by Oliver North
“What are we going to do for the next four hours? They'll be looking for the driver of the Mercedes,” Rachel asked. “They'll know it's the right car. It ought to be obvious with those bullet holes in the trunk and shattered rear window.”
Skillings spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “I've got an idea. You two take your luggage and stroll along the curb toward the Arrivals areaover there. I'll go over to the car rental counter and rent a car. I'll drive by and pick you up there, and we'll leave the airport and stay away until it's nearer the time of your flight. Let ‘em find the Mercedes. I'm sure it was too dark for the guard back at the base to identify me as the driver. Plus we wiped the car down. If they find my prints, no big deal. I signed for the vehicle at the motor pool this morning. I'll report it stolen when I get back to the base. The Brits will guess that somebody stole the car and drove it to the airport to escape the country. And we know that whoever is trying to escape would take the first plane out and is probably already gone by now, right?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Newman said.
Hotel Delle Nacioni
Via Cappellini 18
Milan, Italy
Saturday, 11 March 1995
1055 Hours, Local
The flight from Larnaca-Nicosia Airport was anticlimactic. At three o'clock in the morning, Staff Sergeant Skillings drove the rented Range Rover up to the Departures sign in front of the airport and dropped off two people who looked like dozens of other departing tourists. The couple—their Irish passports identified them as John and Sarah Clancy—mingled with a throng of young people headed home from holiday. They stood in line to check one of their bags, then made their way to the assigned gate.
With its 4:00 A.M. takeoff time, Czech Airlines flight 407 truly earned the nickname “red eye.” Still, the flight was smooth, and the Newmans actually landed in Prague three minutes earlier than they were scheduled—at 6:02 A.M. local time. Their flight from Prague to Milan took off a few minutes late but still managed to arrive atMalpensa International Airport just after nine. By the time the couple deplaned, picked up their baggage, and caught a taxi, it was only a half hour later.
They were pleased that the taxi driver spoke English. As they traveled the Autostrada Dei Laghi from the airport into the city, they asked about the best small hotel, the location of the train station, and the frequency of the scheduled trains to Rome. By the time they pulled up in front of the hotel recommended by the cab driver, they were both feeling the effects of their dramatic escape and the flights from Larnaca and Prague. Both Rachel and her husband were physically and emotionally drained.
Hotel Delle Nacioni was a perfect spot for them to recover from their night of terror. Peter looked up at the stainless steel, curved sign above the entrance. He wanted a small, inconspicuous hotel, one where they were less likely to run into other Americans. The Hotel Delle Nacioni was small, all right, but it also signaled a sense of stylish modernity. A row of international flags atop the sign was meant to welcome overseas travelers. But at this point, the two weary fugitives would've welcomed almost any room with clean sheets on the bed.
As they walked into the lobby, Rachel noticed that the attractiveness of the interior exceeded even the small hotel's pleasant exterior. Her husband, ever concerned with their security, failed to notice the charm of the place. The walls were high and as white as the ceiling. On their right, they passed an expansive glass block wall that seemed to glow with a sea-foam iridescence from the backlit corners. Rachel was so taken by the surroundings that she almost stumbled into the life-sized marble statue in her path. It was beautiful—a reproduction, no doubt, of some Italian masterpiece.
There was only one other couple in the lobby, and they had just finished checking out. Peter requested a room and presented his forged international driver's license and Irish passport.
When the manager finished registering the couple, he waved to the bell captain, who was just coming back inside. The bellman took the room key from the desk counter and grabbed their bags.
As they waited by the elevator, Rachel admired the floor-to-ceiling mirror that ran the length of the hall by the elevators. She checked her image in the reflecting glass and winced at what she saw. Her hair and makeup were a fright, and her eyes were red and puffy from sheer exhaustion.
Their room was much more simple and unpretentious than the rest of the hotel would have led Rachel to believe. There were two twin beds and a dresser, and not much else in the way of furniture. The bellman walked toward the window to pull back the drapes.
“No, thank you,” Peter said. “Leave them closed, please. We're going to get some sleep. We've been traveling all night and need to rest.”
The man nodded and bowed ever so slightly as he moved toward the door. Peter stuck a bill in his hand and shut the door behind him. In less than twenty minutes, both Rachel and Peter were sound asleep.
Almost four hours later, Peter woke, still feeling groggy. Despite his lingering fatigue, he knew he had to call the number in Rome that William Goode had given him.
With Rachel still asleep in the other twin bed, he began the arcane process of trying to dial the number directly but soon gave up. After a brief consultation with the hotel operator, who eventually placed the call for him, he heard a booming male voice on the other end of theline. The voice announced “Community of Saint Patrick”—first in Italian, then French, Spanish, English, and German.
Peter introduced himself as John Clancy, and to his surprise, the man in Rome said that his call had been expected. Then he asked, “Can you and your wife arrive in Rome by Monday the thirteenth?”
Peter agreed to do so, and the deep bass voice in Rome signed off with the Spanish benediction, “ Vaya con Dios.”
Peter sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments and then got up, went into the bathroom and took a lingering shower—mentally thanking Staff Sergeant Skillings for remembering to put together a bag of essentials along with the luggage he had purchased for them. His kit included toothpaste and toothbrush, deodorant, and a comb. Skillings had also done his best to outfit Rachel with a few useful feminine items—including hairspray, brush, even a hand mirror.
Rachel was stirring as Peter finished showering. He went to the side of her bed and leaned down to kiss her. She was fully awake now and reached her arms up and pulled him down to her. The kiss was lingering and intense.
Suddenly she began to weep. “I thought I was never going to see you again,” she whispered.
“Yeah...me too,” he said, kissing her face and wiping her tears. “But now we're together. The rest is in God's hands.”
Coming from Peter, they were strange words—“in God's hands”—and Rachel wasn't quite sure if he was using them as a glib comment or if he meant something deeper. She knew this much, however—each of them had developed a strong spiritual awareness because of the events leading up to the life-threatening disaster of Peter's compromised mission in Iraq.
She moved over on the narrow bed and allowed her husband to lie beside her. Before long, feelings were aroused and, hidden in a small hotel in Milan—despite being on the run from every police and intelligence service on earth—their love found expression.
There were other distractions in Milan. Even though they had less than two full days in the ancient city, they played the part of tourists with enthusiasm: they took in an opera at the nearby Teatro La Scala; they stood awestruck in front of the “Last Supper” by Da Vinci; they walked hand-in-hand to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.
Then, early Monday morning, they arose, walked to the station, and boarded the morning train for Rome. In a second phone call to the Community of Saint Patrick, they had both been provided with an address and instructions to meet a car that would bring them to the group's central offices in the Trastevere section of the city.
The couple spent nearly three months with the Community of Saint Patrick in Rome, living in a small student apartment next door to the ancient church that served as the fo
cal point for the community. For Peter/John and Rachel/Sarah, it was a unique experience. The sixty men and women with whom they met every day were young and old, from every walk of life, and from more than two dozen different countries—and they apparently belonged to almost every Christian denomination.
The daily routine was simple. A morning prayer service—led by one of the community—was followed by a light breakfast. After themorning meal, they all participated in an intensive Bible study session and then community prayer before heading out to work as volunteers all over the city. Some went to schools, others to hospitals, and some even went to the jails.
“John Clancy” found himself on a construction crew working to restore a block of apartments along the Via del Moro. The work suited him well, and he quickly recovered his strength from the injuries he had sustained in Iraq the previous March.
“Sarah” volunteered to work in a nearby hospital where she could put her college nurses' training classes and compassionate nature to good use. She immediately became one of the most sought-after aides on the children's ward.
At the end of each day, the group would meet again in the ancient church for prayer and then join together in an evening meal. Hard physical labor five days a week meant that for most, retiring early was a welcome pleasure.
Having spent most of his adult life in the Marines, Peter Newman was fascinated by the lack of any obvious hierarchy in the community. Leadership responsibilities rotated among the members, leaders chosen each week by consensus. The other person “in charge” surprised him. It turned out not to be the man with the deep voice who had answered the phone when Peter first called. He was not a doctor, minister, professor, or scientist—though there were some of each among the members. Rather, he was a modest, blue-collar type. Everyone called him Galvani. He told Rachel one day that he was fifty-four years old and had been an electrician before becoming part of the Community of Saint Patrick.
Galvani reaffirmed what Bill Goode had told Newman about the community on the voyage from Turkey to Cyprus. The group began during the revolutionary 1960s when Italian Christians turned their backs on traditional organized religion and sought a simpler, more genuine faith. Instead of trying to shake up the West by testing and trashing establishment politics and religion, they felt that more permanent change could be accomplished in other ways.
The youthful “revolutionaries” gathered together every evening to pray and read the Scriptures. As they did so, they were transformed by the simplicity of the gospel. The teachings of Christ—love your enemies, live peacefully, pray in the name of Jesus, help the poor and sick, turn your back on greed and sin, and love God with all of your heart—were the same teachings that had convinced a poor Albanian nun to move to India and begin her work among the poorest of the poor. She became Mother Teresa, and her Sisters of Mercy had certainly demonstrated the love of Christ in the streets of Calcutta.
In two years, the single church community in Rome gave birth to nearly a hundred other cells, as these revolutionary believers founded other communities. They also began clinics, schools, homes for the poor and sick, and classes to teach immigrants the language of their new countries. Before long, the work spread to other countries and cultures, yet with essentially the same first-century qualities of the original Community of Saint Patrick. And now, some thirty years later, more than a thousand other communities had been founded, each operating in conjunction with a church in their neighborhood and each sharing a similar vision. By the time “John and Sarah Clancy” arrived in Trastevere, there were nearly a half million “members” around the world. They carried no identity cards, nor did they wear badges or symbols of rank; they simply identified themselves as “believers.” And each of them carried the sign of the community: a tiny metal fish.
One rainy evening three months after they had arrived in Rome, Galvani asked “John” and “Sarah” to stay following the evening prayer service.
“Our hospice in Jerusalem needs a couple like you to run it. Please pray about it and let me know,” he said.
That night in the privacy of their little apartment, Rachel and Peter did just that. Afterward, they talked quietly in the darkness, while the rain dripped on the orange tiles outside their window. For different reasons, they both came to the same conclusion—that taking the assignment in Jerusalem was the right thing to do. And that's when Rachel announced to her husband that she was pregnant.
Hospice of Saint Patrick
35 Via Dolorosa
Old City of Jerusalem
Saturday, 7 March 1998
1130 Hours, Local
“We arrived here in Jerusalem in July,” Rachel said. “And little James was born in December.”
“That's quite a story.” Gunnery Sergeant Skillings had by this time filled up several pages with notes, and now he was flipping back through them.
“OK, let's assume you didn't leave any traces of your new ‘Clancy' identities on the Pescador. But is it possible you may have left something that would identify you as ‘Newman' in Milan or Rome?”
The husband and wife looked at each other. Skillings could see a new kind of concern on both their faces.
LEGACY OF DEATH
CHAPTER THREE
Al-Fajir—Project 555 Special Weapons Site
Jabal Makhul Presidential Complex
Samarra, Iraq
Saturday, 7 March 1998
1030 Hours, Local
What do you mean? You have searched everywhere and you cannot even confirm that the weapons exist? If there were records anywhere, why in Allah's name would not they be here?” Qusay Hussein, the youngest son of Saddam, the heir to the “throne” of Iraq, was angry.
To the other four men in the room, all senior officers and officials in the fascist government of Iraq, it seemed that the dictator's son was always angry. They kept quiet, studying the fine grain in the imported mahogany table. Finally, one of them spoke.
“Sir, we have looked everywhere possible—not just here in this site, but everywhere else the weapons could have been taken. If the traitor Kamil succeeded in acquiring three nuclear weapons from the Russians as you say he did, we cannot find any trace of them or any records for them.” The speaker was Lieutenant General Abd al-Khadir Salman Khamis, the man who had succeeded Hussein Kamil as Minister of Defense Industries.
“Well,” Qusay said, “you have had more than a month. If you haven't found them, and you haven't located any records, I will just have to tell my father that you have been unable to accomplish the simple task he has given you. Perhaps he needs to find some competent officers who are loyal enough to do as they are told.”
Khamis bristled, but he had enough restraint to remember that making the son of Saddam Hussein unhappy was a dangerous thing to do. Though he was seething inside, the general spoke quietly, controlling his tone.
“My dear cousin Qusay, it is not a matter of loyalty. It is a case of not having enough information. Further, we cannot launch the kind of search we want without raising the suspicions of the UN inspectors.”
“My father assures me that the UNSCOM spies will soon be gone—and that they will not return. What will you use for an excuse then?” Qusay's teeth were clenched as he spoke.
Khamis let the personal insult and the revelation about the UN inspectors pass without comment. He wanted to learn more about these three nuclear weapons. Apparently, Qusay was convinced they were hidden somewhere in this ten-square-mile nuclear weapons design facility—officially designated as a presidential palace. “Please, Qusay, tell us all you know about these nuclear weapons. The more we know about them, the better the chance we will have of finding them.”
Qusay sounded like a teacher explaining a simple math problem to elementary school students. “We are still trying to untangle the web of deceit created by the traitor Kamil. Last month, I informed you how we discovered that Kamil very likely purchased three nuclear weapons from old Soviet stockpiles. I also told you of my father's decision that they be loca
ted.”
“Yes, but you did not tell us what led you to this suspicion,” said Lieutenant General Manee Abd al Rashid. Rashid was head of the General Intelligence Service, the Mukhabarat al-Amma.
“No, and for good reason,” Qusay said. “Before I tell you more, I must remind you that if anything we say in this room becomes known to the Americans, their British lapdogs, or the Zionists, my father will deal most severely with everyone in this room.”
There was little ambiguity about the meaning of this last phrase. When Saddam's own sons-in-law, Hussein Kamil and his brother, had defected to Jordan in August 1995, the Iraqi dictator had provided an object lesson in severity.
Kamil had expected to be welcomed with open arms and an open checkbook when the CIA officers met him in Amman. Unfortunately for Kamil, the Americans weren't willing to trust his intelligence about Iraq and Saddam. The CIA was convinced that Kamil, who had been Iraq's Minister of Defense Industries and head of the dreaded Amn Al-Khass, had defected as a ploy by the Iraqi regime to plant disinformation. After a few weeks, Kamil was all but ignored.
Some of those sitting around the table had been involved in the secret overtures to Kamil and his brother, aimed at convincing them it was safe to return to Iraq. Major General Khalid Salih al-Juburi, the head of Military Intelligence, had secretly traveled to Jordan to deliver Saddam's personal promise of amnesty—and a father's plea to his two daughters that if they returned to Baghdad with their husbands, all would be forgiven.
And every man sitting at the table also knew what had happened when Kamil relented and returned to Iraq on 23 February 1996. Within hours of their arrival, Kamil, his brother, and every member of their families, more than fifty men, women, and children—everyone except Saddam's two daughters—were executed. The official Iraqi news media described the killings as “a spontaneous administration of tribal justice.” In addition, scores of Iraqi military officers suspected of having any allegiance to Kamil were also executed, including a number of senior Republican Guard officers, and even some in Saddam's inner circle.