chance the two coups, on July 14 and 30, that toppled the Army and swept the Ba’ath Party to power under President Bakr, with a vice-president called Saddam Hussein.
Nigel Martin had suspected something was coming and had made his plans. He left the IPC and joined a British-based oil company called Burmah Oil, and after packing up the family’s affairs in Baghdad, he settled the family outside Hertford, from where he could commute daily to London and his new job.
Nigel Martin became a keen golfer, and on weekends his sons would often act as caddies when he played with a fellow executive from Burmah Oil, a certain Mr. Denis Thatcher, whose wife was quite interested in politics.
Terry loved Haileybury, which was then under the head-mastership of William Stewart; both boys were in Melvill House, whose housemaster then was Richard Rhodes-James. Predictably, Terry turned out to be the scholar and Mike the athlete. Scorning having a go at a place in university, Mike announced early that he wanted to make a career in the Army. It was a decision with which Mr. Rhodes-James was happy to agree. If Mike’s protective attitude toward his shorter and chubbier brother had begun at Mr. Hartley’s school in Baghdad, it was confirmed at Haileybury, as was the younger boy’s adoration of his sibling.
Terry Martin left the darkened church when the choir practice ended, walked across Trafalgar Square, and caught a bus to Bayswater, where he and Hilary shared a flat. As he passed up Park Lane, he thought back to the school years with Mike. And now, by being stupid when he should have kept his mouth shut, he had caused his brother to be sent into occupied Kuwait. He felt close to tears with worry and frustration.
He left the bus and scurried down Chepstow Gardens. Hilary, who had been away for three days on business, should be back. He hoped so; he needed to be comforted. When he let himself in, he called out and heard with joy the answering voice from the sitting room.
He entered the room and blurted out the stupid thing he had done.
Then he felt himself enfolded in the warm, comforting embrace of the kind, gentle stockbroker with whom he shared his life.
Mike Martin had spent two days with the Head of Station in Riyadh, a station that had now been beefed up with the addition of two more men from Century.
The Riyadh station normally works out of the embassy, and since Saudi Arabia is regarded, as a most friendly country to British interests, it has never been regarded as a “hard” posting, requiring a large staff and complex facilities. But the ten-day-old crisis in the Gulf had changed things.
The newly created Coalition of Western and Arab nations adamantly opposed to Iraq’s continued occupation of Kuwait already had two appointed co-commanders-in-chief, General Norman Schwarzkopf of the United States and Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, a forty-four-year-old professional soldier, trained in the States and at Sandhurst in England, a nephew of the King, and son of Defense Minister Prince Sultan.
Prince Khaled, in response to the British request, had been as gracious as usual, and with remarkable speed a large detached villa had been acquired on the outskirts of the city for the British embassy to rent.
Technicians from London were installing receivers and transmitters with their inevitable encryption machines for secure usage, and the place was about to become the headquarters of the British Secret
Service for the duration of the emergency. Somewhere across town, the Americans were doing much the same for the CIA, which clearly intended to have a very major presence. The animus that would later develop between the senior brass of the U.S. armed forces and the civilians of the Agency had not yet begun.
In the interim, Mike Martin had stayed at the private house of the Station Head, Julian Gray. Both men agreed there would be no advantage in Martin being seen by anyone in the embassy. The charming Mrs. Gray, a career wife, had been his hostess and never dreamt of asking who he was or what he was doing in Saudi Arabia.
Martin spoke no Arabic to the Saudi staff, just accepted the offered coffee with a smile and a thank you in English.
On the evening of the second day, Gray was giving Martin his final briefing. They seemed to have covered everything they could, at least from Riyadh.
“You’ll be flying to Dhahran tomorrow morning. Civilian flight of Saudia. They’ve stopped running direct into Khafji. You’ll be met.
The Firm has set up a dispatcher in Khafji; he’ll meet you and run you north. Actually, I think he’s ex- regiment. Sparky Low—do you know him?”
“I know him,” said Martin.
“He’s got all the things you said you needed. And he’s found a young Kuwaiti pilot you might like to talk to. He’ll be getting from us all the latest pictures from the American satellites showing the border area and the main concentrations of Iraqi troops to avoid, plus anything else we get. Now, lastly, these pictures have just come in from London.”
He spread a row of large, glossy pictures out on the dining table.
“Saddam doesn’t seem to have appointed an Iraqi Governor-General yet; he’s still trying to put together an administration of Kuwaiti quislings and getting nowhere. Even the Kuwaiti opposition won’t play ball. But it seems there’s already quite a Secret Police presence there. This one here seems to be the local AMAM chief, name of Colonel Sabaawi, quite a bastard. His boss in Baghdad, who may visit, is the head of the Amn-al-Amm, Omar Khatib. Here.”
Martin stared at the face in the photograph: surly, sullen, a mix of cruelty and peasant cunning in the eyes and mouth.
“His reputation is pretty bloody. Same as his sidekick in Kuwait, Sabaawi. Khatib is about forty-five, comes from Tikrit, a clansman of Saddam himself and a longtime henchman. We don’t know much about Sabaawi, but he’ll be more in evidence.”
Gray pulled over another photograph.
“Apart from the AMAM, Baghdad has sent in a team from the Mukhabarat’s Counterintelligence wing, probably to cope with the foreigners and any attempt at espionage or sabotage directed from outside their new conquest. The CI boss is this one here—got a reputation as cunning and nobody’s fool. He may be the one to be careful of.”
It was August 8. Another C-5 Galaxy was rumbling overhead to land at the nearby military airport, part of the vast American logistical machine that was already in gear and pouring its endless materiel into a nervous, uncomprehending, and extremely traditional Moslem kingdom.
Mike Martin looked down and stared at the face of Hassan Rahmani.
It was Steve Laing on the phone again.
“I don’t want to talk,” said Terry Martin.
“I think we should, Dr. Martin. Look, you’re worried about your brother, are you not?”
“Very much.”
“There’s no need to be, you know. He’s a very tough character, well able to look after himself. He wanted to go, no question of it. We gave him absolute right to turn us down.”
“I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“Try and look at it this way, Doctor. If worse comes to worst, we may have to send a lot of other brothers, husbands, sons, uncles, loved ones out to the Gulf. If there’s anything any of us can do to limit their casualties, shouldn’t we try?”
“All right. What do you want?”
“Oh, another lunch, I think. Easier to talk man to man. Do you know the Montcalm Hotel? Say, one o’clock?”
“Despite the brains, he’s quite an emotional little blighter,” Laing had remarked to Simon Paxman earlier that morning.
“Good Lord,” said Paxman, like an entomologist who has just been told of an amusing new species discovered under a rock.
The spymaster and the academic had a quiet booth to themselves—Mr.
Costa had seen to it. When the smoked salmon cornets had been served, Laing broached his subject.
“The fact of the matter is, we may actually be facing a war in the Gulf.
Not yet, of course; it will take time to build up the necessary forces.
But the Americans have the bit between their teeth. They are absolutely determined, with the complete support of our good lady in Downing Street, to get Saddam Hussein and his thugs out of Kuwait.”
