Mission Compromised (17 page)

“My people are working on it. We have arrested scores of people, tortured dozens, and interrogated his wife and children. We will find him. Please assure our father that Hamza will be tracked down and punished for his ingratitude,” replied Kamil.

In truth, Kamil had no real idea where Hamza was, but he didn't want to admit that to anyone, least of all Qusay Hussein. Hamza's defection, if that's what his disappearance was, could be fatal for Kamil—if he failed to find and silence him. He hoped that Qusay wasn't about to deliver a deadline by which the traitorous scientist had to be found and eliminated.

More than anyone else in Iraq, Kamil knew how valuable Hamza would be to the West—particularly the hated CIA and British intelligence. Hamza knew everything about the Iraqi efforts to build the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. And Hussein Kamil was the person who had hired him to build it.

“I am absolutely confident that we shall soon have him in our hands,” Kamil said, though he felt anything but confidence. Professional torturers in the bowels of the Al Ranighwania prison had produced “testimony” from other poor souls that Hamza had been seen in the company of Iraqi dissidents in the mountains not far from the Turkish border. But by the time the assassination teams Kamil had dispatched arrived in Zakhu, deep in the Kurdish-controlled territory north of the Tigris, the traitor had disappeared, assuming that was where he had been in the first place. When the assassination teams returned to the SSS unit in Mosul empty-handed, Kamil had them shot for failing their mission. It occurred to him that Qusay and his
father-in-law might be considering such a fate for him since he was the ultimate authority to whom the Amn Al-Khass teams reported.

Qusay grimaced. “I am told that Hamza was seen over two months ago in the North where the American swine recruit traitors for their puppet opposition. The Iraqi National Congress resistance wouldn't exist but for the American dollars they are spreading around like camel dung in a corral. What are you doing about it? My father wants to know if you can be trusted to do your job,” he barked.

Then why doesn't he ask me himself?
thought Kamil. But he didn't say it. He knew better. Kamil was, of course, recording this conversation. He audio- and videotaped nearly everything that took place in this office. Except, of course, the visits by the Filipino and Thai prostitutes sent by the Japanese ambassador. So he naturally assumed that Qusay was also recording this conversation for his own use—either with a radio microphone hidden beneath his robes or in his attaché case that he had placed so strategically on the table. It was all part of a lethal game of cat and mouse, a game that every senior official in Iraq played. It had been so even before Saddam Hussein had seized the reigns of power in 1969. It got worse after Saddam proclaimed himself president in 1979. And, since the 1990–91 war, spying on one another had become a full-time, and essential, part of staying in power—and staying alive. Kamil wondered if Qusay had obtained one of the new laser listening devices that could be beamed against an unprotected windowpane and tuned to vibrations caused by the voices inside. Kamil had recently acquired such an apparatus, made in Sweden and delivered to him courtesy of a Saudi prince whom he was blackmailing.

Kamil also knew that the brothers, Uday and Qusay, both resented his power. As Minister for Military Industrialization, Kamil was responsible for building Iraq's arsenal of mass destruction weapons—biological,
chemical, and nuclear. And as the commander of the Amn Al-Khass, he was given the vast resources, both human and financial, of the Amn Al-Khass to run a global arms and technology acquisition network and, along with it, an extensive stable of agents, spies, and assassins. He also knew that if the brothers Uday and Qusay were able to convince their father that Kamil was incompetent or somehow disloyal, nothing except a capricious whim of Allah could save him.

Qusay's challenge hung in the air like the smell of garlic. Kamil sighed deeply and looked around his opulently appointed office for an appropriate answer.

The Persian carpet was a two-hundred-year-old treasure from Tabriz. The German pharmacologists from Frankfurt, who were helping to concoct Iraq's next generation of toxic nerve agents, had given it to him as a gift. The unique hand-rubbed mahogany for the walls had been delivered by Li Hoia Shan himself on one of his many trips to bring surface-to-air missile components and telemetry systems from Beijing to Baghdad. The desk, big as a battleship, and the matching conference table at which they now sat had been flown here by Giuseppi Rinaldi when he delivered the last batch of communications and computer equipment direct from Genoa.
In fact
, thought Kamil,
about the only thing in this office that is native to Iraq is the enormous painting of our magnificent leader adorning the wall behind my desk.
Its artist had used great license in portraying Saddam; Kamil thought it caricatured his father-in-law's eccentricities, but Saddam loved it.
That pompous fool can't be properly captured on canvas
, Kamil thought. But now he had to answer the question of his brother-in-law, who had begun to tap incessantly on the table.

“Please, Qusay, think of what you are saying,” began Kamil in a soft but authoritative voice. “You are looking at the negative side.
Think positive. The Amn Al-Khass is totally loyal to your father—the father of my wife,
my
father-in-law, the grandfather of my children and your nephews and nieces, our nation's greatest leader.” His emphasis on family ties did not register with Qusay so Kamil took a more businesslike stance. He leaned across the table and spoke to Qusay with sincerity and authority. His tone and body language were assertive as he said, “I created Amn Al-Khass and have made it work. I run it to protect
our
father, the Ba'ath Party, and the state, and it will always be so. This organization is not yet five years old, but already we have had great success.” Kamil waited for his words to take effect before continuing, as much for the reaction of anyone else who might be listening to his conversation as for his brother-in-law.

“When the American president tried to provoke a rebellion among the Shia after the imperialists were driven from our homeland in 1991, your father, our great leader, gave me the task of eliminating the threat they posed to him and to the Ba'ath Party,” Kamil reminded Qusay. “As you know, I personally saw to it that more than
ten thousand
of those Shia gangsters were exterminated at Al Ranighwania. The mullahs next door and their Shia lackeys have been completely eliminated as a threat. And I am talking about one man, Qusay—
I
have purged those ten thousand enemies for your father!

“Since then, the Amn Al-Khass has grown to become our glorious nation's most effective instrument for dealing with traitors and spies.” Kamil decided that if Qusay or someone else was indeed recording all this, they ought to get an earful. He continued. “Of course I mean no disrespect to the members and leaders of the Mukhabarat. They are certainly courageous defenders of the Party and your father, our great leader. But Qusay, you and I both know that the General Intelligence Directorate is not what it used to be. Back in the old days, when it was
just the
Jihaz al-Khass
—the Special Apparatus—we could all count on the loyalty of
everyone
involved. You know that it is no longer the case.”

Kamil paused so that his brother-in-law could make a decision as to whether he wanted the conversation to continue in this direction. Qusay only nodded, so Kamil continued. “When Fadil al Barak was under consideration to head the GID, I told your father that he could not be trusted.” Here, Kamil knew he was treading in dangerous waters. But he wanted this on tape, so he forged ahead, choosing his words carefully. “There were … uh …
some
around your father who dissuaded him of the accuracy of my information, and Fadil was appointed despite my warnings.” Again Kamil paused, for Uday, the exalted leader's eldest son, had been one of those who had urged the appointment.

Qusay said nothing, but nodded again. Kamil pressed on. “It took until 1989 to verify that my information was indeed correct. And, as I am sure you remember, it took almost two more years of ‘interrogation' to convince Fadil to admit that he was loyal—not to your father—but to the KGB. I was given the honor of personally executing the traitorous pig,” Kamil added proudly, but with just the right amount of humility.

What Kamil did not mention, for he did not have to, was that he had also personally tortured Fadil al Barak on an almost nightly basis in the bowels of the large, fortress-like, Amn Al-Khass building behind the Palace of Meetings. When the wind was blowing right, guests enjoying the cool night air on the balconies of the nearby Rashid Hotel thought they could hear what sounded like the screams of a wounded animal. What they were hearing was the effect of Kamil's “gentle persuasion” that ran the gamut from pliers applied to fingernails, teeth, and genitals to the use of a cattle prod.

In his agony, Fadil eventually realized that “confession” was the only way he could escape the daily torture, so he gave them one, and that gave Kamil the privilege of putting a bullet in the head of the former head of the General Intelligence Directorate. For his loyalty and determination in ferreting out the “traitor,” Saddam Hussein had named his son-in-law as the head of the new Special Security Service. As the commander of the Amn Al-Khass, Kamil's mission was to provide personal protection to Saddam and his family, an appointment with the means and authority to deal mercilessly with any perceived threat to the regime. In fewer than four years, Kamil had built the SSS into the preeminent intelligence/security organ in Iraq.

Now, in late 1994, Kamil had the authority to investigate and, where necessary, eliminate members of Iraq's other security and intelligence services for any real or imagined disloyalty. Yet even this authority did not guarantee his continued tenure if Saddam or his sons perceived that he was somehow becoming a threat to them or their regime. Kamil decided that a further litany of successes was in order. He knew that Qusay would soon tire of this and tell him what was really on his mind.

Kamil continued in the same assertive tone. “You must know that our recruiting drive is going well. Soon the Special Security Service will have five thousand members, all of whom are either loyalists from the Al Delaim tribe or recruits from Hawuija, Samarra, or Tikrit, our family's hometown. All of them have but one goal: to ensure your father's continued safety and success. And as evidence of this loyalty, each man has pledged his life.

“The Political Branch has begun issuing every Iraqi citizen an identity card that soon will be integrated into a new national database managed by the SSS,” Kamil said. “Very soon, every police station in the
country will have a Special Security Service unit assigned to it, with instructions to monitor the loyalty of all police and militiamen.

“Thanks to our friends in Beijing, we have nearly completed our Plan 858, the Al Hadi Project, which links five new listening stations to the center at Al Rashedia, so that we can monitor all electronic communications coming into or going out of the country—even satellite calls. Also, as I reported to you last Thursday at our weekly meeting in the Joint Operations Room—”

“Enough!” Qusay said sharply, interrupting his brother-in-law midsentence. “I already know all this. My father knows all this. That is not why I am here.”

Kamil sat back in his chair. “Then to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” he said with a forced smile. His head might ache and his gut might churn, but his face would betray nothing.

Qusay was silent for what seemed to be several minutes but was probably only one at most. Finally he leaned forward and stared intently into the face of his brother-in-law and said quietly, “My father wants to broaden the effort to punish the Americans. We must bring into our cause others who have a common purpose. We need to find new allies.”

“I do not understand …” Kamil said.

Qusay seemed to have trouble getting the next sentence past his lips, since it had to give credit to Kamil. “My father says that he wants to make use of the many advances that you have made in rebuilding our chemical and biological weapons following our war with the West. With the progress that you have made, these weapons can now be used against the Americans.”

As Qusay spoke, Kamil didn't know whether to be gratified or terrified. After every hard-won success, Kamil was asked to do another
“impossible” assignment. As Minister for Military Industrialization, he had indeed accomplished the extraordinary feat of rebuilding Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. And he had done it in just four years! The infrastructure for constructing these weapons of mass destruction had been severely damaged, but not destroyed, by the Allied bombing campaigns during what they called the Gulf War. The United Nations had tried in vain to locate and destroy any efforts to rebuild the Iraqi arsenal; yet despite sanctions and inspections, Kamil had achieved the impossible and spent billions in black-market oil revenues resurrecting the former laboratories, assembly plants, and storage depots—right under the UN noses.

Qusay continued. “I must admit I was skeptical, but your decision to reconstruct the weapons program at my father's palaces was brilliant. The UN inspectors cannot visit these sites. Now we must put the good work that you have done to its intended use. It is time for our glorious nation to strike back—not just at the American planes that violate our airspace, not just at their bases in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, but at their very homeland. Women and children in the United States must suffer and die, just as ours have.”

The statement took Kamil's breath away. It was a bold idea, but in his mind, impossible. True, the compliment from Qusay concerning his work and success would ordinarily have given Kamil great pleasure. But it was connected to some wild-eyed plan to use the nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction on Americans—in their homeland.