insisted that he drive Terry Martin out to Livermore in the morning rather than go to the expense of a cab.
“I guess I have a more important guy in my house than I thought I had,” he suggested on the drive. But though Martin expostulated that this was not so, the California scholar knew enough about the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to know that not everyone blew in there on a phone call. Dr. Maslowski, with masterly discretion, refrained from asking any more questions.
At the main security gate uniformed guards checked a list, examined Martin’s passport, made a phone call, and directed them to a parking area.
“I’ll wait here,” said Maslowski.
Considering the work it does, the Laboratory is an odd-looking collection of buildings on Vasco Road, some of them modern, but many dating back to the days when it was an old military base. To add to the conglomeration of styles, “temporary” buildings that have somehow become permanent are slotted between the old barracks.
Martin was led to a group of offices on the East Avenue side of the complex.
It does not look like much, but it is out of this cluster of buildings that a group of scientists monitor the spread of nuclear technology across the Third World.
Jim Jacobs turned out to be little older than Terry Martin, just under forty, a Ph.D., and a nuclear physicist. He welcomed Martin into his paper-strewn office.
“Cold morning. Bet you thought California was going to be hot.
Everyone does. Not up here, though. Coffee?”
“Love some.”
“Sugar, cream?”
“No, black, please.”
Dr. Jacobs pressed an intercom button.
“Sandy, could we have two coffees? Mine you know. And one black.”
He smiled across the desk at his visitor. He did not bother to mention that he had talked with Washington to confirm the English visitor’s name and that he really was a member of the Medusa Committee.
Someone on the American end of the committee, whom he knew, had checked a list and confirmed the claim. Jacobs was impressed. The visitor might look young, but he must be pretty high-powered over in England. The Deputy Director knew all about Medusa because he and his colleagues had been consulted for weeks about Iraq and had handed over everything they had, every detail of the story of foolishness and neglect on the part of the West that had damn nearly given Saddam Hussein a nuclear option.
“So how can I help?” he asked.
“I know it’s a long shot,” said Martin, reaching into his attache case.
“But I suppose you have seen this already?”
He laid a copy of one of the dozen pictures of the Tarmiya factory on the desk, the one Paxman had disobediently given him. Jacobs glanced at it and nodded.
“Sure, had a dozen of them through from Washington three, four days ago. What can I say? They don’t mean a thing. Can’t say more to you than I said to Washington. Never seen anything like them.”
Sandy came in with a tray of coffee, a bright blond California woman full of self-assurance.
“Hi, there,” she said to Martin.
“Oh, er, hallo. Did the Director see these?”
Jacobs frowned. The implication was that he himself might not be senior enough. “The Director’s skiing in Colorado. But I ran them past some of the best brains we have here, and believe me, they are very, very good.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” said Martin. Another blank wall. Well, it had only been a long shot.
Sandy placed the cups of coffee on the desk. Her eye fell on the photograph.
“Oh, them again,” she said.
“Yes, them again,” said Jacobs, and smiled teasingly. “Dr. Martin here thinks maybe someone ... older should have a look at them.”
“Well,” she said, “show ’em to Daddy Lomax.”
With that she was gone.
“Who’s Daddy Lomax?” asked Martin.
“Oh, take no notice. Used to work here. Retired now, lives alone up in the mountains. Pops in now and then for old times’ sake. The girls adore him, he brings them mountain flowers. Funny old guy.”
They drank their coffee, but there was little more to say. Jacobs had work to do. He apologized once again for not being able to help. Then he showed his visitor out, returned to his sanctum, and closed the door.
Martin waited in the corridor a few seconds, then put his head around the door.
“Where would I find Daddy Lomax?” he asked Sandy.
“I don’t know. Lives way up in the hills. Nobody’s ever been there.”
“He has a phone?”
“No, no lines go up there. But I think he has a cellular. The insurance company insisted. I mean, he’s terribly old.”
Her face was creased with that genuine concern that only California youth can show for anyone over sixty. She rifled through a Rolodex and came up with a number. Martin noted it, thanked her, and left.
Ten time zones away, it was evening in Baghdad. Mike Martin was on his bicycle, pedaling northwest up Port Said Street. He had just passed the old British Club at what used to be called Southgate, and because he recalled it from his boyhood, he turned to stare back at it.
His lack of attention nearly caused an accident. He had reached the edge of Nafura Square and without thinking pedaled forward. There was a big limousine coming from his left and although technically it did not have right of way, its two motorcycle escorts were clearly not going to stop.
One of them swerved violently to avoid the clumsy
Martin went down with his bicycle, sprawling on the road, his vegetables spilling out. The limousine braked, paused, and swerved around him before accelerating away.
On his knees, Martin looked up as the car passed. The face of the rear seat passenger stared out the window at the oaf who had dared to delay him by a fraction of a second.
It was a cold face in the uniform of a brigadier general, thin and acerbic, channels running down either side of the nose to frame the bitter mouth. In that half-second, what Martin noticed were the eyes.
Not cold or angry eyes, not bloodshot red or shrewd or even cruel.
Blank eyes, utterly and completely blank, the eyes of death long gone.
Then the face behind the window had passed by.
He did not need the whisperings of the two working men who pulled him to his feet and helped gather up his vegetables. He had seen the face before, but dimly, blurred, taken on a saluting base, in a photograph on a table in Riyadh weeks before. He had just seen the most feared man in Iraq after the Rais, perhaps including the Rais. It was the one they called Al-Mu’azib, the Tormentor, the extractor of confessions, head of the AMAM, Omar Khatib.
Terry Martin tried the number he had been given during the lunch hour. There was no reply, just the honeyed tones of the recorded voice advising him: “The party you have called is not available or is out of range. Please try your call later.”
Paul Maslowski had taken Martin to lunch with his faculty colleagues on the campus. The conversation was lively and academic. Over the meal Martin thanked his hosts again for their invitation and repeated his appreciation of the endowment that had funded his visit. He tried the number again after lunch on his way to Barrows Hall, guided by Near Eastern Studies Director Kathlene Keller, but again there was no reply.
The lecture went across well. There were twenty-seven graduate students, all heading for their doctorates, and Martin was impressed at the level and depth of their understanding of the papers he had written on the subject of the Caliphate that ruled central Mesopotamia in what the Europeans call the Middle Ages.
