“I was just sitting in my car at the traffic light, watching nothing in particular, when I noticed this Iraqi Army truck on the opposite side of the intersection. It was parked there, with a group of soldiers around the hood, eating and smoking. Then a young man, one of our own, walked out of a cafe clutching what looked like a tiny box. It was really small. I thought nothing of it until I saw him flick it under the truck. Then he turned the corner and disappeared. The lights changed, but I stayed where I was.
“In five seconds the truck disintegrated. I mean, it just blew apart. The soldiers were all on the ground with their legs off. I’ve never seen such a small package do so much damage. I tell you, I hung a U and got out of there before the AMAM came along.”
“Plastic,” mused the Army officer. “What would I not give for some of that. It must have been one of the Bedou’s men. Who is that bastard, anyway? I’d love to meet him.”
“The point is, I recognized the boy.”
“What?” The young colonel leaned forward, his face alight with interest.
“I wouldn’t have come all this way just to tell you what you will have heard already. I tell you, I recognized the bomb-thrower. Abu Fouad, I’ve been buying cigarettes from his father for years.”
Dr. Reinhart, when he addressed the Medusa Committee in London three days later, looked tired. Even though he had relinquished all his other duties at Porton Down, the documentation he had taken away with him from the first meeting and the supplementary information that had come pouring in ever since had given him a monstrous task.
“The study is probably not yet complete,” he said, “but a fairly comprehensive picture emerges.
“First, of course, we know that Saddam Hussein has a large poison-gas- production capacity, I estimate at over a thousand tons a year.
“During the Iran-Iraq war, some Iranian soldiers who had been gassed were treated here in Britain, and I was able to examine them. We could recognize phosgene and mustard gas even then.
“The worse news is that I have no doubt that Iraq now has substantial supplies of two far more lethal gases, nerve agents of German invention called Sarin and Tabun. If these were used in the Iran-Iraq war, and I think they were, there would have been no question of treating the victims in British hospitals. They would be dead.”
“How bad are these—er ... agents, Dr. Reinhart?” asked Sir Paul Spruce.
“Sir Paul, do you have a wife?”
The urbane mandarin was startled.
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do.”
“Does Lady Spruce ever use perfume from a spray atomizer?”
“Yes, I do believe I have seen her do that.”
“Have you ever noticed how fine the spray from an atomizer is? How small the droplets?”
“Yes, indeed, and bearing in mind the price of perfume, I’m very glad of it.”
It was a good joke. Anyway, Sir Paul liked it.
“Two of those droplets of Sarin or Tabun on your skin, and you’re dead,” said the chemist from Porton Down.
No one smiled.
“The Iraqi search for nerve gases goes back to 1976. In that year they approached the British company ICI, explaining they wanted to build a pesticide plant to produce four bug-killers—but the materials they asked for caused ICI to turn them down flat. The specifications the Iraqis showed were for corrosion-resistant reactor vessels, pipes, and pumps that convinced ICI that the real end-goal was not chemical pesticides but nerve gas. The deal was refused.”
“Thank God for that,” said Sir Paul, and made a note.
“But not everyone refused them,” said the former Viennese refugee.
“Always the excuse was that Iraq needed to produce herbicides and pesticides, which of course need poisons.”
“They could not have really wanted to produce these agricultural products?” asked Paxman.
“No chance,” said Reinhart. “To a professional chemist, the key lies in the quantities and the types. In 1981 they got a German firm to build them a laboratory with a very special and unusual layout. It was to produce phosphorus pentachloride, the starter chemical for organic phosphorus, which is one of the ingredients of nerve gas. No normal university research laboratory would need to handle such hideously toxic substances. The chemical engineers involved must have known that.
“Further export licenses show orders for thiodiglycol. Mustard gas is made from it when mixed with hydrochloric acid. Thiodiglycol, in small quantities, may be used also for making the ink for ball-point pens.”
“How much did they buy?” asked Sinclair.
“Five hundred tons.”
“That’s a lot of ball-points,” muttered Paxman.
“That was in early 1983,” said Reinhart. “In the summer their big Samarra poison gas plant went into operation, producing yperite, which is mustard gas. They began using it on the Iranians in December.
“During the first attacks by the Iranian human waves, the Iraqis used a mixture of yellow rain, yperite, and Tabun. By 1985, they had improved the mixture to one of hydrogen cyanide, mustard gas, Tabun, and Sarin, achieving a sixty percent mortality rate among the Iranian infantry.”
“Could we just look at the nerve gases, Doctor?” asked Sinclair. “That would seem to be the really deadly stuff.”
“It is,” said Dr. Reinhart. “From 1984, the chemicals for which they were shopping were phosphorus oxychloride, which is an important precursor chemical for Tabun, and two Sarin precursors, trimethyl phosphite and potassium fluoride. Of the first of those three, they tried to order 150 tons from a Dutch company. That’s enough pesticide to kill every tree, shrub, and blade of grass in the Middle East. The Dutch turned them down, as ICI had, but they still bought two uncontrolled chemicals at that time: dimethylamine for making Tabun, and isopropanol for Sarin.”
“If they were uncontrolled in Europe, why could they not be used for pesticides?” asked Sir Paul.
“Because of the quantities,” Dr. Reinhart replied, “and the chemical manufacturing and handling equipment, and the factory layouts. To a skilled chemist or chemical engineer, none of these purchases could be other than for poison gas.”
“Do you know who the main supplier over the years has been, doctor?” asked Sir Paul.
“Oh, yes. There was some input of a scientific nature from the Soviet Union and East Germany in the early days, and some exports from about eight countries, in most cases of small quantities of uncontrolled chemicals. But eighty percent of the plants, layouts, machinery, special handling equipment, chemicals, technology, and know-how came from West Germany.”
“Actually,” drawled Sinclair, “we’ve been protesting to Bonn for years. They always trashed the protests. Doctor, can you identify the chemical gas plants on those photos we gave you?”
“Yes, of course. Some factories are identified in the paperwork. Others you can see with a magnifying glass.”
The chemist spread five large aerial photos on the table.
“I do not know the Arab names, but these numbers identify the photographs for you, do they not?”
“Yes. You just point out the buildings,” said Sinclair.
“Here, the whole complex of seventeen buildings ... here, this big single plant—you see the air scrubber unit? And here, this one ... and this whole complex of eight buildings ... and this one.”
Sinclair studied a list from his attache case. He nodded grimly.
“As we thought. Al Qaim, Fallujah, Al-Hillah, Salman Pak, and Samarra. Doctor, I’m very very grateful to you. Our guys in the States figured out exactly the same. They’ll all be targeted for the first wave of attacks.”
When the meeting broke up Sinclair, with Simon Paxman and Terry Martin, strolled up to Piccadilly and had a coffee at Richoux.
“I don’t know about you guys,” said Sinclair as he stirred his cappuccino, “but for us the bottom line is the gas threat. General Schwarzkopf is convinced already. That’s what he calls the nightmare scenario: mass gas attacks, a rain of airbursts over all our troops. If they go, they’ll go in masks and gas capes, head to foot. The good news is, this gas doesn’t live long once it’s exposed to air. It touches the desert, it’s dead. Terry, you don’t look convinced.”
