Chapter 3 

	A week later, the same pair of colonels who had picked up Colonel Kamil the 
night of the American election arrived to fetch him at his hastily rebuilt office on Anter 
Square. Fully aware that the penalty for failure in the President's eyes was death, Kamil 
was filled with foreboding that he was being summoned by Saddam in order to explain 
the loss of the plant at Tarmiyah.  The driver said nothing during the whole trip, but 
followed the Military Canal to the outskirts of the city, finally stopping at the gates of a 
quiet villa surrounded by a high wall. 
	Two sentries at the wooden gate immediately waved them through, and Kamil 
noticed the grounds were more heavily patrolled than usual, even for the protection of 
Saddam Hussein. 
	At the villa's front door, a second pair of sentries checked Kamil's papers, then let 
him through the doors, telling him to go to the dining room on the right. 
	Seated around a large lacquered table were Saddam Hussein, his middle half 
brother, Sabawi, and Dr. Stemmler. 
	"Hussein Kamil Hassan al-Majid! Keef halahk!" Saddam greeted the Colonel with 
the same joviality he had shown him on the night of November 2nd,  slapping his son-in-
law on the shoulder. 
	"M'leeh, shookran." 
	"Good!  Good!" 
	Saddam motioned for Kamil to join the others at the table, then sat down and let 
his brother, Sabawi, open up the meeting. "Sabawi has brought us good news from 
Zurich." 
	"Shookran, Mr. President.  TRAPDOOR is ours."  Sabawi carefully handed a slim 
folder to Colonel Kamil, who, in turn, passed it to his father-in-law, Saddam. 
	Without opening the file, Iraq's president handed it back to his son-in-law, Hussein 
Kamil.  . . . it couldn't be possible, thought the colonel, finding himself now holding the 
separate, plain-white sheet of paper in his hand with the two code groups written on it. 
	"This is the trigger?  For the Trojan Horse?" 
	"Na'am," Yes, Sabawi whispered. 
	"So," resumed President Hussein, "we need someone with the expertise to break 
into the American nuclear arsenal, launch one of their missiles at the target, yet leave no 
trace of our involvement." 
	"The target?" gasped Colonel Kamil, realizing for the first time how far things had 
gone. 
	"The target," emphasized Saddam.  "Sabawi tells me Dr. Saleh has already 
preprogrammed it for us." 
	Colonel Kamil looked at first one man then another, afraid to ask the question. 
	"Warren Air Force Base," whispered Sabawi.  "It's a missile base in Wyoming with 
150 Minutemen III and fifty Peacemakers."
	It was madness!  Sheer madness! thought the Iraqi physicist.  But at the same time 
there was a compelling element to Sabawi's plan: if the attack were successful, the 
American military would be disgraced, and demands from its opponents for further 
disarmament would turn into a chorus. In addition, once the damage had been done, the 
ensuing chaos would leave the governments of the coalition members too weak to 
respond to any future Iraqi aggression. 
	"Surely, gentlemen, amongst ourselves we will be able to locate someone whom 
we can trust, but who is unknown, to carry on the struggle for us and to help us finally 
accomplish what we set out to do originally. And it absolutely can't be anyone we've used 
before, anyone we've been sheltering here like the Abu Nidal Organization," Saddam 
continued.  "Sending him out again would be tantamount to leaving my signature on the 
event, and, besides, he's not even competent enough for what I want.  No, I want to use 
someone who isn't known to Western security services, but on the face of it would have 
nothing to do with us -- this is the problem, isn't it?  We all know what happened after 
Lockerbie -- Palestinians and Jordanians were running across Europe like a bunch of 
cockroaches on a kitchen floor!" 
	"An absolute professional, then," murmured Kamil, playing along until he could 
find out exactly how much further things had gone. "But -- " began Colonel Kamil. 
	"-- if he fails?" Stemmler laughed.  "He won't have had any tie to us then, will he?" 
	"So you can see now, gentlemen," Saddam almost whispered, "there can be no 
question of taking this matter before the party, even to the Revolutionary Command 
Council which has over sixty members -- besides, I've already learned my lesson once in 
this regard -- no, the only way this will work is if we keep it amongst the four of us in this 
room.  I think you can all see that." 
	The moment Colonel Kamil saw his cousin extract three folders from his carryall, 
it immediately dawned on him that the candidates had already been selected -- the sole 
purpose of the meeting was to make the final choice. 
	"Sabawi?" 
	"Yes, Mr. President, as you requested, without mentioning a word of this to 
anyone at the Mukhabarat, I selected the following three candidates myself from our 
files." 
	The secret service chief started to hand all three of the thin manila folders to 
Saddam Hussein, who made a circle with his right hand.  "Just give one to each of us, 
then we'll pass them around." 
	"Yes, Mr. President." 
	"Meanwhile why don't you tell us about the first candidate," Saddam ordered, 
folding his file open on the table in front of him. 
	His half-brother glanced quickly at the title of the dossier he had just handed 
Saddam Hussein, then cleared his throat before he began: "Stefano Sinagra, Sicilian.  
Worked for 'Toto' Riina, the capo di tutti capi of the Sicilian Mafia, and until Riina's 
arrest by the Italian military, Sinagra was his top enforcer.  Sinagra was a contract killer 
who was never part of the organization, but answered directly to Riina, himself." 
	"What's he done outside of Sicily?" Stemmler questioned. 
	"Needless to say, these things aren't easy to document, but we think Riina sent him 
to New York to take care of a couple of wayward lieutenants." 
	"Is that all we know about him?" pressed Colonel Kamil. 
	"Men in this line of work tend to be rather circumspect, especially ones who have 
never been caught." 
	"Good point," muttered Saddam.  "Who's next?" 
	Colonel Kamil made a show of handing his folder to President Hussein, saying the 
name under his breath for the benefit of Sabawi Hussein. 
	"Vitaly Chavchavadze, former spetsnaz commando, recently demobilized from the 
5th Division of the old Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces.  Chavchavadze was stationed at 
several tactical nuclear sites in Eastern Europe, also he was trained as a marksman at 
Zheltyye Vody, the spetsnaz camp." 
	"What's he doing now?" asked Saddam. 
	"Enforcer for Vladimir Kumarin, one of the four top mafiosi in St. Petersburg."
	"How's his English?" 
	"Only passable." 
	"Passable may not be enough," grunted Stemmler to Sabawi Hussein's annoyance. 
	"The third candidate is an American, whose name listed on your folder is probably 
an alias, according to our branch in New York.  I've saved him until last for the simple 
reason that he's my favorite.  Working on his own for a South American client, he shut 
down a CIA narcotics smuggling ring known as "Operation BUNCIN" that that agency 
operated in cooperation with the American Drug Enforcement Administration. 
	"In BUNCIN the CIA used American drug smugglers as sources and exempted 
them from prosecution by the DEA -- the project was monitored by the CIA's Office of 
Security.  BUNCIN was important enough to be operated out of Homestead Air Force 
Base in Florida, where classified AFCT planes picked up the results and hand-delivered 
them to the CIA at Langley." 
	"The CIA doesn't know his face?  How is this possible?" objected Stemmler. 
	"Because every last person in the operation the American came into contact with, 
he liquidated himself." 
	Sabawi couldn't help but notice the small grin that passed across Saddam's face.  A 
man who was ruthless enough to eliminate every possible threat, and in addition wasn't 
threatened by the CIA . . .


Chapter 4   

	The morning's light splashed across the sea of windshields and polished hubcaps, 
creating a wave of reflections that were distinctly visible to the pilot of a tiny single-
engine plane, which was flying directly over United States Interstate 15.  But the pilot's 
eye wasn't focused on the two-acre lot, lined with row after row of gunmetal gray German 
sedans, but on a tiny flyspeck of a Toyota, which seemed to be moving on a 
predetermined path towards the entrance of Aristocrat Motors at the Grand Avenue exit.  
And no one was surprised when the Toyota's driver left the interstate, took the exit, and 
drove under the weatherbeaten archway which led to the showroom floor. 
	As Dr. Victor Saleh carefully shut the door of his battered blue Corolla, he debated 
only for a second whether it was necessary to lock his car door in the midst of so much 
luxury.  The mere thought of this precaution seemed to dent his vanity, and he removed 
his delicate hand from the old Toyota's door handle as if it were contaminated. 
	"Dr. Saleh, am I right?" asked the black salesman, flashing a row of white perfect 
teeth as he extended a large, calloused hand.
	"Yes.  You must be Mr. Johnson," replied the Lebanese professor replied, 
somewhat intimidated by the looming bulk of the black man whose voice had seemed so 
officious on the telephone. 
	"Ready to go for a spin?" 


	The pilot of a single-engine Cessna yawned, had another sip of coffee, and banked 
his plane over Lake Hodges, a silver pool below.
	". . . taking a black 190D northbound onto Bear Valley Parkway . . ." a voice 
crackled over the Cessna's surveillance radio. 
	The pilot set down his cup of coffee, banked the Cessna towards the Interstate, and 
spied the tiny black Mercedes, now hemmed in a box formed by several of the Bureau's 
automotive fleet.  And if anyone were to look upwards from the ground, at the altitude its 
pilot had been directed to maintain, the little Cessna would only have appeared as a dark 
speck, or even nothing at all, to the unaided eye.  
	". . . it's either gonna' be the north or south exit on I-15 . . ." a different voice 
predicted over the Cessna's radio. "Charlie, you awake up there?" 
	"No, I'm on autopilot." 
	"O.K., just let us know which way he goes." 
	"Roger," the pilot yawned, keeping a firm eye on the new Mercedes below him. 

	"Handles like a dream, huh?" Johnson asked Dr. Saleh, who was driving the 190D. 
	"Very well.  Very well, thank you," Dr. Saleh responded.  
	Saleh saw the exit sign for I-15 North and casually swung the Mercedes onto the 
ramp, as a team of facemen rushed past in an assortment of various automobiles. 
	Johnson's eyes never strayed near the rearview mirror, but somehow he felt the 
second team jockey into place and confirmed his suspicions as he saw a familiar Buick 88 
speed ahead in the passing lane.  Over twenty agents had been recruited for this little 
farce, Johnson thought.  Twenty men had abandoned their watch posts to go car shopping 
all across San Diego. RABBIT lives in Claremont, but, of course, he had to take the 
Interstate all the way across town to Escondido.  Last weekend it had been Chula Vista,  
Johnson remembered and visibly frowned.  
	"Have I been out too long?" Dr. Saleh asked solicitously, having just seen the 
cloud pass across the salesman's face. 
	"No! No!"  
	"You're sure?" 
	"Sorry, I got a little stomach acid this morning -- gotta' stop drinking so much 
coffee," the FBI agent lied. 
	"I think I want to buy it," Dr. Saleh announced without warning.  "Is it possible to 
pay with a money order?" 
	"Money order?" 
	"That's not acceptable?" 
	"Hey, sure, boss'll take American Express, Visa, cash, check -- you name it, 
whatever makes you happy." 
	Dr. Saleh nodded his head in appreciation, and Agent Johnson noticed the smile of 
satisfaction which appeared on the professor's face. 




Chapter 5 

	While David Woodring's men followed Dr. Saleh in his Mercedes, a handsome 
American with steel-gray eyes exited his apartment on 62nd Street, walked to Park 
Avenue, and caught a southbound taxi, giving the driver a downtown address.  It was 
early February and a light snow had begun to coat the streets, mottling the sounds of 
horns in its mist. 
	Trinity Church hovered like a ghost ship on lower Broadway, where the driver 
turned on Wall, pulling over to the curb two blocks later as instructed.  If anyone had 
been watching that morning, which they weren't, they would have noticed a rather tall 
man pull a slip of paper from his jacket pocket, obviously double-checking an address 
before he discarded it into a nearby trash container.  
	Fourteen Wall was a tall, soot-covered, stone building with a granite facade and 
two brass-plated revolving doors. The stranger entered the lobby, checked the directory 
which indicated Room 1514 did indeed belong to Digitel Long Distance Services, the 
same name his Colombian contact had given him, then walked into the crowded first-
floor cafeteria past a row of booths towards the rear, finally sitting across from an 
overweight woman reading a copy of W and wearing a pair of glasses with transparent 
frames.  One look at her and he guessed she had previously either worked for AT&T or 
one of its subsidiaries. 
	"I'm glad you're here, I was getting hungry." 
	"Let's order." 
	A harried-looking waitress appeared at their side, holding a pad and pencil in her 
hand. 
	"What'll it be?" 
	"I'd like a double hamburger with everything, fries, and a chocolate shake."
	The waitress shifted her glance immediately to her male companion. 
	"A BLT and a Coke'll be fine." 
	The waitress reread their orders to them then went to the next table. 
	The stranger began: 
	"I don't know if Luiz told you what I wanted -- " 
	"He explained it, alright." 
	The stranger blinked.  "You sure you can get into the computer?" 
	"Look, let me tell you something.  You don't exactly have to be Mata Hari to get 
into the military's machines -- " the stranger furrowed his brow and the hacker hesitated a 
moment, taking a sip of Coke.  "I know, you've heard they've got passwords, 
authorization ladders, secret codes, et cetera, et cetera.  You gotta understand if 
everything goes right, none of that really makes any difference." 
	The stranger still looked doubtful, when the waitress returned with their food, 
slapping the dishes on the table like they were heavy poker chips.  The hacker waited 
until she left to reply. 
	"Look, this is hard to explain to an outsider, but the software, the software the 
military uses isn't exactly airtight.  There's holes in it, holes that if you know they're there 
you can access and essentially take over the whole machine.  For instance, you take the 
Trivial File Transfer Protocol in Unix -- " The stranger held up his hand, and the hacker 
immediately rolled a french fry in the blob of ketchup she'd put on her plate, then stuffed 
it in her mouth. 
	"What if you get caught?" 
	"Look, you saw the company name, right?  We're long distance resellers, as in 
telephone.   That's where I used to work.  New York Tel, the old Ma Bell.  I know my 
way around the network like an IRT conductor knows the stops on the Red Line -- "  The 
stranger frowned again, he knew nothing about New York Telephone long distance 
switching network.  "What I mean is, it's no trouble for me to grab a bunch of numbers 
and leave no trace that I was even there.  I can go over satellite and downlink into 
Tymnet, and then through a couple of cutouts hook into Milnet -- that's what all the bases 
use -- " she stopped to take a large bite out of her hamburger.  "They all run on Unix -- 
that's AT&T software -- like I said, it's got enough holes in it it's not that hard to become 
a superuser and collect people's passwords.  You just need to give me the files you want." 
	"Here."  The stranger pulled a single notepad-sized sheet of paper from his shirt 
pocket and slid it across the table.  The hacker scooped it up and stuffed it in her pocket 
without looking at it. 
	"I work late all the time.  I've got nothing better to do.  Come back here tonight 
and tell the guard you want to see me.  That all right with you?"
	Her visitor nodded affirmatively. 
	"Luiz told me you don't want to use your own name.  When you come back tell the 
guard you're Fred Daniels -- he used to work here before they switched security services, 
OK?" 
	The stranger nodded a second time, finished his BLT, and left. 

	That evening, just as she had told him, there was a single guard on duty who 
readily accepted that he was Fred Daniels and notified the hacker, who told the guard that 
Daniels was expected.  
	The stranger took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and found himself in a deserted 
lobby, lit by humming fluorescent lights and carpeted in a faded corporate gray.  To the 
right a door was open and he walked in, finding the hacker in the middle of a row of 
otherwise empty offices, sitting in front of a computer terminal with a fresh soft drink in 
her hand. 
	"This one took a while," confessed the hacker.  "No one logged onto the 
department you gave me until an hour ago." 
	"Could you tell who it was?" the stranger pressed, humorless. 
	"Couldn't follow him upstream," she replied, typing in a command. "He didn't 
leave a trail.  Used a funny password though." 
	The stranger looked over the hacker's shoulders as she typed in the base's name, C-
H-I-N-A L-A-K-E. 
	The China Lake Naval Weapons Center is a huge, 1,122,177-acre missile testing 
base located at Ridgecrest, California, lying between the Sierra Nevada on the west and 
the Panamint Range on the east.  Airspace over its 1,800-square-mile area is restricted 
exclusively for military use all the way past 20,000 feet.  The base principally functions 
as the Navy's center for research, development, testing, and evaluation for air warfare and 
missile weapons systems and takes its name from an expanse of dry lakebed which was 
named after the coolies who worked the local mines in the 1880s. 
	But in the middle of the southern half of the base lies a separate facility, not 
guarded by Marines like the rest of the base, but surrounded by a special contingent of 
Federal Protective Service bluejackets rotated out of Camp Glynco, Georgia.  This base 
within a base, the China Lake Special Operations Weapons Center, reports directly to the 
Director CIA without going through any military channels; its budget isn't recorded in any 
official governmental department; and for practical purposes, it doesn't exist.  To anyone 
who knows of its existence the reason for all the secrecy is simple: its residents 
manufacture devices designed to be used in the most sensitive of special operations: 
miniature telescope infrared night-vision scopes designed specifically for assassination; 
makeup kits especially designed to avoid close inspection; tiny cryptoanalytic computers 
for breaking both foreign and domestic codes; spread-spectrum field communications 
equipment, like the type used by the various special forces; finally, devices which could 
either trigger or short-circuit various types of nuclear weapons, both U.S. and foreign. 
	The stranger also knew that any user logging onto the Special Operations Center's 
computers ran the risk of being monitored and traced if he were found to be using a 
significant amount of computer time.  But fortunately for him, his friends from Bogota 
had already given him a name. 
	"OK, you said you didn't want to be in here long -- you gonna give me the name?" 
the hacker asked. 
	"Bailey.  Edwin D. Bailey." 
	"Just a minute." 
	"Restricted File -- Veil Classification Required," her screen replied. 
	The stranger winced.  He knew if the hacker failed to give the right password to 
climb the next rung in the authorization ladder, alarm bells at the base's computer center 
would immediately be set off. 
	"Don't worry. I've got the next stage down, too.  Thanks to MR. BUNCIN, 
whoever he was," the hacker breezily informed him.  "Seems as if your friend just got out 
of jail." 
	"BUNCIN asked for Bailey's file?" 
	"Not asked for -- he updated it.  I watched him as he did it." 
	Bailey's unusual curriculum vitae scrolled vertically across the CRT screen, then 
froze still, its most recent entry silently blinking as its text cooked upon the printout. 
	Feb. 5, 1992 : Released from USP Marion, Illinois.  Last Known Residence: 
Memphis.	 The stranger lifted Bailey's three-page resume from the tray and read it 
carefully.  The hacker had already printed out her own copy when she caught BUNCIN 
logging earlier in the afternoon, using the CIA's highest clearance, Veil, to access it.  
What she had read was so frightening she immediately set her copy on fire in the 
bathroom, then flushed the ashes down the toilet. 
	"Now ask it for Bailey's key," the stranger requested, still looking at the printout. 
	"His key?" 
	"His code key.  You'll find it in there somewhere.  It's a 56-bit-long binary number, 
but it could be expressed either way -- in decimal form or 1's and 0's.  I'll know it when I 
see it." 
	"Whatever," sighed the hacker, her fingers  dancing on the keyboard, asking for 
more files. 


Chapter 6 

	The slide photo of a swarthy-looking man with a moustache filled a screen in the 
darkened room. 
	"This is 'Abdul'," a voice explained, slapping the screen with a swagger stick. "Just 
got on a plane last week and went to Vienna.  Didn't say goodbye to anybody." 
	The next slide  was of a younger man with short, curly hair. 
	"This is 'Hassan', Abdul's partner.  He left yesterday for Athens." 
	"How many others like this?" 
	"About ten." 
	"Ten?" 
	"They've all left the United States?" 
	"That's right." 
	"They just knocked off," repeated the division chief, McDonald.
	"What do you mean they just knocked off?" demanded Woodring.
	"Just what I said -- they're not following the UNSCOM people anymore," 
McDonald replied. 
	He was on the eighth floor of the FBI's district office in New York City, which 
housed the CI-4 counterintelligence unit, a unit analagous to CI-5 in Los Angeles. 
	Since the termination of the Gulf War, a considerable portion of the New York 
field office's manpower had been dedicated to following local Iraqi intelligence agents, 
who were, in turn, following members of the U.N.'s Special Commission on Iraqi 
weapons, UNSCOM. 
	The U.N. Security Council formed the Special Commission after the Gulf War to 
investigate Iraq's three most dangerous weapons programs: nuclear, biological and 
chemical.  Post-war nuclear inspections, which had begun in May, 1991, were delegated 
by UNSCOM to the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) a branch of the U.N. 
based in Vienna.  The I.A.E.A. had the contradictory mission of fostering the use of 
atomic energy while simultaneously limiting the spread of nuclear weapons technology.  
Twice-yearly visits by I.A.E.A. inspectors to Iraq for the decade preceding the war had 
resulted in a complete failure on their part to recognize that Saddam Hussein had been 
running four separate programs for manufacturing weapons-grade nuclear fuel during the 
same period.  Unfortunately, since many of the I.A.E.A.'s inspectors had been hired from 
smaller countries, several of them had never seen a nuclear weapons part in their lives. 
	But the intelligence agencies of the coalition members, America's CIA, the British 
MI6, the French DGSE, and the Russian ISS, weren't so easily misled, and each agency 
now  fed the results of its own analysis directly to the Special Commission in New York, 
which, in turn, would assign specific sites for surprise inspection by I.A.E.A. employees 
in Iraq. 
	In Baghdad Sabawi Hussein had been quick to react to these new pressures, 
realizing the best way to outwit the local I.A.E.A. teams was to intercept the flow of 
strategic data from the secret services to the twenty-one Special Commission members in 
New York before it reached I.A.E.A. headquarters in Vienna.  As a result, he instructed 
his intelligence operatives at the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations to follow the twenty-
one commission members and to steal whenever possible any documents they could find, 
even if it included breaking into a member's private residence. 
	The Finnish representative to the Special Commission, Marjatta Rautio, had 
recently come out of her bathroom to find a man rifling the contents of her desk, whom 
she later identified to agents of the CI-4 Division as a member of the Iraqi Mission.  
Afterwards, Woodring ordered an increase in CI-4's surveillance of the Iraqi Mission, 
sending reinforcements from the CI-3 Division in Washington, D.C. and additional Arab-
language speaking agents from other field offices. 
	Now, Woodring couldn't believe his ears.  It was only a month after the January 
airstrikes, which had been successful in knocking out the previously untouched nuclear 
fabricating plant in Tarmiya, which, in theory, had put additional pressure on Saddam 
Hussein to protect whatever secret nuclear processing plants remained.  Instead, 
McDonald was telling him that Iraqi intelligence in New York had just halved the number 
of agents they had dedicated to surveilling the UNSCOM people. 
	Meanwhile, Woodring had a potential spy at  the major WWMCCS contractor in 
San Diego. 


Chapter 7 

	The next day the handsome American who had visited the hacker on Wall Street 
presented a false passport to the Royal Jordan Airlines desk at Schwechat International 
Airport in Vienna. He was confirming his seat for the 3:30 p.m. flight which would arrive 
in Amman, Jordan at 7:30 that evening local time. 
	"Ich mochte meine Fahrkarte fur Amman." 
	"Herr Kluge?" asked the attendant, folding open the passport and double-checking 
its photograph with his customer's face.  All appeared to be in order, so the Jordanian 
handed Herr Kluge his tickets. 
	"Danke." 
	The first inkling of the Iraqis' interest in his services had come from his previous 
employers in Colombia.  An Iraqi intelligence agent had flown to Medellin, discreetly 
asking the Colombians about the gringo who had worked for them on Operation 
BUNCIN.  Their visitor exhibited his bona fides by providing his Colombian hosts a crate 
of Silkworm missiles.  The narcotraficantes had refused, of course, to confirm or deny the 
existence of such a man and had politely shown their Iraqi guest the door. 
	But the next day, the insistent ringing of a certain telephone inside the American's 
flat alerted him that his previous client was on the line, because, at the moment, only the 
Colombians possessed its number.  A 9,600-bits-per-second, 30,000-Hertz-range, public-
key spread-spectrum scrambler modem and multiplexer, the device had been issued by 
the CIA to one of the operatives in Operation BUNCIN, and was written off at the news 
of his disappearance. 
	Designed to operate over the 1435-1540 megahertz test-band frequency of the KH-
14A reconnaissance satellite, the special telephone broadcast its signal via spread 
spectrum over a 5 megahertz-wide band, which, since the bandwidth of the transmission 
was so wide, would only sound like noise to someone who picked it up.  For the same 
reason the special telephone's signal was hard to jam or intercept, since it intentionally 
used a much wider band to transmit than was required by the information being sent. 
	When the call from Bogota arrived, he told his Colombian clients to tell the Iraqis 
he would agree to an initial meeting with one of their representatives, as long as it was 
somewhere in South America where they would be far from the eyes of the allied secret 
services, who, he knew, were following the Iraqis' movements in certain cities.  Shortly 
thereafter, a pleasant luncheon was arranged on the open roof restaurant of the Caesar 
Park Hotel on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, where he was given a suggested itinerary 
by a very nervous functionary from the tourist bureau of the local Iraqi consulate. 
	That evening, using his special telephone far from his hotel room, he called the 
Colombians back from an open-air bar on the summit of Corcovado, resetting the date 
and time of his arrival into Baghdad. 

	Upon his arrival in Amman, the American, whose only baggage was a thin Asprey 
carryall, found a taxi driver who was more than willing, once he heard the price, to drive 
his humorless-looking passenger all 520 miles to Baghdad across the Iraqi border with no 
questions asked.  Eight hours later, upon his arrival in the Iraqi capital, the American told 
the driver to drop him off at the junction of the railroad tracks and Haifa street, where he 
walked the remaining half-mile to the recently damaged Al-Rashid Hotel. 
	After making a one-word telephone call to a number he had been given in Rio de 
Janeiro, the American was picked up at the door by a plainclothesman in a nondescript 
Brazilian Volkswagen Passat sedan, who took him to the same villa where Kamil had just 
been summoned. 
	A pair of plainclothesmen at the gate waved the Passat through and radioed ahead 
that the special guest had arrived. 
	Sabawi Hussein appeared immediately at the door and whisked his special guest 
across a hand-woven rug into a well appointed salon where the  Colonel Kamil, Doctor 
Stemmler, and Saddam Hussein were seated in high-backed chairs. President Hussein 
motioned casually with a flick of the hand for Sabawi and the American to seat 
themselves into the two remaining empty chairs. 
	Once he sat down, Sabawi Hussein warily eyed the guest whose candidacy he had 
promoted, inventorying his physical traits.  Unlike Colonel Kamil and Dr. Stemmler, 
Sabawi Hussein hadn't traveled extensively throughout Europe or America and didn't 
have the same feel for Anglo-Saxons as the others, but, as head of the Mukhabarat, he had 
learned quickly to become a good judge of men.  The American sitting calmly before him 
was just under six feet tall, possessing an athletic build without seeming "built-up", and 
was attractive without having looks that would call undue attention to himself.  He also 
gave no hint of nervousness or panic from being in the presence of Saddam Hussein on 
his own ground, but remained coolly in his seat, saying nothing and waiting for his hosts 
to make the first move. 
	"I am Sabawi Hussein, this is my brother, Saddam, my cousin Kamil, and Dr. 
Stemmler, the head of our nuclear research program.  I -- " 
	"You are the chief of the Mukhabarat and Colonel Kamil runs the Ministry of 
Industry and Military Industrialization, 'MIMI', I believe it's called by the CIA." 
	"A cigarette?" offered Dr. Stemmler. 
	"No thanks, I don't smoke."
	"You are well informed," Sabawi Hussein replied, raising his eyebrows when he 
caught his half brother's gaze. 
	"I have to be in my business, but then I doubt you asked me to come here to find 
out information, since you possess much greater resources for that than I do." 
	An awkward silence reigned in the room, since none of the Iraqis had ever been 
addressed in such an abrupt manner in the presence of Saddam Hussein.  At the same 
time, each man in the room was aware that no other type of man would have a chance of 
accomplishing the mission they were about to propose to their guest. 
	Therefore, without further delay Sabawi Hussein rose from his chair, approached 
the American and offered him a thick paperbound U.S. government-issue book. 
	The American took it and read the title without comment. 
	"Have you ever seen one of these books before?" 
	"No." 
	"Do you know what it is?" 
	"If it's what I think it is, these are the target codes for the U.S. nuclear strategic 
forces -- they're relatively useless unless the sender can authenticate them." 
	"Exactly," Dr. Stemmler spoke for the first time.  "The sender must convince the 
person who receives an Emergency Action Message that something terrible has 
happened." 
	"Good luck," snapped the American.  "I think it would be nothing short of 
impossible to knock out all of the States' command and control networks, which is what 
you'd need to do in order to fool the people in the field. 
	"Look, if this is why you brought me here," the American frowned, getting up 
from his chair, "I think we can end the meeting now.  There's no way -- " 
	"No way a submarine in the middle of the ocean couldn't be made to think that 
Washington's communications network has been knocked out by a sudden nuclear 
terrorist attack?" Stemmler asked, holding a single, white sheet of paper in his hand. 
	The American now stood in the center of the room with all eyes upon him.  He 
knew enough about computers to understand immediately what Dr. Stemmler was 
suggesting. 
	"You are the commander of an American SSBN.  You are far away from everyone, 
underwater for months at a time," Stemmler whispered, still holding the sheet of paper in 
his hand. 
	"Every tour of duty you engage in war games, communicating with Washington 
over essentially three different communications networks: ELF, VLF, and blue-green 
laser. 
	"ELF waves can penetrate the deepest, down to 300 feet, but because their 
frequency is so low, this system can only broadcast a single bit of information in a 
minute.  A properly encoded and authenticated emergency action message, containing an 
order for your submarine to launch one warhead would have to contain a minimum of 40 
characters, or 250 bits -- which, unfortunately, would take over five hours to transmit. 
	"Thus, in a crisis, ELF transmissions are limited to simple three-letter code groups 
signifying things like, 'Sub No. 18: ascend to laser depth to receive next message via 
SSIX.' 
	"You are the commander.  You, in fact, have just received such a message.  You 
have heard nothing from Washington to indicate to you that any crisis exists, but then 
your communications room tells you the ELF transmitter which it continuously monitors 
has suddenly gone off the air.
	"You have just lost touch with your command authority and you only have so 
much time.  You then decide to surface, to surface just high enough to confirm your 
orders with the SSIX satellite that's always overhead. 
	"Trying to stay as deep as possible, you rise to 225 feet, hoping the SSIX satellite's 
blue-green laser transmission will tell you it's all just been a big mistake.  You wait five 
minutes, and you receive nothing.  Your communications room then tells you your sub's 
photovoltaic sensors are in perfect working order. 
	"Now you go above 50 feet, releasing your antenna, desperately trying to contact 
the TACAMO over VLF -- very low frequency.  The E-6A is the last link in the chain 
between the airborne emergency command post and the national command authority. 
	"To your horror the TACAMO sends you a succinct Emergency Action Message 
which, when it's decoded, orders you to launch a single missile towards a target in the 
Middle East.  You have already spent twenty minutes since you received the FLASH-
priority message over the ELF.  Now you have only ninety minutes left until you must 
launch.  Ninety minutes. 
	"You radio back to the pilot in the TACAMO and demand to be patched through to 
Washington.  Then you get the final shock -- the E-6A tells you he can't reach any of the 
National Military Command Centers over Wimex -- the NCA is dead. 
	"Now you have eighty minutes left until launch.  You quickly review all the 
possibilities in your head.  Has Washington been knocked out by a nuclear terrorist 
attack?  Or are you a victim of sabotage?  Has someone somehow gotten control of your 
communications system's software, stolen the codes, and hijacked TACAMO as part of a 
massive deception?  What if there has been an error, a gigantic miscalculation, leaving 
you responsible for possibly initiating the Third World War? 
	"At great risk to yourself, you give the order to the XO to rise to just below the 
surface.  You raise your periscope and the ESM antenna.  Through the periscope you see 
nothing.  Over the ESM you detect no radar -- no enemy planes overhead looking for you.  
Next you raise two more antennas, your UHF receiving antenna and your laser 
transmitter. 
	"You tell the radioman on duty to send a laser burst transmission over the SSIX 
satellite to Atlantic Fleet Communications in Norfolk, requesting confirmation of your 
orders.  Their response should be almost instantaneous.  Instead you hear nothing.  You 
wait.  You are running out of time, you only have sixty-five minutes left.  An hour and 
five minutes to launch. Still, no response from fleet communications. 
	"Against the dictates of everything you've been taught, you give the order to 
surface.  Perhaps there is a shortwave receiver on board.  It isn't likely, but it's possible.  
If there is such a radio, more than likely it will have a scanner, which will automatically 
seek out the strongest transmitting stations, like the BBC.  No matter, several major 
broadcasters will be saying the same thing in several languages: Washington, D.C. has 
been the target of a nuclear attack.  Incoming airliners over a hundred miles distant have 
reported seeing a mushroom cloud, until their communications suddenly went dead. 
	"Now you are filled with rage, the capital of your country has been obliterated.  
Your radioman hands you a FLASH-priority message from the TACAMO demanding to 
know why you're taking so long to launch; forty minutes have passed since he relayed the 
EAM to you.  You send the order from the bridge to the missile control launch center to 
activate the fire control computers.  Two minutes later the trigger is pulled."
	For several seconds the stranger said nothing, the scenario the Third Reich 
scientist had just suggested having seized his entire imagination.
	"The 707 doesn't have a rear stairwell like the 727. How do I exit the plane?" 
	A smile crossed Sabawi Hussein's face; he had anticipated the stranger's question. 
Unfolding a detailed drawing of an Iraqi Air Boeing 707 jetliner, he handed it to 
HYDRA, who studied the yellow-shaded space around the pilot's cockpit in silence. 
	"It has a hatch . . ." 
	"Exactly," Sabawi agreed. "The electrical and equipment access door.  It's on the 
underneath of the fuselage so you won't get caught in the tailwing on your way out."
	"Once I jump, who picks me up?" 
	"Submarine.  We pick you up." 
	"Iraq doesn't have a submarine!  Your whole Navy's nothing more than a handful 
of torpedo boats!" 
	"Not quite correct," interrupted Colonel Kamil.  "At this moment an Iraqi crew is 
in Sevastopol, being trained to operate a rather old Foxtrot-class attack boat we have 
contracted to buy from the Ukrainians. They sold it to us for almost nothing." 
	"Remember," added Sabawi, "we have every desire to get you out of the 
TACAMO as fast as possible." 
	They both knew that if the American felt he had been abandoned in the TACAMO, 
the Iraqis ran the risk of his contacting Washington with information about his mission. 
	"Can you fly?  Do you know how to fly jet airplanes?" Sabawi Hussein broke the 
silence.
	"Yes." 
	"Boeings?" 
	"No." 
	"No matter.  We have a 727, it's not that different from the E-6." 
	"Once TRAPDOOR is activated, you will only have six months, after that the one-
time codes are obsolete," added Stemmler, guessing their guest already approved of their 
plan. 
	Sabawi Hussein looked sideways at his brother and raised an eyebrow.  Colonel 
Kamil followed suit.  The American stared off into space seemingly without a shred of 
interest. 
	"Will you accept the mission?" Sabawi asked at last.  He had spoken softly but his 
question hung in the room, taking on a presence of its own.  The American briefly 
returned his glance, then spoke without hesitation. 
	"Yes, but it's going to be very expensive." 
	"What do you want?" demanded Stemmler. 
	"I'm sure you understand, there's a real difference between performing the 
operation I just did for the Colombians and this.  Whoever takes this on can never work in 
this business again.  He will also be pursued with the full force of the combined American 
intelligence agencies -- nothing will be left uninvestigated -- I'll more than likely be 
caught.  And if I'm not, I'll need enough liquid assets to survive and be able to move at a 
moment's notice." 
	"How much would that be?" asked Sabawi. 
	"Ten million dollars." 
	Sabawi Hussein cast a quick look at his brother, whose face, to his surprise, 
remained expressionless. 
	"Don't you think that's a bit much -- " 
	"I'm neither a fanatic nor a true believer, but a professional who has no intention of 
being caught once it's over." 
	"There are other men, my friend, whom we could also contact," Stemmler added 
with a touch of insolence. 
	"I'm sure there, Doktor Stemmler," replied the American, staring straight into the 
Nazi's eyes.  "There are many others you could contact.  I'm sure you sifted through their 
dossiers before you decided to call me here." 
	The American kept his gaze focused on the German, speaking without blinking, 
"and you decided you couldn't trust some of them not to run away with your money, 
turning you over to the Americans afterwards.  You also decided that very few of them 
had the guts but not the expertise required for this project.  And if I'm guessing correctly, 
you ruled out non-native English speakers . . ." 
	"Enough," replied Saddam Hussein.  "We're convinced you're the one we want and 
we have the money.  There's no need to haggle over this like a bunch of traders in a 
bazaar." 
	"Thank you, Mr. President," responded the American, "now I'd like to give a list of 
my conditions." 
	"Go ahead." 
	"First, I want every record of this meeting, every file, every dossier, destroyed.  
And I need to know who, if anyone, outside this room is aware of why I came here." 
	"No one," answered Sabawi Hussein. 
	"Good.  Let's keep it that way." 
	"Secondly, after I leave here today I will never meet with anyone representing any 
of the Iraqi intelligence services again.  If you have to contact me in case of an 
emergency, use this."  The stranger slipped what looked like a regular cellular telephone 
from his pocket and tossed it to Colonel Kamil, who turned it over in his hand.  Colonel 
Kamil had heard of such devices, but had never been able to obtain them, even after 
repeated requests during his equipment shopping sprees in Europe. 
	"What you're holding's a  spread-spectrum, top-of-the-line CIA digital multiplexer 
that  broadcasts over the KH-14A satellite on a bandwidth so wide it's almost impossible 
to detect.  On top of that, it's equipped with a public key encryption algorithm developed 
by the NSA, so if it is detected, it's virtually impossible to decipher. As you can see it has 
a small receptacle on its side -- " Colonel Kamil turned the device on its side, finding a 
female receptacle" -- that's for the keyboard.  All messages between ourselves from here 
on out will be in ciphertext, not voice, for our mutual safety.  By the way, if anyone were 
to find either one of our boxes, he wouldn't be able to retrieve anything from it without 
our keys. 
	"Third, I'll provide you with a list of twenty nominee accounts, located in a series 
of offshore banks.  Each bank on the list has explicit instructions to forward any deposit 
received in these accounts to another account and another bank and has no idea who the 
real holder is.  I also want the money broken down into irregular pieces before it's wired 
and sent from clean accounts which you have never used before and which have been 
opened by non-Iraqis and non-Arabs. 
	"I also want to be paid half up-front, and half after I finish the job."
	"What else?" asked Sabawi Hussein, impressed by the stranger's thoroughness. 
	"If you need to send me a message, I want you to begin in clear text with the 
phrase, 'Who's speaking, please?'  I'll respond in plaintext with a simple code name.  If 
you don't receive it, disconnect immediately." 
	"What name do you want to use?" asked Stemmler.
	"I'm fond of the classics.  Why not HYDRA?" 
	"HYDRA, what does it mean?" asked Saddam Hussein, leaning forward in his 
chair. 
	"He was a creature that was impossible to kill, if you cut off one of his heads, 
another simply grew back in its place." 
	"I like that," replied the dictator, standing up in his chair. 
	The meeting was over.  The American shook hands with President Hussein, his 
brother, his brother-in-law, and Dr. Stemmler, then a sentry ushered him to the front door.  
A different plainclothesman was waiting by the same Volkswagen Passat, Baghdad's 
most common car, and returned him directly to the airport. 
K/K-3B1B

19


