Gideon's Spies полностью

Now the eavesdropping Mossad team heard Mahmood tell Khan and his guests that his own contacts in Pakistan Intelligence had warned him that the CIA knew about their own role in America’s Hiroshima after their names had surfaced in the documents discovered with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s capture. Mossad’s long-rooted suspicions had been confirmed: Mahmood had gone to Kandahār not to discuss with bin Laden the making of a relatively simple “dirty bomb” but to pledge the services of himself and the five other scientists around Khan’s table.

Next day, even as Meir Dagan was sending Porter Goss details of what the yaholomin unit had recorded, all six scientists had left Pakistan. Khan subsequently resolutely denied any knowledge of his staff being involved in the plot to launch nuclear strikes against America.

Their names had gone onto the Detain Lists of a number of security services. But like others with terrorist links, the scientists had vanished like proverbial thieves in the night. A year would pass before Mossad once more picked up their trail. They were in Saudi Arabia.

Almost a year after Abdul Qadeer Khan had made his televised confession of being a nuclear weapons black marketeer, a commercial flight from Cyprus landed at Tel Aviv airport. Among its passengers was Moshe Feinstein (a pseudonym). He was a Mossad katsa and its expert on nuclear proliferation. In Nicosia he had met with a member of Saudi Arabia’s large foreign community. After months of careful cultivation and detailed checks into his background and that of his family, the foreigner had been recruited as a sayanim and given the code name of “The Salesman,” a nod toward his business acumen. Meetings would be arranged through The Salesman placing a notice in the Lonely Hearts section of a London newspaper available in Riyadh. Two days after it appeared, Moshe would fly to keep the appointment.

The Salesman had developed strong connections with the House of Saud, exploiting the fact that its administration was highly personalized, often being no more than functionaries surrounding one individual, usually a prince of the kingdom. It was The Salesman’s ability to target those key individuals that had made him important to Mossad. In an early briefing, The Salesman had explained to Moshe that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revolved around Prince Saud al-Faisal; and no decision, however inconsequential, could be made without his approval. Other ministries were similarly run. The Salesman had summed up the situation as “if you give them a list of more than one item, they often don’t get to the second. Negligence and incompetence are bywords.” In November 2008, five years after the lakeside meeting, Waheed Nasir chose to deny the Mossad report that he had been present or had gone to Iran.

His tantalizing glimpses into the closed world of the kingdom came during his regular trips to Europe and vacations on Cyprus to escape the ferocious high temperature of summer in Riyadh. A contact in the Ministry of Information had revealed details of the increasing anti-Americanism in the country (in 2005, a regime-approved poll showed that 97 percent of the population held a negative view of the United States). Even more disturbing was the growing extent of the penetration of al-Qaeda into Saudi Arabia and how the ruling family had tried to avoid attacks on its members by allowing them to pay substantial sums to the organization—providing the money was used only to attack targets outside the country. The Salesman had provided details of how Saudi petrodollars had financed the September 11 massacre and the attack on the USS Cole. The Salesman’s evidence enabled Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador with close ties to Mossad, to publicly warn: “Saudi Arabia is paying a ransom to be left alone. It does not care who else suffers. It will reap what it is sowing.”

Within the House of Saud, a power struggle had persisted after the death of King Fahd and the appointment of Abdullah to rule over the desert kingdom. He was a half brother of a powerful faction within the royal family. It was comprised of Prince Sultan, the defense minister; Prince Nayef, the interior minister; Prince Turki, director of intelligence and now ambassador to the Court at St. James; and Prince Salman, governor of Riyadh. They were known as the Sudairi after their mother, Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi, the favorite wife of King Ibn Saud, the founder of the kingdom. Abdullah, their half brother, since coming to power had antagonized the Sudairi by his constant rebukes for their profligate spending habits, which were also a cause of smouldering public resentment. This had led to a groundswell of religious fervor among the population, half of whom were under the age of eighteen. This had been compounded by the country’s oil income fluctuations, leading to a decline in living standards. It had been a fertile breeding ground for al-Qaeda to exploit.