Free December Ultimatum by Michael Nicholson Page B

Japanese road engineer and a Belgian who had never confided to any one what his business in Riyadh had been.
    They had been ordered at gunpoint from their bedrooms and told to leave everything except their passports behind.
    As they crossed the downstairs reception foyer they saw the safe deposit boxes behind the cashier’s grid blown open and thousands of US hundred-dollar bills were scattered across the floor, ‘An expensive carpet even for the Oil King,’ one of the British had said, but no one laughed. The soldiers in the foyer ignored the money, but the Belgian could not. He went down on his knees to scoop it up and the nearest soldier hit him with his rifle butt; then, as he sprawled across the dollars, others kicked him hard in his head and crutch. He was thrown up into the truck unconscious, blood and bile oozing from his mouth.
    The Saudi driver kept the truck in first gear and they left the hotel car park, manoeuvring slowly past the burnt-out wrecks of cars, coaches and artillery pieces as a hundred or more soldiers saw them on their way with stones and spittle.
    Just beyond the gate Franklin saw that the inquisitive had pulled the Swiss flag away from the dead family. They were covered in dust and flies and for a moment he thought the truck driver meant to drive over them. His gorge rose, but at the last second, laughing, the driver swung his truck away and the flies settled again. Except for a father who had been too frightened for their safety, Franklin thought, the two little blonde children would be here in the truck huddled in the arms of their mother on their way to the airport and freedom and home.
    Whoever it was who had ordered their departure had worked fast and thoroughly because, as they joined seven other open trucks carrying other foreigners out, Franklin saw the route was lined with people, an avenue of thousands of hostile Saudis encouraged by their new party organizers to throw curses, stones, glass, camel dung and any missile at hand at these non-Moslems who had attempted to contaminate Islam, who had tried to impose their evils, their diseases, their greed, their blasphemies, even their own images of God, upon the guardians of Mecca in the land of the Holy Koran.
    When the people saw their targets passing so close and so slowly, they avenged themselves enthusiastically. The trucks had gone less than two hundred yards but already two of the older American oilmen were on the floor of the truck, their heads and faces bleeding. The little Japanese, terrified at first, not understanding the ritual, had hidden behind Franklin; but then, understanding the slogans and abuse, he suddenly and quickly moved to the side of the truck and faced them, hands by his sides, standing as straight as a ramrod. The Belgian was lying face down in a pool of his own blood and vomit—Franklin shouted to one of the injured Americans to pull the man towards him and turn him over. But as the blood and vomit ran off his face, Franklin saw that the eyes were open and unblinking.
    He was dead. The American let him fall back again, face down. One of the Englishmen, his right eye blue and closed by a deep cut above the cheekbone, shouted as a pole spun through the air like a boomerang and hit him squarely in the throat and he fell backwards across the dead Belgian.
    Then Franklin heard it, distant but unmistakable above the screams of the crowds: automatic gunfire—long bursts, six guns, maybe more—coming from the direction of Al Ahsa Road where many of the American families lived. He heard a siren, more long bursts of firing, then three explosions. And then nothing. He looked across at the tall American holding on to the other corner of the truck, a man of about fifty. His head started to shake as if he was saying ‘No’ to himself a hundred times. Stones hit him and a bottle split his cheek, but still he stared in the direction of Al Ahsa and still he shook his head.
    ‘You okay, fella?’ Franklin shouted at