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The fear in which the AMAM was held was well known to everyone at the villa. Reports from businessmen and journalists, and from British and American diplomats before their expulsion, amply testified to the omnipresence of the Secret Police, who kept Iraq’s citizens in dread and trembling.

If Martin went in at all, he would have to stay in. Running an agent like Jericho would not be easy for him. First, the man would have to be traced through the dead-letter boxes and realerted that he was back in operation. The boxes might already be compromised and under surveillance. Jericho might have been caught and forced to confess all.

More, Martin would have to establish a place to live, a base where he could send and receive messages.

He would have to prowl the city, servicing the drops if Jericho’s stream of inside information resumed, although it would now be destined for new masters.

Finally, and worst of all, there could be no diplomatic cover, no protective shield to spare him the horrors that would follow capture and exposure. For such a man, the interrogation cells of Abu Ghraib would be ready.

“What—er, exactly did you have in mind?” asked Paxman when Martin had made his demand.

“If I can’t be a diplomat, I want to be attached to a diplomatic household.”

“That’s not easy, old boy. Embassies are watched.”

“I didn’t say embassy. I said diplomatic household.”

“A kind of a chauffeur?” asked Barber.

“No. Too obvious. The driver has to stay at the wheel of the car. He drives the diplomat around and is watched like the diplomat.”

“What, then?”

“Unless things have changed radically, many of the senior diplomats live outside the embassy building, and if the rank is senior enough, they will have a villa in its own walled garden. In the old days such houses always rated a gardener-handyman.”

“A gardener?” queried Barber. “For chrissake, that’s a manual laborer. You’d be picked up and recruited into the Army.”

“No. The gardener-handyman does everything outside the house. He keeps the garden, goes shopping on his bicycle for fish at the fish market, fruit and vegetables, bread and oil. He lives in a shack at the bottom of the garden.”

“So what’s the point, Mike?” asked Paxman.

“The point is, he’s invisible. He’s so ordinary, no one notices him. If he’s stopped, his ID card is in order and he carries a letter on embassy paper, in Arabic, explaining that he works for the diplomat and is exempt from service, and would the authorities please let him go about his business. Unless he is doing something wrong, any policeman who makes trouble for him is up against a formal complaint from the embassy.”

The intelligence officers thought it over.

“It might work,” admitted Barber. “Ordinary, invisible. What do you think, Simon?”

“Well,” said Paxman, “the diplomat would have to be in on it.”

“Only partly,” said Martin. “He would simply have to have a flat order from his governm

ent to receive and employ the man who will present himself, then face the other way and get on with his job. What he suspects is his own affair. He’ll keep his mouth shut if he wants to keep his job and his career. That’s if the order comes from high enough.”

“The British embassy’s out,” said Paxman. “The Iraqis would go out of their way to offend our people.”

“Same with us,” said Barber. “Who do you have in mind, Mike?”

When Martin told them, they stared at him in disbelief.

“You cannot be serious,” said the American.

“But I am,” said Martin calmly.

“Hell, Mike, a request like that would have to go up to—well, the Prime Minister.”

“And the President,” said Barber.

“Well, we’re all supposed to be such pals nowadays, why not? I mean, if Jericho’s product ends up saving Allied lives, is a phone call too much to ask?”