The Fist Of God Part 14

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 s.e.xtons 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."

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 Gemutlich, 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 Gemutlich. 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 Gemutlich'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 pa.s.sports, letterhead stationery, and all the other paraphernalia for deception, pride of place must still go to its safecrackers and locksmiths. The Mossad's ability 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 pa.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysis. 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 embarra.s.sing 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 night.w.a.tch, as observed by the times and places of 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 amba.s.sadors met, apparently informally, for the purpose of indulging in the peculiarly English habit of taking tea and cakes. Also present on the lawn of the British emba.s.sy were Chip Barber, supposedly on the U.S. emba.s.sy 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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. Was.h.i.+ngton 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 gus.h.i.+ng 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 pus.h.i.+ng for an even harder line. They want to demand unconditional surrender."

"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 amba.s.sador, "and why should that be?"Both the amba.s.sadors 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 amba.s.sadors 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 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-d.a.m.ned 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 Ha.s.san 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 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 cafe-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 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. Instead, he went to the fruit market at Kasra and found a truck driver heading west. The man was only going a few miles beyond Habbaniyah, and twenty dinars persuaded him to take a pa.s.senger. Many trucks preferred to drive by night, believing that the Sons of Dogs up there in their airplanes could not see them in the dark, unaware that by either night or day, battered fruit trucks were not General Chuck Horner's top priority. So they drove through the night, by headlights generating at least one candlepower, and at dawn Martin found himself deposited on the highway just west of Lake Habbaniyah, where the driver turned off for the rich farms of the Upper Euphrates Valley. They had been stopped twice by patrols, but on each occasion Martin had produced his papers and the Russian letter, explaining that he had worked as gardener for the infidel, but they were going home and had dismissed him. He whined about the way they had treated him until the impatient soldiers told him to be quiet and get on his way.

That night, Osman Badri was not far from Mike Martin, heading in the same direction but ahead of him. His destination was the fighter base where his elder brother, Abdelkarim, was the squadron commander. During the 1980s a Belgian construction company called Sixco had been contracted to build eight superprotected air bases to house the cream of Iraq's best fighters.

The key to them was that almost everything was buried underground-barracks, hangars, fuel stores, ammunition magazines, workshops, briefing rooms, crew quarters, and the big diesel generators to power the bases. The only things visible aboveground were the actual runways, three thousand meters long. But as these appeared to have no buildings or hangars a.s.sociated with them, the Allies thought they were barebones airfields, as Al Kharz in Saudi Arabia had been before the Americans moved in. A closer inspection on the ground would have revealed one-meterthick concrete blast doors set into downward-leading ramps at the ends of the runways. Each base was in a square five kilometers by five, the perimeter surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. But like Tarmiya, the Sixco bases appeared inactive and were left alone. To operate out of them, the pilots would be briefed underground, get into their c.o.c.kpits, and start their engines there. Only when they were fully run-up, with blast walls protecting the rest of the base from their jet exhaust and diverting the gases upward to mingle with the hot desert air outside, would the doors to the ramps be opened. The fighters could race up the ramps, emerge at full power, afterburners on, scream down the runway, and be airborne in seconds. Even when the AWACS spotted them, they appeared to have come from nowhere and were a.s.sumed to be on low-level missions originating somewhere else. Colonel Abdelkarim Badri was stationed at one of these Sixco bases, known only as KM 160 because it was off the Baghdad-Ar-Rutba road, 160 kilometers west of Baghdad. His younger brother presented himself at the guard post in the wire just after sundown. Because of his rank, a phone call was at once made from the guard hut to the squadron commander's private quarters, and soon a jeep appeared, trundling across the empty desert, apparently having come from nowhere. A young Air Force lieutenant escorted the visitor into the base, the jeep rolling down another hidden but small ramp into the belowground complex, where the jeep was parked. The lieutenant led the way down long concrete corridors, past caverns where mechanics worked on MiG 29s. The air was clean and filtered, and everywhere was the hum of generators. Eventually they entered the senior officers' area, and the lieutenant knocked at a door. At a command from inside, he showed Osman Badri into the CO's apartment. Abdelkarim rose, and the brothers embraced. The older man was thirty-seven, also a colonel and darkly handsome, with a slim moustache. He was unmarried but never lacked for female attention. His looks, his sardonic manner, his das.h.i.+ng uniform, and his pilot's wings ensured it. Nor was his appearance a sham; Air Force generals admitted he was the best fighter pilot in the country, and the Russians, who had trained him on the ace of the Soviet fighter fleet, the MiG 29 Fulcrum supersonic fighter, agreed with that. "Well, my brother, what brings you out here?" Abdelkarim asked. Osman, when he had sat down and gotten coffee from a freshly perked brew, had had time to study his older sibling. There were lines of strain around the mouth that had not been there before, and weariness in the eyes. Abdelkarim was neither a fool nor a coward. He had flown eight missions against the Americans and the British. He had returned from them all-just. He had seen his best colleagues shot down or blown apart by Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles, and he had dodged four himself. The odds, he had recognized after his first attempt to intercept the American strike bombers, were impossible. On his own side, he had neither information nor guidance as to where the enemy was, how many, of what type, at what height, or on which heading. The Iraqi radars were down, the control and command centers were in pieces, and the pilots were simply on their own. Worse, the Americans with their AWACS could pick up the Iraqi warplanes before they had reached a thousand feet, telling their own pilots where to go and what to do to secure the best attack position. For the Iraqis, Abdelkarim Badri knew, every combat mission was a suicide quest. Of all this, he said nothing, forcing a smile and a request for his brother's news. That news killed the smile. Osman related the events of the past sixty hours: the arrival of the AMAM troops at their parents' house at dawn, the search, the discovery in the garden, the beating of their mother and Talat, and the arrest of their father. He told how he had been summoned when the neighboring pharmacist finally got a message to him, and how he had driven home to find their father's body on the dining-room table. Abdelkarim's mouth tightened to an angry line when Osman revealed what he had discovered when he cut open the body bag, and the way their father had been buried that morning. The older man leaned forward sharply when Osman told how he had been intercepted as he left the cemetery, and of the conversation that had taken place. "You told him all that?" he asked, when his brother had finished. "Yes." "Is it true, all true? You really built this Fortress, this Qa'ala?"

"Yes."

"And you told him where it is, so that he can tell the Americans?"

"Yes. Did I do wrong?"

Abdelkarim thought for some while.

"How many men, in all Iraq, know about all this, my brother?"

"Six," said Osman.

"Name them."

"The Rais himself; Hussein Kamil, who provided the finance and the manpower; Amer Saadi, who provided the technology. Then General Ridha, who supplied the artillerymen, and General Musuli of the Engineers-he proposed me for the job. And me, I built it."

"The helicopter pilots who bring in the visitors?"

"They have to know the directions in order to navigate, but not what is inside. And they are kept quarantined in a base somewhere, I don't know where."

"Visitors-how many could know?"

"None. They are blindfolded before takeoff and until they have arrived."

"If the Americans destroy this Qubth-ut-Allah, who do you think the AMAM will suspect? The Rais, the ministers, the generals-or you?"

Osman put his head in his hands.

"What have I done?" he moaned.

"I'm afraid, little brother, that you have destroyed us all."

Both men knew the rules. For treason, the Rais does not demand a single sacrifice but the extirpation of three generations: father and uncles, so there will be no more of the tainted seed, brothers for the same reason, and sons and nephews, so that none may grow up to carry on the vendetta against him. Osman Badri began quietly to weep.

Abdelkarim rose, pulled Osman to his feet, and embraced him.

"You did right, brother. You did the right thing. Now we must see how to get out of here."

He checked his watch: eight o'clock.

"There are no telephone lines for the public from here to Baghdad," he said. "Only underground lines to the Defense people in their various bunkers. But this message is not for them. How long would it take you to drive to our mother's house?"

"Three, maybe four hours," said Osman.

"You have eight, to get there and back. Tell our mother to pack all she values into our father's car. She can drive it-not well, but enough.

She should take Talat and go to Talat's village. She should seek shelter with his tribe until one of us contacts her. Understood?"

"Yes. I can be back by dawn. Why?"

"Before dawn. Tomorrow I am leading a flight of MiGs across to Iran.

Others have gone before. It is a crazy scheme by the Rais to save his best fighter planes. Nonsense, of course, but it may save our lives. You will come with me."

"I thought the MiG 29 was a single-seater?"

"I have one trainer version with two seats. The UB model. You will be dressed as an Air Force officer. With luck, we can get away with it. Go now."

Mike Martin was walking west that night along the Ar-Rutba road when the car of Osman Badri flashed past him, heading toward Baghdad. Neither took any notice of the other. Martin's destination was the next river crossing, fifteen miles ahead. There, with the bridge down, trucks would have to wait for the ferry, and he would have a better chance of paying another driver to take him farther west.

In the small hours of the morning he found exactly such a truck, but it could take him only to a point just beyond Muhammadi. There he began to wait again. At three o'clock the car of Colonel Badri sped back again. He did not hail it, and it did not stop. The driver was clearly in a hurry. Just before dawn a third truck came along, pulled out of a side road onto the main highway, and paused to take him aboard. Again he paid the driver from his dwindling stock of dinar notes, grateful to whoever had thought to give him the wad of money back in Mansour. By dawn, he a.s.sumed, the Kulikov household would complain that they had lost their gardener. A search of his shack would reveal the writing pad beneath the mattress-an odd possession for an illiterate-and a further search would reveal the transmitter beneath the tiles. By midday, the hunt would be well up, starting in Baghdad but spreading across the country. By nightfall, he needed to be far away in the desert, heading for the border. The truck in which he rode was beyond KM 160 when the flight of MiG 29s took off. Osman Badri was terrified, being one of those people with a deep loathing of flying. In the underground caverns that made up the base, he had stood to one side as his brother briefed the four young pilots who would form the rest of the flight. Most of Abdelkarim's contemporaries were dead; these were youngsters, more than a decade his junior, not long out of training school. They listened with rapt attention to their squadron commander and nodded their a.s.sent. Inside the MiG, even with the canopy closed, Osman thought he had never heard a roar like it as, in the enclosed s.p.a.ce, the two RD 33 Soviet turbofans ran up to maximum dry power. Crouching in the rear c.o.c.kpit behind his brother, Osman saw the great blast doors open on their hydraulic pistons and a square of pale blue sky appear at the end of the cavern. The noise increased as the pilot ran his throttle through the gate and into afterburn, and the twin-finned Soviet interceptor shuddered against her brakes. When the brakes came off, Osman thought he had been kicked in the small of the back by a mule. The MiG leaped forward, the concrete walls flashed past, and the jet took the ramp and emerged into the dawn light. Osman shut his eyes and prayed. The rumbling of the wheels ceased, he seemed to be drifting, and he opened his eyes. They were airborne, the lead MiG circling low over KM 160 as the other four jets screamed out of the tunnel below. Then the doors closed, and the air base ceased to exist. All around him, because the UB version is a trainer, were dials and clocks, b.u.t.tons, switches, screens, k.n.o.bs, and levers. Between his legs was a duplicate control column. His brother had told him to leave everything alone, which he was glad to do. At one thousand feet the flight of five MiGs formed into a staggered line, the four youngsters behind the squadron commander. His brother set course just south of due east, keeping low, hoping to avoid detection and to cross the southern outskirts of Baghdad, losing his MiGs from prying American eyes in the clutter of industrial plants and other radar images. It was a high-risk gamble, trying to avoid the radars of the AWACS out over the Gulf, but he had no choice. His orders were formal, and now Abdelkarim Badri had an extra reason for wis.h.i.+ng to reach Iran. Luck was with him that morning, through one of those flukes in warfare that are not supposed to occur but do. At the end of every long s.h.i.+ft on station over the Gulf, the AWACS had to return to base and be replaced by another. It was called changing the cab rank. During the cab rank changes, there was sometimes a brief window when radar cover was suspended. The MiG flight's low pa.s.sage across South Baghdad and Salman Pak coincided with just such a lucky break. The Iraqi pilot hoped that by keeping to one thousand feet, he could slip under any American flights, which tended to operate at twenty thousand feet and up. He wanted to skirt the Iraqi town of Al Kut to its north, then head straight for the safety of the Iranian border at its nearest point.

That morning, at that hour, Captain Don Walker of the 336th Tactical Fighter Squadron out of Al Kharz was leading a flight of four Strike Eagles north toward Al Kut, his mission to bomb a major river bridge over the Tigris across which Republican Guard tanks had been caught by a J-STAR heading south for Kuwait. The 336th had spent much of its war on night missions, but the bridge north of Al Kut would be a "quick fix," meaning there was no time to lose if Iraqi tanks were using it to head south. So the bombing raid that morning had the coding "Jeremiah directs": General Chuck Horner wanted it done, and now. The Eagles were loaded with two-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs and air-to-air missiles. Because of the positioning of the bomb-attachment pylons beneath the wings of the Eagle, the load was asymmetric, the bombs on one side being heavier than the Sparrow missiles on the other. It was called the b.a.s.t.a.r.d load. Automatic trim control compensated for this, but it was still not the load most pilots would choose to have hanging underneath them in a dogfight. As the MiGs, now down to five hundred feet and skimming the landscape, approached from the west, the Eagles were coming up from the south, eighty miles away. The first indication that Abdelkarim Badri had of their presence was a low warbling in his ears. His brother behind him did not know what it was, but the fighter pilots knew. The trainer MiG was in the lead, the four juniors strung out behind him in a loose V formation. They all heard it too. The warbling came from their RWR-radar warning receiver. It meant there were other radars up there somewhere, sweeping the sky. The four Eagles had their radars in the search mode, the beams running out ahead of them to see what was there. The Soviet radar warning receivers had picked up these beams and were telling their pilots. There was nothing the MiGs could do but keep going. At five hundred feet they were well below the Eagles and heading across the Eagles' projected track. At sixty miles, the warbling in the Iraqi pilots' ears rose to a shrill bleep. That meant the RWRs were telling them: Someone out there has gone out of search mode and is locked onto you. Behind Don Walker, his wizzo Tim saw the change in his radar's att.i.tude. From a gentle side-to-side scan, the American radars had gone to lock-on, narrowing their beams and concentrating on what they had found. "We have five unidentifieds, ten o'clock low," the wizzo muttered, and engaged IFF. The other three wizzos in the flight did the same. Identification Friend or Foe is a sort of transponder carried by all combat airplanes. It sends out a pulse on certain frequencies, which are changed daily. Warplanes on the same side will receive this pulse and reply: "I am a friend." Enemy aircraft cannot do so. The five blips on the radar screen crossing the track of the Eagles miles ahead and close to the ground might have been five friendlies coming back from a mission-more than likely, since there were far more Allied aircraft in the skies than Iraqis. Tim questioned the unidentifieds on modes one, two, and four. No response. "Hostiles," he reported. Don Walker flicked his missile switches to Radar, muttered, "Engage," to his other three pilots, dropped the nose, and headed down. Abdelkarim Badri was at a disadvantage, and he knew it. He knew it from the moment the Americans locked onto him. He knew without any IFF to tell him that these other aircraft could not possibly be fellow Iraqis. He knew he had been spotted by hostiles, and he knew his young colleagues would be no match for them. His disadvantage lay in the MiG he flew. Because it was the trainer version, the only type with two seats, it was never destined for combat. Colonel Badri's radar had only a sixty-degree sweep out of the nose. He could not see who had locked onto him. "What do you have?" he barked at his wingman. The reply was breathless and frightened. "Four hostiles, three o'clock high, diving fast." So the gamble had failed. The Americans were bucketing down the sky from the south, intent on blowing them all out of the air. "Scatter, dive, go to afterburner, head for Iran!" he shouted. The young pilots needed no second bidding. From the jet pipes of each MiG a blast of flame leaped backward as the four throttles went through the gate, punching the fighters through the sound barrier and almost doubling their speed. Despite the huge increase in fuel consumption, the single-seaters could keep their afterburners going long enough to evade the Americans and still reach Iran. Their head start on the Eagles meant the Americans would never catch them, even though they too would now be in afterburn. Abdelkarim Badri had no such option. In making their trainer version, the Soviet engineers had not only fitted a simpler radar, but to accommodate the weight of the student and his c.o.c.kpit, they had considerably reduced the internal fuel capacity. The fighter colonel was carrying underwing long-range fuel tanks, but these would not be enough. He had four choices. It took him no more than two seconds to work them out. He could go to afterburner, escape the Americans, and return to an Iraqi base, there to be arrested and handed over sooner or later to the AMAM for torture and death. He could engage afterburner and continue for Iran, evading the Americans but running out of fuel soon after crossing the border. Even if he and his brother ejected safely, they would fall among the Persian tribesmen who had suffered so horribly in the Iran-Iraq war from the cargos dropped on them by Iraqi aviators. He could use the afterburner to avoid the Eagles, then fly south to eject over Saudi Arabia and become a prisoner. It never occurred to him that he would be treated humanely. There were some lines that came into his head from long ago, lines from a poem he had learned at Mr. Hartley's school in that Baghdad of his boyhood. Tennyson? Wordsworth? No, Macaulay, that was it, Macaulay, something about a man in his last moments, something he had read out in cla.s.s.

To every man upon this earth, Death cometh soon or late.

And how can a man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his G.o.ds?

Badri pushed his throttle through the gate into afterburner, hauled the MiG Fulcrum into a climbing turn, and went up to meet the oncoming Americans. As soon as he turned, the four Eagles came into his radar range. Two had scattered, racing down after the fleeing single-seaters, all of them with afterburner engaged, all beyond the sound barrier. But the leader of the Americans was coming straight down and at him. Badri felt the shudder as the Fulcrum went supersonic, adjusted the control column a fraction, and went for the diving Eagle ahead of him. "Christ, he's coming straight at us!" said Tim from the rear seat. Walker did not need to be told. His own radar screen showed him the four vanis.h.i.+ng blips of the Iraqi aircraft fleeing for Iran and the single glow of the enemy fighter climbing toward him to engage. The rangefinder was unwinding like an alarm clock out of control. At thirty miles, they were hurtling toward each other at a closing speed of 2,200 miles per hour. He still could not see the Fulcrum visually, but it would not be long. In the MiG, Colonel Osman Badri was totally bewildered. He had understood nothing of what had happened. The sudden thump of the afterburner engaging had hit him in the small of the back again, and the seven-G turn had caused him to black out for several seconds. "What is happening?" he shouted into his mask, but he was unaware that the mute b.u.t.ton was on, so his brother could not hear him. Don Walker's thumb was poised over his missile controls. He had two choices: the longer-range AIM-7 Sparrow, which was radar-guided from the Eagle itself, or the shorter-range AIM-9 Sidewinder, which was a heat-seeker. At fifteen miles he could see it, the small black dot racing up toward him. The twin fins showed it was a MiG 29 Fulcrum-arguably one of the best interceptor fighters in the world in the right hands. Walker did not know he faced the unarmed trainer version. What he did know was that it might carry the AA-10 Soviet missile, with a range as long as his own AIM-7s. That was why he chose the Sparrows. At twelve miles he launched two Sparrows dead ahead. The missiles flashed away, picking up the radar energy reflected from the MiG and obediently heading straight toward it. Abdelkarim Badri saw the flashes as the Sparrows left the Eagle, giving him a few more seconds of life unless he could force the American to break off. He reached down to his left and pulled a single lever. Don Walker had often wondered what it would be like, and now he knew. From the underside of the MiG's wings came an answering flicker of light. It was like a cold hand gripping his entrails, the icy, freezing sensation of pure fear. Another man had launched two missiles at him. He was staring certain death straight in the face. Two seconds after he launched the Sparrows, Walker wished he had chosen the Sidewinders. The reason was simple: The Sidewinders were fire-and-forget missiles, they would find the target no matter where the Eagle was. The Sparrows needed the Eagle to guide them; if he broke away now, the missiles, without guidance, would "gimbal," or wander off across the sky to fall harmlessly to earth. He was within a fraction of a second of breaking off when he saw the missiles launched by the MiG tumble away toward the ground. In disbelief he realized they were not rockets at all; the Iraqi had tricked him by releasing his underwing fuel tanks. The aluminum canisters had caught the morning sun as they fell, glittering like the ignited fuel of launching missiles. It was a trick, and he, Don Walker, had d.a.m.n nearly fallen for it. In the MiG Abdelkarim Badri realized the American was not going to break off. He had tested the man's nerve, and he had lost. In the rear seat Osman had found the Transmit b.u.t.ton. He could see by looking over his shoulder that they were climbing, already miles above the ground. "Where are we going?" he screamed. The last thing he heard was the voice of Abdelkarim, quite calm. "Peace, my brother. To greet our father. Allah-o-Akhbar." Walker watched the two Sparrows explode at that moment, great peonies of red flame three miles away, then the broken fragments of the Soviet fighter tumble down to the landscape below. He felt the sweat trickling down his chest in rivulets. His wingman, Randy Roberts, who had held his position above and behind him, appeared off his right wingtip, the white-gloved hand raised with the thumb erect. He replied in kind, and the other two Eagles, having abandoned their fruitless chase of the remaining MiGs, swam up from below to reform and went on to the bridge above Al Kut. Such is the speed of events in fighter combat that the entire action, from the first radar lock-on to the destruction of the Fulcrum, had taken just thirty-eight seconds.

The spotter was at the Winkler Bank on the dot of ten that morning, accompanied by his "accountant." The younger man bore a deep attache case containing one hundred thousand American dollars in cash. The money was actually a temporary loan arranged by the banking sayan, who was much relieved to be told that it would simply be deposited with the Winkler Bank for a while, then retrieved and returned to him. When he saw the money, Herr Gemutlich was delighted. He would have been less enthusiastic had he noticed that the dollars occupied only half the thickness of the attache case, and he would have been horrified to see what lay beneath the false bottom. For the sake of discretion, the accountant was banished to Fraulein Hardenberg's room while the lawyer and the banker arranged the confidential operating codes for the new account. The accountant returned to take charge of the receipt for the money and by eleven the matter was concluded. Herr Gemutlich summoned the commissionaire to escort the visitors back to the lobby and the front door. On the way down the accountant whispered something into the American lawyer's ear, and the lawyer translated it to the commissionaire. With a curt nod the commissionaire stopped the old grille-fronted elevator at the mezzanine floor, and the three got out. The lawyer pointed out the door of the men's room to his colleague, and the accountant went in. The lawyer and the commissionaire remained on the landing outside. At this point there came to their ears the sounds of a fracas in the lobby, clearly audible because the lobby was twenty feet along the corridor and down fifteen marble steps. With a muttered excuse the commissionaire strode along the corridor until he could see from the top of the stairs down to the hallway. What he saw caused him to run down the marble steps to sort the matter out. It was an outrageous scene. Somehow three rowdies, clearly drunk, had entered the lobby and were hara.s.sing the receptionist for money for more liquid refreshment. She would later say they had tricked her into opening the front door by claiming they were the postman. Full of indignation, the commissionaire sought to bustle the hooligans outside. No one noticed that one of the rowdies, on entering, had dropped a cigarette pack against the doorjamb so that, although normally self-closing, the door would not quite shut. Nor did anyone notice, in the jostling and pus.h.i.+ng, a fourth man enter the lobby on hands and knees. When he stood up, he was at once joined by the lawyer from New York, who had followed the commissionaire down the stairs to the lobby. They stood to one side as the commissionaire hustled the three rowdies back where they belonged-in the street. When he turned around, the bank servant saw that the lawyer and the accountant had descended from the mezzanine of their own accord. With profuse apologies for the unseemly melee, he ushered them out. Once on the sidewalk, the accountant let out a huge sigh of relief. "I hope I never have to do that again," he said. "Don't worry," said the lawyer. "You did pretty well." They spoke in Hebrew, because the accountant knew no other language. He was in fact a bank teller from Beershe'eva, and the only reason he was in Vienna, on his first and last covert a.s.signment, was that he also happened to he the identical twin of the cracksman, who was then standing immobile in the darkness of the cleaning closet on the mezzanine floor. There he would remain motionless for twelve hours.

Mike Martin arrived in Ar-Rutba in the middle of the afternoon. It had taken him twenty hours to cover a distance that normally would take no more than six in a car. On the outskirts of the town he found a herdsman with a flock of goats and left him somewhat mystified but quite happy by buying four of them for his remaining handful of dinars at a price almost twice what the herdsman would have secured at the market. The goats seemed happy to be led off into the desert, even though they now wore halters of cord. They could hardly be expected to know that they were only there to explain why Mike Martin was wandering around the desert south of the road in the afternoon sun. His problem was that he had no compa.s.s-it was with the rest of his gear, beneath the tiles of a shack in Mansour. Using the sun and his cheap watch, he worked out as best he could the bearing from the radio tower in the town to the wadi where his motorcycle was buried. It was a five-mile hike, slowed by the goats, but they were worth having because twice he saw soldiers staring at him from the road until he was out of sight. But the soldiers took no action. He found the right wadi just before sundown, identifying the marks scored into the nearby rocks, and he rested until the light was gone before starting to dig. The happy goats wandered off. It was still there, wrapped in its plastic bag, a rangy 125-cc. Yamaha cross-country motorcycle, all black, with panniers for the extra fuel tanks. The buried compa.s.s was there, plus the handgun and ammunition. He strapped the automatic in its holster to his right hip. From then on, there would be no more question of pretense; no Iraqi peasant would be riding that machine in those parts. If he were intercepted, he would have to shoot and escape. He rode through the night, making far better time than the Land-Rovers had been able to do. With the dirt bike he could speed across the flat patches and drive the machine over the rocky ridges of the wadis, using engine and feet. At midnight he refueled and drank water, with some K rations from the packs left in the cache. Then he rode on due south for the Saudi border. He never knew when he crossed the border. It was all a featureless wasteland of rocks and sand, gravel and scree, and given the zigzag course he had to cover, there was no way of knowing how many miles he had covered. He expected to know he was in Saudi Arabia when he came to the Tapline Road, the only highway in those parts. The land became easier, and he was riding at twenty miles per hour when he saw the vehicle. Had he not been so tired, he would have reacted faster, but he was half-drugged with exhaustion and his reflexes were slow. The front wheel of the bike hit the tripwire, and he was off, tumbling over and over until he came to rest on his back. When he opened his eyes and looked up, there was a figure standing over him and the glint of starlight on metal. "Bouge pas, mec." Not Arabic. He racked his tired mind. Something a long time ago. Yes, Haileybury, some unfortunate schoolmaster trying to teach him the intricacies of French. "Ne tirez pas," he said slowly. "Je suis Anglais." There are only three British sergeants in the French Foreign Legion, and one of them is called McCullin. "Are you now?" he said in English. "Well, you'd better get your a.r.s.e over to the command vehicle. And I'll have that pistol, if you don't mind."

The Legion patrol was well west of its a.s.signed position in the Allied line, running a check on the Tapline Road for possible Iraqi deserters.

With Sergeant McCullin as interpreter, Martin explained to the French lieutenant that he had been on a mission inside Iraq.

That was quite acceptable to the Legion: Working behind the lines was one of their specialities. The good news was that they had a radio.

The cracksman waited patiently in the darkness of the broom closet through the Tuesday and into the night. He heard various male employees enter the washroom, do what they came for, and leave.

Through the wall he could hear the elevator occasionally whine its way up and down to the top floor. He sat on his briefcase with his back to the wall, and an occasional glance at his luminous watch told him of the pa.s.sing hours.

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 night.w.a.tchman 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 night.w.a.tch 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 Sat.u.r.days 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 night.w.a.tch was apparently always the same. He made three tours of the building, testing all doors, at ten P.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 Gemutlich'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 night.w.a.tch 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 Gemutlich'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 bra.s.s affairs over a hundred years old. When the three drawers were removed, he inserted his hand and began to feel for a k.n.o.b, b.u.t.ton, 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 bra.s.s, 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 Gemutlich'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 fict.i.tious 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. Ballga.s.se, 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