Salem liked to have musicians in his entourage; Harrington played the guitar, so Salem arranged to hire him to travel to Pakistan, where he could help oversee the ultralight flying by the royal guests. A few days before Christmas, Harrington, a genial, ­big-­boned Texan who had never traveled abroad previously, found himself jetting to London in the company of an American pilot, Don Kessler, who worked for Salem and who also played the drums.

They all stopped initially at Salem’s estate outside London, and then, on Christmas Eve, they flew to the south of France, and after that, to Salzburg, Austria. They unloaded their luggage and drove to the ski resort in Kitzbühel. Of course, they had no ski equipment with them, as the decision to fly to Austria had been made only hours earlier, so Salem led the group into a shop and bought everyone skis, boots, parkas, and pants. They hit the slopes and then accepted an invitation to a party at the local villa of Adnan Khashoggi, the ­well-­known Saudi arms dealer.

Khashoggi’s home had a discotheque with a stage. The room that night was loud, dark, and teeming with Saudis and Europeans. Salem took the microphone and announced that he intended to perform. He and George Harrington took ­steel-­string acoustic guitars onto the stage and struck up the folk and bar band classic “House of the Rising Sun.”

There is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun.

It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy,

And God I know I’m one . . .

“He was a ­half-­assed guitar player, and even less qualified as a vocalist, but you ­couldn’t embarrass him at all,” Harrington recalled. “So we played that night for a packed house.”6

They flew next to Marbella, Spain, and then on to Cairo for New Year’s Eve. They stopped for a while in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then traveled to Dubai.

At the Hyatt hotel there Harrington met Salem’s new girlfriend from Orlando: Lynn Peghiny. They became instant friends, two Americans caught up in an unexpected adventure, hopping from one country to the next, unfamiliar with their surroundings. Lynn had flown in from New York to join the upcoming expedition to Pakistan. (“I look back and I’m astounded at what I did at ­twenty-­four,” she said in hindsight.) Salem put her in a hotel suite with a grand piano. They listened to her play Chopin.

A few days later, Salem packed Lynn and George into his Mitsubishi ­MU-­2, a stubby, ­short-­haul turboprop airplane. An elderly Bedouin aide carried aboard a hooded hunting falcon. George took possession of a briefcase containing at least $250,000 in cash and traveler’s checks; he had come to understand that one of his jobs was to keep track of Salem’s travel money. Also along was Bengt Johansson, a ­shaggy-­haired, ­chain-­smoking Swedish flight mechanic who was one of the ­longest-­serving European members of Salem’s entourage. They roared down the runway, bound for Karachi. “It was so loaded down and they took off and everybody just applauded that the thing got up in the air,” Lynn recalled, “and I’m like, ‘Why are y’all taking chances?’”

In Karachi, Salem met with a Saudi diplomat; he often dropped in on his country’s ambassadors when he traveled the world. His entourage checked into the Sheraton, a ­concrete-­and-­glass fortress that passed as the city’s finest hotel.

At the Karachi seaport, Salem discovered that the Pakistan Army would not permit either ultralights or hot air balloons into their country. On its eastern frontier, the Pakistan Army faced Indian military forces in a continuous state of alert; to the west, it was embroiled in a secret guerrilla war in Afghanistan against Soviet forces, who occasionally conducted raids inside Pakistan. Saudi princes flying around in uncontrolled small planes and balloons seemed to the army’s officers a prescription for disaster. Salem argued, and fumed, and tried to pull strings, but the Pakistani authorities stood firm; they told him to send his airborne toys back to Dubai.

In the midst of these frustrations Salem summoned George Harrington and Bengt Johansson one morning and announced that they would all fly in the Mitsubishi up to Peshawar, the Pakistani city that served as a staging area for the Afghan war. Initially, Salem explained only that he had an errand to run. As it turned out, it involved his half-brother Osama.

“I said, ‘Why?’” as Harrington recalled it. Eventually, “he explained that Peshawar was apparently the base for rebels . . . I had never heard of Peshawar. World politics were not on my radar screen. He said that Osama was up there and he was the liaison between the U.S., the Saudi government, and the Afghan rebels,” as Harrington remembered. “Salem needed to make sure that Osama was getting what he needed. The Saudi government was funneling stuff to Osama; Salem said he needed to go up and check with his brother to make sure . . . things were going well.”

The trio flew up that same afternoon and landed on a dirt ­strip—­Harrington could not tell if it was a road or a runway. Osama and some of his aides came out to greet them. “I remember being struck that he was so much taller than Salem.”

He was then about ­twenty-­seven years old. In addition to his height, his bushy dark beard made a striking impression; it poured down his cheeks and gathered below his chin, elongating his thin face. His brown eyes were bright and communicative, but his manner was reserved. Osama visited Pakistan regularly from his home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but he had not settled down on the war front; he was a philanthropic commuter, encouraged by his religious teachers to fund charities and Arab volunteers who had just begun to arrive to join the fighting.

Salem made formal introductions to his American and Swedish companions. Osama wore robes and a flat Afghan cap; he was reticent around the foreigners, but he shook Johansson’s hand respectfully. Bengt had learned over the years that all of Salem’s younger siblings treated their eldest brother with unquestioning respect, and that this respect extended by rights to Salem’s friends, no matter how indecorous they might appear in Saudi eyes.

They drove to Osama’s office and sat in a circle. The two ­half-­brothers spoke together in Arabic for about two hours. A modest lunch appeared. It was typical of Salem to bring his Western friends into settings where they might not otherwise be welcomed, but no one openly questioned their presence, and in any event, neither Harrington nor Johansson could understand much of what was being said.

After lunch Osama led them on a tour of the charitable and humanitarian work that he was supporting in the Peshawar region to help the Afghans. They visited refugee camps where Afghan civilians and fighters displaced by Soviet bombing lived in primitive tents or shelters. They visited a hospital “with people with amputated limbs,” and Harrington was amazed to hear tales of terrible atrocities carried out by the Soviets, and how, nonetheless, the wounded rebels “wanted to go back and fight for Afghanistan.” They visited an orphanage where, as Johansson recalled it, the children lived in “small blocks . . . concrete blocks, and they were sleeping on the floor.” The children gathered together and sang songs for Osama’s visitors.

Salem recorded these scenes with a personal video camera, a large and awkward handheld device that he had brought with him. He appeared to be making a home movie to publicize Osama’s work and to raise funds. It was “a ­fact-­finding mission,” Harrington remembered. “The camera was to show what was going on. Nothing militaristic . . . It was more about money.”

After some additional adventures in Pakistan, Salem’s entourage flew back to Dubai; Salem announced that he had to make an unexpected business trip, and that he would be gone for about a week.

The American balloon champion who was a part of the entourage took George and Lynn on a soaring flight above the emirate’s sand dunes. Gulf breezes and desert winds blew them accidentally over a local emir’s palace. The emir’s guards pointed their automatic weapons angrily at the billowing red and yellow dirigible. “This is it,” Harrington remembered thinking. He would end his life as “just a bloodstain on the ruler’s lawn.” Fortunately, the guards held their fire.

They heard nothing from Salem for a while, but Harrington knew where he had gone, because Salem had told him of his destination: Washington, D.C.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia was preparing that early winter of 1985 for a summit meeting and state dinner with President Ronald Reagan. “For some reason,” as Harrington recalled it, “the king wanted Salem” in Washington. Salem flew off immediately. This was hardly an unusual diversion. As Salem’s friend Mohamed Ashmawi, a wealthy Saudi oil executive, put it: “He used to go and visit the king wherever he is.”

MORE FROM TODAY BOOKS: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIRS

An intimate look a journalist's life in a war zone

An intimate look a journalist's life in a war zone George Foreman on being a knockout dad ‘American Son,’ by Oscar De La Hoya ‘Forget Me Not’ is a story of love and loss A sportscaster’s career and life with ailing dad Climber dies on Everest — and comes back to life Tillman’s mom describes search for truth Jimmy Carter remembers ‘Miss Lillian’ Maria Shriver: ‘Just Who Will You Be?’ Lost diary tells of life in 1930s Manhattan   Add Today Books: Biography/Memoirs headlines to your news reader: