The Imam of the Cave Read online

  THE IMAM OF THE CAVE

  By J Randall

  CHAPTER 1: FORMER IRAQI WEAPONS FACTORY

  UN WEAPONS INSPECTOR Derrick Willy flinched and his body jerked spasmodically. His heart skipped a beat as he sucked a quick, involuntary gulp of air into his lungs, like a skin diver reaching the surface a moment before blackout.

  He wheeled around and cast his eyes over the twenty by twenty-five foot room, expecting to discover what had startled his senses, but the only thing he could see was a few pieces of rusting machinery covered in dust and spider webs in an otherwise vacant little building.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary.

  No leaking nerve gas containers or unexploded ordnance.

  Nothing to threaten him.

  Not even the presence of Republican Guard chaperones.

  The graffiti-laden walls had turned yellow and pockmarked as the plaster had aged and crumbled into little mounds on the dusty floor. Like so many things in Iraq, the plaster held on for as long as it could then gave up.

  Though Derrick could converse in Arabic, he couldn’t read the graffiti, but the crudely drawn American flags pierced with chalk daggers and scimitars needed little explanation.

  The spasm passed as quickly as it had arrived and left Derrick with the same feeling of disorientation he had experienced dozens of times over the last three months.

  He lifted his blue baseball cap and ran his right hand through his light brown crew cut then wiped his sweaty palm on his khaki trousers.

  Derrick hadn’t felt sick a day in his life, until recently. The doctors said that UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were experiencing psychological stress as a result of the Iraqi government’s sudden apathetic view toward the UN’s mission.

  The Iraqis no longer cared where the inspectors went or bothered to send escorts. It was as if Saddam Hussein had died and the country was a headless snake, with nothing to give direction or purpose.

  Of course, this wasn’t true—Saddam was alive and well, hopping about from one of his country palaces to another. In fact, since the 3rd of March three different teams had inspected his palaces.

  Derrick finished checking the camera and chemical detection instruments and, as with every other site, confirmed that they hadn’t been tampered with. He packed his tools into his satchel and headed across the dusty floor.

  When he reached the door he turned and gave one last, uneasy glance at the lifeless room before stepping out of the building toward his white UN Toyota.

  He had three more sites to visit before returning to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Center (BMVC), and not many hours until sundown.

  * * *

  Peter Branham laid the olive drab binoculars down and rubbed his deep-set hazel eyes. He’d been following the UNSCOM inspector since 0645, when he left the BMVC compound on his assigned route.

  This was the fourth stop the inspector had made, and Peter had come to realize that looking through a pair of binoculars for hours on end strained your eyes and doing it outside in Iraq gave you a bad sunburn on the back of your neck. The previous three installations Willy had inspected were as void of life and activity as burned out blocks in a crowded city.

  Peter had followed a different inspector each day for the last two weeks. When he arrived in Baghdad he had reported to the UN Chief of the BMVC, William Holden. Holden had assigned him to investigate the disappearances of inspectors during the two weeks before Peter arrived.

  Holden, the sole UN representative in Iraq who knew Peter’s real mission, suggested that Peter observe them from a distance as they did their inspections. Agitated over the loss of his inspectors, Holden had insisted that Peter report all of his observations directly to him. Peter readily agreed, to keep the UNSCOM Chief placated, but he had no intention of providing anything that hadn’t been cleared first by his own office, the UN Security Council Investigative Agency.

  Today, Saturday, was like all of the previous inspections he’d observed. No Iraqis were to be seen anywhere. No Republican Guard accompanied the inspectors. He was beginning to think they were a myth, created by the press to put the UN in a better light.

  The building that Willy was checking was a prefabricated concrete structure, a former weapons factory that supposedly manufactured components of warheads for SCUD missiles. It was located on a vacant street that had taken some heavy hits during the Gulf War. The UN inspectors who found the building had detected trace elements of chemicals that could have been used in the manufacture of anthrax.

  Peter scanned the landscape around the building. He focused on the figure of a man walking toward the former factory, his sandaled feet kicking up wisps of sand that rose and settled as they followed him. Peter increased the magnification. The man was dressed in some type of cowled tan robe.

  He watched as Derrick Willy exited the building and the man paused next to the lone palm tree that stood out front.

  The man seemed to be saying something to Willy that was bringing the inspector closer to him…

  Derrick was offering his canteen to him and the man was reaching out to accept it, when Derrick dropped to the ground as if clubbed on the head with great force.

  Frantically Peter tried to understand what had just happened.

  Then a shadow blotted out the sun like a cloud, and he jerked his head around to see what had happened, only to find himself staring up at the cowled man’s twin standing above him.

  His last thoughts were of a gloved hand reaching toward him.

  * * *

  The UNSCOM Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Center was situated in a 600 by 900 foot compound in the northeast corner of Baghdad, in the Al A’Zamiyah district, four miles east of the Tigris River.

  The compound had formerly been the Canal Hotel, so named because it was adjacent to an Army canal that bypassed the Tigris River. It comprised four large buildings and several smaller structures, all air conditioned to protect the UN staff and their sensitive equipment from Iraq’s relentless heat. The buildings were arranged in a square with a sixty by sixty foot open courtyard in the center.

  The motor pool where the UN vehicles were parked and maintained was outside the building that housed the communications center and conference rooms, alongside an access road that ran around the BMVC facility. On the opposite side of the compound was a landing pad and maintenance center for the UN helicopter.

  Seven in the evening of the day after Derrick’s failure to return, Olaf Peterson, team leader for Conventional Weapons Team Five strode briskly to the conference room for the sixth code red briefing in the last thirty days. ‘Code red’ was the name of the UN situation for a missing inspector.

  There had been five earlier incidents of missing inspectors during this time. Four of the men were listed as missing on inspection (MOI) and had vanished without a trace. The facilities they inspected had been checked and the encompassing terrain investigated, with no indication of foul play. The desert sand had swallowed them. Or so it seemed.

  But Olaf refused to consider Derrick an MOI.

  * * *

  UN Representative William Holden chaired the code red briefing of his twenty-three team leaders. ‘Wild Bill,’ as his subordinates called him, had been given his Christian name after the actor by his parents. Bill Holden was six feet, three inches of vibrant leadership. His forty year old body was in peak physical shape for a man who disliked organized athletics. The slight tinge of gray invading the dark brown hair on his temples lured many of the younger inspectors to think he had lost a step—until they met him on the racquetball court.

  All available UN resources, together with the best of United States intelligence agencies, couldn’t solve the mystery of the missing insp
ectors. The National Security Agency had intensified its monitoring of Iraqi communications and satellite time over Iraq—to no avail.

  Five inspectors had now disappeared without a trace. The body of the sixth man, Jeremy Atkinson—the third inspector who didn’t make it back to the compound—had been found in his overturned Land Cruiser.

  Today’s code red ended with the decision to have two inspectors work together for each site visit. Bill had wanted to pair the inspectors after the loss of the first two men, but the schedule demanded by the UN couldn’t have been met.

  Doubts about the missing men had begun to surface after Jeremy Atkinson’s body was found. Neither the Republican Guard nor the local police had overtly followed the inspectors as they visited the facilities designated for observation by UNSCOM.

  A suspicion now worked its way into the back of Bill’s mind. What if it were a ruse to deflect attention from their actions as they methodically abducted the UN personnel? Could the inspectors have found something the Iraqis didn’t want discovered?

  Bill’s footsteps were as heavy as his heart as he headed to the operations center to contact New York. He knew that his supervisor, the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, and the Director of the UN Investigative Agency would be in their offices on First Avenue.

  He briefed them on the disappearances of Derrick Willy and the investigator, Peter Branham.

  The Executive Chairman instructed him to contact the liaison office of the Baath Party headquarters.

  CHAPTER 2: MILITARY LIAISON

  LATE MONDAY MORNING, the UN Toyota stopped at the entrance to the drive that led to the Baath Party headquarters’ six acre compound. Bill Holden and his driver, Pierre, peered at the eight-foot-high stone wall surrounding it. The wall was topped with three rolls of barbed wire and had spotlights at fifty-foot intervals.

  Bill shook his head. “Who’d want to break in? Probably built to keep anyone from getting out.”

  An Iraqi soldier stepped out of the small wooden guard shack and glared disdainfully at the white UN vehicle and its two occupants. His clean, pressed, olive drab uniform and the black beret cocked on the side of his head identified him as one of the elite Republican Guard. And the Saddam mustache below his toucan nose tended to confirm it.

  He swaggered up to the driver’s side. “What you want?” he said in minimal English. He thrust out his hand without saying another word, waiting for the driver to hand over their United Nations passports.

  “We’re here to see Colonel Riza,” said Bill.

  “You wait here. I see if he’s in.” He stepped into the guard booth and picked up a telephone.

  Bill knew the Colonel was in. He had called at 0700 hours for an appointment. Riza was reluctant to see him, but when Bill threatened to go above his head and contact one of the party ministers, Riza reluctantly gave him an appointment.

  The guard stepped out of the shack and lifted the green metal barrier. He squinted his intense eyes and gave a look that couldn’t be taken for anything but contempt.

  “Colonel Riza will see you. Remain in jeep when you reach military liaison building. He have someone take you to his office.”

  Bill reached across Pierre and held his hand out. “Our passports?”

  “If you leave building,” the guard said with a sneer, “I return them to you.”

  Pierre drove the jeep forward slowly. “Asshole, I hope you get crustaceans in your mustache.”

  Bill chuckled at Pierre, who was called ‘Frenchy’ by the other members of the UNSCOM team. “I think you mean crabs.”

  “Yeah, them to!”

  Frenchy stopped the jeep in front of a windowless beige building constructed of heavy cinder blocks. The two men sat patiently, knowing it could take five minutes, if not thirty, until one of the colonel’s lackeys came out of the building.

  In just two minutes a private came running down the steps.

  “You must have put the fear of Allah in him,” said Frenchy.

  Frenchy took his blue baseball cap off and ran a white handkerchief across his nearly hairless pate, which was covered with freckles. The other inspectors joked that he should transfer to his head some of the abundant hair that covered his back, chest and arms. His reply was always the same, “It’s God’s way of air conditioning a man.”

  “Come with me,” said the short, skinny soldier in English.

  Glaring at Frenchy, he added bluntly, “You wait here.”

  Bill stepped out of the jeep and stared down at the ferret-faced boy of a soldier. He asked in Arabic, “Has the Iraqi Army done away with formality or do all privates talk to their superiors in that tone? Perhaps I should ask the colonel.”

  The soldier lowered his head quickly.

  “I’m sorry. My English not so good,” he offered in a timid defense. “Please follow me.”

  Frenchy grinned, not understanding everything Bill had said but able to imagine it from the change in the soldier’s demeanor. He watched the skinny soldier jog up the white marble steps to keep ahead of Bill’s long gait and enter the building first.

  * * *

  “Come in, Mr. Holden,” said Colonel Riza from behind his small metal desk. “I have more important things to do, so please don’t waste my time.”

  Bill glanced up at the larger than life picture of uniform-clad Saddam Hussein on the wall then back down to the gray haired colonel with his salt and pepper mustache spread above his lip. This was his fifth visit to Colonel Riza’s office.

  “When one of my inspectors vanishes it may be trivial to you, but let me assure you it’s not trivial to the United Nations.”

  Bill, who remained standing, refrained from letting his emotions show. He knew that a scornful look would make Colonel Riza’s temper rise, and he wasn’t in the mood to take any shit from him.

  “How often do I have to visit your office before I’m given some answers?”

  “You can visit as often as you like, but I’ll tell you the same thing as last time. The Iraqi government knows nothing of this matter and has no complicity in it. Whether they fled or melted away we had nothing to do with it.

  “If you’d like to accompany me to the basement cells, I’d be happy to let you speak to the dissidents we brought in after your last visit. I can’t guarantee they would be able to comprehend your questions, but I can say that if they knew anything they would have given us more than the lies that came from their mouths.”

  Riza picked up a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Bill, who declined, then lighted one before continuing.

  “Mr. Holden, our interest in the UN commission in Iraq is null. There is nothing here for you to find, no secret arms caches, chemical dumps or weapons of mass destruction that you’re so intent on finding. Why do you think we no longer have our Republican Guard babysit your inspectors?”

  Riza expelled a stream of pungent smoke from the strong Iraqi cigarette. “I will tell you why. Because there’s nothing for you to find.”

  Riza stood up. “If I learn anything, Mr. Holden, you’ll be the first one I notify, as I did when we found the wrecked jeep with your dead inspector. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an important meeting to attend.”

  Bill did a left-face and marched quickly out of the office and the building, followed by the running private who had brought him in.

  * * *

  Bill slid into the jeep, which Frenchy had started when he saw him leave the building.

  “Home?” asked Frenchy.

  “First stop at the gate. We need to pick up our passports.”

  “Can do, Boss.” Frenchy put the Toyota in gear and drove away from the building.

  They stopped at the barrier and Frenchy stuck his hairy arm out without saying a word and took the passports from the guard.

  He saw an opening in the traffic, stepped on the gas and merged cautiously with the erratic drivers who competed daily for the right of way on the road.

  “How did it go?”

  “The same man, the same story as last t
ime. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil…I don’t blame Colonel Riza personally. He’s a victim of the political world he lives in, but I don’t respect him as a soldier or a man.”

  “Do you think the Iraqis took the inspectors?” Frenchy drove the Toyota sharply to the left then back to the right, just missing a homemade wooden cart with two truck tires on its axel being pulled by a donkey.

  “Yes, but I can’t connect the dots.” Bill had a worried look on his face.

  The Toyota moved along the broad street, jockeying through the maze of trucks, cars and two-wheel vehicles. Those without motorized transportation walked or rode carts pulled by donkeys and the occasional camel. The newer Japanese pickups and SUVs stood out in the endless crowd of vehicles that farted fog pockets of smoke and exhaust and should have been retired to a bone yard years earlier.

  CHAPTER 3: UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK

  EDWARD ROGERS, United States Ambassador to the UN, stood before the gathered envoys. He was six feet tall, slender, with walnut brown eyes. He intentionally left his immaculate coiffured hair a little longer on the sides to hide his ears, which stuck out and for which, as a child, he was more than once chided as looking like a taxi with its doors open.

  His suits were handmade by a tailor who had moved from a haberdashery on London’s Savile Row to New York. Rogers’s appearance was impeccable and if anyone were to point out a fault it would be his stiff manner of speech.

  “Gentlemen, I assure you that the United States is fully as baffled by these incidents as the rest of you are. Everyone here—and I repeat”—he directed his long, pale face to the Russian and Chinese representatives—“every nation represented in this room has been a victim of some variety or other of terrorist deed.”

  Rogers reached into a blue folder with his manicured fingers, removed a series of photos and laid them on the table for the other members to see.

  “Let me explicate the pictures you have laid out before you. A high altitude, high resolution camera digitally recorded the first set of photos. The scene is the Wakhjir Pass on the Chinese-Afghanistan border. As you can observe in the first photo, there are eight intermediate range ballistic missiles arrayed on their transporters and deployed at the border.”