Shadows and Lies Read Free

thought of her – then frantic efforts to make the flight connections. Now waiting for her here and in the White House of all places.
    The office was fiercely feminine in decor as he'd expected, dressed in pale shades of green and yellow giving it the slight feel of a hot house. There were four drawings on the wall, two by Daumier, two by artists he didn't recognize, since they weren’t French. The desk was dark wood, caressed by wax for at least two hundred years. It was an office he expected the First Lady to have, certainly if that First Lady was Becky Gordon.
    The summons had come at an odd time. The Middle East crisis was rushing for a showdown with Saddam Hussein threatening to attack Israel and the Democratic National Convention began this week. Over the last three and a half years President Tufts had downsized the military to controversial levels, closing bases, especially overseas since they weren't located in Congressional districts. The Republicans had accused him of risking an international crisis for which the Americans would not be equipped to respond.
    Then the fragile Arab coalition put together by George Bush had collapsed. Saddam Hussein had quietly rebuilt his army after his first Gulf War debacle. Saudi Arabia, concerned about Muslim extremists backed by Iran, insisted the American military presence they had tolerated be withdrawn. Then in April, Saddam had sent his troops back into Kuwait, only this time they continued another 200 miles into Saudi Arabia and seized much of that country's northeastern oil fields, the bulk of its oil producing capability.
    In response Tufts had launched more than 800 cruise missiles as well as a massive B-52 attack while he frantically worked to recreate the coalition. Two of the bombers were shot down with surface-to-air missiles and Iraqi television displayed the wreckage with Republican Guardsmen astride the twisted metal, emptying their AK47's into the air.
    Four members of one crew were being held in Baghdad. Their beaten faces had appeared on international television as did their statements condemning the unjustified aggression of the American imperialists. Family members and anti-war groups demanded that President Tufts do something, anything, to bring them home.
    An American buildup was underway in southern Saudi Arabia with the eager support of a newly compliant Saudi king supported by the British and with reluctance by the French. No military action was anticipated before fall, when the desert heat abated. Or so the newspapers had been saying these last months.
    On the second leg of his flight to Washington D.C., Powers read that according to unnamed intelligence sources it was likely Saddam, who had been blustering about his nuclear capability, in fact possessed at least two nuclear bombs, "devices" had been the word, bought from rogue military elements in Turkmenistan, a predominantly Muslim portion of the former Soviet Union.
    If attacked, Saddam vowed to "unleash the fires of Allah" on the infidel and claimed several nuclear bombs were buried in the strata that held the ocean of oil beneath the fields he occupied. He vowed to destroy those fields and so contaminate them with radioactivity. The oil of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran, who all drew from the same vast reservoir, would be unusable for a 1,000 years. He would also launch his nuclear weapons against the American forces.
    Oil and gasoline prices were stable since there had been an abundance of reserves when the Iraqi attack had come and the other oil producing nations were pumping at maximum capability. But gas lines were expected if there was no resolution of the crisis by year's end and there was likely to be a heating fuel shortage this winter. Now Saddam was escalating the war of wills by threatening massive SCUD missile attacks against Israel unless the United Nations recognized his legitimate rights to the land Iraq now occupied. It was, Powers thought again, a peculiar time to be summoned to the