governments to fall. The recriminations and the self-blame would last a generation.”
“He can’t do that,” said Laing again.
“He thinks he can,” repeated Martin.
“It’s the gas weapon,” muttered Paxman.
“Maybe. By the bye, did you ever find out what that phrase on the phone intercept meant?”
Laing glanced across at Paxman. Jericho again. There must be no mention of Jericho.
“No. Nobody we asked had ever heard of it. No one could work it out.”
“It could be important, Steve. Something else—not gas.”
“Terry,” said Laing patiently, “in less than twenty days the Americans, with us, the French, Italians, Saudis, and others, are going to throw at Saddam Hussein the biggest air armada the world has ever seen.
Enough firepower to exceed in a further twenty days all the tonnage dropped in the Second World War. The generals down in Riyadh are kind of busy. We really can’t go down there and say ‘Hold everything, guys. We have a phrase in a phone intercept we can’t work out.’ Let’s face it, it was just an excitable man on a phone suggesting that God was on their side.”
“There’s nothing strange in that, Terry,” said Paxman. “People going to war have claimed they had God’s support since time began. That was all it was.”
“The other man told the speaker to shut up and get off the line,” Martin reminded them.
“So he was busy and irritable.”
“He called him the son of a whore.”
“So he didn’t like him much.”
“Maybe.”
“Terry, please, leave it alone. It was just a phrase. It’s the gas weapon.
That’s what he’s counting on. All the rest of your analysis we agree with.”
Martin left first, the two intelligence officers twenty minutes later.
Shrugged into their coats, collars up, they went down the sidewalk looking for a taxi.
“You know,” said Laing, “he’s a clever little bugger, and I quite like him. But he really is a terrible fusspot. You’ve heard about his private life?”
A cab went by, empty, its light off. Tea break time. Laing swore at it.
“Yes, of course, the Box ran a check.”
The Box, or Box 500, is slang for the Security Service, MI-5. Once, long ago, the address of MI-5 really was P.O. Box 500, London.
“Well, there you are then,” said Laing.
“Steve, I really don’t think that’s got anything to do with it.”
Laing stopped and turned to his subordinate.
“Simon, trust me. He’s got a bee in his bonnet, and he’s just wasting our time. Take a word of advice. Just drop the professor.”
“It will be the poison gas weapon, Mr. President.”
Three days after the New Year, such festivities as there had been in the White House—and for most there had been no pause at all—had long died away. The whole West Wing, the heart of the Bush administration, was humming with activity.
In the quiet of the Oval Office, George Bush sat behind the great desk, backed by the tall narrow windows, five inches of pale green bulletproof glass, and beneath the seal of the United States.
Facing him was Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Adviser.
The President glanced down at the digest of the analyses that had just been presented to him.
“Everyone is agreed on this?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. The stuff that just came in from London shows their people completely concur with ours. Saddam Hussein will not pull out of Kuwait unless he is given an out, a face-saver, which we will ensure he does not get. For the rest, he will rely on mass gas attacks on the Coalition ground forces, either before or during their invasion across the border.”
George Bush was the first American President since John F. Kennedy who had actually been in combat. He had seen American bodies killed in action. But there was something particularly hideous, especially foul, in the thought of young combat soldiers writhing through their last moments of life as gas tore at their lung tissues and crippled their central nervous systems.
“And how will he launch this gas?” he asked.
“We believe there are four options, Mr. President. The obvious one is by canisters launched from fighters and strike bombers, Colin Powell has just been on the line to Chuck Horner in Riyadh. General Horner says he needs thirty-five days of unceasing air war. After day twenty, no Iraqi airplane will reach the border. By day thirty, no Iraqi plane will take off for more than sixty seconds. He says he guarantees it, sir.
You can have his stars on it.”
“And the rest?”
“Saddam has a number of MLRS batteries. That would seem to be the second line of possibility.”
Iraq’s multilaunch rocket systems were Soviet-built and based on the old Katyushkas used with devastating effect by the Soviet Army in the Second World War. Now much updated, these rockets, launched in rapid sequence from a rectangular “pack” on the back of a truck or from a fixed position, had a range of one hundred kilometers.
“Naturally, Mr. President, because of their range, they would have to be launched from within Kuwait or the Iraqi desert to the west. We believe the J-STARs will find them on their radars and they will be taken out. The Iraqis can camouflage them all they like, but the metal will show up.
“For the rest, Iraq has stockpiles of gas-tipped shells for use by tanks and artillery. Range, under thirty-seven kilometers—nineteen miles.
We know the stockpiles are already on site, but at that range it’s all desert—no cover. The Air boys are confident they can find them and destroy them. And then there are the Scuds—they’re being taken care of even as we speak.”
“And the preventive measures?”
“They’re completed, Mr. President. In case of an anthrax attack, every man is being inoculated. The Brits have done it too. We are increasing production of the anti-anthrax vaccine every hour. And every man and woman has a gas mask and a coverall gas cape. If he tries it ...”
The President rose, turned, and stared up at the seal. The bald eagle, clutching its arrows, stared back.
Twenty years earlier, there had been those awful zip-up body bags coming back from Vietnam, and he knew that a supply was even now stored in discreet unmarked containers under the Saudi sun. Even with all the precautions, there would be patches of exposed skin, masks that could not be reached and pulled on in time.
The following year would be the reelection campaign. But that was not the point. Win or lose, he had no intention of going down in history as the American President who consigned tens of thousands of soldiers to die, not as in Vietnam over nine years, but over a few weeks or even days.
“Brent ...”
“Mr. President.”
“James Baker is due to see Tariq Aziz shortly.”
“In six days in Geneva.”
“Ask him to come and see me, please.”
In the first week of January, Edith Hardenberg began to enjoy herself, really enjoy herself, for the first time in years. There was a thrill in exploring and explaining to her eager young friend the wonders of culture that lay within her city.
The Winkler Bank was permitting its staff a four-day break to include
New Year’s Day; after that, they would have to confine their cultural outings to the evenings, which still gave
