The Fist of God

preparing and to summon the trusty Kemal from his quarters across the yard. It was Kemal who had taken the whore down to the basement.

Kadiri had read and reread the report she had almost finished. Had it concerned his personal habits and preferences, a lever for future blackmail, he would have dismissed it and simply had her killed. In any case, no blackmail would ever have worked. The personal baseness of some of the entourage of the Rais was greater than his own, he knew. He also knew that the Rais did not care.

This was worse. Apparently he had talked of things that had happened within the government and the Army. That she was spying was obvious. He needed to know for how long and what she had reported already, but most of all, for whom.

Kemal took his long-awaited pleasures first, with his master’s permission. No man would lust after what remained when Kemal had finished the interrogation. It had taken several hours. Then, Kadiri knew, Kemal had gotten it all—at least, all the courtesan knew.

After that, Kemal had continued for his own amusement until she was dead.

Kadiri was convinced that she had not known the real identity of the man who had recruited and ran her to spy on him, but the picture had to fit Hassan Rahmani.

The description of the information-against-money exchanges in the confessional of St. Joseph’s showed the man was professional, and Rahmani was certainly that.

That he should be watched did not worry Kadiri. All those around the Rais were watched; indeed, they watched each other. The rules of the

Rais were simple and clear. Every figure of high rank was watched and reported on by three of his peers. A denunciation for treachery could and probably would lead to ruin. Thus, few conspiracies could get very far. One of those confided in would report the matter, and it would come to the ears of the Rais.

To complicate matters, each member of the entourage was occasionally provoked, to see what his reaction would be. A colleague, briefed to do so, would take his friend aside and propose treason.

If the friend agreed, he was finished. If he failed to report the proposer, he was finished. So any approach could be a provocation—it was simply too unsafe to assume otherwise. Thus, each reported on the others.

But this was different. Rahmani was head of Counterintelligence. Had he taken the initiative on his own, and if so, why? Was it an operation with the knowledge and approval of the Rais himself, and if so, why?

What had he said? the general wondered. Things indiscreet, no doubt.

But traitorous?

The body had stayed in the basement until the bombs fell, then Kemal had found a crater on a patch of waste ground to dump it. The general had insisted the handbag be placed nearby. Let that bastard Rahmani know what had happened to his slut.

As midnight passed, General Abdullah Kadiri sweated alone, tipping a few drops of water into his tenth tumbler of arak. If it was Rahmani alone, he would finish the bastard. But how could he know how far up the ladder he was distrusted? He would have to be careful henceforth, more careful than he had ever been before. Those late-night trips into the city would end. In any case, with the air war started, it was time to cease.

Simon Paxman had flown back again to London. There was no point in staying in Riyadh. Jericho had been kicked firmly into touch by the CIA, although the unseen renegade in Baghdad would not know it yet, and Mike Martin was confined to quarters until he could escape to the desert and find his way to safety across the border.

Later, Paxman could swear with his hand on his heart the meeting on the evening of the eighteenth with Dr. Terry Martin had been a true coincidence. He knew Martin lived in Bayswater, as he did himself, but it is a large borough with many shops.

With his wife away at the bedside of her sick mother and his own return unforeseen, Paxman had come home to an empty flat and an empty fridge, so he went shopping at an open-late supermarket on Westbourne Grove.

Terry Martin’s cart nearly crashed into his own as he came around the corner of pastas and pet food. Both men were startled.

“Am I allowed to know you?” asked Martin with an embarrassed grin.

There was no one else in that aisle at the time.

“Why not?” said Paxman. “I’m just a humble civil servant shopping for his evening meal.”

They finished their purchases together and agreed to adjourn to an Indian restaurant for a meal rather than cook at home alone. Hilary, it seemed, was also away.

Paxman should, of course, not have done it. He should never have felt uncomfortable that Terry Martin’s elder brother was in a situation of appalling danger and that he, with others, had sent him into it. It should not have worried him that the trusting scholar should really believe that his adored sibling was safe inside Saudi Arabia. All tradecraft insists that one does not worry about that sort of thing. But he did.

There was another worry. Steve Laing was his superior at Century House, but Laing had never been to Iraq. His background was in Egypt and Jordan. Paxman knew Iraq—and Arabic. Not like Terry Martin, of course, but Martin was exceptional. Paxman knew enough, from several visits before he had been made head of the Iraq Desk, to form a sincere respect for the quality of Iraqi scientists and the ingenuity of their engineers. It was no secret that most British technical institutes considered their graduates from Iraq the best in the Arab world.

The worry that had nagged at him since he was told by his superiors that the last Jericho report could be none other than a load of nonsense was simply the fear that, despite all the odds, Iraq might actually be further ahead than the Western scientists were prepared to credit.

He waited until the two meals had arrived, surrounded by small pots of the accessories without which no Indian meal is complete, then made up his mind.

“Terry,” he said, “I am going to do something which, if it ever got out, would mean the end of my career in the Service.”

Martin was startled.

“That sounds drastic. Why?”

“Because I have been officially warned off you.”

The scholar was about to spoon some mango chutney onto his plate, then stopped.

“I am not thought to be reliable anymore? It was Steve Laing who pulled me into all this.”

“It’s not that. The view is that—you worry too much.”

Paxman was not prepared to use Laing’s word fusspot.

“Perhaps I do. It’s the training. Academics do not like puzzles that seem to have no answer. We have to go on worrying at it until the jumbled hieroglyphic makes sense. Was it that business of the phrase in the intercept?”

“Yes, that and other things.”

Paxman had chosen chicken khorma; Martin liked his hotter—vindaloo. Because he knew his eastern food, Martin drank hot black tea, not ice-cold beer, which only makes things worse. He blinked at Paxman over the edge of his mug.

“All right. So what is the great confession?”

“Will you give me your word that this goes no further?”

“Of course.”

“There’s been another intercept.”

Paxman had not the slightest intention of revealing the existence of Jericho. The group who knew of that asset in Iraq was still tiny and would stay that way.

“Can I listen to it?”

“No. It’s been suppressed. Don’t approach Sean Plummer. He’d have to deny it, and that would reveal where you got the information.”

Martin helped himself to more raita to cool down the flaming curry.

“What does it say, this new intercept?”

Paxman told him. Martin put down his fork and wiped his face, which was bright pink beneath the ginger thatch of his hair.

“Can it—could it, under any circumstances, be true?” asked Paxman.

“I don’t know. I’m not a physicist. The brass has given it a no-no?”