'And it obviously entailed you getting a person or persons into Saddam's palace or bunker?'Kratz hesitated.

'Yes or no will suffice,' said Christopher.

'Yes, sir.'

'My question is extremely simple, Colonel. May we therefore take advantage of the year's preparation you've already carried out and - dare I suggest - steal your plan?'

'I would have to take advice from my government before I could consider. ..'

Christopher took an envelope from his pocket. 'I will be happy to let you see Mr Rabin's letter to me on this subject, but first allow me to read it to you.'

The Secretary opened the envelope and extracted the letter. He placed his gla.s.ses on the end of his nose and unfolded the single sheet.

From the Prime Minister 'Colonel Kratz, let me a.s.sure you on behalf of the United States Government that I believe such information as you have in your possession may make the difference between success and failure.'

Dear Mr Secretary, You are correct in thinking that the Prime Minister of the State of Israel is Chief Minister and Minister of Defence while at the same time having overall responsibility for Mossad.

However, I confess that when it comes to any ideas we may be considering for future relations with Saddam, I have only been kept in touch with the outline proposals. I have not yet been fully briefed on the finer details.

If you believe on balance that such information as we possess may make the difference between success or failure with your present difficulties, I will instruct Colonel Kratz to brief you fully and without reservation.

Yours Yitzhak Rabin Christopher turned the letter around and pushed it across the table.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was nailed to the wall behind him.

Saddam continued puffing at his cigar as he lounged back in his chair. All of them seated around the table waited for him to speak. He glanced to his right.

'My brother, we are proud of you. You have served our country and the Ba'ath Party with distinction, and when the moment comes for my people to be informed of your heroic deeds, your name will be written in the history of our nationas one of its great heroes.'

Al Obaydi sat at the other end of the table, listening to the words of his leader. His fists, hidden under the table, were clenched to stop himself shaking. Several times on the journey back to Baghdad he had been aware that he was being shadowed. They had searched his luggage at almost every stop, but they had found nothing, because there was nothing to find. Saddam's half-brother had seen to that. Once the Declaration had reached the safety of their mission in Geneva he hadn't even been allowed to pa.s.s it over to the Amba.s.sador in person. Its guaranteed route in the diplomatic pouch made it impossible to intercept even with the combined efforts of the Americans and the Israelis.

Saddam's half-brother now sat on the President's right-hand side, basking in his leader's eulogy.

Saddam swung himself slowly back round and stared down at the other end of the table.

'And I also acknowledge,' he continued, 'the role played by Hamid Al Obaydi, whom I have appointed to be our Amba.s.sador in Paris. His name must not, however, be a.s.sociated with this enterprise, lest it harm his chances of representing us on foreign soil.'

And thus it had been decreed. Saddam's half-brother was to be acknowledged as the architect of this triumph, while Al Obaydi was to be a footnote on a page, quickly turned. Had Al Obaydi failed, Saddam's half-brother would have been ignorant of even the original idea, and Al Obaydi's bones would even now be rotting in an unmarked grave. Since Saddam had spoken no one round that table, except for the State Prosecutor, had given Al Obaydi a second look. All other eyes, and smiles, rested on Saddam's half-brother.

It was at that moment, in the midst of the meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council, that Al Obaydi came to his decision.

Dollar Bill sat slouched on a stool, leaning on the bar in unhappy hour, happily sipping his favourite liquid. He was the establishment's only customer, unless you counted the slip of a woman in a Laura Ashley dress who sat silently in the corner. The barman a.s.sumed she was drunk, as she hadn't moved a muscle for the past hour.

Dollar Bill wasn't at first aware of the man who stumbled through the swing doors, and wouldn't have given him a second look had he not sat himself on the stool next to his. Theintruder ordered a gin and tonic. Dollar Bill had a natural aversion to any man who drank gin and tonic, especially if they occupied the seat next to his when the rest of the bar was empty. He considered moving but decided on balance that he didn't need the exercise.

'So how are you, old timer?' the voice next to him asked.

Dollar Bill didn't care to think of himself as an 'old timer', and refused to grace the intruder with a reply.

'What's the matter, not got a tongue in your head?' the man asked, slurring his words. The barman turned to face them when he heard the raised voice, and then returned to drying the gla.s.ses left over from the lunchtime rush.

'I have, sir, and it's a civil one,' replied Dollar Bill, still not so much as glancing at his interrogator.

'Irish. I should have known it all along. A nation of stupid, ignorant drunks.'

'Let me remind you, sir,' said Dollar Bill, 'that Ireland is the land of Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, O'Casey and Joyce.' He raised his gla.s.s in their memory.

'I've never heard of any of them. Drinking partners of yours, I suppose?' This time the young barman put his cloth down and began to pay closer attention.

'I never had that honour,' replied Dollar Bill, 'but, my friend, the fact that you have not heard of them, let alone read their works, is your loss, not mine.'

'Are you accusing me of being ignorant?' said the intruder, placing a rough hand on Dollar Bill's shoulder.

Dollar Bill turned to face him, but even at that close range he couldn't focus clearly through the haze of alcohol he had consumed during the past two weeks. He did, however, observe that, although he appeared to be part of the same alcoholic haze, the intruder was somewhat larger than himself. Such a consideration had never worried Dollar Bill in the past.

"No, sir, it was not necessary to accuse you of igno-rance. For you have been condemned by your own utterances.' 'I won't take that from anyone, you Irish drunk,' said the intruder. Keeping his hand on Dollar Bill's shoulder, he swung at him and landed a blow on the side of his jaw.

Dollar Bill staggered back off his high stool, falling to the floor in a heap.

The intruder waited some time for Bill to rise to his feet before he aimed a second blow to the stomach. Once again,Dollar Bill ended up on the floor.

The young man behind the bar had already begun dialling the number his boss had instructed he should call if ever such a situation arose. He only hoped they would come quickly as he watched the Irishman somehow get back on his feet. This time it was his turn to aim a punch at the intruder's nose, a punch which ended up flying through the air over his a.s.sailant's right shoulder. A further blow landed on the side of Dollar Bill's throat. Down he went a third time, which in his days as an amateur boxer would have been considered a technical knock-out; but as there seemed to be no referee present to officiate, he rose once again.

The young barman was relieved to hear a siren in the distance, and was praying they weren't on their way to another call when suddenly four policemen came bursting through the swing doors.

The first one caught Dollar Bill just before he hit the ground for a fourth time, while two of the others grabbed the intruder, thrust his arms behind his back and forced a pair of handcuffs on him. Both men were bundled out of the bar and thrown into the back of a waiting police van. The siren continued its piercing sound as the two drunks were driven away.

The barman was grateful for the speed with which the San Francisco Police Department had come to his aid. It was only later that night that he remembered he hadn't given them an address.

As Hannah sat alone at the back of the plane bound for Amman, she began to consider the task she had set herself.

Once the Amba.s.sador's party had left Paris, she had returned to the traditional role of an Arab woman. She was dressed from head to toe in a black abayah, and apart from her eyes, her face was covered by a small mask. She spoke only when asked a question directly, and never posed a question herself. She felt her Jewish mother would not have survived such a regime for more than a few hours.

Hannah's one break had come when the Amba.s.sador s wife had enquired where she intended to stay once they had returned to Baghdad. Hannah explained that she had made no immediate plans as her mother and sister were living in Karbala, and she could not stay with them if she hoped to hold on to her job with the Amba.s.sador.

Hannah had hardly finished the second sentence before the Amba.s.sador's wife insisted that she come and live with them.'Our house is far too large,' she explained, 'even with a dozen servants.'

When the plane touched down at Queen Alia airport, Hannah looked out of the tiny window to watch a large black limousine that would have looked more in place in New York than Amman driving towards them. It drew up by the side of the aircraft and a driver in a smart blue suit and dark gla.s.ses jumped out.

Hannah joined the Amba.s.sador and his wife in the back of the car and they sped away from the airport in the direction of the border with Iraq.

When the car reached the customs barrier, they were waved straight through with bows and salutes, as if the border didn't exist. They travelled a further mile and pa.s.sed a second customs post on the Iraqi side, where they were treated in much the same manner as the first, before joining the six-lane highway to Baghdad.

On the long journey to the capital, the speedometer rarely fell below seventy miles per hour. Hannah soon became bored with the beating sun and the sight of miles and miles of flat sand that stretched to the horizon and beyond, with only the occasional cl.u.s.ter of palm trees to break the monotony. Her thoughts returned to Simon and what might have been ...

Hannah dozed off as the air-conditioned limousine sped quietly along the highway. Her mind drifted from Simon to her mother, to Saddam, and then back to Simon.

She woke with a start to find they were entering the outskirts of Baghdad.

It had been many years since Dollar Bill had seen the inside of a jail, but not so long that he had forgotten how much he detested having to a.s.sociate with drug peddlers, pimps and muggers.

Still, the last time he had been foolish enough to get himself involved in a bar-room brawl, he had started it. But even then he only ended up with a fifty-dollar fine. Dollar Bill felt confident that the jails were far too overcrowded for any judge to consider the thirty-day mandatory sentence for such cases.

In fact he had tried to slip one of the policemen in the van fifty dollars. They normally happily accepted the money, opened the back door of the van and kicked you out. He couldn't imagine what the San Francisco police were coming to. Surely with all the muggers and drug addicts around they had more important things to deal with than mid-afternoonmiddle-aged bar-room drunks.

As Dollar Bill began to sober up, the stench got to him, and he hoped that he'd be among the first to be put up in front of the night court. But as the hours pa.s.sed, and he became more sober and the stench became greater, he began to wonder if they might end up keeping him overnight.

'William O'Reilly,' shouted the police Sergeant as he looked down the list of names on his clipboard.

'That's me,' said Bill, raising his hand.

'Follow me, O'Reilly,' the policeman barked as the cell door clanked open and the Irishman was gripped firmly by the elbow.

He was marched along a corridor that led into the back of a courtroom. He watched the little line of derelicts and petty criminals who were waiting for their moment in front of the judge. He didn't notice a woman a few paces away from him, tightly gripping the rope handle of a holdall.

'Guilty. Fifty dollars.'

'Can't pay.'

Three days in jail. Next.'

After three or four cases were dispensed with in this cursory manner within as many minutes, Dollar Bill watched the man who had shown no respect for the canon of Irish literature take his place in front of the judge.

'Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace. How do you plead?'

"Guilty, Your Honour.'

Any previous known record?'

"None," said the Sergeant.

'Fifty dollars,' said the judge.

It interested Dollar Bill that his adversary had no previous convictions, and was also able to pay his fine immediately.

When it came to Dollar Bill's own turn to plead, he couldn't help thinking, as he looked up at the judge, that he appeared to be awfully young for the job. Perhaps he really was now an 'old timer'.

'William O'Reilly, Your Honour,' said the Sergeant, looking down at the charge sheet. 'Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace.'

'How do you plead?'

'Guilty, Your Honour,' said Dollar Bill, fingering a small wad of bills in his pocket as he tried to remember the location of the nearest bar that served Guinness.'Thirty days,' said the judge, without raising his head.

'Next.'

Two people in the courtroom were stunned by the judge's decision. One of them reluctantly loosened her grip on the rope handle of her holdall, while the other stammered out, 'Bail, Your Honour?'

'Denied.'

THE TWO MEN REMAINED SILENT until David Kratz had come to the end of his outline plan.

Dexter was the first to speak. 'I must admit, Colonel, I'm impressed. It just might work.'

Scott nodded his agreement, and then turned to the Mossad man who only a few weeks before had given Hannah the order that he should be killed. Some of the guilt had been lifted since they had been working so closely with each other, but the lines on the forehead and the prematurely grey hair of the Israeli leader remained a perpetual reminder of what he had been through. During their time together Scott had come to admire the sheer professional skill of the man who had been put in charge of the operation.

'I still need some queries answered,' said Scott, 'and a few other things explained.'

The Israeli Councillor for Cultural Affairs to the Court of St James nodded.

'Are you certain that they plan to put the safe in the Ba'ath Party headquarters?'

'Certain, no. Confident, yes,' said Kratz. 'A Dutch company completed some building work in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the headquarters nearly three years ago, and among thir final drawings was a brick construction, the dimen-sions of which would house the safe perfectly.'

'And is this safe still in Kalmar?'

'It was three weeks ago,' replied Kratz, 'when one of my agents carried out a routine check.'

'And does it belong to the Iraqi Government?' asked Dexter Hutchins.

'Yes, it has been fully paid for, and is now legally the property of the Iraqis.'

'Legally that may be the position, but since the Gulf War the UN has imposed a new category of sanctions,' Scott reminded him.

'How can a safe be considered a piece of military equipment?' asked Dexter.

'Exactly the Iraqis' argument,' replied Kratz. 'But,unfortunately for them, when they placed the original order with the Swedes, among the explicit specifications was the requirement that the safe "must be able to withstand a nuclear attack". The word "nuclear" was all that was needed to start the bells ringing at the UN.'

'So how do you plan to get round that problem?'

asked Scott.

'Whenever the Iraqi Government submits a new list of items that they consider do not break UN Security Council Resolution 661, the safe is always included. If the Americans, the British and the French didn't raise any objection, it could slip through.'

'And the Israeli Government?'

'We would protest vociferously in front of the Iraqi delegation, but not behind closed doors to our friends.'

'So let us imagine for one moment that we're in possession of a giant safe that can withstand a nuclear attack. What good does that do us?' asked Scott.

'Someone has to be responsible for getting that safe from Sweden to Baghdad. Someone has to install it when they get there, and someone has to explain to Saddam's people how to operate it,' said Kratz.

'And you have someone who is six feet tall, a karate expert, and speaks fluent Arabic?'

'We did have, but she was only five feet ten.' The two men stared at each other. Scott remained silent.

'And how were you proposing to a.s.sa.s.sinate Saddam?' asked Dexter quickly. 'Lock him up in the safe and hope he would suffocate?'

Kratz realised the comment had been made to take Scott's mind off Hannah, so he responded in kind. 'No, we discovered that was the CIA's plan, and dismissed it. We had something more subtle in mind.'