultural milieu, like the Taliban, cutting off the head would likely kill the snake.

When the USS Cole pulled into port, in Yemen, it represented an opportunity. The Cole was not, itself, a long-standing target, but one that was available and seized. That was more like Mustafa’s M.O.

Donnelly’s phone rang. His administrative assistant was reminding him of his weekly briefing with the National Security Council. It was time to get back to work.

*  *  *

Mustafa, in chorus with hundreds of others, prostrated himself for the final time as the imam said Allah hu akbar in the ritual Sunni prayer. The Friday prayer was the one communal prayer of the week, where all Muslims were admonished to pray as a community. It culminated when the penitents stood and turned right and left asking a blessing for those around them. Mustafa did not stay for the imam’s sermon because he didn’t want to listen to another speech that was not a call to arms, but rather a rehash of some lesson from the Holy Qur’an.

Mustafa furtively looked at the people who were on the street around him as he left the masjid. He was always wary of others, even here in Riyadh, not in Yemen, where he was assumed to be. He had left for Yemen earlier, gone into hiding briefly, and returned to Saudi Arabia across the vast unpatrolled patches of desert that separated the two countries. These Muslim brothers are ignorant, he murmured to himself. They don’t understand the message of Islam, and have been wooed by capitalism and foreign ideologies. They support those al-Saud heretics.

It never ceased to amaze Mustafa that more than 200 years of Wahhabi tradition—a tradition that began right here in a section of Riyadh where now stood an alien residential compound for western infidels—had been allowed to be so desecrated. These foreign pigs! These rats grow nests that recreate America and spread their influence in this holy land!

Mustafa was furious whenever he thought about the fact that the king was called the Protector of the Two Holy Places, Mecca and Medina, as if those venerable places were distinct from the rest of this pure land that Allah has graced. What a joke, he thought. Those al-Saud bastards are even educating women! It isn’t bad enough that they let foreign workers plunder Muslim treasure, but they let them drink and mix with women in their compounds. These are not fit rulers.

Mustafa walked the alleys back to his small apartment, where he would meet with a small group of true believers like himself. The honor of the Faithful was in his hands. The pigs will kill some of us, but not all of us. We are abundant on the earth, and we will prevail.

*  *  *

Saleh al-Qattani had just hung up the phone after speaking with his mentor and friend, Faisal al-Shammari. Faisal was stationed in Riyadh, but Saleh was in Dammam, in the Saudi Eastern Province, where oil was the real king.

Saleh spoke with Faisal on a number of subjects, but he seemed to be bothered by the most recent prisoner release on the King’s birthday. If that bothered Faisal, then it bothered Saleh. Like Faisal, Saleh had also been to Quantico on an FBI program. In fact it was Faisal who had arranged it. And like Faisal, Saleh thought that this tradition should be abandoned. That was fine when we were all Bedouin, he thought, but we are training our own engineers and doctors now, we have an energy grid now, we have modern telecommunications and computer networks now, and there are more than 22,000 Saudi students studying in the United States, exceeding pre-9/11 levels, so what’s the point of sustaining these old ideas?

Of course, there were other ideas circulating that were not so benign, like those of ISIS. Those ideas, while seeming ancient, were brought to the Arab world in the 20th century, spread from Nazi propaganda, propelled by Zionism, nurtured by colonial failed states, and only tentatively linked to Islam.

Saleh, Faisal’s direct report in the Eastern Province, was the one who had to face the lion’s share of modern Saudi political strife. Khobar Towers, site of a terrible terrorist attack a few decades ago, was in the Eastern Province. Saudi Shi’ahs, who were a constant target of the central government because they were thought to be a foreign community overwhelmingly loyal to Iran across the Gulf, were in the Eastern Province. Expatriate technical workers were clustered in the Eastern Province. ARAMCO, the Saudi oil company, was centered in the Eastern Province.

Saleh understood that his job for Faisal was to carefully police the Eastern Province, and it was a high pressure position. He could never let down his guard. And Faisal knew Saleh was the perfect man for the job—a cop at heart, not a diplomat.

Saleh had said goodbye to Faisal with only one thought on his mind… What does Faisal think is going to happen, and when? I guess I’ll have to move a few people around and refocus our activities for a few weeks. As if I didn’t have enough to think about.

PART ONE

Looking for Work

It was a rainy March day in Riyadh—the kind of day when you need a couple of extra drizzles of olive oil on your hummus. I was hanging out in my usual spot, the Shish Taouk Restaurant—named after the roasted chicken chunks it specializes in—near the kitchen, by the big grease stain on the cheap rug. The food’s decent and the company’s non-existent, and that’s why I eat there twice a day.

I’m a good customer but Ibrahim, the Lebanese owner, thinks I’m strange, so he leaves me alone most of the time. Arabs are polite people for the most part, and I’m sure Ibrahim has been trying to find a strategy to figure out how to pry me out of his joint. Oh, he never says anything, but once in a while I catch a glance that informs me. I get my calls here, too, and when someone calls for Mr. Terry, Ibrahim is quick to hand me the phone, hoping that the call will be short and the person on the other end gives me reason to leave.  Once in a while it works. It did today. I nodded as I walked past a smiling Ibrahim and went out the door to find a taxi.

I was supposed to meet a guy named Abdullah at the Sheraton, over near the south entrance to the Diplomatic Quarters where I live. The road was all torn up near King Abdulaziz Road, so it took half an hour to go what would normally have taken ten minutes. This Abdullah guy sounded serious, so I figured he’d stay even though I told him I’d be right there and now knew I’d be late.  Saudis don’t have time pressure like Americans anyway, but you’d never know it listening to all the horns blare when a driver doesn’t floor it off the line the second the light turns green.

I paid the cabbie a few riyals and jumped out of the car, taking the Sheraton Hotel steps two at a time, and went through the revolving doors past the potted plants and the reception desk. I lost my job a couple of weeks earlier and a former colleague held me on unpaid leave status so I didn’t have to leave the country. As long as I had a valid iqama I was okay, but I knew I was living on borrowed time, if you call this living, and that if my situation came to anyone’s attention, I’d be forced to leave the country immediately. I spent a lot of my prior earnings fooling around in Bahrain and Dubai thinking I’d have the job for years, so I didn’t have much more than the cash I’d need to buy a ticket home and to live for a while without a job. My AMEX card was no good—expired. I needed some cash before I got too depressed to earn any, and I saw Abdullah as an opportunity straight from Providence.

I walked through the massive lobby and looked around to make eye contact with a man I had never seen. I figured he’d spot me.  He did, and when he waved I nodded. As I approached him, he stood to shake my hand. From the way he was dressed, I figured him for a Saudi, what with the pressed, spotless white thobe and red-checked gutra. He sported the usual trimmed mustache and goatee—they don’t connect, by the way-- something about making the mouth look like a woman’s pink bits—and he had prayer beads wrapped around his wrist. His egal was sort of tipped off center so I made him for a Shammar, a member of one of the larger local tribes from Saudi Arabia’s northeast. I think King Abdullah is a Shammari, too, but I’m no expert.  The man introduced himself as Dr. Abdullah—a name as ubiquitous in the Kingdom as Joe is in Brooklyn.

Aleikum assalaam, I responded to his greeting, Kef halik?

Al Hamdu lillah. Would it be better for you if we spoke English?

Yes, Dr. Abdullah, I said smiling, I think I’ve reached the limit of my Arabic.

Smiling back at me, he led me to a couch at the far edge of the lobby, as far away from the entrance—and other people, apparently—as we could get. He ordered two cappuccinos and some cookies for us, and I nodded my thanks.  I refused the cigarette he offered, still amazed that you could light up in so many public places in Riyadh. It turns out he didn’t need an engineer, which was what I was. I was confused. I figured some friend of mine had given him Ibrahim’s number because he wanted to hire an engineer, but that’s not what this was about. I know because I asked him as we sipped our coffees.

So, Dr. Abdullah, if it’s not an engineer you’re after why call me?  That’s pretty much all I’m good for.

Mr. Hussein told me you were looking for work. I know him from another company. I want you to do a job, yanni, but it’s not an engineering job of any kind.  It’s something of a more personal nature.

Which Hussein are we talking about? The one who was my project leader? I didn’t even think he knew I worked there—used to work there.

Another Hussein, to be sure, but this Hussein said you were both dependable and, yanni, out of a job.

I had to admit the guy had my interest, even though I couldn’t imagine what I could do for him if he didn’t want an engineer. Maybe he wanted an English language tutor for his kids, but I’m from Pittsburgh so I’d be likely to poison any kid’s accent—did you really want your children to identify the American capital as Warshington, DC? I figured he’d get to the point in his own time, so I stayed mum, drank my coffee, and munched a couple of cookies.

I am impressed that you did not yet ask for the details. I’ve worked with Americans before, and most do not appreciate a—what is the word… a mull in the conversation.

Lull, I corrected.

Yes, lull. Sometimes my English is not good enough.

It’s very good, and you make me feel ashamed that I don’t speak better Arabic, after having been here for close to two years now.

Here most people want to practice their English, so if you want to learn Arabic you have to take a class or find a tutor. No matter, yanni, you will stay long enough to learn, insh’allah.

Thank you. Since you brought it up, what is it you would like to discuss with me?

He deliberated a moment and then took out a business-size envelope and placed it on the small table in front of us, pushing it over toward me. He did the same with a cell phone.

Read this, Mr. Terry. I’m going out to the front of the building for a moment for a breath of air. I’ll be outside for five minutes. Call me on this mobile if you want to discuss things further. Otherwise, I doubt we will meet again. With that, he rose, shook my hand, and left.

I watched him walk across the lobby and out the door. I didn’t see him once he cleared the revolving door. I gave it a minute—just enough time for me to finish my cappuccino and the last two cookies. I picked up the envelope. It didn’t feel like a wad of bills—just a single sheet of paper. I turned the envelope over and ran my finger under the flap to break the seal. I unfolded the single sheet of paper. The note was short and sweet. It read, I would like you to be taken hostage and filmed.

Hey, It’s a Job, Isn’t It?

No extras. No elaboration. It was just a simple declarative statement. At first I thought he was joking, but why would he joke with someone he had never laid eyes on about something like that? I wasn’t sure what to do, but I needed an explanation so I picked up the phone and dialed the only preprogrammed number. I told him I wanted to talk.

A moment later, he reentered the lobby and sat down in the chair he had just left. He wasn’t smiling either—he just sat there sipping his cappuccino and looking at me.  I narrowed my eyes and leaned back, folding my arms across