With Hostile Intent

Chapter Nine Latifiyah

Tyrwhitt gazed out at the lights of Baghdad. It was warm outside, peaceful now, the lights of the city twinkling in the darkness like a blanket of diamonds. On evenings like this, Tyrwhitt could visualize what it must have been like that night in 1991.

It was the mother of all sound and light shows. Sirens, gunfire, tracers arcing through the blackness… Tomahawk missiles cruising like homing pigeons… the earth trembling with the impact of bombs… sudden eruptions of fire and brick and evil black smoke… the veil of darkness cloaking the invisible enemy…

From these very windows in the Rasheed Hotel the international press pool had witnessed the dismantling of Baghdad. Here in the Rasheed Hotel they watched the most spectacular display of military pyrotechnics in modern warfare.

When would it happen again?

Soon, Tyrwhitt thought. Sooner than anyone expected.

He turned from the window, feeling the onset of the old familiar loneliness that afflicted him on nights like this. He had had enough of Baghdad. Enough of Iraq and its problems. For too long he had lived in this squalid and oppressed place. He had lived with this same debilitating fear, dreading the day when the Bazrum would knocking on his door.

Too long without Claire.

Thank God for the Cyfonika. Since the war the Iraqi telephone system was even more useless than before. International calls to and from Baghdad passed through the Bazrum’s eavesdropping operators and were hopelessly delayed or misrouted. At least the Cyfonika satellite communicator permitted him to call anywhere in the world. In order to cloak the device’s true purpose from the suspicious Bazrum — transmitting encrypted data to the CIA post in Riyadh — Tywhitt made frequent use of the Cyfonika for personal calls. He called his editor in Sydney to discuss new stories. Other times, usually when he’d been drinking, he telephoned old mates scattered around the planet. When he was lonely, as he was tonight, he called Claire.

As he expected, she was asleep in her hotel in Bahrain. She was not pleased.

Tyrwhitt explained to her what he wanted to do: They would drive around the countryside of Iraq, viewing the sites the UNSCOM — United Nations Special Commission — inspectors had tried without success to examine. It was a wonderful idea.

“No way,” said Claire.

“Not so fast, darling. It would be a great story, showing both sides of the debate. It would be a coup.”

“Some coup. It would make me seem as much a suck up to Iraq as you are.”

“What if I arranged an exclusive interview with Saddam?”

“I don’t want to interview Saddam. I despise him, and I despise Baghdad.”

“Really, Claire, the place has changed. There’s a lot to love here.”

“Name one thing.”

“Me, for one.”

“All the more reason not to go.”

Tyrwhitt groaned theatrically. “Claire, darling, you’re breaking my heart.”

“What heart?”

He had to laugh, even though he knew he was getting nowhere. Claire wasn’t coming. Okay, he thought, time to to bring out the heavy artillery.

“I suppose,” he said, “you know about the incident in the No Fly Zone?”

“That shoot down? Old stuff. As a matter of fact, I interviewed the Navy pilot who shot down the Iraqi.”

“Oh? So you’re still keeping company with the flyboys, are you?”

“That’s it. I’m hanging up, Chris.”

“Sorry. Does your Navy chap happen to know who it was that he shot down?”

There was a pause and he knew he had her attention. “Somebody I should know about?” she asked.

“A fellow named Al-Fariz.”

“Wait a minute. I’m getting a pencil. Spell that for me.”

Tyrwhitt spelled the name. Then he told her about Captain Hakim Al-Fariz and the young officer’s relationship to the president of Iraq. He left out the details about the executions of the officers involved in controlling the mission. The Cyfonika in unencrypted mode was as public as a telephone.

In the long silence that followed, he could hear Claire Phillips’s mind working. “That’s pretty interesting,” she said finally. “What’s going to happen next?”

“I have no idea,” he said for the benefit of the Bazrum eavesdroppers. “Why don’t you fly up here and we’ll find out together?”

He heard her groan. “Nice try, Chris. You get the exclusive on this one. I have other plans.”

“What do they call this place?”

“Latifiyah,” said Muhammad, his driver.

Tyrwhitt nodded, feigning ignorance. He knew about Latifiyah. It was forty kilometers south of Baghdad. It had been a weapons depot and a prime target for coalition bombers during the Gulf War. By the end of the campaign, the Latifiyah facility looked like an archeological dig. During the UNSCOM period, when frustrated United Nations inspectors tried to enter Latifiyah, the Iraqis blocked their entry.

Tyrwhitt could see that Latifiyah had been recently transformed. A complex of new buildings had been constructed and, by the looks of the walls and the fortified roofs, the structures were meant to be bomb-resistant.

“Can we visit the place? You know, just to look around?”

Muhammad shook his head vigorously. “It is forbidden. We must not approach any closer than we are now.”

They were at least five kilometers from the complex. Tyrwhitt had ordered Muhammad to stop the Land Rover at the crest of a hill overlooking the complex. Down below, he could make out the network of fences and observation towers. Dust trails rose behind roving patrol vehicles.

“What do they do there?” Tyrwhitt asked Muhammad.

Muhammad shook his head vigorously. “It is not a matter that concerns us.”

Tyrwhitt didn’t press him on it. It was a charade they both played. He knew that Muhammad had a very good idea what they did there, and they both understood that it was in neither’s best interest to flaunt such knowledge.

Over the past year Tyrwhitt had developed a liking for Muhammad. The Iraqi possessed a sense of humor, and he didn’t ask too many questions about these excursions in the desert. Muhammad, who came not from Baghdad but from Samarra in the north, took great pains to keep Tywhitt out of trouble.

As he was trying to do today.

But this was Iraq. In this troubled country you made no assumptions about loyalty, a commodity more scarce than cow’s milk. Tyrwhitt presumed Muhammad was in the employ of the Bazrum. Even if he was not, he was without doubt subjected to frequent interrogations about his Australian client. Such was the reality of life in Iraq.

Tyrwhitt pulled his Zeiss field glasses from his knapsack. Ignoring Muhammad’s distressed look, he stepped out of the Land Rover and focused the glasses on the Latifiyah complex. With the eight-power resolution, he observed something he had not seen earlier: vehicle tracks approaching the buildings. They sloped down a ramp, into a subterranean chamber beneath each building. It meant that whatever the buildings contained was buried deep in the earth, probably encased in layers of concrete.

It was intended to be bombproof.

He noticed something else. At each corner of the perimeter fence was a battery of skyward-pointing large-bore weapons. Fifty-seven millimeter AA guns, Tyrwhitt guessed. They were on trailers and could be quickly redeployed.

There was more. Over there, at the far end of the facility, was a large-wheeled truck with a sloped track in its bed. And another. Tyrwhitt counted three in all. He was sure there would be more.

Mobile SAM launchers.

Tyrwhitt whistled softly. It all added up. Latifiyah was one of eight new complexes he knew about. This one, more than any other, had the look and feel of a prime weapons assembly facility.

He now had material for two pieces of reportage. The first was for public consumption, describing the heroic struggle of beleaguered Iraq to preserve its sacred sovereignty by barring UNSCOM inspectors from peaceful industrial plants like Latifiyah. For his objective reporting, Tyrwhitt would receive the praise and gratitude of the Minister of Information and, perhaps, even Saddam himself.

The second report, encrypted within the first and transmitted via the Cyfonika, would reach a different audience. It would detail the layout, anti-aircraft defenses, and precise coordinates of each structure in the Latifiyah weapons plant. With the information Tyrwhitt supplied, allied warplanes would—

“They’re coming!” said Muhammad.

Tyrwhitt swung the glasses to where Muhammad was pointing. Yes, they sure as hell were. A rooster tail of dust rose behind the desert-drab vehicle that was speeding toward them. In the back of the vehicle he could see soldiers holding their weapons at the ready.

Tyrwhitt lowered the glasses. Instinctively he reached down and touched his ankle holster, making sure the Beretta nine-millimeter was still in place. It was.

“Move over,” he ordered. Shoving Muhammad aside, he climbed into the driver’s side. He jammed the Land Rover into gear and stomped on the accelerator.

Abdallah Al-Kazeem, the Iraqi Minister of Information, had ghastly breath. Tyrwhitt winced as the minister spoke directly into his face. “You are a friend of Iraq, and a journalist of the very greatest magnitude,” said the minister. Then, to Tyrwhitt’s disgust, Al-Kazeem kissed him. Not once, but twice.

Al-Kazeem regularly threw these receptions to preserve his relations with the foreign press corps in Baghdad. To Tyrwhitt, the whole thing was a joke. What remained of the Baghdad press corps amounted to no more than a dozen full time correspondents, down from over a hundred. All the heavyweights — Morrison of Reuters, Hughes from the AP, Amanpour from CNN — had packed up and gone. Baghdad was no longer prime time. Now there were only the second-stringers like Baxter, who toiled for BBC, or Wenger, the super serious German who wrote dispatches for “Die Welt.” And Chris Tyrwhitt, whose employer, World Wide News, was famous for its anti-American bias.

Tyrwhitt knew that he had forfeited most of his own credibility with the overseas press community. They considered him tainted because of his sympathetic attitude toward Iraq. In some circles they had even taken to calling him “Baghdad Ben.”

Screw them was Tyrwhitt’s attitude. As far as he was concerned, the fraternity of foreign correspondents was like a pack of jackals, snapping and stealing and fighting over their precious little scraps of information. None of their opinions mattered to him.

None except one. Someday, he thought, it would be nice if Claire knew the truth about her ex-husband. He doubted if that day would come.

Al-Kazeem finished bestowing compliments and kisses on Tyrwhitt. While the minister launched into a speech in Arabic, Tyrwhitt returned to the cluster of reporters standing in the audience.

“Amazing,” whispered Baxter. “Anyone else would have been tortured and shot after being caught in a forbidden area.”

“They didn’t catch me.”

“That’s because they’re incompetent,” said Baxter. “They can figure out who it was they were chasing out there at Latifiyah. If it was anyone else, he’d be hanging on a meat hook now. You they give a medal and a kiss.”

“They respect my reportorial style.”

“They respect that servile drivel you write for them. Like the piece you just did about brave little Iraq throwing out the oppressive UNSCOM inspectors.”

Tyrwhitt shrugged. To hell with Baxter. But the truth was, it had been a close thing — and a foolish decision — running from the armed security detail back there at Latifiyah. Thank God for the Land Rover. He didn’t like to think what might have happened if he had been caught. Some illiterate Republican Guard sergeant could have performed a summary execution on the spot.

Al-Kazeem was well into his speech, speaking in rapid fire Arabic. With his rudimentary command of the language, Tyrwhitt understood only about half of what was said. His Arabic was adequate enough to communicate with taxi drivers, order whiskey, and negotiate with the proprietor of the Tammuz whore house. That was enough.

“What’s he saying?” he asked Baxter.

“Something about Iraq’s courageous president defying the American murderers.”

“Smart guy. He’ll go far.”

The minister rambled on, then concluded his speech to unanimous applause. The occasion was not of enough importance to warrant the attendance of Saddam, or even Aziz, the deputy prime minister. The audience was mostly middle grade government officials and military officers.

The guests were ushered into a hall where tables were laden with fresh fruit and pastry. To Tyrwhitt’s great relief, there was a bar. He ordered a scotch, slammed it down, and immediately ordered a refill.

Half a dozen Iraqi bureaucrats came by to shake Tyrwhitt’s hand. Several uniformed officers, mostly colonels and brigadiers, their chests laden with dangling medals, introduced themselves and congratulated Tyrwhitt on his reporting.

Standing at the bar, Tyrwhitt became aware of an officer, a hawk-faced man with intense brown eyes, studying him. He returned the officer’s gaze. An uneasy feeling crept over him. It was unusual in the Arab world for men to maintain eye contact like this one was doing. The officer was staring at him like a bird of prey.

There was something familiar about the man. Those unblinking dark eyes, the beak-like nose.

Tyrwhitt walked over to him. “My name is Chris Tyrwhitt,” he said. “Do I know you?”

“Certainly not,” said the man in a voice that sent an alarm through Tyrwhitt. “I am Colonel Tariq Jabbar.”