Spoils of War, page 11
‘It is him I am talking about.’ The lieutenant leaned forward on the bed, speaking with a sudden earnestness. ‘I want you to understand what I am. I am a True Believer. I am bound to speak the truth. I am an army reservist and I was transferred into the Mukhabarat only to work with documents and translations. It was not my job to interrogate or torture. But to Al-Shaheb we are all criminals, all to be hanged to give the Kuwaitis their revenge.
‘When I joined the staff of Colonel Jalloul I had orders to report on him to my own chief, General Malik. Jalloul knew this and despised me for it. In spite of this, I grew to love him. I saw that he was a good man and a patriot. He had baraka – do you understand this word? It means the grace of God. I saw that he was disloyal in a way to Saddam Hussein, as I had been warned, but that others were greater criminals. I prayed to God for guidance and he showed me that the work of the Mukhabarat was that of liars and thieves. I saw that it had been against God for us to invade Kuwait. When I discovered evidence against Jalloul I did not denounce him.’
‘What evidence was that?’
‘Something that was worth more than his life.’ Fadel paused to give effect to his words. ‘Something I have kept to myself. I will not give it for nothing to Al-Shaheb.’
Jack was perplexed. It was hard to get the measure of the Iraqi through the florid, emotional language, harder still to believe in his overnight conversion. What he had to say might be quite intriguing, but they seemed to have moved a long way from what Jack had been hoping to discuss. ‘Do you think Al-Shaheb would be interested in what you know?’ he said.
‘Of course. It’s a matter of money, much money, and that is all these Kuwaitis care about. Do you think you can make your rich friend interested?’
‘In exchange for some kind of clemency for you? I’m sure that would depend entirely on what this information was.’
‘It’s good,’ Fadel said with conviction. ‘Good for Kuwait and the greedy sheikhs who rule it.’ He threw another glance at the door of the cell and lowered his voice even further. ‘Are you a Nazarene, Mr Rushton?’
‘A Christian? Yes. More or less.’
‘If I tell you more, do you swear by Jesus Christ to say nothing to Al-Shaheb or his police?’
Fadel was deadly serious. ‘If that’s what you want,’ Jack said with misgiving.
‘Swear it.’
‘I swear by Jesus Christ,’ he mumbled.
‘Then understand that my life now also depends on this.’ The strange blue eyes shone with intensity. ‘It concerns gold. You know about the gold that was taken from the bank?’
‘The Kuwait Central Bank?’ Both Vincent and Al-Shaheb had mentioned the theft of bullion that had taken place soon after the invasion. ‘The gold that was sent to Iraq?’
‘Not all was sent. Some of it, a lot of it, was stolen. Colonel Jalloul knows what happened to it.’
9
The cell had grown hotter while they talked. There was perspiration on Fadel’s brow as he hunched forward on the bed, getting his face close to his visitor’s. Jack felt the sweat in his own armpits and pulled off his jacket. He leaned back in the chair, instinctively withdrawing from the intimacy of the prisoner’s closeness, his rapid breathing and his fervent stare.
Jack began to think he should have paid more attention when Al-Shaheb had warned him that the Iraqi would tell him lies.
‘You’re saying that after the gold was taken from the Central Bank, some of it disappeared? What happened to it?’
‘It was stolen,’ Fadel said simply.
‘By whom?’
A shrug, perhaps a little too nonchalant. ‘I don’t know. But Jalloul knows. He had evidence.’
‘And where is this evidence now?’
‘Gone. With him, I think. After he left, the Mukhabarat came and searched his headquarters. I was with them. They found nothing, but knew it had been there.’
‘And you think this had something to do with his disappearance?’
‘Of course.’
Jack sighed. Again he thought Fadel was trying to manipulate the conversation, offering bogus information in exchange for the chance of salvation that Jack seemed to represent. Last night Al-Shaheb had spoken casually about part of the gold consignment going missing, so perhaps the Iraqi’s story was not based entirely on fantasy. Quite likely it was an amalgam of rumour and speculation that he was trying to pass off as the truth. On the other hand, if it offered any clues as to what had become of Jalloul it had to be listened to.
‘Let’s try and start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘When did all this happen?’
‘In the last week of August. I learned of it on the thirty-first. I know because that was a Friday. I was on duty in the headquarters and could not go to the khutbah, the weekly sermon, so instead I recited some shurahs in the office. I was there on my own. It was a good chance to make a search.’
‘For what?’
‘For something to give to General Malik. He was an impatient man. He wanted evidence of Jalloul’s disloyalty. I had discovered nothing, and by then I had already resolved that I would not report on the colonel. But I needed something, some small piece of information that would do him no harm but would prove to General Malik that I was doing my job.
‘The colonel kept a folder of private papers in his office, separate from the official files. I saw him one day, when he thought no-one was looking, replacing this folder in a special cabinet and then hiding the key. He taped the key beneath a drawer of his desk. That Friday I removed it and opened the cabinet. When I looked at the papers I found things that I knew at once were too dangerous to reveal.’
‘Such as?’
‘Passports. Also papers about the removal of the gold to Iraq. These were –’
‘Wait a minute. Tell me about the passports.’
Fadel looked uncomfortable. ‘The colonel had a passport that was in another name. A passport issued in Baghdad, with his photograph. Genuine in every way, with an exit visa allowing him to leave Iraq, but with a different name and details. Such a thing is not unusual for an intelligence officer who must travel . . . do you say, incommunicado?’
‘Incognito. Then what made you think it was dangerous?’
‘Well, I wasn’t sure whether General Malik knew about it. Such a document can be issued only with the approval of the Mukhabarat, and if the colonel was under suspicion there might have been no approval. He might have got it some other way, and if the general learned of it the matter would be very serious. But this is not the important thing . . .’
‘It may be important to me. What name was on this passport?’
‘Mr Rushton, I told you that I loved Colonel Jalloul and would do nothing to help his enemies. I should not have mentioned this.’
‘I’m not an enemy, Lieutenant. And it seems to me that the colonel is well out of harm’s way by now. If you really want my help you’ll have to tell me everything. What was the name on the passport?’
Fadel shrugged and said reluctantly: ‘Ghani. Given name, Mohamed. It stated his profession as merchant.’
The same name Dale Griggs had overheard Jalloul using. ‘You said passports. Plural. What others were there?’
‘Only one other. Issued to a woman, and with an exit visa also. Her name I do not remember.’
Jack felt a flush of excitement. ‘Fatma Al-Falaki,’ he said. ‘Does that ring a bell?’
‘That could be it.’
‘Does this look like her?’ He took from his pocket the photograph Hamadi had given him and held it out. Fadel studied it and said, ‘Pretty. Maybe that is her. But in the other picture she wore an abaya.’
‘What else do you remember about the passports? When were they issued?’
‘I was not looking, for such details,’ the Iraqi said helplessly. ‘They both seemed to be new. The colonel’s one had visas for some countries, but not used visas. Also entry stamps from Jordan, two with dates from earlier that month. These I noticed because I recognized the dates. The colonel had been absent from his headquarters at those times. He had said he was visiting Baghdad for staff meetings.’
Jack’s interest had quickened even further. ‘Do you remember those dates?’
‘The fifteenth of August, and the twenty-eighth.’
Coinciding with Jalloul’s meetings in Amman with Dr Hamadi. ‘What other countries did he have visas for?’
‘Turkey. France. And Switzerland, I think.’
‘But no stamps showing that he’d actually visited those places?’
‘No.’
‘All right,’ Jack said with satisfaction. ‘Now tell me what else you found.’
‘The really dangerous things. The papers about the gold.’ Relieved to change the focus of the discussion, Fadel leaned back on the bed. ‘First you must understand what was happening at that time. Orders came from Baghdad, as soon as the occupation began, to take the gold from the vaults of the bank. This was done on the first weekend we were here, but it took time to organize its removal to Iraq.
‘To safeguard it, they sent these ten special trucks from Baghdad. Armoured trucks, the kind they use to carry money to banks, but painted to look like army vehicles. They returned the following weekend – the eleventh and twelfth of August, I think. The Mukhabarat were in charge of the convoy, but they had to ask Military Intelligence to arrange an armed escort, and the request was passed to Colonel Jalloul. The army gave them two armoured personnel carriers and a platoon of the Republican Guard.
‘In Jalloul’s secret file there were copies of all these orders. There was a – do you call it an inventory? – prepared by the army officer who supervised the removal of the gold from the bank. There was a manifest given to the man in charge of the convoy, stating what was in his cargo, and a receipt given by the Central Bank of Iraq when it was delivered to them.’ Fadel gave Jack a significant, almost a sly, look. ‘Between the first figure and the other two there was a difference. Just over forty tonnes of gold were taken from the bank here, but only thirty-six and a half tonnes was sent to Baghdad. In between, more than three and a half tonnes went missing.’
Jack did some rapid mental calculations. Three and a half metric tons of gold bullion – three thousand five hundred kilograms, a figure large enough in itself to stagger the imagination – broke down to roughly a hundred and twelve thousand troy ounces. At the free market rate of around four hundred dollars an ounce, that amounted to . . . nearly forty-five million dollars’ worth.
He did not utter the figure aloud. Possibly Fadel had no idea of the values he was talking about. And possibly Fadel was lying through his teeth. What he had had to say about the passports seemed authentic; Jack had independent confirmation of the names Jalloul and Noura were supposed to have used on that September night, as well as the dates on which the colonel had travelled to Amman to see Dr Hamadi. But the story about the gold sounded simply absurd. It couldn’t just have gone missing, not in a quantity like that, at least not without raising a panic.
‘You’re saying the stuff disappeared here in Kuwait, during those few days? And you think Jalloul knows where it went?’
‘He must know. The papers prove it was missing, and he had the papers.’
‘But that’s not quite the same thing. You didn’t see any indication that he was aware of what had actually happened to it?’
‘It would be too dangerous to write down something like that,’ the Iraqi said dismissively.
‘Also, he can’t have been the only one who knew. The gold must have been under guard, by soldiers or the secret police. Do you know where it was kept after it was taken from the bank?’
‘No,’ the Iraqi admitted. ‘But where are those other people now? Dead on the Mutla Ridge? Fighting the Kurds? Executed for disloyalty? Colonel Jalloul is the one man you can be sure knows the truth. Tell this to your friend. Tell the Kuwaitis if they want their gold back they should find Jalloul.’
Jack considered. Unexpected as all this was, and even if Fadel wasn't lying or exaggerating, the question of the gold seemed hardly relevant to his own purpose. Indeed, it threatened to be a distraction. At least he had now confirmed the alias that Jalloul had been using. And it seemed clear that the colonel had had a line of retreat carefully prepared for himself: his insurance policy against action by his political enemies had apparently proved just as useful in helping him skip with Dr Hamadi’s million dollars.
‘When was the last time you saw Jalloul?’ Jack asked.
‘The Monday after that. The third of September. He worked in his office as usual and then returned to his quarters on the base. The next morning he was gone. The first we knew of it was when General Malik’s men came. They searched everywhere. They found the key to the cabinet, but the folder of papers – the passports, the documents about the gold – all were gone.’
‘Was any of Jalloul’s work concerned with Kuwaiti civilians?’
‘Not much. His job was military intelligence. Internal security was work for the Mukhabarat. Dirty work.’
‘Do you know if he ever ordered the arrest of a civilian? Could he have?’
The Iraqi gave the hint of a cynical smile. ‘Any officer could do that. But if he had, the Mukhabarat would want to know why. They would want the prisoner to themselves. The only Kuwaitis I know passed through his hands were soldiers captured during the invasion. They were interrogated and then sent to Iraq, the POW camps. And all properly treated.’
Jack was finding this blind loyalty a little irritating. He wondered how to phrase his next question without coming too close to betraying the confidence of Hamadi. He showed Fadel the photograph again.
‘What would you say if I told you Jalloul arranged for this woman to be arrested? On a false charge of helping the resistance? And that, as a result, she was raped, tortured and murdered by your friends in the secret police?’
‘I would say you must be wrong.’
‘You think he had too much baraka? It happened at just about the time he disappeared, and shortly after he had been paid a large bribe to see that she left the country safely.’
‘Jalloul would not do that,’ Fadel said with conviction.
‘Wouldn’t harm the girl, or wouldn’t take the money?’
‘I can’t say about the money. But if he made a bargain he would keep his part of it. Say that as well to your friend. And tell him that Lieutenant Fadel, who unjustly faces his death, is the man who helped you.’
Major Al-Shaheb gave Jack a lift back to the city. He seemed to have got over his huffiness at Jack’s insistence on conducting the interview in private, and the only question he asked was: ‘Did he co-operate?’
‘As fully as he could, I think. He claims not to be a regular member of the secret police, just an army reservist.’
‘I told you he would lie,’ said the major with satisfaction.
‘I have a feeling he may be telling the truth. About that, at least.’
‘We will see when I question him myself,’ Al-Shaheb said ominously.
He drove his Range Rover at homicidal speeds, stamping alternately on brake and accelerator, scowling and cursing the military traffic that cluttered the roads. This didn’t encourage further conversation, allowing Jack to lapse into his own thoughts.
The vision of Fadel stayed with him, the blue eyes glittering with misplaced hope in the deepening gloom of the cell. He felt dissatisfied but also burdened by what the lieutenant had told him. If it was true, it seemed to confirm that Jalloul had skipped the country at exactly the time Noura Hamadi had been arrested. It suggested that he was using a false passport and that his travel plans included a visit to Switzerland, which made sense. But what about the other visas he had acquired, for France and Turkey? Why Turkey, of all places? And where, if anywhere, did the story about the missing gold come into it?
All that the Iraqi could offer in support of his claim was a glimpse at a few sets of papers, all of them now missing. There could be any number of explanations for the discrepancy he said he had found between the quantity of gold removed from the Central Bank and the amount taken out of Kuwait. There might have been a simple error in the original tally, for instance. And even if the figures were accurate, some part of the shipment could have been diverted elsewhere quite officially – if that word could apply to what had been an outright theft in the first place. Fadel hadn’t been in any position to know.
There was something else about his story, though, something that didn’t quite square up with another version of the events he had described. The discrepancy eluded Jack. All this had happened more than seven months ago in any case. If the gold had really gone missing the Central Bank of Iraq must certainly have been aware of it and have taken steps to recover it. It was too fantastic, too puerile even, to suppose that such a quantity of treasure could simply disappear.
On the other hand, this was the Gulf, the Middle East. Its history and its politics, some would say its thinking as well, were steeped in the kind of fantasy that few nasranis like himself were equipped to understand. And when it came to disappearances, there were people, families, whole households, who had vanished without trace from here during the Iraqi occupation. Not to mention the countless millions in currency, the entire contents of museums, warehouses full of goods, fleets of planes and vehicles, many of which would probably never be seen again. Why not forty-odd million dollars’ worth of gold for good measure?
The man at the centre of it all, Colonel Jalloul, remained a bundle of contradictory impressions. Dale Griggs had seen no reason to distrust him and even Hamadi had once thought of him as a man of his word. Yet clearly their faith had been misplaced. The fact that Jalloul had been willing to accept a bribe was not, in this part of the world, a sure sign of an unscrupulous nature. What mattered was that in return he had made a promise that he hadn’t kept; he had left Noura Hamadi to face a gruesome death. If that had been his intention all along, though, why had he gone to all the trouble of getting her a passport and arranging the finer details of her departure?
Unless the gold was indeed a factor. It kept intruding into the story of Noura’s arrest and Jalloul’s disappearance. It was possible that Jalloul himself had been involved in its theft. In fact it was quite easy to imagine that he might simply have abandoned his agreement with Dr Hamadi when he’d discovered he had bigger fish to fry. What was two million dollars, after all, compared with forty-five million?
