"I shall be frank, Colonel. I have no time to waste."
"Of course."
"We can delude ourselves, and we could delude others, as to the real situation here, and what do we achieve? Only a crucial loss of time."
"I understand, Dr Tariq."
"If this complex had not been bombed by the Zionists in 1981, then we would by now have the capability for the production of nuclear warheads. During the war with the Khomeini zealots, I could not command the necessary resources to reactivate the programme following the '81 setback. I now have the necessary resources. I have the commitment of the Chairman. But – and this is why I am obliged to require your co-operation – at a certain level there are gaps in my team. In specific areas of the programme I am short of men of the required experience. I had recruited abroad in those areas, Do you understand me?"
"I understand you."
"I had recruited Professor Khan… "
"I understand you."
The Colonel needed no instruction in the politics of fear. He had ordered firing squads into Kurdish villages. He had executed in public deserters from his battalion when it fought for its life on the Basra to Baghdad road. He had witnessed the death by hanging of two members of the A1 Daawa al Islamiya who were believed connected with the attempt on the life of the Chairman.
Much of his present work was aimed at silencing, by fear, the community of dissidents in exile. Silencing them or killing them.
"The Zionists murdered Professor Khan, they sent a letter bomb, simply to create an atmosphere of terror amongst the foreign nationals employed by me."
"Professor Khan travelled… "
"Covertly, of course. Yet evidently they knew his itinerary.
Just as they were able to single out an important member of my staff here, and address him by name."
The Colonel lit his cigarette. He blew the smoke to the ceiling.
"Then you have more than one problem, Dr Tariq."
Dr Tariq said, "Quite so, Colonel. I have someone leaking information from inside Tuwaithah. And I have the problem of lilling gaps from outside, from the top echelons of a scientific community that is growing more, not less, hostile. As I said, I will be frank. I recognise the extent of the problem."
"Where can you fill such gaps?"
" N o longer from France, I think. Nor perhaps from Italy, though these have been our best recruiting grounds to date. The Soviet Union and China are not impossible, but we have not been successful there before. The United States is difficult. Their security services are watchful and their private sector pays inordinately high wages. In Great Britain, on the other hand, the position is very different. I should look to Britain, Colonel. I should look to the Atomic Weapons Establishment in the village of Aldermaston in the Thames Valley
The Colonel laughed out loud "I get a bus, do I? I drive a bus to the front door. I shout in a very loud voice that the Republic of Iraq will pay well for atomic scientists. I fill the bus and I drive it to the airport. Is that what you have in mind?"
He had been right the first time. There was not a jot of humour in the man. There was the thin voice beating at him across the desk.
" Y o u are reminded that I have the backing of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. And the Chairman, who deigns to place a measure of trust in you, Colonel, antici-pates that what I want you will make it your urgent priority to find. I want a scientist who specialises in the physics of implosion."
The Colonel took out a notepad. He wrote "physics of implosion".
He arranged to return at the same time the next day to set about identifying the traitor in Tuwaithah.
He left behind him the scene, still shockingly evident, of the destruction by the Israelis of the Osirak reactor, the flattened mound of concrete. When his car was past the missile launchers, past the guards, he demanded speed. He wanted to be through Baghdad before the evening traffic. He was quiet in the car – none of his customary banter with his driver – as he digested the consequences of failing Dr Tariq. The spy in Tuwaithah would be an interesting challenge. For once the wielding of fear as a weapon would certainly be counter-productive. But the procurement of scientists from overseas as a novelty intrigued him. It was somewhat outside his province and yet, he thought, anyone who was willing to leave a Western nuclear establishment to help Dr Tariq build his atom bomb was either an idiot or a traitor, and traitors were after all his special subject. And to solve Dr Tariq's problems all he had to do was to find two traitors. One here and pray he wouldn't be yet another scientist who needed replacing, and one in the West. The Colonel had a momentary vision of himself being captured by the Special Forces of a Western army as he tried to recruit a physicist He wanted to be at the village of Qara Tappah before dusk became night.
The newest building in the centre of Qara Tappah had been built in 1934. It was the coffee house. There were oil lamps hanging over the verandah, and they threw black shadows towards the mosque entrance, and towards the shop where clothes were sold, long since shut. Across the square ran the open sewer of the village. The lamps from the coffee shop flickered on its silver, glistening surface. The coffee shop was abandoned, the square was empty. There was not one villager who had dared to emerge from behind his shuttered door, not since the foreigner had come to the village.
At the edge of the sewer, Colt lay. The pain racked his whole body.
The headlights of the Mercedes found him. He heard the slamming of the car door. He looked up into the face of the Colonel.
"Did you win?"
He had come to the village at last light bearing a balaclava helmet, a webbing belt and trousers, and a mess tin all belonging to the Presidential Guard. He had won because, over 20 miles of open country, he had eluded the patrols of the Presidential Guard.
He had walked, disshevelled and mud-plastered, out into the square from the coffee shop and thrown at the feet of the Captain those trophies that he had lifted from three different observation posts along the way. He had come through the back of the coffee shop yard, through the kitchen, out onto the verandah. Colt had laughed at the Captain and the men around him, laughed until they took out their failure on him with the most savage beating he had ever received. He wondered how much the Colonel had wagered on his winning.
His voice was a croak. " N o problem."
4
Erlich was content just to be on home territory. He couldn't imagine a government servant working abroad who did not feel that tug of pleasure when he walked up the steps of his embassy in a foreign capital. Past the locally employed security man, that didn't count, and up to the best-dress marine. The marine was where Erlich could believe he started to belong. Four minutes sitting in the big lobby and hearing the splatter of the ornamental pool and waterfall, and the lady coming to meet him. In each embassy he knew that had a Legal Attache's office there was a lady who looked like everyone's mother, and who did the confidential typing and the greeting downstairs. Just about time to take in the portraits of the most recent Ambassadors before she was at his side, hair in a bun, flat shoes, blouse and cardigan, and shaking his hand and making him welcome. Up three floors in the elevator, and away down the long corridor that was chaos because the electricians were rewiring the floor, and on to the security gate into Bureau territory. There must have been a blueprint in F. B. I. H. Q. for Legal Attaches' premises, because the set-up in London, the mechanism of the outer security door, was identical to the one in Rome.