The Port of Piraeus, Greece
A GREY-BLUE POLLUTION haze shrouded the dawn sun as the black-hulled, Gibraltar-registered container ship was eased from the jetty by two tugs. The vessel had been in the Greek port for a mere six hours, off-loading cargoes she’d brought from further west and hoisting on board others which had destinations to the east.
The great sack of the eastern Mediterranean is criss-crossed by a spider’s web of shipping routes, at the centre of which lies Piraeus. Well-placed for the Med and the Aegean with its routes to the Black Sea, a quarter of the port’s ‘box traffic’ consists of transshipments from one container line to another.
The thick, oily water of the inner harbour churned and frothed as the ship’s screw began to turn. This modern, well-run vessel was a workhorse of the container business, shuttling relentlessly the length of the Mediterranean, transporting her sealed and invisible cargoes. The next port of call on her journey east was Limassol on the southern coast of Cyprus. Some twenty of the containers stacked on her deck were bound for that divided island, all of them loaded at Piraeus. Among them was a forty-footer transshipped from a vessel out of Ilychevsk in Ukraine. The Single Administrative Document accompanying it gave the container’s final destination as Haifa in Israel and its contents as defective fruit and vegetable juices being returned to their supplier.
The clasp locking the container’s doors bore the seal of the Ukrainian customs in Odessa. The officer who’d applied the seal had not checked the container’s repacked contents. A bribe had seen to that. If he had looked behind the single pallet of expanding Tetrapaks, he would have found a far more explosive cargo.
09.10 hrs
Baghdad
Overlooking the sweet-water canal in east Baghdad, a modern hotel served as the UN Special Commission’s headquarters in Iraq. Its blue frontage was pierced by large porthole-like windows and the car park in front was crowded with white-painted vehicles, some of them armoured. Two Nissan Prairies and two Toyota Landcruisers lined up with their engines running to get the air-conditioning going. Most of the members of the newly arrived UN inspection team were already inside waiting for the start of their first outing.
Dean Burgess stood in the open with Andrew Hardcastle, trying not to be irritated by the mild chauvinism which had first shown itself the day before at the briefing in Bahrain. They watched their plain-clothes Iraqi security escorts digest the news of where the day’s inspection was to be. Above the pale cotton slacks and shirts and the multi-pocketed fisherman’s vests which both UN men wore, Burgess was sporting the blue baseball cap with the UN logo he’d been issued with in Bahrain. It gave him a small feeling of authority in a situation where, for an American in particular, there was little such comfort to be had.
He had a clear head this morning after a good night’s sleep helped by Temazepam. His unease about his marriage had been buried under the flood of impressions that arrival in Iraq had entailed. His only problem was the lingering culture shock. The hostility with which they’d been received on arrival last night at the Habbaniyah Military Air Base west of Baghdad had been as blatant as he’d expected. As far as the Iraqi military were concerned, the UNSCOM team were spies, whatever cloak of legality the outside world had given them.
The air base itself had been eerie and unpleasant. MiG-29s stood ostentatiously on the flight-line, proof of Iraq’s surviving military strength despite America’s best efforts to destroy it in 1991. The immigration process had been handled in a so-called executive lounge. Burgess had needed to use the bathroom after the flight but had nearly thought better of it when he saw the filthy, excreta-caked hole in the ground he would need to crouch over.
The bus ride into the capital with its ubiquitous portraits of the Iraqi leader had surprised him, although it shouldn’t have. Despite knowing that the bridges and buildings bombed in the 1991 war had all been repaired, subconsciously he’d expected some sign of the billions of dollars’ worth of damage inflicted on the country. Gleaming palaces, broad, well-surfaced highways – it just didn’t fit.
Potemkin villages, Hardcastle had said. A good-looking frontage, but behind it poverty and hardship for the masses. Across the river in the eastern half of the city, he’d seen skinny street children hawking cigarette lighters and unemployed graduates trying to sell their textbooks at the kerb.
An hour ago they’d driven here to the Canal Hotel, home of the UN’s Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Centre, from the nearby Al Hyatt where they were billeted. A tour of the BMVC had impressed him with well-equipped laboratories, and its crowded operations room with computer terminals that could call up pictures from remote cameras in over a hundred sensitive sites up and down the country.
‘Come on, come on!’ Hardcastle chivvied, glaring across the car park at the trio of army-green jeeps. The news that their destination for the day was to be the Haji protein factory seemed to have caused puzzlement. They should have set off immediately, but the half-dozen minders were propped against their vehicles while their leader busied himself on the radio.
‘What’s going on Andrew? How do you read this?’ Burgess whispered.
‘God knows. But one thing’s sure. They’ll be phoning the Haji plant to warn them we’re coming.’
‘Complete surprise must be pretty much impossible to achieve.’
‘It can never be total,’ Hardcastle acknowledged. ‘But they’d need more than one hour’s notice to remove all the evidence at the Haji factory if they have been up to no good there.’
‘Are these guys Mukhabarat – the Ba’ath party intelligence?’ Burgess checked. He liked to classify people. To give them labels.
‘They never tell us who they are, but no, I think they’re Amn al Aman. That’s general security. Saddam has several parallel security organisations, each reporting to him and each keeping an eye on the others. Helps stop assassination attempts.’
‘Neat.’
‘Mr Hardcastle!’
His name had been shouted from the doorway of the hotel. The voice was antipodean.
They spun round. Burgess recognised the uniformed operations officer from New Zealand he’d met half an hour earlier.
‘Message for you, Mr Hardcastle. Urgent!’
‘Damn! Keep an eye on those minders, Dean. Don’t let the buggers take off without me.’
‘Sure thing.’
Hardcastle strode back into the hotel.
‘It’s from New York,’ the New Zealand army captain told him. Where else? thought Hardcastle.
They entered the conference room which UNSCOM used as its operations centre, its walls papered with lists of equipment and personnel involved in Iraq’s biological weapons programme. A couple of headquarters staff sat at work tables surrounded by papers, reference books and half-empty coffee mugs. The computers they tapped away at were notebooks whose liquid crystal displays didn’t give out the radiation of desktop cathode ray screens, a radiation that could be read by Iraqi electronic monitoring devices set up in rooms nearby.
‘Over here, Mr Hardcastle.’ The New Zealander handed him a sealed envelope. ‘Came on the secure fax link.’
‘Secure’ didn’t mean too much here. The UN’s signals from New York used a low-level encryption system that could be cracked within an hour by a good Iraqi technician with a Pentium PC.
‘Thanks.’ Hardcastle read the brief note, then grimaced. ‘Bugger!’ A change of mission. ‘Damn, damn!’ They’d just alerted the Iraqis to their interest in the Haji factory and now they weren’t bloody going there. At least not today.
He re-read the fax.
New overhead imagery shows suspected building materials and heavy plant at site known as Task Two. Urgent you change plan and inspect this site first.
Task Two. The patch of disturbed sand in the desert. Why not do both sites? Send half the team to the Haji place and half out to the wilderness. Why not? Because the Amn people would insist they hadn’t the manpower to host both locations. Arrant nonsense of course, but it would provoke hour
s of prevarication.
‘Right, then,’ Hardcastle puffed, resigned to the change of plan. He showed the signal to the New Zealander. ‘You need to know about this. I’ll give you the co-ordinates.’
The UN was certain the monitoring centre itself was bugged, so they’d established the routine of passing critical information to one another in writing. Hardcastle jotted down a summary, together with the map reference.
Site is in middle of the desert. U-2 spotted sand disturbance a few days ago. Now think it’s being built on. They could be putting up a building to conceal something interesting that’s been buried there.
He swung the small pack from his back and unzipped the map pocket in the lid.
‘I’ll show you where on this.’
He unfolded one of the large-scale aviation charts which they used for navigating the desert around Baghdad.
‘X marks the spot.’
‘Got it,’ said the New Zealander, marking up his own chart and writing down the exact co-ordinates.
‘Miles from bloody anywhere, as you can see,’ Hardcastle complained.
‘And well beyond VHF I should think.’
The ops officer opened a ring-binder and checked his list of the communications masts used to link live pictures from the remote cameras and to extend their radio net.
‘As I thought,’ he confirmed. ‘Nothing near it. It’ll have to be the sat system.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep in touch. You’ll confirm to New York that I’m switching tasks?’
‘Of course, Mr Hardcastle. Happy hunting.’
Hardcastle stuffed the map back into his rucksack then swung it round onto his shoulders.
‘Thanks.’
Out in the car park Burgess was glad to see the Englishman reappear, whatever his reservations about him. He felt very much the new kid on the block and his American accent had prompted an adverse response from the short, weasel-faced headman of the Iraqi security team. The man, identified to them only as Mustafa, now stood waiting in the shade of a large tree, the armpits of his striped shirt dark with sweat, his gross stomach straining at its buttons.
‘Change of plan, I’m afraid,’ Hardcastle grumbled, taking Burgess by the arm. ‘We’re heading for the desert. Better inform our guard dogs. Where’s Mustafa?’
‘Over there.’
They walked across the car park to the shade-giving tree, watched by the expressionless security man.
‘Mustafa, we have a problem,’ Hardcastle announced abruptly.
‘We go now?’
‘Yes. We’d like to leave immediately, but not to where I told you.’
The Iraqi’s pinched face darkened.
‘No Haji factory? They all ready for you there.’
You bet, Burgess mused.
‘No. Not the Haji factory today. There’s another site we want to see that’s west of Baghdad. About ninety k’s from here. In the desert.’
Mustafa glared suspiciously at Hardcastle’s folded-up air chart.
‘What other site? You have map reference? Co-ordinate?’ he growled, hoisting up the trousers which had slipped under the weight of his belly.
‘Of course.’
‘Why you want to go there?’ Mustafa bitched, making no attempt to conceal his annoyance.
‘Just for a look.’
Hardcastle spread out his map and pointed at the general area of interest. The Iraqi squinted at it. Needs glasses, thought Burgess, and too vain to wear them.
‘There is nothing in this place,’ the Iraqi snapped dismissively. ‘I know this area. Just desert. Maybe some goats.’
‘Then you’ve no cause to be concerned, have you Mustafa?’ Hardcastle purred.
‘You have exact co-ordinate?’ the Iraqi repeated, making no attempt to conceal the hatred in his hard, brown eyes.
‘Yes. I have them. You don’t need them.’
The security man bristled.
‘We’ll take the highway that leads to Habbaniyah,’ Hardcastle continued firmly. ‘I’ll tell you when to turn off. Just follow my directions, okay? Get a move on, shall we? The sooner we’re there, the sooner we can come back again.’
‘One moment . . .’ The security man made to walk away with the map.
‘Hang on. That’s mine.’ Hardcastle grabbed it back. ‘Come on. Let’s move it. I’ll give you directions on the VHF when we get close.’
‘One moment,’ the Iraqi repeated, turning towards his own jeep which was almost blocking the car park exit. ‘I have to check if is possible.’
‘It is possible,’ Hardcastle growled between clenched teeth. ‘And don’t you dare pretend otherwise, you little shit,’ he added once the security man was out of earshot.
Burgess flinched at Hardcastle’s high-handedness, suspecting that antagonising the minder would prove counterproductive.
‘He’s real scared,’ Burgess breathed. ‘Thinks we’re onto something he doesn’t know about.’
‘Probably,’ said Hardcastle, then shouted after the Iraqi, ‘Five minutes, Mustafa. Five minutes, then we’re setting off! Better tell the troops what’s going on,’ he added softly to Burgess. He strode over to the UN vehicles to warn his team of the switch to Task Two.
Burgess ambled to the front of the UN convoy and rested his backside against the wing of the leading four-wheel-drive. He watched the Iraqi minders huddle round their own map twenty yards away. They reminded him of a bunch of used car dealers plotting a mileage fraud.
It was nine-thirty in the morning and the last day of September, yet the sun was already blisteringly hot. He’d put on sunblock but was glad of the UN’s baseball cap to give his fair skin some extra protection. He wore a long-sleeved, light-grey shirt – added to his bag by Carole in a moment of female practicality because it wouldn’t show the dirt if he had to wear it for several days – and over it the fisherman’s vest with pockets for his notebook, pens and a compass. Also some spare Hi-8 tapes for the camcorder he was to use to video all significant events. On his feet he wore a stout pair of Nikes.
Hardcastle joined him.
‘I think they’re about to play silly buggers,’ he warned, leaning against the mudguard next to him. ‘Time for some pressure. Get that camera out.’
Burgess opened his backpack and extracted the Sony. Hardcastle checked his watch.
‘He’s had his five minutes. Let’s go prod him.’
Burgess folded out the viewer, pressed record and followed in Hardcastle’s wake, the camera at chest height. As they approached, one of the minders produced his own camera and began videoing them. Mustafa emerged from his vehicle poker-faced.
‘Ready, Mustafa?’ Hardcastle asked, knowing what the answer would be.
‘What you ask, it is not possible.’
‘What d’you mean? We can go wherever we want. You know that.’
‘National security . . .’
‘Bollocks!’
‘Yes. National security. Where you show me on the map it is a military training area.’
‘Rubbish!’ Hardcastle snorted. ‘I know perfectly well where the training areas are and this isn’t one of them. I demand you accompany us there. Immediately.’
‘I’m sorry. It is Special Republican Guard training area. I have my orders.’
‘And I have mine, Mustafa. I shall take the matter higher.’ He turned on his heel. ‘Bugger!’ he whispered under his breath. ‘They’re such bloody time-wasters.’
Burgess switched off the camera.
‘What now?’ he asked, unsurprised that the Iraqi had responded to Hardcastle’s aggression in the way he’d predicted.
‘Well, we’re in confrontation, so there’s a procedure to follow. Official complaint to be lodged, all that sort of stuff. Load of nonsense.’
Back at his vehicle he reached for the VHF handset and told the ops room what was happening. ‘Get the protests in right away,’ he instructed the New Zealander. Clipping the microphone back in its holder, he put a hand to his mouth and stared across at th
e car park exit. ‘Now, I wonder if we can’t force the issue. Jump in, Dean. This could be quite a ride.’
The half-caste Canadian major was at the wheel. Hardcastle scribbled words on a notepad then held it up for Latour to read.
That gap between the Iraqi vehicles and the exit – think we can get through it?
The Canadian nodded.
‘Okay.’ Hardcastle grabbed the microphone again. ‘Mike three, Charlie nine. Mike three, Charlie nine.’
The signal was code for ‘wagons roll’. The three UN vehicles behind them shifted into gear. Latour let up the clutch and rolled towards the car park exit. The Iraqis had their heads down, talking on their radio.
‘Okay. Foot down. Go, go, go!’ Hardcastle hissed.
Latour slipped through the gap. He glanced left, saw a break in the traffic on the highway running parallel to the canal and pushed into it. Burgess twisted round to see whether the others had made it. The second UN Nissan swerved through the gap, then nothing.
‘Shoot! They’ve blocked the two Landcruisers,’ Burgess warned.
‘You want me to stop?’ asked Latour.
‘No. Keep going. Steady speed.’ Hardcastle squared up to the dashboard where he believed the Iraqi’s microphone would be hidden. ‘Under UN Resolution 687, they’ve no right to impede our inspection,’ he declared combatively.
Burgess rolled his eyes. To him this sort of tactic was pointlessly provocative. He was distracted suddenly by two huge turquoise-coloured shells set well back from the road on their left, like halves of a coconut cleaved by a scimitar.
‘Martyrs Memorial,’ Hardcastle explained. ‘Impressive, don’t you think? So it damn well should be. It’s Saddam’s tribute to the hundreds of thousands he sent to die in his lunatic war against Iran.’
‘Ha! Looks like we have company,’ the Canadian chipped in, one eye on the mirror. He’d spotted a green jeep thundering up behind them.
Hardcastle grabbed the microphone. ‘Sierra four, Sierra four. This is Golf. What’s your situation, over?’
‘Golf, Sierra four.’ The voice was German and belonged to a demolition specialist from Mannheim in the third vehicle. ‘They block us with two of their jeeps. We are still in the BMVC parking. Over.’
Fire Hawk Page 9
