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It could well be argued that the continuing human rights abuses of the present Iraqi regime, if it is allowed to survive, will prove most distressing. This is beyond any doubt. Yet the West has been required to witness terrible scenes in China, Russia, Vietnam, Tibet, East Timor, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world. It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war.

The least catastrophic outcome of the present war in the Gulf and the eventual invasion of Iraq is therefore the survival in power of Saddam Hussein as sole master of a unified Iraq, albeit militarily emasculated as regards foreign aggression.

For all the stated reasons, this group urges an end to all the efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein, or to march to Baghdad and occupy Iraq.

Respectfully submitted,

PIAG

Mike Martin found the chalk mark on February 7 and retrieved the slim glassine envelope from the dead-letter box that same evening. Shortly after midnight, he set up his satellite dish pointing out of the doorway of his shack and read the spidery Arabic script on the single page of onionskin paper straight into the tape machine. After the Arabic, he added his own English translation and sent the message at 0016A.M. , one minute into his window.

When the burst came through and the satellite caught it in Riyadh, the radio man on duty shouted:

“He’s here. Black Bear’s coming through!”

The four sleepy men in the adjoining room ran in. The big tape machine against the wall slowed down and decrypted the message. When the technician punched the playback button, the room was filled with the sound of Martin speaking Arabic. Paxman, whose Arabic was best, listened to the halfway point and hissed:

“He’s found it. Jericho says he’s found it.”

“Quiet, Simon.”

The Arabic stopped, and the English text began. When the voice stopped and signed off, Barber smacked one bunched fist into the palm of his other hand in excitement.

“Boy, he’s done it. Guys, can you get me a transcript of that—like, now ?”

The technician ran the tape back, put on earphones, turned to his word processor, and began to type.

Barber went to a telephone in the living room and called the underground headquarters of CENTAF.

There was only one man he needed to talk to.

General Chuck Horner apparently needed very little sleep. No one either in the Coalition Command offices beneath the Saudi Defense Ministry or the CENTAF headquarters beneath the Saudi Air Force building on Old Airport Road was getting much sleep during those weeks, but General Horner seemed to get less than most.

Perhaps when his beloved aircrew was aloft and flying deep into enemy territory, he did not feel able to sleep. As the flying was going on twenty-four hours per day, that left little sleeping time.

He had a habit of prowling the offices of the CENTAF complex in the middle of the night, ambling from the analysts of the Black Hole along to the Tactical Air Control Center. If a telephone rang unattended and he was near it, he would answer it. Several bemused Air Force officers out in the desert, calling up for a clarification or with a query and expecting a duty major to come on the line, found themselves speaking to the boss himself.

It was a very democratic habit, but it occasionally brought surprises. On one occasion a squadron commander, who will have to remain nameless, called to complain that his pilots were nightly running a gauntlet of triple-A fire on their way to their targets. Could not the Iraqi gunners be squashed by a visit from the heavy bombers, the Buffs?

General Horner told the lieutenant colonel that this was not possible—the Buffs were fully tasked. The squadron commander out in the desert protested, but the answer was still the same. Well, said the lieutenant colonel, in that case you can suck me.

Very few officers can tell a full general to do that and get away with it. It says much for Chuck Horner’s approach to his flying crews that two weeks later the feisty squadron commander got his promotion to full colonel.

That was where Chip Barber found Horner that night, just before one o’clock, and they met in the general’s private office inside the underground complex forty minutes later.

The general read the transcription of the English language text from Riyadh gloomily. Barber had used the word processor to annotate certain parts—it no longer looked like a radio message.

“This another of your deductions from interviewing businessmen in Europe?” he asked mordantly.

“We believe the information to be accurate, General.”

Horner grunted. Like most combat men, he had little time for the covert world—the people referred to as spooks. It was ever thus. The reason is simple. Combat is dedicated to the pursuit of optimism—cautious optimism perhaps, but nevertheless optimism—or no one would ever take part in it.

The covert world is dedicated to the presumption of pessimism. The two philosophies have little in common, and even at this stage of the war the U.S. Air Force was becoming increasingly irritated by the CIA’s repeated suggestions that it was destroying fewer targets than it claimed.

“And is this supposed target associated with what I think it is?” asked the general.

“We just believe it to be very important, sir.”