Luke and his group sat. Bill Cronin remained standing. Eight or nine generic plastic bottles of water were on the table in front of them. Trudy and Swann reached for bottles. Ed Newsam was apparently too cool for that. Luke reached and took one.

“We know you just came in, and you must be eager to get to your accommodations, so we’ll go through this as quickly as we can,” Radis said.

“I think we know most of the details of the operation,” Luke said. “Trudy received a great deal of information before we left, and she briefed us on the flight.”

Radis nodded. “Good. We’ve got some classified material here that may not have been transmitted to you because of its delicate nature. The fewer eyes with the opportunity to see this information, the better. And I believe it will increase your understanding of the situation.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “Hit us.”

Montgomery put a series of photographs on the table in a row, one at a time. Luke picked one up, glanced at it, and handed it to Trudy. Then he picked up another one. They were photos of abandoned palaces, similar in nature to the one they were in, but in worse shape. Walls were pockmarked with bullet holes or half destroyed by mortar fire. Fixtures were ripped out and missing. Trashed furniture and equipment lay heaped in piles. Pyramid-shaped rock slides of rubble lay against ruined walls. Burnt-out skeletons of trucks and cars sat side by side in parking lots. In one photo, a bust of Saddam Hussein wore a medieval equestrian combat helmet on his head—as though Saddam had been a horseback warrior during the Golden Age of Islam.

Luke smiled at that one. Saddam looked like a child playing make-believe.

“As you may know, Saddam was in power here for nearly twenty-four years,” Montgomery said. He spoke with a clipped, upper-crust English accent. He had an oddly high-pitched voice. He seemed like an odd man in many ways. Spooks often were.

“And during that time, he built between eighty and one hundred palaces for his own private use, as well as the use of his family, Baath party officials, friends and business partners of his, and his many mistresses. He wasn’t shy about looting Iraq’s treasury, stockpiling priceless antiquities looted from his own country, from Iran during the war in the early 1980s, and from Kuwait during his occupation there in 1990. Unmarked cash, much of it in American dollars, cars, gold, diamonds, anything you can imagine.

“He moved much of this hoard to banks outside the country, but some of it is still right here, hidden in his palaces, but also in old weapons depots, in underground bunkers and caves. We believe the value of his secret fortune runs into the many billions of dollars. Indeed, Saddam was probably one of the richest men on Earth.”

“And this widely known fact is classified because why?” Ed Newsam said.