“We could do that,” said Mustafa. “But if the cops outside see us assembling a raid team, they might call ahead and warn Saddam.” He considered. “The three of us ought to be able to sneak away unnoticed, however.”
“And what are the three of us going to do against the whole Republican Guard?” asked Samir.
“Scout the territory,” Mustafa said. “Amal, call Abu Naji back. Tell him to get over to the Baghdad ABI office and round up as many agents as he can for a raid on Saddam’s Adhamiyah estate. Tell him to be careful not to let the police know, and tell him to hurry. Oh, and he needn’t bother with a warrant.”
“Exigent circumstances?” Amal smiled. “Whose life shall I say is in danger? The missing prisoner’s, or ours?”
“That all depends,” Mustafa said, “on what the prisoner is really made of.”
Saddam Hussein waited at the turnaround in front of his mansion, dressed in an authentic Iraqi military uniform purchased off eBazaar. Oversized mirror shades allowed him to gaze unblinking into the storm. He was grinning broadly in anticipation and every few moments had to turn and spit sand from between his teeth.
Presidential Secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud stood to Saddam’s right, looking significantly less jubilant. To Abid’s right was the sorcerer Mr. Rammal, his expression hidden beneath the cowl of his robe. Forty Republican Guardsmen were arrayed on the mansion’s front steps, weapons at the ready. Their faces were impassive: They might have been awaiting the arrival of a head of state, a shipment of gold bullion, or a battle.
Behind the Guard, sheltering beneath an overhang by the front door, were Tariq Aziz, Uday Hussein, and a small group of male servants. Aziz and the servants looked nervous; Uday, sullen. Uday was furious at having been kept home from the mission to retrieve the jinn. He was also bored: All the women of the house, from his mother down to the lowliest maid, had been sent away.
The police cars arrived and were waved through the front gate. They came up the drive and pulled to a stop at the turnaround. Qusay got out of the lead car. He nodded to his father, then opened up the car’s back door and reached inside.
As the prisoner’s feet touched the ground the wind whipped up violently. Abid and Mr. Rammal were staggered by it, and the Guard had to struggle to maintain their ranks. Aziz threw up an arm to shield himself and the servants covered their faces in fear. Uday, remembering how he’d shamed himself earlier, balled his hands into fists and leaned into the wind.
Saddam stood his ground. He waited for Qusay to pull the prisoner upright, then removed his sunglasses and peered squinting into the prisoner’s eyes. “Welcome to my home!” he said, shouting to be heard above the wind’s howl. He tugged playfully at the chain between the prisoner’s wrists. “Welcome to my service!”
Halal Enforcement had a boat dock on the river one block east from the Homeland Security building.
The three of them had donned goggles before setting out, and Mustafa and Samir had tied rags over their mouths and noses, while Amal used her headscarf. They looked like bandits, and as they approached the guard shack at the dock entrance Mustafa expected to be challenged. But the shack was deserted, and though the gate was locked the keypad entry code had not been changed in a decade.
They boarded a motor launch with an enclosed cabin and set off upriver. The sandstorm was getting worse. The sky had turned a dull orange from the amount of dust floating above the city, and visibility dropped until it was down to less than fifty meters. Mustafa used the onboard GPS to navigate, while Samir and Amal kept a sharp lookout for approaching vessels. Fortunately most of the other river traffic seemed to have pulled off to wait out the storm.
After about fifteen minutes they rounded a bend in the river and spotted a string of lights that, according to the GPS, marked Saddam’s private dock. The dock spanned nearly a hundred meters of waterfront and terminated at its east end in a riverside party and guest house that was larger than most people’s primary homes. The house also contained a guard station, so Mustafa steered well clear of it, continuing upriver past the dock’s west end before killing the launch’s running lights and doubling back. He brought them in on the lowest throttle setting, finally cutting the engine entirely and coasting into an open berth beside a yacht named Bint Zabibah.
“Now what?” Samir said, after they’d tied off the launch.
“You remember back in ’97, when Halal was planning to raid this place?” Mustafa asked.
“I remember the judge denying us a warrant after our informant turned up in a cement mixer.”
“Yes, but before that, when the mission was still a go, I had a good look at the blueprints and reconnaissance photos. The main way up to the estate is through there”—he gestured towards the party/guard house—“but there’s also a separate gate above a slipway at this end, for putting boats into and out of the water—and loading liquor onto trucks. That gate’s not so well guarded, and at the time it was secured only with a padlock and chain.”
Amal was already rummaging in the launch’s toolbox. “Will this do?” she said, holding up a pair of long-handled bolt cutters.
They put their goggles and face masks back on and stepped out onto the dock. The gate was where Mustafa said it would be, but unlike Halal, Saddam had upgraded his security since the 1990s. A video camera had been mounted above the gateway, and the gate itself was now a solid sheet of metal, barred and bolted from the inside.
“What about going over the wall?” Amal suggested, as they huddled out of the camera’s view. “We can use the bolt cutters on the barbed wire.”
“It’s got to be at least four meters high,” Samir said. “You have a grappling hook, too?”
“If we can pile up some boxes or something for you to stand on, you can give me a boost.” Reading their silence as discomfort rather than skepticism, she added: “Pretend you’re my brothers.”
No one had a better idea, so they crept along the dock looking for some boxes or crates strong enough to bear their weight. Just past the Bint Zabibah they found a small, wheeled dumpster chained to a post. They cut the chain and trundled the dumpster back to the slipway.
Mustafa was the tallest of them, so he stood on the dumpster lid and let Amal climb up on his shoulders. Samir stayed on the ground trying to hold the dumpster steady. This circus act would have been difficult even in perfectly calm weather and under these conditions should have been impossible, but the wind was oddly cooperative. More than once, as she stretched to cut the strands of barbed wire, Amal felt herself starting to overbalance, only to have a sudden gust like a firm hand push her back against the wall. She worked as quickly as she could. When the last strand parted, she tossed the bolt cutter to the ground and said, “OK!” Mustafa placed his hands under the soles of Amal’s shoes and pushed up, hard. This maneuver proved too much for the dumpster lid, which buckled beneath him and sent him tumbling back to be caught by Samir—but when they looked up, Amal had vanished over the wall.
Five long minutes later, the light on the security camera went out and the gate opened. Amal, now armed with an assault rifle, waved them inside. They passed through a short tunnel. At the other end was a guard shack, inside which a Republican Guardsman lay, bound hand and foot with plastic zip-ties and blindfolded with his own jacket. Mustafa turned to ask Amal a question but she was already forging ahead.
They made for the lights of the main house. They’d covered about half the distance when the wind dropped almost to nothing, and they heard, somewhere off to the left, the asthmatic roar of a lion. This was followed by another, softer wheezing sound. A Republican Guard staggered out of the haze, gasping for breath, and fell facedown in front of them.
While Amal kept watch for the lion, Mustafa and Samir bent down over the Guard. The man hadn’t been mauled; he’d been stabbed. A handmade plastic blade had been driven into his upper back, piercing a lung. Mustafa pulled it loose and squinted at the legend on the side of the shiv: XBOX 360.