Hide and seek with Saddam Hussein
Sandra Howard
HONOUR AMONG THIEVES by Jeffrey Archer HarperCollins, £14.99, pp. 419 Jeffrey Archer is Britain's best-selling novelist. Unlike his nearest rivals he doesn't go in for sex and sensationalism. There are no raunchy couplings, Jilly Cooperesque sexy interludes or lurid, lingering deaths. Archer's heroines are shapely (but decently clad), clever brunettes who fall in love (for life) with upright, brainy, good-looking chaps. Death is dealt with quickly and efficiently and the reader (and bodies) are moved on smartly from the scene. Only his plots are brazen.
The story is all. Descriptive passages and flowing imagery might water down the reader's attention; Archer does not chance his arm. He simply creates a fantastic whopper of a story on a scale that suspends belief — and yet and yet . . . Even his detractors, who would rather be seen dead than reading an Archer book, must con- cede that most of his stories rattle along like an Inter City Shuttle. There is no time to ponder credibility.
In his latest extraordinary tale, the cast of characters rub shoulders with real world leaders grappling with real situations. It gives gilt-edged topicality and readability to a story that takes off at the speed of Con- corde, leaving the reader panting, with hardly a moment to second guess the twists ahead.
The backbone plot involves a believable Mafia boss undertaking an assignment commissioned by Saddam Hussein's deputy ambassador to the UN, one Al Obaydi. The requirement is to steal the American Declaration of Independence and ensure its safe passage to Baghdad. The stakes are predictably high. A hundred million pounds are on the table. Should the mis- sion succeed, Saddam Hussein would take delivery of a unique weapon with which to humiliate President Clinton and the Amer- ican people in the full glare of CNN-aided publicity. That the Mafia might conceivably baulk at handing such dynamite to such a dastardly dictator is implicit in the book's title. But the Mafia? Who is Archer trying to kid? Between the Saddam camp and high-powered hoods like these the double dealing is as fast and furious as a champi- onship ping-pong match. Caught in the crossfire and mutually (and near fatally as it turns out) attracted to each other are a beautiful ex-model and a clean-cut young law professor. She is motivated to train as a Mossad agent by the loss of her entire family in a scud missile attack, he spies for the CIA in his spare time. A Saddam Hussein cousin or two and Sandhurst-educated, butchering henchmen lie in wait round every corner. Mafia boss Cavalli enlists the services of an engaging, drunken, Irish counterfeiter (Dollar Bill), as finely drawn a character as one of his forged signatures, and a silent hit-woman, dressed in Laura Ashley, who strangles her victims very tidily with a rope- handled shopping-bag.
Then there is the wild card character, Bertha; her imaginative and spectacular vital statistics must have involved consider- able research. Bertha's journey from Swe- den to Iraq via Jordan on an (apparently) old army truck did cause my eyebrows to rise (she weighs over five tons), but three quarters of the way through an Archer story is no time to start being sceptical.
When villains and heroes are finally batting it out in Baghdad, volleys of twist, bluff and counter bluff sing to and fro over the net. The action in Iraq is graphic and atmospheric — evidence of Archer's first- hand knowledge of the plight of Kurds and Iraqi villagers.
I found myself resigned to the fact that only our girl and our man would get through, which was sad because the Mossad, Kurd and CIA back-up heroes are terrific guys. I really minded their sticky ends. Please, Jeffrey, let them limp, one legged, to safety next time.
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