Fire Hawk (39 page)

Waddell clicked a key on the computer. The face of Saladin flashed on the screen, the picture Sam had produced on Sophie's PC in Cyprus.

‘This man – sorry about the blurry image – was photographed in Cyprus on the night Christine Taylor was murdered there.' Sam noted Waddell's tactful use of Chrissie's operational surname in front of Kessler. ‘He was standing a few feet away from Christine Taylor, apparently somewhat perturbed by the conversation she was having with two Ukrainians. Sam believes this man was also the leader of the group that took him prisoner in Baghdad, right?'

‘I'm certain of it.'

‘Were they Mukhabarat?' the CIA woman checked. ‘I don't recollect what was said in the report filed at Langley.'

‘I never knew who—' Sam began.

‘Actually the answer's no,' Waddell cut in. He tapped the computer screen. ‘You see, we've now got an ID on this fellow from one of our émigré sources. His name apparently is Naif Hamdan, a colonel in the Iraqi army. During the war with Iran, he held the rank of major and commanded a detachment of chemical troops on the southern front.'

‘Now you're talking . . .' breathed Sam.

‘There's more. Colonel Hamdan had a wife. I say had because she's dead now. You remember the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad? Bombed in error in the Gulf War with three to four hundred civilians killed? Well, apparently Mrs Hamdan was one of those brought out inside several polythene bags.'

‘Oh God,' whispered the woman from the CIA.

‘But here's what's really interesting,' Waddell continued, holding up his hands for silence. ‘Before she married the Colonel, Mrs Hamdan's family name was
Shenassi
.'

‘Oh boy! This gets good.' This time it was Dean Burgess who spoke.

‘I don't understand,' said Sam. The name meant nothing to him.

‘Shenassi, Sam, was also the name of the Baghdad animal feed plant boss who committed suicide last Wednesday after UNSCOM found he'd been brewing up anthrax. Doctor Shenassi and Colonel Hamdan's wife were brother and sister.'

‘Good Lord,' Sam breathed.

Waddell passed a hand over his thistle-like hair.

‘So let's try and make sense of all this. We're into speculation of course, but we can try it for size. First, let's say that Hamdan and Shenassi conspire for reasons we don't yet know to produce an anthrax weapon. They need money to fund their plan for using the stuff, so they kidnap Sam Packer. Somehow – and we still don't know how – they knew that Sam worked for SIS.'

Not appearing to accuse
him
any more at least, thought Sam, exhilarated to hear Waddell endorse what he himself had concluded in Cyprus.

‘They knew, therefore, that if they moved fast and acted discreetly there was a good chance we'd agree to send them Salah Khalil in exchange,' Waddell went on. ‘And Khalil was loaded with money. Next. Colonel Hamdan turns up in Cyprus, escorting Khalil presumably, to make sure he gets his hands on that cash. And there was a
lot
of it involved. Enough to fund a whole string of terrorist operations.

‘Now, the movement of that money is something we
are
sure about. Salah Khalil, as far as we can tell, is the sole shareholder of a Cyprus-based offshore trading company. I say that with a proviso, because the Central
Bank of Cyprus files show the shares being held by a nominee. But the nominee, surprise, surprise, happens to be the lawyer whom Khalil went to see last Monday.'

Burgess nodded. He knew a lot about shell companies. Tracking money movements had formed a good part of his duties at the New York field office he'd recently left.

‘At midday on Monday Cyprus time, one hour after Khalil visited his lawyer, a bank account in Lugano in the name of the same Cyprus-based offshore company transferred five million dollars to an account in Jersey which belongs to yet another company registered in Cyprus. That money transfer was nominally against an invoice for a cargo of oil. We've not yet been able to identify the owners of the company that received the money, because yet again it's in nominee names.

‘But, and we're still speculating like mad here, Cyprus is, of course, a favourite offshore business centre for criminal organisations from the former Soviet Union. So it's entirely possible the money was paid to an FSU Mafiya gang. Another pointer to that is the strong Ukrainian link we've uncovered in the murder of our agent Christine Taylor.'

He hit a couple of keys on the computer and the photo Sam had stolen from the Mondiale Hotel came up full frame.

‘The full image, with Hamdan just a blur in the background, was taken in the bar of the Mondiale Hotel, Limassol on the eve of Christine's death.'

Burgess glanced at Kessler. Tough for the man to keep up such a cool front when it was his wife they were talking about.

‘That's Chrissie, with her back to camera. Next to her in the green jacket is a former KGB officer called Viktor Rybkin. He's someone she'd met on a number of previous occasions and was friendly with. At first we thought Rybkin was in Cyprus on SBU business, but
we've now learned he was kicked out of the Ukrainian intelligence service a few months ago. Like many of his colleagues in the military and security field, he'd succumbed to the lure of crime.'

‘I thought as much,' Sam breathed. ‘So it's confirmed.'

‘Yes. And what's also just been confirmed is that he now works for the man you see sitting opposite him, the one with the interesting line in cosmetic dentistry.
His
name is Vladimir Filipovich Grimov, known as Dima. According to an Odessa police file which our Kiev station officer got access to this morning, he's a former army officer who now virtually runs the Odessa arm of a
biznis
empire believed to be headed by an ex-communist factory boss called Voronin. Like many of the new Mafiya godfathers, Voronin has ring-fenced his position as a gang leader by getting himself elected to the Rada – the parliament – which gives him automatic immunity from prosecution in Ukraine.

‘Now, that covers the who's who. But what's going on? Well, we believe that Christine Taylor had made an important discovery, namely that the Iraqis she was shadowing
were
doing business with these two Ukrainian hoods. We believe she was trying to exploit her old friendship with Viktor Rybkin to find out what that business was. And we imagine she got close to succeeding, which was why they killed her.'

Sam's eyes were on Martin Kessler now. The only movement on the grey face was a quick, nervous licking of the lips.

‘Chrissie died before she could report in, unfortunately. All we know, or rather
suspect,
about the business relationship is that five million dollars may have passed from Hamdan to Grimov. As I said before, a lot of money. And if it was money for help in launching an anthrax attack, then we could be talking about something pretty sophisticated,' he warned.

‘Can we get some background clear here?' Jennifer asked. ‘I have to admit an ignorance on technical matters. I had legal training, not science. What exactly are we talking about here? The warning Sam was given was about an anthrax
warhead,
right? Now, is that a bomb or what?'

‘Good question,' Waddell conceded. ‘We'd all benefit from an explanation of the technicalities. Dean – you're hot from the front and you've spent the past few days with Andrew Hardcastle. Any of his expertise rubbed off?'

‘Some. I'll tell you as much as
I've
understood,' Burgess answered, leaning back in his chair. He smoothed his moustache. ‘Let me begin with the conclusion that we in the UNSCOM team came to at the end of our mission. We're pretty darn sure that with the help of specialised equipment smuggled in and then out of the Haji factory on the weekend of the thirteenth of September several kilograms of freeze-dried, finely milled anthrax spores
were
produced. Enough for a weapons test and to fill a warhead or two as well.

‘The warheads, or whatever you want to call them, can be any sort of device able to release the anthrax in a controlled way. You see, to use anthrax as a weapon of mass murder, the powdered spores need to be released in a dust that's fine enough to remain airborne long enough to be inhaled by the victims. And to reach those victims the device has to spread the stuff in a controlled way so that it gets into the victims' air supply. It could be something real simple, like a ducted fan mounted on the back of a truck driven down a crowded city street or backed up against the intake for a subway ventilation system. Or it could be an explosive shell or ballistic missile warhead, though there's a risk that much of the agent would be destroyed by the detonation of the weapon itself. Finally, the gizmo could be a simple
canister that sprays the agent from a plane like a crop duster, or maybe even from a cruise missile or some other type of unmanned air vehicle. All the canister needs to have is a nozzle to control the flow and something to push the powder out, like a fan. Or just some holes opening in a controlled way at the front to let in the slipstream.'

‘Surely anthrax can be in liquid form too, can't it?' enquired Martin Kessler, determined on clarity.

‘Sure, sir. The spores can be in solution. But the dried version is easier to transport and handle and has a longer shelf life. Ideally the stuff needs to be kept cool and away from sunlight. If we're talking about a weapon being smuggled out of the country then powder is what makes sense.'

‘I understand.'

‘Okay, and I pretty much followed all of that too,' cut in Jennifer. ‘But do you know what type of device was being tested this time?'

‘No, we do not. If we'd been able to continue digging at the site in the desert we might have found some technical parts that would have given us the answer.'

‘And this weapon you're envisaging,' Sam intervened, ‘this canister or whatever – it would be easily portable? One man could carry it?'

‘Absolutely. It could weigh just a few pounds. You'd probably need to wear a mask when handling it tactically, that's all.'

Silence fell round the table as they considered what Burgess had just told them.

‘Five million dollars – phew,' Sam whistled. ‘You could buy most things with that. A light aircraft, a cruise missile . . .'

‘Exactly,' said Waddell. He and Kessler glanced at one another, as if they knew something more but weren't revealing it. ‘Now, if all our speculation about Naif
Hamdan's plans is correct, the next and most important question of all is
why
? Is he planning an act of terrorism independently or is somebody else controlling him?'

‘Saddam, of course,' Jennifer stated firmly. ‘Listen. No little Iraqi splinter group could produce a stock of anthrax, test a warhead and get it out of the country without Saddam's intelligence set-up finding out about it way before it got anywhere. So if there
is
an anthrax attack being planned, it has to be Saddam who's behind it.'

‘Don't be too sure of that, Jen,' Burgess chipped in, dabbing at his moustache again, as he always did when he was about to take a stand on something. ‘The Amn al Aman security guys were real taken aback by what we were uncovering,' he told her, pulling himself up straight in the chair. ‘Not once, but twice. They just were not expecting us to find anything sensitive either out in the desert or at the Haji plant. Those guys were out of the information loop. And in the opinion of people on the UNSCOM team who weren't greenhorns like me, that simply has never happened before.'

The CIA woman cleared her throat and straightened the sleeves of her grey jacket.

‘Dean, you know as well as I do that folks in Washington are going to be real sceptical about the idea of any Iraqis freelancing with anthrax. The view in DC is that's just not possible. Look, Saddam's already had to give away much more about his BW programme to the UN than he wanted to. So, to keep what's left of it secret, he's had to set up a cell system, keeping the organisations that produce the stuff secret even from his own security people. I have to say, guys, that that's the line
I
favour. I'm of the school of thought that says
nothing
of importance can happen in Iraq without Saddam's say-so.'

‘And normally we would agree with you, Jennifer,' Martin Kessler stated, his glasses having slipped down his
nose a little, giving him an oddly
distrait
look. ‘But the oddities of this particular case do go on and on.' He gestured to Waddell to continue.

‘We had a signal this morning from our man in Amman. Sources there are saying there's been a handful of arrests in Baghdad and some deaths. Not deaths at the hands of the Mukhabarat, you understand, but
suicides
. People biting into cyanide capsules to avoid interrogation.'

‘Like Shenassi,' Burgess exclaimed. ‘You're saying there's a link?'

‘We don't know.' Waddell turned to face Sam. ‘Perhaps
you
can enlighten us.'

‘Me? What d'you mean?'

‘Take a look at this.' Waddell hit the computer keys again and a new image appeared on the screen.

‘Jesus Christ!' Sam gasped. ‘
Sandhurst!
My interrogator in Baghdad,' he explained. ‘I gave him that nickname because he sounded so British. The guy was also in charge of the swap at the border.'

‘He negotiated the deal with us,' Waddell added for the benefit of the Americans, beaming with satisfaction. ‘He called himself a Colonel. Real name's Major Omar Hasan. He's an officer in a chemical weapons regiment. And he killed himself to avoid being interrogated by the Mukhabarat.' He let his words sink in. ‘Why? Why would he need to do that? And why did Shenassi also top himself, if what he was up to had the full backing and approval of the president?'

Jennifer folded her arms, trying to think of an alternative scenario.