Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Now you’re talking . . .’ breathed Sam.

  ‘There’s more. Colonel Hamdan had a wife. I say had because she’s dead now. You remember the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad? Bombed in error in the Gulf War with three to four hundred civilians killed? Well, apparently Mrs Hamdan was one of those brought out inside several polythene bags.’

  ‘Oh God,’ whispered the woman from the CIA.

  ‘But here’s what’s really interesting,’ Waddell continued, holding up his hands for silence. ‘Before she married the Colonel, Mrs Hamdan’s family name was Shenassi.’

  ‘Oh boy! This gets good.’ This time it was Dean Burgess who spoke.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Sam. The name meant nothing to him.

  ‘Shenassi, Sam, was also the name of the Baghdad animal feed plant boss who committed suicide last Wednesday after UNSCOM found he’d been brewing up anthrax. Doctor Shenassi and Colonel Hamdan’s wife were brother and sister.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Sam breathed.

  Waddell passed a hand over his thistle-like hair.

  ‘So let’s try and make sense of all this. We’re into speculation of course, but we can try it for size. First, let’s say that Hamdan and Shenassi conspire for reasons we don’t yet know to produce an anthrax weapon. They need money to fund their plan for using the stuff, so they kidnap Sam Packer. Somehow – and we still don’t know how – they knew that Sam worked for SIS.’

  Not appearing to accuse him any more at least, thought Sam, exhilarated to hear Waddell endorse what he himself had concluded in Cyprus.

  ‘They knew, therefore, that if they moved fast and acted discreetly there was a good chance we’d agree to send them Salah Khalil in exchange,’ Waddell went on. ‘And Khalil was loaded with money. Next. Colonel Hamdan turns up in Cyprus, escorting Khalil presumably, to make sure he gets his hands on that cash. And there was a lot of it involved. Enough to fund a whole string of terrorist operations.

  ‘Now, the movement of that money is something we are sure about. Salah Khalil, as far as we can tell, is the sole shareholder of a Cyprus-based offshore trading company. I say that with a proviso, because the Central Bank of Cyprus files show the shares being held by a nominee. But the nominee, surprise, surprise, happens to be the lawyer whom Khalil went to see last Monday.’

  Burgess nodded. He knew a lot about shell companies. Tracking money movements had formed a good part of his duties at the New York field office he’d recently left.

  ‘At midday on Monday Cyprus time, one hour after Khalil visited his lawyer, a bank account in Lugano in the name of the same Cyprus-based offshore company transferred five million dollars to an account in Jersey which belongs to yet another company registered in Cyprus. That money transfer was nominally against an invoice for a cargo of oil. We’ve not yet been able to identify the owners of the company that received the money, because yet again it’s in nominee names.

  ‘But, and we’re still speculating like mad here, Cyprus is, of course, a favourite offshore business centre for criminal organisations from the former Soviet Union. So it’s entirely possible the money was paid to an FSU Mafiya gang. Another pointer to that is the strong Ukrainian link we’ve uncovered in the murder of our agent Christine Taylor.’

  He hit a couple of keys on the computer and the photo Sam had stolen from the Mondiale Hotel came up full frame.

  ‘The full image, with Hamdan just a blur in the background, was taken in the bar of the Mondiale Hotel, Limassol on the eve of Christine’s death.’

  Burgess glanced at Kessler. Tough for the man to keep up such a cool front when it was his wife they were talking about.

  ‘That’s Chrissie, with her back to camera. Next to her in the green jacket is a former KGB officer called Viktor Rybkin. He’s someone she’d met on a number of previous occasions and was friendly with. At first we thought Rybkin was in Cyprus on SBU business, but we’ve now learned he was kicked out of the Ukrainian intelligence service a few months ago. Like many of his colleagues in the military and security field, he’d succumbed to the lure of crime.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ Sam breathed. ‘So it’s confirmed.’

  ‘Yes. And what’s also just been confirmed is that he now works for the man you see sitting opposite him, the one with the interesting line in cosmetic dentistry. His name is Vladimir Filipovich Grimov, known as Dima. According to an Odessa police file which our Kiev station officer got access to this morning, he’s a former army officer who now virtually runs the Odessa arm of a biznis empire believed to be headed by an ex-communist factory boss called Voronin. Like many of the new Mafiya godfathers, Voronin has ring-fenced his position as a gang leader by getting himself elected to the Rada – the parliament – which gives him automatic immunity from prosecution in Ukraine.

  ‘Now, that covers the who’s who. But what’s going on? Well, we believe that Christine Taylor had made an important discovery, namely that the Iraqis she was shadowing were doing business with these two Ukrainian hoods. We believe she was trying to exploit her old friendship with Viktor Rybkin to find out what that business was. And we imagine she got close to succeeding, which was why they killed her.’

  Sam’s eyes were on Martin Kessler now. The only movement on the grey face was a quick, nervous licking of the lips.

  ‘Chrissie died before she could report in, unfortunately. All we know, or rather suspect, about the business relationship is that five million dollars may have passed from Hamdan to Grimov. As I said before, a lot of money. And if it was money for help in launching an anthrax attack, then we could be talking about something pretty sophisticated,’ he warned.

  ‘Can we get some background clear here?’ Jennifer asked. ‘I have to admit an ignorance on technical matters. I had legal training, not science. What exactly are we talking about here? The warning Sam was given was about an anthrax warhead, right? Now, is that a bomb or what?’

  ‘Good question,’ Waddell conceded. ‘We’d all benefit from an explanation of the technicalities. Dean – you’re hot from the front and you’ve spent the past few days with Andrew Hardcastle. Any of his expertise rubbed off?’

  ‘Some. I’ll tell you as much as I’ve understood,’ Burgess answered, leaning back in his chair. He smoothed his moustache. ‘Let me begin with the conclusion that we in the UNSCOM team came to at the end of our mission. We’re pretty darn sure that with the help of specialised equipment smuggled in and then out of the Haji factory on the weekend of the thirteenth of September several kilograms of freeze-dried, finely milled anthrax spores were produced. Enough for a weapons test and to fill a warhead or two as well.

  ‘The warheads, or whatever you want to call them, can be any sort of device able to release the anthrax in a controlled way. You see, to use anthrax as a weapon of mass murder, the powdered spores need to be released in a dust that’s fine enough to remain airborne long enough to be inhaled by the victims. And to reach those victims the device has to spread the stuff in a controlled way so that it gets into the victims’ air supply. It could be something real simple, like a ducted fan mounted on the back of a truck driven down a crowded city street or backed up against the intake for a subway ventilation system. Or it could be an explosive shell or ballistic missile warhead, though there’s a risk that much of the agent would be destroyed by the detonation of the weapon itself. Finally, the gizmo could be a simple canister that sprays the agent from a plane like a crop duster, or maybe even from a cruise missile or some other type of unmanned air vehicle. All the canister needs to have is a nozzle to control the flow and something to push the powder out, like a fan. Or just some holes opening in a controlled way at the front to let in the slipstream.’

  ‘Surely anthrax can be in liquid form too, can’t it?’ enquired Martin Kessler, determined on clarity.

  ‘Sure, sir. The spores can be in solution. But the dried version is easier to transport and handle and has a longer shelf life. Ideally the stuff needs to be kept cool and away from sunlight. If we’re talkin
g about a weapon being smuggled out of the country then powder is what makes sense.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Okay, and I pretty much followed all of that too,’ cut in Jennifer. ‘But do you know what type of device was being tested this time?’

  ‘No, we do not. If we’d been able to continue digging at the site in the desert we might have found some technical parts that would have given us the answer.’

  ‘And this weapon you’re envisaging,’ Sam intervened, ‘this canister or whatever – it would be easily portable? One man could carry it?’

  ‘Absolutely. It could weigh just a few pounds. You’d probably need to wear a mask when handling it tactically, that’s all.’

  Silence fell round the table as they considered what Burgess had just told them.

  ‘Five million dollars – phew,’ Sam whistled. ‘You could buy most things with that. A light aircraft, a cruise missile . . .’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Waddell. He and Kessler glanced at one another, as if they knew something more but weren’t revealing it. ‘Now, if all our speculation about Naif Hamdan’s plans is correct, the next and most important question of all is why? Is he planning an act of terrorism independently or is somebody else controlling him?’

  ‘Saddam, of course,’ Jennifer stated firmly. ‘Listen. No little Iraqi splinter group could produce a stock of anthrax, test a warhead and get it out of the country without Saddam’s intelligence set-up finding out about it way before it got anywhere. So if there is an anthrax attack being planned, it has to be Saddam who’s behind it.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure of that, Jen,’ Burgess chipped in, dabbing at his moustache again, as he always did when he was about to take a stand on something. ‘The Amn al Aman security guys were real taken aback by what we were uncovering,’ he told her, pulling himself up straight in the chair. ‘Not once, but twice. They just were not expecting us to find anything sensitive either out in the desert or at the Haji plant. Those guys were out of the information loop. And in the opinion of people on the UNSCOM team who weren’t greenhorns like me, that simply has never happened before.’

  The CIA woman cleared her throat and straightened the sleeves of her grey jacket.

  ‘Dean, you know as well as I do that folks in Washington are going to be real sceptical about the idea of any Iraqis freelancing with anthrax. The view in DC is that’s just not possible. Look, Saddam’s already had to give away much more about his BW programme to the UN than he wanted to. So, to keep what’s left of it secret, he’s had to set up a cell system, keeping the organisations that produce the stuff secret even from his own security people. I have to say, guys, that that’s the line I favour. I’m of the school of thought that says nothing of importance can happen in Iraq without Saddam’s say-so.’

  ‘And normally we would agree with you, Jennifer,’ Martin Kessler stated, his glasses having slipped down his nose a little, giving him an oddly distrait look. ‘But the oddities of this particular case do go on and on.’ He gestured to Waddell to continue.

  ‘We had a signal this morning from our man in Amman. Sources there are saying there’s been a handful of arrests in Baghdad and some deaths. Not deaths at the hands of the Mukhabarat, you understand, but suicides. People biting into cyanide capsules to avoid interrogation.’

  ‘Like Shenassi,’ Burgess exclaimed. ‘You’re saying there’s a link?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ Waddell turned to face Sam. ‘Perhaps you can enlighten us.’

  ‘Me? What d’you mean?’

  ‘Take a look at this.’ Waddell hit the computer keys again and a new image appeared on the screen.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Sam gasped. ‘Sandhurst! My interrogator in Baghdad,’ he explained. ‘I gave him that nickname because he sounded so British. The guy was also in charge of the swap at the border.’

  ‘He negotiated the deal with us,’ Waddell added for the benefit of the Americans, beaming with satisfaction. ‘He called himself a Colonel. Real name’s Major Omar Hasan. He’s an officer in a chemical weapons regiment. And he killed himself to avoid being interrogated by the Mukhabarat.’ He let his words sink in. ‘Why? Why would he need to do that? And why did Shenassi also top himself, if what he was up to had the full backing and approval of the president?’

  Jennifer folded her arms, trying to think of an alternative scenario.

  ‘So what we seem to have is a small cell of dedicated men,’ Waddell insisted. ‘Colonel Naif Hamdan, his brother-in-law Doctor Husayn Shenassi and Captain Omar Hasan, who may well have served with Hamdan at some point. Then there was the older man who gave Sam the warning in Baghdad, who seems to have had a sudden attack of conscience and tried to sabotage his co-conspirators’ plans by telling us about them. Then there were a few others not yet identified. Three of that group are now dead, two by their own hand. Why? Our suspicion is it was because Saddam had finally found out what they were up to and didn’t much like what he saw. In fact, it put him into such a panic he decided to close the shutters on the UN and kick them out until he’d cleared up the mess.’ He leaned forward on his hands. ‘It does have a ring of logic to it, Jennifer.’

  The CIA woman shifted uncomfortably. ‘I’ll agree it has to be considered.’

  Martin Kessler pushed the glasses back up his nose, deciding it was time to take charge of the meeting.

  ‘Let’s focus on intentions now. If all this speculation is correct, and Hamdan is acting independently of the Iraqi leadership, what is it that he wants? Could it be connected with an attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein? Any guesses on that one, Jennifer?’

  ‘It doesn’t match anything we know about. The only opposition group we thought stood a breath of a chance against Saddam was the Iraqi National Accord, a link-up between exiled politicians overseas and rebel officers inside Iraq. But as you know, the coup they were trying to stage fell to pieces a few months back. The Mukhabarat had the whole set-up infiltrated from top to bottom. Hundreds were tortured and shot and we had to stage an emergency airlift from the Kurdish zone to get out our own people and as many of the INA as we could rescue. Nope. Colonel Hamdan hasn’t featured on any list of names that I’ve ever seen. And if he’s hoping to use anthrax to kill Saddam he’ll need to get it into the guy’s bedroom rather than smuggle it out of the country.’

  ‘Quite,’ Kessler answered. ‘So we’re back to guesswork. Does Hamdan have some bizarre personal motive perhaps? Revenge against the US for blowing his wife to bits in the Amiriyah shelter? A remarkably elaborate and costly scheme if that were the case. Or, might he be a pan-arabist or Islamic fundamentalist set on clobbering the Israelis?’

  He looked around the table for comments, but received none.

  ‘Any of that’s possible,’ said Burgess sombrely.

  ‘Without some new intelligence all we can do is distribute the file on Hamdan to any nation that’s a potential target – the Israelis, Kuwaitis and Saudis – and also crank Interpol into action, though it’d be a bloody miracle if any border guard managed to pick him up from that blurry photograph.’

  ‘My God! This is a nightmare!’ Jennifer tapped on the table with her pen. ‘The potential for some major incident with a massive loss of life . . . it’s, it’s just huge.’ She turned to Burgess and put a hand on his arm. ‘Dean, your guys back home’ll have to make darned sure it isn’t us that gets hit.’

  Burgess nodded. ‘I have to make some calls,’ he declared, looking at his watch.

  There were wheels to be set in motion before he caught the flight. He thought of Carole and the kids. When he’d called her last night she’d told him of a Pledge for the Family rally in Washington next weekend, which she wanted them all to go on. Needed to ring her again to say he wouldn’t be able to make it.

  ‘Let me just tell you what else we’re doing,’ Waddell continued, ‘SIS has strong contacts with the SBU and we’re working on them to dig up everything they can about Mr Voronin’s organisation and the activities of Dima Grimov in Odessa. But we hav
e to be realistic. Mafiya gangs like the Voroninskaya have tremendous power in Ukraine. The SBU does not have the clout of the old KGB and the Ukrainian Militsia are heavily corrupted. We may not be able to get hold of the information we need that way. So any other leads anybody can come up with – it could make all the difference.’

  The meeting broke up. Burgess was running short of time. The plane to Washington was in three hours.

  Kessler stood up to bid the Americans goodbye. As he shook their hands he said, ‘Whatever these monsters are planning, we’ve got to stop them.’ There was almost a touch of passion in his voice.

  ‘Amen to that,’ mouthed Burgess.

  As Jennifer slipped on a long black raincoat, with a helping hand from Kessler, Waddell took Sam by the arm. ‘Don’t you leave just yet.’

  Burgess reached back to shake Sam’s hand.

  ‘A privilege to meet you.’ He held on to it as if to show his respect. ‘I sure admire your guts.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’ Sam felt himself colouring with embarrassment. ‘But really it wasn’t—’

  ‘No. Don’t get all British about it. Keep well. So long now.’

  The Americans were gone. Kessler and Waddell sat back at the table and indicated Sam should do the same.

  ‘We’ve another mission for you, Sam,’ Kessler announced without further ado. ‘Needed the cousins out of the way first. The thing is we don’t know if it’s connected with the Hamdan business or not.’

  Another mission? What Sam had been through in the past few weeks had been enough trauma for one life.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.

  ‘There’s somebody who wants to come across to us,’ Waddell intoned, sounding like an old cold warrior.

  ‘What d’you mean “come across”? Where?’ Sam asked uneasily.