The Icarus Agenda (16 page)

“Enough!” exploded the frustrated terrorist, gripping Kendrick’s unharmed shoulder and spinning him away from the sink. “Give me your information, what you saw in Berlin!
Now!
What is this proof of treason … or stupidity … or
greed
? What
is
it?”

“There has to be more than one person involved,” began Evan, coughing, each cough more pronounced, more violent, his whole body trembling. “As people leave they take them
out
—” Suddenly, Kendrick bent over, clutching his throat, lurching for the first toilet to the left of the filthy sink. “I’m retching!” he cried, grabbing the edges of the bowl with both hands.

“Take
what
out?”

“
Films!
” spat out Evan, his voice directed toward the area around the toilet’s handle. “Films smuggled out of the embassy!… For sale!”

“Films?
Photographs?
”

“Two rolls. I intercepted them, bought them both! Identities,
methods
—”

Nothing further could be heard in the enormous concrete terrorist cell. Ear-shattering bells erupted; deafening sounds signaling an emergency reverberated off the walls as a group of uniformed guards rushed in, weapons leveled, eyes frantically searching. In seconds they spotted the object of their search; six soldiers bolted forward toward the row of toilets.

“
Never!
” screamed the prisoner known as Amal Bahrudi. “
Kill
me, if you wish, but you will learn
nothing
, for you
are
nothing!”

The first two guards approached. Kendrick lunged at them, hurling his body at the stunned soldiers, who thought they were rescuing an infiltrator about to be killed. He swung his arms and smashed his fists into the confused faces.

Mercifully, a third soldier hammered the stock of his rifle into the skull of Amal Bahrudi.

All was darkness, but he knew he was on the examining table in the prison laboratory. He could feel the cold compresses on his eyes and ice packs over various parts of his body; he reached up and removed the thick, wet compresses. Faces above him came into focus—bewildered faces, angry faces. He had no time for them!

“
Faisal!
” he choked, speaking Arabic. “Where is Faisal, the
doctor
?”

“I am down here by your left foot,” answered the Omani physician in English. “I’m sponging out a rather strange puncture wound. Someone bit you, I’m afraid.”

“I can see his teeth,” said Evan, now also speaking English.
“They were like those of a saw-toothed fish—only yellow.”

“Proper diets are lacking in this part of the world.”

“Get everyone out, Doctor,” interrupted Kendrick. “Now. We’ve got to talk—
now
!”

“After what you did in there I doubt they’d leave, and I’m not even sure I’d let them. Are you crazy? They came to save your life and you tore into them, fracturing one man’s nose and breaking apart another’s bridgework.”

“I had to be convincing, tell them that—no,
don’t
. Not yet. Get them out. Tell them anything you like, but we’ve got to
talk
. Then you have to reach Ahmat for me.… How long have I been here?”

“Nearly an hour—”

“
Christ!
What time is it?”

“Four-fifteen in the morning.”

“Hurry! For God’s sake,
hurry
!”

Faisal dismissed the soldiers with calming words, reassuring them, explaining that there were things he could not explain. As the last guard went out the door, he paused, removed his automatic from its holster and handed it to the doctor. “Should I aim this at you while we talk?” asked the Omani after the soldier had left.

“Before sunrise,” said Kendrick, pushing away the ice packs and sitting up, painfully swinging his legs over the table. “I want a number of guns aimed at me. But not as accurately as they might be.”

“What are you saying? You can’t be serious.”

“Escape. Ahmat has to arrange an escape.”

“
What?
You
are
crazy!”

“Never saner, Doctor, and never more serious. Pick two or three of your best men, which means men you completely trust, and set up some kind of transfer—”

“
Transfer?
”

Evan shook his head and blinked his eyes, the swelling still apparent although reduced by the cold compresses. He tried to find the words he needed for the astonished doctor. “Let me put it this way: somebody’s decided to move a few prisoners from here to someplace else.”

“Who would do that? Why?”

“Nobody! You make it up and do it, don’t explain.… Do you have photographs of the men inside?”

“Of course. It’s normal arrest procedure, although the names are meaningless. When they’re given, they’re always false.”

“Let me have them, all of them. I’ll tell you whom to choose.”

“Choose for
what
?”

“The transfer. The ones you’re moving out of here to someplace else.”

“To
where
? Really, you’re not making sense.”

“You’re not listening. Somewhere along the way, a back street or a dark road outside the city, we’ll overpower the guards and escape.”

“Overpower …?
We?
”

“I’m part of the group, part of the escape. I’m going back in there.”

“Complete madness!” exclaimed Faisal.

“Complete sanity,” countered Evan. “There’s a man inside who can take me where I want to go. Take
us
where we
have
to go! Get me the police photographs and then reach Ahmat on the triple-five number. Tell him what I’ve told you, he’ll understand.… Understand,
hell
! It’s what that Ivy League juvenile delinquent had in mind from the beginning!”

“I think perhaps you did also,
ya Shaikh ya Amreekánee
.”

“Maybe I did. Maybe I just want to blame it on someone else. I don’t fit into this mold.”

“Then something inside is propelling you, reshaping the man who was. It happens.”

Kendrick looked into the soft brown eyes of the Omani doctor. “It happens,” agreed Evan. Suddenly his mind was filled with the outlines of a murky silhouette; the figure of a man emerged from the raging fires of an earthbound hell. Whirlwinds of smoke enveloped the apparition as cascading rubble fell all around it, muting the screams of victims.
The Mahdi
. Killer of women and children, of friends dear to him, partners in a vision—his family, the only family he ever wanted. All gone, all dead, the vision joining the smoke of destruction, disappearing in the rising vapors until nothing was left but the cold and the darkness.
The Mahdi!
“It happens,” repeated Kendrick softly, rubbing his forehead. “Get me the photographs and call Ahmat. I want to be back in that compound in twenty minutes, and I want to be taken out ten minutes later. For God’s sake,
move
!”

Ahmat, sultan of Oman, still in slacks and his New England Patriots T-shirt, sat in the high-backed chair, the red light of his private, secure telephone glowing below on the right leg of his desk. With the instrument next to his ear, he was listening intensely.

“So it happened, Faisal,” he spoke quietly. “Praise be to Allah, it
happened
.”

“He told me you expected it,” said the doctor over the line, his tone questioning.

“ ‘Expected’ is too strong, old friend. Hoped is more appropriate.”

“I removed your tonsils, great Sultan, and I attended you over the years for minor illnesses, including a great fear you had that proved groundless.”

Ahmat laughed, more to himself than into the phone. “A wild week in Los Angeles, Amal. Who knew what I might have contracted?”

“We had a pact. I never told your father.”

“Which means you think I’m not telling you something now.”

“The thought occurred to me.”

“Very well, old friend—” Suddenly, the young sultan snapped his head up as the door of his royal office was opened. Two women entered; the first was obviously pregnant, an Occidental from New Bedford, Massachusetts, blond, and wearing a bathrobe. His wife. Next to appear was an olive-skinned, dark-haired female dressed fashionably in street clothes. She was known to the household simply as Khalehla. “Beyond common sense, good Doctor,” continued Ahmat into the phone. “I have certain sources. Our mutual acquaintance needed assistance, and who better to provide it than the ruler of Oman? We leaked information to the animals at the embassy. Prisoners were being held somewhere, subjected to brutal interrogation.
Someone
had to be sent there to maintain discipline, order—and Kendrick found him.… Give our American anything he wants, but delay his schedule by fifteen or twenty minutes, until my two police officers arrive.”

“The Al Kabir? Your cousins?”

“Two special police will suffice, my friend.”

There was a brief silence, a voice searching for words. “The rumors are true, aren’t they, Ahmat?”

“I have no idea what you mean. Rumors are gossip and neither interests me.”

“They say you are so much wiser than your years—”

“That’s sophomoric,” broke in the sultan.

“
He
said you had to be to—‘run this place,’ ” he said. “It’s difficult for one who treated you for mumps.”

“Don’t dwell on it, Doctor. Just keep me informed.” Ahmat reached into the drawer where the base of the private telephone
lay and punched a series of numbers. Within seconds, he spoke. “I’m sorry, my family, I know you’re asleep, but I must again bother you. Go to the compound at once. Amal Bahrudi wants to escape. With
fish
.” He hung up.

“What’s happened?” asked the young sultan’s wife, rapidly walking forward.

“
Please
,” said Ahmat, his eyes on the stomach of his waddling spouse. “You have only six weeks to go, Bobbie. Move slowly.”

“He’s too much,” said Roberta Aldridge Yamenni, turning her head and addressing Khalehla at her side. “This jock of mine came in around two thousand in the Boston Marathon and he’s telling me how to carry a baby. Is that too much?”

“The royal seed, Bobbie,” replied Khalehla, smiling.

“Royal, my foot! Diapers are one hell of an equalizer. Ask my mother, she had four of us in six years.… Really, darling, what happened?”

“Our American congressman made contact in the compound. We’re mocking up an escape.”

“It worked!” cried Khalehla, approaching the desk.

“It was your idea,” said Ahmat.

“Please, forget it. I’m way out of line here.”

“
Nothing’s
out of line,” the youthful sultan said firmly. “Appearances notwithstanding,
risks
notwithstanding, we need all the help we can get, all the advice we can gather.… I apologize, Khalehla. I haven’t even said hello. As with my cousins, my lowly policemen, I’m sorry to drag you out at this hour, but I knew you’d want to be here.”

“Nowhere else.”

“How did you manage it? I mean leaving the hotel at four in the morning.”

“Thank Bobbie. I add, however, Ahmat, that neither of our reputations has been enhanced.”

“Oh?” The sultan looked at his wife.

“Great Lord,” intoned Bobbie, her palms together, bowing and speaking in her Boston accent. “This lovely lady is a courtesan from Cairo—nice ring to it, huh? Under the circumstances—” Here the royal wife outlined her swollen stomach with her hands and continued, “The privilege of rank has its goodies. Speaking as one of Radcliffe’s stellar history majors, which my former roommate here will attest to, Henry the Eighth of England called it ‘riding in the saddle.’ It happened when Anne Boleyn was too indisposed to accommodate her monarch.”

“For God’s sake, Roberta, this isn’t
The King and I
and I’m
not
Yul Brynner.”

“You are now, pal!” Laughing, Ahmat’s wife looked at Khalehla. “Of course, if you touch him, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

“Not to fear, my dear,” said Khalehla in mock seriousness. “Not after what you’ve told me.”

“All right, you two,” Ahmat interrupted. His brief look expressed the gratitude he felt toward both women.

“We have to laugh now and then,” said his wife. “Otherwise I think we’d go stark raving mad.”

“Raving as in mad,” agreed Ahmat quietly, settling his eyes on the woman from Cairo. “How’s your British businessman friend?”

“Raving as in drunk,” answered Khalehla. “He was last seen half upright in the hotel’s American Bar still calling me names.”

“It’s not the worst thing that could happen to your cover.”

“Certainly not. I obviously go to the highest bidder.”

“What about our superpatriots, the elder merchant princes who’d just as soon see me flee to the West in frustration as stay here? They still believe you’re working with them, don’t they?”

“Yes. My ‘friend’ told me in the Sabat Aynub market that they’re convinced you met with Kendrick. His logic was such that I had to go along with him and agree that you were a damn fool; you were asking for the worst kind of trouble. Sorry.”

“What logic?”

“They know that a garrison car picked up the American a few blocks away from his hotel. I couldn’t argue, I was there.”

“Then they were looking for that car. Garrison vehicles are all over Masqat.”

“Sorry, again, it was a wrong move, Ahmat. I could have told you that if I’d have been able to reach you. You see, the circle was broken; they knew Kendrick was here—”

“
Mustapha
,” interrupted the young sultan angrily. “I mourn his death but not the closing of his big mouth.”

“Perhaps it was he, perhaps not,” said Khalehla. “Washington itself could be responsible. Too many people were involved in Kendrick’s arrival, I saw that also. As I understand, it was a State Department operation; there are others who do these things better.”

“We don’t know who the enemy is or where to
look
!” Ahmat clenched his fist, bringing his knuckles to his teeth. “It could be anyone,
anywhere
—right in front of our eyes. Goddamnit, what do we
do
?”

“Do as he’s told you,” said the woman from Cairo. “Let him go in under deep cover. He’s made contact; wait for him to reach you.”