Honor Among Thieves

by Jeffrey Archer

  On the table in front of him was a file stamped “Confidential,” and above that the name “Calder Marshall” in bold letters. Despite the fact that the Archivist was wearing horn-rimmed glasses with thick lenses, Butterworth felt he could hardly have missed it.

  Butterworth paused before he began a speech he’d prepared every bit as assiduously as the President had his inauguration address. Marshall sat, fingers intertwined, nervously waiting for Butterworth to proceed.

  “You have, over the past sixteen years,” began the Special Assistant, “made several requests for the President to visit the National Archives.” Butterworth was pleased to observe that Marshall was looking hopeful. “And, indeed, this particular President wishes to accept your invitation.” Mr. Marshall’s smile broadened. “To that end, in our weekly meeting, President Clinton asked me to convey a private message to you, which he hoped you would understand must be in the strictest confidence.”

  “In the strictest confidence. Of course.”

  “The President felt sure he could rely on your discretion, Mr. Marshall. So I feel I can let you know that we’re trying to clear some time during the last week of this month for him to visit the Archives, but nothing, as yet, has been scheduled.”

  “Nothing, as yet, has been scheduled. Of course.”

  “The President expects to be in Washington that week, after returning from a whistle-stop tour for the special May elections, but as you can imagine, his schedule hasn’t been firmed up yet.”

  “Firmed up yet. Of course.”

  “President Clinton has also requested that it be a strictly private visit, which would not be open to the public or the press.”

  “Not be open to the press. Of course.”

  “After the bombing of the World Trade Center, one can’t be too careful.”

  “Can’t be too careful. Of course.”

  “And I would be obliged if you did not discuss any aspect of the visit with your staff, however senior, until we are able to confirm a definite date. These things have a habit of getting out and then, for security reasons, the visit might have to be canceled.”

  “Have to be canceled. Of course. But if it’s to be a private visit,” said the Archivist, “is there anything the President particularly wants to see, or will it just be the standard tour of the building?”

  “I’m glad you asked that question,” said Mr. Butterworth, opening the file in front of him. “The President has made one particular request, apart from which he will be in your hands.”

  “In my hands. Of course.”

  “He wants to see the Declaration of Independence.”

  “The Declaration of Independence. That’s easy enough.”

  “That is not the request,” said Butterworth.

  “Not the request?”

  “No. The President wishes to see the Declaration, but not as he saw it when he was a freshman at Georgetown, under a thick pane of glass. He wishes the frame to be removed so he can study the parchment itself. He hopes you will grant this request, if only for a few moments.”

  This time the Archivist did not immediately say “Of course.” Instead he said, “Most unusual,” and added, “hopes I would grant him this request, if only for a few moments.” There was a long pause before he said, “I’m sure that will be possible, of course.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Butterworth, trying not to sound too relieved. “I know the President will be most appreciative. And, if I could impress on you again, not a word until we’ve been able to confirm the date.”

  Butterworth rose and glanced at the long-case clock at the far end of the room. The meeting had taken twenty-two minutes. He would still be able to escape from the conference room before he was thrown out by the officious woman from scheduling.

  The Special Assistant to the President guided his guest towards the door.

  “The President wondered if you would like to see the Oval Office while you’re here?”

  “The Oval Office. Of course, of course.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Hamid Al Obaydi was left alone in the center of the room. After two of the four guards had stripped him naked, the other two had expertly checked every stitch of his clothing for anything that might endanger the life of their President.

  On a nod from the man who appeared to be the chief guard, a side door opened and a doctor entered the room, followed by an orderly who carried a chair in one hand and a rubber glove in the other. The chair was placed behind Al Obaydi, and he was invited to sit. He did so. The doctor first checked his nails and ears before instructing him to open his mouth wide while he tapped every tooth with a spatula. He then placed a clamp in his jaw so that it opened even wider, which allowed him slowly to look into every crevice. Satisfied, he removed the clamp. He then asked Al Obaydi to stand up, turn around and place his legs straight and wide while bending over until his hands touched the seat of the chair. Al Obaydi heard the rubber glove being placed on the doctor’s hand and felt a sudden burst of pain as two fingers were thrust up his rectum. He cried out and the guards facing him began to laugh. The fingers were extracted just as abruptly, repeating the jab of pain a second time.

  “Thank you, Deputy Ambassador,” said the doctor, as if he had just checked Al Obaydi’s temperature for a mild dose of flu. “You can get dressed now.” Al Obaydi knelt down and picked up his pants as the doctor and the orderly left the room.

  As he dressed, Al Obaydi couldn’t help wondering if each member of the Security Council went through the same humiliation every time Saddam called a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council.

  The order to return to Baghdad to give Sayedi an update on the latest position, as the Ambassador to the UN had described the summons, filled Al Obaydi with considerable apprehension, despite the fact that following his most recent meeting with Cavalli he felt he had the answers to any questions the President might put to him.

  Once Al Obaydi had reached Baghdad after a seemingly endless journey through Jordan—direct flights having been suspended as part of the UN sanctions—he hadn’t been allowed to rest or even given the chance to change his clothes. He’d been driven direct to Ba’ath headquarters in a black Mercedes.

  When Al Obaydi had finished dressing, he checked himself in a small mirror on the wall. His apparel was, on this occasion, modest compared with the outfits he’d left in his apartment in New York: Saks Fifth Avenue suits, Valentino sweaters, Church’s shoes and a solid gold Cartier watch. All this had been rejected in favor of the one set of cheap Arab clothing he retained in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe in Manhattan.

  When Al Obaydi turned away from the mirror, one of the guards beckoned him to follow as the door at the end of the room opened for the first time. The contrast to the bare, almost barracks-room surroundings of the examination room took him by surprise. A thickly carpeted, ornately painted corridor was well lit by chandeliers that hung every few paces.

  The Deputy Ambassador followed the guard down the corridor, becoming more aware with each step of the massive gold-painted door that loomed up ahead of him. But when he was only a few paces away, the guard opened a side door and ushered him into an anteroom that echoed the opulence of the corridor.

  Al Obaydi was left alone in the room, but no sooner had he taken a seat on the large sofa than the door opened again. Al Obaydi jumped to his feet only to see a girl enter carrying a tray, in the center of which was a small cup of Turkish coffee.

  She placed the coffee on a table beside the sofa, bowed and left as silently as she had come. Al Obaydi toyed with the cup, aware that he had fallen into the Western habit of preferring cappuccino. He drank the muddy black liquid simply out of a nervous desire to be doing something.

  An hour passed slowly: he became increasingly nervous, with nothing in the room to read and only a massive portrait of Saddam Hussein to stare at. Al Obaydi spent the time going over every detail of what Cavalli had told him, wishing he could refer to the file in his small attaché case, which the guards h
ad whisked away long before he’d reached the examination room.

  During the second hour, his confidence began to drain away. During the third, he started to wonder if he would ever get out of the building alive.

  Then suddenly the door swung open and Al Obaydi recognized the red-and-yellow flash of the uniform of one of Saddam’s Presidential Guards: the Hemaya.

  “The President will see you now,” was all the young officer said, and Al Obaydi rose and followed him quickly down the corridor towards the gold-painted door.

  The officer knocked, opened the massive door and stood to one side to allow the Deputy Ambassador to join a full meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council.

  Al Obaydi stood and waited, like a prisoner in the dock hoping to be told by the judge that he might at least be allowed to sit. He remained standing, well aware that no one ever shook hands with the President unless invited to do so. He stared around at the twelve-man council, noticing that only two, the Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, and the State Prosecutor, Nakir Farrar, were wearing suits. The other ten members were dressed in full military uniforms but did not wear sidearms. The only handgun, other than those worn by General Hamil, the Commander of the Presidential Guard, and the two armed soldiers directly behind Saddam, was on the table in front of the President, placed where other heads of state would have had a memo pad.

  Al Obaydi became painfully aware that the President’s eyes had never left him from the moment he had entered the room. Saddam waved his Coheba cigar at the Deputy Ambassador to indicate that he should take the vacant seat at the opposite end of the table.

  The Foreign Minister looked towards the President, who nodded. He then turned his attention to the man who sat nervously in the far chair.

  “This, Mr. President, as you know, is Hamid Al Obaydi, our Deputy Ambassador at the United Nations, whom you honored with the responsibility of carrying out your orders to steal the Declaration of Independence from the American infidels. On your instructions, he has returned to Baghdad to inform you, in person, of what progress he has made. I have not had an opportunity to speak to him, Mr. President, so you will forgive me if I appear, like yourself, to be a seeker after information.”

  Saddam waved his cigar again to let the Foreign Minister know that he should get on with it.

  “Perhaps I could start, Deputy Ambassador”—Al Obaydi was surprised by such a formal address, since their two families had known each other for generations, but he accepted that to show friendship of any kind in front of Saddam was tantamount to an admission of conspiracy—“by asking you to bring us all up-to-date on the President’s imaginative scheme.”

  “Thank you, Foreign Minister,” replied Al Obaydi, as if he had never met the man before. Al Obaydi turned back to face Saddam, whose black eyes remained fixed on him.

  “May I begin, Mr. President, by saying what an honor it has been to be entrusted with this task, especially remembering the idea had emanated from Your Excellency personally.” Every member of the Council was now concentrating his attention on the Deputy Ambassador, but Al Obaydi noticed that from time to time each of them would glance in Saddam’s direction to see how he was reacting.

  “I am happy to be able to report that the team led by Mr. Antonio Cavalli…”

  Saddam raised a hand and looked towards the State Prosecutor, who opened a thick file in front of him.

  Nakir Farrar was feared second only to Saddam in the Iraqi regime. Everyone knew of his reputation. A first-class honors degree in jurisprudence at Oxford. President of the Union, and a bencher at Lincoln’s Inn. That was where Al Obaydi had first come across him. Not that Farrar had ever acknowledged his existence. He had been tipped to be the first Queen’s Counsel Iraq had ever produced. But then came the invasion of the Nineteenth Province and the British expelled the high-flyer, despite several appeals from people in high places. Farrar returned to a city he had deserted at the age of eleven, and immediately offered his remarkable talent for Saddam Hussein’s personal use. Within a year Saddam had appointed him State Prosecutor. A title, it was rumored, he had selected himself. He stared down at the open file.

  “Cavalli is a New York criminal, Mr. President, who, because he has a law degree and heads a private legal practice, creates a legitimate front for such an operation.” Saddam nodded and turned his attention back to Al Obaydi.

  “Mr. Cavalli has completed the preparation stage and his team is now ready to carry out the President’s orders.”

  “Do we have a date yet?” asked Farrar.

  “Yes, State Prosecutor. May 25th. Clinton has a full day’s schedule at the White House, with his speechwriters in the morning, and his wife’s health-policy task unit in the afternoon, and he”—the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN had warned Al Obaydi never to refer to Clinton as “the President”—“will therefore not be involved in any public engagements that day which would have made our task impossible.”

  “And tell me, Deputy Ambassador,” said the State Prosecutor, “did Mr. Cavalli’s lawyer succeed in getting a permit to close down the road between the White House and the National Archives during the time when Clinton will be involved in these internal meetings?”

  “No, State Prosecutor, he did not,” came back Al Obaydi’s reply. “The Mayor’s Office did, however, grant a permit for filming to take place on Pennsylvania Avenue from 13th Street east. But the road can only be closed for forty-five minutes. It seems this Mayor was not as easy to convince as her predecessor.”

  A few members of the Council looked puzzled. “Not as easy to convince?” asked the Foreign Minister.

  “Perhaps ‘persuade’ would be a better word.”

  “And what form did this persuasion take?” asked General Hamil, who sat on the right of the President and knew only one form of persuasion.

  “A $250,000 contribution to her reelection fund.”

  Saddam began to laugh, so the others around the table followed suit.

  “And the Archivist, is he still convinced it’s Clinton who will be visiting him?” asked the State Prosecutor.

  “Yes, he is,” said Al Obaydi. “Just before I flew out Cavalli had taken eight of his own men over the building posing as a Secret Service preliminary reconnaissance team, carrying out a site survey. The Archivist could not have been more cooperative, and Cavalli was given enough time to check out everything. That exercise should make the switching of the Declaration on May 25th far easier for him.”

  “But if, and I say only if, they succeed in getting the original out, have they made arrangements for passing the document over to you?” asked the State Prosecutor.

  “Yes,” replied Al Obaydi confidently. “I understand that the President wants the document to be delivered to Barazan Al-Tikriti, our venerated Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. When he has received the parchment, and not before, I will authorize the final payment.”

  The President nodded his approval. After all, the venerated Ambassador in Geneva was his half brother. The State Prosecutor continued his questioning.

  “But how can we be sure that what is handed to us will be the original, and not just a first-class copy?” he demanded. “What’s to prevent Cavalli from making a show of walking in and out of the National Archives, but not actually switching the documents?”

  A smile appeared on Al Obaydi’s lips for the first time. “I took the precaution, State Prosecutor, of demanding such proof,” he replied. “When the fake replaces the original, it will continue to be displayed for the general public to view. You can be assured that I shall be among the general public.”

  “But you have not answered my question,” said the State Prosecutor sharply. “How will you know ours is the original?”

  “Because on the original document penned by Timothy Matlack, there is a simple spelling mistake, which has been corrected on the copy executed by Bill O’Reilly.”

  The State Prosecutor reluctantly sat back in his chair, when his master raised a hand.

  “Another criminal,
Excellency,” explained the Foreign Minister. “This time a forger, who has been responsible for making the copy of the document.”

  “So,” said the State Prosecutor, leaning forward once again, “if the incorrect spelling is still on the document displayed in the National Archives on May 25th, you will know we have a fake and therefore will not pay out another cent. Is that right?”

  “Yes, State Prosecutor,” said Al Obaydi.

  “Which word on the original has been incorrectly spelled?” demanded the State Prosecutor.

  When the Deputy Ambassador told him, all Nakir Farrar said was, “How appropriate,” and then closed the file in front of him.

  “However, it will still be necessary for me to have the final payment in hand,” continued Al Obaydi, “should I be satisfied that they have carried out their part of the bargain, and that we are in possession of the original parchment.”

  The Foreign Minister looked towards Saddam who again nodded.

  “The money will be in place by May 25th,” said the Foreign Minister. “I would also like the opportunity to go over some of the details with you before your return to New York. As long as that meets with the President’s approval?”

  Saddam waved a hand to indicate that such a request was not important to him. His eyes remained fixed on Al Obaydi. The Deputy Ambassador wasn’t sure if he was meant to leave or await further questioning. He favored caution, and remained seated and silent. It was some time before anyone spoke.

  “You must be curious, Hamid, about why I place such importance on this scrap of useless paper.” As the Deputy Ambassador had never met the President before, he was surprised to be called by his first name.

  “It is not for me to question Your Excellency’s reasoning,” replied Al Obaydi.

  “Nevertheless,” continued Saddam, “you would be less than human not to wonder why I am willing to spend one hundred million dollars and at the same time risk international embarrassment should you fail.”

  Al Obaydi noted the word “you” with some discomfort.