Hannah’s eyes pleaded with Scott.
“How touching, my dear, he’s forgiven you. But I fear I don’t share his forgiving nature.” The General turned to see Major Saeed running towards him. He listened carefully to what the Major whispered to him, then began banging his swagger stick rapidly against his long leather boots.
“You’re a fool!” he shouted at the top of his voice, and suddenly struck the Major across the face with his swagger stick.
He turned back to face Scott. “It seems,” he said, “that the reunion I had planned for you and your friends will have to wait a little longer, because although we have Colonel Kratz safely locked up, the Jew and the Kurdish traitor have escaped. But it can only be a matter of time before we catch them.”
“How long have you known?” asked Hannah quietly.
“You made the mistake so many of our enemies make, Miss Kopec, of underestimating our great President,” replied the General. “He dominates the affairs of the Middle East to a far greater extent than Gorbachev did the Russians, Thatcher the British or Bush the American people. I ask myself, how many citizens in the West any longer believe the Allies won the Gulf War? But then, you were also stupid enough to underrate his cousin, Abdul Kanuk, our newly appointed Ambassador to Paris. Perhaps he wasn’t quite that stupid when he followed you all the way to your lover’s flat and stood in a doorway the rest of the night before following you back to the embassy. It was he who informed our Ambassador in Geneva what ‘Miss Saib’ was up to.
“Of course, we needed to be sure, not least because our Deputy Foreign Minister found it so hard to accept such a tale about one of his most loyal members of staff. Such a naïve man. So, when you came to Baghdad, the Ambassador’s wife invited Miss Saib’s brother to dinner. But, sadly he didn’t recognize you. Your cover, as the more vulgar American papers would describe it, was blown. Those same papers keep asking pathetically, ‘Why doesn’t Mossad assassinate President Saddam?’ If only they knew how many times Mossad has tried and failed. What Colonel Kratz didn’t tell you at your training school in Herzliyah, Miss Kopec, was that you are the seventeenth Mossad agent who has attempted to infiltrate our ranks during the past five years, and all of them have experienced the same tragic end as your Colonel is about to. And the real beauty of the whole exercise is that we don’t have to admit we killed any of you in the first place. You see, the Jewish people are unwilling to accept, after Entebbe and Eichmann, that such a thing could possibly happen. I feel sure you will appreciate the logic of that, Professor.”
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” said Scott.
“I’m touched, Professor, by your Western ethics, but I fear you have nothing to bargain with.”
“We’ll trade Miss Saib if you release Hannah.”
The General burst out laughing. “Professor, you have a keen sense of the ridiculous, but I won’t insult you by suggesting that you don’t understand the Arab mind. Do allow me to explain. You will be killed, and no one will comment because, as I have already explained, the West is too proud to admit that you even exist. Whereas we in the East will throw our hands in the air and ask why Mossad has kidnapped a gentle, blameless secretary on her way to Paris, and is now holding her in Tel Aviv against her will. We even know the house where she is captive. We have already arranged for sentimental pictures of her to be released to every paper in the Western world, and a distraught mother and son have been coached for weeks by one of your own public relations companies to face the Western press. We’ll even have Amnesty International protesting outside Israeli embassies across the world on her behalf.”
Scott stared at the General.
“Poor Miss Saib will be released within days. Both of you, on the other hand, will die an unannounced, unheralded and unmourned death. To think that all you sacrificed your lives for was a scrap of paper. And while we’re on that subject, Professor, I will relieve you of the Declaration.”
The four soldiers stepped forward and thrust their bayonets at Scott’s throat as the General snatched the cardboard tube from his grasp.
“You did well to switch the documents in two minutes, Professor,” said the General, glancing up at the television screen above him. “But you can be assured that it remains our intention to burn the original very publicly on the Fourth of July, and I feel confident that we will destroy President Clinton’s flimsy reputation along with it.” The General laughed. “You know, Professor, I have for many years enjoyed killing people, but I shall gain a particular pleasure from your deaths, because of the appropriate way you will be departing this world.”
The soldiers surrounded Hannah and Scott and forced them back into the Chamber and on towards the short corridor. The General followed them down the passage. They all came to a halt in front of the open safe.
“Allow me,” said General Hamil, “to inform you of one statistic you failed to mention, Professor, when you briefed me on this amazing feat of engineering. Perhaps you simply didn’t know, although I am bound to admit that you have done your homework thoroughly. But did you realize that one person locked in a safe of this size, with a capacity of 504 cubic feet, can only hope to survive for six hours? I do not yet know the exact length of time two people can hope to survive while sharing the same amount of oxygen. But I will very shortly.” He removed a stopwatch from his pocket, waved his swagger stick and the soldiers hurled first Hannah and then Scott into the safe. The smile remained on the General’s face as two of the soldiers pushed the massive door closed. The lights all began flashing red.
The General clicked his stopwatch.
When the car came to a halt, Kratz reckoned that the distance they had traveled was under a mile. He heard the door open and felt a shove on his arm to indicate he should get out of the car. He was pushed up three stone steps before entering a building and walking into a long corridor. His footsteps echoed on the wooden floor. Then he was guided into a room on his left, where he was pushed down onto a chair, tied and gagged. His shoes and socks were removed. When he heard the door close, he sensed he was alone.
It was a long time — he couldn’t be sure just how long — before the door opened again. The first voice he heard was General Hamil’s. “Remove the gag,” was all he said.
Kratz could hear him pacing around the chair, but at first the General said nothing. Kratz began to concentrate. He knew the pill was good for two hours, no more, and he suspected it was already forty or fifty minutes since they had driven him away from Ba’ath headquarters.
“Colonel Kratz, I have waited some time for the privilege of making your acquaintance. I’ve long admired your work. You are a perfectionist.”
“Cut the crap,” said Kratz, “because I don’t admire you or your work.”
He waited for the first slap of gloves across his face or for a fist to come crashing into his jaw, but the General simply continued to circle the chair.
“You mustn’t be too disappointed,” said the General. “I feel sure, after all you’ve heard about us, that you must have expected at least some electric shocks by now, perhaps the Chinese water torture, even the rack, but I fear — unlike Mossad, Colonel — that when dealing with people of your seniority we long ago dispensed with such primitive methods. We have found them to be outmoded, a thing of the past. Worse, they just don’t get results. You Zionists are tough and well trained. Few of you talk, very few. So we’ve had to resort to more scientific methods to gain the information we need.”
If it was still within the hour, thought Kratz, he’d judged it well.
“A simple injection of PPX will ensure that we learn everything we want to know,” continued the General, “and once we have the information we require, we’ll simply kill you. So much more efficient than in the past, and with all the environmental complaints one gets nowadays, so much more tidy. Though, I must confess, I miss the old methods. So you’ll appreciate why I couldn’t resist locking Miss Kopec and Professor Bradley in their safe, especially since they hadn’t seen each other for so long.”