Honour Among Thieves by Jeffrey Archer

Author:Jeffrey Archer [Archer, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: English fiction, General, Espionage, Fiction
ISBN: 9780006476061
Google: ohrdUofmS00C
Amazon: 0006476066
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-01-01T16:42:57+00:00

Chapter 17

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was nailed to the wall behind him.

Saddam continued puffing at his cigar as he lounged back in his chair. All of them seated around the table waited for him to speak. He glanced to his right.

‘My brother, we are proud of you. You have served our country and the Ba’ath Party with distinction, and when the moment comes for my people to be informed of your heroic deeds, your name will be written in the history of our nation as one of its great heroes.’

Al Obaydi sat at the other end of the table, listening to the words of his leader. His fists, hidden under the table, were clenched to stop himself shaking. Several times on the journey back to Baghdad he had been aware that he was being shadowed. They had searched his luggage at almost every stop, but they had found nothing, because there was nothing to find. Saddam’s half-brother had seen to that. Once the Declaration had reached the safety of their mission in Geneva he hadn’t even been allowed to pass it over to the Ambassador in person. Its guaranteed route in the diplomatic pouch made it impossible to intercept even with the combined efforts of the Americans and the Israelis.

Saddam’s half-brother now sat on the President’s right-hand side, basking in his leader’s eulogy.

Saddam swung himself slowly back round and stared down at the other end of the table.

‘And I also acknowledge,’ he continued, ‘the role played by Hamid Al Obaydi, whom I have appointed to be our Ambassador in Paris. His name must not, however, be associated with this enterprise, lest it harm his chances of representing us on foreign soil.’

And thus it had been decreed. Saddam’s half-brother was to be acknowledged as the architect of this triumph, while Al Obaydi was to be a footnote on a page, quickly turned. Had Al Obaydi failed, Saddam’s half-brother would have been ignorant of even the original idea, and Al Obaydi’s bones would even now be rotting in an unmarked grave. Since Saddam had spoken no one round that table, except for the State Prosecutor, had given Al Obaydi a second look. All other eyes, and smiles, rested on Saddam’s half-brother.

It was at that moment, in the midst of the meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council, that Al Obaydi came to his decision.

Dollar Bill sat slouched on a stool, leaning on the bar in unhappy hour, happily sipping his favourite liquid. He was the establishment’s only customer, unless you counted the slip of a woman in a Laura Ashley dress who sat silently in the corner. The barman assumed she was drunk, as she hadn’t moved a muscle for the past hour.

Dollar Bill wasn’t at first aware of the man who stumbled through the swing doors, and wouldn’t have given him a second look had he not sat himself on the stool next to his. The intruder ordered a gin and tonic. Dollar Bill had a natural aversion to any man who

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