Honor Among Thieves

The shorter man stepped forward, gripped the handle of the safe firmly and pulled. All three lights immediately turned red, and a noisy clamping sound began again.

Pedersson chuckled. “You see, Mr. Riffat, unless Madame Bertha knows you personally, she clams up and sends you back to the red-light district.” He laughed at a joke his guests suspected he had told many times before. “The hand that opens the safe,” he continued, “must be the same one that passed the palm-print test. A good safety device, I think you’ll agree.” Both men nodded in admiration as Pedersson quickly fiddled with the three dials, placed his hand on the square and then spoke to Madame Bertha. One by one the three lights dutifully turned from red to green.

“She is now prepared to let me, and me alone, open her up. So watch carefully. Although, as I said, the door weighs a ton, it can be opened with the gentlest persuasion, thus.”

Pedersson pulled back the ton of massive steel with no more exertion than he would have used to open the front door of his home. He jumped inside the safe and began walking around, first with his arms outstretched to show that he could not touch the sides while standing in the center, and then with his hands above his head, showing he was unable to reach the roof. “Do please enter, gentlemen,” he cried from inside.

The two men stepped up gingerly to join him.

“In this case, three is not a crowd,” said Pedersson, laughing again. “And you will be happy to discover that it is impossible for me to get myself locked in.” He gripped the handle on the inside of the safe and pulled the great door shut.

Two of the occupants did not find this part of the experiment quite so appealing.

“You see, gentlemen,” continued Pedersson, who could not hide the satisfaction in his voice, “Bertha cannot lock herself again unless it is my hand on the outside handle.” With one small push, the door swung open and Pedersson stepped out, closely followed by his two customers.

“I once had to spend an evening inside her before the system was perfected—a sort of one-night stand, you might call it,” said Pedersson. He laughed even louder as he pushed the door back in place. The three lights immediately flashed to red and the clamps noisily closed in place.

He turned to face them. “So, gentlemen, you have been introduced to Madame Bertha. Now, if you would be kind enough to accompany me back to my office, I will present you with a delivery note and, more important, Bertha’s bible.”

As they returned across the yard, Pedersson explained to his two visitors that the book of instructions had been treated by the company as top secret. They had produced one in Swedish, which the company retained in its own safe, and another in Arabic, which Pedersson said he would be happy to hand over to them.

“The bible itself is 108 pages in length, but simple enough to understand if you’re an engineer with a first-class honors degree.” He laughed again. “We Swedish are a thorough race.”

Neither of the men felt able to disagree with him.

“Will you require anyone to accompany Madame Bertha on her journey?” Pedersson asked, his eyes expressing hope.

“No, thank you,” came back the immediate reply. “I think we can handle the problem of transport.”

“Then I have only one more question for you,” Pedersson said, as he entered his office. “When do you plan to take her away?”

“We hoped to collect the safe this afternoon. We understood from the fax you sent to the United Nations that your company has a crane that can lift the safe, and a dolly on which it can be moved from place to place.”

“You are right in thinking we have a suitable crane, and a dolly that has been specially designed to carry Madame Bertha on short journeys. I am also confident I can have everything ready for you this afternoon. But that doesn’t cover the problem of transport.”

“We already have our own vehicle standing by in Stockholm.”

“Excellent, then it is settled,” said Mr. Pedersson. “All I need to do in your absence is to program out my hand and voice so that it can accept whoever you select to take my place.” Pedersson looked forlorn for a second time. “I look forward to seeing you again this afternoon, gentlemen.”

“I’ll be coming back on my own,” said Riffat. “Mr. Bernstrom will be returning to America.”

Pedersson nodded and watched the two men climb into their car before he walked slowly back to his office. The phone on his desk was ringing.

He picked it up, said, “Bertil Pedersson speaking,” and listened to the caller’s request. He placed the

receiver on his desk and ran to the window, but the car was already out of sight. He returned to the phone. “I am so sorry, Mr. Al Obaydi,” said Pedersson, “the two gentlemen who came to see the safe have just this moment left, but Mr. Riffat will be returning this afternoon to take her away. Shall I let him know you called?”

* * *

Al Obaydi put the phone down in Baghdad, and began to consider the implications of what had started out as a routine call.

As Deputy Ambassador to the UN, it was his responsibility to keep the sanctions list up-to-date. He had hoped to pass on the file within a week to his as-yet-unappointed successor.

In the past two days, despite phones that didn’t connect and civil servants who were never at their desks—and even when they were, were too terrified to answer the most basic questions—he was almost in a position to complete the first draft of his report.

The problem areas had been: agricultural machinery, half of which the UN Sanctions Committee took for granted was military equipment under another name; hospital supplies, including pharmaceuticals, on which the UN accepted most of their request; and food, which they were allowed to purchase—although most of the produce that came across the border seemed to disappear on the black market long before it reached the Baghdad housewife.

A fourth list was headed “miscellaneous items,” and included among these was a massive safe which, when Al Obaydi checked its measurements, turned out to be almost the size of the room he was presently working in. The safe, an internal report confirmed, had been ordered before the planned liberation of the Nineteenth Province, and was now sitting in a warehouse in Kalmar, waiting to be collected. Al Obaydi’s boss at the UN had confessed privately that he was surprised that the Sanctions Committee had lifted the embargo on the safe, but this did not deter him from assuring the Foreign Minister that they had only done so as a result of his painstaking negotiating skills.