The Fist of God (46 page)

“He can’t do that,” said Laing again.

“He thinks he can,” repeated Martin.

“It’s the gas weapon,” muttered Paxman.

“Maybe. By the bye, did you ever find out what that phrase on the phone intercept meant?”

Laing glanced across at Paxman. Jericho again. There must be no mention of Jericho.

“No. Nobody we asked had ever heard of it. No one could work it out.”

“It could be important, Steve. Something else—not gas.”

“Terry,” said Laing patiently, “in less than twenty days the Americans, with us, the French, Italians, Saudis, and others, are going to throw at Saddam Hussein the biggest air armada the world has ever seen.

The Fist of God

Enough firepower to exceed in a further twenty days all the tonnage dropped in the Second World War. The generals down in Riyadh are kind of busy. We really can’t go down there and say ‘Hold everything, guys. We have a phrase in a phone intercept we can’t work out.’ Let’s face it, it was just an excitable man on a phone suggesting that God was on their side.”

“There’s nothing strange in that, Terry,” said Paxman. “People going to war have claimed they had God’s support since time began. That was all it was.”

“The other man told the speaker to shut up and get off the line,” Martin reminded them.

“So he was busy and irritable.”

“He called him the son of a whore.”

“So he didn’t like him much.”

“Maybe.”

“Terry, please, leave it alone. It was just a phrase. It’s the gas weapon.

That’s what he’s counting on. All the rest of your analysis we agree with.”

Martin left first, the two intelligence officers twenty minutes later.

Shrugged into their coats, collars up, they went down the sidewalk looking for a taxi.

“You know,” said Laing, “he’s a clever little bugger, and I quite like him. But he really is a terrible fusspot. You’ve heard about his private life?”

A cab went by, empty, its light off. Tea break time. Laing swore at it.

“Yes, of course, the Box ran a check.”

The Box, or Box 500, is slang for the Security Service, MI-5. Once, long ago, the address of MI-5 really was P.O. Box 500, London.

“Well, there you are then,” said Laing.

The Fist of God

“Steve, I really don’t think that’s got anything to do with it.”

Laing stopped and turned to his subordinate.

“Simon, trust me. He’s got a bee in his bonnet, and he’s just wasting our time. Take a word of advice. Just drop the professor.”

“It will be the poison gas weapon, Mr. President.”

Three days after the New Year, such festivities as there had been in the White House—and for most there had been no pause at all—had long died away. The whole West Wing, the heart of the Bush administration, was humming with activity.

In the quiet of the Oval Office, George Bush sat behind the great desk, backed by the tall narrow windows, five inches of pale green bulletproof glass, and beneath the seal of the United States.

Facing him was Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Adviser.

The President glanced down at the digest of the analyses that had just been presented to him.

“Everyone is agreed on this?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. The stuff that just came in from London shows their people completely concur with ours. Saddam Hussein will not pull out of Kuwait unless he is given an out, a face-saver, which we will ensure he does not get. For the rest, he will rely on mass gas attacks on the Coalition ground forces, either before or during their invasion across the border.”

George Bush was the first American President since John F. Kennedy who had actually been in combat. He had seen American bodies killed in action. But there was something particularly hideous, especially foul, in the thought of young combat soldiers writhing through their The Fist of God

last moments of life as gas tore at their lung tissues and crippled their central nervous systems.

“And how will he launch this gas?” he asked.

“We believe there are four options, Mr. President. The obvious one is by canisters launched from fighters and strike bombers, Colin Powell has just been on the line to Chuck Horner in Riyadh. General Horner says he needs thirty-five days of unceasing air war. After day twenty, no Iraqi airplane will reach the border. By day thirty, no Iraqi plane will take off for more than sixty seconds. He says he guarantees it, sir.

You can have his stars on it.”

“And the rest?”

“Saddam has a number of MLRS batteries. That would seem to be the second line of possibility.”

Iraq’s multilaunch rocket systems were Soviet-built and based on the old Katyushkas used with devastating effect by the Soviet Army in the Second World War. Now much updated, these rockets, launched in rapid sequence from a rectangular “pack” on the back of a truck or from a fixed position, had a range of one hundred kilometers.

“Naturally, Mr. President, because of their range, they would have to be launched from within Kuwait or the Iraqi desert to the west. We believe the J-STARs will find them on their radars and they will be taken out. The Iraqis can camouflage them all they like, but the metal will show up.

“For the rest, Iraq has stockpiles of gas-tipped shells for use by tanks and artillery. Range, under thirty-seven kilometers—nineteen miles.

We know the stockpiles are already on site, but at that range it’s all desert—no cover. The Air boys are confident they can find them and destroy them. And then there are the Scuds—they’re being taken care of even as we speak.”

The Fist of God

“And the preventive measures?”

“They’re completed, Mr. President. In case of an anthrax attack, every man is being inoculated. The Brits have done it too. We are increasing production of the anti-anthrax vaccine every hour. And every man and woman has a gas mask and a coverall gas cape. If he tries it ...”

The President rose, turned, and stared up at the seal. The bald eagle, clutching its arrows, stared back.

Twenty years earlier, there had been those awful zip-up body bags coming back from Vietnam, and he knew that a supply was even now stored in discreet unmarked containers under the Saudi sun. Even with all the precautions, there would be patches of exposed skin, masks that could not be reached and pulled on in time.

The following year would be the reelection campaign. But that was not the point. Win or lose, he had no intention of going down in history as the American President who consigned tens of thousands of soldiers to die, not as in Vietnam over nine years, but over a few weeks or even days.

“Brent ...”

“Mr. President.”

“James Baker is due to see Tariq Aziz shortly.”

“In six days in Geneva.”

“Ask him to come and see me, please.”

In the first week of January, Edith Hardenberg began to enjoy herself, really enjoy herself, for the first time in years. There was a thrill in exploring and explaining to her eager young friend the wonders of culture that lay within her city.

The Winkler Bank was permitting its staff a four-day break to include The Fist of God

New Year’s Day; after that, they would have to confine their cultural outings to the evenings, which still gave the promise of theater, concerts, and recitals, and weekends, when the museums and galleries were still open.

They spent half a day at the Jugendstil, admiring the Art Nouveau, and another half-day in the Sezession, where hangs the permanent exhibition of the works of Klimt.

The young Jordanian was delighted and excited, a fund of questions pouring from him, and Edith Hardenberg caught the enthusiasm, her eyes alight as she explained that there was another wonderful exhibition at the Künstlerhaus that was definitely a must for the next weekend.

After the Klimt viewing, Karim took her to dine at the Rotisserie Sirk.

She protested at the expense, but her new friend explained that his father was a wealthy surgeon in Amman and that his allowance was generous.

Amazingly, she allowed him to pour her a glass of wine and failed to notice when he refilled it. Her talk became more animated, and there was a small flush on each pale cheek.

Over coffee, Karim leaned forward and placed his hand on hers. She looked flustered and glanced hastily around to see if anyone had noticed, but no one bothered. She withdrew her hand, but quite slowly.

By the end of the week, they had visited four of the cultural treasures she had in mind, and when they walked back through the cold darkness toward her car after an evening at the Musikverein, he took her gloved hand in his and kept it there. She did not pull it away, feeling the warmth seep through the cotton glove.

“You are very kind to do all this for me,” he said gravely. “I am sure it must be boring for you.”

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“Oh, no, it’s not at all,” she said earnestly. “I enjoy seeing and hearing all these beautiful things. I’m so glad you do too. Quite soon, you’ll be an expert on European art and culture.”

When they reached her car, he smiled down at her, took her wind-chilled face between both his bare but surprisingly hot hands, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“
Danke
, Edith.”

Then he walked away. She drove herself home as usual, but her hands were trembling and she nearly hit a tram.

Secretary of State James Baker met Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Geneva on January 9. It was not a long meeting, and it was not a friendly one. It was not intended to be. There was a single English-Arabic interpreter present, though Tariq Aziz’s English was perfectly up to the task of understanding the American, who spoke slowly and with great clarity. His message was quite simple.

If, during the course of any hostilities that may occur between our countries, your government chooses to employ the internationally banned weapon of poison gas, I am authorized to inform you and President Hussein that my country will use a nuclear device. We will, in short, nuke Baghdad.

The dumpy, gray-haired Iraqi took in the sense of the message but at first could not believe it. For one thing, no man in his senses would dare convey such a barefaced threat to the Rais. He had a habit, in the manner of former Babylonian kings, of taking out his displeasure on the message-bearer.

For another, he was not sure at first that the American was serious. The fallout, the collateral damage of a nuclear bomb, would not be The Fist of God

confined to Baghdad, surely? It would devastate half the Middle East, would it not?

Tariq Aziz, as he headed home for Baghdad a deeply troubled man, did not know three things.

One was that the so-called “theater” nuclear bombs of modern science are a far cry from the Hiroshima bomb of 1945. The new, limited-damage “clean” bombs are called thus because although their heat-and-blast damage is as appalling as ever, the radioactivity they leave behind is of extremely short duration.

The second thing was that within the hull of the battleship
Wisconsin
, then stationed in the Gulf and joined by the
Missouri
, were three very special steel-and-concrete caissons, strong enough, if the ship went down, not to degrade for ten thousand years. Inside them were three Tomahawk cruise missiles the United States hoped never to have to use.

The third was that the Secretary of State was not joking at all.

General Sir Peter de la Billière walked alone in the darkness of the desert night, accompanied only by the crunch of sand beneath his feet and his troubled private thoughts.

A lifelong professional soldier and a combat veteran, his tastes were as ascetic as his frame was spare. Unable to take much pleasure in the luxury offered by cities, he felt more at home and at ease in camps and bivouacs and the company of fellow soldiers. Like others before him, he appreciated the Arabian desert—its vast horizons, blazing heat, and numbing cold, and many times its awesome silence.

That night, on a visit to the front lines—one of the treats he permitted himself as often as possible—he had walked away from St. Patrick’s The Fist of God

Camp, leaving behind him the brooding Challenger tanks beneath their nets, crouching animals patiently waiting for their time, and the hussars preparing the evening meal beneath them.

By then a close friend of General Schwarzkopf and privy to all the planning staff’s innermost councils, the general knew that war was coming. Less than a week before the expiration of the United Nations deadline, there was not a hint that Saddam Hussein had any intention of pulling out of Kuwait.

What worried him that night under the stars of the Saudi desert was that he could not understand what the tyrant of Baghdad thought he was up to. As a soldier, the British general liked to understand his enemy, to plumb his intentions, his motivations, his tactics, his overall strategy.

Personally, he had nothing but contempt for the man in Baghdad. The amply documented files depicting genocide, torture, and murder revolted him. Saddam was not a soldier, never had been, and what real military talent he had had in his army he had largely wasted by overruling his generals or having the best of them executed.

That was not the problem; the problem was that Saddam Hussein had clearly taken overall command of every aspect—political and military—and nothing he did made a fraction of sense.

He had invaded Kuwait at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons.

That done, he had blown away his chances of reassuring his fellow Arabs that he was open to diplomacy, susceptible to reason, and that the problem could be resolved within the ambit of inter-Arab negotiations. Had he taken that road, he could probably have counted quite rightly on the oil continuing to flow, and the West gradually losing interest as the inter-Arab conferences bogged down for years.

It was the dictator’s own stupidity that had brought in the West, and to The Fist of God

cap it, the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, with its multiple rapes and brutality and its attempt to use Westerners as human shields, had guaranteed his utter isolation.

In the early days Saddam Hussein had had the rich oil fields of northeastern Saudi Arabia at his mercy, and he had hung back. With his army and air force under good generalship, he could even have reached Riyadh and dictated his terms. He had failed, and Desert Shield had been put in place while he masterminded one public relations disaster after another in Baghdad.