Finally he had scrubbed his face and hands and changed his clothes, swapping the stained and desert-soiled robes of the Bedou tribesman for the clean white dish-dash of the Kuwaiti doctor.
The cars in front of him inched forward toward the Iraqi infantry grouped around the concrete-filled barrels up ahead. In some cases the soldiers simply glanced at the driver’s identity card and waved him on; in other cases the car was pulled to one side for a search. Usually, it was those vehicles that carried some kind of cargo that were ordered to the curb.
He was uncomfortably aware of the two big wooden trunks behind him on the floor of the cargo area, whose contents were enough to ensure his instant arrest and hand-over to the tender mercies of the AMAM.
Finally the last car ahead of him surged away, and he pulled up to the barrels. The sergeant in charge did not bother to ask for identity papers. Seeing the big boxes in the rear of the Volvo, the soldier waved the station wagon to the side of the road and shouted an order to his colleagues who waited there.
An olive-drab uniform appeared at the driver’s side window, which Martin had already rolled down.
The uniform bent, and a stubbled face appeared in the open window.
“Out,” said the soldier. Martin got out and straightened up. He smiled politely. A sergeant with a hard, pockmarked face walked up. The private soldier wandered round to the rear door and peered in at the boxes.
“Papers,” said the sergeant. He studied the ID card that Martin offered, and his glance flickered from the blurred face behind the plastic to the one standing in front of him. If he saw any difference between the British officer facing him and the store clerk of the Al-Khalifa Trading Corporation whose portrait had been used for the card, he gave no sign.
The identity card had been dated as issued a year earlier, and in a year a man can decide to shave his beard.
“You are a doctor?”
“Yes, Sergeant. I work at the hospital.”
“Where?”
“On the Jahra road.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Amiri hospital, in Dasman.”
The sergeant was clearly not of great education, and within his culture a doctor rated as a man of considerable learning and stature. He grunted and walked to the back of the station wagon.
“Open,” he said.
Martin unlocked the rear door, and it swung up above their heads. The sergeant stared at the two trunks.
“What are these?”
“Samples, Sergeant. They are needed by the research laboratory at the Amiri.”
“Open.”
Martin withdrew several small brass keys from the pocket of his dish-dash . The boxes were of the cabin-trunk or portmanteau type, purchased from a luggage store, and each had two brass locks.
“You know these trunks are refrigerated?” said Martin conversationally, as he fiddled with the keys.
“Refrigerated?” The sergeant was mystified by the word.
“Yes, Sergeant. The interiors are cold. They keep the cultures at a constant low temperature. That guarantees that they remain inert. I’m afraid if I open up, the cold air will escape and they will become very active. Better stand back.”
At the phrase “stand back,” the sergeant scowled and unslung his carbine, pointing it at Martin, suspecting the boxes must contain some kind of weapon.
“What do you mean?” he snarled. Martin shrugged apologetically.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t prevent it. The germs will just escape into the air around us.”
“Germs—what germs?” The sergeant was confused and angry, as much with his own ignorance as with the doctor’s manner.
“Didn’t I say where I worked?” he asked mildly.