Obsession (Year of Fire)

by Florencia Bonelli

  Saddam Hussein wasn’t religious, so he allowed the consumption of alcohol, and a servant immediately handed Gérard a glass of champagne, which he sipped as he strolled around the room, greeting the other guests. He made sure to locate the men closest to Saddam, the most important in his regime after him. He greeted the two brothers, Uday and Kusay. They said that the elder was a sadistic psychopath who took pleasure in hurting people and animals. In 1988, he had assassinated the valet and tester of his father’s food with an electric knife because the servant had introduced Saddam to a young girl who had ended up becoming his lover. Uday’s latest obsession, turning the national soccer team into world champions, kept him busy in his offices at the Olympic headquarters in Baghdad. There were rumors that he locked the players up when they lost and whipped them with cables. Gérard noted that, as usual, Uday had had too much to drink, was speaking too loudly and laughing at silly things. Kusay, on the other hand, had a more sober and sensitive temperament, didn’t speak much and passed his gaze over the guests as if he was trying to uncover their murky secrets. Though he was the second son, it was said that his father trusted him more than his unstable eldest son and was planning to name him his successor.

  Fauzi Dahlan introduced him to the new minister of military industry, Khidir Al-Saadi, a weapons-technology expert, whose rise to the cabinet of ministers was due to the plan devised by Gérard Moses in 1995 as part of the strategy to get the attentive eyes of the UN off of Iraq so that they could resume the production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons without the burden of bothersome inspections. The execution of the plan heavily featured one man, Hussein Kamel, minister of military industry at the time, and son-in-law of the rais. Saddam Hussein had summoned him one morning to his palace in Baghdad and said, “Hussein, my son, I’m going to ask you for a sacrifice and I want you to do it in the name of your love for your fatherland.”

  “Anything you say, Sayid Rais.”

  “I need you to desert, to betray me.”

  “Never! I would never betray you, Sayid Rais! You know that! My loyalty is absolute.”

  “I know, my son. That’s why I’m asking you this favor. I need you to desert and ask for asylum from King Hussein of Jordan. Then you’ll be approached by the different intelligence agencies from the West and all those UN commissions they created in 1991 to annoy me. You’re in charge of providing the weapons for my army, so they’ll ask you about the weapons of mass destruction. You’ll tell them that you ordered all of them destroyed, that there’s not one left in the territory. After a few months, I’ll extend my mercy toward you and my daughter, I’ll tell you that all is forgiven and that you can return home.”

  The plan mapped out by Gérard even included a final phase that Kamel knew nothing about: his death.

  “Sayid Rais,” Moses had reasoned, “the death of your son-in-law will be inevitable if we want to make our plan credible. If Hussein Kamel returns and is pardoned, the Westerners will know that he was your emissary sent to give them false information. On the other hand, if he dies, they will know that what he said is true. And they’ll leave us alone.”

  Saddam Hussein shook his head, with a saddened expression and a very pronounced frown, and declared, “There will always be collateral damage in these strategies. It’s all to save Iraq from the Zionist enemy.”

  Kamel complied with his part of the pact. He deserted with his family, asked for refuge in Amman and spent months talking. He insisted that he had ordered the Iraqi weapons destroyed. There wasn’t a drop of anthrax left, this being the key ingredient in the creation of biological weapons. They had eliminated the nerve agents and turned all the laboratories into factories for insecticides and medicine. They wouldn’t find a nuclear warhead in all of Iraq, though he confessed that there were still blueprints of the plans for constructing missiles. As for the uranium reserves, they had been packed in containers lined with lead and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

  In February of the following year, 1996, after lengthy mediation with relatives and high-powered international politicians, Saddam declared that he had forgiven his son-in-law and daughter Raghad and invited them to return. Hussein Kamel died in a shootout just after returning to Baghdad, when the police showed up at his house, accused him of being a traitor and tried to arrest him. And then, with the post of head minister of the military industry empty, Khidir Al-Saadi occupied it.

  Gérard Moses kept on strolling around the room with the glass of champagne in his hand. He was delighted to greet the famous arms dealer Rauf Al-Abiyia, who introduced him to his partner, Mohamed Abu Yihad. Moses looked at the half-blond, half-white beard of Abu Yihad and his Scandinavian features, but he resisted the temptation to ask questions. In this room, curiosity was paid for dearly.

  A servant opened both oak doors and announced the imminent arrival of the sayid rais. Everyone present lined up like schoolchildren next to the seats where they would be dining. Saddam Hussein was preceded by his valet and food tester, one of the people he trusted most, who quickly pulled out the throne where his master would sit at the head of the long table. The rais entered, and Gérard Moses had noted that he possessed the bearing and charisma of a king. He said, “Good evening, friends,” with a serious gesture, and passed his gaze over each face. He stopped when he saw Moses and gave his first smile of the evening.

  “Professor Orville Wright!” Moses hurried to his side. They shook hands. “I’ve waited for this moment with great anxiety and expectation. You’ve talked to us so much about this invention that I can’t wait to have it in front of me.”

  “I won’t disappoint you, Sayid Rais. What I’ve built for you is better than you can imagine.”

  Saddam nodded with a smile and indicated that he should return to his seat. At the end of the dinner, Gérard asked permission to leave the dining room and reappeared a few minutes later preceded by two servants pushing a table on wheels that held an object covered by a cloth of red satin, the rais’s favorite color.

  “Shukran,” Moses said to the servants, one of the few words he knew in Arabic. He smiled at the rais and announced, “This is my most successful invention, something I’ve been researching for years. And I hand it over to you, dear Sayid Rais.” Saddam nodded and smiled again, thinking about the millions Moses had demanded for his invention. “With this, you will become the master of the East and bring the West to its knees. There won’t be a state in the world that doesn’t fear and respect you.”

  He uncovered the object with a theatrical flourish. No one in the room would have been able to say what it was. Constructed in a silver, lustrous metal, it was a tube about five feet high and eight inches wide, with several buttons and hoses made of aluminum and plastic.

  “Gentlemen, you have before you a revolutionary uranium centrifuge. The Wright centrifuge, capable of enriching uranium in ten days.”

  After his statement, the majority reacted by raising their eyebrows and murmuring. Saddam Hussein slapped the table and silence again fell over the guests.

  “Professor Wright, do you mean to say that what once took us years will now take us ten days?”

  “Not just that, Sayid Rais, but the energetic consumption, the other big problem with outdated centrifuges, will be reduced to a quarter.”

  Again the murmurs, the exchanged looks and the rais’s slap.

  “Rais, what you see here is just a small-scale prototype. If we were able to build ten and had the nuclear fuel”—he meant uranium—“to put to work, we’ll equal Israel’s nuclear capacity in six months.”

  “That’s incredible!” Saddam Hussein exclaimed, and got up from his throne to approach the apparatus. “You really are a genius, Professor Wright. Bless the moment it occurred to me to invite you to speak at our university!”

  “Thank you, Sayid Rais,” he said with an exultant gleam in his eyes. He was thinking about Eliah Al-Saud; he would have liked to share his success with him. “However, this project, increasing our nuclear capacity in such a short perio
d of time, will only be feasible under two conditions: constructing the centrifuges and having the nuclear fuel to use.”

  “If you’ll allow me, Sayid Rais, I would like to ask Professor Orville Wright a question,” said the minister of military industry, Khidir Al-Saadi. The minister only dared to continue after Saddam gestured his approval. “Tell me, Professor Wright, what is the cost of producing this centrifuge?”

  “Around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. With ten of these, working twenty-four hours a day, we will be able to build a nuclear arsenal of approximately three hundred warheads, a similar quantity to the Israeli arsenal.” After hearing this fact, Saddam Hussein turned to his director of intelligence services, who nodded to confirm the information. “Of course, if we constructed more, it would take less time and the quantity would increase.”

  “Do we have the technology to build them?”

  “Yes. Certain internal parts are from a factory in Germany. The company that made them is ready to provide me with a set of them. Even here, in Iraq, we can get the steel we need for the tub,” he said, stroking it. “This is a special steel, maraging steel. Its alloy has a high nickel content that makes it extremely light but still strong.”

  “I want you to lead the project, Professor Wright!” the rais declared, and Moses bowed his head and smiled, agreeing to Hussein’s order.

  “We will need the nuclear fuel as soon as we have finished building the centrifuges. I know that uranium stocks are nonexistent at the moment and that getting more won’t be easy given the embargo the republic is currently being subjected to.”

  Saddam Hussein raised his arm and pointed to two guests on the far end of the table, who had stayed silent, observing.

  “That’s why we have the inestimable help of our friends, Rauf Al-Abiyia and Mohamed Abu Yihad. They will be in charge of obtaining the yellowcake you need, Professor Wright.”

  Uranium, once extracted from the ore, is crushed, ground, bathed in acid, dried and packaged in what are known as yellowcakes. This is then used as a base for the enriching process with the centrifuges.

  Rauf Al-Abiyia and Mohamed Abu Yihad stood up and bowed at Saddam Hussein’s words.

  “At your service, Sayid Rais.”

  “Did you know, Professor Wright, that our friend Abu Yihad risked a lot to obtain large quantities of red mercury for the glory of Iraq?”

  “And now, Sayid Rais,” Aldo Martínez Olazábal intervened, “I will continue to take risks to get all the uranium Iraq needs. The richest mines are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That’s where we’ll get the quantities that Professor Wright needs for his project.”

  Nobody spent the night in the palace in Sarseng except the rais and his most intimate entourage, so the rest of the guests boarded helicopters to go back to Baghdad.

  Rauf Al-Abiyia settled in his seat and noticed that his friend and partner’s hand was shaking as he tried to buckle his seat belt.

  “Do you feel okay, sadik?”

  “Yes, fine,” Aldo lied. “A little tired.”

  They said good-bye in the hall outside their hotel rooms in Baghdad. Minutes later, Rauf noticed that although Abu Yihad had complained of his exhaustion, he could hear him pacing in his room like a caged tiger.

  In truth, Aldo wasn’t tired. The dose of adrenaline he had received during the dinner would keep him up all night. He had found himself face-to-face with the man who had robbed Roy of his magnificent invention and who had ordered him assassinated with a dose of ricin, and he hadn’t opened his mouth. Impotence and anger upset him so much that he had started to assess his chances of wrenching away the gun Uday always had hanging from his waist and shooting this son of a bitch Orville Wright.

  At first, when Al-Abiyia had introduced him, the name had seemed familiar. But it wasn’t until the professor unveiled his centrifuge that the pieces of the puzzle fit together in his mind. He had to work hard to hold back his tears. He had loved Roy like a son. He couldn’t forget Roy’s enthusiasm about how wonderful his invention had been. At that moment, he could have been rich and happy with Matilde, because there was something unbelievable about Juana’s story about Roy raping her. Roy Blahetter had been a gentleman; he was incapable of doing something so despicable.

  The next morning, he went into Rauf’s room, greeted him and hurried to pray in the direction of the Mecca. Once they were finished with the ritual, Aldo wrote on a piece of paper, “I have to talk to you outside. There are microphones here.” He ripped the paper into little pieces and threw them in the toilet. He flushed until none of them floated anymore.

  They went out to the hotel’s garden and walked around the edge of the fountain. Rauf Al-Abiyia knew of Roy Blahetter’s aspirations and his attempts to sell the centrifuge. He had judged it the crazy idea of a dreaming kid, so he hadn’t bothered to find potential buyers. What Abu Yihad was telling him radically changed the situation.

  “You never told me that Professor Wright is the one who stole the idea from your son-in-law.”

  “I didn’t think it was necessary,” Aldo explained. “I was only hoping you could connect me with someone interested in buying it. That’s what Roy wanted.”

  “We missed out on a million-dollar deal,” he lamented. “I wonder what Saddam paid Wright for that device.”

  “What are you talking about, Rauf? You’re worried about the money when I’m telling you that I lost a son at the hands of Orville Wright? I want to destroy him, torture him, to cut him into pieces.”

  “Calm down, Mohamed. Your whole life you’ve been impetuous and you’ve paid dearly for it. You’ve seen what a high opinion Saddam has of Professor Wright. Now he’s depending on him to achieve his dream of nuclear capability. To eliminate him now would be to sign our own death warrants.”

  “No one would have to know that it was me who killed that son of a bitch.”

  “Oh, no?” Al-Abiyia scoffed. “Don’t you know Saddam has eyes and ears everywhere? Nothing happens in his country without him finding out about it. You yourself told me we had to talk outside because the room is crawling with microphones.”

  “We could kill him outside of Iraq.”

  “Do you think Saddam got to where he is by being an idiot? He’ll protect Wright like a son from now on. Didn’t you notice that he was one of the few people to spend the night at the palace in Sarseng? It will be almost impossible to get near the professor.” Rauf looked at his friend with compassion and put a hand on his shoulder. “Mohamed, I know it will be difficult for you not to avenge the death of your son-in-law. I understand your bitterness. But this world is hard and unfair. You have to forget the matter and let your son-in-law rest in peace if you want to stay alive. Don’t get involved with Saddam, Mohamed, don’t stand in his way. He wouldn’t just end you, he would wipe your whole family off the face of the planet. That’s his favorite form of vengeance.”

  Aldo thought of Matilde, and a shiver ran through his body.

  END OF PART ONE

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  MY HEARTFELT THANKS:

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  * * *

  To Estefanía Tapié, who shared her experiences as a missionary in Mozambique with me and whose tales inspired a character in this novel.

  To Doctor Claudia Rey, an outstanding gynecologist and wonderful person, who explained ovarian cancer to me simply and easily.

  To Doctor Raquel “Raco” Rosenberg, whose superlative account helped me to understand the situation in Africa and the suffering of its people.

  To Doctor Valeria Vassia, who, like my Matilde, is a pediatric surgeon and gave me a lot of extremely valuable information.

  To Juan Simeran, who lived in Israel for seven years and provided me with his texts and other information. Thank you also for the book, which helped me to understand the situation in Palestine. To his wife, Evelia Ávila Corrochado, a dear reader, who introduced us.

  To Clarita Duggan, another wonderful reader, who told me about her experiences at Eton.r />
  To my friend the writer Soledad Pereyra, for sharing her knowledge about war planes. Sol, my dear, I still dream of seeing your book Desmesura published.

  To my very dear friend “Gellyta” Caballero, for her loving support and brilliant ideas; for inspiring some of Juana Folicuré’s witticisms; providing me with incredible books for my research; and for analyzing the manuscript with so much love and professionalism.

  To Leana Rubbo, for doing seemingly impossible research.

  To my close friend Adriana Brest, for her two wonderful presents: the epigraph to the first part of Obsession and The Perfumed Garden.

  To my very dear friend Paula Cañón, who is always finding material for my research and who, for Obsession, found a priceless story.

  To Doctor María Teresa “Teté” Zalazar, whose medical knowledge was essential in helping me to write a scene.

  To Uriel Nabel, an Israeli soldier, who so generously shared his three-year experience in the Tsahal with me.

  To Sonia Hidalgo, a dear reader, who sought out information for this book with a determination that touched my heart. And also for putting me in contact with her nephew, Uriel Nabel.

  To Marcela Conte-Grand, who worked selflessly with the translation into French.

  To my dear friend Vanina Veiga, who also gave me a hand with the translation into French.

  To my cousin Doctor Fabiola Furey, who in spite of all her work and familial obligations took the time to seek out material on porphyria.

  To Laura Calonge, delegate in Argentina for Doctors Without Borders, and her assistant, Carolina Heidenhain, for explaining the philosophy and workings of the great humanitarian organization.