Hostile Fire (12 page)

Murdock nodded and swung his legs off the bed. “Did he make a contact?”

“He’ll tell you.” She led the way down the stairs to the big living room. Jones looked better to Murdock. He had trimmed his beard, combed his hair, and put on a different shirt. He sat at a desk at the side of the room. The telephone was in his hand as they came into the room. He spoke rapidly in Arabic. Murdock caught only a few words. He said something else, then hung up and turned to Murdock.

“How is your Arabic?” he asked in that tongue.

“Not the best, but I can get by,” Murdock answered in Arabic.

“The small one, is he fluent?”

“Yes, fluent and colloquial. He was born here.”

“Good. We have a meet. All three of you should come. Are you armed?”

Murdock showed him the pistol and the thermal imager.

“Oh, yes,” Jones said after turning out the lights and trying the imager. “Now, there is a tool we can really use. You ready? Get your men. We have fifteen minutes to get to the meet.”

At the curb they got in the six-year-old Citroën and Jones squeezed into the front seat to drive. He slipped through the first mile without lights. Then he turned them on and went through a brightly lighted section, before turning into an alley a mile away and stopping in a parking lot behind a four-story building. Jones waved at Murdock before they got out.

“I’m not sure this will produce anything. She’s a contact I’ve had for ten years, but I haven’t talked to her in five. I used the same coded words as before and she replied in kind and here we are. Her code name is Gypsy, which she isn’t
and she’s a bit of a rebel in her own land. She has wide contacts and keeps her ears open. She’s an artist of quite good talent and makes a living selling her pictures. I’d guess she’s still on the Company payroll as well. Every few hundred dinars help these days. We should meet no one else but her here, but if we do, let me do the talking.”

They went through a door in the back of the building. Darkness engulfed them like a black fog. They could see no lights at all. Murdock aimed the thermal imager around and found no live bodies.

“I remember this place,” Jones whispered. He grabbed Murdock’s shirtsleeve and they moved forward slowly, step by step. After twenty steps Jones paused. He whispered.

“Yes. I was right. A door just ahead. We’ll all get to the side wall when I open it. He moved Murdock to one side and Murdock pushed Ching and Rafii to the wall. They all flattened against it. Jones opened the door. Murdock saw a thin shaft of pale light cut into the darkness, and Jones let out a held-in breath.

“Yes, good. Now a little light. We move ahead. Stay close behind me.”

Again the four men made a slow movement forward. Murdock couldn’t make out any details in the room. It could be a warehouse, an office, even a garage. He had no idea. Ahead he saw a half-open door. They angled toward it, and again stopped near it. Jones looked into the room from the side of the door. More lights were on now. Murdock saw that it was living quarters: chairs, a table, some rugs on the wooden floor. In the dim light he had trouble making out anything else. A voice in Arabic probed out of the semi-lighted room.

“About time you got here, Jones. I’ve been waiting. I thought you were out of the business.”

“Gypsy, you always were the innovative one. When did you set up this man trap?”

“Long ago. How do you like it?”

“Feels like your style. I have some friends with me.”

“So I gathered from your coded words. Come in and close the door and we’ll find some more lights. My guess is that they are not with the Company.”

“True. But men whom you can trust with your life. They are trusting their lives to you.”

“Way I like it. Should we switch to English?”

“Yes,” Jones said in English.

The lights came up, and Murdock saw the woman sitting in an upholstered chair on the far side of the room in what looked like a small office area. It had a desk, two file cabinets, bookshelves, and on the end of the desk a small TV. That all went into Murdock’s mental computer in a fraction of a second. Then his eyes concentrated on the woman. She was seated, but he could tell she was small, thin almost to anorexia. Her hair was obviously a dark wig that framed her face. Her cheeks were slightly sunken, her eyes deep set and dark, her skin lighter than most Iraqis. She wore a silk blouse and a skirt. She had folded her hands in her lap.

“These are the Americans? Good job with the clothes and makeup. Yes, excellent job. Except for the small one. He is a real Iraqi. You wonder if I’m still with the Company? Only on the extreme fringes. I have no control. I have no responsibilities. I have stayed alive. I have my work. I paint.”

“We hear that you have sensitive ears and many contacts,” Murdock said. “Excuse my abruptness. My apologies. I am Commander Murdock; these are two of my men. We are U.S. Navy SEALs, and right now we are on a terribly short time schedule. Do you know why we are here?”

“There is only one reason I can imagine. You are worried about Iraq having nuclear bombs.”

“That we are,” Jones said. “Our sources tell us that Iraq has four operational nuclear devices, probably crude bombs.”

“Your sources are correct,” Gypsy said. “Few people in or out of the government know about this program. Oh, we have known that there was a push to get the bombs before our neighbors did. But I had no idea that the development was complete. Not until three weeks ago. Knowing it isn’t of much value. What are you Americans going to do about it?”

“We’re concerned that President Nabil could use the weapons on Israel,” Murdock said. “If he does, there will be an immediate retaliation and perhaps half a million Iraqis
would die instantly, with another half million dying slowly of radiation poisoning.”

“Yes, I and a select group have discussed this both ways in the past few days,” Gypsy said. “The bomb is a multiedged sword that cuts so many ways. The threat of using it was enough to stop the Cold War by the two most powerful nations on earth. Now with the proliferation, the threat again becomes real on a smaller scale, but real enough.”

“We need only two simple facts, Gypsy, that we hope you can help us with,” Murdock said. “We need to know where the bombs are being made and where the four completed ones are being held.”

Gypsy laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sound that had a chilling effect of Murdock.

“What you ask for, Commander, is impossible. How would I know such information? I don’t. How could I find out these ‘simple facts’ for you? Not without a dozen times endangering my life and that of anyone associated with me. If they knew I was even talking with you gentlemen, they would kick my doors down and machine gun me into Allah’s bosom in a second. There is nothing you could offer me that would even start me on such a search.”

“How about half a million U.S. dollars?” Murdock asked.

Gypsy sucked in a breath. Her black eyes glowed for a moment. “That is a tremendous lot of money, a hundred and fifty thousand dinars. Enough for me to live on the rest of my life.” She laughed again. “Plenty for that, since my life’s future would be no more than two weeks long. How could I explain such wealth? No, not money.”

“Think of the million faces of your countrymen, women, children, soldiers, all of whom would be vaporized in an instant if President Kamil dropped one of his nuclear bombs on Haifa,” Jones said. “Think of those souls, and know that right now you might have the ability to prevent such a disaster.”

She frowned and reached for a long black cigar that lay smoking in a metal ashtray on her desk. It was crooked and about the diameter of a cigarette. She took a long drag on the cigar and inhaled it, then blew it out slowly. A ragged
cough racked her. She closed her eyes and rode it out, then smiled.

“One of my small vices. You are unfair. I am a simple painter who mixes the oils well and has a certain talent that I can use to paint what will sell in this feeble market for artwork. I am not a world-class spy. I do not know or have the skills that Mr. Jones here has, or at least had several years ago.” She took another drag on the cigar but this time did not inhale.

“Gypsy, you have helped me in the past. We have worked well together.”

“And the Secret Police almost killed me because of it. But now, after these five years, even the Home Guard has tired of watching me. The Secret Police no longer monitor my phone or shadow me when I go out. My friends are not questioned and I am at peace to live my life and paint my little pictures and try to make a living.”

“Baghdad would be the Israelis’ first target,” Murdock said. “You could very well be one of those vaporized.”

“Glorious. Then I would not have to worry about the Secret Police or about John Jones or Commander Murdock.” Her laugh came again, only not so cold this time. She sighed and put the cigar back in the ashtray, but left it burning.

Gypsy stood and walked the length of the room, then back. Murdock figured she was no more than five feet tall and might weigh ninety pounds dripping wet. She marched now more than walked. “Did you know that I was a major in the Women’s Guard during the Iranian war? I commanded four hundred women, all armed with rifles.” She smiled and did another tour of the room. “Luckily we were not called into battle. We would have been a disaster.”

She went back to the desk and sat in her chair and doodled on a pad on her desk. When she looked up, Murdock saw that she had made her decision.

“Yes, it very well might be the death of me, but I will help you. I know an army colonel who is overly fond of illegal Scotch whiskey. He has been known to brag sometimes about his accomplishments when he’s drunk.”

“Is he a part of the team that worked on the nuclear program?” Murdock asked.

“If all of his bragging is true, he headed the program. With Khaled it is hard to tell when he is bragging or telling the truth. He is a typical colonel who has been given too much power and far too many privileges.”

“When can you see him?” Jones asked.

“Tonight. He likes late-night get-togethers.”

“Here?” Murdock asked.

“Oh no. He likes his comforts, which I can’t offer him here. He lives in a big house with servants.”

“Would he have anything in writing about the program?”

“Not a word. He says it’s all verbal. He’s most proud of the fact that nothing ever has been written down.”

“What else can we do?” Murdock asked. “There must be others we could talk to. What about men who have worked on the program? There should be many back in town.”

“Yes, but they have been warned not to talk. I met two of them, and they said they had been away fishing for eight months. We have no seacoast, no fishing fleet. They were on the project. The pay was double the usual and they were sworn to secrecy.”

“What type of workers were they?” Rafii asked.

“The silent ones. Yes, the ones I talked to were construction workers. Built the barracks, houses, laboratories, and warehouses. Finding one of them might be possible. One was picked up by the Secret Police a month ago and we haven’t seen him since. The other one is still around. He drinks a lot. Yes, you might find him at his favorite illegal booze house.”

“Booze house?” Ching asked.

“A house where ordinary people smuggle in whiskey and beer and other illegal drinks and sell them to friends and neighbors.” Jones said. “Usually extremely hush, hush.”

Gypsy reached for a phone. “Let me call this lover man and see if he is hungry tonight. He almost always is. If he is, I’ll go see what I can find out without getting myself shot. I’ll give you the address of the booze house. Only two of you can go there.”

Twenty minutes later, Murdock and Rafii parked down the block from a house with a light on in the window. It was rundown, with litter in the front yard, and pushed up against
buildings on both sides. It was the start of an abandoned business district that had deteriorated badly.

They walked back to the house and Rafii took the lead. He knocked on the front door as he had been told. A door opened a crack and Rafii whispered his name. Then the door closed, and they went around the side of the house to the rear door and found a man sitting on the steps smoking.

“Rafii?” he asked.

“Yes, a friend told us about your place. First time here. Do you have any tonight?”

“Every night,” the smoker said. “You are new. Twenty dinars to get inside.”

“So much?”

“Going rate.”

The men both took out twenty-dinar notes from worn purses. Each had been given three hundred dinars before they left Kuwait. Murdock also had five thousand dinars in a money belt inside his undershirt. The man checked the notes carefully in the pale light from the open rear door, then waved them inside.

The house had all the windows blacked out. Inside the first room they found the bar, a table with a dozen bottles of whiskey, gin, other liquors, and more bottles of beer. Each bought a beer for five dinars, then sipped at the strange brew while they circulated. More than twenty people filled the room. Less than half were women, but all those were in Western dress and with no veils. A record player punched out a soft jazz tune in the background. They looked for a man Gypsy said was called Sharif. She had described him as a taller-than-normal Iraqi man with a trimmed beard, eyeglasses, and a hearing aid. He was about forty and had lost two fingers on his right hand.

They found him in the second room, talking to a striking young woman with perfect dark features, a slender body, and big breasts. Rafii moved up, pushed the woman aside, and spoke quietly to the man. His eyes flared for a moment then he nodded slowly.

Murdock moved up to cut off anyone standing nearby, and he heard the offer.

“Yes, we just want to talk,” Rafii said in his soft voice
with a hint of persuasion. “A hundred dinars if you come outside with us and talk. We’re not the Secret Police.”

“Talk about what? I’m just a poor construction man. I know nothing important.”

“Good, then you won’t mind making a hundred dinars. That would buy a lot of booze for you, Sharif, my friend.”

“You know my name. That is upsetting. Nobody here knows my name.”