The Fist of God Page 7

  To be frank, it is not quite that tidy (nothing British is ever quite that tidy), but they seem to muddle through.

  That August 1990, the focus of attention was Mid-East, and particularly the Iraq Desk, upon whom the entire political and bureaucratic world of Westminster and Whitehall seemed to have descended like a noisy and unwelcome fan club.

  The Deputy Chief listened carefully to what the Controller Mid-East and the Director Ops for that region had to say and nodded several times. It was, he thought, or might be, an interesting option.

  It was not that no information was coming out of Kuwait. In the first forty-eight hours, before the Iraqis closed down the international telephone lines, every British company with an office in Kuwait had been on the phone, the telex, or the fax machines to their local man. The Kuwaiti embassy had been bending the ear of the Foreign Office with the first horror stories and demanding instant liberation.

  The problem was, virtually none of the information was of the sort the Chief could present to Cabinet as utterly reliable. In the aftermath of the invasion, Kuwait was one giant “bugger’s muddle,” as the Foreign Secretary had so mordantly phrased it six hours earlier.

  Even the British embassy staff were now firmly locked in their compound on the edge of the Gulf, almost in the shadow of the needle-pointed Kuwait Towers, trying to contact by telephone those British citizens on a grossly inadequate list to see if they were all right. The received wisdom from these frightened businessmen and engineers was that they could occasionally hear gunfire. “Tell me something I don’t know” was the reaction at Century to such gems of intelligence.

  Now a man in on the ground, and a trained deep-penetration, covert-ops man who could pass for an Arab—that could be very interesting. Apart from some rock-hard real information as to what the hell was going on in there, a chance existed to show the politicians that something was actually being done and to cause William Webster over at the CIA to choke on his after-dinner mints.

  The Deputy Chief had had no illusions about Margaret Thatcher’s almost kittenish esteem (mutual) for the SAS since that afternoon in May 1980 when they had blown away those terrorists at the Iranian embassy in London, and she had spent the evening with the team at the Albany Street barracks drinking whiskey and listening to their tales of derring-do.

  “I think,” he said at last, “I’d better have a chat with the DSF.”

  Officially, the Special Air Service Regiment has nothing to do with the SIS. The chains of command are quite different. The active-service 22nd SAS (as opposed to the part-time 23rd SAS) is based at a barracks called Stirling Lines, outside the county town of Hereford in the west of England. Its commanding officer reports to the Director of Special Forces, or DSF, whose office is in a sprawl of buildings in West London. The actual office is at the top of a once-elegant pillared building covered in a seemingly perpetual skin of scaffolding, part of a rabbit warren of small rooms whose lack of splendor belies the importance of the operations planned there.

  The DSF comes under the Director of Military Operations (a general) who reports to the Chief of General Staff (an even higher general), and the General Staff comes under the Ministry of Defence.

  But the Special in the title of the SAS is there for a reason. Ever since it was founded in the Western Desert of Libya in 1941 by Colonel David Stirling, the SAS has operated covertly. Its tasks have always included deep penetration with a view to lying hidden and observing enemy movements; deep penetration with a view to sabotage, assassination, and general mayhem; terrorist elimination; hostage recovery; close protection, a euphemism for bodyguarding the high and mighty; and foreign training missions.

  Like members of any elite unit, the officers and men of the SAS tend to live quietly within their own society, unable to discuss their work with outsiders, refusing to be photographed, and rarely emerging from the shadows.

  Because the lifestyles of the members of the two secret societies had much in common, the SIS and the SAS knew each other at least by sight and had frequently cooperated in the past, either on joint operations or with the intelligence people, “borrowing” a specialist soldier from the regiment for a particular task. It was something of this kind that the Deputy Chief of the SIS (who had cleared his visit with the Chief, Sir Colin) had in mind when he took a glass of single malt whiskey from Brigadier J. P.

  Lovat in the covert London headquarters that evening as the sun went down.

  The unwitting object of such discussion and private musing in London and Kuwait was at that moment poring over a map in another barracks many miles away. For the past eight weeks, he and his team of twelve instructors had been living in a section of the quarters assigned to the private bodyguard unit of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan of Abu Dhabi.

  It was a task the regiment had undertaken many times before. All up and down the western shore of the Gulf, from the Sultanate of Oman in the south to Bahrain in the north, lies a chain of sultanates, emirates, and sheikhdoms in and out of which the British have been pottering for centuries. The Trucial States, now the United Arab Emirates, were so called because Britain once signed a truce with their rulers to protect them with the Royal Navy against marauding pirates in exchange for trading privileges. The relationship continues, and many of these rulers have princely guard units trained in the finer points of close protection by visiting SAS instructor teams. A fee is paid, of course, but to the Ministry of Defence in London.

  Major Mike Martin had a large map of the Gulf and most of the Middle East spread out over the mess hall table and was studying it, surrounded by several of his men. At thirty-seven, he was not the oldest man in the room; two of his sergeants topped forty, tough, wiry, and very fit soldiers whom a man twenty years their junior would have been extremely foolish to take on.

  “Anything in it for us, boss?” asked one of the sergeants.

  As in all small, tight units, first names are widely used in the regiment, but officers are normally called

  “boss” by other ranks.

  “I don’t know,” said Martin. “Saddam Hussein has got himself into Kuwait. Question is: Will he get out of his own accord? If not, will the UN authorize a force to go in and throw him out? If yes, I would think there ought to be something in there for us to do.”

  “Good,” said the sergeant with satisfaction, and there were nods from the other six around the table. It had been too long, so far as they were concerned, since they had been on a real, high-adrenaline combat operation.

  There are four basic disciplines in the regiment, and each recruit must master one of them. There are the freefallers, specializing in high-altitude parachute drops; the mountain-men, whose preferred terrain is rock faces and the high peaks; the armored scout car men, who drive and operate stripped-down, heavily armored long-base Land-Rovers over open terrain; and the amphibians, skilled in canoes, silent-running inflatables, and subaqua or underwater work.

  In his team of twelve, Martin had four freefallers, including himself, four scout car men teaching the Abu Dhabis the principles of fast attack and counterattack over desert ground, and because Abu Dhabi lies by the Gulf, four subaqua instructors.

  Apart from their own speciality, SAS men must have a good working knowledge of the other disciplines, so that inter-changeability is common. They have to master more besides—radio, first aid, and languages.

  The basic combat unit consists of only four men. If one is ever out of action, his tasks will be quickly shared among the surviving three, whether they be radio operators or unit medics.

  They pride themselves on a far higher educational level than any other unit in the Army, and because they travel the world, languages are a must. Every soldier must learn one, apart from English. For years Russian was a favorite, now going out of fashion since the end of the cold war. Malay is very useful in the Far East, where the regiment for years fought in Borneo. Spanish is on the increase since the covert operations in Colombia against the cocaine lords of Medellin and Cali. French is learned—ju
st in case.

  And because the regiment had spent years assisting Sultan Qaboos of Oman in his war with Communist infiltrators from South Yemen into the interior of Dhofar, plus other training missions up and down the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia, many SAS men speak passable Arabic. The sergeant who had asked for some action was one of them, but he had to admit: “The boss is bloody amazing. I’ve never heard anyone like him. He even looks the part.”

  Mike Martin straightened and ran a nut-brown hand through jet-black hair.

  “Time to turn in.”

  It was just after ten. They would be up before dawn for the usual ten-mile run with their charges before the sun became too hot. It was a chore the Abu Dhabis loathed but upon which their sheikh insisted. If these strange soldiers from England said it was good for them, it was good for them. Besides, he was paying for it, and he wanted value for his money.

  Major Martin retired to his own quarters and slept quickly and deeply. The sergeant was right; he did look the part. His men often wondered if he got his olive skin, dark eyes, and deep black hair from some Mediterranean forebears. He never told them, but they were wrong.

  The maternal grandfather of both Martin boys had been a British tea planter at Darjeeling in India. As kids they had seen pictures of him—tall, pink-faced, blond-moustached, pipe in mouth, gun in hand, standing over a shot tiger. Very much the pukka sahib , the Englishman of the Indian Raj.

  Then in 1928 Terence Granger had done the unthinkable: He had fallen in love with and insisted on marrying an Indian girl. That she was gentle and beautiful was not the point. It was simply not done. The tea company did not fire him—that would have brought it out in the open. They sent him into internal exile (that was what they actually called it) to an isolated plantation in faraway Assam.

  If it was supposed to be a punishment, it did not work. Granger and his new bride, the former Miss Indira Bohse, loved it there—the wild, ravined countryside teeming with game and tigers, the deep green tea slopes, the climate, the people. And there Susan was born in 1930. They raised her there, an Anglo-Indian girl with Indian playmates.

  By 1943 war had rolled toward India, with the Japanese advancing through Burma to the border.

  Granger was old enough not to have to volunteer, but he insisted, and after basic training at Delhi he was posted as a major to the Assam Rifles. All British cadets were promoted straight to major; they were not supposed to serve under an Indian officer, but Indians could make lieutenant or captain.

  In 1945 he died in the crossing of the Irrawaddy. His body was never brought back; it vanished in those drenched Burmese jungles, one of tens of thousands who had seen some of the most vicious hand-to-hand fighting of the war.

  With a small company pension, his widow retreated back into her own culture. Two years later, more trouble came. India was being partitioned in 1947. The British were leaving. Ali Jinnah insisted on his Moslem Pakistan in the north, Pandit Nehru settled for mainly Hindu India in the south. As waves of refugees of the two religions rolled north and south, violent fighting broke out. Over a million died. Mrs.

  Granger, fearful for her daughter’s safety, sent her to complete her education with her late father’s younger brother, a very proper architect of Haslemere, Surrey. Six months later, the mother died in the rioting.

  So at seventeen Susan Granger came to England, the land of her fathers that she had never seen. She spent one year at a girls’ school near Haslemere and then two years as a trainee nurse at Farnham General Hospital, followed by one more as a secretary to a Farnham solicitor.

  At twenty-one, the youngest permitted age, she applied as a stewardess with the British Overseas Airways Corporation. She trained with the other girls at the BOAC school, the old converted St. Mary’s Convent at Heston, just outside London. Her nursing training was the clincher, and her looks and manner an added plus.

  At twenty-one she was beautiful, with tumbling chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and skin like a European with a permanent golden suntan. On graduation she was assigned to Number 1 Line, London to India—an obvious choice for a girl speaking fluent Hindi.

  It was a long, long trip in those days aboard the four-propeller Argonaut. The route was London-Rome-Cairo-Basra-Bahrain-Karachi-Bombay. Then on to Delhi, Calcutta, Colombo, Rangoon, Bangkok, and finally Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Of course, one crew could not do it all, and the first crew stopover was Basra in the south of Iraq, where another crew took over.

  It was there in 1951, over a drink at the Port Club, that she met a rather shy young accountant with the Iraq Petroleum Company, then owned and run by the British. His name was Nigel Martin, and he asked her to dinner. She had been warned about wolves—among the passengers, the crew, and during the stopovers. But he seemed nice, so she accepted. When he took her back to the BOAC station house, where the stewardesses were quartered, he held out his hand. She was so surprised, she shook it.

  Then she lay awake in the awful heat wondering what it would be like to kiss Nigel Martin.

  On her next stopover in Basra, he was there again. Only after they were married did he admit he had been so smitten that he found out through the BOAC Station Officer Alex Reid when she was due next.

  That autumn of 1951 they played tennis, swam at the Port Club, and walked through the bazaars of Basra. At his suggestion she took a leave and came with him to Baghdad, where he was based.

  She soon realized it was a place where she could settle down. The swarming throngs of brightly colored robes, the sights and smells of the street, the cooking meats by the edge of the Tigris, the myriad little shops selling herbs and spices, gold, and jewels—all reminded her of her native India. When he proposed to her, she accepted at once.

  They married in. 1952 at St. George’s Cathedral, the Anglican church off Haifa Street, and although she had no one on her side of the church, many people came from the IPC and the embassy to fill both rows of pews.

  It was a good time to live in Baghdad. Life was slow and easy, the boy king Faisal was on the throne with Nuri as Said running the country, and the overwhelming foreign influence was British. This was partly because of the powerful contribution of the IPC to the economy and partly because most of the Army officers were British-taught, but mainly because the entire upper class had been potty-trained by starched English nannies, which always leaves a lasting impression.

  In time the Martins had two sons, born in 1953 and 1955. Christened Michael and Terry, they were as unlike as chalk and cheese. In Michael the genes of Miss Indira Bohse came through; he was black-haired, dark-eyed, and olive-skinned; wags from the British community said he looked more like an Arab. Terry, two years younger, took after his father: short, stocky, pink-skinned, and ginger-haired.

  At three in the morning, Major Mike Martin was shaken awake by an orderly.

  “There is a message, sayidi .”

  It was quite a simple message, but the urgency coding was “blitz,” and the signoff meant it came personally from the Director of Special Forces. It required no answer. It just ordered him back to London on the first available plane.

  He handed over his duties to the SAS captain, who was on his first tour with the regiment and was his second-in-command for the training assignment, and raced to the airport in civilian clothes.

  The 2:55A.M. for London should have left. Over a hundred passengers snored or grumbled on board as the stewardess brightly announced that the operational reason for the ninety-minute delay would soon be sorted out.

  When the doors opened again to admit a single, lean man in jeans, desert boots, shirt, and bomber jacket with a tote bag over one shoulder, a number of those still awake glared at him. The man was shown to an empty seat in business class, made himself comfortable, and within minutes of takeoff tilted back his seat and fell fast asleep.

  A businessman next to him who had dined copiously and with much illicit liquid refreshment, then waited two hours in the airport and two more on the plane, fed himself another antacid tablet and glowered
at the relaxed, sleeping figure beside him.

  “Bloody Arab,” he muttered, and tried in vain to sleep.

  Dawn came over the Gulf two hours later, but the British Airways jet was racing it toward the northwest, landing at Heathrow just before ten local time. Mike Martin came out of the customs hall among the first because he had no baggage in the aircraft hold. There was no one to meet him; he knew there would not be. He also knew where to go.

  It was not even dawn in Washington, but the first indications of the coming sun pinked the distant hills of Prince Georges County, where the Patuxent River flows down to join the Chesapeake. On the sixth and top floor of the big, oblong building among the cluster that forms the headquarters of the CIA and is known simply as Langley, the lights still burned.

  Judge William Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence, rubbed fingertips over tired eyes, rose, and walked to the picture windows. The swath of silver birches that masked his view of the Potomac when they were in full leaf, as they were now, still lay shrouded in darkness. Within an hour the rising sun would bring them back to pale green. It had been another sleepless night. Since the invasion of Kuwait he had been catnapping between calls from the President, the National Security Council, the State Department, and so it seemed, just about anyone else who had his number.

  Behind him, as tired as he, sat Bill Stewart, his Deputy Director (Operations), and Chip Barber, head of the Middle East Division.

  “So that’s about it?” asked the DCI, as if asking the question again might produce a better answer.

  But there was no change. The position was that the President, the NSC, and State were all clamoring for deep-mined hypersecret intelligence from inside the heart of Baghdad, from the innermost councils of Saddam Hussein himself. Was he going to stay in Kuwait? Would he pull out under threat of the United Nations resolutions that were rolling out of the Security Council? Would he buckle in the face of the oil embargo and the trade blockade? What was he thinking? What was he planning? Damn it, where was he anyway?