THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407010325
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY FREDERICK HERMAN
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
THE FIST OF GOD
FREDERICK FORSYTH
Bantam. 544 pp. $23.95.
FREDERICK FORSYTH'S latest best seller deserves to be one if for no other reason than its superb interweaving of the real world and real personalities with fictional events and characters. The reader will be hard pressed to define the borderline between the two.
The Fist of God begins with the very real, and to this day unsolved, assassination of Dr. Gerald Vincent Bull in Brussels and ends with the conclusion of the Persian Gulf war. The interval in between provides Forsyth grist for enough fictional thrills and spills to fill several books.
The assassination of Bull, a genius in gun design who created a super gun for Saddam Hussein, and Hussein's invasion of Kuwait set in motion an all-out effort by U.S. and British intelligence agencies to ascertain just what weapons of mass destruction Hussein might have available. No power is willing to launch a war for the liberation of Kuwait unless that question - the risk of casualties - is answered. It soon becomes apparent that finding the answer is not a simple matter. Only someone high up in the inner circle of the Iraqi government can supply it.
Such a source exists within the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, which knows neither its identity nor how to contact it. The story Forsyth unfolds involves the re-establishment of communication with this source, and the acquisition, and then the use, of its information. This is not a small task even for fictional characters.
The individual selected for the task is Maj. Mike Martin of the British SAS forces. Martin, who can pass for an Arab, infiltrates Iraq and ultimately achieves the near-impossible. It is a sign of Forsyth's talent as a writer that his plot not only holds together but also seems realistic. Needless to say it keeps the reader eagerly turning the pages.
A series of subplots delve into everything from Mossad operations to underground resistance to the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and diplomatic and military maneuvers among the anti-Hussein powers. To these Forsyth adds extensive and vivid descriptions of military operations, arms technology and sabotage.
There is a serious side to the fiction of The Fist of God. Forsyth touches on some of the political problems of the powers, explaining, for example, why the United States decided not to eliminate Hussein. And he fairly points out that the West was very lucky that an Iraqi threat of mass destruction by high-tech weapons did not materialize after the West had sold the technology for their creation.
Forsyth writes: ``. . . it is madness for the thirty most industrially developed nations of the world, who dispose between them of ninety-five percent of high weaponry and the means for its production, to sell these artifacts to the crazed, the aggressive, and the dangerous for short-term financial profit. . . .'' Speaking of intelligence he makes it very clear that even the most sophisticated technology will never be a ``. . . substitute for the oldest information-gathering device on earth: the human eyeball. . . .'' MEMO: Frederick Herman is a Norfolk educator, historian and architect. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
TRACEY ROWE
Frederick Forsyth draws on the Iraqi war for his new best-selling
thriller, The Fist of God.
by CNB