In 1978, in Baghdad, one of the most feared men on earth made an Indian physicist an offer few would have dared to refuse. Saddam Hussein, then the power behind Iraq’s presidency, had personally walked his guest through the country’s nuclear facilities, and now he wanted him to stay. Take charge of our programme, he said in effect, and name your price. The man on the receiving end was Raja Ramanna, the scientist who four years earlier had detonated India’s first nuclear device. By his own account, Ramanna was not flattered but frightened. He lay awake the whole night, wondering whether he would be allowed to leave at all, and took the first flight home he could find.
