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“He brought them. There was only one civilian. You told no one else?”

“No, just him. It must have been him. He has the lives of nine young men on his head. He will not see Paradise.”

“So. What more do you want of me?”

“I do not ask who you are or where you come from. As a trained Army officer, I know you cannot be just a simple Bedou camel-drover from the desert. You have supplies of explosives, guns, ammunition, grenades. My people could also do much with these things.”

“And your offer?”

“Join with us and bring your supplies. Or stay on your own but share your supplies. I am not here to threaten, only to ask. But if you want to help our resistance, this is the way to do it.”

Mike Martin thought for a while. After eight weeks he had half his supplies left, still buried in the desert or scattered through the two villas he used not for living but for storage. Of his other four houses, one was destroyed and the other, where he had met with his pupils, compromised. He could hand over his stores and ask for more by night drop—risky but feasible, so long as his messages to Riyadh were not being intercepted, which he could not know. Or he could make another camel trip across the border and return with two more panniers. Even that would not be easy—there were now sixteen divisions of Iraqis ranged along that border, three times the number when he had entered.

It was time to contact Riyadh again and ask for instructions. In the meanwhile, he would give Abu Fouad almost everything he had. There was more south of the border; he would just have to get it through somehow.

“Where do you want it delivered?” he asked.

“We have a warehouse in Shuwaikh Port. It is quite secure. It stores fish. The owner is one of us.”

“In six days,” said Martin.

They agreed on the time and the place where a trusted aide of Abu Fouad would meet the Bedou and guide him the rest of the journey to the warehouse. Martin described the vehicle he would be driving and the way he would look.

That same night, but two hours earlier because of the time difference, Terry Martin sat in a quiet restaurant not far from his apartment and twirled a glass of wine in one hand. The guest he awaited entered a few minutes later, an elderly man with gray hair, glasses, and a spotted bow tie. He looked round inquiringly.

“Moshe, over here.”

The Israeli bustled over to where Terry Martin had risen, and greeted him effusively.

“Terry, my dear boy, how are you?”

“Better for seeing you, Moshe. Couldn’t let you pass through London without at least a dinner and a chance to chat.”

The Israeli was old enough to be Martin’s father, but their friendship was based on common interest.

Both were academics and avid students of ancient Middle Eastern Arab civilizations, their cultures, art, and languages.

Professor Moshe Hadari went back a long way. As a young man, he had excavated much of the Holy Land with Yigael Yadin, himself both a professor and an Army general. Hadari’s great regret was that, as an Israeli, much of the Middle East was forbidden to him, even for scholarship. Still, in his field he was one of the best, and that field being a small one, it was inevitable that the two scholars should meet at some seminar, as they had ten years earlier.

It was a good dinner, and the talk flowed over the latest research, the newest tiny fresh perceptions of the way life had been in the kingdoms of the Middle East ten centuries earlier.

Terry Martin knew he was bound by the Official Secrets Act, so his recent activities on assignment for Century House were not for discussion. But over coffee their conversation came quite naturally around to the crisis in the Gulf and the chances of a war.

“Do you think he will pull out of Kuwait, Terry?” the professor asked.

Martin shook his head. “No, he can’t, unless he is given a clearly marked road, concessions he can use to justify withdrawal. To go naked, he falls.”

Hadari sighed.

“So much waste,” he said. “All my life, so much waste. All that money, enough to make the Middle East a paradise on earth. All that talent, all those young lives. And for what? Terry, if war comes, will the British fight with the Americans?”

“Of course. We’ve already sent the Seventh Armoured Brigade, and I believe the Fourth Armoured will follow. That makes a division, apart from the fighters and the warships. Don’t worry about it. This is one Mid-East war in which Israel not only may, but must, sit on her thumbs.”

“Yes, I know,” said the Israeli gloomily. “But many more young men will have to die.”

Martin leaned forward and patted his friend on the arm.

“Look, Moshe, the man has got to be stopped. Sooner or later. Israel of all countries must know how far he has got with his weapons of mass destruction. In a sense, we have just been finding out the true scale of what he has.”