Mission Compromised Page 11

  Rachel was shocked. “Oh … Inga, I'm sorry … I didn't know. Weren't all the killings on the first day? How were you ever able to do what you did after that? How could you even function or stay so calm? You even talked the terrorists out of killing more people.” Rachel's curiosity spilled out.

  Inga shook her head and said, “It wasn't me. I don't know where the words came from. I am not a brave person. I don't know what possessed me to stand up to the ringleader and tell him to stop the shooting and torture. I do know that I prayed. And I know that God gave me the words to say … that's all I can tell you.”

  Rachel felt awkward, and her questions seemed forced and stilted. She desperately needed to keep the conversation about Inga and not about her. Yet even as she clumsily asked questions, she was fascinated by Inga's story. She didn't want to cause her former classmate more pain, but she couldn't stop now. “In the training video that TWA put together, there is some newsreel footage showing one of the terrorists holding you against the bulkhead by the open door. He has a gun underneath your chin. It looks like you're going to be the next one killed. It's clear in the video that he's saying something to you and that you say something back. But in the video, there is no sound. But a few moments later, he stands back and takes the gun away. And it wasn't much longer after that that the terrorists left the airplane. What was he saying to you, and what did you say back to him?”

  Inga looked as though she was far away. “He was the ringleader. It was right after he had shot another American in the foot. I don't know what made me do it, but I got up from my seat and told him he couldn't do that anymore. That's when he grabbed me and pushed me up to the cabin door. He jammed that enormous gun hard under my chin and screamed that he was going to kill me. And I said, ‘I hope you will find forgiveness.’ And then he said—this is the part you see in the video—‘Why aren't you afraid to die?’ And all I said was, ‘I'm not afraid to die because I know where I'm going and I know why I'm going there.’ That's when he backed up and let me go. And as you know, an hour or so later it was all over.”

  Rachel was puzzled. “That's it? What made you say that, Inga? Where did he think you were going?”

  Now it was Inga's turn to be puzzled. She looked at her classmate and said, “I said what came to mind, even with that gun jammed into my throat—it's the essential truth of Christianity. There is no need to be afraid of death if you know where you are going after you die. And all true Christians know where they are going—it's just that most of them don't know when. At that point, I was sure that I knew.” Inga said this last part with just the faintest hint of a smile.

  Perhaps it was Inga's subtle smile, maybe it was the guilt Rachel was feeling from the night's activities with Mitch, but Rachel reacted with some irritation. “Of course you're a Christian. I'm a Christian too. My parents are lifelong Methodists—so were my grandparents. We've always been Christians, but I'm not sure I know what difference that would make in a situation like yours, on that hijacked plane,” Rachel said, shaking her head.

  “You know, Rachel, I used to think the same thing, but a year before the Beirut incident, a dear old lady was on one of my flights. She was on her way from California to bury her daughter who had been killed in New York in some senseless street shooting. This young girl had been a totally innocent bystander who got in the way of a bullet that killed her instantly.”

  “How awful!” Rachel exclaimed. “I'll bet that poor mother was a basket case.”

  “That's what I'd have thought,” Inga said, “but she wasn't. She had such composure and peace in spite of what had happened to her daughter. She told me, ‘I've had some time to get used to the idea. The police called to inform me about the shooting two days ago. Since then my husband and I have tried to make sense of it all.’ I asked her where her husband was, and she told me that he had gone on ahead to make funeral arrangements.

  “I couldn't get over her composure, and so I asked her about it. She told me that she was a Christian, like we thought we were, too, you know? But she explained that your faith has to be personal in order to be real. She said, ‘I trust God—even in this tragedy. I know that He has not abandoned us, and He has promised to give us peace and comfort.’ Then, since we still had over an hour of flight time left, and I was caught up on my cabin duties, I sat down beside her. I thought I could console her. But she ended up consoling me.”

  Rachel was intrigued. The waiter interrupted their conversation as he brought Rachel's order along with Inga's breakfast. The two women thanked him in unison and began to eat.

  Inga took a sip of her orange juice. “Anyway, this sweet little lady told me how, though she grieved for her murdered daughter, she didn't despair because she knew that her daughter was a true believer and follower of Jesus Christ, and she knew that her daughter was in heaven.”

  “I've heard people talk like that,” Rachel said quietly, “but it's always kind of put me off, you know? I mean, it sounds kind of arrogant to me. Like there are different levels of religion and theirs is more real than mine. And how can anyone know that they are going to heaven?”

  “I know what you're saying, Rachel. I was like that, too,” Inga replied, “but deep down I knew I didn't have anything like that inside me. I mean, the faith of that lady was real. It really was personal. I wished I had that kind of faith, and I told her so. Then she spent the next half hour telling me how I could have real faith in God. That made me wonder what would happen to me when I died, something I'd never really thought about. Have you ever really thought about what will happen to you when you die?”

  Once again, Rachel could feel her cheeks beginning to flush. Suddenly the spacious dining room seemed too hot, too small. She had the horrible thought that Mitch might come bounding in and say something that would reveal their secret to Inga. Rachel interrupted her friend. “Uh … listen, Inga. Sorry—I just noticed the time … and I'm running late. I need to get my things and catch the shuttle to O'Hare. It was sure nice seeing you again. Let's try to stay in touch,” she said as she rose to pay the bill.

  “What flight are you on today?” Inga asked.

  “Chicago to San Diego, then back to Dulles. I'll get to sleep in my own bed tonight,” Rachel said with a smile that she didn't feel. The words my own bed tonight seemed somehow out of place, embarrassing.

  “The nine-fifty flight to San Diego?” Inga asked.

  “Yeah … flight 1529.”

  “I'm flying standby to San Diego on that flight. Unless it's completely booked, I'll see you aboard the flight. Maybe we can talk some more,” Inga said, excited at seeing her old friend and hoping they'd be able to spend some more time together.

  Rachel smiled sheepishly and waved as she put her credit card back into her purse. “Great—I can't wait,” she said without much sincerity as she turned to leave.

  BAGHDAD

  CHAPTER SIX

  Office of the Commander, Amn Al-Khass

  ________________________________________

  Special Security Service Headquarters

  Palestine Street, Baghdad, Iraq

  Tuesday, 29 November 1994

  2305 Hours, Local

  Hussein Kamil was unhappy, almost despondent. The first cousin and son-in-law of the country's Supreme Leader, The Defender of Islam, Secretary General of the Ba'ath Socialist Party, Head of State, and Commander of the Armed Forces surely had his benefits, but connection to all those titles also carried its liabilities. One of the benefits was that in exchange for marrying Saddam Hussein's only attractive daughter, Kamil got to be the Minister of Military Industrialization and commander of the Amn Al-Khass—the SSS, Iraq's Special Security Services and one of the world's most feared organizations. But as far as Kamil was concerned, one of his most serious liabilities—and perhaps his greatest threat—was sitting opposite him right now: his brother-in-law, Saddam Hussein's second (though some said favorite) son, Qusay Hussein.

  Although they were in his office, Kamil had diffidently escorted his broth
er-in-law to the seat at the head of the oval conference table where the second son of Iraq's Supreme Leader could feel in charge. Kamil gestured for Qusay to take the favored chair.

  “My father is not pleased,” Qusay said sharply as he sat.

  “What do you mean, he is not pleased?” queried Kamil, trying to control his nerves as he took a seat on the corner of the table nearest the dictator's son. It is always like this, he thought. The phone would ring late at night. A meeting—always a very late-night meeting—would be ordered. The caller would invariably be Qusay or his older brother, Uday, or it might be Saddam's personal secretary, Abd Hamid Mahmoud.

  The meeting—no matter where it took place—would invariably start with a series of open-ended statements that sounded more like accusations. There was never a correct reply. The best that you could hope for was not to say something that could be used against you in the many paranoid purges that characterized the Supreme Leader's regime. Tonight's inquisition appeared to be no different.

  “He is not happy with your efforts at identifying and dealing with traitors,” continued Qusay. “He is especially unhappy that Khidir Hamza has still not been found and eliminated. It has been too long! What are you doing about him?” On a hot August day four months earlier, Khidir Hamza, the number-two man in Iraq's supersecret nuclear weapons program, had walked out the door of his house in Baghdad's high-security palace compound and disappeared. Since he was a walking repository of secrets and information of great value, especially for the West, tracking him down and killing him was Kamil's personal responsibility.

  “My people are working on it. We have arrested scores of people, tortured dozens, and interrogated his wife and children. We will find him. Please assure our father that Hamza will be tracked down and punished for his ingratitude,” replied Kamil.

  In truth, Kamil had no real idea where Hamza was, but he didn't want to admit that to anyone, least of all Qusay Hussein. Hamza's defection, if that's what his disappearance was, could be fatal for Kamil—if he failed to find and silence him. He hoped that Qusay wasn't about to deliver a deadline by which the traitorous scientist had to be found and eliminated.

  More than anyone else in Iraq, Kamil knew how valuable Hamza would be to the West—particularly the hated CIA and British intelligence. Hamza knew everything about the Iraqi efforts to build the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. And Hussein Kamil was the person who had hired him to build it.

  “I am absolutely confident that we shall soon have him in our hands,” Kamil said, though he felt anything but confidence. Professional torturers in the bowels of the Al Ranighwania prison had produced “testimony” from other poor souls that Hamza had been seen in the company of Iraqi dissidents in the mountains not far from the Turkish border. But by the time the assassination teams Kamil had dispatched arrived in Zakhu, deep in the Kurdish-controlled territory north of the Tigris, the traitor had disappeared, assuming that was where he had been in the first place. When the assassination teams returned to the SSS unit in Mosul empty-handed, Kamil had them shot for failing their mission. It occurred to him that Qusay and his father-in-law might be considering such a fate for him since he was the ultimate authority to whom the Amn Al-Khass teams reported.

  Qusay grimaced. “I am told that Hamza was seen over two months ago in the North where the American swine recruit traitors for their puppet opposition. The Iraqi National Congress resistance wouldn't exist but for the American dollars they are spreading around like camel dung in a corral. What are you doing about it? My father wants to know if you can be trusted to do your job,” he barked.

  Then why doesn't he ask me himself? thought Kamil. But he didn't say it. He knew better. Kamil was, of course, recording this conversation. He audio- and videotaped nearly everything that took place in this office. Except, of course, the visits by the Filipino and Thai prostitutes sent by the Japanese ambassador. So he naturally assumed that Qusay was also recording this conversation for his own use—either with a radio microphone hidden beneath his robes or in his attaché case that he had placed so strategically on the table. It was all part of a lethal game of cat and mouse, a game that every senior official in Iraq played. It had been so even before Saddam Hussein had seized the reigns of power in 1969. It got worse after Saddam proclaimed himself president in 1979. And, since the 1990–91 war, spying on one another had become a full-time, and essential, part of staying in power—and staying alive. Kamil wondered if Qusay had obtained one of the new laser listening devices that could be beamed against an unprotected windowpane and tuned to vibrations caused by the voices inside. Kamil had recently acquired such an apparatus, made in Sweden and delivered to him courtesy of a Saudi prince whom he was blackmailing.

  Kamil also knew that the brothers, Uday and Qusay, both resented his power. As Minister for Military Industrialization, Kamil was responsible for building Iraq's arsenal of mass destruction weapons—biological, chemical, and nuclear. And as the commander of the Amn Al-Khass, he was given the vast resources, both human and financial, of the Amn Al-Khass to run a global arms and technology acquisition network and, along with it, an extensive stable of agents, spies, and assassins. He also knew that if the brothers Uday and Qusay were able to convince their father that Kamil was incompetent or somehow disloyal, nothing except a capricious whim of Allah could save him.

  Qusay's challenge hung in the air like the smell of garlic. Kamil sighed deeply and looked around his opulently appointed office for an appropriate answer.

  The Persian carpet was a two-hundred-year-old treasure from Tabriz. The German pharmacologists from Frankfurt, who were helping to concoct Iraq's next generation of toxic nerve agents, had given it to him as a gift. The unique hand-rubbed mahogany for the walls had been delivered by Li Hoia Shan himself on one of his many trips to bring surface-to-air missile components and telemetry systems from Beijing to Baghdad. The desk, big as a battleship, and the matching conference table at which they now sat had been flown here by Giuseppi Rinaldi when he delivered the last batch of communications and computer equipment direct from Genoa. In fact, thought Kamil, about the only thing in this office that is native to Iraq is the enormous painting of our magnificent leader adorning the wall behind my desk. Its artist had used great license in portraying Saddam; Kamil thought it caricatured his father-in-law's eccentricities, but Saddam loved it. That pompous fool can't be properly captured on canvas, Kamil thought. But now he had to answer the question of his brother-in-law, who had begun to tap incessantly on the table.

  “Please, Qusay, think of what you are saying,” began Kamil in a soft but authoritative voice. “You are looking at the negative side. Think positive. The Amn Al-Khass is totally loyal to your father—the father of my wife, my father-in-law, the grandfather of my children and your nephews and nieces, our nation's greatest leader.” His emphasis on family ties did not register with Qusay so Kamil took a more businesslike stance. He leaned across the table and spoke to Qusay with sincerity and authority. His tone and body language were assertive as he said, “I created Amn Al-Khass and have made it work. I run it to protect our father, the Ba'ath Party, and the state, and it will always be so. This organization is not yet five years old, but already we have had great success.” Kamil waited for his words to take effect before continuing, as much for the reaction of anyone else who might be listening to his conversation as for his brother-in-law.

  “When the American president tried to provoke a rebellion among the Shia after the imperialists were driven from our homeland in 1991, your father, our great leader, gave me the task of eliminating the threat they posed to him and to the Ba'ath Party,” Kamil reminded Qusay. “As you know, I personally saw to it that more than ten thousand of those Shia gangsters were exterminated at Al Ranighwania. The mullahs next door and their Shia lackeys have been completely eliminated as a threat. And I am talking about one man, Qusay—I have purged those ten thousand enemies for your father!

  “Since then, the Amn Al-Khass has grown to become our glo
rious nation's most effective instrument for dealing with traitors and spies.” Kamil decided that if Qusay or someone else was indeed recording all this, they ought to get an earful. He continued. “Of course I mean no disrespect to the members and leaders of the Mukhabarat. They are certainly courageous defenders of the Party and your father, our great leader. But Qusay, you and I both know that the General Intelligence Directorate is not what it used to be. Back in the old days, when it was just the Jihaz al-Khass—the Special Apparatus—we could all count on the loyalty of everyone involved. You know that it is no longer the case.”

  Kamil paused so that his brother-in-law could make a decision as to whether he wanted the conversation to continue in this direction. Qusay only nodded, so Kamil continued. “When Fadil al Barak was under consideration to head the GID, I told your father that he could not be trusted.” Here, Kamil knew he was treading in dangerous waters. But he wanted this on tape, so he forged ahead, choosing his words carefully. “There were … uh … some around your father who dissuaded him of the accuracy of my information, and Fadil was appointed despite my warnings.” Again Kamil paused, for Uday, the exalted leader's eldest son, had been one of those who had urged the appointment.

  Qusay said nothing, but nodded again. Kamil pressed on. “It took until 1989 to verify that my information was indeed correct. And, as I am sure you remember, it took almost two more years of ‘interrogation’ to convince Fadil to admit that he was loyal—not to your father—but to the KGB. I was given the honor of personally executing the traitorous pig,” Kamil added proudly, but with just the right amount of humility.