The aircraft finished its rollout, and the co-pilot came aft to lower the steps. A car pulled up. He entered it, and it pulled off.
“Peace be with you,” he told the other man in the back of the Mercedes.
“Peace?” The general snorted. “The whole world cries out that we have little enough of that.” Clearly the man hadn’t slept since the death of his president, Badrayn saw. His hands shook from all the coffee he’d drunk, or per-
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haps from the alcohol he’d used to counteract it. It would not be a pleasant thing to look into the coming week and wonder if one would live to see the end of it. On the one hand one needed to stay awake. On the other, one needed to escape. This general had a family and children in addition to his mistress. Well, they probably all did. Good.
“Not a happy situation, but things are under control, yes?” The look this question generated was answer enough. About the only good thing that could be said was that had the President merely been wounded, this man would now be dead for failing to detect the assassin. It was a dangerous job, being intelligence chief for a dictator, and one which made many enemies. He’d sold his soul to the devil, and told himself that the debt would never be collected. How could a bright man be such a fool?
“Why are you here?” the general asked.
“To offer you a golden bridge.”
13
TO THE MANNER BORN
THERE WERE TANKS IN
the streets, and tanks were “sexy” things for the “overhead imagery” people to look at and count. There were three KH-11-class reconnaissance satellites in orbit. One of them, eleven years old, was dying slowly. Long since out of maneuvering fuel, and with one of its solar panels degraded to the point that it could barely power a flashlight, it could still take photos through three of its cameras and relay them to the geosynchronous communications bird over the Indian Ocean. Less than a second later they were downlinked and forwarded to various interpretation offices, one of them at CI A.
“That ought to cut down on pursesnatchings.” The analyst checked his watch and added eight hours. Okay, approaching ten A.M. “Lima,” or local time. People should have been out on the streets, working, moving around, socializing at the many sidewalk restaurants, drinking the awful local version of coffee. But not today. Not with tanks in the streets. A few individuals were moving around, mainly women by the look of them, probably shopping. A main battle tank was parked about every four blocks on the main thoroughfares–and one at every traffic circle, of which there were many–supported by lighter vehicles on the side streets. Little knots of soldiers stood at every intersection. The photos showed that all of them carried rifles, but couldn’t determine rank or discern unit patches.
“Get a count,” his supervisor instructed.
“Yes, sir.” The analyst didn’t grumble. Counting the tanks was something they always did. He’d even type them, mainly by checking the main gun. By doing this they’d be able to determine how many of the tanks regularly counted in their regimental laagers had turned their engines over and moved from one place to another. The information had importance to someone or other, though
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for the past ten years they’d been doing the same thing, generally to learn that whatever the faults and flaws of the Iraqi military, it did its maintenance well enough to keep the engines running. It was rather less diligent about its gunnery, which they’d learned in the Persian Gulf War, but as the analyst had already noted, you look at a tank and assume that it works. It was the only prudent course. He hunched down over the viewer and saw that a white car, probably a Mercedes from the shape, was driving up National Route 7. A more detailed look at the photos would have showed it heading toward the Sibaq’ al Mansur racetrack, where he would have seen more automobiles of the same type, but he’d been told to count the tanks.
IRAQIS CLIMATIC VARIATIONS are more striking than in most places in the world. This February morning, with the sun high in the sky, it was barely above freezing, though in the summer 115 degrees Fahrenheit attracted little in the way of notice. The assembled officers, Badrayn saw, were in their winter wool uniforms, with high collars and voluminous gold braid; most of them were smoking, and all of them were worried. His host introduced the visitor to those who didn’t know him. He didn’t bother wishing peace unto them. They weren’t in the mood for the traditional Islamic greeting. These men were surprisingly Western and totally secular in their outlook and demeanor. Like their departed leader, they gave mere lip service to their religion, though at the moment they all wondered if the teachings of eternal damnation for a sinful life were true or not, knowing that some of them would probably find out soon enough. That possibility worried them enough that they had left their offices and come to the racetrack to hear him speak.
The message Badrayn had to deliver was a simple one. This he did.
“How can we believe you?” the army chief asked when he’d finished.
“It is better for everyone this way, is it not?”
“You expect us to abandon our motherland to …
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him?” a corps commander demanded, disguising frustration as anger.
“What you decide to do is your concern, General. If you desire to stand and fight for what is yours, the decision is clearly yours as well. I was asked to come here and deliver a message as an honest broker. This I have done,” Badrayn replied evenly. There was no sense getting excited about things like this, after all.
“With whom are we supposed to negotiate?” This was the chief of the Iraqi air force.
“You may make your reply to me, but as I have already told you, there really is nothing to negotiate. The offer is a fair one, is it not?” Generous would be a better term. In addition to saving their own skins, and the skins of those close to them, they would all emerge from their country wealthy. Their president had salted away huge sums of money, little of which had ever actually been detected and seized. They all had access to travel documents and passports from any country in the known world. In that particular area the Iraqi intelligence service, assisted by the engraving bureau of its treasury, had long since established its expertise. “You have his word before God that you will not be harassed, wherever you may go.” And that was something they had to take seriously. Badrayn’s sponsor was their enemy. He was as bitter and spiteful as any man on earth. But he was also a man of God, and not one to invoke His name lightly.
“When do you need your reply?” the army chief asked, more politely than the others.
“Tomorrow would be sufficient, or even the day after. Beyond that, I cannot say. My instructions,” Badrayn went on, “go only that far.”
“And the arrangements?”
“You may set them yourselves, within reason.” Badrayn wondered how much more they could possibly expect from him, or his sponsor.
But the decision he demanded was harder than one might imagine. The patriotism of the assembled general officers was not of the usual sort. They loved their country, largely because they controlled it. They had power,
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genuine life-and-death power, a far greater narcotic than money, and one of the things for which a man would risk his life and his soul. One of their number, many of them thought–hoped–just might pull it off. One of them just might assume the presidency of their country successfully, and together they just might calm things down and continue as before. They’d have to open their nation up somewhat, of course. They’d have to allow U.N. and other inspectors to see everything, but with the death of their leader they’d have the chance to start anew, even though everyone would know that nothing new at all was happening. Such were the rules of the world. A promise here or there, a few remarks about democracy and elections, and their former enemies would fall all over themselves giving them and their nation a chance. A further incentive was the sheer opportunity of it. Not one of them had felt truly secure in years. Everyone knew of colleagues who had died, either at the hands of their dead leader, or under circumstances euphemistically called “mysterious”–helicopter crashes had been a favorite ploy of their fallen and beloved President. Now they had a chance to live lives of power with much greater confidence, and against that was a life of indolence in some foreign place. Each of them already had a life of every luxury a man could imagine–plus power. Each could snap his fingers and the people who jumped were not servants but soldiers. . . .