The Fist of God Page 9

  “That’s about it, Major. I don’t expect an answer immediately, right now, but time is of the essence.”

  “Do you mind if we have a few words with our colleague in private?” asked J.P.

  “Of course not. Look, Simon and I will trot back to the office. You have my desk number. Perhaps you’d let me know this afternoon?”

  Sergeant Sid showed the two civilians out and escorted them down to the street, where he watched them hail a taxi. Then he climbed back to his aerie under the roof beams behind the scaffolding.

  J.P. went to a small fridge and extracted three cold beers. When the tabs were off, all three men took a swig.

  “Look, Mike, you know what’s what. That’s what they want. If you think it’s crazy, we’ll go along with that.”

  “Absolutely,” said Craig. “In the Regiment you get no black marks for saying no. This is their idea, not ours.”

  “But if you want to go with them,” said J.P., “walk through the door, so to speak, then you’re with them till you come back. We’ll be involved, of course. They probably can’t run it without us. But you’ll be under them. They’ll be in charge. When it’s over, you come back to us as if you’d been on leave.”

  Martin knew how it worked. He’d heard of others who had worked for Century. You just ceased to exist for the Regiment until you came back. Then they all said, “Good to see you again,” and never mentioned or asked where you had been.

  “I’ll take it,” he said. Colonel Craig rose. He had to get back to Hereford. He held out his hand.

  “Good luck, Mike.”

  “By the way,” said the brigadier, “you have a lunch date. Just down the street. Century set it up.”

  He handed Martin a slip of paper and bade him farewell.

  Mike Martin went back down the stairs. The paper said his lunch was at a small restaurant four hundred yards away, and his host was Mr. Wane Al-Khouri.

  Apart from MI-S and MI-6 the third major arm of British intelligence is the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, a complex of buildings in a guarded compound outside the staid town of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire.

  GCHQ is the British version of America’s National Security Agency, with which it cooperates very closely—the listeners whose antennae eavesdrop on almost every radio broadcast and telephone, conversation in the world if they so wish.

  Through its cooperation with GCHQ, the American NSA has a number of outstations inside Britain, apart from its other listening posts all over the world, and GCHQ has its own overseas stations, notably a very large one on British sovereign territory at Akrotiri in Cyprus.

  The Akrotiri station, being closer to the scene, monitors the Middle East, but it passes all its product back to Cheltenham for analysis. Among the analysts are a number of experts who, although Arabs by birth, are cleared to a very high level. Such a one was Mr. Al-Khouri, who had long before elected to settle in Britain, naturalize, and marry an English wife.

  This genial former Jordanian diplomat now worked as a senior analyst in the Arabic Service of GCHQ

  where, even though there were many British scholars of Arabic, he could often read a meaning behind the meaning of a taped speech by a leader in the Arab world. It was he who, at the request of Century, was waiting for Mike Martin at the restaurant.

  They had a convivial lunch that lasted two hours and spoke nothing but Arabic. When they parted, Martin left and strolled back toward the SAS building. There would be hours of briefings before he was ready to leave for Riyadh with a passport he knew Century would by then have ready, complete with visas in a false name.

  Before he left the restaurant Mr. Al-Khouri called a number from the wall phone by the men’s room.

  “No problem, Steve. He’s perfect. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone like him. It’s not scholar’s Arabic, you know; it’s even better, from your point of view. Street Arabic, every swearword, slang, piece of jargon. ... No, not a trace of an accent. ... Yes, he can pass all right ... on just about any street in the Middle East. No, no, not at all, old chap. Glad to be of assistance.”

  Thirty minutes later, Mike Martin had retrieved his rental car and was on the M4 heading back to Cheltenham. Before he entered the headquarters, he also made a call, to a number just off Gower Street.

  The man he was calling picked up the phone, since it was in his office in the SOAS, where he was working over papers on an afternoon that called for no lectures.

  “Hullo, bro. It’s me.”

  The soldier had no need to introduce himself. Since they had been at prep school together in Baghdad, he had always called his younger brother “bro.” There was a gasp at the other end of the line.

  “Mike? Where the hell are you?”

  “In London, in a phone booth.”

  “I thought you were somewhere in the Gulf.”

  “Got back this morning. Probably leave again tonight.”

  “Look, Mike, don’t go. It’s all my fault. ... I should have kept my bloody mouth shut—”

  His elder brother’s deep laugh came across the line.

  “I wondered why the buggers suddenly got interested in me. Take you to lunch, did they?”

  “Yes, we were talking about something else. It just cropped up, sort of slipped out. Look, you don’t have to go. Tell them I was mistaken.”

  “Too late. Anyway, I’ve accepted.”

  “Oh God. ...” In his office, surrounded by erudite tomes on medieval Mesopotamia, the younger man was almost in tears.

  “Mike, look after yourself. I’ll pray for you.”

  Mike thought for a moment. Yes, Terry had always had a touch of religion. He probably would.

  “You do that, bro. See you when I get back.”

  He hung up. Alone in his office, the ginger-haired scholar who hero-worshiped his soldier brother put his head in his hands.

  When the British Airways 8:45P.M. flight for Saudi Arabia lifted off from Heathrow that night, right on time, Mike Martin was on it with a fully visa-ed passport in another name. He would be met just before dawn by Century’s Head of Station at the Riyadh embassy.

  Chapter 4

  Don Walker eased down on the brake pedal and the ’63 vintage Corvette Stingray paused for a moment at the main entrance to Seymour Johnson Air Force base to let a couple of campers pass before emerging onto the highway.

  It was hot. The August sun blasted down up ahead on the small North Carolina town of Goldsboro so that the tarmac seemed to shimmer like moving water. It was good to have the top down and feel the wind, warm though it was, running through his short blond hair.

  He maneuvered the classic sports car over which he had lavished so much attention up through the slumbering town to Highway 70, then pulled onto Highway 13 heading northeast.

  Don Walker, that hot summer of 1990, was twenty-nine years old, single, a fighter jockey, and had just learned that he was going to war. Well, maybe. Apparently it would depend on some weird Arab called Saddam Hussein.

  That same morning the wing commander, Colonel (later General) Hal Hornburg, had laid it out: In three days, on August 9, his squadron, the 336th Rocketeers of the Ninth Air Force of Tactical Air Command was shipping out to the Arabian Gulf. The orders had come through from TAC command at Langley Air Force base in Hampton, Virginia. So it was on. The elation among the pilots had been ecstatic. What was the point of all those years of training if you never got to fire the goodies?

  With three days to go there was a mess of work to get through, and for him as squadron weapons officer more than most. But he had begged for just twenty-four hours’ furlough to go and say good-bye to his folks, and Lieutenant Colonel Steve Turner, chief of weapons, had told him if there was one tiny detail missing on August 9 when the F-15E Eagles rolled, he—Turner—would personally kick ass. Then he had grinned and told Walker if he wanted to get back by sun-up, he had better get moving.

  Walker was hammering up through Snow Hill and Greenville by nine that morning, heading for
the chain of islands east of Pamlico Sound. He was lucky his parents were not back in Tulsa, or he could never have made it. Being August, they were taking their annual vacation at the family beach house near Hatteras, a five-hour drive from the base.

  Don Walker knew he was a hotshot pilot, and he reveled in it. To be twenty-nine and do the thing you love best in the world and do it supremely well is a good feeling. He liked the base, he liked the guys, and he adored the exhilaration and power of the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle that he flew. It was, he thought, the best piece of airplane in the whole U.S. Air Force, and the hell with what the men on the Fighting Falcons said. Only the Navy’s F-18 Hornet might compare, or so they said, but he had never flown the Hornet, and the Eagle was just fine by him.

  At Bethel he turned due east for Columbia and Whalebone, which was where the highway turned into the island chain; with Kitty Hawk behind him to his left, he turned south toward Hatteras, where the road finally ran out and the sea was on all sides. He had had good vacations at Hatteras as a boy, going out to sea in the early dawn with his grandfather for bluefish, until the old man got sick and could not go anymore.

  Now that his dad was retiring from the oil job in Tulsa maybe he and Mom would spend more time at the beach house and he could get down there more often. He was young enough that the thought that he might not come back from the Gulf, if there was a war, did not cross his mind.

  Walker had graduated from high school in Tulsa at the age of eighteen with only one burning ambition—he wanted to fly. So far as he could recall, he had always wanted to fly. He spent four years at Oklahoma State, majoring in aeronautical engineering, and he graduated in June 1983. He had done his time with the ROTC, and that fall he was inducted into the Air Force.

  He underwent pilot training at Williams AFB, near Phoenix, flying the T-33 and the T-38, and after eleven months, at wings parade, he learned he had passed as a distinguished graduate, fourth out of forty pupils. To his abiding joy, the top five graduates went to fighter lead-in school at Holloman AFB, near Alamagordo, New Mexico. The rest of the pupils, he thought with the supreme arrogance of a young man destined to fly fighters, would be sent to become bomb-droppers or trash-carriers.

  At the replacement training unit at Homestead, Florida, he finally quit the T-38 and converted to the F-4

  Phantom, a big, powerful brute of a plane, but a real fighter at last.

  Nine months at Homestead ‘terminated with his first squadron posting, to Osan in South Korea, flying the Phantoms for a year. He was good and he knew it, and so apparently did the brass. After Osan, they sent him to the Fighter Weapons School at McConnell AFB in Wichita, Kansas.

  Fighter Weapons runs arguably the toughest course in the USAF. It marks out the high-fliers, career-wise. The technology of the new weapons is awe-inspiring. Graduates of McConnell have to understand every nut and bolt, every silicon chip and microcircuit of the bewildering array of ordnance that a modern fighter plane can launch at its opponents, in the air or on the ground. Walker emerged again as a distinguished graduate, which meant that every fighter squadron in the Air Force would be happy to have him.

  The 336th Squadron at Goldsboro got him in the summer of ’87, flying Phantoms for a year, followed by four months at Luke AFB in Phoenix, then converting to the Strike Eagle with which the Rocketeers were being reequipped. He had been flying the Eagle for more than a year when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

  The Stingray turned just before midday into the island chain; a few miles to his north stood the monument at Kitty Hawk where Orville and Wilbur Wright had hauled their string-and-wire contraption into the air for a few yards to prove that man really could fly in a powered airplane. If they only knew ...

  Through Nag’s Head he followed the crawl of campers and trailers until they finally petered out and the road emptied past Cape Hatteras onto the tip of the island. He ran the Stingray onto the driveway of his parents’ timber-clad frame house just before one. He found them on the porch that faced out over the calm blue sea.

  Ray Walker caught sight of his son first and let out a shout of pleasure. Maybelle came out from the kitchen, where she had been preparing lunch, and rushed into his embrace. His grandfather was sitting in his rocking chair, looking at the sea. Don walked over and said:

  “Hi, Grandpa. It’s me, Don.”

  The old man looked up and nodded and smiled; then he looked back at the ocean.

  “He’s not so good,” said Ray. “Sometimes he knows you, sometimes he doesn’t. Well, sit down and tell us the news. Hey, Maybelle, how’s about a couple of beers for some thirsty guys?”

  Over the beers, Don told his parents he was off to the Gulf in five days. Maybelle’s hand flew to her mouth; his father looked solemn.

  “Well, I guess that’s what it’s for, the training and all,” he said at length.

  Don swigged his beer and wondered not for the first time why parents always had to worry so much.

  His grandpa was staring at him, some kind of recognition in his rheumy eyes.

  “Don’s going off to war, Grandpa,” Ray Walker shouted at him. The old man’s eyes flickered with life.

  All his career he had been a Marine, joining the Corps straight out of school many, many years before, in 1941 he had kissed his wife good-bye and left her with her folks in Tulsa, along with their newborn baby, Maybelle, to go to the Pacific. He had been with MacArthur on Corregidor and heard him say, “I shall return,” and he had been twenty yards away from the general when MacArthur did return.

  In between he had fought his way through a dozen miserable atolls in the Marianas and survived the hell of Iwo Jima. He carried seventeen scars on his body, all from combat, and was entitled to wear the ribbons of a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and seven Purple Hearts on his chest.

  He had always refused to take a commission, happy to stay a master sergeant, for he knew where the real power lay. He had waded ashore at Inchon, Korea, and when they finally sent him to finish his Corps days as an instructor at Parris Island, his dress uniform carried more decorations than any other piece of cloth on the base. When they finally retired him after two deferments, four generals showed up at his last parade, which was more than normally show up for another general.

  The old man beckoned his grandson toward him. Don rose from the table and leaned over.

  “Watch out for them Japanese, boy,” the old man whispered, “or they’ll gitcha.”

  Don put an arm round the old man’s thin, rheumaticky shoulders.

  “Don’t you worry, Grandpa. They won’t get anywhere near me.”

  The old man nodded and seemed satisfied. He was eighty. It was not, finally, the Japanese or the Koreans who had gotten the immortal sergeant. It was old Mr. Alzheimer. These days he spent most of his time in a pleasant dream, with his daughter and son-in-law to look after him because he had nowhere else to go.

  After lunch Don’s parents told him about their tour of the Arabian Gulf, from which they had returned four days earlier. Maybelle went and fetched her pictures, which had just arrived back from the developer.

  Don sat by his mother’s side while she went through the pile, identifying the palaces and mosques, sea-fronts and markets of the chain of emirates and sheikhdoms she and Ray had visited.

  “Now you be careful when you get down there,” she admonished her son. “These are the kind of people you’ll be up against. Dangerous people—just look at those eyes.”

  Don Walker looked at the picture in her hand. The Bedouin stood between two sand dunes with the desert behind him, one trailing end of his keffiyeh tucked up and across his face. Only the dark eyes stared suspiciously out toward the camera.

  “I’ll be sure and keep a look-out for him,” he promised her. At that she seemed satisfied.

  At five o’clock he decided he should head back to the base. His parents escorted him to the front of the house where his car was parked. Maybelle hugged her son and told him yet again to take care, and Ray embraced him a
nd said they were proud of him. Don got into the car and reversed to swing into the road.

  He looked back.

  From the house his grandfather, supported by two canes, emerged onto the veranda. Slowly he placed the two canes to one side and straightened up, forcing the rheumatism out of his old back and shoulders until they were square. Then he raised his hand, palm down, to the peak of his baseball cap and held it there, an old warrior saluting his grandson who was leaving for yet another war.

  Don, from the car, brought up his hand in reply. Then he touched the accelerator and sped away. He never saw his grandfather again. The old man died in his sleep in late October.

  It was already dark by then in London. Terry Martin had worked late, for although the undergraduates were away for the long summer vacation, he had lectures to prepare, and because of the specialized vacation courses the school also ran, he was kept quite busy even through the summer months. But that evening he was forcing himself to find something to do, to keep his mind off his worry.

  He knew where his brother had gone, and in his mind’s eye he imagined the perils of trying to penetrate Iraqi-occupied Kuwait under deep cover.

  At ten, while Don Walker was beginning his drive north from Hatteras, Terry left the school, bidding a courteous good night to the old janitor who locked up after him, and walked down Gower Street and St.

  Martin’s Lane toward Trafalgar Square. Perhaps, he thought, the bright lights would cheer him up. It was a warm and balmy evening.

  At St. Martin-in-the-Fields, he noticed that the doors were open and the sound of hymns came from inside. He entered, found a pew near the rear, and listened to the choir practice. But the choristers’ clear voices only made his depression deeper. He thought back to the childhood that he and Mike had shared thirty years earlier in Baghdad.

  Nigel and Susan Martin had lived in a fine, roomy old house on two floors in Saadun, that fashionable district in the half of the city called Risafa. Terry’s first recollection, when he was two, was of his dark-haired brother being dressed up to start his first day at Miss Saywell’s kindergarten school. It had meant shirt and short trousers, with shoes and socks, the uniform of an English boy. Mike “had yelled in protest at being separated from his usual dish-dash , the white cotton robe that gave freedom of movement and kept the body cool.