L ive lambs had been hustled aft, over the fantail of the warship DD-603, for slaughter; the deck covered over with Persian rugs and an exotic tent; coffee brewed endlessly over charcoal braziers set alight over the explosives in the gun turrets, all this watched over by seven-foot-tall Nubian slaves with scimitars swinging from their belts. As King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, prayed and took counsel from his court astrologer, Majid Ibn Khataila, his sons Amir Mohammed and Amir Mansur sneaked below deck to watch Too Many Girls , a 1940 movie briefly famed for a risque scene involving a woman’s dress, a men’s dormitory and Lucille Ball.

Eight decades ago this year, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with the Saudi king on Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake to hammer out the dea

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