The Terrorist Prince

A Susanna Sloane Novel

Noted securities attorney Susanna Sloane has recently accepted a group of new securities fraud cases, all against the same stockbroker.  She turns them over to her law partner when the President of the United States appoints her ambassador-at-large to Saudi Arabia.  Her assignment is to spy on the activities of Prince Ali ibn Saud who has invited her to the unveiling of a painting he will present to his countrymen.  Neither she nor her husband, sports agent Rusty Byers, can begin to imagine the ensuing web of intrigue that will eventually bring down the administration of the first woman president of the United States.
The prince wants to enlist Susanna’s expertise in forming corporations in America for the purpose of funding Islamic charities similar to those already operating in Europe and the Middle East.  Unbeknownst to Susanna, these charities are fronts for financing terrorism.  When she is instructed to cooperate fully and report back to Washington, she discovers that for a successful conclusion, her assignment might require a sexual relationship with the prince.  Aware of the Arab attitude toward women, Susanna is surprised that the prince would be interested in her.
She meets with Prince Ali and his bankers at a mosque in East London.  Later that evening, after dinner, she succumbs to his advances and finds him an ardent lover.  What she had imagined would be a bullet to bite for her country has been marvelously pleasurable.  He later turns up in Las Vegas where, under favorable Nevada law, she has elected to form the charitable corporations.  The prince asks her to meet him in London, and then at Heathrow airport, she is abducted off the tarmac. Using her cell phone, she contacts the United States Embassy and gives them the identification number on the tail of the plane, but they are unable to track it.  She is flown to Afghanistan, and taken to the prince’s luxurious retreat deep within an Afghan cave where they resume their sexual liaison.
It soon becomes clear to Susanna that handsome and urbane Prince Ali is, in reality, the terrorist head of Al Qaeda.  After ten days she is free to leave, and a private plane takes her to a remote airfield in the south of France.  The consulate in Nice arranges for her return through London, where she is debriefed by the U. S. ambassador, before continuing on to Washington.  There she is asked to diagram the cave in which she was held and to view satellite photographs of remote Afghan airstrips.
The prince meets her in New York and asks her to determine if some of his men are being held prisoner in secret locations—and tortured.  When reports of her inquiry find their way to the oval office, the president invites Susanna and Rusty to spend a weekend as her guests at Camp David.  Susanna is assured that although secret prisons do exist, the prisoners are treated humanely.  As proof, the president arranges for her to tour the prisons. 
  When the prince meets her again in New York, he shows her current satellite photos of the prisons.  She then realizes that what she had seen had been staged for her benefit.  He also tells her that they were videotaped in London and Las Vegas, and the White House intends to release copies of the tapes should she disclose the truth about the prisons.
News of the secret prisons is leaked to the press.  In retaliation, the tapes are sent to newspapers and television stations nationwide.  But Ali had had the White House copies altered, and when this is discovered, the administration is castigated for apparently falsifying evidence.  The disclosure of the sanctioned torture combined with the tampering of the tapes, forces the resignation of the president.
The newly sworn president offers Susanna the vice presidency.  She is at first delighted, then comes to realize the impossibility of overcoming the confirmation process; to the chagrin of both her husband and her lover who, each in his own way, intends to manipulate her.