As rumors swirled around his desert kingdom, King Saud sulked in seclusion in the private quarters of his vast, chandelier-festooned palace at Riyadh. He stopped presiding over the grand luncheons and dinners served daily in the palace dining hall to visitors and hangers-on. The loudspeakers, which customarily bellow the latest news during mealtimes, were silenced. The lord of the world's richest oil sands was so strapped for cash that his yacht Monsour had been seized in Genoa for nonpayment of an Italian architect's $600,000 fee. He was under intense pressure from royal...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
