After Scott had shaken hands with each of them he took a walk around the truck. “Do you really believe this old heap is capable of carrying Madame Bertha to Baghdad?” he asked Kratz in disbelief.
“Sergeant Cohen.”
“Sir,” said a voice in the dark.
“You’re the trained mechanic. Why don’t you brief Professor Bradley?”
“Yes, sir.” Another figure appeared out of the gloom. Scott couldn’t see his features clearly, as he was covered in grease, but from his accent he would have guessed he had spent most of his life in London. “The Heavy Expanded Mobile Tactical Truck was built in Wisconsin, sir. She has five gears, four forward, one reverse. She can be used on all terrains in most weather conditions in virtually any country. She weighs twenty tons and can carry up to ten tons, but with that weight on board you cannot risk driving over thirty miles per hour. Any higher than that and she would be impossible to stop, even though if pushed she can top 120 miles per hour.”
“Thank you, Cohen. A useful piece of equipment, I think you’ll agree,” said Kratz, looking back at Scott. “We’ve wanted one of these for years, and then suddenly you arrive on the scene and Uncle Sam offers us the prototype model overnight. But then, at a cost of nearly a million dollars of taxpayers’ money, you’d expect the Americans to be choosy about who they loan one out to.”
“Would you care to join us for lunch, Professor?” asked the man who had been introduced as Feldman.
“Don’t tell me the HEMTT cooks as well,” said Scott.
“No, sir, we have to rely on the Kurd for that. Aziz’s speciality is hamburger and French fries. If you’ve never had the experience before, it can be quite tasty.”
The eight of them sat cross-legged on the ground, using the reverse side of a backgammon board as a table. Scott couldn’t remember enjoying a burned hamburger more. He was also glad of the chance to chat with the men he would be working with on the operation. Kratz began to talk through the different contingency plans they would have to consider once they had reached the Jordan-Iraq border. It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Scott to realize how professional these men were, or to see their desire to be part of the final team. He grew confident that the operation was in good hands, and that Kratz’s team had not been chosen at random.
After a third hamburger he was sorry when the Mossad Colonel reminded him he had a flight to catch. He rose and thanked the cook for a memorable meal.
“See you in Jordan, sir,” said Sergeant Cohen.
“See you in Jordan,” said Scott.
As Scott was being driven to the airport, he asked Kratz, “How are you going to select the final two?”
“They’ll decide for themselves. Nothing to do with me, I’m only their commanding officer.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re going to play round-robin backgammon on the way to Jordan. The two winners get a day trip to Baghdad, all expenses paid.”
“And the losers?”
“Get a postcard saying ‘Wish you were here.’”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hannah gathered up all the files that the Deputy Foreign Minister would require for his meeting with the Revolutionary Command Council.
By working hours that no one else knew existed, and completing tasks the Minister had never thought would get done, Hannah had quickly made herself indispensable. Whenever the Minister needed something, it was there on his desk: she could anticipate his every need, and never sought praise for doing so. But, despite all this, she rarely left the office during the day or the house at night, and certainly seemed to be no nearer to coming into contact with Saddam. The Ambassador’s wife tried valiantly to help on the social side, and on one occasion she even invited a young soldier around to dinner. He was good-looking, Hannah thought, and seemed to be pleasant enough, although he hardly opened his mouth all evening and left suddenly without a word. Perhaps she was unable to hide the fact that she no longer had any interest in men.
Hannah had sat in on several meetings with individual Ministers, even members of the Command Council, including Saddam’s half brother, the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, but she felt no nearer to Saddam himself than she had been when she lived in a cul-de-sac in Chalk Farm. She was becoming despondent, and began to fear that her frustration might become obvious for all to see. As an antidote she channeled her energies into generating reports on interdepartmental spending, and set up a filing system that would have been the envy of the clerks in the Library of Congress. But one of the many things Mossad had taught her during her arduous days of training was always to be patient, and ready, because in time an opening would appear.
It was early on a Thursday morning, when most of the Minister’s staff had begun their weekends, that the first opening presented itself. Hannah was typing up her notes from a meeting the Deputy Minister had had the previous day with the newly appointed Head of Interest Section in Paris, a Mr. Al Obaydi, when the call came through. Muhammad Saeed Al-Zahiaf, the Foreign Minister, wished to speak to his Deputy.
A few moments later, the Deputy Minister came rushing out of his office, barking at Hannah to follow him. Hannah grabbed a notepad and chased after the Minister down the long passageway.
Although the Foreign Minister’s office was only at the other end of the corridor, Hannah had never been inside it before. When she followed her Minister into the room, she was surprised to find how modern and dull it was, with only the panoramic view over the Tigris as compensation.
The Foreign Minister did not bother to rise, but hastily ushered his subordinate into a chair on the opposite side of the desk, explaining that the President had requested a full report on the subject they had discussed at the Revolutionary Command Council the previous evening. He went on to explain that his own secretary had gone home for the weekend, so Miss Saib should take down a record of their meeting.
Hannah could not believe the discussion that followed. Had she not been aware that she was listening to two loyal members of the Revolutionary Command Council, she would have dismissed their conversation as an outrageous piece of propaganda. The President’s half brother had apparently succeeded in stealing the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives in Washington, and the document was now nailed to a wall of the room in which the Council met.
The discussion concentrated on how the news of this triumph should be released to an astonished world, and the date that had been selected to guarantee the greatest media coverage. Details were also discussed as to which square in the capital the President should deliver his speech from before he publicly burned the document, and whether Peter Arnett or Bernard Shaw of CNN should be granted special access to film the President standing next to the parchment the night before the burning ceremony took place.
After two hours the meeting broke up and Hannah returned with the Deputy Minister to his office. Without so much as a glance in her direction, he ordered her to make a fair copy of the decisions that had been reached that morning.
It took Hannah the rest of the morning to produce a first draft, which the Minister read through immediately. After making a few changes and emendations, he told her to produce a final copy to be delivered to the Foreign Minister with a recommendation that it should, if it met with his approval, be sent on to the President.
As she walked home through the streets of Baghdad that evening, Hannah felt helpless. She wondered what she could possibly do to warn the Americans. Surely they were planning some countermeasures in order to try to recapture the Declaration, or would at least be preparing some form of retaliation once they knew the day that had been selected for the public burning.