The Fist of God

Some dictators, when delicate matters are to be discussed, like to keep the meeting small. Saddam thought the opposite; if there was dirty work to be done, they should all be involved. No man could say: “I have clean hands, I did not know.” In this way, all around him would get the message: “If I fall, you fall.”

When all had resumed their seats, the President nodded to his son-in-law Hussein Kamil, who called on Dr. Saadi to report. The technocrat read his report without raising his eyes. No wise man raised his eyes to stare Saddam in the face. The President claimed he could read into a man’s soul through his eyes, and many believed it. Staring into his face might signify courage, defiance, disloyalty. If the President suspected disloyalty, the offender usually died horribly.

When Dr. Saadi had finished, Saddam thought for a while.

“This man, this Canadian. How much does he know?”

“Not all, but enough, I believe, to work it out, sayidi.”

Saadi used the honorific Arabic address equivalent to the Western sir, but more respectful. An alternative acceptable title was Sayid Rais, or

“Mr. President.”

“How soon?”

“Soon, if not already, sayidi.”

“And he has been talking to the Israelis?”

“Constantly, Sayid Rais,” replied Dr. Ubaidi. “He has been friends of theirs for years. Visited Tel Aviv and given lectures on ballistics to their artillery staff officers. He has many friends there, possibly among the Mossad, though he may not know that.”

“Could we finish the project without him?” asked Saddam Hussein.

Hussein Kamil cut in. “He is a strange man. He insists on carrying all his most intimate scientific paperwork around with him in a big canvas bag. I instructed our counterintelligence people to have a look at this paperwork and copy it.”

“And this was done?” The President was staring at Hassan Rahmani, his Counterintelligence chief.

“Immediately, Sayid Rais. Last month during his visit here. He drinks much whiskey. It was doped, and he slept long and deep. We took his bag and photocopied every page in it. Also, we have taped all his technical conversations. The papers and the transcripts have all been passed to our comrade Dr. Saadi.”

The presidential stare swiveled back to the scientist.

“So, once again, can you complete the project without him?”

“Yes, Sayid Rais, I believe we can. Some of his calculations make sense only to himself, but I have had our best mathematicians studying them for a month. They can understand them. The engineers can do the rest.”

Hussein Kamil shot his deputy a warning look: You had better be right, my friend.

“Where is he now?” asked the President.

“He has left for China, sayidi,” replied Dr. Ubaidi. “He is trying to find us a third stage for the Al-Abeid rocket. Alas, he will fail. He is expected back in Brussels in mid-March.”

“You have men there, good men?”

“Yes, sayidi. I have had him under surveillance in Brussels for ten months. That is how we know he has been entertaining Israeli delegations at his offices there. We also have keys to his apartment building.”

“Then let it be done. On his return.”

“Without delay, Sayid Rais.” Dr. Ubaidi thought of the four men he had in Brussels on arm’s-length surveillance work. One of them had done this before: Abdelrahman Moyeddin. He would give the job to him.

The three intelligence men and Dr. Saadi were dismissed. The rest stayed. When they were alone, Saddam Hussein turned to his son-in-law.

“And the other matter—when will I have it?”

“I am assured, by the end of the year, Abu Kusay.”

Being family, Kamil could use the more intimate title “Father of Kusay.” It reminded the others present who was family and who was not. The President grunted.

“We shall need a place, a new place, a fortress; not an existing place, however secret. A new secret place that no one will know about. No one but a tiny handful, not even all of us here. Not a civil engineering project, but military. Can you do it?”

General Ali Musuli of the Army Engineers straightened his back, staring at the President’s midchest.

“With pride, Sayid Rais.”

“The man in charge—your best, your very best.”

“I know the man, sayidi. A colonel. Brilliant at construction and deception. The Russian Stepanov said he was the best pupil in maskirovka that he had ever taught.”

“Then bring him to me. Not here—in Baghdad, in two days. I will commission him myself. Is he a good Ba’athist, this colonel? Loyal to the party and to me?”

“Utterly, sayidi. He would die for you.”

“So would you all, I hope.” There was a pause, then quietly: “Let us hope it does not come to that.”

As a conversation-stopper, it worked. Fortunately that was the end of the meeting anyway.

Dr. Gerry Bull arrived back in Brussels on March 17, exhausted and depressed. His colleagues assumed his depression was caused by his rebuff in China. But it was more than that.

Ever since he had arrived in Baghdad more than two years earlier, he had allowed himself to be persuaded— because it was what he wanted to believe—that the rocket program and the Babylon gun were for the launch of small, instrument-bearing satellites into earth orbit. He could see the enormous benefits in self-esteem and pride for the whole Arab world if Iraq could do that. Moreover, it would be lucrative, pay its way, as Iraq launched communications and weather satellites for other nations.

As he understood it, the plan was for Babylon to fire its satellite-bearing missile southeast over the length of Iraq, on over Saudi Arabia and the south Indian Ocean, and into orbit. That was what he had designed it for.

He had been forced to agree with his colleagues that no Western nation would see it that way. They would assume it was a military gun.

Hence, the subterfuge in the ordering of the barrel parts, breech, and recoil mechanism.

Only he, Gerald Vincent Bull, knew the truth, which was very simple—the Babylon gun could not be used as a weapon for launching conventional explosive shells, however gigantic those shells might be.

For one thing, the Babylon gun, with its 156-meter barrel, could not stay rigid without supports. It needed one trunnion, or support, for every second of its twenty-six barrel sections, even if, as he foresaw, its barrel ran up the forty-five-degree side of a mountain. Without these supports, the barrel would droop like wet spaghetti and tear itself apart as the joins ripped open.

Therefore, it could not raise or depress its elevation, nor traverse from side to side. So it could not pick a variety of targets. To change its angle, up or down or side to side, it would have to be dismantled, taking weeks. Even to clean out and reload between discharges would take a couple of days. Moreover, repeated firings would wear out that very expensive barrel. Lastly, Babylon could not be hidden from counterattack.

Every time it fired, a gobbet of flame ninety meters long would leap from its barrel, and every satellite and airplane would spot it. Its map coordinates would be with the Americans in seconds. Also, its reverberation shock waves would reach any good seismograph as far away as California. That was why he told anyone who would listen, “It cannot be used as a weapon.”

His problem was that after two years in Iraq, he had realized that for Saddam Hussein science had one application and one only: It was to be applied to weapons of war and the power they brought him and to nothing else. So why the hell was he financing Babylon? It could only fire once in anger before the retaliatory fighter-bombers blew it to bits, and it could only fire a satellite or a conventional shell.