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Terry Martin’s interest for these people was not because of his scholastic excellence in medieval Mesopotamia, but for the second hat he wore. Quite as a private interest, he had begun years earlier to study the armed forces of the Middle East, attending defense exhibitions and cultivating friendships among manufacturers and their Arab clients, where his fluent Arabic had made him many contacts. After ten years he was a walking encyclopedia in his chosen pastime subject and was listened to with respect by the top professionals, much as the American novelist Tom Clancy is regarded as a world expert on the defense equipment of NATO and the former Warsaw Pact.

The two soles meunière arrived, and they began to eat with appreciation.

Eight weeks earlier Laing, who was at that time Director of Operations for the Mid-East Division at Century House, had called up a pen portrait of Terry Martin from the Research people. He had been impressed with what he saw.

Born in Baghdad, raised in Iraq, then schooled in England, Martin had left Haileybury with three advanced levels, all with distinction, in English, history, and French. Haileybury had had him down as a brilliant scholar, destined for a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge.

But the boy, already a fluent Arab speaker, wanted to go on to Arabic studies, so he had applied as a graduate to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, attending the spring interview of 1973.

Accepted at once, he had joined in the autumn term of 1973, studying history of the Middle East.

He walked through a first-class degree in three years and then put in a further three years for his doctorate, specializing in Iraq of the eighth to fifteenth centuries, with particular reference to the Abassid Caliphate fromA.D. 750 to 1258. He took his Ph.D. in 1979, then one year off for a sabbatical—he had been in Iraq in 1980 when Iraq invaded Iran, triggering the eight-year war, and this experience began his interest in Middle Eastern military forces.

On his return he was offered a lectureship at the age of only twenty-six, a signal honor at the SOAS, which happens to be one of the best and therefore one of the toughest schools of Arabic learning in the world. He was promoted to a readership in recognition of his excellence in original research, and he became a reader in Middle East history at the age of thirty-four, clearly earmarked for a professorship by the age of forty.

So much had Laing read in the written biography. What interested him even more was the second string, the compendium of knowledge about Middle Eastern arms arsenals. For years, it had been a peripheral subject, dwarfed by the cold war, but now ...

“It’s about this Kuwait business,” he said at last. The remains of the fish had been cleared away. Both men had declined a dessert. The Meursault had gone down very nicely, and Laing had deftly ensured that Martin had most of it. Now two vintage ports appeared as if unbidden.

“As you may imagine, there’s been a hell of a flapdoodle going on these past few days.”

Laing was understating the case. The Lady had returned from Colorado in what the mandarins referred to as her Boadicea mode, a reference to that ancient British queen who used to chop Romans off at the knees with the swords sticking out of her chariot wheels if they got in the way. Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd was reputed to be drinking of taking to wearing a steel helmet, and the demands for instant enlightenment had rained down on the spooks of Century House.

“The fact is, we would like to slip someone into Kuwait to find out exactly what is going on.”

“Under Iraqi occupation?” asked Martin.

“I’m afraid so, since they seem to be in charge.”

“So why me?”

“Let me be frank,” said Laing, who intended to be anything but. “We really do need to know what is going on inside. The Iraqi occupation army—how many, how good, what equipment. Our own nationals—how are they coping, are they in danger, can they realistically be got out in safety. We need a man in on the ground. This information is vital. So—someone who speaks Arabic like an Arab, a Kuwaiti or Iraqi. Now, you spend your life among Arabic-speakers, far more than I do—”

“But surely there must be hundreds of Kuwaitis right here in Britain who could slip back in,” Martin suggested.

Laing sucked leisurely at a piece of sole that had stuck between two teeth.

“Actually,” he murmured, “one would prefer one of one’s own people.”

“A Brit? Who can pass for an Arab, right in the middle of them?”

“That’s what we need. I’m afraid we doubt if there is one.”

It must have been the wine, or the port. Terry Martin was not used to Meursault and port with his lunch.

Later, he would willingly have bitten off his own tongue if he could turn the clock back a few seconds.

But he spoke, and then it was too late.

“I know one. My brother Mike. He’s a major in the SAS. He can pass for an Arab.”

Laing hid the stab of excitement that jumped inside him as he removed the toothpick and the offending morsel of sole.

“Can he now,” he murmured. “Can he now?”

Chapter 3

Steve Laing returned to Century House by cab in a spirit of some surprise and elation. He had arranged the lunch with the academic Arabist in the hopes of recruiting him for another task, which he still had in mind, and had only raised the matter of Kuwait as a conversational ploy.