The Fist of God

Chapter 18

The two men from Century House arrived in Riyadh before Chip Bar

ber did from Washington. Steve Laing and Simon Paxman landed before dawn, having taken the night flight from Heathrow.

Julian Gray, the Riyadh Head of Station, met them in his usual unmarked car and brought them to the villa where he had been virtually living, with only occasional visits home to see his wife, for five months.

He was puzzled by the sudden reappearance of Paxman from London, let alone the more senior Steve Laing, to oversee an operation that had effectively been closed down.

In the villa, behind closed doors, Laing told Gray exactly why Jericho had to be traced and brought back into play without delay.

“Jesus. So the bastard’s really managed to do it.”

“We have to assume so, even though we have no proof,” said Laing. “When does Martin have a listening window?”

“Between eleven-fifteen and eleven forty-five tonight,” said Gray. “For security, we haven’t sent him anything for five days. We’ve been expecting him to reappear over the border anytime.”

“Let’s hope he’s still there. If not, we’re in deep shit. We’ll have to reinfiltrate him, and that could take forever. The Iraqi deserts are alive with patrols.”

“How many know about this?” asked Gray.

“As few as possible, and it stays that way,” replied Laing.

A very tight need-to-know group had been established between London and Washington, but for the professionals it was still too big. In Washington there was the President and four members of his Cabinet, plus the Chairman of the National Security Council and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Add to that four men at Langley, of whom one, Chip Barber, was heading for Riyadh. Back in California, the unfortunate Dr. Lomax had an unwanted house guest in his cabin to ensure he made no contact with the outside world.

In London, the news had gone to the new Prime Minister, John Major, the Cabinet Secretary, and two members of the Cabinet; at Century House, three men knew.

In Riyadh there were now three at the SIS villa, and Barber on his way to join them. Among the military, the information was confined to four generals—three American and one British.

Dr. Terry Martin had developed a diplomatic bout of flu and was residing comfortably in an SIS safe house in the countryside, looked after by a motherly housekeeper and three not-so-motherly minders.

From henceforth, all operations against Iraq that concerned the search for, and destruction of, the device the Allies assumed to be code-named Qubth-ut-Allah, or the Fist of God, would be undertaken under the cover of active measures designed to terminate Saddam Hussein himself, or for some other plausible reason.

Two such attempts had in fact already been made. Two locations had been identified at which the Iraqi President might be expected to reside, at least temporarily. No one could say precisely when, for the Rais moved like a will-o’-the-wisp from hiding place to hiding place when he was not in the bunker in Baghdad.

Continuous overhead surveillance watched the two locations. One was a villa out in the countryside forty miles from Baghdad, the other a big mobile home converted into a war caravan and planning center.

On one occasion the aerial watchers had seen mobile missile batteries and light armor moving into position around the villa. A flight of Strike Eagles went in and blew the villa apart. It was a false alarm—the bird had flown.

On the second occasion, two days before the end of January, the large trailer had been seen to move to a new location. Again an attack went in; again the target was not at home.

On both occasions the fliers took enormous risks in pressing their attacks, for the Iraqi gunners fought back furiously. The failure to terminate the Iraqi dictator on both occasions left the Allies in a quandary.

They simply did not know Saddam Hussein’s precise movements. The fact was, no one knew them, outside of a tiny group of personal bodyguards drawn from the Amn-al-Khass, commanded by his own son Kusay.

In reality, he was moving around most of the time. Despite the assumption that Saddam was in his bunker deep underground for the whole of the air war, he was really in residence there for less than half that time. But his safety was assured by a series of elaborate deceptions and false trails. On several occasions he was “seen” by his own cheering troops—cynics said they were cheering because they were the ones not at the front being pounded by the Buffs. The man the Iraqi troops saw on all such occasions was one of the doubles who could pass for Saddam among all but his closest intimates.

At other times, convoys of limousines, up to a dozen, swept through the city of Baghdad with blackened windows, causing the citizenry to believe their Rais was inside one of the cars. Not so; these cavalcades were all decoys. When he moved, he sometimes went in a single unmarked car.

Even among his innermost circle, the security measures prevailed. Cabinet members alerted for a conference with him would be given just five minutes to leave their residences, get into their cars, and follow a motorcycle outrider. Even then, the destination was not the meeting place.

They would be driven to a parked bus with blackened windows, there to find all the other ministers sitting in the dark. There was a screen between the ministers and the driver. Even the driver had to follow an Amn-al-Khass motorcyclist to the eventual destination.

Behind the driver, the ministers, generals, and advisers sat in darkness like schoolboys on a mystery tour, never knowing where they were going or, afterward, where they had been.

In most cases these meetings were held in large and secluded villas, commandeered for the day and vacated before nightfall. A special detail of the Amn-al-Khass had no other job than to find such a villa when the Rais wanted a meeting, hold the villa owners incommunicado, and let them return home when the Rais was long gone.

Small wonder the Allies could not find him. But they tried—until the first week of February. After that, all assassination attempts were called off, and the military never understood why.