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He had touched on a nerve, and he knew it. The psycho-portrait he had ordered on Dr. Terry Martin was about to prove its worth. Martin flushed deep pink, then controlled himself.

“I really do get pissed off,” he said, “when my own fellow countrymen insist the Arab peoples are just a bunch of camel-herders who choose to wear tea towels on their heads. Yes, I have actually heard it expressed that way. The fact is, they were building extremely complex palaces, mosques, ports, highways, and irrigation systems when our ancestors were still running around in bearskins. They had rulers and lawgivers of amazing wisdom when we were in the Dark Ages.”

Martin leaned forward and jabbed at the man from Century with his coffee spoon.

“I tell you, the Iraqis have among them some brilliant scientists, and as builders they are beyond compare. Their construction engineers are better than anything for a thousand-mile radius around Baghdad, and I include Israel. Many may have been Soviet or Western trained, but they have absorbed our knowledge like sponges and then made an enormous input themselves.”

He paused, and Laing pounced.

“Dr. Martin, I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve only been with Century’s Mid-East Division for a year, but I’ve come to the same view as you—that the Iraqis are a very talented people. But they happen to be ruled by a man who has already committed genocide. Is all this money and all this talent really going to be put to the purpose of killing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people? Is Saddam going to bring glory to the people of Iraq, or is he going to bring them slaughter?”

Martin sighed.

“You’re right. He’s an aberration. He wasn’t once, long ago, but he’s become one. He’s perverted the nationalism of the old Ba’ath Party into National Socialism, drawing his inspiration from Adolf Hitler.

What do you want of me?”

Laing thought for a while. He was close, too close to lose his man now.

“George Bush and Mrs. T have agreed that our two countries put together a body to investigate and analyze the whole area of Saddam’s WMD. The investigators will bring in the facts as they discover them. The scientists will tell us what they mean. What has he got? How developed? How much of it?

What do we need to protect ourselves against, if it comes to war—gas masks? Space suits? Antidote syringes? We don’t know yet just what he’s got or just what we’ll need—”

“But I know nothing of these things,” Martin interrupted him.

“No, but you know something we don’t. The Arab mind, Saddam’s mind. Will he use what he’s got?

Will he tough it out in Kuwait, or will he quit? What inducements will make him quit? Will he go to the end of the line? Our people just don’t understand this Arab concept of martyrdom.”

Martin laughed. “President Bush,” he said, “and all the people around him will act according to their upbringing. Which is based on the Judeo-Christian moral philosophy supported by the Greco-Roman concept of logic. And Saddam will react on the basis of his own vision of himself.”

“As an Arab and a Moslem?”

“Uh-unh. Islam has nothing to do with it. Saddam doesn’t care a fig for the hadith , the codified teachings of the Prophet. He prays on camera when it suits him. No, you have to go back to Nineveh and Assyria. He doesn’t mind how many have to die, so long as he thinks he can win.”

“He can’t win, not against America. Nobody can.”

“Wrong. You use the word win as a Britisher or an American would use it. The way Bush and Scowcroft and the rest are using it even now. He will see it differently. If he quits Kuwait because he is paid to by King Fahd, which might have happened if the Jeddah conference had taken place, he can win with honor. To be paid to quit is acceptable. He wins. But America will not allow that.”

“No way.”

“But if he quits under threat, he loses. All Arabia will see that. He will lose, and probably die. So he will not quit.”

“And if the American war machine is launched against him? He’ll be smashed to bits,” said Laing.

“It doesn’t matter. He has his bunker. His people will die. Not important. But if he can hurt America, he will win. If he can hurt America badly, really badly, he will be covered in glory. Dead or alive. He will win.”

“Bloody hell, it’s complicated,” sighed Laing.

“Not really. There’s a quantum leap in moral philosophy when you cross the Jordan. Let me ask again: What do you want of me?”

“The committee is forming, to try and advise our masters on the question of these weapons of mass destruction. The guns, tanks, airplanes—the Ministries of Defence will deal with those. They’re not the problem. Just ironmongery—we can destroy it from the air.

“Actually, there are two committees, one in Washington and one here in London. British observers on theirs, American observers on ours. There’ll be people from the Foreign Office, Aldermaston, Porton Down. Century has two places. I’m sending a colleague, head of the Iraq desk, Simon Paxman. I’d like you to sit with him, see if there’s an aspect of interpretation that we might miss because it’s a peculiarly Arab aspect. That’s your forte—that’s what you can contribute.”

“All right, for what I can contribute, which may be nothing. What’s it called, the committee? When does it meet?”

“Ah, yes, Simon will call you with the when and where. Actually, it’s got an appropriate name. Medusa.”