Honor Among Thieves

And thus it had been decreed. Saddam’s half brother was to be acknowledged as the architect of this triumph, while Al Obaydi was to be a footnote on a page, quickly turned. Had Al Obaydi failed, Saddam’s half brother would have been ignorant of even the original idea, and Al Obaydi’s bones would even now be rotting in an unmarked grave. Since Saddam had spoken no one around that table, except for the State Prosecutor, had given Al Obaydi a sec

ond look. All other eyes, and smiles, rested on Saddam’s half brother.

It was at that moment, in the midst of the meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council, that Al Obaydi came to his decision.

Dollar Bill sat slouched on a stool leaning on the bar in unhappy hour, happily sipping his favorite liquid. He was the establishment’s only customer, unless you counted the slip of a woman in a Laura Ashley dress who sat silently in the corner. The barman assumed she was drunk, as she hadn’t moved a muscle for the past hour.

Dollar Bill wasn’t at first aware of the man who stumbled through the swing doors, and wouldn’t have given him a second look had he not sat himself on the stool next to his. The intruder ordered a gin and tonic. Dollar Bill had a natural aversion to any man who drank gin and tonic, especially if they occupied the seat next to his when the rest of the bar was empty. He considered moving but decided on balance that he didn’t need the exercise.

“So how are you, old-timer?” the voice next to him asked. Dollar Bill didn’t care to think of himself as an “old-timer,” and refused to grace the intruder with a reply.

“What’s the matter, not got a tongue in your head?” the man asked, slurring his words. The barman turned to face them when he heard the raised voice, and then returned to drying the glasses left over from the lunchtime rush.

“I have, sir, and it’s a civil one,” replied Dollar Bill, still not so much as glancing at his interrogator.

“Irish. I should have known it all along. A nation of stupid, ignorant drunks.”

“Let me remind you, sir,” said Dollar Bill, “that Ireland is the land of Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, O’Casey and Joyce.” He raised his glass in their memory.

“I’ve never heard of any of them. Drinking partners of yours, I suppose?” This time the young barman put his cloth down and began to pay closer attention.

“I never had that honor,” replied Dollar Bill, “but, my friend, the fact that you have not heard of them, let alone read their works, is your loss, not mine.”

“Are you accusing me of being ignorant?” said the intruder, placing a rough hand on Dollar Bill’s shoulder.

Dollar Bill turned to face him, but even at that close range he couldn’t focus clearly through the haze of alcohol he had consumed during the past two weeks. He did, however, observe that, although he appeared to be part of the same alcoholic haze, the intruder was somewhat larger than he. Such a consideration had never worried Dollar Bill in the past.

“No, sir, it was not necessary to accuse you of ignorance. For you have been condemned by your own utterances.”

“I won’t take that from anyone, you Irish drunk,” said the intruder. Keeping his hand on Dollar Bill’s shoulder, he swung at him and landed a blow on the side of his jaw. Dollar Bill staggered back off his high stool, falling to the floor in a heap.

The intruder waited some time for Bill to rise to his feet before he aimed a second blow to the stomach. Once again, Dollar Bill ended up on the floor.

The young man behind the bar had already begun dialing the number his boss had instructed he should call if ever such a situation arose. He only hoped they would come quickly as he watched the Irishman somehow get back on his feet. This time it was his turn to aim a punch at the intruder’s nose, a punch which ended up flying through the air over his assailant’s right shoulder. A further blow landed on the side of Dollar Bill’s throat. Down he went a third time, which in his days as an amateur boxer would have been considered a technical knockout; but as there seemed to be no referee present to officiate, he rose once again.

The young barman was relieved to hear a siren in the distance, and was praying they weren’t on their way to another call when suddenly four policemen came bursting through the swing doors.

The first one caught Dollar Bill just before he hit the ground for a fourth time, while two of the others grabbed the intruder, thrust his arms behind his back and forced a pair of handcuffs on him. Both men were bundled out of the bar and thrown into the back of a waiting police van. The siren continued its piercing sound as the two drunks were driven away.

The barman was grateful for the speed with which the San Francisco Police Department had come to his aid. It was only later that night that he remembered he hadn’t given them an address.

As Hannah sat alone at the back of the plane bound for Amman, she began to consider the task she had set herself.

Once the Ambassador’s party had left Paris, she had returned to the traditional role of an Arab woman. She was dressed from head to toe in a black yashmak, and apart from her eyes, her face was covered by a small mask. She spoke only when asked a question directly, and never posed a question herself. She felt her Jewish mother would not have survived such a regime for more than a few hours.

Hannah’s one break had come when the Ambassador’s wife had inquired where she intended to stay once they had returned to Baghdad. Hannah explained that she had made no immediate plans as her mother and aunt were living in Karbala, and she could not stay with them if she hoped to keep her job with the Ambassador.

Hannah had hardly finished the second sentence before the Ambassador’s wife insisted that she come and live with them. “Our house is far too large,” she explained, “even with a dozen servants.”

When the plane touched down at Queen Alia Airport, Hannah looked out of the tiny window to watch a large black limousine that would have looked more in place in New York than Amman driving towards them. It drew up by the side of the aircraft and a driver in a smart blue suit and dark glasses jumped out.

Hannah joined the Ambassador and his wife in the back of the car and they sped away from the airport in the direction of the border with Iraq.

When the car reached the customs barrier, they were waved straight through with bows and salutes, as if the border didn’t exist. They traveled a further mile and passed a second customs post on the Iraqi side, where they were treated in much the same manner as the first, before joining the six-lane highway to Baghdad.

On the long journey to the capital, the speedometer rarely fell below seventy miles per hour. Hannah soon became bored with the beating sun and the sight of miles and miles of flat sand that stretched to the horizon and beyond, with only the occasional cluster of palm trees to break the monotony. Her thoughts returned to Simon and what might have been…

Hannah dozed off as the air-conditioned limousine sped quietly along the highway. Her mind drifted from Simon to her mother, to Saddam, and then back to Simon.