Honor Among Thieves

The General smiled at her. “Miss Kopec, I believe. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. I fear it will be a couple of minutes before Professor Bradley is able to join us.”

The guards surrounded Hannah as the General looked up at a television screen above the door. He watched as Scott, inside the Chamber, pressed a button on the side of his watch. Scott then ran over to the wall, quickly extracted the copy of the document from the tube and checked it against the original. He felt he had done a fair job back in the cab of the truck, but he spat on Lewis Morris and John Witherspoon for good measure, then spent a few seconds rubbing the parchment on the stone floor before comparing it once again to the one on the wall. He looked at his watch: forty-five seconds. He began to pull the nails out of the wall, but was unable to get the top right-hand one to budge, so he eased the Declaration over its head. Sixty seconds.

Hannah stared up at the television screen in horror, watching Simon undo all her work, while the General made a phone call.

Once Scott had removed the document from the wall he placed it on the table. He then fastened the Declaration that he had taken out of the cardboard cylinder back on the wall, easing the parchment over the nail in the top right-hand corner, which still stubbornly refused to budge. Ninety seconds. He picked up Dollar Bill’s copy from the table, rolled it up and dropped it into the cylinder. One hundred and ten seconds. He walked over to the door that led to the elevators and stood inhaling deeply for a moment before the alarm stopped and the doors swung open.

Scott knew that it would take them a few minutes before the source of the alarm could be checked, so when he saw the General, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

Kratz sat on the front seat of the truck, keeping a wary eye on Major Saeed. There was a ringing sound: Saeed pressed a button and placed the phone to his ear. Suddenly, without warning, he turned, whipped out his pistol and looked anxiously towards the cab. He barked out an order, and within seconds every soldier in sight surrounded the truck, their rifles pointing directly at Kratz.

The Major rushed up. “Where are the other two?” he demanded. Kratz shrugged his shoulders. Saeed turned on his heels and ran into the building, shouting another order as he went.

Kratz placed his right hand over his left wrist and slowly began to unpeel the plaster, a second skin, secreted beneath his watch. He delicately removed the tiny green pill stuck to the plaster and transferred it to the palm of his hand. Sixty or seventy eyes were staring at him. He began coughing, and slowly put his hand up to his mouth, lowered his head and swallowed the pill.

Saeed came rushing back out of the building and began barking new orders. Within seconds, a car pulled up beside the truck.

“Out!” the Major screamed at Kratz, who stepped down onto the tarmac and allowed a dozen fixed bayonets to guide him toward the back door of the car. He was pushed onto the seat, and two men in dark suits took a place on either side of him. One quickly turned him and tied his hands behind his back, while the other blindfolded him.

Cohen and Aziz watched from the other side of the Square as the car sped away from them.

Chapter Thirty-One

The General returned Scott’s smile.

“I won’t introduce you to Miss Saib,” he said, “since I believe you’ve already met.”

Scott looked blank as he stared at the woman dressed in a black abaya and a pushi that covered her face. She was surrounded by four soldiers, their bayonets drawn.

“We have a lot to thank Miss Saib for, because of course it was she who led us to you in the first place, not to mention her postcard to Mrs. Rubin that helped you find the Declaration so quickly. We did try to make it as easy as possible for you.”

“I don’t know Miss Saib,” said Scott.

“Oh, come, Professor—or should I call you Agent Bradley? I admire your gallantry, but while you may claim not to know Miss Saib, you certainly know Hannah Kopec,” the General said as he ripped off Hannah’s pushi.

Scott stared at Hannah, but still said nothing.

“Ah, I see you do remember her. But then, it would be hard to forget someone who tried to kill you, wouldn’t it?”

Hannah’s eyes pleaded with Scott.

“How touching, my dear, he’s forgiven you. But I fear I don’t share his forgiving nature.” The General turned to see Major Saeed running towards him. He listened carefully to what the Major whispered to him, then began banging his swagger stick rapidly against his long leather boots.

“You’re a fool!” he shouted at the top of his voice, and suddenly struck the Major across the face with his swagger stick.

He turned back to face Scott. “It seems,” he said, “that the reunion I had planned for you and your friends will have to wait a little longer, because although we have Colonel Kratz safely locked up, the Jew and the Kurdish traitor have escaped. But it can only be a matter of time before we catch them.”

“How long have you known?” asked Hannah quietly.

“You made the mistake so many of our enemies make, Miss Kopec, of underestimating our great President,” replied the General. “He dominates the affairs of the Middle East to a far greater extent than Gorbachev did the Russians, Thatcher the British or Bush the American people. I ask myself, how many citizens in the West any longer believe the Allies won the Gulf War? But then, you were also stupid enough to underrate his cousin, Abdul Kanuk, our newly appointed Ambassador to Paris. Perhaps he wasn’t quite that stupid when he followed you all the way to your lover’s flat and stood in a doorway the rest of the night before following you back to the embassy. It was he who informed our Ambassador in Geneva what ‘Miss Saib’ was up to.

“Of course, we needed to be sure, not least because our Deputy Foreign Minister found it so hard to accept such a tale about one of his most loyal members of staff. Such a naïve man. So, when you came to Baghdad, the Ambassador’s wife invited Miss Saib’s brother to dinner. But, sadly he didn’t recognize you. Your cover, as the more vulgar American papers would describe it, was blown. Those same papers keep asking pathetically, ‘Why doesn’t Mossad assassinate President Saddam?’ If only they knew how many times Mossad has tried and failed. What Colonel Kratz didn’t tell you at your training school in Herzliyah, Miss Kopec, was that you are the seventeenth Mossad agent who has attempted to infiltrate our ranks during the past five years, and all of them have experienced the same tragic end as your Colonel is about to. And the real beauty of the whole exercise is that we don’t have to admit we killed any of you in the first place. You see, the Jewish people are unwilling to accept, after Entebbe and Eichmann, that such a thing could possibly happen. I feel sure you will appreciate the logic of that, Professor.”

“I’ll make a bargain with you,” said Scott.

“I’m touched, Professor, by your Western ethics, but I fear you have nothing to bargain with.”

“We’ll trade Miss Saib if you release Hannah.”