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“Oh, yes, Abu Fouad. Please tell me what it is you want.”

“Not I personally, but a friend. He is wounded and sick. I know you are a pharmacist. You must at once take medications to him—bandages, antibiotics, pain-killers. Have you heard of the one they call the Bedou?”

“Yes, of course. But do you mean to say you know him?”

“Never mind, but we have been working together for weeks. He is hugely important to us.”

“I will go downstairs to the shop right now and select the things he needs, and take them to him. Where do I find him?”

“He is holed up in a house in Shuwaikh and cannot move. Take pencil and paper.”

Abu Fouad dictated the address he had been given. At the other end of the phone it was noted.

“I will drive over at once, Abu Fouad. You can trust me,” said Salah the pharmacist.

“You are a good man. You will be rewarded.”

Abu Fouad hung up. The Bedou had said he would phone at dawn if nothing happened, and the pharmacist would be in the clear.

Mike Martin saw, rather than heard, the first truck just before half past eight. It was rolling on its own momentum, the engine off to make no sound, and it trundled past the intersection of the street before coming to a halt a few yards farther on and just out of sight. Martin nodded in approval.

The second truck did the same a few moments later. From each vehicle, twenty men descended quietly, Green Berets who knew what they were doing. The men moved in a column up the street, headed by an officer who grasped a civilian. The man’s white dish-dash glimmered in the half-darkness. With all the street names ripped down, the soldiers had needed a civilian guide to find this road. But the house numbers were still up.

The civilian stopped at a house, studied the number plate, and pointed. The captain in charge had a hurried, whispered conversation with his sergeant, who took fifteen men down a side alley to cover the back.

Followed by the remaining soldiers, the captain tried the steel door to the small garden. It opened. The men surged through.

Inside the garden the captain could see that a low light burned in an upstairs room. Much of the ground floor was taken up by the garage, which was empty. At the front door all pretense of stealth vanished.

The captain tried the handle, found it was locked, and gestured to a soldier behind him. The man fired a brief burst from his automatic rifle at the lock in the wooden setting, and the door swung open.

With the captain leading, the Green Berets rushed in. Some went for the darkened ground-floor rooms; the captain and the rest went straight up for the master bedroom.

From the landing the captain could see the interior of the low-lit bedroom, the armchair with its back to the door, and the checkered keffiyeh peeping out over the top. He did not fire. Colonel Sabaawi of the AMAM had been specific: This one he wanted alive for questioning. As he rushed forward, the young officer did not feel the snag of the nylon fishing line against his shins.

He heard his own men bursting in through the back and others pounding up the stairs. He saw the slumped form in the soiled white robe, filled out by cushions, and the big watermelon wrapped in the keffiyeh . His face contorted with anger, and he had the time to snarl an insult at the trembling pharmacist who stood in the doorway.

Five pounds of Semtex-H may not sound like much, and it does not look very large. The houses of that neighborhood are built of stone and concrete, which was what saved the surrounding residences, some of which were occupied by Kuwaitis, from more than superficial damage. But the house in which the soldiers stood virtually disappeared. Tiles from its roof were later found several hundred yards away.

The Bedou had not waited around to watch his handiwork. He was already two streets away, shuffling along, minding his own business, when he heard the muffled boom, like a door being slammed, then the one-second hollow silence

, then the crash of masonry.

Three things happened the following day, all after dark. In Kuwait, the Bedou had his second meeting with Abu Fouad. This time, the Kuwaiti came alone to the rendezvous, in the shadow of a deep arched doorway only two hundred yards from the Sheraton, which had been taken over by dozens of senior Iraqi officers.

“You heard, Abu Fouad?”

“Of course. The whole city is buzzing. They lost over twenty men and the rest injured.” He sighed.

“There will be more random reprisals.”

“You wish to stop now?”

“No. We cannot. But how much longer must we suffer?”

“The Americans and the British will come. One day.”

“Allah make it soon. Was Salah with them?”