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He had nodded understandingly as Tariq heaped blame on the American warmongers, and when, finally consumed with his own sense of outrage, he mentioned what James Baker had actually said to him, the awaited explosion of rage from the Rais had not come.

While others around the table glowered and fumed, Saddam Hussein had continued to nod and smile.

The Foreign Minister was smiling as he left because at the last his Rais had actually congratulated him on his European mission. The fact that, by any normal diplomatic standards, that mission had been a disaster—rebuffed on every side, treated with freezing courtesy by his hosts, unable to dent the resolve of the Coalition ranged against his country—did not seem to matter.

His puzzlement stemmed from something the Rais had said at the end of the audience. It ha

d been an aside, a muttered remark to the Foreign Minister alone as the President had seen him to the door.

“Rafeek, dear Comrade, do not worry. Soon I shall have a surprise for the Americans. Not yet. But if the Beni el Kalb ever try to cross the border, I shall respond not with gas, but with the Fist of God.”

Tariq Aziz had nodded in agreement, even though he did not know what the Rais was talking about.

With others, he found out twenty-four hours later.

The morning of January 12 saw the last meeting of the full Revolutionary Command Council to be held in the Presidential Palace, at the corner of July 14 Street and Kindi Street. A week later it was bombed to rubble, but the bird inside was long flown.

As usual, the summons to the meeting came at the last moment. No matter how high one rose in the hierarchy, no matter how trusted one might be, no one but a tiny handful of family, intimates, and personal bodyguards ever knew exactly where the Rais would be at a given hour on any day.

If he was still alive at all after seven major, serious attempts at assassination, it was because of his obsession with personal security.

Neither Counterintelligence nor the Secret Police of Omar Khatib, and certainly not the Army; not even the Republican Guard were entrusted with that security. That task fell to the Amn-al-Khass. Young they might be, most barely out of their teens, but their loyalty was fanatical and absolute. Their commander was the Rais’s own son Kusay.

No conspirator could ever know upon what road the Rais would be traveling, when, or in what vehicle.

His visits to army bases or industrial installations were always surprises, not only to the visited but also to those around him. Even in Baghdad he flitted from location to location on a whim, sometimes spending a few days in the palace, at other times retiring to his bunker behind and beneath the Rashid Hotel.

Every plate set before him had to be tasted first, and the food-taster was the first-born son of the chef.

Every drink came from a bottle with an unbroken seal.

That morning the summons to the meeting at the palace came to each member of the RCC by special messenger one hour before the meeting. No time was thus left for preparations for an assassination.

The limousines swerved through the gate, deposited their charges, and went away to a special parking garage. Each member of the RCC passed through a metal-detecting arch; no personal sidearms were allowed.

When they were assembled in the large conference room with its T-shaped table, there were thirty-three of them. Eight sat at the top of the T, flanking the empty throne at the center. The rest faced each other down the length of the stem of the T.

Seven of those present were related to the Rais by blood and three more by marriage. These plus eight more were from Tikrit or its immediate surroundings. All were long-standing members of the Ba’ath Party.

Ten of the thirty-three were cabinet ministers and nine were Army or Air Force generals. Saadi Tumah Abbas, former commander of the Republican Guard, had been promoted to Defense Minister that very morning and sat beaming on the top table. He had replaced Abd Al-Jabber Shenshall, the renegade Kurd who had long since thrown in his lot with the butcher of his own people.

Among the Army generals were Mustafa Radi for the Infantry, Farouk Ridha of the Artillery, Ali Musuli of the Engineers, and Abdullah Kadiri of the Armored Corps.

At the far end of the table were the three men controlling the intelligence apparatus: Dr. Ubaidi of the Foreign Intelligence arm of the Mukhabarat, Hassan Rahmani of Counterintelligence, and Omar Khatib of the Secret Police.

When the Rais entered, everyone rose and clapped. He smiled, took his chair, bade them be seated, and began his statement. They were not here to discuss anything; they were here to be told something.

Only the son-in-law, Hussein Kamil, showed no surprise when the Rais made his peroration. When, after forty minutes of speech invoking the unbroken series of triumphs that had marked his leadership, he gave them his news, the immediate reaction was of stunned silence.

That Iraq had been trying for years, they knew. That fruition in this one area of technology that alone seemed capable of inspiring a thrill of fear throughout the world and awe even among the mighty Americans had been achieved—now, on the very threshold of war—seemed unbelievable. Divine intervention. But the Divinity was not in heaven above; he sat right here, with them, smiling quietly.

It was Hussein Kamil, forewarned, who rose and led the ovation. The others scrambled to follow, each fearing to be last to his feet or most subdued in his applause. Then no one was prepared to be first to stop.

When he returned to his office two hours later, Hassan Rahmani, the urbane and cosmopolitan head of Counterintelligence, cleared his desk, ordered no interruptions, and sat at his desk with a strong black coffee. He needed to think, and think deeply.

As with everyone else in that room, the news had shaken him. At a stroke the balance of power in the Middle East had changed, even though no one else yet knew. After the Rais, who with raised hands called with admirable self-deprecation for the ovation to cease, had resumed his chairmanship, every man in the room had been sworn to silence.

This Rahmani could understand. Despite the raging euphoria that had enveloped them all as they left and in which he had unstintingly joined, he could foresee major problems.