“They will help us get rid of a major problem.”
“What problem?” Sherev asked.
“Hussein.”
“How?”
“We give my contact the stones, he ensures Hussein dies. That is the deal.”
“When will this occur?”
“It is already occurring.”
“How are you sure your contact will keep his end of the bargain?”
“That is his business,” Lekur said. “He is a man of great means and his reach is long.”
“Who is this man?”
“I cannot tell you that.”
“Why does he want the stones?”
“That is not our concern.”
“It is my concern,” Sherev said. “I am responsible for the Archives.”
Lekur steepled his fingers. “The deal is already done. The Premier approved it two hours ago.”
“You made a deal, but you don’t know what you bargained away, do you?”
The daily intelligence briefing was a requirement, but ever since the Gulf War the time and the location were always changed, to keep the Western intelligence agencies from being able to pinpoint the President’s location.
Farik Hassid sat in the same spot for over three thousand of these briefings. As a member of the Tikrit Tribe, the same village where Saddam came from, he had a favored status on the intelligence council. As the chief of staff for intelligence, he had learned long ago to walk the fine line between giving actual intelligence and telling the President what he wanted to hear.
He focused most of his efforts on rooting out internal dissension than external threats to the country — after all, what more could the world do to Iraq that it had not already done?
He was irritated when his aide-de-camp, a young man also from the same village, the son of an old friend, entered the conference room while the head of the secret police was giving his daily assessment.
Hassid leaned back in his chair as the aide leaned, lips close to his ear, and whispered, “You have a call.”
Hassid turned in anger, but the next words froze his heart.
“It is a message from a man named Al-Iblis. The caller has the proper code.” Hassid swallowed, willing his heart to start. He stood, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, and followed his aide out the door. He took the cell phone the aide had hidden in a pocket.
“Yes?”
“Al-Iblis requires your services.” The voice on the other end was cold and flat.
“Verify that you speak for Al-Iblis.”
“Tark.”
The word hit Hassid’s chest like a knife. “Farm.”
The second code word was the twist of the knife. Abandonment and annihilation. The man spoke for Al-Iblis.
Hassid forced his throat to work, his lips to move. “What is required?”
The order was short and to the point. When the man was done, Hassid could no longer feel any part of his body. He was numb.
“You will comply.” It was not a question. The phone went dead.
Hassid slowly dialed the number he had been given. A voice answered in English.
“My name is Farik Hassid. I am the chief of staff for intelligence for the state of Iraq. Stay on the line. It will be worth your time, I assure you.”
The voice demanded to know if this was a joke, but Hassid ignored it and placed the phone in his dress uniform breast pocket, still on, facing outward. He turned to his aide. “You are dismissed.”
“Sir?”
Hassid ignored him as he walked to the conference room door. He pulled it open and entered. As he walked past his seat, every eye in the room turned to him, wondering what urgent matter could have pulled him out of the meeting.
Hassid went to the end of the table where the President leaned back in his seat, awaiting his report.
Hassid felt nothing. He was past feelings, past any concern of life. He lifted his left hand as if he had something to say, while his right jerked his pistol out of the holster. Hussein’s eyes grew wide, his bushy eyebrows raised in shock as Hassid pointed the gun directly at the President’s face. He pulled the trigger, a blossom of red appearing in Hussein’s left cheek. Hassid kept firing until all but one round was gone and there was nothing left of the President’s head.
“Saddam Hussein is dead!” Hassid yelled in English, then he placed the hot muzzle against his right temple and pulled the trigger as the rest of the staff rushed toward him.
Lekur checked his watch and pointed at the television mounted in the corner of the room. “Turn on CNN.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Sherev bristled at being ordered about in his own office, but he pressed the button on the remote. It was the top of the hour. And the lead headline was the apparent assassination of Saddam Hussein in a suicide attack in Baghdad by a member of his inner military staff, less than two minutes ago. A tape of a phone call to CNN headquarters was played, the sound of gunfire, yells in Arabic, and a voice saying in English that Hussein was dead.
“How did this happen?” Sherev turned back to Lekur. He wondered how CNN could have received the report so quickly and if all of this was a setup. “I told you my contact’s reach is long. He has fulfilled his half of the bargain, trusting that we fulfill our part. Bring me the stones.”
Sherev leaned back in his hard chair. “The stones have been examined several times by scientists. They are not natural. Do you understand what that means?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “They were manufactured a long time ago. And now we know who made them — the Airlia. The United Nations Alien Oversight Committee has queried every government for Airlia artifacts. Of course, like us, no one has been forthcoming, willing to give up whatever pieces they have. Now you want us to turn these two stones over to some mysterious contact you have?”
“What can you do with the stones?” Lekur asked. “What have you done with them other than lock them in a vault and let them gather dust? Religious icons.” The politician shook his head. “What a waste. I am not concerned with the Airlia. I am concerned with the safety of my country, and the largest threat to that safety has just been killed. I consider the stones a small price to pay for that. I don’t care what my contact wants them for. They were worthless to us; now they have become valuable.”
Still, Sherev hesitated. He knew it was indeed a great coup for Hussein to have been killed. The Mossad had tried to accomplish the very same thing for two decades without success. So had the Americans. A powerful coalition of nations had not been enough to remove the one man who was the greatest threat to stability in the region. Now it was done.
Sherev turned it around. If this contact of Lekur’s could get to Hussein, then he could get to anyone. There was an underlying threat to this deal that Sherev felt sure Lekur had not seen yet.
“My assistant will take you to the Archives.” Sherev spun his chair about, looking out at the desert. He heard the door close behind Lekur. Then he turned back to his desk once more and picked up the secure line to Mossad headquarters.
“What is it?” Che Lu had just walked into the conference room and caught Mualama staring off into space.
Mualama was startled. He tapped the manuscript. “Burton discovered the truth about Ngorongoro.”
Che Lu sat down across from the African. “I noted that no one asked you what you were supposed to be covering when you were a Watcher. Was it Ngorongoro?”
Mualama nodded. “I told you we were second-echelon Watchers, recruited by Wedjat. So much was lost over the years. I think the core of the Watchers no longer trusted those in the second echelon. And—” he pointed at the screen “—now I know why they never contacted me, or my father, or those before us.”
“What do you mean?” Che Lu asked.