A black Mercedes limo drew up smoothly below the restaurant window.
‘Looks like our taxi, Sherman.’
‘That doesn’t look anything like our taxi!’
‘Wanna bet?’
Leanne Gresham and Sherman Beck slipped their jackets on, paid the waitress and made their way outside.
Gresham opened the rear door for Beck.
‘Pleasant lunch, Agent Beck?’ Kellner looked up from a report he was perusing, took off his reading glasses and smiled. ‘Glad to have you aboard. And especially you, Mrs Gresham.’
Leanne Gresham slipped into the front seat and arranged her skirt. ‘Thanks for the lift, Mr Kellner.’
‘Call me Lee.’
‘Lee and Sherman? I must say I would never have expected to be sharing a limo with two opposing Civil War generals!’
Beck grinned.
‘Now, Lee. Agent Beck here was interested to know why my old department took such a keen interest in al-Qasr’s offer to defect to the States in 1992.’
Kellner nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Right. OK… But before I go into that I’d like to tell y’all that—’
‘Sir?’ The driver interrupted them.
‘What is it, Agent Keane?’
‘Shall I drive to Langley, sir?’
‘Yeah, but take it easy. Enjoy the ride.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Leanne, Sherman, I’m proud to tell you that we’ve traced our informant. The message about our friend in California came from Germany. Hamburg to be exact.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs Gresham, I’m going to put up the dividing screen.’ Kellner pointed playfully at the driver and pressed a button. In a few seconds, Beck and Kellner were in a sealed environment.
‘Now, Beck, consider this space a confessional.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m not sayin’ I’m guilty or anything, but you know a priest would rather die than reveal a confession.’
‘In theory, sir.’
‘Yeah. Well here is no theory. You get my meaning?’
Beck nodded.
‘Good. Now take your eyes off the brown dirt and green leaves of north Virginia and look closely at my lips. You are going to hear some facts. Of a very secret nature.’
Beck took a deep breath and nodded.
‘Good, Beck. I can tell you’re taking this seriously. Now, many people have asked this question: why was it, when the Coalition had the Iraqi army on the run from Kuwait in the first Gulf War, that we did not finish Saddam off once and for all?’
‘Are you asking me the question, sir?’
‘Can you answer it?’
‘A number of factors, sir. I mean, first and foremost, the Iraqi army was willing to surrender. Also, the terms of the UN Resolutions. They covered ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, but not toppling the regime. We had a famous victory with minimal loss of life. Invasion of Iraq had presumably not been planned for in any detail, and casualties might have been politically difficult to sustain. Then there’s world opinion and the issue of the balance of power in the Mid-East, sir. Unpredictable consequences. Relations with the Saudis. In short, sir, while the opportunity was ripe, there may have been too many unpredictable factors. There was of course the hope of an Iraqi uprising against their dictator. I guess there was talk of generals mutinying against Saddam and stuff like that. Restraint seemed appropriate. Colin Powell’s style, sir.’
‘I’m impressed, Beck. Again. Do tell me when you’re applying for my job. I’d like to know in advance.’
Beck laughed modestly.
‘All right, Sherman. That’s a pretty good summary of what we might call the external position.’
‘External position, sir?’
‘There was another factor. Back in 1990, the CIA had intelligence – mainly from the Israelis – that Saddam was working on a new weapon.’
‘The super gun, sir?’
‘That’s the one you could talk about, Beck. The Agency began to hear about an amazing dude workin’ on the Iraqi chemical and biological programme.’
‘Dr Sami al-Qasr?’
‘You got it. Do you get the rest?’
Beck closed his eyes and thought hard for a few seconds. ‘A DNA weapon.’
‘A DNA selective weapon. Details varied. But Saddam was very clever. He could be, you know. He didn’t threaten the United States directly. He didn’t say, “March on Baghdad and I’ll hit you with something you never even heard of.” What he did was this. He knew the Israelis had a spy at al-Tuwaitha. So he seeded just sufficient information to get the Mossad on the hotline and give Uncle Sam the willies.’
‘And did it?’
‘You betcha. This was something we just hadn’t bargained for. You could say this was the moment when the term “Weapons of Mass Destruction” came into its own. For the handful of us who knew about the situation, WMD was mainly a euphemism—’
‘Right. You got it. Now, we couldn’t go on air and tell the world about this thing. Why do you think that was, Beck?’
‘Because we wanted it ourselves.’
‘Right. We wanted it ourselves. And we didn’t want anyone to know we wanted it. You may recall how much power having the atomic bomb gave us when nobody knew we had it. Well, we lost that advantage soon enough after we dropped the bomb, though for a while we were still ahead, because no one else had it. Then, thanks to the KGB, we lost that as well. Before al-Qasr, we hadn’t experienced that kind of power for a long, long time. And what we wanted, it looked like Iraq had. But we couldn’t just ask them, “Hey, do you have a terrifying DNA-altering weapon?” All we could do was try to find out if it was possible that they were so far ahead of us on that. Need I say that when information on al-Qasr started coming in, there were a lot of butts fidgeting around when it came to deciding: Do we go for Baghdad this year?’
‘Jeez!’ Beck shook his head in disbelief. ‘You telling me that because of this guy…?’
Kellner nodded. ‘I guess I am.’
Beck took time absorbing the information. ‘But that means…’
‘Go on, Beck. Do my thinking for me.’
‘But when al-Qasr came over to the US in 1992, why didn’t we invade?’
‘You’re on the right lines. Keep thinking.’
‘OK. So al-Qasr comes over; he’s debriefed. And he tells our people that he’s left in a hurry and a lot of his work is still in Saddam’s hands, and they’re still workin’ on it, and without him the US will never catch up.’
‘Getting warmer.’
‘And he says that in 1990 the threat was exaggerated, but the potential for development was there.’
‘Boy, you’re getting warm.’
‘But the US would need to develop the counter weapon – and there’s no need to invade immediately because they’re still a few years away from battlefield deployment. The heat’s off. Anyhow, the UN has gone in. And guys like the Brit David Kelly are on the case.’
‘You are hot, Beck. I’m thinking of promoting you right now.’
‘But Saddam starts pissing with the UN inspection team. And we start wondering if he’s got something up his sleeve. The Israelis are getting anxious. And – 9/11…’
‘9/11. The issue of WMD shoots right up into the stratosphere. So the plan to invade is hatched. The ostensible purpose – well, you know all about that.’
‘And the government has to allow the Iraq Survey Group to throw egg on its face.’
‘Right, Beck. Because the US does not want it to be known that the weapon they were searching for really does exist.’
Beck’s jaw dropped. ‘So all that stuff about going to war on a false prospectus – and the Michael Moore film and all that stuff that suggested incompetence…’
‘Just had to be taken on the chin, son. I guess it always will. Why d’ya think Colin Powell – in spite of everything – still supported the war?
‘That’s the thing you gotta understand about a secret weapon, Beck. It’s only powerful when it’s secret. Get it?’
‘Just one question, sir?’
‘Shoot.’
‘Did the Iraqis have the weapon?’
Kellner smiled. ‘What d’ya think?’