The Fist of God

  Between half past five and six he heard the staff walking past on their way to the lobby and home. At six, he knew, the nightwatchman would arrive, to be admitted by the commissionaire, who by then would have checked every one of the staff past his desk according to the daily list.

  When the commissionaire left just after six, the nightwatch would lock the front door and set the alarms.

  Then he would settle down with the portable TV he brought every evening and watch the game shows until it was time for his first round.

  According to the yarid team, even the cleaners were supervised. They did the common parts—halls, stairways, and washrooms—during the nights of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but on a Tuesday night the cracksman should remain undisturbed. On Saturdays they came back to clean the private offices under the eye of the commissionaire, who remained with them at all times.

  The routine of the nightwatch was apparently always the same. He made three tours of the building, testing all doors, at tenP.M. , at two in the morning, and at five.

  Between coming on duty and his first tour, he watched his TV and ate his packed supper. In the longest gap, between ten and two, he dozed, setting a small alarm to tell him when it was two in the morning. The cracksman intended to make his burglary during that gap.

  He had already seen Gemütlich’s office and its all-important door. The latter was of solid wood but happily was not alarmed. The window was alarmed, and he had noted the faint outline of two pressure pads between the parquet and the carpet.

  At ten precisely he heard the elevator rumbling upward, bearing the nightwatch to begin his tour of the office doors, starting at the top and coming down floor by floor on foot.

  Half an hour later, the elderly man had finished, put his head around the door of the men’s room, flashed on the light to check the wired and alarmed window, closed the door, and returned to his desk in the lobby. There he chose to watch a late game show.

  At 10:45 the cracksman, in complete darkness, left the men’s room and stole up the stairs to the fourth floor.

  The door of Herr Gemütlich’s office took him fifteen minutes. The last tumbler of the four-lever mortise deadlock tumbled back, and he stepped inside.

  Although he wore a band around his head holding a small penlight, he took another, larger flashlight to scan the room. By its light, he could avoid the two pressure pads and approach the desk from its unguarded side. Then he switched it off and resumed by the light only of the penlight.

  The locks on the three top drawers were no problem—small brass affairs over a hundred years old.

  When the three drawers were removed, he inserted his hand and began to feel for a knob, button, or lever. Nothing. It was an hour later, at the rear of the third drawer down on the right-hand side, that he found it. A small lever, in brass, no more than an inch long. When he pushed it, there was a low click, and a strip of inlay at the base of the pillar jumped open a centimeter.

  The tray inside was quite shallow, less than an inch, but it was enough to contain twenty-two sheets of thin paper. Each was a replica of the letter of authority that alone would suffice to operate the accounts under Gemütlich’s charge.

  The cracksman produced his camera and a clamper, a device of four fold-back aluminum legs that kept the prefocused camera at exactly the right distance from the paper beneath it to get a high-definition exposure.

  The top of the pile of sheets was the one describing the operating method of the account opened the previous morning by the spotter, on behalf of the fictitious client in the United States. The one he wanted was the seventh down. The number he already knew—the Mossad had been paying money into Jericho’s account for two years before the Americans took over.

  To be on the safe side, he photographed them all anyway. After returning the cachette to its original state, he replaced and relocked all the drawers and withdrew, sealing the office door behind him. He was back in the broom closet by ten past one.

  When the bank opened for morning business, the cracksman let the elevator run up and down for half an hour, knowing the commissionaire never needed to escort the staff to their offices. The first client appeared at ten to ten. When the elevator had gone up past him, the cracksman stole out of the men’s room, tiptoed to the end of the corridor, and looked down into the lobby. The desk of the commissionaire was empty; he was upstairs escorting the client.

  The cracksman produced a bleeper and pressed twice. Within three seconds the front door bell rang.

  The receptionist activated her speaker system and asked:

  “Ja?”

  “Lieferung,” said a tinny voice. She pressed the door-release catch, and a big cheerful delivery man entered the lobby. He bore a large oil painting wrapped in brown paper and string.

  “Here you are, lady, all cleaned and ready to rehang,” he said.

  Behind him the door slid to its close. As it did so, a hand came around the edge at floor level and inserted a wad of paper. The door appeared to close but the catch did not engage.

  The delivery man stood the oil painting on the edge of the receptionist’s desk. It was big, five feet wide and four feet tall. It blocked her whole view of the lobby.

  “But I know nothing about—” she protested. The head of the delivery man came around the edge of the painting.

  “Just sign for its safe receipt, please,” he said, and put in front of her a clipboard with a receipt form. As she studied it, the cracksman came down the marble steps and slipped out of the door.

  “But this says Harzmann Galerie,” she pointed out.

  “That’s right. Ballgasse, number fourteen.”

  “But we’re number eight. This is the Winkler Bank. The gallery is farther up.”

  The puzzled delivery man made his apologies and left. The commissionaire came back down the marble steps. She explained what had happened. He snorted, resumed his seat across the lobby from the reception desk, and returned to the morning paper.

  When the Blackhawk helicopter brought Mike Martin into the Riyadh military air base at midday, there was a small and expectant committee to meet him. Steve Laing was there, with Chip Barber. The man he had not expected to see was his commanding officer, Colonel Bruce Craig. While Martin had been in Baghdad, the deployment of the SAS in the western deserts of Iraq had grown to involve two full squadrons out of Hereford’s four. One had remained at Hereford as the standby squadron, the other was in smaller units on training missions around the world.

  “You got it, Mike?” asked Laing.

  “Yes. Jericho’s last message. Couldn’t get it out by radio.”

  He explained briefly why and handed over the single grubby sheet of paper with Jericho’s report.

  “Man, we were worried when we couldn’t get you these past forty-eight hours,” said Barber. “You’ve done a great job, Major.”

  “Just one thing, gentlemen,” said Colonel Craig. “If you have finished with him, can I have my officer back?”

  Laing was studying the paper, deciphering the Arabic as best he could. He looked up.

  “Why yes, I suppose so. With our sincere thanks.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Barber. “What are you going to do with him now, Colonel?”

  “Oh, a bunk in our base across the airfield, some food—”

  “Got a better idea,” said Barber. “Major, how does a Kansas steak and fries, an hour in a marble bathtub, and a big soft bed grab you?”

  “By the balls,” laughed Martin.

  “Right. Colonel, your man gets a suite at the Hyatt down the road for twenty-four hours, courtesy of my people. Agreed?”

  “Okay. See you this time tomorrow, Mike,” said Craig.

  On the short drive to the hotel opposite CENTAF headquarters, Martin gave Laing and Barber a translation of the Jericho message. Laing made verbatim notes.

  “That’s it,” said Barber. “The air boys will go in there and blow it away.”

  It required Chip Barber to check the soiled Iraqi peasant i
nto the best suite in the Hyatt, and when he was settled, Barber left to cross the road to the Black Hole.

  Martin had his hour in the deep, steaming bath and used the complimentary gear to shave and shampoo, and when he came out, the steak and fries were on a tray in the sitting room.

  He was halfway through the meal when sleep overtook him. He just managed to make the wide soft bed next door, then he was asleep.

  While he slept, a number of things happened. Freshly pressed shorts, trousers, socks, shoes, and shirt were delivered to his sitting room.

  In Vienna, Gidi Barzilai sent the operational details of the Jericho numbered account to Tel Aviv, where an identical replica was prepared with the appropriate wording.

  Karim met Edith Hardenberg when she left the bank after work, took her for a coffee, and explained that he had to return to Jordan for a week to visit his mother, who was sick. She accepted his reason, held his hand, and told him to hurry back to her as soon as he could.

  Orders went out from the Black Hole to the air base at Taif where a TR-1 spy plane was preparing to take off for a mission to the far north of Iraq, to take further pictures of a major weapons complex at As-Sharqat.

  The mission was given a new task with fresh map coordinates, specifically to visit and photograph an area of a range of hills in the northern sector of the Jebal al Hamreen. When the squadron commander protested the sudden change, he was told the orders were classified as “Jeremiah directs.” The protest ended.

  The TR-1 took off just after two, and by four, its images were appearing on the screens inside the designated conference room down the corridor from the Black Hole.

  There was cloud and rain over the Jebal that day, but with its infrared and thermal imaging radar, the ASARS-2 device that defies cloud, rain, hail, sleet, snow, and darkness, the spy plane got its pictures anyway.

  They were studied as they arrived by Colonel Beatty of the USAF and Squadron Leader Peck of the RAF, the two top photoreconnaissance analysts in the Black Hole.

  The planning conference began at six. There were only eight men present. In the chair was General Horner’s deputy, the equally decisive but more jovial General Buster Glosson. The two intelligence officers, Steve Laing and Chip Barber, were there because it was they who had brought the target and knew the background to its revelation. The two analysts, Beatty and Peck, were required to explain their interpretation of the pictures of the area. And there were three staff officers, two American and one British, who would note what had to be done and ensure that it was.

  Colonel Beatty opened with what was to become the leitmotif of the conference.

  “We have a problem here,” he said.

  “Then explain it,” said the general.

  “Sir, the information provided gives us a grid reference. Twelve figures, six of longitude and six of latitude. But it is not a SATNAV reference, pinning the area down to a few square yards. We are talking about one square kilometer. To be on the safe side, we enlarged the area to one square mile.”

  “So?”

  “And there it is.”

  Colonel Beatty gestured to the wall. Almost the entire space was covered by a blown-up photograph, high-definition, computer-enhanced, and covering six feet by six. Everyone stared at it.

  “I don’t see anything,” said the general. “Just mountains.”

  “That, sir, is the problem. It isn’t there.”

  The attention switched to the spooks. It was, after all, their intelligence.

  “What,” said the general slowly, “is supposed to be there?”

  “A gun,” said Laing.

  “A gun?”

  “The so-called Babylon gun.”

  “I thought you guys had intercepted all of them at the manufacturing stage.”

  “So did we. Apparently one got through.”

  “We’ve been through this before. It’s supposed to be a rocket, or a secret fight-bomber base. No gun can fire a payload that big.”

  “This one can, sir. I’ve checked with London. A barrel over one hundred and eighty meters long, a bore of one meter. A payload of over half a ton. A range of up to a thousand kilometers, according to the propellant used.”

  “And the range from here to the Triangle?”

  “Four hundred and seventy miles, or 750 kilometers. General, can your fighters intercept a shell?”

  “No.”

  “Patriot missiles?”

  “Possibly, if they’re in the right place at the right time and can spot it in time. Probably not.”

  “The point is,” interjected Colonel Beatty, “gun or missile, it’s not there.”

  “Buried underground, like the Al Qubai assembly factory?” suggested Barber.

  “That was disguised with a car junkyard on top,” said Squadron Leader Peck. “Here there’s nothing.

  No road, no tracks, no power lines, no defenses, no helipad, no razor wire, no guard barracks—just a wilderness of hills and low mountains with valleys between.”

  “Supposing,” said Laing defensively, “they used the same trick as at Tarmiya—putting the defense perimeter so far out, it was off the frame?”

  “We tried that,” said Beatty. “We looked fifty miles out in all directions. Nothing—no defenses.”

  “Just a pure deception operation?” proposed Barber.

  “No way. The Iraqis always defend their prize assets, even from their own people. Look—see here.”

  Colonel Beatty advanced to the picture and pointed out a group of huts.

  “A peasant village, right next door. Woodsmoke, goat pens, goats here out foraging in the valley. There are two others off the frame.”

  “Maybe they hollowed out the whole mountain,” said Laing. “You did, at Cheyenne Mountain.”

  “That’s a series of caverns, tunnels, a warren of rooms behind reinforced doors,” said Beatty. “You’re talking about a barrel 180 meters long. Try to get that inside a mountain, you’d bring the whole damn thing down on top. Look, gentlemen, I can see the breech, the magazine, all the living quarters being underground, but a chunk of that barrel has to stick out somewhere. It doesn’t.”

  They all stared at the picture again. Within the square were three hills and a portion of a fourth. The largest of the three was unmarked by any blastproof doors or access road.

  “If it’s in there somewhere,” proposed Peck, “why not saturate-bomb the square mile? That would bring down any mountain on top of the weapon.”

  “Good idea,” said Beatty. “General, we could use the Buffs. Paste the whole square mile.”

  “May I make a suggestion?” asked Barber.

  “Please do,” said General Glosson.

  “If I were Saddam Hussein, with his paranoia, and I had one single weapon of this value, I’d have a man in command I could trust. And I’d give him orders that if ever the Fortress came under bombing attack, he was to fire. In short, if the first couple of bombs fell wide—and a square mile is quite a big area—the rest might be a fraction of a second too late.”

  General Glosson leaned forward.

  “What is your precise point, Mr. Barber?”

  “General, if the Fist of God is inside these hills, it is hidden by a deception operation of extreme skill. The only way to be a hundred percent certain of destroying it is by a similar operation. A single plane, coming out of nowhere, delivering one attack, and hitting the target on the button the first and only time.”

  “I don’t know how many times I have to say this,” said the exasperated Colonel Beatty, “but we don’t know where the button is—precisely.”

  “I think my colleague is talking about target-marking,” said Laing.

  “But that means another airplane,” objected Peck. “Like the Buccaneers marking for the Tornados.

  Even the target-marker must see the target first.”

  “It worked with the Scuds,” said Laing.

  “Sure, the SAS men marked the missile launchers, and we blew them away. But they were right there on t
he ground, a thousand yards from the missiles with binoculars,” said Peck.

  “Precisely.”

  There was silence for several seconds.

  “You are talking,” said General Glosson, “of putting men into the mountains to give us a ten-square-yard target.”

  The debate went on for two more hours. But it always came back to Laing’s argument.

  First find it, then mark it, then, destroy it—and all without the Iraqis noticing until it was too late.

  At midnight a corporal of the Royal Air Force went to the Hyatt Hotel. He could get no reply from the sitting-room door, so the night manager let him in. He went into the bedroom and shook by the shoulder the man sleeping in a terrycloth robe on top of the bed.

  “Sir, wake up, sir. You’re wanted across the road, Major.”

  Chapter 22

  “It’s there,” said Mike Martin two hours later.

  “Where?” asked Colonel Beatty with genuine curiosity.

  “In there somewhere.”

  In the conference room down the corridor from the Black Hole, Martin was leaning over the table studying a photograph of a larger section of the Jebal al Hamreen range. It showed a square five miles by five miles. He pointed with his forefinger.

  “The villages, the three villages—here, here, and here.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re phony. They’re beautifully done, they’re perfect replicas of the villages of mountain peasants, but they’re full of guards.”

  Colonel Beatty stared at the three villages. One was in a valley only half a mile from the middle of the three mountains at the center of the frame. The other two occupied terraces on the mountain slopes farther out.

  None was big enough to support a mosque; indeed, they were little more than hamlets. Each had its main and central barn for the storage of winter hay and feed, and smaller barns for the sheep and goats.

  A dozen humble shacks made up the rest of the settlements, mud-brick dwellings with thatch or tin roofs of the kind that can be seen anywhere in the mountains of the Middle East. In summer there might be small patches of tilled crops nearby, but not in winter.