The students stared open-mouthed.
“We have to give it to the Iraqis?”
“No, you carry the loaves in open baskets on scooters, or in the trunks of cars. They will stop you at roadblocks and steal it. We meet here again in six days.”
Four days later, Iraqi trucks began to break down. Some were towed away and others abandoned, six trucks and four jeeps. The mechanics found out why but could not discover when or by whom. Tires began to blow out and the plywood squares were handed over to the Secret Police, who fumed and beat up several Kuwaitis seized at random on the streets.
Hospital wards began to fill with sick soldiers, all with vomiting and stomach pain. As they were hardly ever given food rations by their own army and lived hand-to-mouth at their roadblocks and in their stone-slab cantonments up and down the streets, it was assumed they had been drinking polluted water.
Then at the Amiri hospital in Dasman, a Kuwaiti lab technician ran an analysis of a sample of vomit from one of the Iraqis. He approached his departmental chief in great perplexity.
“He’s been eating rat poison, professor. But he says he only had bread for three days, and some fruit.”
The professor was puzzled.
“Iraq Army bread?”
“No, they didn’t deliver any for some days. He took it from a passing Kuwaiti baker’s boy.”
“Where are your samples?”
“On the bench, in the lab. I thought it best to see you first.”
“Quite right. You have done well. Destroy them. You have seen nothing, you understand?”
The professor walked back into his office shaking his head. Rat poison. Who the hell had thought of that?
The Medusa Committee met again on August 30, because the bacteriologist from Porton Down felt he had discovered all he could at that point about Iraq’s germ warfare program, such as it was or appeared to be.
“I’m afraid we are looking at somewhat slim pickings,” Dr. Bryant told his listeners. “The main reason is that the study of bacteriology can quite properly be carried out at any forensic or veterinary laboratory using the same equipment that you would find in any chemical lab and that won’t show up on export permits.
“You see, the overwhelming majority of the product is for the benefit of mankind, for the curing of diseases, not the spreading of them. So nothing could be more natural than for a developing country to want to study bilharzia, beri-beri, yellow fever, malaria, cholera, typhoid, or hepatitis. These are human diseases. There is another range of animal diseases that the veterinary colleges might quite properly want to study.”
“So there’s virtually no way of establishing whether Iraq today has a germ-bomb facility or not?” asked Sinclair of the CIA.
“Virtually not,” said Bryant. “There’s a record to show that way back in 1974, when Saddam Hussein was not on the throne, so to speak—”
“He was vice-president, then, and the power behind the throne,” said Terry Martin. Bryant was flustered.
“Well, whatever. Iraq signed a contract with the Institut Merieux in Paris to build them a bacteriological research project. It was supposed to be for veterinary research into animal diseases, and it may have been.”
“What about the stories of anthrax cultures for use against humans?” the American asked.
“Well, it’s possible. Anthrax is a particularly virulent disease. It mainly affects cattle and other livestock, but it can infect humans if they handle or ingest products from infected sources. You may recall the British government experimented with anthrax on the Hebridean island of Grainard during the Second World War. It’s still out of bounds.”
“That bad, eh? Where would he get this stuff?”
“That’s the point, Mr. Sinclair. You’d hardly go to a reputable European or American laboratory and say ‘Can I have some nice anthrax cultures because I want to throw them at people?’ Anyway, he wouldn’t need to. There are diseased cattle all over the Third World. One would only have to note an outbreak and buy a couple of diseased carcasses. But it wouldn’t show up on government paperwork.”
“So he could have cultures of this disease for use in bombs or shells, but we don’t know. Is that the position?” asked Sir Paul Spruce. His rolled-gold pen was poised above his note pad.
“That’s about it,” said Bryant. “But that’s the bad news. The better news is, I doubt if it would work against an advancing army. I suppose that if you had an army advancing against you and you were ruthless enough, you’d want to stop them in their tracks.”
“That’s about the shape of it,” said Sinclair.
“Well, anthrax wouldn’t do that. It would impregnate the soil if dropped from a series of air bursts above and ahead of the army. Anything growing from that soil—grass, fruit, vegetables—would be infected.
Any beast feeding on the grass would succumb. Anyone eating the meat, drinking the milk, or handling the hide of any such beast would catch it. But the desert is not a good vehicle for such spore cultures.
Presumably our soldiers will be eating prepacked meals and drinking bottled water?”
“Yep, they are already,” said Sinclair.
“Then anthrax wouldn’t have much effect, unless they breathed the spores in. The disease has to enter humans by ingestion into the lungs or the food passages. Bearing in mind the gas hazard, I suspect they will be wearing gas masks anyway.”
“We plan on it, yes,” replied Sinclair.
“So do we,” added Sir Paul.
“Then I don’t really see why anthrax,” said Bryant. “It wouldn’t stop the soldiers in their tracks, like a variety of gases, and those who did catch it could be cured with powerful antibiotics. There is an incubation period, you see. The soldiers could win the war and then fall sick. Frankly, it’s a terrorist weapon rather than a military one. Now, if you dropped a vial of anthrax concentrate in the water supply on which a city depended, you might start a catastrophic epidemic that would overwhelm the medical services, But if you’re going to spray something on fighting men in a desert, I’d choose one of the various nerve gases instead. Invisible and fast.”
“So no indication, if Saddam has a germ warfare lab, where it might be?” asked Sir Paul Spruce.
“Frankly, I’d check with all the West’s veterinary institutes and colleges. See if there have been any visiting professorships or delegations to Iraq over the past ten years. Ask those who went whether there was any facility that was absolutely off-limits to them and surrounded by quarantine precautions. If there was, that will be it,” said Bryant.
Sinclair and Paxman wrote furiously. Another job for the checkers.
“Failing that,” concluded Bryant, “you could try human intelligence. An Iraqi scientist in this field who has quit and settled in the West. Researchers in bacteriology tend to be thin on the ground, quite a tight group—like a village, really. We usually know what’s going on in our own countries, even in a dictatorship like Iraq. Such a man might have heard, if Saddam has got this facility, where he put it.”
“Well, I’m sure we are deeply grateful, Dr. Bryant,” said Sir Paul as they rose. “More work for our governments’ detectives, eh, Mr. Sinclair? I have heard that our other colleague at Porton Down, Dr.
Reinhart, will be able to give us his deductions on the matter of poison gases in about two weeks. I shall of course stay in touch, gentlemen. Thank you for your attendance.”
The group in the desert lay quietly watching dawn steal across the sand dunes. The youngsters had not realized when they went to the house of the Bedou the previous evening that they would be away all night. They had thought they would get another lecture.
They had brought no warm clothing, and nights in the desert are bitter, even at the end of August. They shivered and wondered how they would explain their absence to their distraught parents. Caught by the curfew? Then why not telephone? Out of order ... it would have to do.
Three of the five wondered if they had made the right choice after all, but i
t was too late to go back now.
The Bedou had simply told them it was time they saw some action and had led them from the house to a rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle parked two streets away. They had been out of town and off the road into the flat, hard desert before curfew. Since entering the desert, they had seen no one.
They had driven south for twenty miles across the sand until they intercepted a narrow road that they suspected ran from the Manageesh oil field to their west toward the Outer Motorway in the east. All the oil fields, they knew, were garrisoned by Iraqis and the main highways were infested with patrols.
Somewhere to their south sixteen divisions of Army and Republican Guard were dug in, facing Saudi Arabia and the growing tide of Americans pouring in. They felt nervous.
Three of the group lay in the sand beside the Bedou, watching the road in the growing light. It was quite narrow. Approaching vehicles would have to swerve to the graveled edge to pass each other.
Extending halfway across the road was a plank studded with nails. The Bedou had taken it from his truck and laid it there, covering it with a blanket made from old Hessian sacks. He had made them scoop sand over the blanket until it looked just like a small drift of sand blown in from the desert by the wind.
The other two pupils, the bank clerk and the law student, were spotters. Each lay on a sand dune a hundred yards up and down the road looking for approaching vehicles. They had been told that if the vehicle was a large Iraqi truck or were several in number, they should wave in a certain way.
Just after six, the law student waved. His signal meant “Too much to handle.” The Bedou pulled at the fishing line he held in his hand. The plank slithered off the road. Thirty seconds later, two trucks crammed with Iraqi soldiers went by unharmed. The Bedou ran to the road and replaced the plank, the sacks, and the sand.
Then minutes later, the bank clerk waved. It was the right signal. From the direction of the highway a staff car came bowling down the road toward the oil field.
The driver never thought to swerve to avoid the bar of sand but still only caught the nails with one front wheel. It was enough. The tire blew out, the blanket wrapped around the wheel and the car swerved violently. The driver caught the swerve in time and steadied the car, and it rolled to a stop half on and half off the road. The side that was off the road bogged down.
The driver sprang out of the front and two officers emerged from the back, a major and a junior lieutenant. They shouted at the driver, who shrugged and whined, pointing at the wheel. The jack would never get under it—the car was at a crazy angle.
To his stunned pupils the Bedou muttered, “Stay here,” rose, and walked down the sand to the road. He had a Bedouin camel blanket over his right shoulder, covering his right arm. He smiled broadly and hailed the major.
“Salaam aleikhem, Sayid Major. I see you have a problem. Perhaps I can help. My people are just a short distance away.”
The major reached for his pistol, then relaxed. He glowered and nodded.
“Aleikhem salaam, Bedou. This spawn of a camel has driven my car off the road.”
“It will have to be pulled back, sayidi . I have many brothers.”
The distance had closed to eight feet when the Bedou’s arm came up. He fired in the SAS fashion, two round bursts, pause, two rounds, pause ... The major was hit in the heart at a range of eight feet. A slight move of the AK to the right caught the lieutenant in the breastbone, causing him to fall on the driver, who was rising from his tattered front wheel. When the man straightened, he was just in time to die from the third pair of bullets in the chest.
The noise of the firing seemed to echo in the dunes, but the desert and the road were empty. He summoned the three terrified students from their hiding places.
“Put the bodies back in the car—the driver behind the wheel, the officers in the back,” he told the two males. To the girl he gave a short screwdriver, its blade honed to a needle point.
“Stab the petrol tank three times.”
He looked to his spotters. They signaled nothing was coming. He told the girl to take her handkerchief, wrap it around a stone, knot it, and soak it in petrol. When the three bodies were back in the car, he lit the soaking handkerchief and tossed it into the pool of petrol spurting from the tank.
“Now, move.”
They needed no further bidding, running through the sand dunes to where he had parked the four-wheel-drive. Only the Bedou thought to pick up the plank and bring it with him. As he turned into the dunes, the main body of petrol in the burning car caught and fireballed. The staff car disappeared in flames.
They drove back toward Kuwait in awed silence. Two of the five were with him in the front, the other three behind.
“Did you see?” asked Martin at last. “Did you watch?”
“Yes, Bedou.”
“What did you think?”
“It was ... so quick,” said the girl Rana at last.
“I thought it was a long time,” said the banker.
“It was quick, and it was brutal,” said Martin. “How long do you think we were on the road?”
“Half an hour?”
“Six minutes. Were you shocked?”
“Yes, Bedou.”
“Good. Only psychopaths are not shocked the first time. There was an American general once, Patton.
Ever heard of him?”
“No, Bedou.”
“He said that it was not his job to ensure that his soldiers died for their country. It was his job to make sure the other poor bastards died for theirs. Understand?”
George Patton’s philosophy does not translate well into Arabic, but they worked it out.
“When you go to war, there is a point up to which you can hide. After that point you have a choice. You die or he dies. Make your choice now, all of you. You can go back to your studies or go to war.”
They thought for several minutes. It was Rana who spoke first.
“I will go to war, if you will show me how, Bedou.”
After that the young men had to agree.
“Very well. But first I will teach you how to destroy, kill, and stay alive. My house, in two days’ time, at dawn, when curfew is lifted. Bring school textbooks, all of you, including you, banker. If you are stopped, be natural; you are just students going to study. True, in a way, but different studies.
“You have to get off here. Find your way into town by different trucks.”
They had rejoined the tarred roads and reached the Fifth Ring Motorway. Martin pointed out a garage where trucks would stop and the drivers would give them lifts. When they had gone, he went back to the desert, uncovered his buried radio, drove three miles from the burial site, opened the satellite dish, and began to talk on his encrypted Motorola to the designated house in Riyadh.
An hour after the ambush the burnt-out staff car was found by the next patrol. The bodies were taken to the nearest hospital, Al Adan.
The forensic pathologist who did the autopsy under the eyes of a glowering colonel of the AMAM
spotted the bullet holes—tiny pinpricks in the sealed-over charred flesh. He was a family man, with daughters of his own. He knew the young nurse who had been raped.
He drew the sheet back over the third body and began to peel off his gloves.
“I’m afraid they died of asphyxia when the car caught fire after the crash,” he said. “May Allah have mercy.”
The colonel grunted and left.
At his third meeting with his band of volunteers, the Bedou drove them far out into the desert, to a spot west of Kuwait City and south of Jahra where they could be alone. Seated in the sand like a picnic party, the five youngsters watched as their teacher took out a haversack and poured out onto his camel blanket an array of strange devices. One by one he identified them.
“Plastic explosive. Easy to handle, very stable.”
They went several shades paler when he squeezed the substance in his hands like modeling clay. One of the young men, whose father owned
a tobacco shop, had brought on request a number of old cigar boxes.
“This,” said the Bedou, “is a time pencil, a detonator with timer combined. When you twist this butterfly screw at the top, a phial of acid is crushed. The acid begins to burn its way through a copper diaphragm.
It will do so in sixty seconds. After that, the mercury fulminate will detonate the explosive. Watch.”
He had their undivided attention. Taking a piece of Semtex-H the size of a cigarette pack, he placed it in the small cigar box and inserted the detonator into the heart of the mass.
“Now when you twist the butterfly like this, all you have to do is close the box and wrap a rubber band around the box ... so ... to hold it closed. You only do this at the last moment.”
He placed the box on the sand in the center of the circle.
“However, sixty seconds is a lot longer than you think. You have time to walk to the Iraqi truck, or bunker or half-track, toss in the box, and walk away. Walk—never run. A running man is at once the start of an alarm. Leave enough time to walk around one corner. Continue walking, not running, even after you hear the explosion.”
He had half an eye on the watch on his wrist. Thirty seconds.
“Bedou,” said the banker.
“Yes?”
“That’s not a real one, is it?”
“What?”
“The bomb you just made. It’s a dummy, right?”
Forty-five seconds. He reached forward and picked it up.
“Oh, no. It’s a real one. I just wanted to show you how long sixty seconds really is. Never panic with these things. Panic will kill you, get you shot, just stay calm at all times.”
With a deft flick of the wrist he sent the cigar box spinning away over the dunes. It dropped behind one and exploded. The bang rocked the sitting group, and fine sand drifted back on the wind.
High over the northern Gulf, an American AWACS plane noted the explosion on one of its heat sensors.
The operator drew it to the attention of the mission controller, who peered at the screen. The glow from the heat source was dying away.