I cannot say this for sure. As I said, it was routine."
"Ten years?"
"Perhaps. Not continuously, though, or even very thoroughly. He was merely one of thousands of our returned mujahideen." The irony of this statement eluded him, and after a moment he added, "You saw his file. He raised no particular concerns or alarms."
This statement was so blatantly disingenuous I had to laugh.
He did not like this and gave me a nasty look.
"Yet," Bian noted, "when you learned he was about to be apprehended, your ambassador rushed to the White House and intervened. If this . . . if Ali bin Pacha was beneath your radar, why go to such extraordinary trouble?"
Another question he didn't want to hear. In fact, I had not put this piece together, and Bian's analysis caught me by surprise--not the fact that the Saudis wanted to hide bin Pacha's secrets, per se; something else. It caught him by surprise as well, and he simply stared at her.
Since he was no longer answering, Bian answered for him. "You were aware bin Pacha was part of a terrorist cell and you knew rich Saudis were giving him money. Until he was about to be captured, you didn't care, or . . . you did care, and approved of his activities."
"This is speculation. Completely absurd."
She kept her eyes on his face.
I also was studying al-Fayef's face. He was too much the veteran professional to do something stupid, like look guilty, or even more stupidly, confess. But he did lick his lips a few times, and with a shaky hand he fumbled out a fresh cigarette and lit it.
He turned to Phyllis and insisted, "I have nothing more to say. Now you must tell me what you intend to do."
Actually, he'd told us as minimal truth he could get away with: a careful mixture of what we could learn on our own, what was intuitively obvious, and what any intelligent regional expert could divine from the facts. The problem for us, and the bigger problem for him, was what he didn't tell us, but that Bian had just surmised.
Regarding Phyllis, as usual her eyes conveyed one emotion, her lips another, and neither betrayed what probably was in her heart, or in her head. I was sure she was angry, frustrated, and worried. But for Phyllis, emotion and logic were never at war; it just never occurred to her that reason has a peer, or that emotion should incubate action. She announced unequivocally and, I thought, predictably, "What's done is done. We move forward."
Bian asked, "What does that mean?"
"It means what it means."
"What about justice?"
"For who?" Phyllis asked.
"For the soldiers who are fighting. For those who are dead. For their families, for their loved ones. For America."
"There is no justice for dead soldiers," Phyllis replied with typically chilling logic. "They are not murder victims--they're casualties of war."
"The Saudis have been feeding money, people, and who knows what to their killers. We now have the names of two princes." Bian looked in al-Fayef's direction and added, "It sounds like there are more names, and possibly the Saudi government's implicated as well. You can't ignore or paste over that."
Wrong, because Phyllis turned to al-Fayef and said, "It's not in our interest to expose the royal family to . . . embarrassment."
He smiled, though I saw no hint of pleasure or even contentment in his eyes; I saw relief. He said, "Good choice. It would be, you know, a disaster for both our countries." He looked around the room, at each of our faces, then added agreeably, "A war is going on, after all. We must remain friends. Good allies."
After all he had just said, about America, about our arrogance, about our incompetence, I was amazed that a bolt of lightning didn't strike. Apparently, while Bian and I missed the cues, the sheik and Phyllis had moved to a new song, this one titled "Row, row, row the boat gently down the stream."
And, in fact, Phyllis gave a cool nod to her sheik friend.
He said, "I recognize, however, that we have caused you certain difficulties." He waved his cigarette in small circles through the air. "Embarrassments. Inconveniences."
"Your sensitivity is greatly appreciated."
He leaned back into his chair and exhaled a long stream of smoke. "Two names, Phyllis. This is all I have been authorized to offer."
Phyllis shuffled her hands and replied noncommittally, "If they're the right names."
"Yes, yes . . . of course." He watched her face. "There is a man in Syria, a