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all sons of Abdul Aziz al Saud, the first Saudi king. In 1902, twelve years after the Saud family was driven into exile by the Al Rashid dynasty, Abdul Aziz recaptured Riyadh with just twenty men. Raider, plunderer, and charismatic leader, Abdul Aziz overcame family feuds, tamed the nomads, and, in 1932, completed his unification of the Arabian peninsula into one Sunni nation—with the help of millions in British pounds sterling. Six years later, oil was discovered under the desert sands. And the House of Saud took permanent control of the Saudi throne—and its oil fields.
    One of Abdul Aziz’s thirty-seven sons from sixteen wives, Abbudin officially succeeded his half-brother, King Fahd, in 2005. He was regent, and defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia since 1996, when Fahd was incapacitated by a major stroke. Thus it had been Abbudin who deftly maneuvered the Saudi kingdom through the rise of Islamic radicalism, the second Gulf War, and the emergence of domestic unrest that slithered unseen into the nation’s consciousness.
    Round of cheek and jowl, wet sandbags under his dark, questioning eyes, Abbudin was unlike the four brothers who preceded him. He possessed neither the passion for financial and social reform of Faisal, the royal bearing and statesmanship of Khalid, nor the political deftness of Fahd, who supported both Palestinian and American interests in the Middle East. Where his predecessors were successful in maintaining Saudi wealth and power, Abbudin dealt with a changing world, one that consistently nibbled away at the edges of his kingdom.
    Now eighty-four, still shrewd and calculating behind his rimless glasses, Abbudin bent with the winds of change, giving room but never giving way.Soon, this Shi’ite anarchist sitting across the table would feel the sharpness of his teeth. But, today, in this council, he must yield. The time for revenge had not yet come.
    Other than those around this table, King Abbudin knew that few in the world were aware that Imam Moussa al-Sadr was the true leader of Hezbollah, the deadly militia which now controlled not only the land but also the government of Lebanon. Fewer still were aware he was alive.
    Imam Moussa al-Sadr was the founder of the first armed paramilitary force in Lebanon, the Lebanese Resistance Brigades Movement—or Amal—a lethal group of trained assassins. A member of a prominent family of Shi’ite theologians, Moussa al-Sadr was appointed the first head of the Supreme Islamic Shi’ite Council. The Resistance Brigades, and the Shi’ite Council, were the birthplaces of Hezbollah.
    Al-Sadr mysteriously vanished in 1978 during a trip to Libya to meet with Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. His disappearance was a meticulously planned, flawlessly executed rescue, necessary to protect him from the Israeli spies who sought his life. Most of the watching world thought he had been assassinated by Qaddafi, his bitter enemy. The Islamic world mourned him as a martyr.
    Now, after thirty years of leading Hezbollah from the shadows, al-Sadr stood before the leaders of Islam still fueled by the fires of religious fervor.
    “My good friend,” al-Sadr said, slowly waving the back of his bronzed hand toward the Saudi king, “we are all aware of your inestimable wisdom and we are indebted to your thoughtful leadership through this dreadfully disorienting period in the history of Islam. The Arab world has benefited richly from the intelligent guidance of the House of Saud.”
    Abbudin’s jaw clenched, causing a momentary thrust of the dark beard perched at the end of his chin. But Abbudin bided his time. He would wait for his moment of revenge for these barely veiled insults that slipped so softly from al-Sadr’s lips.
    “I, for one, refuse to believe that any true Muslim would fail to join in the call to jihad. Perhaps,” al-Sadr insinuated, inclining his kaffiyeh ever so slightly in the Saudi king’s direction, “in the past, there may have been economic or political or religious