Honour Among Thieves

"Guilty, Your Honour.' Any previous known record?' "None," said the Sergeant. 'Fifty dollars,' said the judge. It interested Dollar Bill that his adversary had no previous convictions, and was also able to pay his fine immediately. When it came to Dollar Bill's own turn to plead, he couldn't help thinking, as he looked up at the judge, that he appeared to be awfully young for the job. Perhaps he really was now an 'old timer'. 'William O'Reilly, Your Honour,' said the Sergeant, looking down at the charge sheet. 'Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace.' 'How do you plead?' 'Guilty, Your Honour,' said Dollar Bill, fingering a small wad of bills in his pocket as he tried to remember the location of the nearest bar that served Guinness. 'Thirty days,' said the judge, without raising his head. 'Next.' Two people in the courtroom were stunned by the judge's decision. One of them reluctantly loosened her grip on the rope handle of her holdall, while the other stammered out, 'Bail, Your Honour?' 'Denied.' THE TWO MEN REMAINED SILENT until David Kratz had come to the end of his outline plan. Dexter was the first to speak. 'I must admit, Colonel, I'm impressed. It just might work.' Scott nodded his agreement, and then turned to the Mossad man who only a few weeks before had given Hannah the order that he should be killed. Some of the guilt had been lifted since they had been working so closely with each other, but the lines on the forehead and the prematurely grey hair of the Israeli leader remained a perpetual reminder of what he had been through. During their time together Scott had come to admire the sheer professional skill of the man who had been put in charge of the operation. 'I still need some queries answered,' said Scott, 'and a few other things explained.' The Israeli Councillor for Cultural Affairs to the Court of St James nodded. 'Are you certain that they plan to put the safe in the Ba'ath Party headquarters?' 'Certain, no. Confident, yes,' said Kratz. 'A Dutch company completed some building work in the basement of the headquarters nearly three years ago, and among thir final drawings was a brick construction, the dimen-sions of which would house the safe perfectly.' 'And is this safe still in Kalmar?' 'It was three weeks ago,' replied Kratz, 'when one of my agents carried out a routine check.' 'And does it belong to the Iraqi Government?' asked Dexter Hutchins. 'Yes, it has been fully paid for, and is now legally the property of the Iraqis.' 'Legally that may be the position, but since the Gulf War the UN has imposed a new category of sanctions,' Scott reminded him. 'How can a safe be considered a piece of military equipment?' asked Dexter. 'Exactly the Iraqis' argument,' replied Kratz. 'But, unfortunately for them, when they placed the original order with the Swedes, among the explicit specifications was the requirement that the safe "must be able to withstand a nuclear attack". The word "nuclear" was all that was needed to start the bells ringing at the UN.' 'So how do you plan to get round that problem?' asked Scott. 'Whenever the Iraqi Government submits a new list of items that they consider do not break UN Security Council Resolution 661, the safe is always included. If the Americans, the British and the French didn't raise any objection, it could slip through.' 'And the Israeli Government?' 'We would protest vociferously in front of the Iraqi delegation, but not behind closed doors to our friends.' 'So let us imagine for one moment that we're in possession of a giant safe that can withstand a nuclear attack. What good does that do us?' asked Scott. 'Someone has to be responsible for getting that safe from Sweden to Baghdad. Someone has to install it when they get there, and someone has to explain to Saddam's people how to operate it,' said Kratz. 'And you have someone who is six feet tall, a karate expert, and speaks fluent Arabic?' 'We did have, but she was only five feet ten.' The two men stared at each other. Scott remained silent. 'And how were you proposing to assassinate Saddam?' asked Dexter quickly. 'Lock him up in the safe and hope he would suffocate?' Kratz realised the comment had been made to take Scott's mind off Hannah, so he responded in kind. 'No, we discovered that was the CIA's plan, and dismissed it. We had something more subtle in mind.' 'Namely?' asked Scott. 'A tiny nuclear device was to be planted inside the safe.' 'And the safe would be in the passage next to where the