The Gulf Conspiracy (3 page)

‘
There’s nothing at all in the manual. The official view seems to be that it’s best not to breathe it in the first place.’

‘
Who would have thought?’ said Morton before another bout of stomach cramps made him curl up and cry out in pain. When the pain subsided he lay back on the pillow and took a moment or two to steady himself before asking, ‘Surely they must have done follow-up studies on the volunteers?’

‘
I think they did.’

‘
Well?’

‘
You’re not going to believe this; the results are classified.’

‘
Oh, I believe it,’ exclaimed Morton. ‘The words piss-up and brewery spring to mind.’

Both Morton and his colleague had recovered sufficiently by the following day to attend an official briefing on the scud incident. Chemical attack had not been confirmed, the assembly was informed. Contrary to rumour, the cloud in the sky witnessed by many after the missile had disintegrated had been aviation fuel catching fire. Personnel should pay no heed to rumour. There was absolutely no cause for alarm.

Morton looked at the anaesthetist and the colleague who had looked after him as somewhere behind them a Scottish technician murmured sourly, ‘Aye, right.’

Dhahran Airbase

Saudi Arabia

February 1991

Lt. Colonel James Blamire arrived at the television studio in plenty of time to confer with his American counterpart as they’d previously arranged. A few inches shorter than the gangling Blamire but broader and with an iron-grey crew cut in contrast to the Englishman’s thinning fair hair, Marine Colonel Max Schumacher got up and held out his hand when he saw Blamire come in through the door.

He smiled and suggested, ‘Why don’t we walk and talk outside?’ He picked up his briefcase from the side of his chair.

Blamire, noting the number of people in the room and the noise being made by the technicians as they went about their business of preparing for a press conference, grimaced and nodded his agreement.

The two men made their way to a side exit, stepping carefully over cable lines and easing between satellite broadcasting equipment to leave the studio, pausing only to tell the floor manager who was clutching a clipboard in one hand and gesturing to a man setting up the lighting gantry with the other, that they would return in plenty of time for the start of the conference.

‘
The word is out that some of the press are going to be asking awkward questions about Saddam’s use of CB weapons,’ said Blamire.

‘
I’ve heard that too and I’m not exactly relishing it. I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what they’ve got?’

‘’
Fraid not. I tried my sources but no joy. Hopefully it’s just the stuff of rumour but by God, there’s plenty of it going about.’

The two men continued their slow walk in silence until Schumacher broke it by saying, ‘Between you and I, 513 Military Intelligence have filed a report of anthrax being found in King Khalid City,’ said Schumacher. ‘Thought you should know.’

‘
One of our field labs has identified Plague bacillus at Wadi al Batin,’ said Blamire.

‘
Jesus.’

‘
But there is to be no change to the official line,’ said Blamire.

‘
Which makes our position about as comfortable as sitting on a barbed wire fence,’ said Schumacher.

‘
Trotting out the same old crap like some military parrot.’ said Blamire. He recited, ‘There is no confirmed evidence of Saddam ever having used CB weapons intentionally.’

‘
Note the all-important use of the word, “intentionally”,’ snorted Schumacher. ‘The Iraqis use plague and we use semantics. Still, I guess in some quarters of the UN this would be regarded as progress.’

‘
If either of these reports has been leaked to the media - despite the fact they’re top secret – Joint Intelligence suggests that we point them in the direction of air strikes carried out on Saddam’s labs.’

Schumacher smiled and said, ‘An unfortunate but unavoidable fall-out carried on the desert wind?’

‘
Precisely. These facilities posed an unacceptable threat to the civilised world and had to be destroyed. Any collateral damage due to escaping micro-organisms is to be regretted.’

‘
Think the media’ll swallow it?’ said Schumacher.

‘
Personally I’d prefer if they swallowed the bugs and got off my bloody back. I’m fed up pandering to a bunch of holier-than-thou scribblers so that Joe Public can watch the bloody war on television.’

‘
Know how you feel,’ agreed Schumacher.

‘
There is one thing that bothers me though,’ said Blamire. ‘I don’t quite understand why we’re bending over backwards to pretend that Saddam isn’t using CB weapons when he damn well is.’

Schumacher looked at Blamire sideways. ‘You’re serious?’ he said. ‘You really don’t know?’

‘
No, I don’t,’ confessed Blamire.

‘
We sold him the weapons, James. Uncle Sam supplied him with the bugs less than six years ago and George Bush reckons the American people couldn’t quite handle that fun piece of information right now, particularly if our boys should start dying of a plague with stars and stripes written all over it.’

‘
Oh what a tangled web we weave,’ sighed Blamire. ‘What exactly did you lot give him?’

‘
From what I can make out, just about anything he asked for in the mid-eighties. Anthrax, Plague, Clostridia, Brucella, you name it. Oh, and Sarin nerve gas for good measure.’

‘
Jesus.’

‘
And d’you know the really cute thing? He was supplied with seed cultures from the American National Type Culture Collection at the rate they charge our research labs at home. Less than sixty dollars a throw.’

‘
Good God.’

‘
And the bastard didn’t even pay.’

‘
So now he can grow as much as he wants at any time from these damned seed cultures.’

‘
Yep,’ agreed Schumacher. ‘Just thank Christ he can’t deliver them properly or we’d be in even deeper shit. These old Scuds are about as useful as wheelbarrows when it comes to actually delivering CB weapons.’

‘
At least the vaccines seemed to be doing their job too,’ said Blamire. ‘There’s been no outbreak of disease that I’ve heard about.’

‘
No,’ agreed Schumacher.

‘
Mind you, the nerve gas could be a bigger problem,’ said Blamire. ‘I suppose we could have used the same “fall-out from a destroyed lab facility” angle if it wasn’t for a couple of well-observed airburst incidents involving Scuds.’

‘
I heard about that,’ said Schumacher.

‘
And compounded in one case by a fuck-up when they sounded the all clear before the damned stuff had had time to dissipate. You’d almost think that someone wanted to expose the troops to the stuff.’

‘
You know, it’s odd you should say that,’ said Schumacher, pausing to light a cigarette, ‘I’ve been worried about these PB pills they’ve been dishing out to the guys. Do you know what they are?

‘
They’re just pills as far as I’m concerned,’ said Blamire, shrugging. ‘Not my field, I’m afraid. They’re supposed to counter the effects of nerve gas, aren’t they?’

‘
With certain provisos,’ said Schumacher. ‘One, the substance they contain, pyridostigmine bromide, is toxic itself, especially if you should happen to take too much of it.’

‘
I take it that’s why the troops are instructed only to take them immediately before a gas attack,’ said Blamire.

‘
Correct but it’s not clear to me how you can tell when that is exactly,’ pointed out Schumacher.

‘
Good point.’

‘
So you can understand the temptation to pop these pills every time every time the guys hear a plane engine come over and that can be dangerous. Nobody knows the long-term effects of PB overdosing.’

‘
You seem to know a lot about these things.’

‘
Enough,’ agreed Schumacher. ‘I spent some time at Fort Dietrich. But you know the really weird thing? PB isn’t effective against all nerve gases. In fact, there’s one gas where it actually makes the effects worse. Want to take a shot at it?’ Schumacher glanced sideways at Blamire.

‘
Sarin?’

‘
Yep, Sarin.’

‘
The one gas we know Saddam has for sure? ’

‘
Exactly. PB works well enough against the effects of Soman and Tabun but when combined with Sarin, it can be a deadly combination. Even tiny concentrations of Sarin in the air can cause problems for someone who’s been taking PB pills.’

‘
Have you said anything about this to anyone?’ asked Blamire.

‘
Are you kidding? I like being a colonel. The uniform of private, first class, wouldn’t suit me. No one’s supposed to know we gave Sarin to Saddam. Remember?’

‘
Silly me,’ said Blamire. ‘So our masters are prepared to have the troops exposed to unnecessary danger in order to avoid any political embarrassment?’

‘
Seems like it.’

Both men stopped to watch a number of jeeps draw up some three hundred metres away outside the studio building and a number of senior officers get out. Even at a distance the men could see that the bulky figure of General Norman Schwarzkopf was among them.

‘
Personally I’m counting on Stormin’ Norman putting an end to this odyssey of fun and getting all our asses out of here by the end of the month,’ said Schumacher.

‘
Amen to that,’ said Blamire. ‘We’d better get back; it’s almost showtime.’

Blamire and Schumacher took their places at opposite ends of the long table fronting rows of collapsible seats provided for members of the press corps. TV and film cameras were manoeuvred into position and lighting adjusted as General Schwarzkopf took centre stage behind a sea of microphones bearing the logos of their stations. He was flanked by US and British commanders and was the first to be questioned on the progress of the war.

Schwarzkopf handled the press with his usual aplomb and great good humour and the press responded with laughter and even, on occasion, applause. The general was always good copy. He was a tough, straight talking, all action American hero and that was exactly what the folks back home wanted to see on their TV sets - and that went for both sides of the Atlantic. When British commanders were questioned it was as if the lights had been turned out and a speak-your-weight machine had taken over.

Blamire was beginning to think that his fears about CB weapons questions had been unfounded when a slight woman with a French accent and wearing fatigues got to her feet and announced her credentials as representing a French radio station. She asked if there was any truth in the rumour that a field laboratory team had recently detected the presence of the anthrax bacillus in Dahran.

Schwarzkopf waited until the hubbub had died down and said, ‘I am unaware of any such thing, young lady. How about you Max?’

Max Schumacher shook his head and said, ‘No sir.’

‘
And plague bacillus at Wadi al Batin?’ continued the journalist.

Schumacher glanced at Blamire who took his cue and fielded the question for him. ‘We are certainly not aware of any deliberate use of any offensive micro-organisms against Allied forces,’ he said.

‘
How about
accidental
use?’ asked the woman, picking up on the operative word amidst laughter from the floor. Her accent made the word seem sexy.

‘
That’s really not as daft as it sounds,’ said Blamire, using the PR trick of smiling disarmingly as if taking the assembly into his confidence. ‘The fact of the matter is that our air crews have been having some success in destroying Saddam’s microbiological research facilities.’ He paused to allow the journalists to work out what he was going to say next and feel good about it. ‘Unfortunately,’ he continued, ‘it is possible that a certain amount of dangerous fall-out has escaped and although of course, we regret it, the simple fact of the matter is that it’s just not possible to contain and destroy everything inside these buildings when high explosive is being used.’

Blamire hoped that the French woman might be satisfied with his answer – as everyone else seemed to be - but she remained standing, small and slim but ram-rod straight and exuding the self confidence of someone who saw herself on a mission of truth. Her hair was swept back in a ponytail and the camera lights were reflecting off her frameless glasses. ‘So what sort of bacteria can we expect to be in the air around us?’ she asked.

‘
I really don’t think that’s going to be a major problem,’ replied Blamire. ‘We would anticipate that any escaping organisms would dissipate to statistical insignificance anywhere outside a radius of two miles from source. As for the identity of these agents, well, of course, that’s impossible for us to predict.’

‘
Is it really, Colonel?’ said the French journalist. There was clear doubt in her tone.

For one awful moment Blamire thought that she was about to accuse them openly of knowing perfectly well what organisms Saddam had access to and where he had got them. As fate would have it, however, another journalist got to his feet and said, ‘Tom Coogan, NBC News: maybe the rest of us could get a question or two in here?’