The Crown Prince’s Visit (4)
An overwhelming aura poured from Prince Rashid’s body.
He looked as if he might bark, “Take this man away and cut off his head!” at any second.
It drove home, all over again, that he was the prince of an absolute monarchy.
Unmoved by the pressure, I kept my chin up and went on.
“If you do it this way, you can wipe out corruption and secure anywhere from two hundred billion to as much as three hundred billion dollars in funding.”
It was, honestly, an astonishing idea.
I’d seen the news myself and slapped my knee in admiration. So who had come up with such a brilliant scheme?
The man standing right in front of me.
After seizing power, Crown Prince Rashid formed an anti-corruption committee and rounded up the royals on corruption charges, locking them away in one sweep.
The detention site was none other than the five-star Riyadh Ritz-Carlton.
At the time, the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton was called the most luxurious prison in the world.
Rashid offered them a deal: surrender part of their fortune, swear loyalty to him, and receive a pardon.
Sign the paper and you could walk out. Refuse, and you would never leave the hotel for the rest of your life.
Unable to withstand pressure from every direction, the royals signed, surrendering seventy to ninety percent of their wealth to the state.
In the end, the total haul came to roughly two to three hundred billion dollars.
It was hard to grasp how much money that really was, but Saudi Arabia’s annual GDP was about eight hundred billion dollars. In other words, they’d shaken down an amount equal to thirty percent of the country’s GDP.
No, what was even more astonishing was that they’d managed to skim off that much in the first place.
Prince Rashid, who had been glaring at me as though he might kill me, suddenly burst out laughing.
“Hahaha! You’re an interesting man.”
That was a compliment, right?
I let out a quiet sigh of relief inside.
As if he had never been angry at all, Prince Rashid now wore an expression of clear amusement. And it made sense—after all, I had just said aloud what he had been thinking in his own head.
“But there’ll be fierce resistance.”
It was one thing to arrest royals with money and power and extort them. It was another to make them lie flat on the floor and beat them until they coughed up a million dollars per blow.
They wouldn’t hand over their assets without a fight.
“Since this would be a purge of corruption, the public would support it, and international opinion would be favorable as well. Only the people involved would resist. In any case, they’re parasites eating away at the state. Given what they’ve done, they should be grateful just to keep their lives. I’m only presenting one method. The choice is yours, Prince.”
“So… you’re saying I should become Crown Prince and do all this?”
I nodded.
“Saudi Arabia needs sweeping reform. Under the current system, that’s impossible. The only way to change that is for you to become Crown Prince.”
For him to push aside his cousin and become Crown Prince did not merely mean the title would change hands.
It meant abolishing the long-standing fraternal succession system and replacing it with patrilineal succession.
Under fraternal succession, brothers and even their children remained eligible for the throne, which made it difficult to purge other relatives.
It was a structure that practically guaranteed corruption among the royals.
But with patrilineal succession, the crown passed from father to son, making it far easier to strip the brothers and cousins without hesitation.
It would also strengthen the monarchy.
“Have you considered how much chaos that would cause in the process?”
I knew what he was worried about.
Since the founding of Saudi Arabia, there had never once been a coup. He was probably wondering whether a coup could even succeed, and whether the powerful and the public would recognize him.
“The kind of chaos you’re concerned about won’t happen. The Saudi people are more eager for reform than anyone, so they’ll support you.”
“There are just as many who don’t want reform. They’ll call it the will of God.”
Again, Saudi Arabia was a nation born of a deal between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi clergy. The royal family and the religious establishment formed the two pillars of state power.
Since Wahhabism was Islamic fundamentalism, the people most likely to resist Prince Rashid’s reforms would be those very clerics.
In fact, after Rashid became Crown Prince and pushed through his reforms, Wahhabi clerics openly rose against the royal family.
Rashid crushed them by force and executed, one after another, the religious hardliners who shouted that even if a knife were at his throat, women must not be allowed to drive or attend sporting events.
“That isn’t God’s will. It’s only their will. If you’re afraid of getting your hands dirty, then pushing aside the current Crown Prince and becoming the next king would be impossible.”
Prince Rashid smiled and nodded.
“I’ve heard enough. Is this the reason you asked to see me today? Or is there another reason?”
Everything I had said so far was, after all, about what would happen once he took power. If that were all, there would be no reason to go through the trouble of meeting me.
He seemed to suspect as much.
And he was right. The real game was about to begin.
“There is one more reason.”
Prince Rashid nodded as if he’d expected that.
“Usually, people who come looking for me want one of two things.”
“And those are?”
“Money or power.”
“That’s true.”
What people want is usually more or less the same.
“What is it that you want?”
From his tone, it sounded as if he might actually be willing to give me what I wanted.
The wealth of the Saudi royal family was famous around the world. Even distant in-laws and obscure cousins were said to have tens of millions of dollars to their names.
And as the son of the current king, he was in a different league entirely. I didn’t know his exact net worth, but it was estimated to be at least three billion dollars.
He owned businesses not only in Saudi Arabia but abroad as well, and he had a separate management team handling his assets.
“Neither. I’d simply like to make a deal with you, Prince.”
He laughed, amused.
“A deal…”
Then he added, almost casually, “A deal is an arrangement that benefits both sides. Yet many of the people who come to see me don’t seem to understand that very basic fact.”
He must have met plenty of people who only cared about their own gain.
“This deal will definitely benefit you, Prince.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“If you think otherwise, then feel free to refuse.”
At that, he showed genuine curiosity.
“What sort of deal?”
“I heard that you like collecting art.”
“And?”
I finally got to the point.
“I’d like to sell you a painting.”
He was known to have a keen interest in art and to be a major player in the art auction market.
He was said to own works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Degas, Rembrandt, and Andy Warhol, displayed in his private museum.
“These days, I’m not very interested in paintings.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen one interesting enough to hold your attention.”
Prince Rashid’s eyes gleamed with interest.
“So you’re saying you have a painting that could catch my attention?”
I said with confidence, “Of course. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Where is it?”
“I left it with your guard at the entrance.”
“I’d like to see it.”
When Prince Rashid gestured, Asher stepped out for a moment and brought the painting in. I unwrapped it myself and propped it against the sofa so he could see it clearly.
“Well?”
After taking one look at the painting, Prince Rashid snorted.
“Now that is a rare painting indeed.”
It was true. You couldn’t easily find a painting this badly wrecked.
At a glance, it looked like something that belonged in a trash can.
On top of that, the painting was only 45.4 centimeters wide and 65.6 centimeters tall.
Size didn’t determine price, of course, but a painting that small rarely commanded a high one.
No wonder he laughed. But if you knew what it really was, the story changed entirely.
“You want to sell me this painting?”
“Yes. I’ll even give you a special price.”
“How much?”
I answered calmly.
“One hundred and fifty million dollars.”
“……”
For a moment, it felt as if time had stopped.
It was an absurd sum for me, and an absurd sum even for a prince from an oil state.
A long silence settled over the vast living room.
Ever since the painting came up, Asher had been eyeing me as if I were a con artist, and now he began glaring openly, his eyes wide.
“I’m sorry, Prince. I’ll have both of them removed from your sight immediately.”
By “both,” he probably meant me and the painting.
Asher lifted a hand to call the guards, but Rashid spoke up.
“Wait.”
Asher froze, and Prince Rashid looked at the painting with widened eyes.
He stared so intently that he hardly blinked at all.
Watching him, I was surprised inside.
Could he have seen something in this painting?
People often said works of art carried a unique aura, which was why they bothered going all the way to museums to see them.
They said that when people looked at a truly beautiful painting, they sometimes felt moved to tears or to a cry of wonder without realizing it.
But this painting, aside from being old, didn’t seem to have much of any aura at all.
Still, that was only my perspective. It might be different to an expert, or to someone with a sharper eye.
After all, the more you know, the more you see.
How much time passed?
It felt like at least thirty minutes before Prince Rashid finally spoke.
“Who is this painting of?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“And the title?”
“Messiah. In Latin, it would be Salvator Mundi.”
“Savior… That suits it.”
He murmured to himself, stroking his beard, then asked the most important question of all.
“Who painted it?”
I said calmly, “Leonardo da Vinci.”
Asher gasped.
“Da Vinci!”
There was no one who didn’t know Leonardo da Vinci’s name.
He appeared in textbooks, novels, films, and every other medium imaginable.
He was an Italian of the Renaissance, a genius with extraordinary talents in every field imaginable—art, literature, invention, science, engineering, medicine, mathematics, and more.
He was also one of the most famous painters of his age. The mural known as The Last Supper was one of his works, and nearly everyone had seen it at least once.
A long silence fell over the room.
I was wondering whether I should add a little explanation when, fortunately, Prince Rashid spoke again.
“You’re saying this is a work by Leonardo da Vinci?”
“Yes.”
“For all his fame, not many of da Vinci’s works remain. Only seventeen paintings are known to exist.”
As expected, he knew his art.
“One of them is the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.”
“As far as I know, none of the seventeen looks like this.”
I nodded.
“That’s right. This one had remained undiscovered until now.”
Prince Rashid’s eyes gleamed as he asked, “If this is truly a Leonardo da Vinci, then why is it in Korea?”