Part 8 (1/2)
Paxman had chosen chicken khorma; Martin liked his hotter-vindaloo. Because he knew his eastern food, Martin drank hot black tea, not ice-cold beer, which only makes things worse. He blinked at Paxman over the edge of his mug.
”All right. So what is the great confession?”
”Will you give me your word that this goes no further?”
”Of course.”
”There's been another intercept.”
Paxman had not the slightest intention of revealing the existence of Jericho. The group who knew of that a.s.set in Iraq was still tiny and would stay that way.
”Can I listen to it?”
”No. It's been suppressed. Don't approach Sean Plummer. He'd have to deny it, and that would reveal where you got the information.”
Martin helped himself to more raita to cool down the flaming curry.
”What does it say, this new intercept?”
Paxman told him. Martin put down his fork and wiped his face, which was bright pink beneath the ginger thatch of his hair.
”Can it-could it, under any circ.u.mstances, be true?” asked Paxman.
”I don't know. I'm not a physicist. The bra.s.s has given it a no-no?”
”Absolutely. The nuclear scientists all agree it simply cannot be true.
So Saddam was lying.”
Privately, Martin thought it was a very odd radio intercept. It sounded more like information from inside a closed meeting.
”Saddam lies,” Martin said, ”all the time. But usually for public consumption. This was to his own inner core of confidants? I wonder
why? Morale booster on the threshold of war?”
”That's what the powers think,” said Paxman.
”Have the generals been told?”
”No. The reasoning is, they are extremely busy right now and do not need to be bothered by something that simply has to be rubbish.”
”So what do you want from me, Simon?”
”Saddam's mind. No one can figure it out. Nothing he does makes sense in the West. Is he certifiably insane or crazy like a fox?”
”In his world, the latter. In his world, what he does makes sense. The terror that revolts us has no moral downside for him, and it makes sense. The threats and the bl.u.s.ter make sense to him. Only when he tries to enter our world-with those ghastly PR exercises in Baghdad, ruffling that little English boy's hair, playing the benign uncle, that sort of thing-only when he tries that does he look a complete fool. In his own world he is not a fool. He survives, he stays in power, he keeps Iraq united, his enemies fail and perish.”
”Terry, as we sit here, his country is being pulverized.”
”It doesn't matter, Simon. It's all replaceable.”
”But why did he say what he is supposed to have said?”
”What do the powers think?”
”That he lied.”
”No,” said Martin, ”he lies for public consumption. To his inner core, he doesn't have to. They are his, anyway. Either the source of the information lied and Saddam never said that; or he said it because he believed it was true.”
”Then he was himself lied to?”
”Possibly. Whoever did that will pay dearly when he finds out. But then, the intercept could be phony. A deliberate bluff, designed to be intercepted.”
Paxman could not say what he knew: that it was not an intercept. It came from Jericho. And in two years under the Israelis and three months under the Anglo-Americans, Jericho had never been wrong.
”You've got doubts, haven't you?” said Martin.
”I suppose I have,” admitted Paxman.
Martin sighed.
”Straws in the wind, Simon. A phrase in an intercept, a man told to shut up and called a son of a wh.o.r.e, a phrase from Saddam about succeeding and being seen to succeed-in the hurting of America-and now this. We need a piece of string.”
”String?”
”Straw only makes up a bale when you can wrap it around with string.
There has to be something else as to what he really has in mind.
Otherwise, the powers are right, and he will go for the gas weapon he already has.”
”All right. I'll look for a piece of string.”
”And I,” said Martin, ”did not meet you this evening, and we have not spoken.”
”Thank you,” said Paxman.
Ha.s.san Rahmani heard of the death of his agent Leila two days after it happened, on January 19. She had not appeared for a scheduled handover of information from General Kadiri's bed, and fearing the worst, he had checked morgue records.
The hospital in Mansour had produced the evidence, though the corpse had been buried, with many others from the destroyed military buildings, in a ma.s.s grave.