Honour Among Thieves

expected of an Iraqi woman abroad, including how to avoid the advances of Abdul Kanuk, the Chief Administrator. By the second week, her learning curve had already slowed down, and increasingly Hannah found the Ambassador was relying on her skills. She tried not to show too much initiative. Once they had finished their work, Hannah and Muna were expected to remain indoors, and were not allowed to leave the building at night unless accompanied by the Chief Administrator, a prospect that didn't tempt either of them. As Muna had no interest in music, the theatre or even going to cafes, she was happy to pass the time in her room reading the speeches of Saddam Hussein. As the days slowly passed Hannah began to hope that the Mossad agent in Paris would contact her so that she could be pulled out and sent back to Israel to prepare for her mission - not that she had any clue who the Mossad agent was. She wondered if they had one in the embassy. Alone in her room, she often speculated. The driver? Too slow. The gardener? Too dumb. The cook? Certainly possible - the food was bad enough to believe it was her second job. Abdul Kanuk, the Chief Administrator? Hardly, since, as he pointed out at least three times a day, he was a cousin of Barazan Al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the UN Ambassador in Geneva. Kanuk was also the biggest gossip in the embassy, and supplied Hannah with more information about Saddam Hussein and his entourage in one night than the Ambassador managed in a week. In truth, the Ambassador rarely spoke of Sayedi in her presence, and when he did he was always guarded and respectful. It was during the second week that Hannah was introduced to the Ambassador's wife. Hannah quickly discovered that she was fiercely independent, partly because she was half Turkish, and didn't consider that it was necessarily her duty always to stay inside the embassy compound. She did things that were thought extreme by Iraqi standards, like accompanying her husband to cock- tail parries, and she had even been known to pour herself a drink without waiting to be asked. She also went -which was more important for Hannah - twice a week to swim at the nearby public baths in the boulevard Lannes. The Ambassador agreed, after a little persuasion, that it would be acceptable for the new secretary to accompany his wife. Scott arrived in Paris on a Sunday. He had been given a key to a small flat on the avenue de Messine, and they had opened an account for him at the Societe Generale on boulevard Haussmann in the name of Simon Rosenthal. He was to telephone or fax Langley only after he had located the Mossad agent. No other operative had been informed of his existence, and he had been told not to make contact with any field agent he had worked with in the past who was now stationed in Europe. Scott spent the first two days discovering the nine places from which he could observe the front door of the Jordanian Embassy without being seen by anyone in the building. By the end of a week he had begun to realise for the first time what agents really meant by the expression 'hours of solitude'. He even started to miss some of his students. He developed a routine. Every morning before breakfast he would run for five miles in the Pare Monceau, before he began the morning shift. Every evening he would spend two hours in a gym on rue de Berne before cooking supper, which he ate alone in his flat. Scott began to despair of the Mossad agent ever leaving the embassy compound, and to wonder if Miss Kopec was even in there. The Ambassador's wife seemed to be the only woman to come and go as she pleased. And then without warning, on the Tuesday of his second week, someone else left the building accompanying the Ambassador's wife. Was it Hannah Kopec? He only caught a fleeting glimpse as the car sped away. He followed the chauffeur-driven Mercedes, always remaining at an angle that would make it difficult for the Ambassador's driver to spot him in his rear-view mirror. The two women were dropped outside the swimming pool on the boulevard Lannes. He watched them get out of the car. In the photographs he had been shown at Langley, Hannah Kopec had had long black hair. The hair was now cropped, but it was unquestionably her. Scott drove a hundred yards further down the road, turned right and parked the car. He walked back, entered the building and purchased a spectator's ticket at a cost of two francs. He strolled up to the balcony which overlooked