Honour Among Thieves (31 page)

The
Secretary opened the envelope and extracted the letter. He placed his glasses
on the end of his nose and unfolded the single sheet.

From
the Prime Minister ‘Colonel Kratz, let me assure you on behalf of the United
States Government that I believe such information as you have in your
possession may make the difference between success and failure.’

Dear
Mr Secretary, You are correct in thinking that the Prime Minister of the State
of Israel is Chief Minister and Minister of Defence while at the same time
having overall responsibility for Mossad.

However,
I confess that when it comes to any ideas we may be considering for future
relations with Saddam, I have only been kept in touch with the outline
proposals. I have not yet been fully briefed on the finer details.

If
you believe on balance that such information as we possess may make the
difference between success or failure with your present difficulties, I will
instruct Colonel Kratz to brief you fully and without reservation.

Yours
Yitzhak Rabin Christopher turned the letter around and pushed it across the
table.

T
HE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE was nailed to the wall behind him.

Saddam
continued puffing at his cigar as he lounged back in his chair. All of them
seated around the table waited for him to speak. He glanced to his right.

‘My
brother, we are proud of you. You have served our country and the Ba’ath Party
with distinction, and when the moment comes for my people to be informed of
your heroic deeds, your name will be written in the history of our nation as
one of its great heroes.’

Al
Obaydi sat at the other end of the table, listening to the words of his leader.
His fists, hidden under the table, were clenched to stop himself shaking.
Several times on the journey back to Baghdad he had been aware that he was
being shadowed. They had searched his luggage at almost every stop, but they
had found nothing, because there was nothing to find. Saddam’s half-brother had
seen to that. Once the Declaration had reached the safety of their mission in
Geneva he hadn’t even been allowed to pass it over to the Ambassador in person.
Its guaranteed route in the diplomatic pouch made it impossible to intercept
even with the combined efforts of the Americans and the Israelis.

Saddam’s
half-brother now sat on the President’s right-hand side, basking in his
leader’s eulogy.

Saddam
swung himself slowly back round and stared down at the other end of the table.

‘And
I also acknowledge,’ he continued, ‘the role played by Hamid Al Obaydi, whom I
have appointed to be our Ambassador in Paris. His name must not, however, be
associated with this enterprise, lest it harm his chances of representing us on
foreign soil.’

And
thus it had been decreed. Saddam’s half-brother was to be acknowledged as the
architect of this triumph, while Al Obaydi was to be a footnote on a page,
quickly turned. Had Al Obaydi failed, Saddam’s half-brother would have been
ignorant of even the original idea, and Al Obaydi’s bones would even now be
rotting in an unmarked grave. Since Saddam had spoken no one round that table,
except for the State Prosecutor, had given Al Obaydi a second look. All other
eyes, and smiles, rested on Saddam’s half-brother.

It
was at that moment, in the midst of the meeting of the Revolutionary Command
Council, that Al Obaydi came to his decision.

Dollar
Bill sat slouched on a stool, leaning on the bar in unhappy hour, happily
sipping his favourite liquid. He was the establishment’s only customer, unless
you counted the slip of a woman in a Laura Ashley dress who sat silently in the
corner. The barman assumed she was drunk, as she hadn’t moved a muscle for the
past hour.

Dollar
Bill wasn’t at first aware of the man who stumbled through the swing doors, and
wouldn’t have given him a second look had he not sat himself on the stool next
to his. The intruder ordered a gin and tonic. Dollar Bill had a natural
aversion to any man who drank gin and tonic, especially if they occupied the
seat next to his when the rest of the bar was empty. He considered moving but
decided on balance that he didn’t need the exercise.

‘So
how are you, old timer?’ the voice next to him asked. Dollar Bill didn’t care
to think of himself as an ‘old timer’, and refused to grace the intruder with a
reply.

‘What’s
the matter, not got a tongue in your head?’ the man asked, slurring his words.
The barman turned to face them when he heard the raised voice, and then
returned to drying the glasses left over from the lunchtime rush.

‘I
have, sir, and it’s a civil one,’ replied Dollar Bill, still not so much as
glancing at his interrogator.

‘Irish.
I should have known it all along. A nation of stupid, ignorant drunks.’

‘Let
me remind you, sir,’ said Dollar Bill, ‘that Ireland is the land of Yeats,
Shaw, Wilde, O’Casey and Joyce.’ He raised his glass in their memory.

‘I’ve
never heard of any of them. Drinking partners of yours, I suppose?’ This time
the young barman put his cloth down and began to pay closer attention.

‘I
never had that honour,’ replied Dollar Bill, ‘but, my friend, the fact that you
have not heard of them, let alone read their works, is your loss, not mine.’

‘Are
you accusing me of being ignorant?’ said the intruder, placing a rough hand on
Dollar Bill’s shoulder.

Dollar
Bill turned to face him, but even at that close range he couldn’t focus clearly
through the haze of alcohol he had consumed during the past two weeks. He did,
however, observe that, although he appeared to be part of the same alcoholic
haze, the intruder was somewhat larger than himself. Such a consideration had
never worried Dollar Bill in the past.

“No,
sir, it was not necessary to accuse you of igno-rance. For you have been
condemned by your own utterances.’ ‘I won’t take that from anyone, you Irish
drunk,’ said the intruder. Keeping his hand on Dollar Bill’s shoulder, he swung
at him and landed a blow on the side of his jaw. Dollar Bill staggered back off
his high stool, falling to the floor in a heap.

The
intruder waited some time for Bill to rise to his feet before he aimed a second
blow to the stomach. Once again, Dollar Bill ended up on the floor.

The
young man behind the bar had already begun dialling the number his boss had
instructed he should call if ever such a situation arose. He only hoped they
would come quickly as he watched the Irishman somehow get back on his feet.
This time it was his turn to aim a punch at the intruder’s nose, a punch which
ended up flying through the air over his assailant’s right shoulder. A further
blow landed on the side of Dollar Bill’s throat. Down he went a third time,
which in his days as an amateur boxer would have been considered a technical
knock-out; but as there seemed to be no referee present to officiate, he rose
once again.

The
young barman was relieved to hear a siren in the distance, and was praying they
weren’t on their way to another call when suddenly four policemen came bursting
through the swing doors.

The
first one caught Dollar Bill just before he hit the ground for a fourth time,
while two of the others grabbed the intruder, thrust his arms behind his back
and forced a pair of handcuffs on him. Both men were bundled out of the bar and
thrown into the back of a waiting police van. The siren continued its piercing
sound as the two drunks were driven away.

The
barman was grateful for the speed with which the San Francisco Police
Department had come to his aid. It was only later that night that he remembered
he hadn’t given them an address.

As
Hannah sat alone at the back of the plane bound for Amman, she began to
consider the task she had set herself.

Once
the Ambassador’s party had left Paris, she had returned to the traditional role
of an Arab woman. She was dressed from head to toe in a black abayah, and apart
from her eyes, her face was covered by a small mask. She spoke only when asked
a question directly, and never posed a question herself. She felt her Jewish
mother would not have survived such a regime for more than a few hours.

Hannah’s
one break had come when the Ambassador s wife had enquired where she intended
to stay once they had returned to Baghdad. Hannah explained that she had made
no immediate plans as her mother and sister were living in Karbala, and she
could not stay with them if she hoped to hold on to her job with the
Ambassador.

Hannah
had hardly finished the second sentence before the Ambassador’s wife insisted
that she come and live with them. ‘Our house is far too large,’ she explained,
‘even with a dozen servants.’

When
the plane touched down at Queen Alia airport, Hannah looked out of the tiny
window to watch a large black limousine that would have looked more in place in
New York than Amman driving towards them. It drew up by the side of the
aircraft and a driver in a smart blue suit and dark glasses jumped out.

Hannah
joined the Ambassador and his wife in the back of the car and they sped away
from the airport in the direction of the border with Iraq.

When
the car reached the customs barrier, they were waved straight through with bows
and salutes, as if the border didn’t exist. They travelled a further mile and
passed a second customs post on the Iraqi side, where they were treated in much
the same manner as the first, before joining the six-lane highway to Baghdad.

On
the long journey to the capital, the speedometer rarely fell below seventy
miles per hour. Hannah soon became bored with the beating sun and the sight of
miles and miles of flat sand that stretched to the horizon and beyond, with
only the occasional cluster of palm trees to break the monotony. Her thoughts
returned to Simon and what might have been...

Hannah
dozed off as the air-conditioned limousine sped quietly along the highway. Her
mind drifted from Simon to her mother, to Saddam, and then back to Simon.

She
woke with a start to find they were entering the outskirts of Baghdad.

It
had been many years since Dollar Bill had seen the inside of a jail, but not so
long that he had forgotten how much he detested having to associate with drug
peddlers, pimps and muggers.

Still,
the last time he had been foolish enough to get himself involved in a bar-room
brawl, he had started it. But even then he only ended up with a fifty-dollar
fine. Dollar Bill felt confident that the jails were far too overcrowded for
any judge to consider the thirty-day mandatory sentence for such cases.

In
fact he had tried to slip one of the policemen in the van fifty dollars. They
normally happily accepted the money, opened the back door of the van and kicked
you out. He couldn’t imagine what the San Francisco police were coming to.
Surely with all the muggers and drug addicts around they had more important
things to deal with than mid-afternoon middle-aged bar-room drunks.

As
Dollar Bill began to sober up, the stench got to him, and he hoped that he’d be
among the first to be put up in front of the night court. But as the hours
passed, and he became more sober and the stench became greater, he began to
wonder if they might end up keeping him overnight.

‘William
O’Reilly,’ shouted the police Sergeant as he looked down the list of names on
his clipboard.

‘That’s
me,’ said Bill, raising his hand.

‘Follow
me, O’Reilly,’ the policeman barked as the cell door clanked open and the
Irishman was gripped firmly by the elbow.

He
was marched along a corridor that led into the back of a courtroom. He watched
the little line of derelicts and petty criminals who were waiting for their
moment in front of the judge. He didn’t notice a woman a few paces away from
him, tightly gripping the rope handle of a holdall.

‘Guilty.
Fifty dollars.’

‘Can’t
pay.’

Three
days in jail. Next.’

After
three or four cases were dispensed with in this cursory manner within as many
minutes, Dollar Bill watched the man who had shown no respect for the canon of
Irish literature take his place in front of the judge.

‘Drunk
and disorderly, disturbing the peace. How do you plead?’

“Guilty,
Your Honour.’

Any
previous known record?’

“None,”
said the Sergeant.

‘Fifty
dollars,’ said the judge.

It
interested Dollar Bill that his adversary had no previous convictions, and was
also able to pay his fine immediately.

When
it came to Dollar Bill’s own turn to plead, he couldn’t help thinking, as he
looked up at the judge, that he appeared to be awfully young for the job.
Perhaps he really was now an ‘old timer’.

‘William
O’Reilly, Your Honour,’ said the Sergeant, looking down at the charge sheet.
‘Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace.’

‘How
do you plead?’

‘Guilty,
Your Honour,’ said Dollar Bill, fingering a small wad of bills in his pocket as
he tried to remember the location of the nearest bar that served Guinness.