“This is for real?”
“Absolutely,” said the Englishman. “We are convinced that the construction people are a good source, maybe the best yet, because they are hard-hats who knew what they were doing when they built these places, and they talk freely,, more so than the bureaucrats.”
Glosson rose.
“Okay. You going to have any more for me?”
“We’ll just keep digging up there in Europe, Buster,” said Barber. “We get any more hard-fact targets, we’ll pass them on. They’ve buried a hell of a lot of stuff, you know. Deep under the desert. We’re talking major construction projects.”
“You tell me where they’ve put ’em, and we’ll blow the roof down on them,” said the general.
Later, Glosson took the list to Chuck Horner. The USAF chief was shorter than Glosson, a gloomy-looking, crumpled man with a bloodhound face and all the diplomatic subtlety of a rhino with piles. But he adored his aircrew and ground crew, and they responded in kind.
It was known that he would fight on their behalf against the contractors, the bureaucrats, and the politicians right up to the White House if he thought he had to, and never once moderate his language.
What you saw was what you got.
Visiting the Gulf States of Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, where some of his crews were posted, he avoided the fleshpots of the Sheratons and Hiltons where the good life flowed (literally) in order to chow with the flight crews down at the base and sleep in a cot in the bunkhouse.
Servicemen and women have no appetite for dissembling; they know quickly what they like and what they despise. The USAF pilots would have flown string-and-wire biplanes against Iraq for Chuck Horner.
Horner studied the list from the covert intelligence people and grunted. Two of the sites showed up on the maps as bare desert.
“Where did they get this from?” he asked Glosson.
“Interviewing the construction teams who built them, so they say,” said Glosson.
“Bullshit,” said General Horner. “Those cocksuckers have got themselves someone in Baghdad. Buster, we don’t say anything about this—to anyone. Just take their goodies and rack ’em up on the hit list.” He paused and thought, then added, “Wonder who the bastard is.”
Steve Laing made it home to London on the eighteenth, a London in frenzied turmoil over the crisis gripping the Conservative government as a back-bench Member of Parliament sought to use the party rules to topple Margaret Thatcher from the premiership.
Despite his tiredness, Laing took the message on his desk from Terry Martin and called him at the school. Because of Martin’s excitement, Laing agreed to see him for a brief drink after work, delaying Laing’s return to his home in the outer suburbs by as little as possible.
When they were settled at a corner table in a quiet bar in the West End, Martin produced from his attaché case a cassette player and a tape. Showing them to Laing, he explained his request weeks ago to Sean Plummer, and their meeting the previous weekend.
“Shall I play it for you?” he asked.
“Well, if the chaps at GCHQ can’t understand it, I know damned well I can’t,” said Laing. “Look, Sean Plummer’s got Arabs like Al-Khouri on his staff. If they can’t work it out ...”
Still, he listened politely.
“Hear it?” asked Martin excitedly. “The ‘k’ sound after have ? The man’s not invoking the help of Allah in Iraq’s cause. He’s using a title. That’s what got the other man so angry. Clearly, no one is supposed to use that title openly. It must be confined to a very tiny circle of people.”
“But what does he actually say?” asked Laing in complete bewilderment.
Martin looked at him blankly. Didn’t Laing understand anything?
“He is saying that the vast American buildup doesn’t matter, because ‘soon we shall have Qubth-ut-Allah.’ ”
Laing still looked perplexed.
“A weapon,” urged Martin. “It must be. Something to be available soon that will hold the Americans.”
“Forgive my poor Arabic,” said Laing, “but what is Qubth-ut-Allah?”
“Oh,” said Martin. “It means ‘the Fist of God.’ ”
Chapter 12
After eleven years in power and having won three general elections, the British Prime Minister actually fell on November 20, although she did not announce her decision to resign until two days later.
Her fall from power was triggered by an obscure rule in the Conservative Party constitution requiring her nominal reelection as Party leader at periodic intervals. Such an interval occurred that November. Her reelection should have been just a formality, until an out-of-office former minister chose to run against her. Unaware of her danger, she hardly took the challenge seriously, conducting a lackluster campaign and actually attending a conference in Paris on the day of the vote.
Behind her back a range of old resentments, affronted egos, and nervous fears that she might even lose the forthcoming general election coalesced into an alliance against her, preventing her from being swept back into the Party leadership on the first ballot.
Had she been so returned, there would have been no second ballot, and the challenger would have disappeared into obscurity. In the ballot of November 20 she needed a two-thirds majority; she was just four votes short, forcing a runoff second ballot.
Within hours, what had started as a few dislodged stones tumbling down a hill became a landslide. After consulting her Cabinet, who told her she would now lose, she resigned. To head off the challenger, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, ran for the top job and won.
The news stunned the soldiers in the Gulf, American and British alike. Down in Oman, American fighter pilots who were now consorting daily with SAS men from the nearby base asked the British what was going on and received helpless shrugs in return.
Mike Martin heard the news when the Iraqi chauffeur swaggered over and told him. Martin contemplated the news, looked blank, and asked:
“Who is she?”
“Fool,” snapped the chauffeur. “The leader of the Beni Naji. Now we will win.”
He went back to his car to resume listening to Baghdad radio. In a few moments First Secretary Kulikov hurried from the house and was driven straight back to his embassy.
That night, Martin sent a long transmission to Riyadh, containing the latest batch of answers from Jericho and an added request from himself for further instructions. Crouched by the doorway of his shack to ward off any intruders, for the satellite dish was positioned in the doorway facing south, Martin waited for his reply. A low, pulsing light on the console of the small transceiver told him at half past one in the morning that he had his reply.
He dismantled the dish, stored it back beneath the floor with the batteries and transceiver, slowed down the message, and listened to it play back.
There was a fresh list of demands for information from Jericho and an agreement to the agent’s last demand for money, which had now been transferred into his account. In under a month the renegade on the Revolutionary Command Council had earned over a million dollars.
Added to the list were two further instructions for Martin. The first was to send Jericho a message, not in the form of a question, that it was hoped he could somehow filter into the thinking of the planners in Baghdad. It was to the effect that the news from London probably meant that the Coalition action to recover Kuwait would be called off if the Rais stood firm.
Whether this disinformation reached the highest councils of Baghdad will never be known, but within a week Saddam Hussein had claimed that the toppling of Thatcher was due to the revulsion of the British people at her opposition to him.
The final instruction on Mike Martin’s tape that night was to ask Jericho if he had ever heard of a weapon or weapon system referred to as the Fist of God.
By the light of a candle, Martin spent most of the rest of the night writing the questions in Arabic onto two sheets of thin airmail paper. Within twenty hours, the papers had
been secreted behind the loose brick in the wall close to the Imam Aladham shrine in Aadhamiya.
It took a week for the answers to come back. Martin read the spidery Arabic script of Jericho’s handwriting and translated everything into English. From a soldier’s point of view, it was interesting.
The three Republican Guard divisions facing the British and Americans along the border, the Tawakkulna and Medina, now joined by the Hammurabi, were equipped with a mix of T-54/55, T-62, and T-72 main battle tanks, all three Russian.
But on a recent tour, Jericho continued, General Abdullah Kadiri of the Armored Corps had discovered to his horror that most of the crews had removed their batteries and used them to power fans, cookers, radios, and cassette players. It was doubtful if, in combat conditions, any of them would now start. There had been several executions on the spot, and two senior commanders had been relieved and sent home.
Saddam’s half-brother, Ali Hassan Majid, now Governor-General of Kuwait, had reported that the occupation was becoming a nightmare, with attacks on Iraqi soldiers still unquenchable and desertions rising. The resistance showed no signs of abating, despite vigorous interrogations and numerous executions by Colonel Sabaawi of the AMAM and two personal visits by his boss, Omar Khatib.
Worse, the resistance had now somehow acquired the plastic explosive called Semtex, which is much more powerful than industrial dynamite.
Jericho had identified two more major military command posts, both constructed in subterranean caverns and invisible from the air.
The thinking in the immediate circle around Saddam Hussein was definitely that a seminal contribution to the fall of Margaret Thatcher had been his own influence. He had twice reiterated his absolute refusal even to consider pulling out of Kuwait.
Finally, Jericho had never heard of anything code-named the Fist of God but would listen for such a phrase. Personally, he doubted there existed any weapon or weapon system unknown to the Allies.
Martin read the entire message onto tape, speeded it up, and transmitted it. In Riyadh it was seized upon avidly and the radio technicians logged its time of arrival: 2355 hours, November 30, 1990.
Leila Al-Hilla came out of the bathroom slowly, pausing in the doorway with the light behind her to raise her arms to the doorframe on each side and pose for a moment.
The bathroom light, shining through the negligee, showed off her ripe and voluptuous silhouette to full advantage. It should; it was black, of the sheerest lace, and had cost a small fortune, a Paris import acquired from a boutique in Beirut.
The big man on the bed stared hungrily, ran a furred tongue along a thick lower lip, and grinned.
Leila liked to dawdle in the bathroom before a session of sex. There were places to be washed and anointed, eyes to be accentuated with mascara, lips to be etched in red, and perfumes to be applied, different aromas for different parts of her body.
It was a good body at thirty summers, the sort clients liked: not fat, but well-curved where it ought to be, full-hipped and breasted, with muscle beneath the curves.
She lowered her arms and advanced toward the dim-lit bed, swinging her hips, the high-heeled shoes adding four inches to her height and exaggerating the hip-swing.
But the man on the bed, on his back and naked, covered like a bear in black fur from chin to ankles, had closed his eyes.
Don’t go to sleep on me now, you oaf, she thought, not tonight when I need you. Leila sat on the side of the bed and ran sharp red fingernails up through the hair of the belly to the chest, tweaked each nipple hard, then ran her hand back again, beyond the stomach to the groin.
She leaned forward and kissed the man on the lips, her tongue prying an opening. But the man’s lips responded halfheartedly, and she caught the strong odor of arak.
Drunk again, she thought—why can’t the fool stay off the stuff. Still, it had its advantages, that bottle of arak every evening. Oh well, to work.
Leila Al-Hilla was a good courtesan, and she knew it. The best in the Middle East, some said, and certainly among the most expensive.
She had trained years ago, as a child, in a very private academy in Lebanon where the sexual wiles and tricks of the ouled-nails of Morocco, of the nautch girls of India, and the subtle technocrats of Fukutomi-cho were practiced by the older girls while the children watched and learned.
After fifteen years as a professional on her own, she knew that ninety percent of the skill of a good whore had nothing to do with the problem of coping with insatiable virility. That was for porn magazines and films.
Her talent was to flatter, compliment, praise, and indulge, but mainly to elicit a real male erection out of an endless succession of jaded appetites and faded powers.
She ran her probing hand out of the groin and felt the man’s penis. Sighed inwardly. Soft as a marshmallow. General Abdullah Kadiri, commander of the Armored Corps of the Army of the Republic of Iraq, was going to need a little encouraging this evening.
From beneath the bed where she had secreted it earlier, she took a soft cloth bag and tipped its contents onto the sheet beside her.
Smearing her fingers with a thick, creamy jelly, she lubricated a medium-size dildo-vibrator, lifted one of the general’s thighs, and slipped it expertly into his anus.
General Kadiri grunted, opened his eyes, glanced down at the naked woman crouching beside his genitals, and grinned again, the teeth flashing beneath the thick black moustache.
Leila pressed the disk on the base of the vibrator, and the insistent pulsing throb began to fill the general’s lower body. Beneath her hand the woman felt the limp organ begin to swell.
From a flask with a tube sticking through the seal she half-filled her mouth with a swig of tasteless, odorless petroleum jelly, then leaned forward and took the man’s stirring penis into her mouth.
The combination of the oily smoothness of the jelly and rapid probing of her skillful pointed tongue began to have an effect. For ten minutes, until her jaw ached, she caressed and sucked until the general’s erection was as good as it was ever going to be.
Before he could lose it, she lifted her head, swung an ample thigh across him, inserted him into her, and settled across his hips. She had felt bigger and better ones, but it was working—just.
Leila leaned forward and swung her breasts over his face.
“Ah, my big strong black bear,” she cooed, “you are superb, as ever.”
He smiled up at her. She began to rise and settle, not too fast, rising until the helmet was just still between the labia, settling slowly until she had enveloped everything he had. As she moved, she used developed and practiced vaginal muscles to grip and squeeze, relax, grip and squeeze.
She knew the effect of the double incitement. General Kadiri began to grunt and then shout, short harsh cries forced out of him by the sensation of the deep pulsing throb in his sphincter area and the woman rising and falling on his shaft with steadily increasing rhythm.
“Yes, yes, oh yes, this is so good, keep going, darling,” she panted into his face until finally he had his orgasm. While he climaxed into her hips, Leila straightened her torso, towering over him, jerking in spasm, screaming with pleasure, faking her own tremendous climax.
When he was spent, he deflated at once and in seconds she had removed herself and his dildo, tossing it to one side lest he fall asleep too soon. That was the last thing she wanted after all her hard work. There was yet more work to do.
So she lay beside him and drew the sheet over them both, propping herself on one elbow, letting her bosom press against the side of his face, smoothing his hair and stroking his cheek with her free right hand.
“Poor bear,” she murmured. “Are you very tired? You work too hard, my magnificent lover. They work you too hard. What was it today, eh? More problems on the Council, and always you who has to solve them? Mmmmmm? Tell Leila, you know you can tell little Leila.”
So before he slept, he did.
Later, when General Kadiri was snoring away the effects
of arak and sex, Leila retired to the bathroom where, with the door locked and seated on the toilet with a tray across her lap, she noted everything down in a neat, crabbed Arabic script.
Later still, in the morning, the sheets of flimsy paper rolled into a hollowed-out tampon to avoid the security checks, she would hand it over to the man who paid her.
It was dangerous, she knew, but it was lucrative, double earnings for the same job, and one day she intended to be rich—rich enough to leave Iraq forever and set up her own academy, perhaps in Tangier, with a string of nice girls to sleep with and Moroccan houseboys to whip whenever she felt the need.
If Gidi Barzilai had been frustrated by the security procedures of the Winkler Bank, two weeks of trailing Wolfgang Gemütlich were driving him to distraction. The man was impossible.
After the spotter’s identification, Gemütlich had quickly been followed to his house out beyond the Prater Park. The next day, while he was at work, the yarid team had watched the house until Frau Gemütlich left to go shopping. The girl member of the team went after her, staying in touch with her colleagues by personal radio so that she could warn them of the lady’s return. In fact, the banker’s wife was away for two hours—more than ample time.
The break-in by the neviot experts was no problem, and bugs were quickly planted in sitting room, bedroom, and telephone. The search—quick, skilled, and leaving no trace—yielded nothing. There were the usual papers: deeds to the house, passports, birth certificates, marriage license, even a series of bank statements. Everything was photographed, but a glance at the private bank account revealed no evidence of embezzlement from the Winkler Bank—there was even a horrible chance that the man would turn out to be completely honest.
The wardrobe and bedroom drawers revealed no sign of bizarre personal habits—always a good blackmail lever among the respectable middle classes—and indeed the neviot team leader, having watched Frau Gemütlich leave the house, was not surprised.
If the man’s personal secretary was a mousy little thing, his wife was like a scrap of discarded paper.