SADDAMS BOMBMAKER by KHIDHIR HAMZA

Author:KHIDHIR HAMZA
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political History
Publisher: SCRIBNER
Published: 2001-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GETTING THE GOODS

THE SKY was a gun gray with a chilly wind out of the north when I landed in Bonn in late August 1987. As usual, a security type from the embassy was waiting when I walked out of the airport with two assistants. A dark, thin man, he quickly put me in a bad mood by trying to chat me up as soon as we got into the car. I’d long ago tired of these low-level agents trying to learn what we were up to. Unprofessional, habitual liars with bad breath and worse Arabic, they were nothing but trouble. I finally told the agent point-blank to shut up because we were too tired for his questions. My two assistants smiled approvingly. When we arrived at the hotel, I dismissed the agent and said we’d catch a cab to the embassy on our own. He sullenly obeyed.

I was exhausted. I’d slept little on the flight, whiling away the hours staring out the window, nursing drinks and picking at my food, contemplating an escape. I hadn’t a clue as to how I was going to pull it off, of course, since I had no trusted contacts, or even a name to look up. Few Iraqi officials had defected and lived to tell about it. All I had were my survival instincts from nearly twenty years inside the regime. I decided I’d just have to stay alert to the odd inflection in a voice, the curious expression in a contact’s eyes, the hint of corruptibility that told me it was safe to go forward. Ironically, in this hall of mirrors, the people I’d have to keep my guard up with would be Iraqis who encouraged me to grouse about Saddam. It could be a trap.

First off, however, I had to check in with Ali Abdul-Muttalib, the greasy entrepreneur who headed Kamel’s clandestine arms- purchasing network in Europe. Apparently he was still in good graces, though Kamel had curtailed his activities in the technical domain. While Abdul-Muttalib dealt with high-tech companies all the time, he was technically illiterate. So Kamel had split my mission in two, ordering me to do as much purchasing as possible with Abdul-Muttalib, but leave the information-gathering and computer requirements to Anees Wadi, his partner at Meed International in London. In addition, since my trip to Germany was budgeted for less than two weeks, I decided to leave the negotiations for a foundry to my assistants and concentrate on trying to fill the other, more sensitive requirements directly with Abdul-Muttalib’s many black marketeers. Right away, though, I had to make clear who was in charge. When Abdul-Muttalib started grilling me on the purpose of my purchases and what project we were working on, I put down my pen and locked eyes with him.

“Look,” I said, “stop asking questions. Your job is to make arrangements to help me get what I need. If you have any doubts, you can pick up that phone and call Kamel yourself.” I waited for him to make a move.

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