Obsession (Year of Fire) (89 page)

“Juana, you know how fond I am of you. But this isn’t a good time. It would be better if you left.”

“Yes, I know, Eliah. It’s not a good time, but since we’re leaving tomorrow morning for the Congo, I had to come to talk to you now. I won’t have another chance.”

“I don’t know what you wanted to talk about. You friend made it very clear to me. She used me in a way…”

“No, Eliah!” Juana put her hand up to shut him up. “Listen to me, please. Give me a moment. I beg you in the name of our friendship.”

Al-Saud nodded and perched on one of the weight-lifting machines. He looked defeated and exhausted.

“I know very well the string of nonsense Mat just said to you to
keep you away. Because you have to know that all she was trying to do was keep you away forever. Do you know why? Because she doesn’t want to tie you to her.”

“Tie me to her? What does that mean? I
want
to be tied to her. Forever.”

“But she can’t give you children and so she doesn’t want to bind you to her.”

A spark of hope appeared in Al-Saud’s face, but was extinguished immediately.

“I don’t know if I believe you, Juana,” he said, throwing back his head and shaking it. “Why would a person act like that, throwing her happiness away, sacrificing herself like that? It doesn’t seem believable to me.”

“Oh, Eliah. That’s Mat. After all these months with her, you don’t think she’s capable of sacrificing herself for you? She says you want to have children.”

“I’m sorry, Juana, but she seemed very firm when she told me that she had always known she was going to break up with me when she left for the Congo. Her career comes first. My bad behavior with women also played an important part in her decision, according to what she told me.”

“I’m not going to deny that the thing with Celia and the article in
Paris Match
hit her hard, but, deep down, she always knew this would end because of her infertility. If we look at it coldly, there’s also an element of pride in all this. And Mat has a lot of pride. She gets it from her father. The Martínez Olazábals could win prizes for their pride. When they extirpated her reproductive organs, her great dream, of being a wife and a mother, went down the drain. From that moment on, she became obsessed with the idea of getting a medical degree and dedicating herself to treating the weakest people in the world. Her psychiatrist told her that, since she had been left without a role in life, mother and wife, she invented this other one, and she waves it around like a banner so that everyone will know that she may not be able to give life, but she can still save them. In short, stud, she wants to show that though she’ll never bring a child into the world, she is valuable and has the right to exist.”

Juana’s last words touched his heart. His Matilde didn’t need to look for the meaning of life. Her mere existence was the meaning, because she made the world a better place. He would have liked to have this conversation with her instead of Juana. He would have liked to console her and demonstrate to her that she was the meaning of
his
life.

“My God, Juana,” he lamented. “I’m so confused. Why did she agree to marry Blahetter? She couldn’t give him children either.”

“Ugh, that idiot, God rest his soul. Don’t compare that situation with this one. Matilde didn’t love him. Plus, she knew that Roy was egocentric and only thought about himself and the success of his career. He didn’t give a damn about having children. Plus, don’t forget the pressure Mat’s father put on her to agree to marry him. Don Aldo had a very strong influence on Mat. She adores him, even though she knows he’s the biggest fool in the world.”

Al-Saud rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. A few seconds passed in silence. Juana looked at her watch. She had to go; she still hadn’t finished packing.

“Stud, I’m leaving. It’s late. I just wanted you to know the truth behind this whole situation.”

Al-Saud stood up and walked toward Juana. He put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her.

“Thank you. You’ve been an excellent friend. To Matilde as well.”

“Hey, that’s me,” she said in self-mockery, “wonder woman.”

“Do I have any hope, Juana?”

“I think so. That’s why I’m here, at the risk of getting kicked in the head when I came through that door.” Al-Saud laughed in spite of his despondent mood. “It won’t be easy to get her back, stud. The truth is that you fucked up with the Celia thing, especially since she was the one who revealed Matilde’s infertility to you. Finding out what she did from the
Paris Match
article did its part as well. But she loves you so much it makes her crazy. I’m sure that she could forgive you for everything she’s upset about now. The question we should ask here is: Will Matilde forgive herself for the fact that she’s an infertile woman and let herself be happy with the man who loves her? That’ll be the hardest part, stud.”

Al-Saud looked at Juana as she went down the stairs and, as he admired her unbreakable spirit, he debated whether or not to believe her theory.

Matilde smiled sadly out of sight of Juana or Ezequiel. The smile had something sardonic in it as well, but it was just for her. Three months
before, when she was boarding the flight in Ezeiza that would bring her to Paris, she had imagined that life was finally giving her the opportunity she had always yearned for: to go to Africa to treat the weak and neglected. At that point, she felt happy and euphoric. Right now, as she crossed the crowded lobby of Charles de Gaulle Airport and went up to the check-in counter for the Belgian airline Sabena, which was taking them to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, life was weighing down on her, as if it were a dark, cold, damp tunnel with no light at the end. She didn’t want to walk down it without Eliah. He had been the true light of her life.

Diana and Markov were watching her closely for the last time. She would miss them, she said to herself. Ezequiel and Juana were entertaining themselves with newspapers and magazines at a kiosk. Matilde watched them chatting and laughing like someone watching the rain fall.

“
Regarde-moi
, Matilde.” The familiar voice seemed to have come from inside her. At the same time, she felt a hand squeeze her shoulder. She spun around quickly. She was alone, there was no one behind her. She looked a little farther and saw him. He was there, a few feet away, staring at her obstinately. Eliah Al-Saud, in the flesh. As usual she felt the powerful energy that radiated out from him enveloping her and subjugating her, but it disappeared as if by magic when she noticed the unusual way his green eyes were shining. They were tears, which spilled over and fell down his unshaven cheeks.

“
Bonjour
, Matilde! Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“
Bonjour
, Auguste,” she murmured.

“Are you okay?” Vanderhoeven looked worried.

“Yes, yes, fine. Excuse me,” she said, and moved toward Al-Saud, but he wasn’t there anymore. She looked for him desperately. The crowd confused her. She ran toward the door, scanned the cars; she couldn’t make out the Aston Martin. Al-Saud had disappeared.

CHAPTER 24

Gérard Moses was conscious of the fact that this was a privilege bestowed on very few people. He looked out of the little window of the Panther AS 565 helicopter and made out, in the midst of the unfathomable darkness of the mountains in the north of Iraq, the light of the palace where the sayid rais would receive him for dinner. The lavish dwelling in the village of Sarseng was the only place where Saddam Hussein felt safe; for that reason, being invited to enter the heart of this fortress constituted an unusual honor that Gérard had earned by offering the rais what he valued most: loyalty. Saddam preferred to surround himself with ministers and advisers who might not have been very intelligent but were faithful, submissive and obsequious. Gérard Moses was something unusual: a collaborator with an uncommonly high IQ and unshakable loyalty. He had been demonstrating both qualities for a few years and had convinced Hussein that only one person had a stronger aversion to the Zionists and Israelis than the sayid rais himself did: Gérard Moses. They were united by more than hatred, by a common objective: the destruction of Israel.

It took him almost half an hour to get through the security checks implemented by the soldiers of the Iraqi Special Security Organization (
Amn al Khass
in Arabic), under the command of Kusay Hussein, the second son of the rais. In the dark of the night, it was difficult to see the men who were guarding the palace inside the perimeter of electrified fence. But Gérard knew that they were there; he could hear the barking of the Dobermans and rottweilers Saddam liked so much. He looked up and made out the silhouettes of the Crotale antiaircraft missiles stationed on the roof. Of course, the palace was a fortress, with bunkers where
a thousand people could take refuge, stocked with enough water and supplies to withstand months underground. They said, though Gérard couldn’t confirm it, that those bunkers led to the mouths of tunnels linked to a subterranean aerial base a few miles to the east, where they ran a laboratory of chemical and biological weapons that the allied forces hadn’t detected during the Gulf War because they had made it blend into the landscape using the Russian
maskirovka
technique. The fortress was missing the roar of the engines of the fighter planes that, before the conflict, had flown over it to protect the airspace. Fauzi Dahlan had said that since 1991, the brand-new Iraqi air force had been reduced to a pile of scraps, not to mention the pilots that deserted, taking Migs and Mirages with them to Iran and Saudi Arabia.

One of the two oak doors swung open, and Gérard went into the dining room, which he had been to before. The familiarity of the place and the faces observing him from different points of the room gave him a sense of belonging that he hadn’t felt often in his life. Fauzi Dahlan approached him with a smile.

“Professor Orville Wright!” he exclaimed. “Welcome!”

The majority of those present knew Gérard’s real name; nonetheless, they approved of his custom of adopting the name of one of the inventors of the airplane in academic spheres, given his hatred for the last name
Moses
, which sounded so Jewish and was so tied up with the Zionist cause.

Saddam Hussein wasn’t religious, so he allowed the consumption of alcohol, and a servant immediately handed Gérard a glass of champagne, which he sipped as he strolled around the room, greeting the other guests. He made sure to locate the men closest to Saddam, the most important in his regime after him. He greeted the two brothers, Uday and Kusay. They said that the elder was a sadistic psychopath who took pleasure in hurting people and animals. In 1988, he had assassinated the valet and tester of his father’s food with an electric knife because the servant had introduced Saddam to a young girl who had ended up becoming his lover. Uday’s latest obsession, turning the national soccer team into world champions, kept him busy in his offices at the Olympic headquarters in Baghdad. There were rumors that he locked the players up when they lost and whipped them with cables. Gérard noted that, as usual, Uday
had had too much to drink, was speaking too loudly and laughing at silly things. Kusay, on the other hand, had a more sober and sensitive temperament, didn’t speak much and passed his gaze over the guests as if he was trying to uncover their murky secrets. Though he was the second son, it was said that his father trusted him more than his unstable eldest son and was planning to name him his successor.

Fauzi Dahlan introduced him to the new minister of military industry, Khidir Al-Saadi, a weapons-technology expert, whose rise to the cabinet of ministers was due to the plan devised by Gérard Moses in 1995 as part of the strategy to get the attentive eyes of the UN off of Iraq so that they could resume the production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons without the burden of bothersome inspections. The execution of the plan heavily featured one man, Hussein Kamel, minister of military industry at the time, and son-in-law of the rais. Saddam Hussein had summoned him one morning to his palace in Baghdad and said, “Hussein, my son, I’m going to ask you for a sacrifice and I want you to do it in the name of your love for your fatherland.”

“Anything you say, Sayid Rais.”

“I need you to desert, to betray me.”

“Never! I would never betray you, Sayid Rais! You know that! My loyalty is absolute.”

“I know, my son. That’s why I’m asking you this favor. I need you to desert and ask for asylum from King Hussein of Jordan. Then you’ll be approached by the different intelligence agencies from the West and all those UN commissions they created in 1991 to annoy me. You’re in charge of providing the weapons for my army, so they’ll ask you about the weapons of mass destruction. You’ll tell them that you ordered all of them destroyed, that there’s not one left in the territory. After a few months, I’ll extend my mercy toward you and my daughter, I’ll tell you that all is forgiven and that you can return home.”