The Fist of God

  Between the transfer from vehicle to vehicle and the moment when he judged the sun to be high enough and hot enough to send the Iraqis to seek shelter in the shade, he had even managed a two-hour nap at the wheel of the car inside the garage. Then he had driven the station wagon out and put the jeep inside the garage, aware that such a prized vehicle would soon be confiscated.

  Finally he had scrubbed his face and hands and changed his clothes, swapping the stained and desert-soiled robes of the Bedou tribesman for the clean white dish-dash of the Kuwaiti doctor.

  The cars in front of him inched forward toward the Iraqi infantry grouped around the concrete-filled barrels up ahead. In some cases the soldiers simply glanced at the driver’s identity card and waved him on; in other cases the car was pulled to one side for a search. Usually, it was those vehicles that carried some kind of cargo that were ordered to the curb.

  He was uncomfortably aware of the two big wooden trunks behind him on the floor of the cargo area, whose contents were enough to ensure his instant arrest and hand-over to the tender mercies of the AMAM.

  Finally the last car ahead of him surged away, and he pulled up to the barrels. The sergeant in charge did not bother to ask for identity papers. Seeing the big boxes in the rear of the Volvo, the soldier waved the station wagon to the side of the road and shouted an order to his colleagues who waited there.

  An olive-drab uniform appeared at the driver’s side window, which Martin had already rolled down.

  The uniform bent, and a stubbled face appeared in the open window.

  “Out,” said the soldier. Martin got out and straightened up. He smiled politely. A sergeant with a hard, pockmarked face walked up. The private soldier wandered round to the rear door and peered in at the boxes.

  “Papers,” said the sergeant. He studied the ID card that Martin offered, and his glance flickered from the blurred face behind the plastic to the one standing in front of him. If he saw any difference between the British officer facing him and the store clerk of the Al-Khalifa Trading Corporation whose portrait had been used for the card, he gave no sign.

  The identity card had been dated as issued a year earlier, and in a year a man can decide to shave his beard.

  “You are a doctor?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. I work at the hospital.”

  “Where?”

  “On the Jahra road.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the Amiri hospital, in Dasman.”

  The sergeant was clearly not of great education, and within his culture a doctor rated as a man of considerable learning and stature. He grunted and walked to the back of the station wagon.

  “Open,” he said.

  Martin unlocked the rear door, and it swung up above their heads. The sergeant stared at the two trunks.

  “What are these?”

  “Samples, Sergeant. They are needed by the research laboratory at the Amiri.”

  “Open.”

  Martin withdrew several small brass keys from the pocket of his dish-dash . The boxes were of the cabin-trunk or portmanteau type, purchased from a luggage store, and each had two brass locks.

  “You know these trunks are refrigerated?” said Martin conversationally, as he fiddled with the keys.

  “Refrigerated?” The sergeant was mystified by the word.

  “Yes, Sergeant. The interiors are cold. They keep the cultures at a constant low temperature. That guarantees that they remain inert. I’m afraid if I open up, the cold air will escape and they will become very active. Better stand back.”

  At the phrase “stand back,” the sergeant scowled and unslung his carbine, pointing it at Martin, suspecting the boxes must contain some kind of weapon.

  “What do you mean?” he snarled. Martin shrugged apologetically.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t prevent it. The germs will just escape into the air around us.”

  “Germs—what germs?” The sergeant was confused and angry, as much with his own ignorance as with the doctor’s manner.

  “Didn’t I say where I worked?” he asked mildly.

  “Yes, at the hospital.”

  “True. The isolation hospital. These are full of smallpox and cholera samples for analysis.”

  This time the sergeant did jump back, a clear two feet. The marks on his face were no accident—as a child he had nearly died of smallpox.

  “Get that stuff out of here, damn you!”

  Martin apologized again, closed the rear door, slid behind the wheel, and drove away. An hour later, he was guided into the fish warehouse in Shuwaikh Port and handed over his cargo to Abu Fouad.

  United States Department of State

  Washington, D.C. 20520

  October 16, 1990

  MEMORANDUM TO: James Baker

  FROM: Political Intelligence and Analysis Group

  SUBJECT: Destruction of Iraqi War Machine

  CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY

  In the ten weeks since the invasion by Iraq of the Emirate of Kuwait, the most rigorous investigation has been undertaken, both by ourselves and our British allies, of the precise size, nature, and state of preparation of the war machine presently at the disposal of President Saddam Hussein.

  Critics will doubtless say, with the usual benefit of hindsight, that such an analysis should have been accomplished prior to this date. Be that as it may, the findings of the various analyses are now before us, and they present a very disturbing picture.

  The conventional forces of Iraq alone, with its standing army of a million and a quarter men, its guns, tanks, rocket batteries, and modern air force, combine to make Iraq far and away the most powerful military force in the Middle East.

  Two years ago, it was estimated that if the effect of the war with Iran had been to reduce the Iranian war machine to the point where it could no longer realistically threaten its neighbors, the damage inflicted by Iran on the Iraqi war machine was of similar importance.

  It is now clear that, in the case of Iran, the severe purchasing embargo deliberately created by ourselves and our British colleagues has caused the situation to remain much the same. In the case of Iraq, however, the two intervening years have been filled by a rearmament program of appalling vigor.

  You will recall, Mr. Secretary, that Western policy in the Gulf area and indeed the entire Middle East has long been based upon the concept of balance: the notion that stability and therefore the status quo can only be maintained if no nation in the area is permitted to acquire such power as to threaten into submission all its neighbors and thus establish dominance.

  On the conventional warfare front alone, it is now clear that Iraq has acquired such a power and now bids to create such dominance.

  But this report is even more concerned with another aspect of Iraqi preparations: the establishment of an awesome stock of weapons of mass destruction, coupled with continuing plans for even more, and their appropriate international, and possibly intercontinental, delivery systems.

  In short, unless the utter destruction of these weapons, those still in development, and their delivery systems is accomplished, the immediate future demonstrates a catastrophic prospect.

  Within three years, according to studies presented to the Medusa Committee and with which the British completely concur, Iraq will possess its own atomic bomb and the ability to launch it anywhere within a two-thousand-kilometer radius of Baghdad.

  To this prospect must be added that of thousands of tons of deadly poison gas and a bacteriological war potential involving anthrax, tularemia, and possibly bubonic and pneumonic plague.

  Were Iraq ruled by a benign and reasonable regime, the prospect would still be daunting. The reality is that Iraq is ruled solely by President Saddam Hussein, who is clearly in the grip of two identifiable psychiatric conditions: megalomania and paranoia.

  Within three years, failing preventive action, Iraq will be able to dominate by threat alone all the territory from the north coast of Turkey to the Gulf of Aden, from the seas off
Haifa to the mountains of Kandahar.

  The effect of these revelations must be to change Western policy radically. The destruction of the Iraqi war machine and particularly the weapons of mass destruction must now become the overriding aim of Western policy. The liberation of Kuwait has now become irrelevant, serving only as a justification.

  The desired aim can be frustrated only by a unilateral withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait, and every effort must be made to ensure that this does not happen.

  U.S. policy, in alliance with our British allies, must therefore be dedicated to four goals: 1. Insofar as it is possible, covertly to present provocations and arguments to Saddam Hussein aimed at causing him to refuse to pull out of Kuwait.

  2. To reject any compromise he may offer in exchange for leaving Kuwait, thus removing the justification for our planned invasion and the destruction of his war machine.

  3. To urge the United Nations to pass without further procrastination the long-delayed Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing the Coalition Allies to begin the air war as soon as they are ready.

  4. To appear to welcome but in fact to frustrate any peace plan that might enable Iraq to escape unscathed from her present dilemma. Clearly the UN Secretary-General, Paris, and Moscow are the principal dangers here, likely to propose at any time some naive scheme capable of preventing what must be done. The public, of course, will continue to be assured of the opposite.

  Respectfully submitted,

  PIAG

  “Itzhak, we really have to go along with them on this one.”

  The Prime Minister of Israel seemed, as always, dwarfed by the big swivel chair and the desk in front of it, as his Deputy Foreign Minister confronted him in the premier’s fortified private office beneath the Knesset in Jerusalem. The two Uzi-toting paratroopers outside the heavy, steel-lined timber door could hear nothing of what went on inside.

  Itzhak Shamir glowered across the desk, his short legs swinging free above the carpet, although there was a specially fitted footrest if he needed it. His lined, pugnacious face beneath the grizzled gray hair made him seem even more like some northern troll.

  His Deputy Foreign Minister was different from the Prime Minister in every way: tall where the national leader was short, well-tailored where Shamir was rumpled, urbane where he was choleric. Yet they got along extremely well, sharing the same uncompromising vision of their country and of Palestinians, so that the Russian-born Prime Minister had had no hesitation in picking and promoting the cosmopolitan diplomat.

  Benjamin Netanyahu had made his case well. Israel needed America: her goodwill, which had once been automatically guaranteed by the power of the Jewish lobby but was now under siege on Capitol Hill and in the American media; her donations, her weaponry, her veto in the Security Council. That was an awful lot to jeopardize for one alleged Iraqi agent being run by Kobi Dror from down there in Tel Aviv.

  “Let them have this Jericho, whoever he is,” urged Netanyahu. “If he helps them destroy Saddam Hussein, the better for us.”

  The Prime Minister grunted, nodded, and reached for his intercom.

  “Get on to General Dror, and tell him I need to see him here in my office,” he told his private secretary.

  “No, not when he’s free. Now.”

  Four hours later, Kobi Dror left his Prime Minister’s office. He was seething. Indeed, he told himself as his car swung down the hill out of Jerusalem and onto the broad highway back to Tel Aviv, he did not recall when he had been so angry.

  To be told by your own Prime Minister that you were wrong was bad enough. To be told he was a stupid asshole was something he could have done without.

  Normally he took pleasure in looking at the pine forests where, during the siege of Jerusalem when the highway of today had been a rutted track, his father and others had battled to punch a hole through the Palestinian lines and relieve the city. But not today.

  Back in his office, he summoned Sami Gershon and told him the news.

  “How the hell did the Americans know?” he shouted. “Who leaked?”

  “No one inside the Office,” Gershon said with finality. “What about that professor? I see he’s just got back from London.”

  “Damned traitor,” snarled Dror. “I’ll break him.”

  “The Brits probably got him drunk,” suggested Gershon. “Boasting in his cups. Leave it, Kobi. The damage is done. What have we got to do?”

  “Tell them everything about Jericho,” snapped Dror. “I won’t do it. Send Sharon. Let him do it. The meeting’s in London, where the leak took place.”

  Gershon thought it over and grinned.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Dror.

  “Just this. We can’t contact Jericho anymore. Just let them try. We still don’t know who the bastard is.

  Let them find out. With any luck, they’ll make a camel’s ass out of it.”

  Dror thought it over, and eventually a sly smile spread across his face. “Send Sharon tonight,” he said.

  “Then we launch another project. I’ve had it in my mind for some time. We’ll call it Operation Joshua.”

  “Why?” asked Gershon, perplexed.

  “Don’t you remember exactly what Joshua did to Jericho?”

  The London meeting was deemed important enough for Bill Stewart, Langley’s Deputy Director (Operations) to cross the Atlantic personally, accompanied by Chip Barber of the Middle East Division.

  They stayed at one of the Company’s safe houses, an apartment not far from the embassy in Grosvenor Square, and had dinner with a Deputy Director of the SIS and Steve Laing. The Deputy Director was for protocol, given Stewart’s rank; he would be replaced at the debriefing of David Sharon by Simon Paxman, who was in charge of Iraq.

  David Sharon flew in from Tel Aviv under another name and was met by a katsa from the Israeli embassy in Palace Green. The British counterintelligence service MI-5—which does not like foreign agents, even friendly ones, playing games at the port of entry—had been alerted by SIS and spotted the waiting katsa from the embassy. As soon as he greeted the new arrival, “Mr. Eliyahu,” off the Tel Aviv flight, the MI-S group moved in, warmly welcoming Mr. Sharon to London, and offering every facility to make his stay pleasant.

  The two angry Israelis were escorted to their car, waved away from the concourse entrance, and then followed sedately into central London. The massed bands of the Brigade of Guards could not have done a better job.

  The debriefing of David Sharon began the following morning, and it took the whole day and half the night. The SIS elected to use one of their own safe houses, a well-protected and efficiently “wired”

  apartment in South Kensington.

  It was (and still is) a large and spacious place, of which the dining room served as the site for the conference. One of the bedrooms housed the banks of tape recorders, and two technicians who recorded every word spoken. A trim young woman brought over from Century commandeered the kitchen and masterminded a convoy of trays of coffee and sandwiches to the six men grouped around the dining table.

  Two fit-looking men in the lobby downstairs spent the day pretending to mend the perfectly functioning elevator, while in fact ensuring that none but the other known inhabitants of the building got above the ground-floor level.

  At the dining table were David Sharon and the katsa from the London embassy, who was a declared agent anyway; the two Americans, Stewart and Barber from Langley; and the two SIS men, Laing and Paxman.

  At the Americans’ bidding, Sharon started at the beginning of the tale and told it the way it had happened.

  “A mercenary? A walk-in mercenary?” queried Stewart at one point. “You’re not putting me on?”

  “My instructions are to be absolutely frank,” said Sharon. “That was the way it happened.”

  The Americans had nothing against a mercenary. Indeed, it was an advantage. Among all the motives for betraying one’s country, money is the simplest and easiest for the recruiter agency. With a mercenary one kn
ows where one is. There are no tortured feelings of regret, no angst of self-disgust, no fragile ego to be massaged and flattered, no ruffled feathers to be smoothed. A mercenary in the intelligence world is like a whore. No tiresome candle-lit dinners and sweet nothings are necessary. A fistful of dollars on the dressing table will do nicely.

  Sharon described the frantic search for someone who could live inside Baghdad under diplomatic cover on extended stay, and the Hobson’s-choice selection of Alfonso Benz Moncada, his intensive training in Santiago, and his reinfiltration to run Jericho for two years.

  “Hang on,” said Stewart. “This amateur ran Jericho for two years? Made seventy collections from the drops and got away with it?”

  “Yep. On my life,” said Sharon.

  “What do you figure, Steve?”

  Laing shrugged. “Beginner’s luck. Wouldn’t have liked to try it in East Berlin or Moscow.”

  “Right,” said Stewart. “And he never got tailed to a drop? Never compromised?”

  “No,” said Sharon. “He was tailed a few times, but always in a sporadic and clumsy way. Going from his home to the Economic Commission building or back, and once when he was heading for a drop. But he saw them and aborted.”

  “Just supposing,” said Laing, “he actually was tailed to a drop by a real team of watchers. Rahmani’s Counterintelligence boys stake out the drop and roll up Jericho himself. Under persuasion, Jericho has to cooperate. ...”

  “Then the product would have gone down in value,” said Sharon. “But Jericho really was doing a lot of damage. Rahmani wouldn’t have allowed that to go on. We’d have seen a public trial and hanging of Jericho, and Moncada would have been expelled, if lucky.

  “It seems the trackers were AMAM people, even though foreigners are supposed to be Rahmani’s turf.

  Whatever, they were as clumsy as usual. Moncada spotted them without trouble. You know how the AMAM is always trying to move into counterintelligence work.”