The Icarus Agenda (23 page)

“We have our unspectacular lives to live; when will they let us
live
them?” the father and husband had screamed.

The answer came for a daughter named Zaya and a son who became Azra the Terrorist. The Israeli Commission of Arab Affairs on the West Bank again made a pronouncement. Their father was a troublemaker. The family was ordered out of the village.

They went north, toward Lebanon, toward anywhere that would accept them, and along the journey of their exodus, they stopped at a refugee camp called Shatila.

While brother and sister watched from behind the low stone wall of a garden, they saw their mother and father slaughtered, as were so many others, their bodies broken by staccato fusillades of bullets, snapping them into the ground, blood spewing from their eyes and their mouths. And up above, in the hills, the sudden thunder of Israeli artillery was to the ears of children the sound of unholy triumph. Someone had very much approved of the operation.

Thus was born Zaya Yateem, from gentle child to ice-cold strategist, and her brother, known to the world as Azra, the newest crown prince of terrorists.

The memories stopped with the sight of a man running inside the gates of the embassy.

“
Blue!
” cried Ahbyahd, the streaks of white in his hair apparent in the growing light, his voice a harsh, astonished whisper as he raced across the courtyard. “In Allah’s name, what
happened
? Your sister is beside herself but she understands that she cannot come outside, not as a woman, not at this hour, and especially not with you here. Eyes are everywhere—what
happened
to you?”

“I’ll tell you once we’re inside. There’s no time now. Hurry!”

“
We?
”

“Myself, Yosef and a man named Bahrudi—he comes from the
Mahdi
! Quickly! The light’s nearly up. Where do we go?”

“Almighty God … the
Mahdi
!”

“
Please
, Ahbyahd!”

“The east wall, about forty meters from the south corner, there’s an old sewer line—”

“I know it! We’ve been working on it. It’s clear now?”

“One must crouch low and climb slowly, but yes, it’s clear. There is an opening—”

“Beneath the three large rocks on the water,” said Azra, nodding rapidly. “Have someone there. We race against the light!”

The terrorist called Blue slipped away from the chained gates and with gathering speed, slowly, subtly discarding his previous posture, quickly rounded the south edge of the wall. He stopped, pressing his back into the stone, his eyes roaming up the line of barricaded shops. Yosef stepped partially out of a boarded-up recessed doorway; he had been watching Azra and wanted the young leader to know it. The older man hissed, and in seconds “Amal Bahrudi” emerged from a narrow alleyway between the buildings; staying in the shadows, he raced up the pavement, joining Yosef in the doorway. Azra gestured to his left, indicating a barely paved road in front of him that paralleled the embassy wall; it was beyond the stretch of shops on the square; across the way there was only a wasteland of rubble and sand grass. In the distance, toward the fiery horizon, was the rock-laden coastline of the Oman Gulf. One after the other the fugitives raced down the road in their torn prison clothes and hard leather sandals, past the walls of the embassy into the sudden, startling glare of the bursting sun. Azra leading, they reached a small promontory above the crashing waves. With surefooted agility, the world’s new crown prince of killers started down over the huge boulders, stopping every now and then to gesture behind him, pointing out the areas of green sea moss where a man could lose his life by slipping and plunging down into the jagged rocks below. In less than a minute they reached an oddly shaped indentation at the bottom of the short cliff where the huge stones met the water. It was marked by three boulders forming a strange triangle at the base of which was a cavelike opening no more than three feet wide and continuously assaulted by the pounding surf.

“There it is!” exclaimed Azra, exultation and relief in his voice. “I knew I could find it!”

“What
is
it?” yelled Kendrick, trying to be heard over the crashing waves.

“An old sewer line,” roared Blue. “Built hundreds of years ago, a communal toilet continuously washed down by sea water carried up by slaves.”

“They bored through
rock
?”

“No, Amal. They creased the surface and angled the rocks above; nature took care of the rest. A reverse aqueduct, if you like. It’s a steep climb, but as someone had to build it, there
are ridges for feet—slaves’ feet, like our Palestinian feet, no?”

“How do we get in there?”

“We walk through water. If the prophet Jesus can walk
on
it, the least we can do is walk
through
it.
Come
. The
embassy
!”

Perspiring heavily, Anthony MacDonald climbed the open waterfront staircase on the side of the old warehouse. The creaking of the steps under his weight joined the sounds of wood and rope that erupted from the piers where hulls and stretched halyards scraped the slips along the docks. The first yellow rays of the sun pulsated over the waters of the harbor, broken by intruding skiffs and aged trawlers heading out for the day’s catch, passing observant marine patrols that every now and then signaled a boat to stop for closer inspection.

Tony had ordered his driver to crawl the car back toward Masqat on the deserted road without headlights until they reached a back street in the As Saada that cut across the city to the waterfront. Only when they encountered streetlamps did MacDonald instruct the driver to switch on the lights. He had no idea where the three fugitives were running or where they expected to hide in the daylight with an army of police searching for them, but he assumed it would be with one of the Mahdi’s more unlikely agents in the city. He would avoid them; there was too much to learn, too many contradictory things to understand before a chance confrontation with the young ambitious Azra. But there was one place he could go, one man he could see without fear of being seen himself. A hired killer who followed orders blindly for money, a stick of human garbage who made contact with potential clients only in the filthy alleyways of the el Shari el Mishkwiyis. Only those who had to know knew where he lived.

Tony heaved his way up the last flight of steps to the short, thick door at the top that led to the man he had come to see. As he reached the final step he froze, mouth gaping, eyes bulging. Suddenly, without warning, the door whipped open on greased hinges as the half-naked killer lunged out on the short platform, a knife in his left hand, its long, razor-sharp blade glistening in the new sun, while in his right was a small .22 caliber pistol. The blade was poised across MacDonald’s throat, the barrel of the gun jammed into his left temple; unable to breathe, the obese Englishman gripped both railings with his hands to keep from falling back down the steps.

“It is
you
,” said the gaunt, hollow-cheeked man, withdrawing
the pistol but keeping the knife in place. “You are not to come here. You are never to come here!”

Swallowing air, his immense body rigid, MacDonald spoke hoarsely, feeling the psychopath’s blade across his throat. “If it were not an emergency, I would never have done so, that should be perfectly clear.”

“What is clear is that I was
cheated
!” replied the man, wiggling the knife. “I killed that importer’s son in the same way I could kill you at this moment. I carved up that girl’s face and left her in the streets with her skirt above her head and I was
cheated
.”

“No one meant to.”

“Someone
did
!”

“I’ll make it up to you. We must talk. As I mentioned, it’s an emergency.”

“Talk here. You don’t come inside.
No
one comes inside!”

“Very well. If you’ll be so kind as to permit me to stand rather than hanging on for dear life half over this all too ancient staircase—”

“
Talk
.”

Tony steadied himself on the third step from the top, taking out a handkerchief and blotting his perspiring forehead, his gaze on the knife below. “It’s imperative I reach the leaders inside the embassy. Since they cannot, of course, come out, I must go in to them.”

“It is too dangerous, especially for the one who gets you inside, since he remains outside.” The bone-gaunt killer pulled the blade away from MacDonald’s throat, only to readjust it with a twist of his wrist, the glistening point now resting at the base of the Englishman’s neck. “You can talk to them on the telephone, people do all the time.”

“What I have to say—what I must ask them—can’t be spoken over the phone. It’s vital that only the leaders hear my words and I theirs.”

“I can sell you a number that is not published in the listings.”

“It’s published somewhere and if you have it others do also. I cannot take the risk. Inside. I
must
get inside.”

“You are difficult,” said the psychopath, his left eyelid flickering, both pupils dilated. “Why are you difficult?”

“Because I am immensely rich and you are not. You need money for your extravagances … your habits.”

“You
insult
me!” spat out the killer for hire, his voice strident but not loud, the half-crazed man aware of the fishermen and
dock laborers trudging to their morning chores three stories below.

“I’m only being realistic. Inside. How much?”

The killer coughed his foul breath in MacDonald’s face, pulling the blade back and settling his rheumy stare on his past and present benefactor. “It will cost a great deal of money. More than you have ever paid before.”

“I’m prepared for a reasonable increase, not exorbitant, mind you, but reasonable. We’ll always have work for you—”

“There’s an embassy press conference at ten o’clock this morning,” interrupted the partially drugged man. “As usual, the journalists and television people will be selected at the last minute, their names called out at the gates. Be there, and give me a telephone number so I can give you a name within the next two hours.”

Tony did so: his hotel and his room. “How much, dear boy?” he added.

The killer lowered the knife and stated the amount in Omani rials; it was equivalent to three thousand English pounds, or roughly five thousand American dollars. “I have expenses,” he explained. “Bribes must be paid or the one who bribes is dead.”

“It’s
outrageous
!” cried MacDonald.

“Forget the whole thing.”

“Accepted,” said the Englishman.

Khalehla paced her hotel room, and although she had given up cigarettes for the sixth time in her thirty-two years, she smoked one after another, her eyes constantly straying to the telephone. Under no condition could she operate from the palace. That connection had been jeopardized enough.
Damn
that son of a bitch!

Anthony MacDonald—cipher, drunk … someone’s agent extraordinary—had his efficient network in Masqat, but she was not without resources herself, thanks to a roommate at Radcliffe who was now a sultan’s wife—thanks to Khalehla’s having introduced a fellow Arab to her best friend a number of years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
God
, how the world moved in smaller, swifter and even more familiar circles! Her mother, a native Californian, had met her father, an exchange student from Port Said, while both were in graduate school at Berkeley, she an Egyptologist, he a doctoral candidate in Western Civilization, both aiming for academic careers. They fell in love and got
married. The blond California girl and the olive-skinned Egyptian.

In time, with Khalehla’s birth, the stunned racially absolute grandparents on both sides discovered that there was more to children than the purity of strain. The barriers fell in a sudden rush of love. Four elderly individuals, two couples predisposed to abhor each other, had bridged the gaps of culture, skin and belief by finding joy in a child and other mutually shared pleasures. They became inseparable, the banker and his wife from San Diego and the wealthy exporter from Port Said and his only Arab wife.

“
What am I doing?
” cried Khalehla to herself. This was no time to think about the past, the present was
everything
! Then she realized why her mind had wandered—two reasons really. The pressures had become too great; she needed a few minutes to herself, to think about herself and those she loved if only to try to understand the hatred that was everywhere. The latter was the second, the more important reason. The faces and the words spoken at a dinner party long ago had been lurking in the background, especially the words, quietly echoing off the walls of her mind; they had made an impression on an eighteen-year-old girl about to leave for America.

“The monarchs of the past had precious little to their overall credit,” her father had said that night in Cairo when the whole family was together, including both sets of grandparents. “But they understood something our present leaders don’t consider—can’t consider, actually, unless they try to become monarchs, which wouldn’t be seemly in these times no matter how hard some
do
try.”

“What’s that, young man?” asked the California banker. “I haven’t entirely given up on a monarchy. Republican, of course.”

“Well, starting with our own pharaohs and then through the high priests of Greece, the emperors of Rome, and all the kings and queens of Europe and Russia, they arranged marriages so as to bring the diverse nations into their central families. Once a person knows another under those circumstances—dining, dancing, hunting, even telling jokes—it’s difficult to maintain a stereotyped bias, isn’t it?”

Everyone around the table had looked at one another, smiles and gentle nods emerging.

“In such circles, however, my son,” remarked the exporter from Port Said, “things did not always work out so felicitously.
I’m no scholar, but there were wars, families against their own, ambitions thwarted.”

“True, revered Father, but how much worse might it have all been without such arranged marriages? Far, far worse, I’m afraid.”