The Fist of God

  When he swept her up and carried her through to her tiny bedroom, she just turned her face into his shoulder and let it happen. She hardly felt her severe little dress slip to the floor. His fingers had a deftness that Horst had never possessed—no pushing and shoving and snagging of zips and buttons.

  She was still in her slip when he joined her beneath the Bettkissen , the big soft Viennese duvet, and the heat from his hard young body was like a great comfort on a bitter winter’s night.

  She did not know what to do, so she closed her eyes tight and let it happen. Strange, awful, sinful sensations began to run through her unaccustomed nerves beneath the attentions of his lips and softly searching fingers. Horst had never been like this.

  She began to panic when his lips strayed from her own and from her breasts and went to other places, bad, forbidden places, what her mother had always referred to as “down there.”

  She tried to push him away, protesting feebly, knowing the waves beginning to run through her lower body were not proper and decent, but he was eager as a spaniel puppy on a downed partridge.

  He took no notice of her repeated “Nein, Karim, das sollst du nicht ,” and the waves became a tidal flow and she was a lost rowboat on a crazy ocean until the last great wave crashed over her and she drowned in a sensation with which she had never once in her thirty-nine years needed to burden the ears of her father confessor at the Votivkirche.

  Then she took his head in her arms and pressed his face to her thin little breasts and rocked him in silence.

  Twice more during the night he made love to her, once just after midnight and again in the blackness before dawn, and each time he was so gentle and strong that her pent-up love came pouring to meet his in a way she had never envisaged could be possible. Only after the second time could she bring herself to run her hands over his body while he slept and wonder at the sheen of the skin and the love that she felt for every inch of it.

  Although he had no idea his guest had any interest in the world other than Arab studies, Dr. Maslowski insisted that he drive Terry Martin out to Livermore in the morning rather than go to the expense of a cab.

  “I guess I have a more important guy in my house than I thought I had,” he suggested on the drive. But though Martin expostulated that this was not so, the California scholar knew enough about the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to know that not everyone blew in there on a phone call. Dr. Maslowski, with masterly discretion, refrained from asking any more questions.

  At the main security gate uniformed guards checked a list, examined Martin’s passport, made a phone call, and directed them to a parking area.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Maslowski.

  Considering the work it does, the Laboratory is an odd-looking collection of buildings on Vasco Road, some of them modern, but many dating back to the days when it was an old military base. To add to the conglomeration of styles, “temporary” buildings that have somehow become permanent are slotted between the old barracks. Martin was led to a group of offices on the East Avenue side of the complex.

  It does not look like much, but it is out of this cluster of buildings that a group of scientists monitor the spread of nuclear technology across the Third World.

  Jim Jacobs turned out to be little older than Terry Martin, just under forty, a Ph.D., and a nuclear physicist. He welcomed Martin into his paper-strewn office.

  “Cold morning. Bet you thought California was going to be hot. Everyone does. Not up here, though.

  Coffee?”

  “Love some.”

  “Sugar, cream?”

  “No, black, please.”

  Dr. Jacobs pressed an intercom button.

  “Sandy, could we have two coffees? Mine you know. And one black.”

  He smiled across the desk at his visitor. He did not bother to mention that he had talked with Washington to confirm the English visitor’s name and that he really was a member of the Medusa Committee. Someone on the American end of the committee, whom he knew, had checked a list and confirmed the claim. Jacobs was impressed. The visitor might look young, but he must be pretty high-powered over in England. The Deputy Director knew all about Medusa because he and his colleagues had been consulted for weeks about Iraq and had handed over everything they had, every detail of the story of foolishness and neglect on the part of the West that had damn nearly given Saddam Hussein a nuclear option.

  “So how can I help?” he asked.

  “I know it’s a long shot,” said Martin, reaching into his attaché case. “But I suppose you have seen this already?”

  He laid a copy of one of the dozen pictures of the Tarmiya factory on the desk, the one Paxman had disobediently given him. Jacobs glanced at it and nodded.

  “Sure, had a dozen of them through from Washington three, four days ago. What can I say? They don’t mean a thing. Can’t say more to you than I said to Washington. Never seen anything like them.”

  Sandy came in with a tray of coffee, a bright blond California woman full of self-assurance.

  “Hi, there,” she said to Martin.

  “Oh, er, hallo. Did the Director see these?”

  Jacobs frowned. The implication was that he himself might not be senior enough. “The Director’s skiing in Colorado. But I ran them past some of the best brains we have here, and believe me, they are very, very good.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” said Martin. Another blank wall. Well, it had only been a long shot.

  Sandy placed the cups of coffee on the desk. Her eye fell on the photograph.

  “Oh, them again,” she said.

  “Yes, them again,” said Jacobs, and smiled teasingly. “Dr. Martin here thinks maybe someone ... older should have a look at them.”

  “Well,” she said, “show ’em to Daddy Lomax.”

  With that she was gone.

  “Who’s Daddy Lomax?” asked Martin.

  “Oh, take no notice. Used to work here. Retired now, lives alone up in the mountains. Pops in now and then for old times’ sake. The girls adore him, he brings them mountain flowers. Funny old guy.”

  They drank their coffee, but there was little more to say. Jacobs had work to do. He apologized once again for not being able to help. Then he showed his visitor out, returned to his sanctum, and closed the door.

  Martin waited in the corridor a few seconds, then put his head around the door.

  “Where would I find Daddy Lomax?” he asked Sandy.

  “I don’t know. Lives way up in the hills. Nobody’s ever been there.”

  “He has a phone?”

  “No, no lines go up there. But I think he has a cellular. The insurance company insisted. I mean, he’s terribly old.”

  Her face was creased with that genuine concern that only California youth can show for anyone over sixty. She rifled through a Rolodex and came up with a number. Martin noted it, thanked her, and left.

  Ten time zones away, it was evening in Baghdad. Mike Martin was on his bicycle, pedaling northwest up Port Said Street. He had just passed the old British Club at what used to be called Southgate, and because he recalled it from his boyhood, he turned to stare back at it.

  His lack of attention nearly caused an accident. He had reached the edge of Nafura Square and without thinking pedaled forward. There was a big limousine coming from his left and although technically it did not have right of way, its two motorcycle escorts were clearly not going to stop.

  One of them swerved violently to avoid the clumsy fellagha with the vegetable basket attached to his pillion, the motorcycle’s front wheel clipping the smaller bicycle and sending it crashing to the tarmac.

  Martin went down with his bicycle, sprawling on the road, his vegetables spilling out. The limousine braked, paused, and swerved around him before accelerating away.

  On his knees, Martin looked up as the car passed. The face of the rear seat passenger stared out the window at the oaf who had dared to delay him by a fraction of a second.

  It was a cold face in the uniform of
a brigadier general, thin and acerbic, channels running down either side of the nose to frame the bitter mouth. In that half-second, what Martin noticed were the eyes. Not cold or angry eyes, not bloodshot red or shrewd or even cruel. Blank eyes, utterly and completely blank, the eyes of death long gone. Then the face behind the window had passed by.

  He did not need the whisperings of the two working men who pulled him to his feet and helped gather up his vegetables. He had seen the face before, but dimly, blurred, taken on a saluting base, in a photograph on a table in Riyadh weeks before. He had just seen the most feared man in Iraq after the Rais, perhaps including the Rais. It was the one they called Al-Mu’azib, the Tormentor, the extractor of confessions, head of the AMAM, Omar Khatib.

  Terry Martin tried the number he had been given during the lunch hour. There was no reply, just the honeyed tones of the recorded voice advising him: “The party you have called is not available or is out of range. Please try your call later.”

  Paul Maslowski had taken Martin to lunch with his faculty colleagues on the campus. The conversation was lively and academic. Over the meal Martin thanked his hosts again for their invitation and repeated his appreciation of the endowment that had funded his visit. He tried the number again after lunch on his way to Barrows Hall, guided by Near Eastern Studies Director Kathlene Keller, but again there was no reply.

  The lecture went across well. There were twenty-seven graduate students, all heading for their doctorates, and Martin was impressed at the level and depth of their understanding of the papers he had written on the subject of the Caliphate that ruled central Mesopotamia in what the Europeans call the Middle Ages.

  When one of the students rose to thank him for coming all that way to talk to them and the rest had applauded, Terry Martin went pink and bobbed his thanks to them. Afterward, he spotted a pay phone on the wall in the lobby. This time there was an answer, and a gruff voice said:

  “Yeah.”

  “Excuse me, is that Dr. Lomax?”

  “There’s only one, friend. That’s me.”

  “I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve come from England. I’d like to see you. My name’s Terry Martin.”

  “England, eh? Long ways away. What would you want with an old coot like me, Mr. Martin?”

  “Want to tap a long memory. Show you something. People at Livermore say you’ve been around longer than most, seen just about everything. I want to show you something. Difficult to explain on the phone.

  Could I come up and see you?”

  “It ain’t a tax form?”

  “No.”

  “Or a Playboy centerfold?”

  “ ’Fraid not.”

  “Now you got me curious. Do you know the way?”

  “No. I have pencil and paper. Can you describe it?”

  Daddy Lomax told him how to get to where he lived. It took some time. Martin wrote it all down.

  “Tomorrow morning,” said the retired physicist. “Too late now, you’ll get lost in the dark. And you’ll need a four-wheel drive.”

  It was one of the only two E-8A J-STARs in the Gulf War that caught the signal that morning of January 27. The J-STARs had been still experimental aircraft and were flying with largely civilian technicians on board when they were rushed in early January from their base at the Grumman Melbourne plant in Florida halfway across the world to Arabia.

  That morning, one of the two flying out of Riyadh military air base was high over the Iraqi border, still inside Saudi air space, peering with its Norden down-and-sideways radar more than a hundred miles into the western desert of Iraq.

  The plink was faint, but it indicated metal, moving slowly, far into Iraq, a convoy no longer than two, maybe three trucks. Still, that was what the J-STAR was there for, so the mission commander told one of the AWACS circling over the northern end of the Red Sea, giving the AWACS the exact position of the small Iraqi convoy.

  Inside the hull of the AWACS the mission commander logged the precise spot and looked around for an airborne element that might be available to give the convoy an unfriendly visit. All the western desert operations were still keyed toward Scud-hunting at that time, apart from the attention being given to the two huge Iraqi air bases called H2 and H3 that were situated in those deserts. The J-STAR might have picked up a mobile Scud-launcher, even though it would be unusual in daylight.

  The AWACS came up with an element of two F-15E Strike Eagles coming south from Scud Alley North.

  Don Walker was riding south at twenty thousand feet after a mission to the outskirts of Al Qaim, where he and his wingman, Randy Roberts, had just destroyed a fixed missile base protecting one of the poison gas factories targeted for later destruction.

  Walker took the call and checked his fuel. It was low. Worse, with his laser-guided bombs gone, his underwing pylons contained only two Sidewinders and two Sparrows. But these were air-to-air missiles in case they ran into Iraqi jets. Somewhere south of the border his assigned refueling tanker was patiently waiting, and he would need every drop to get back to Al Kharz. Still, the convoy location was only fifty miles away and just fifteen off his intended track. Even though he had no ordnance left, there was no harm in having a look.

  His wingman had heard everything, so Walker gestured through the canopy to the flier half a mile away through the clear air, and the two Eagles rolled into a dive to their right.

  At eight thousand feet, he could see the source of the plink that had showed up on the screen of the J-STAR. It was not a Scud-launcher, but two trucks and two BRDM-2s, Soviet-made light armored vehicles on wheels, not tracks.

  From his perch, he could see much more than the J-STAR could. Down in a deep wadi beneath him was a single Land-Rover. At five thousand feet, he could see the four British SAS men around it, tiny ants on the brown cloth of the desert. What they could not see were the four Iraqi vehicles forming a horseshoe around them, nor the Iraqi soldiers pouring down from the tailboards of the two trucks to encircle the wadi.

  Don Walker had met the SAS down in Oman. He knew they were operating in the western deserts against Scud-launchers, and several of his squadron had already been in radio contact with these strange-sounding English voices from the ground when the SAS men had tagged a target they could not handle themselves.

  At three thousand feet, he could see the four Britishers looking up curiously. So, half a mile away, were the Iraqis. Walker pressed his transmit button.

  “Line astern, take the trucks.”

  “You got it.”

  Though he had neither bombs nor rockets left, tucked in the glove of his right wing, just outside the gaping air intake, was an M-61-A1 Vulcan 20-min. cannon, six rotating barrels capable of spewing out its entire magazine of 450 shells with impressive speed. The 20-mm. cannon shell is the size of a small banana and explodes on impact. For those caught in a truck or running in the open, they can spoil everything.

  Walker flicked the Aim and Arm switches, and his Head-Up Display—his HUD—showed him the two armored cars straight through his screen, plus an aiming cross, whose position had already taken account of drift and aim-off.

  The first BRDM took a hundred cannon shells and blew apart. Raising his nose slightly, he put the swimming cross on the Plexiglas of the HUD onto the rear of the second vehicle. He saw the gas tank ignite. Then he was up and over it, climbing and rolling until the brown desert appeared above his head.

  Keeping the roll going, Walker brought the Eagle back down again. The horizon of blue and brown turned back to its usual position, with the brown desert at the bottom and the blue sky at the top. Both BRDMs were flaming, one truck was on its side, the other shredded. Small figures ran frantically for the cover of the rocks.

  Inside the wadi the four SAS men had gotten the message. They were aboard and rolling down the dry watercourse and away from the ambush. Just who had spotted them—wandering shepherds, probably—and given their position away, they would never know, but they knew who had just saved their backsides.

  The
Eagles lifted away, waggled their wings, and climbed toward the border and the waiting tanker.

  The NCO commanding the SAS patrol was one Sergeant Peter Stephenson. He raised a hand at the departing fighters and said:

  “Dunno who you are, mate, but I owe you one.”

  As it happened, Mrs. Maslowski had a Suzuki Jeep as a runabout, and though she had never driven it in four-wheel mode, she insisted Terry Martin borrow it. His flight to London was not until five that afternoon, and he set off early because he did not know how long he would be. He told her he intended to be back by two at the latest.

  Dr. Maslowski had to return to his office but gave Martin a map so he would not get lost.

  The road to the valley of the Mocho River took him right back past Livermore, where he found Mines Road running off Tesla. Mile by mile, the last houses of the suburb of Livermore dropped away, and the ground rose. He was lucky in the weather. Winter in these parts is never very cold, but the proximity of the sea gives rise to thick dense clouds and sudden banks of swirling fog. That January 27the sky was blue and crisp, the air calm and cold.

  Through the windshield he could see the icy tip of Cedar Mountain far away. Ten miles after the turnoff, he left Mines Road and turned onto a dirt road, clinging to the side of a precipitous hill.

  Down in the valley far below, the Mocho glittered in the sun as it tumbled between its rocks. The grass on either side gave way to a mix of sagebrush and she-oak; high above, a pair of kites wheeled against the blue, and the road ran on, along the edge of Cedar Mountain Ridge into the wilderness.

  He passed a single green farmhouse, but Lomax had told him to go to the end of the road. After another three miles he found the cabin, rough-hewn with a raw stone chimney and a plume of blue woodsmoke drifting up to the sky.

  He stopped in the yard and got out. From a barn, a single Jersey cow surveyed him with velvet eyes.

  Rhythmic sounds came from the other side of the cabin, so he walked around to the front to find Daddy Lomax on a bluff looking out over the valley and the river far below.