In the last week of September, in conditions of such total secrecy that not even its Allies were told, the United States made its plans to move from defensive role to offensive. The assault on Iraq was planned, even though the United Nations mandate was still limited to securing the safety of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and only that.
But he also had problems. One was that the number of Iraqi troops, guns, and tanks deployed against him was double the number when he had arrived in Riyadh six weeks earlier. Another problem was that he would need double the amount of Coalition forces to liberate Kuwait than that needed to secure Saudi Arabia.
Norman Schwarzkopf was a man who took George Patton’s dictum very seriously: One dead American or Brit or Frenchie or any other Coalition soldier or airman was one too many. Before he would go in, he would want two things: twice the amount of force he presently had, and an air assault guaranteed to “degrade” by fifty percent the strength of the Iraqi forces arrayed north of the border.
That meant more time, more equipment, more stores, more guns, more tanks, more troops, more airplanes, more fuel, more food, and a lot more money. Then he told the stunned armchair Napoleons on Capitol Hill that if they wanted a victory, they had better let him have it all.
Actually, it was the more urbane Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, who passed the message on, but he softened the language a bit. Politicians love to play the games of soldiers, but they hate to be addressed in the language of soldiers.
So the planning in that last week of September was utterly secret. As it turned out, it was just as well. The United Nations, leaking peace plans at every seam, would wait until November 29 before giving the go-ahead to the Coalition to use all necessary force to evict Iraq from Kuwait unless she quit by January 15. Had planning started at the end of November, it could never have been completed in time.
Ahmed Al-Khalifa was deeply embarrassed. He knew Abu Fouad, of course, who and what he was. Further, he sympathized with his request. But he had given his word, he explained, and he could not go back on it.
Not even to his fellow-Kuwaiti and fellow-resister did he reveal that the Bedou was in fact a British officer. But he did agree to leave a message for the Bedou in a place he knew the man would find it sooner or later.
The following morning he left a letter, with his personal recommendation urging the Bedou to agree to meet Abu Fouad, under the marble tombstone of Able Seaman Shepton in the Christian cemetery.
There were six soldiers in the group, headed by a sergeant, and when the Bedou came around the corner, they were as surprised as he.
Mike Martin had parked his small truck in the lock-up garage and was making his way across the city on foot toward the villa he had chosen for that night. He was tired, and unusually, his alertness was blunted.
When he saw the Iraqis and knew they had seen him, he cursed himself. In his job, men can die for a moment’s lack of alertness.
It was well after curfew, and though he was quite used to moving through the city when it was deserted of law-abiding citizens and only the Iraqi patrols were on the prowl, he made a point of moving through the ill-lit side streets, across the darkened patches of waste ground, and down the black alleys, just as the Iraqis made a point of sticking to the main highways and intersections. That way, they never troubled each other.
But following Hassan Rahmani’s return to Baghdad and his vitriolic report on the uselessness of the Popular Army, some changes were taking place. The Green Berets of the Iraqi Special Forces had begun to appear.
Though not classed with the elite Republican Guard, the Green Berets were at least more disciplined than the rabble of conscripts called the Popular Army. It was six of these who stood quietly by their truck at a road junction where normally there would have been no Iraqis.
Martin just had time to lean heavily on the stick he carried with him and adopt the posture of an old man. It was a good posture, for in the Arab culture the old are given respect or at least, compassion.
“Hey, you,” shouted the sergeant. “Come over here.”
There were four assault rifles trained on the lone figure in the checkered
“What are you doing out at this hour, Bedou?”
“Just an old man trying to get to his home before the curfew,
“It’s past the hour of curfew, fool! Two hours past.”
The old man shook his head in bewilderment.
“I didn’t know,
In the Middle East watches are not indispensable, just highly prized, a sign of prosperity. Iraqi soldiers arriving in Kuwait soon acquired them—they just took them. But the word
The sergeant grunted. The excuse was possible.
“Papers,” he said.
The old man used his spare hand to pat his soiled robe.
“I seem to have lost them,” he pleaded.
“Frisk him,” said the sergeant. One of the soldiers moved forward. The hand grenade strapped to the inside of Martin’s left thigh felt like one of the watermelons from his truck.
“Don’t you touch my balls,” said the old Bedou sharply. The soldier stopped. One in the back let out a giggle. The sergeant tried to keep a straight face.
“Well, go on, Zuhair. Frisk him.”
The young soldier Zuhair hesitated, embarrassed. He knew the joke was on him.
“Only my wife is allowed to touch my balls,” said the Bedou. Two of the soldiers let out a guffaw and lowered their rifles. The rest did the same. Zuhair still held back.
“Mind you, it doesn’t do her any good. I’m long past that sort of thing,” said the old man.
It was too much. The patrol roared with laughter. Even the sergeant grinned.
“All right, old man. On your way. And don’t stay out again after dark.”
The Bedou limped off to the corner of the street, scratching under his clothes. At the corner he turned. The grenade, priming arm sticking clumsily out to one side, skittered across the cobbles and came to rest against the toe-cap of Zuhair. All six stared at it. Then it went off. It was the end of the six soldiers. It was also the end of September.
That night, far away in Tel Aviv, General Kobi Dror of the Mossad sat in his office in the Hadar Dafna building, taking a late-night drink after work with an old friend and colleague, Shlomo Gershon, always known as Sami.
Sami Gershon was head of the Mossad’s Combatants or Komemiute Division, the section responsible for running illegal agents, the dangerous cutting edge of espionage. He had been one of the other two present when his chief had lied to Chip Barber.
“You don’t think we should have told them?” Gershon asked, because the subject had come up again.
Dror swirled his beer in the bottle and took a swig. “Screw them,” he growled. “Let them recruit their own bloody assets.”
As a teenage soldier in the spring of 1967, Dror had crouched under his Patton tank in the desert and waited while four Arab states prepared to settle accounts with Israel once and for all. He still recalled how the outside world had confined itself to muttering, “Tut tut.”
With the rest of his crew, commanded by a twenty-year-old, he had been one of those under Israel Tal who had punched a hole straight through the Mitla Pass and driven the Egyptian Army back to the Suez Canal.
And he recalled how, when Israel had destroyed four armies and four air forces in six days, the same Western media that had wrung its hands at his country’s impending obliteration in May had accused Israel of bully- boy tactics by winning.
From then on, Kobi Dror’s philosophy had been made: Screw them all.
He was a sabra, born and raised in Israel, and had none of the breadth of vision nor forbearance of people like David Ben-Gurion.
His political loyalty lay with the far-right Likud Party, with Menachem Begin, who had been in the Irgun, and Itzhak Shamir, formerly of the Stern Gang.
Once, sitting at the back of a classroom, listening to one of his staff lecture the new recruits, he had heard the man use the phrase “friendly intelligence agencies.” He had risen and taken over the class.
