The Fist of God (17 page)

she rose to her feet. Her baby suckled for a while, tethered behind her, and they set off at that ambling, rolling pace that seems to be very slow but covers an amazing amount of ground. The she-camel had been well fed and watered at the corral and would not tire for days.

He was well to the northwest of the Ruqaifah police station, where a track road passes from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait, when he crossed the border shortly before eight. The night was black, save for a low gleam from the stars. The glow of Kuwait’s Manageesh oil field lay to his right and would probably have an Iraqi patrol in it, but the desert ahead of him was empty.

On the map it was thirty-five miles to the camel farms just south of Sulaibiya, the outlying district of Kuwait City where he intended to leave his beasts until he needed them again. But before that, he would bury the gear in the desert and mark the spot.

Unless he was stopped and delayed, he would do this in darkness before sunrise, which was nine hours away. The tenth hour would bring him to the camel farms.

When the Manageesh oil field dropped behind him, he steered by his hand compass in a straight line for his destination. The Iraqis, as he had surmised, might patrol the roads, even the tracks, but never the empty desert. No refugee would try to escape that way, nor enemy to enter.

From the camel farms, after sunrise, he knew he could scramble onboard a truck heading into the heart of town, twenty miles farther on.

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Far above him, silent in the night sky, a KH-11 satellite of the National Reconnaissance Office slid across the sky. Years earlier, previous generations of American spy satellites had had to take their pictures and at intervals spit out the capsules in reentry vehicles, to be laboriously recovered and the film processed.

The KH-11s, sixty-four feet long and weighing thirty thousand pounds each, are smarter. As they take their images of the ground below them, they automatically encrypt the pictures into a series of electronic pulses that are beamed
upward
to another satellite.

The receiver satellite above is one of a network positioned in geosynchronous orbit, meaning they drift through space at a speed and on a course that keeps them always above the same spot on the earth.

In effect, they hover. Having received the images from the KH-11, the hovering satellite either beams them straight down to the United States or, if the curve of the earth gets in the way, bounces them across space to another hovering “bird” that sends the pictures down to its American masters. Thus the NRO can collect its photographic information in real time, just seconds after the pictures are taken.

The bonus in war is huge. The KH-11 can see, for example, an enemy convoy on the move well in advance, in time to call up an air strike to blast the trucks into oblivion. The unfortunate soldiers inside them would never know how the fighter-bombers found them. For the KH-11s can work through night and day, in cloud or fog.

The phrase has been used about them:
all-seeing
. Alas, it is a self-delusion. The KH-11 that night swept out of Saudi Arabia and over Kuwait. But it did not see the lone Bedou tribesman entering forbidden territory, nor would it have cared if it had. It moved over Kuwait and into Iraq. It saw many buildings, great sprawls of industrial minicities around Al-Hillah and Tarmiya, Al-Atheer and Tuwaitha, but it did not The Fist of God

see what was in those buildings. It did not see the vats of poison gas in preparation, nor the uranium hexafluoride destined for the gas-diffusion centrifuges of the isotope separation plant.

It moved north, picking out the airfields, the highways, and the bridges. It even saw the automobile junkyard at Al Qubai, but took no notice. It saw the industrial centers of Al Qaim, Jazira, and Al-Shirqat west and north of Baghdad, but not the devices of mass death that were being prepared inside them. It passed over the Jebel al Hamreen, but it did not see the Fortress that had been built by the engineer Osman Badri. It saw only a mountain among other mountains, hill villages among other hill villages. Then it passed on over Kurdistan and into Turkey.

Mike Martin plodded on through the night toward Kuwait City, invisible in robes he had not worn for almost two weeks. He smiled on recalling the moment when, returning to his Land-Rover from a hike in the desert outside Abu Dhabi, he had been surprised to be intercepted by a plump American lady pointing a camera and shouting “click click” at him.

It had been agreed that the British Medusa Committee should meet for its preliminary conference in a room beneath the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. The main reason was that the building was secure, being regularly swept against listening devices, although it did seem that with Russians being so terribly
nice
these days, they might have stopped at last attempting such tiresome practices.

The room to which the eight guests were led was two floors below ground level. Terry Martin had heard of the warren of shockproof, bugproof chambers where the most delicate matters of state could be The Fist of God

discussed in complete discretion below the innocent-looking building opposite the Cenotaph.

Sir Paul Spruce took the chair, an urbane and experienced bureaucrat with the rank of Assistant Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet. He introduced himself and then everyone to everyone. The American embassy and thus the United States was represented by the Assistant Defense Attaché and Harry Sinclair, an astute and experienced officer from Langley who had headed the CIA’s London station for the past three years. Sinclair was a tall, angular man who favored tweed jackets, frequented the opera, and got along extremely well with his British counterparts.

The CIA man nodded and winked at Simon Paxman, whom he had met once at a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee, on which the CIA has a permanent seat in London.

Sinclair’s job would be to note anything of interest that the British scientists might come up with and convey that information back to Washington, where the considerably larger American end of the Medusa Committee was also in session. All the findings would then be collated and compared in the continuing search to analyze Iraq’s potential to cause appalling casualties.

There were two scientists from Aldermaston, the Weapons Research Establishment in Berkshire—they like to drop the word
atomic
in front of WRE, but that is what Aldermaston is all about. Their job would be to try and elucidate from information out of the United States, Europe, and anywhere else it could be gleaned, plus air photographs of possible Iraqi nuclear research facilities, just how far, if at all, Iraq had proceeded in its quest to crack the technology of making an atomic bomb of her own.

There were two other scientists, from Porton Down. One was a The Fist of God

chemist, the other a biologist specializing in bacteriology.

Porton Down has often been accused in the press of researching chemical and bacteriological weapons for British use. In fact, its research has for years been concentrated on seeking antidotes to any and all forms of gas and germ warfare that might be leveled at British and allied troops. Unfortunately, it is impossible to develop antidotes to anything without first studying the properties of the toxin. The two scientists from Porton therefore had under their aegis, and in conditions of massive security, some very nasty substances. But then so, that August 13, had Mr. Saddam Hussein. The difference was, the Allies had no intention of using them on Iraqis, but it was felt that Mr.

Hussein might not be so forbearing.

The Porton men’s job would be to see if, from lists of chemicals purchased by Iraq over a period of years, they could deduce what he had, how much, how nasty, and if it was usable. They would also study air photographs of a range of factories and plants in Iraq to see if any telltale signs in the form of structures of certain size and shape—decontamination units, emission scrubbers—might identify the poison gas factories.

“Now, gentlemen,” Sir Paul began, addressing the four scientists, “the principal burden rests upon you. The rest of us will assist and support where we can.

“I have here two volumes of intelligence so far received from our people abroad, embassy staff, trade missions, and the—ah—covert gentlemen. Early days yet. These are the first results from the cull of export licenses to Iraq over the past decade, and needless to say, they come from governments that are being most promptly helpful.

“We have thrown the net as wide as possible. Reference is made to exports of chemicals, building materials, laboratory equipment, The Fist of God

specialized engineering products—just about everything but umbrellas, knitting wool, and cuddly toys.

“Some of these exports, indeed probably the majority, will turn out to be quite normal purchases by a developing Arab country for peaceful purposes, and I apologize for what may turn out to be wasted time studying them. But please concentrate not only on specialized purchases for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, but also on dual-use purchases—items that could be adapted or cannibalized for a purpose other than that stated.

“Now, I believe our American colleagues have also been at work.”

Sir Paul handed one of his files to the men from Porton Down and one to those from Aldermaston. The man from the CIA produced two files and did the same. The bewildered scientists sat facing a block of paperwork.

“We have tried,” explained Sir Paul, “not to duplicate—the Americans and ourselves—but, alas, there may be some element of duplication. I apologize again. And now, Mr. Sinclair.”

The CIA Head of Station, unlike the Whitehall civil servant who had almost sent the scientists to sleep with his verbosity, was direct and to the point.

“The thing is, gentlemen, we may have to fight these bastards.”

This was more like it. Sinclair spoke as the British like to think Americans speak—direct, and unafraid to mince words. The four scientists gave him their rapt attention.

“If that day ever comes, we will go in first with air power. Like the British, we will want to lose the absolute minimum possible in casualties. So we’ll go for their infantry, their guns, tanks, and planes.

We’ll target their SAM missile sites, communications links, command centers. But if Saddam uses weapons of mass destruction, we would The Fist of God

take awful casualties, both of us. So we need to know two things.

“One, what has he got? Then we can plan for gas masks, capes, chemical antidotes. Two, where the hell has he put it? Then we can target the factories and the storage depots—destroy it all before he can use it. So study the photographs, use magnifying glasses, look for the telltale signs. We’ll keep tracing and interviewing the contractors who built him these factories and the scientists who equipped them. That should tell us a lot. But the Iraqis may have moved it around a bit. So it comes back to you gentlemen, the analysts. You could get to save a lot of lives here, so give it your best shot. Identify the WMD for us, and we’ll go in and bomb seven shits out of it.”

The four scientists were smitten. They had a job to do, and they knew what it was. Sir Paul was looking slightly shell-shocked.

“Yes, well, I’m sure we’re all deeply grateful to Mr. Sinclair for his—er—explanation. May I suggest we reconvene when either Aldermaston or Porton Down has something for us?”

When they left the building, Simon Paxman and Terry Martin strolled in the warm August sunshine out of Whitehall and into Parliament Square. It was thronged with the usual columns of tourist buses. They found an empty bench close to the marble statue of Winston Churchill, glowering down on the impudent mortals who clustered beneath him.

“You’ve seen the latest from Baghdad?” asked Paxman.

“Of course.”

Saddam Hussein had just offered to pull out of Kuwait if Israel pulled out of the West Bank and Syria out of Lebanon. An attempt at linkage.

The United Nations had rejected it out of hand. The resolutions continued to roll out of the Security Council: cutting off Iraq’s trade, oil exports, currency movements, air travel, resources. And the systematic destruction of Kuwait by the occupying army went on.

The Fist of God

“Any significance?”

“No, just the usual huff and puff. Predictable. Playing to the audience.

The PLO liked it, of course, but that’s all. It’s not a game plan.”

“Has he got a game plan?” asked Paxman. “If so, no one can work it out. The Americans think he’s crazy.”

“I know. I saw Bush last night on TV.”

“Is he crazy, Saddam?”

“Like a fox.”

“Then why doesn’t he move south into the Saudi oil fields while he has the chance? The American buildup is only starting—ours, too. A few squadrons, carriers in the Gulf, but nothing on the ground. Air power alone can’t stop him. That American general they’ve just appointed ...”

“Schwarzkopf,” said Martin. “Norman Schwarzkopf.”

“That’s the chap. He reckons he’ll need two full months before he has the forces to stop and roll back a full-scale invasion. So why not attack now?”

“Because that would be attacking a fellow Arab state with which he has no quarrel. It would bring shame. It would alienate every Arab. It is against the culture. He wants to rule the Arab world, to be acclaimed by it, not reviled by it.”

“He invaded Kuwait,” Paxman pointed out.

“That was different. He could claim that was correcting an imperialist injustice because Kuwait was always historically part of Iraq. Like Nehru invading Portuguese Goa.”

“Oh, come on, Terry. Saddam invaded Kuwait because he’s bankrupt.

We all know it.”

“Yes, that’s the real reason. But the up-front reason is that he was reclaiming rightful Iraqi territory. Look, it happens all over the world.

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India took Goa, China took Tibet, Indonesia has taken East Timor.

Argentina tried for the Falklands. Each time, the claim is retaking a chunk of rightful territory. It’s very popular with the home crowd, you know.”

“Then why are his fellow Arabs turning against him?”