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There was a fresh list of demands for information from Jericho and an agreement to the agent’s last demand for money, which had now been transferred into his account. In under a month the renegade on the Revolutionary Command Council had earned over a million dollars.

Added to the list were two further instructions for Martin. The first was to send Jericho a message, not in the form of a question, that it was hoped he could somehow filter into the thinking of the planners in Baghdad. It was to the effect that the news from London probably meant that the Coalition action to recover Kuwait would be called off if the Rais stood firm.

Whether this disinformation reached the highest councils of Baghdad will never be known, but within a week Saddam Hussein had claimed that the toppling of Thatcher was due to the revulsion of the British people at her opposition to him.

The final instruction on Mike Martin’s tape that night was to ask Jericho if he had ever heard of a weapon or weapon system referred to as the Fist of God.

By the light of a candle, Martin spent most of the rest of the night writing the questions in Arabic onto two sheets of thin airmail paper. Within twenty hours, the papers had

been secreted behind the loose brick in the wall close to the Imam Aladham shrine in Aadhamiya.

It took a week for the answers to come back. Martin read the spidery Arabic script of Jericho’s handwriting and translated everything into English. From a soldier’s point of view, it was interesting.

The three Republican Guard divisions facing the British and Americans along the border, the Tawakkulna and Medina, now joined by the Hammurabi, were equipped with a mix of T-54/55, T-62, and T-72 main battle tanks, all three Russian.

But on a recent tour, Jericho continued, General Abdullah Kadiri of the Armored Corps had discovered to his horror that most of the crews had removed their batteries and used them to power fans, cookers, radios, and cassette players. It was doubtful if, in combat conditions, any of them would now start. There had been several executions on the spot, and two senior commanders had been relieved and sent home.

Saddam’s half-brother, Ali Hassan Majid, now Governor-General of Kuwait, had reported that the occupation was becoming a nightmare, with attacks on Iraqi soldiers still unquenchable and desertions rising. The resistance showed no signs of abating, despite vigorous interrogations and numerous executions by Colonel Sabaawi of the AMAM and two personal visits by his boss, Omar Khatib.

Worse, the resistance had now somehow acquired the plastic explosive called Semtex, which is much more powerful than industrial dynamite.

Jericho had identified two more major military command posts, both constructed in subterranean caverns and invisible from the air.

The thinking in the immediate circle around Saddam Hussein was definitely that a seminal contribution to the fall of Margaret Thatcher had been his own influence. He had twice reiterated his absolute refusal even to consider pulling out of Kuwait.

Finally, Jericho had never heard of anything code-named the Fist of God but would listen for such a phrase. Personally, he doubted there existed any weapon or weapon system unknown to the Allies.

Martin read the entire message onto tape, speeded it up, and transmitted it. In Riyadh it was seized upon avidly and the radio technicians logged its time of arrival: 2355 hours, November 30, 1990.

Leila Al-Hilla came out of the bathroom slowly, pausing in the doorway with the light behind her to raise her arms to the doorframe on each side and pose for a moment.

The bathroom light, shining through the negligee, showed off her ripe and voluptuous silhouette to full advantage. It should; it was black, of the sheerest lace, and had cost a small fortune, a Paris import acquired from a boutique in Beirut.

The big man on the bed stared hungrily, ran a furred tongue along a thick lower lip, and grinned.

Leila liked to dawdle in the bathroom before a session of sex. There were places to be washed and anointed, eyes to be accentuated with mascara, lips to be etched in red, and perfumes to be applied, different aromas for different parts of her body.

It was a good body at thirty summers, the sort clients liked: not fat, but well-curved where it ought to be, full-hipped and breasted, with muscle beneath the curves.

She lowered her arms and advanced toward the dim-lit bed, swinging her hips, the high-heeled shoes adding four inches to her height and exaggerating the hip-swing.

But the man on the bed, on his back and naked, covered like a bear in black fur from chin to ankles, had closed his eyes.

Don’t go to sleep on me now, you oaf, she thought, not tonight when I need you. Leila sat on the side of the bed and ran sharp red fingernails up through the hair of the belly to the chest, tweaked each nipple hard, then ran her hand back again, beyond the stomach to the groin.

She leaned forward and kissed the man on the lips, her tongue prying an opening. But the man’s lips responded halfheartedly, and she caught the strong odor of arak.

Drunk again, she thought—why can’t the fool stay off the stuff. Still, it had its advantages, that bottle of arak every evening. Oh well, to work.

Leila Al-Hilla was a good courtesan, and she knew it. The best in the Middle East, some said, and certainly among the most expensive.

She had trained years ago, as a child, in a very private academy in Lebanon where the sexual wiles and tricks of the ouled-nails of Morocco, of the nautch girls of India, and the subtle technocrats of Fukutomi-cho were practiced by the older girls while the children watched and learned.

After fifteen years as a professional on her own, she knew that ninety percent of the skill of a good whore had nothing to do with the problem of coping with insatiable virility. That was for porn magazines and films.

Her talent was to flatter, compliment, praise, and indulge, but mainly to elicit a real male erection out of an endless succession of jaded appetites and faded powers.

She ran her probing hand out of the groin and felt the man’s penis. Sighed inwardly. Soft as a marshmallow. General Abdullah Kadiri, commander of the Armored Corps of the Army of the Republic of Iraq, was going to need a little encouraging this evening.