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“Actually,” drawled Sinclair, “we’ve been protesting to Bonn for years. They always trashed the protests. Doctor, can you identify the chemical gas plants on those photos we gave you?”

“Yes, of course. Some factories are identified in the paperwork. Others you can see with a magnifying glass.”

The chemist spread five large aerial photos on the table.

“I do not know the Arab names, but these numbers identify the photographs for you, do they not?”

“Yes. You just point out the buildings,” said Sinclair.

“Here, the whole complex of seventeen buildings ... here, this big single plant—you see the air scrubber unit? And here, this one ... and this whole complex of eight buildings ... and this one.”

Sinclair studied a list from his attaché case. He nodded grimly.

“As we thought. Al Qaim, Fallujah, Al-Hillah, Salman Pak, and Samarra. Doctor, I’m very very grateful to you. Our guys in the States figured out exactly the same. They’ll all be targeted for the first wave of attacks.”

When the meeting broke up Sinclair, with Simon Paxman and Terry Martin, strolled up to Piccadilly and had a coffee at Richoux.

“I don’t know about you guys,” said Sinclair as he stirred his cappuccino, “but for us the bottom line is the gas threat. General Schwarzkopf is convinced already. That’s what he calls the nightmare scenario: mass gas attacks, a rain of airbursts over all our troops. If they go, they’ll go in masks and gas capes, head to foot. The good news is, this gas doesn’t live long once it’s exposed to air. It touches the desert, it’s dead. Terry, you don’t look convinced.”

“This rain of airbursts,” said Martin. “How’s Saddam supposed to launch them?”

Sinclair shrugged.

“Artillery barrage, I guess. That’s what he did against the Iranians.”

“You’re not going to pulp his artillery? It’s only got a range of thirty kilometers. Must be out there in the desert somewhere.”

“Sure,” said the American, “we have the technology to locate every gun and tank out there, despite the digging-in and the camouflage.”

“So if his guns are broken, how else does Saddam launch the gas rain?”

“Fighter-bombers, I guess.”

“But you’ll have destroyed them too, by the time the ground forces move,” Martin pointed out. “Saddam will have nothing left flying.”

“Okay, so Scud missiles—whatever. That’s what he’ll try. And we’ll waste them one by one. Sorry, guys, gotta go.”

“What are you getting at, Terry?” asked Paxman when the CIA man had gone. Terry Martin sighed.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that Saddam and his planners will know all that. They won’t underestimate American air power. Simon, can you get me all Saddam’s speeches over the past six months? In Arabic—must be in Arabic.”

“Yes, I suppose so. GCHQ in Cheltenham will have them, or the BBC Arabic Service. On tape or transcript?”

“Tape if possible.”

For three days Terry Martin listened to the guttural, haranguing voice out of Baghdad. He played and replayed the tapes and could not get rid of the nagging worry that the Iraqi despot was making the wrong noises for a man in such deep trouble. Either he did not know or recognize the depth of his trouble, or he knew something that his enemies did not.

On September 21, Saddam Hussein made a new speech, or rather a statement from the Revolutionary Command Council, that used his own particular vocabulary. In the statement he declared there was not the slightest chance of any Iraqi retreat from Kuwait, and that any attempt to eject Iraq would lead to

“the mother of all battles.”

That was how it had been translated. The media had loved it, and the words became quite a catchphrase.

Dr. Martin studied the text and then called Simon Paxman.

“I’ve been looking at the vernacular of the Upper Tigris valley,” he said.

“Good God, what a hobby,” replied Paxman.