The Fist of God

Terry Martin was on the phone to Simon Paxman, who was still inundated with work and could have done without the interruption. It was only because he had taken a liking to the fussy professor of Arabic studies that Paxman took the call.

“I know I’m being a bother, but do you have any contacts at GCHQ?”

“Yes, of course,” said Paxman. “In the Arabic Service, mainly. Know the Director of it, come to that.”

“Could you possibly give him a call and ask if he’d see me?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. What have you in mind?”

“It’s the stuff coming out of Iraq these days. I?

?ve studied all Saddam’s speeches, of course, and watched the announcements about hostages and human shields and seen their ghastly attempts at PR on the television. But I’d like to see if there’s anything else being picked up, stuff that hasn’t been cleared by their Propaganda Ministry.”

“Well, that’s what GCHQ does,” admitted Paxman. “I don’t see why not. If you’ve been sitting in with the Medusa people, you’ve got the clearance. I’ll give him a call.”

That afternoon, by appointment, Terry Martin drove west to Gloucestershire and presented himself at the well-guarded gate of the sprawl of buildings and antennae that constitute the third main arm of British intelligence alongside MI-6 and MI-5, the Government Communications Headquarters.

The Director of the Arabic Service was Sean Plummer, under whom worked that same Mr. Al-Khouri who had tested Mike Martin’s Arabic in the Chelsea restaurant eleven weeks earlier, though neither Terry Martin nor Plummer knew that.

The Director had agreed to see Martin in the midst of a busy day because, as a fellow Arabist, he had heard of the young scholar of the SOAS and admired his original research on the Abassid Caliphate.

“Now, what can I do for you?” he asked when they were both seated with a glass of mint tea, a luxury Plummer permitted himself to escape the miseries of institution coffee. Martin explained that he was surprised at the paucity of the intercepts he had been shown corning out of Iraq. Plummer’s eyes lit up.

“You’re right, of course. As you know, our Arab friends lend to chatter like magpies on open circuits.

The last couple of years, the interceptable traffic has slumped. Now, either the whole national character has changed, or—”

“Buried cables,” said Martin.

“Precisely. Apparently Saddam and his boys have buried over forty-five thousand miles of fiber-optic communication cables. That’s what they’re talking on. For me, it’s an absolute bastard. How can I keep giving the spooks in London another round of Baghdad weather reports and Mother Hussein’s bloody laundry lists?”

It was his manner of speaking, Martin realized. Plummer’s service delivered a lot more than that.

“They still talk of course—ministers, civil servants, generals—right down to chitchat between tank commanders on the Saudi border. But the serious, top-secret phone calls are off the air. Never used to be. What do you want to see?”

For the next four hours, Terry Martin ran his eye over a range of intercepts. Radio broadcasts were too obvious; he was looking for something in an inadvertent phone call, a slip of the tongue, a mistake. Finally he closed the files of digests.

“Would you,” he asked, “just keep an eye open for anything really odd, anything that just doesn’t make sense?”

Mike Martin was beginning to think he should one day write a tourist’s guide to the flat roofs of Kuwait City. He seemed to have spent an impressive amount of time lying on one of them surveying the area beneath him. On the other hand, they did make superb places for LUPs, or lying-up positions.

He had been on this particular one for almost two days, surveying the house whose address he had given to Abu Fouad. It was one of the six he had been lent by Ahmed Al-Khalifa, and one he would now never use again.

Although it was two days since he had given the address to Abu Fouad and nothing was supposed to happen until tonight, October 9, he had still watched, night and day, living off a handful of bread and fruit.

If Iraqi soldiers arrived before seven-thirty on the evening of the ninth, he would know who had betrayed him—Abu Fouad himself. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. The Kuwaiti colonel should be making his call about now, as instructed.

Across the city, Abu Fouad was indeed lifting the phone. He dialed a number, which was answered on the third ring.

“Salah?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“We have never met, but I have heard many good things about you—that you are loyal and brave, one of us. People know me as Abu Fouad.”

There was a gasp at the end of the phone.

“I need your help, Salah. Can we, the movement, count on you?”