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“Supposing he gets out of his own accord,” suggested Martin.

“Well, fine, no war needed,” replied Laing, though privately he thought this option might not be so fine after all. There were rumors in the wind that were deeply disturbing and had in fact given rise to his lunch with the Arabist.

“But if not, we shall just have to go in, under the auspices of the United Nations, and kick him out.”

“ ‘We’?”

“Well, the Americans mainly. We’ll send forces to join them; land, sea, air. We’ve got ships in the Gulf right now, fighters and fighter-bomber squadrons heading south. That sort of thing. Mrs. T is determined we’ll not be seen to be slacking. At the moment it’s just Desert Shield, stopping the bastard from getting any thoughts of moving south and invading Saudi Arabia. But it may come to more than that. You’ve heard of WMD, of course?”

“Weapons of mass destruction. Of course.”

“That’s the problem. NBC. Nuclear, bacteriological, and chemical. Privately, our people at Century have been trying to warn the political masters for a couple of years about this sort of thing. Last year the Chief presented a paper, ‘Intelligence in the Nineties.’ Warned that the great threat now, since the end of the cold war, is and will be proliferation. Jumped-up dictators of highly unstable aspect getting hold of seriously high-tech weaponry and then possibly using it. ‘Top marks,’ they all said, ‘jolly good’—then did bugger-all about it. Now, of course, they’re all worried shitless.”

“He’s got a lot of it, you know: Saddam Hussein,” remarked Martin.

“That’s the point, my dear fellow. We estimate Saddam has spent fifty billion dollars over the past decade on weapons procurement. That’s why he’s bankrupt—owes fifteen billion to the Kuwaitis, another fifteen to the Saudis, and that’s just for loans made to him during the Iran-Iraq war. He invaded because they refused to write it all off and bung him another thirty billion to get his economy out of trouble.

“Now, the meat of the problem is that one-third of that fifty billion—an incredible seventeen billion greenbacks—has been spent acquiring WMD or the means to make them.”

“And the West has woken up at last?”

“With a vengeance. There’s a hell of an operation going on. Langley’s been told to race around the world to trace every government that’s ever sold anything to Iraq and check out the export permits.

We’re doing the same.”

“Shouldn’t take that long if they all cooperate, and they probably will,” said Martin, as his wing of skate arrived.

“It’s not that easy,” said Laing. “Although it’s early yet, it’s already clear Saddam’s son-in-law Kamil has set up a damnably clever procurement machine. Hundreds of small dummy companies all over Europe and North, Central, and South America. Buying bits and bobs that didn’t seem to mean much.

Forging export applications, fudging the details of the product, lying about its end-use, diverting purchases through countries that were on the export certificate as the final destination. But put all the innocent-seeming bits and bobs together, and you can get something really nasty.”

“We know he’s got gas,” said Martin. “He’s used it on the Kurds and the Iranians at Fao. Phosgene, mustard gas. But I’ve heard there are nerve agents as well. No odor, no visible sign. Lethal and very short-lived.”

“My dear chap, I knew it. You’re a mine of information.”

Laing knew all about the gas, but he knew more about flattery.

“Then there’s anthrax,” said Martin. “He’s been experimenting with that, and maybe pneumonic plague.

But you know, you can’t just run up these things with a pair of kitchen gloves. You need some very specialized chemical equipment. It should show up on the export licenses.”

Laing nodded and sighed with frustration.

“Should, yes. But the investigators are already running into two problems. A wall of obfuscation from some companies, mainly in Germany, and the question of dual-use. Someone ships out a cargo of pesticide—what could be more innocent in a country trying to boost its agricultural production, or so it says. Another company in another country ships a different chemical—same apparent reason, pesticide.

Then some smart chemist puts them together and bingo—poison gas. Both the suppliers whine, ‘We didn’t know.’ ”

“The key will lie in the chemical blending equipment,” said Martin. “This is high-tech chemistry. You can’t mix these things up in a bathtub. Find the people who supplied the turnkey factories and the men who assembled them. They may huff and puff, but they’ll know exactly what they were doing when they did it. And what it was for.”

“Turnkey factories?” asked Laing.

“Whole plants, built from scratch by foreign contracted companies. The new owner just turns the key and walks in. But none of this explains our lunch. You must have access to chemists and physicists. I’ve only heard of these things because of a personal interest. Why me?”

Laing stirred his coffee thoughtfully. He had to play this one carefully.

“Yes, we have chemists and physicists. Scientists of all kinds. And no doubt they’ll come up with some answers. Then we’ll translate the answers into plain English. The Americans will do the same. We’re working in total cooperation with Washington on this, and we’ll compare our analyses. We’ll get some answers, but we won’t get them all. We believe you have something different to offer. Hence this lunch.

Do you know that most of our top brass still take the view that the Arabs couldn’t assemble a kid’s bicycle, let alone invent one?”