The Fist of God (73 page)

The Fist of God

Mike Martin arrived in Ar-Rutba in the middle of the afternoon. It had taken him twenty hours to cover a distance that normally would take no more than six in a car.

On the outskirts of the town he found a herdsman with a flock of goats and left him somewhat mystified but quite happy by buying four of them for his remaining handful of dinars at a price almost twice what the herdsman would have secured at the market.

The goats seemed happy to be led off into the desert, even though they now wore halters of cord. They could hardly be expected to know that they were only there to explain why Mike Martin was wandering around the desert south of the road in the afternoon sun.

His problem was that he had no compass—it was with the rest of his gear, beneath the tiles of a shack in Mansour. Using the sun and his cheap watch, he worked out as best he could the bearing from the radio tower in the town to the wadi where his motorcycle was buried.

It was a five-mile hike, slowed by the goats, but they were worth having because twice he saw soldiers staring at him from the road until he was out of sight. But the soldiers took no action.

He found the right wadi just before sundown, identifying the marks scored into the nearby rocks, and he rested until the light was gone before starting to dig. The happy goats wandered off.

It was still there, wrapped in its plastic bag, a rangy 125-cc. Yamaha cross-country motorcycle, all black, with panniers for the extra fuel tanks. The buried compass was there, plus the handgun and ammunition.

He strapped the automatic in its holster to his right hip. From then on, there would be no more question of pretense; no Iraqi peasant would be riding that machine in those parts. If he were intercepted, he would The Fist of God

have to shoot and escape.

He rode through the night, making far better time than the Land-Rovers had been able to do. With the dirt bike he could speed across the flat patches and drive the machine over the rocky ridges of the wadis, using engine and feet.

At midnight he refueled and drank water, with some K rations from the packs left in the cache. Then he rode on due south for the Saudi border.

He never knew when he crossed the border. It was all a featureless wasteland of rocks and sand, gravel and scree, and given the zigzag course he had to cover, there was no way of knowing how many miles he had covered.

He expected to know he was in Saudi Arabia when he came to the Tapline Road, the only highway in those parts. The land became easier, and he was riding at twenty miles per hour when he saw the vehicle. Had he not been so tired, he would have reacted faster, but he was half-drugged with exhaustion and his reflexes were slow.

The front wheel of the bike hit the tripwire, and he was off, tumbling over and over until he came to rest on his back. When he opened his eyes and looked up, there was a figure standing over him and the glint of starlight on metal.

“
Bouge pas, mec
.”

Not Arabic. He racked his tired mind. Something a long time ago. Yes, Haileybury, some unfortunate schoolmaster trying to teach him the intricacies of French.

“
Ne tirez pas
,” he said slowly. “
Je suis Anglais
.”

There are only three British sergeants in the French Foreign Legion, and one of them is called McCullin.

“Are you now?” he said in English. “Well, you’d better get your arse The Fist of God

over to the command vehicle. And I’ll have that pistol, if you don’t mind.”

The Legion patrol was well west of its assigned position in the Allied line, running a check on the Tapline Road for possible Iraqi deserters.

With Sergeant McCullin as interpreter, Martin explained to the French lieutenant that he had been on a mission inside Iraq.

That was quite acceptable to the Legion: Working behind the lines was one of their specialities. The good news was that they had a radio.

The cracksman waited patiently in the darkness of the broom closet through the Tuesday and into the night. He heard various male employees enter the washroom, do what they came for, and leave.

Through the wall he could hear the elevator occasionally whine its way up and down to the top floor. He sat on his briefcase with his back to the wall, and an occasional glance at his luminous watch told him of the passing hours.

Between half past five and six he heard the staff walking past on their way to the lobby and home. At six, he knew, the nightwatchman would arrive, to be admitted by the commissionaire, who by then would have checked every one of the staff past his desk according to the daily list.

When the commissionaire left just after six, the nightwatch would lock the front door and set the alarms. Then he would settle down with the portable TV he brought every evening and watch the game shows until it was time for his first round.

According to the yarid team, even the cleaners were supervised. They did the common parts—halls, stairways, and washrooms—during the nights of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but on a Tuesday night the The Fist of God

cracksman should remain undisturbed. On Saturdays they came back to clean the private offices under the eye of the commissionaire, who remained with them at all times.

The routine of the nightwatch was apparently always the same. He made three tours of the building, testing all doors, at ten P.M., at two in the morning, and at five.

Between coming on duty and his first tour, he watched his TV and ate his packed supper. In the longest gap, between ten and two, he dozed, setting a small alarm to tell him when it was two in the morning. The cracksman intended to make his burglary during that gap.

He had already seen Gemütlich’s office and its all-important door. The latter was of solid wood but happily was not alarmed. The window was alarmed, and he had noted the faint outline of two pressure pads between the parquet and the carpet.

At ten precisely he heard the elevator rumbling upward, bearing the nightwatch to begin his tour of the office doors, starting at the top and coming down floor by floor on foot.

Half an hour later, the elderly man had finished, put his head around the door of the men’s room, flashed on the light to check the wired and alarmed window, closed the door, and returned to his desk in the lobby. There he chose to watch a late game show.

At 10:45 the cracksman, in complete darkness, left the men’s room and stole up the stairs to the fourth floor.

The door of Herr Gemütlich’s office took him fifteen minutes. The last tumbler of the four-lever mortise deadlock tumbled back, and he stepped inside.

Although he wore a band around his head holding a small penlight, he took another, larger flashlight to scan the room. By its light, he could avoid the two pressure pads and approach the desk from its unguarded The Fist of God

side. Then he switched it off and resumed by the light only of the penlight.

The locks on the three top drawers were no problem—small brass affairs over a hundred years old. When the three drawers were removed, he inserted his hand and began to feel for a knob, button, or lever. Nothing. It was an hour later, at the rear of the third drawer down on the right-hand side, that he found it. A small lever, in brass, no more than an inch long. When he pushed it, there was a low click, and a strip of inlay at the base of the pillar jumped open a centimeter.

The tray inside was quite shallow, less than an inch, but it was enough to contain twenty-two sheets of thin paper. Each was a replica of the letter of authority that alone would suffice to operate the accounts under Gemütlich’s charge.

The cracksman produced his camera and a clamper, a device of four fold-back aluminum legs that kept the prefocused camera at exactly the right distance from the paper beneath it to get a high-definition exposure.

The top of the pile of sheets was the one describing the operating method of the account opened the previous morning by the spotter, on behalf of the fictitious client in the United States. The one he wanted was the seventh down. The number he already knew—the Mossad had been paying money into Jericho’s account for two years before the Americans took over.

To be on the safe side, he photographed them all anyway. After returning the
cachette
to its original state, he replaced and relocked all the drawers and withdrew, sealing the office door behind him. He was back in the broom closet by ten past one.

When the bank opened for morning business, the cracksman let the elevator run up and down for half an hour, knowing the The Fist of God

commissionaire never needed to escort the staff to their offices. The first client appeared at ten to ten. When the elevator had gone up past him, the cracksman stole out of the men’s room, tiptoed to the end of the corridor, and looked down into the lobby. The desk of the commissionaire was empty; he was upstairs escorting the client.

The cracksman produced a bleeper and pressed twice. Within three seconds the front door bell rang. The receptionist activated her speaker system and asked:

“
Ja
?”

“
Lieferung
,” said a tinny voice. She pressed the door-release catch, and a big cheerful delivery man entered the lobby. He bore a large oil painting wrapped in brown paper and string.

“Here you are, lady, all cleaned and ready to rehang,” he said.

Behind him the door slid to its close. As it did so, a hand came around the edge at floor level and inserted a wad of paper. The door appeared to close but the catch did not engage.

The delivery man stood the oil painting on the edge of the receptionist’s desk. It was big, five feet wide and four feet tall. It blocked her whole view of the lobby.

“But I know nothing about—” she protested. The head of the delivery man came around the edge of the painting.

“Just sign for its safe receipt, please,” he said, and put in front of her a clipboard with a receipt form. As she studied it, the cracksman came down the marble steps and slipped out of the door.

“But this says Harzmann Galerie,” she pointed out.

“That’s right. Ballgasse, number fourteen.”

“But we’re number eight. This is the Winkler Bank. The gallery is farther up.”

The puzzled delivery man made his apologies and left. The The Fist of God

commissionaire came back down the marble steps. She explained what had happened. He snorted, resumed his seat across the lobby from the reception desk, and returned to the morning paper.

When the Blackhawk helicopter brought Mike Martin into the Riyadh military air base at midday, there was a small and expectant committee to meet him. Steve Laing was there, with Chip Barber. The man he had not expected to see was his commanding officer, Colonel Bruce Craig.

While Martin had been in Baghdad, the deployment of the SAS in the western deserts of Iraq had grown to involve two full squadrons out of Hereford’s four. One had remained at Hereford as the standby squadron, the other was in smaller units on training missions around the world.

“You got it, Mike?” asked Laing.

“Yes. Jericho’s last message. Couldn’t get it out by radio.”

He explained briefly why and handed over the single grubby sheet of paper with Jericho’s report.

“Man, we were worried when we couldn’t get you these past forty-eight hours,” said Barber. “You’ve done a great job, Major.”

“Just one thing, gentlemen,” said Colonel Craig. “If you have finished with him, can I have my officer back?”

Laing was studying the paper, deciphering the Arabic as best he could.

He looked up.

“Why yes, I suppose so. With our sincere thanks.”

“Wait a minute,” said Barber. “What are you going to do with him now, Colonel?”

“Oh, a bunk in our base across the airfield, some food—”

“Got a better idea,” said Barber. “Major, how does a Kansas steak and The Fist of God

fries, an hour in a marble bathtub, and a big soft bed grab you?”

“By the balls,” laughed Martin.

“Right. Colonel, your man gets a suite at the Hyatt down the road for twenty-four hours, courtesy of my people. Agreed?”

“Okay. See you this time tomorrow, Mike,” said Craig.

On the short drive to the hotel opposite CENTAF headquarters, Martin gave Laing and Barber a translation of the Jericho message. Laing made verbatim notes.

“That’s it,” said Barber. “The air boys will go in there and blow it away.”

It required Chip Barber to check the soiled Iraqi peasant into the best suite in the Hyatt, and when he was settled, Barber left to cross the road to the Black Hole.

Martin had his hour in the deep, steaming bath and used the complimentary gear to shave and shampoo, and when he came out, the steak and fries were on a tray in the sitting room.

He was halfway through the meal when sleep overtook him. He just managed to make the wide soft bed next door, then he was asleep.

While he slept, a number of things happened. Freshly pressed shorts, trousers, socks, shoes, and shirt were delivered to his sitting room.

In Vienna, Gidi Barzilai sent the operational details of the Jericho numbered account to Tel Aviv, where an identical replica was prepared with the appropriate wording.

Karim met Edith Hardenberg when she left the bank after work, took her for a coffee, and explained that he had to return to Jordan for a week to visit his mother, who was sick. She accepted his reason, held his hand, and told him to hurry back to her as soon as he could.

Orders went out from the Black Hole to the air base at Taif where a TR-1 spy plane was preparing to take off for a mission to the far north of The Fist of God

Iraq, to take further pictures of a major weapons complex at As-Sharqat.

The mission was given a new task with fresh map coordinates, specifically to visit and photograph an area of a range of hills in the northern sector of the Jebal al Hamreen. When the squadron commander protested the sudden change, he was told the orders were classified as “Jeremiah directs.” The protest ended.

The TR-1 took off just after two, and by four, its images were appearing on the screens inside the designated conference room down the corridor from the Black Hole.