The Fist of God (70 page)

Colonel Badri asked the pharmacist to take his mother home to Qadisiyah; he would join them later. When they had gone, he walked over to the car.

The voice said: “Please join me, Colonel. We need to talk.” He opened the car door and peered inside. The sole occupant had moved to the far side to make space. Badri thought he knew the face, but vaguely. He had seen it somewhere. He climbed in and closed the door. The man in the dark gray suit pressed a button, and the window rose, shutting out the sounds from outside.

“You have just buried your father.”

“Yes.” Who was this man? Why could he not place the face?

“It was foul, what was done to him. If I had learned in time, I might have stopped it. I learned too late.”

Osman Badri felt something like a punch in the stomach. He realized to whom he was talking—a man who had been pointed out to him at a military reception two years earlier. “I am going to say something to you, Colonel, that, if you were to report it, would cause me to die more terribly than your father.”

There was only one such thing, thought Badri. Treason.

“Once,” said the man quietly, “I loved the Rais.”

The Fist of God

“So did I,” said Badri.

“But things change. He has gone mad. In his madness he piles cruelty upon cruelty. He must be stopped. You know about the Qa’ala, of course.”

Badri was surprised again, this time by the sudden change of subject.

“Of course. I built it.”

“Exactly. Do you know what now resides within it?”

“No.”

The senior officer told him.

“He cannot be serious,” said Badri.

“He is completely serious. He intends to use it against the Americans.

That may not be our concern. But do you know what America will do in return? It will reply in kind. Not a brick here will stand on brick, not a stone on stone. The Rais alone will survive. Do you want to be part of this?”

Colonel Badri thought of the body in the cemetery, over which the sextons were even then still heaping the dry earth.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Tell me about Qa’ala.”

“Why?”

“The Americans will destroy it.”

“You can get this information to them?”

“Trust me, there are ways. The Qa’ala ...”

So Colonel Osman Badri, the young engineer who had once wanted to design fine buildings to last for centuries, as his ancestors had done, told the man called Jericho.

“Grid reference.”

Badri gave him that too.

“Go back to your post, Colonel. You will be safe.”

The Fist of God

Colonel Badri left the car and walked away. His stomach was heaving, turning and turning. Within a hundred yards he began to ask himself, over and again: What have I done? Suddenly, he knew he had to talk to his brother, that older brother who had always had the cooler head, the wiser counsel.

The man the Mossad team called the spotter arrived back in Vienna that Monday, summoned from Tel Aviv. Once again he was a prestigious lawyer from New York, with all the necessary identifying paperwork to prove it.

Even though the real lawyer was no longer on vacation, the chances that Gemütlich, who hated telephones and fax machines, would telephone New York to check were regarded as minimal. It was a risk the Mossad was prepared to take.

Once again the spotter installed himself at the Sheraton and wrote a personal letter to Herr Gemütlich. He again apologized for his unannounced arrival in the Austrian capital but explained he was accompanied by his firm’s accountant, and that the pair of them wished to make a first substantial deposit on behalf of their client.

The letter was delivered by hand in the late afternoon, and the following morning Gemütlich’s reply arrived at the hotel, offering a meeting at ten in the morning.

The spotter was indeed accompanied. The man with him was known simply as the cracksman, for that was his speciality.

If the Mossad possesses at its Tel Aviv headquarters a virtually unrivaled collection of dummy companies, false passports, letterhead stationery, and all the other paraphernalia for deception, pride of place must still go to its safecrackers and locksmiths. The Mossad’s ability The Fist of God

to break into locked places has its own niche in the covert world. At the science of burglary, the Mossad has long been regarded simply as the best. Had a neviot team been in charge at the Watergate, no one would ever have known.

So high is the reputation of Israeli lock-pickers that when British manufacturers sent a new product to the SIS for their comments, Century House would pass it on to Tel Aviv. The Mossad, devious to a fault, would study it, find how to pick it, then return it to London as

“impregnable.” The SIS found out about this.

The next time a British lock company came up with a particularly brilliant new lock, Century House asked them to take it back, keep it, but provide a slightly easier one for analysis. It was the easier one that was sent to Tel Aviv. There it was studied and finally picked, then returned to London as “unbreakable.” But it was the original lock that the SIS advised the manufacturer to market.

This led to an embarrassing incident a year later, when a Mossad locksmith spent three sweaty and infuriating hours working at such a lock in the corridor of an office building in a European capital before emerging livid with rage. Since then, the British have tested their own locks and left the Mossad to work it out for themselves.

The lock-picker brought from Tel Aviv was not the best in Israel but the second best. There was a reason for this: He had something the best lock-pick did not have.

During the night the young man underwent a six-hour briefing from Gidi Barzilai on the subject of the eighteenth-century work of the German-French cabinetmaker Riesener, and a full description by the spotter of the internal layout of the Winkler building. The yarid, surveillance team completed his education with a rundown of the movements of the nightwatch, as observed by the times and places of The Fist of God

lights going on and off inside the bank during the night.

That same Monday, Mike Martin waited until five in the afternoon before he wheeled his bone-shaker bicycle across the graveled yard to the rear gate of the Kulikov garden, opened the gate, and let himself out.

He mounted and began to ride down the road in the direction of the nearest ferry crossing of the river, at the place where the Jumhuriya Bridge used to be before the Tornados offered it their personal attention.

He turned the corner, out of sight of the villa, and saw the first parked car. Then the second, farther on. When the two men emerged from the second car and took up position in the center of the road, his stomach began to tighten. He risked a glance behind him; two men from the other car had blocked any retreat. Knowing it was all over, he pedaled on. There was nothing else to do. One of the men ahead of him pointed to the side of the road.

“Hey you!” he shouted. “Over here!”

He came to a stop under the trees by the side of the road. Three more men emerged, soldiers. Their guns pointed straight at him. Slowly he raised his hands.

Chapter 21

That afternoon in Riyadh, the British and American ambassadors met, apparently informally, for the purpose of indulging in the peculiarly The Fist of God

English habit of taking tea and cakes.

Also present on the lawn of the British embassy were Chip Barber, supposedly on the U.S. embassy staff, and Steve Laing, who would tell any casual inquirer that he was with his country’s Cultural Section. A third guest, in a rare break from his duties belowground, was General Norman Schwarzkopf.

Within a short time, all five men found themselves together in a corner of the lawn, nursing their cups of tea. It made life easier when everyone knew what everyone else really did for a living.

Among all the guests, the sole topic of talk was the imminent war, but these five men had information denied to all the rest. One piece of information was the news of the details of the peace plan presented that day by Tariq Aziz to Saddam Hussein, the plan brought back from Moscow and the talks with Mikhail Gorbachev. It was a subject of worry for each of the five guests, but for different reasons.

General Schwarzkopf had already that day headed off a suggestion out of Washington that he might attack earlier than planned. The Soviet peace plan called for a declared cease-fire, and an Iraqi pullout from Kuwait on the following day.

Washington knew these details not from Baghdad but from Moscow.

The immediate reply from the White House was that the plan had merits but failed to address key issues. It made no mention of Iraq’s annulment forever of its claim on Kuwait; it did not bear in mind the unimaginable damage done to Kuwait—the five hundred oil fires, the millions of tons of crude oil gushing into the Gulf to poison its waters, the two hundred executed Kuwaitis, the sacking of Kuwait City.

“Colin Powell tells me,” said the general, “that the State Department is pushing for an even harder line. They want to demand unconditional surrender.”

The Fist of God

“So they do, to be sure,” murmured the American envoy.

“So I told ’em,” said the general, “I told ’em, you need an Arabist to look at this.”

“Indeed,” replied the British ambassador, “and why should that be?”

Both the ambassadors were consummate diplomats who had worked for years in the Middle East. Both
were
Arabists.

“Well,” said the Commander-in-Chief, “that kind of ultimatum does not work with Arabs. They’ll die first.”

There was silence in the group. The ambassadors searched the general’s guileless face for a hint of irony.

The two intelligence officers stayed quiet, but both men had the same thought in their minds: That is precisely the point, my dear general.

“You have come from the house of the Russian.”

It was a statement, not a question. The Counterintelligence man was in plain clothes but clearly an officer.

“Yes,
bey
.”

“Papers.”

Martin rummaged through the pockets of his
dish-dash
and produced his ID card and the soiled and crumpled letter originally issued to him by First Secretary Kulikov. The officer studied the card, glanced up to compare the faces, and looked at the letter.

The Israeli forgers had done their work well. The simple, stubbled face of Mahmoud Al-Khouri stared through the grubby plastic.

“Search him,” said the officer.

The other plainclothesman ran his hands over the body under the
dish-dash
, then shook his head. No weapons.

“Pockets.”

The Fist of God

The pockets revealed some dinar notes, some coins, a penknife, different colored pieces of chalk, and a plastic bag. The officer held up the last piece.

“What is this?”

“The infidel threw it away. I use it for my tobacco.”

“There is no tobacco in it.”

“No,
bey,
I have run out. I was hoping to buy some in the market.”

“And don’t call me
bey
. That went out with the Turks. Where do you come from, anyway?”

Martin described the small village far in the north. “It is well known thereabouts for its melons,” he added helpfully.

“Be quiet about your thrice-damned melons!” snapped the officer, who had the impression his soldiers were trying not to smile.

A large limousine cruised into the far end of the street and stopped, two hundred yards away.

The junior officer nudged his superior and nodded. The senior man turned, looked, and told Martin, “Wait here.”

He walked back to the large car and stooped to address someone through the rear window.

“Who have you got?” asked Hassan Rahmani.

“Gardener-handyman, sir. Works there. Does the roses and the gravel, shops for the cook.”

“Smart?”

“No, sir, practically simpleminded. A peasant from up-country, comes from some melon patch in the north.”

Rahmani thought it over. If he detained the fool, the Russians would wonder why their man had not come back. That would alert them. He hoped that if the Russian peace initiative failed, he would get his permission to raid the place. If he let the man complete his errands and The Fist of God

return, he might alert his Soviet employers. In Rahmani’s experience there was one language every poor Iraqi spoke and spoke well. He produced a wallet and peeled out a hundred dinars.

“Give him this. Tell him to complete his shopping and return. Then he is to keep his eyes open for someone with a big, silver umbrella. If he keeps silent about us and reports tomorrow on what he has seen, he will be well rewarded. If he tells the Russians, I will hand him over to the AMAM.”

“Yes, Brigadier.”

The officer took the money, walked back, and instructed the gardener as to what he had to do. The man looked puzzled.

“An umbrella,
sayidi
?”

“Yes, a big silver one, or maybe black, pointing at the sky. Have you ever seen one?”

“No,
sayidi
,” said the man sadly. “Whenever it rains they all run inside.”

“By Allah the Great,” murmured the officer, “it’s not for the rain, oaf!

It’s for sending messages.”

“An umbrella that sends messages,” repeated the gardener slowly, “I will look for one,
sayidi
.”

“Get on your way,” said the officer in despair. “And stay silent about what you have seen here.”

Martin pedaled down the road, past the limousine. As he approached, Rahmani lowered his head into the rear seat. No need to let the peasant see the head of Counterintelligence for the Republic of Iraq.

Martin found the chalk mark at seven and recovered the message at nine. He read it by the light from the window of a café—not electric light, for there was none anymore, but a gasoline lamp. When he saw the text, he let out a low whistle, folded the paper small, and stuffed it The Fist of God

inside his underpants.

There was no question of going back to the villa. The transmitter was blown, and a further message would spell disaster. He contemplated the bus station, but there were Army and AMAM patrols all over it, looking for deserters.