An Enemy Within

by Roy David

  How the hell was he supposed to come up with a line to mitigate this disaster? The media would have a field day proclaiming that no one knew what they were doing.

  He decided he had to go to the bathroom. Sometimes he could think more clearly while taking a leak. The questions from the media would come tumbling in now, a veritable avalanche.

  He thought quickly, splashing noisily into the pan. He would have to go over to Bremer’s office this afternoon, brief the Press Office on how to play it. ‘Okay,’ he said to himself, tossing ideas around. He’d tell them that any mention of the Iraqi army and the Ba’athists must always include the name of Saddam in the same breath. Tar them all with the same brush. Killers, torturers, despots.

  Disbanding the Iraqi army was a no-brainer, he would tell them to say. They would have to get a quote from someone, too. No problem. ‘How could anyone trust them not to rise up?’

  His mind working overtime, the vision of mass graves flashed into his head. He’d been planning to push out an update piece for some time. This struck him as the perfect opportunity to remind people who they were dealing with.

  ‘Got it,’ he whistled. Weren’t search teams still digging all over the place? They must have found more corpses by now. Well, they could dig for his salvation from this Bremer shit.

  He washed his hands, studying himself in the mirror. Pictures of bullet-ridden skulls, decaying bodies, skeletons with their hands bound. That would deflect the people back home from the real issue. The public were susceptible to that – especially if something was said often enough.

  He smiled back at the face before him. ‘Any smart-arsed journos who ask what a Ba’athist administrator has got to do with mass graves, we’ll remind them they asked the same about the Nazis,’ he said.

  He only hoped to God it would work.

  * * *

  Aban al-Tikriti loaded the CD into his computer drive and brought up the file he had begun to read the previous night only to give up in the early hours, exhausted.

  As part of Saddam’s response to the UN Security Council resolution 1441 – the resolution eventually used by the US and Britain to wage war – Iraq had made two copies of a top-secret report on their disarmament process. It was more than 12,000 pages long.

  One copy was delivered to the International Atomic Energy Authority in Geneva, the body responsible for all previous weapons inspections in Iraq. The other was destined for the United Nations in New York, to be delivered by secure means to the then-current chair of the UN, Colombia.

  The report was, in fact, intercepted by US officials, virtually at the doors of UN headquarters, who took it to Washington for ‘photocopying’ so it could be distributed to the remaining four permanent UN members, Britain, China, France, and Russia, and then to the other fifteen non-permanent member countries.

  The four permanent members duly received the full dossier, but the other member states were made to wait several days. And, when they got their version, it was a heavily-edited manuscript which had been cut by more than 8,000 pages.

  Intelligence agencies were aware that Saddam had warned the dossier would list everyone who had supplied Iraq in its thirty-year weapons programme – each government, every public and private company, and each individual. But these references had all been removed by the US in the redacted copies.

  And, now, Aban was staring at that full unedited list on screen, a mind-numbing flow of information he found difficult to fully comprehend. Exports from America, sanctioned by the Reagan administration, then continued by the government of Bush senior, included regular shipments of anthrax, strains of botulism toxin, Brucella melitensis, gangrene bacteria, West Nile fever virus, and other agents used in germ warfare.

  So too, were detailed plans for chemical weapons-production facilities, chemical warfare agent precursors, missile production and missile guidance equipment, chemical and biological warhead filling apparatus. The list of WMD seemed endless.

  The file showed seventeen shipments and some eighty batches of bio-material had been sent to Iraq during the Reagan years alone.

  There were almost 800 approved US export licenses for dual-use technology. Some of those deliveries continued after Saddam had carried out the gassing of more than 5,000 men, women, and children in the Kurdish town of Halabja, near the border with Iran, in 1988.

  Aban recounted the Kurds always claimed they were subjected to many more gassings. Estimates reckoned more than 100,000 people perished. Survivors and their offspring were left with virulent cancers, congenital abnormalities, blindness, and many other serious health problems.

  He read further. There was a multitude of international companies involved; American, British, Russian, Chinese, French, German – Singapore featuring prominently, too. But, what use was all this? The names of the companies, the individuals, meant nothing to him. What would be to gain in dragging up old history?

  He stretched his arms out wide to relieve the tension in his shoulders and paced the room. Suddenly, the incongruity finally hit home. It struck him so hard he was forced into a loud raucous laugh, so surprised with the absurd paradox of it all.

  So, it was the father, George Bush, first as Vice-President, then President, who had helped Saddam build his array of WMD. And now, it was the son, George W. Bush, who was destroying Iraq because of that.

  * * *

  It was raining when Alex got out of the yellow cab from JFK. The cool drizzle on her face felt good; such a refreshing contrast to the merciless heat of the Middle East.

  Her apartment was in a former warehouse block on the borders of SoHo and Greenwich Village, third floor, one-bedroom, in a six-storey building that dated to the 1880s. Part of it she used as a studio where the light flooded in through large cast-iron windows and where she sometimes had clients sit for portrait work. It was, as her friends said, ‘pretty hip’ and she knew she had done very well to have landed it. Now, with Kowolski’s money, she could pay the mortgage.

  ‘Hey, Alex.’ She was just paying the fare when the Badgeman came ambling up the street. He gave her a high-five. ‘Say, girl, where you been the last few weeks?’

  She scanned his garments, not a piece of cloth that was not covered by a badge of some description. ‘This here’s new – and this,’ he said pointing to a couple of pin-ons. ‘Got this at the gas station. It says BP, guess you don’t know what that stands for, heh?’

  ‘Well, Badge, I guess it could be British Petroleum. They’re mighty big in the States right now.’

  ‘Gee, British Petroleum,’ he mumbled, wiping the badge with his thumb while his eyes darted up and down the street, his usual custom. Badge was a familiar site in these parts, seemingly covering an area that stretched from Sixth Avenue to east of Lafayette Street into Little Italy, sometimes handing out leaflets of one sort or another, occasionally washing a car. She had once seen him up on Houston Street wearing a sandwich board advertising a new restaurant.

  They talked often, like this, on the street, and she had once suggested that she take some photographs for a magazine feature, but he appeared reticent so she never pursued the idea. It was Richard Northwood who’d let slip the reason for the Badgeman’s hesitancy one night when he got drunk at her apartment.

  Gazing out of her window, Northwood had spotted him shuffling along in the street below. ‘You see that guy down there,’ he’d slurred.

  ‘Yeah, Badgeman – he’s not too bright but he’s harmless,’ Alex had replied.

  ‘He’s a Fed, Alex. Known in the FBI as one of their streetwalkers, cute eh?’

  In a more sober frame, Northwood had sworn Alex to secrecy about the revelation – not that she would have told a soul anyway. But not before he told her the Badgeman’s intelligence-gathering on drugs, prostitution, money racketeering and such like had led to several invaluable arrests.

  Now, she sometimes wondered, when she looked into the Badgeman’s blue eyes with something of a hint of amusement, whether he knew she knew. She also thought he was in the wron
g job. He should have been on the stage.

  It was one of the many things she liked about New York. An ants’ nest of activity where, among all that aping of myrmecological dash, there was just no guessing who was the soldier, the worker, the male or the queen.

  She punched a series of numbers into the security device on the front door, hoping the monthly code had not been changed while she was away. She was in luck as the large heavy door buzzed open.

  ‘Hey, you didn’t tell me where y’ouse been,’ Badge shouted after her.

  ‘Baghdad, man.’

  ‘Jeez, that’s hot – and dangerous.’

  ‘Yeah, treacherous in more ways than one,’ she said, closing the door behind her.

  Dropping her bags in the hallway, she gathered up her mail. Then she switched on her computer to see she had a stack of emails since her last pick-up in Baghdad.

  Among them, as she hoped, was one from Steve Lewis. The note was bright and cheerful, trusting the flight had been okay. Would she mind if he continued to correspond? He had enjoyed her company so much, could he be her ‘cyber friend’ over the Internet? Her heart suddenly felt lighter.

  She replied straight away, saying that if he was ever in New York, she, too, knew a great Italian restaurant and would be delighted to return the favour.

  Throwing her jacket over a chair, she sauntered into the kitchen, smiling to herself. ‘Cyber friend’, she thought. But would she ever see him again? She hoped so. Romance? She let out a sigh and opened the fridge.

  A half-full bottle of white wine greeted her. Removing the cork and lifting the bottle to her nose, it seemed drinkable. From a cupboard, she took a wine glass, something she could have done with her eyes closed. Then she suddenly stopped. Memories flooded back. After several seconds, she put the glass back and emptied the bottle down the sink. Alcohol hadn’t been the crutch she’d envisaged needing in Baghdad – she’d hardly drunk any. The thought bucked her up no end.

  Making a lemon tea, she returned to her computer. An email from Aban caught her eye. She thought about leaving it until later, guessing the message contained a brief pleasantry. She clicked it open, her face immediately taking on a puzzled frown. Just a pleasant few words of introduction but with a lengthy attachment included.

  Scanning several sheets of the contents, her eyes widened. She let out a gasp. A shock of overwhelming disbelief rattled through her.

  For every page was stamped with the words ‘Top Secret’.

  12

  Alex spent the next day in high tempo mode, feverishly checking out Aban’s amazing file. Having worked solidly on the Internet from early morning, her right hand ached.

  Forgoing lunch, it was late afternoon before she paused, sinking back in her chair and trying to take stock of the notes she’d made. Her mind swam with detail. Wondering whether to call it a day, she pressed on. A new page caught her eye. Quickly scanning the contents, a feeling of despair suddenly hit her as if she’d just rushed headlong into a brick wall.

  She groaned, throwing the mouse down on the desk and watching, disinterested, as the back cover fell off and the batteries fell out. ‘Shit,’ she cried. The story wasn’t new.

  Many of the companies and individuals responsible for arming Saddam over the years had already been exposed by a German newspaper, Die Tageszeitung, several months earlier – something she’d missed.

  The revelations, from the paper’s Geneva UN correspondent, Andreas Zumach, had been picked up in the US but not reported with much enthusiasm by the mainstream press. The thought flittered through her mind that they’d slapped a gag on anything that might undermine the war effort in Iraq. Kowolski probably had a hand in it.

  Alex stared in disbelief at her screen. The Los Angeles alternative paper, the LA Weekly News, had gone further, publishing a list of ninety US or affiliate companies who had supplied Iraq with its many chemical poisons and military aid. The stories, run over several days, had been printed while she was in Baghdad.

  Kowolski must have known about them, she thought. Maybe that was one of the reasons he’d been so on edge. But why hadn’t she seen them? Her mind wandered. She knew why. The stories had originally broken slap-bang in the middle of her depressive phase when she’d hardly spoken to anyone. Keeping up with any news had been of no interest.

  Damn, if only she’d seen the reports. She’d have loved to hear Kowolski try to explain them away.

  While it was prima facie evidence of America’s involvement in the arming of Saddam, Alex quickly decided it was pointless trying to take the story further. Now the facts were in the public domain, no doubt politicians would want to examine the material and act on it – a committee of inquiry or such like, she figured.

  She’d initially been flushed with the excitement at what she thought would be a tremendous scoop. But it had all been a waste of time. Now, frustration consumed her because she had a full schedule of work for Kowolski and she’d been sidetracked. The downtown photo lab which was producing her Baghdad photographs, expected her this morning and she’d put them off.

  Kowolski hadn’t given her a deadline, but he was just as likely to stun her with a surprise date for McDermott’s big day in New York. She needed to be ready.

  She was just about to pick up the phone to call the lab when it rang. Unmistakable; the voice of Greg Spencer.

  ‘I’ll have to be quick,’ he said, a nervous edge to his voice. ‘You get the message from our friend?’

  ‘I’ve been working on it all day – there’s nothing new. It’s all out in the open here. We’d been secretly supplying Iraq for years with chemicals.’

  ‘No, not that stuff, the other info. It’s dynamite.’

  A shiver ran through her. ‘What other stuff?’

  But the line suddenly went dead. Frantic, she tried to call him back – no response. Hurrying over to her computer she scrolled down the pages of Aban’s email, convinced she hadn’t missed anything. Page after page flashed by. No, she’d covered everything. So what the hell was Greg talking about?

  Slumping back in her chair, her mind began racing. There’d been over a hundred emails waiting for her when she got back – and she still hadn’t read half of them. Opening her inbox, she ran down the list. Nothing else from Aban. Many of the others were simply junk. She often cursed why they weren’t always filtered to the spam file on her Hotmail account, the one she used to pick up her emails when abroad. It always confused her how some got through to her main account and some didn’t.

  Then the thought struck her. Her spam file! Logging into her Hotmail server, she waited for the tab to appear, impatiently tapping her fingers on the edge of her desk. She clicked on the spam box. Her eyes flicked over the lines of blue type – and there it was. Another email from Aban, with the heading: ‘Greetings’.

  Opening it, Alex began devouring the contents. She gave out a low whistle as she took in the implications of Aban’s overview of the material. It was just as Greg had described, dynamite. Hundreds of firms from around the world, including America, had paid kickbacks to Saddam during the seven terrible years of sanctions against Iraq in the UN’s oil for food programme starting in 1996. This definitely had not been published.

  She nodded to herself as she read further, understanding Aban’s take on how the scam worked. Companies exporting a controlled range of goods to Iraq had their invoices paid from a UN bank account. In turn, Iraq was allowed to sell oil, the proceeds going back to that UN account to balance the books.

  But Aban’s documents showed firms had been secretly sending ten per cent of the invoice value as an upfront payment directly to Saddam’s coffers. These payments were classed by Iraq as ‘trucking and service fees’.

  The company then inflated the price of its invoice by that ten per cent – which the UN, unknowingly, paid in full.

  Aban explained he had heard rumours of such a slush fund. Now he was convinced Saddam and his inner circle had obviously raked in millions of dollars, probably billions, while the country g
rew steadily weaker. Children had died in their thousands because of the sanctions. The tales of suffering were endless. Infant mortality alone had sent Iraq scurrying back to the Dark Ages.

  Aban was hoping Alex and his other ‘good friend’, Mr Greg, could bring the matter to the public’s attention.

  Alex read further, discovering there was an extra edge to the situation. It appeared some powerful foreign individuals, friendly to Saddam, had received millions of dollars of oil credits. Through a myriad of shell companies, the Iraq government had given them the rights to buy several million barrels of its oil at a reduced price. This was then sold on at market rates to earn a healthy commission for the individual.

  She sat back in her chair, astounded. It was fraud and corruption on a mammoth scale.

  But what could she do about it? Who could she tell?

  * * *

  It was a little after two in the morning – eight hours ahead in Iraq – by the time she switched off her computer, shattered. Summoning a final reserve of energy, she called Greg’s cell phone from her quick-dial menu. He would have ideas what to do about Aban’s material – his contacts were first class. The number did not ring out. She dialled it again, this time deliberately pressing each button, so she could hear the tune of each key. The number sounded unobtainable.

  Maybe he’d left Baghdad and was on his way back to Oz although, when they’d spoken earlier, he’d made no mention of it. Perhaps he’d meant to before he was cut off.

  Tiredness quickly taking over again, she felt somewhat relieved she hadn’t made contact. A dull ache pounded her brow and her head swam with questions she hadn’t the strength to answer. She made her way to bed, vowing to speak to him in the morning.

  Pulling the duvet tight around her, she lay there thinking what a strike for democracy it would be if they could make everything public.

  Kowolski wouldn’t like it; Richard Northwood would hate it. And the White House would go berserk.

  * * *