The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 4

The vast, arid desert appeared endless in the night, the sporadic moonlight outlining the mountains of Jabal Sham in the distance—an unreachable, menacing border towering on the dark horizon. Everywhere the flat surface seemed to be a dry mixture of earth and sand, the windless plain devoid of those swelling, impermanent hills of windblown dunes one conjures up with images of the great Sahara. The hard, winding road beneath was barely passable; the brown military vehicle lurched and skidded around the sandy curves on its way to the royal meeting ground. Kendrick, as instructed, sat beside the armed, uniformed driver; in the back was a second man, an officer and also armed. Security started at the pickup; a perceived wrong move on Evan's part and he was flanked. Apart from polite greetings neither soldier spoke.

'This is desert country,' said Kendrick in Arabic. 'Why are there so many turns?'

'There are many off-shoot roads, sir,' answered the officer from the back seat. 'A straight lane in these sands would mark them too clearly.'

Royal security, thought Evan without comment.

They took an 'off-shoot road' after twenty-five minutes of speeding due west. Several miles beyond, a campfire glowed on the right. As they drew near, Kendrick saw a platoon of uniformed guards circling the fire, facing out, all points of the compass covered; the dark silhouettes of two military trucks loomed in the distance. The car stopped; the officer leaped out and opened the door for the American.

'Precede me, sir,' he said in English.

'Certainly,' replied Evan, trying to spot the young sultan in the light of the fire. There was no sign of him, nor of anyone not in uniform. Evan tried to recall the face of the boy-man he had met over four years ago, the student who had come home to Oman during a Christmas or a spring break, he could not remember which, only that the son of the sultan was an amiable young man, as knowledgeable as—he was enthusiastic about American sports. But that was all Evan could recall; no face came to him, only the name, Ahmat, which Mustapha had confirmed. Three soldiers in front of him gave way; they walked through the protective ring.

'You will permit me, sir?' said a second officer, suddenly standing in front of Kendrick.

'Permit you what?'

'It is customary under these circumstances to search all visitors.'

'Go ahead.'

The soldier swiftly and efficiently probed the robes of the aba, raising the right sleeve above the area where Evan had spread the skin-darkening gel. Seeing the white flesh, the officer held the cloth in place and stared at Kendrick. 'You have papers with you, ya Shaikh!

'No papers. No identification.'

'I see.' The soldier dropped the sleeve. 'You have no weapons, either.'

'Of course not.'

'That is for you to claim and for us to determine, sir.' The officer snapped out a thin, black device from his belt, no larger than a pack of cigarettes. He pressed what looked like a red or orange button. 'You will wait here, please.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' said Evan, glancing at the guards, their rifles poised.

'No, you are not, ya Shaikh,' agreed the soldier, striding back towards the fire.

Kendrick looked at the English-speaking officer who had accompanied him in the back seat from Masqat. 'They take no chances, do they?' he said aimlessly.

The will of almighty Allah, sir,' replied the soldier. The sultan is our light, our sun. You are Aurobbi, a white man. Would you not protect your lineage to the heavens?'

'If I thought he could guarantee my admittance, I certainly would.'

'He is a good man, ya Shaikh. Young, perhaps, but wise in many ways. We have come to learn that.'

'He is coming here, then?'

'He has arrived, sir.'

The bass-toned roar of a big powerful car broke the crackling intrusion of the campfire. The vehicle with tinted windows swerved in front of the ring of guards and came to an abrupt stop. Before the driver could emerge, the rear door opened and the sultan stepped out. He was in the robes of his royal office, but with the door still open he proceeded to remove them, throwing his aba into the car, the ghotra headdress remaining on his head. He walked through the circle of his Royal Guard, a slender, muscular man of medium height and broad shoulders. Except for the ghotra, his clothes were Western. His slacks were a tan gabardine, and over his chest was a T-shirt with a cartoon figure wearing a three-cornered American revolutionary hat bursting out of an American football. Underneath, the legend read: New England Patriots.

'It's been a long time, Evan Kendrick, ya Shaikh,' said the young man in a slightly British accent, smiling and extending his hand. 'I like your costume, but it's not exactly Brooks Brothers, is it?'

'Neither is yours unless the Brothers Brooks are into T-shirts.' They shook hands. Kendrick could feel the sultan's strength. 'Thank you for seeing me, Ahmat… Forgive me—I should say Your Royal Highness. My apologies.'

'You knew me as Ahmat, and I knew you as Shaikh, sir. Must I still call you “sir”?'

'That'd be inappropriate, I think.'

'Good. We understand each other.'

'You look different from what I remember,' said Evan.

'I was forced to grow up swiftly—not by choice. From student to teacher, without the proper qualifications, I'm afraid.'

'You're respected, I've heard that.'

'The office does it, not the man. I must learn to fill the office. Come on, let's talk—away from here.' The sultan, Ahmat, took Kendrick's arm and started through his circle of guards only to be stopped by the officer who had searched Evan.

'Your Highness!' cried the soldier. 'Your safety is our lives! Please remain within the cordon.'

'And be a target by the light of the fire?'

'We surround you, sir, and the men will continuously sidestep around the circle. The ground is flat.'

'Instead, point your weapons beyond the shadows, sahbee,' said Ahmat, calling the soldier his friend. 'We'll only be a few metres away.'

'With pain in our hearts, Your Highness.'

'It will pass.' Ahmat ushered Kendrick through the cordon. 'My countrymen are given to trivial melodramatics.'

'It's not so trivial if they're willing to make a moving ring and take a bullet meant for you.'

'It's nothing special, Evan, and, frankly, I don't know all the men in those bodies. What we may have to say to each other could be for our ears only.'

'I didn't realize…" Kendrick looked at the young sultan of Oman as they walked into the darkness. 'Your own guards?'

'Anything's possible during this madness. You can study the eyes of a professional soldier but you can't see the resentments or the temptations behind them. Here, this is far enough.' Both men stopped in the sand.

'The madness,' said Evan flatly in the dim light of the fire and the intermittent moonlight. 'Let's talk about it.'

'That's why you're here, of course.'

'That's why I'm here,' Kendrick said.

'What the hell do you want me to do! cried Ahmat in a harsh whisper. 'Whatever move I make, another hostage could get shot and one more bullet-riddled body thrown out of a window!' The young sultan shook his head. 'Now, I know you and my father worked well together—you and I discussed a few projects at a couple of dinner parties, but I don't expect you to remember.'

'I remember,' broke in Kendrick. 'You were home from Harvard, your second year in graduate school, I think. You were always on your father's left, the position of inheritance.'

'Thanks a bunch, Evan. I could have had a terrific job at E. F. Hutton.'

'You have a terrific job here.'

'I know that,' said Ahmat, his whispered voice again rising. 'And that's why I have to make sure I do it right. Certainly I can call back the army from the Yemen border and take the embassy by blowing it apart—and in doing so I guarantee the deaths of two hundred and thirty-six Americans. I can see your headlines now. Arab sultan kills, et cetera, et cetera. Arab. The Knesset in Jerusalem has a field day! No way, pal. I'm no hair-trigger cowboy who risks innocent lives and somehow in the confusion gets labelled anti-Semitic in your press. God in Heaven! Washington and Israel seem to have forgotten that we're all Semites, and not all Arabs are Palestinians and not all Palestinians are terrorists! And I won't give those pontificating, arrogant Israeli bastards another reason to send their American F-14s to kill more Arabs just as innocent as your hostages! Do you read me, Evan Shaikh?'

'I read you,' said Kendrick. 'Now will you cool off and listen to me?'

The agitated young sultan exhaled audibly, nodding his head. 'Of course I'll listen to you, but listening isn't agreeing to a damn thing.'

'All right.' Evan paused, his eyes intense, wanting to be understood despite the strange, obscure information he was about to impart. 'You've heard of the Mahdi?'

'Khartoum, the 1880s.'

'No. Bahrain, the 1980s.'

'What?'

Kendrick repeated the story he had told Frank Swann at the State Department. The story of an unknown, obsessed financier who called himself the Mahdi, and whose purpose was to drive out the Westerner from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, keeping the immense wealth of industrial expansion in Arab hands—specifically his hands. How this same man who had spread his gospel of Islamic purity throughout the fanatic fringes had formed a network, a silent cartel of scores, perhaps hundreds, of hidden companies and corporations all linked together under the umbrella of his own concealed organization. Evan then described how his old Israeli architect, Emmanuel Weingrass, had perceived the outlines of this extraordinary economic conspiracy, initially by way of threats levelled against the Kendrick Group—threats he had countered with his own outrageous warnings of retribution—and how the more Manny learned, the more he was convinced that the conspiracy was real and growing and had to be exposed.

'Looking back, I'm not proud of what I did,' continued Evan in the dim light of the campfire and the flitting desert moon. 'But I rationalized it because of what had happened. I just had to get out of this part of the world, and so I walked away from the business, walked away from the fight Manny said we must confront. I told him his imagination was working overtime, that he was giving credence to irresponsible—and often drunken—goons. I remember so clearly what he said to me. “Could my wildest imaginings,” he said, “or even less conceivably theirs, come up with a Mahdi? Those killers did it to us—he did it!” Manny was right then and he's right now. The embassy is stormed, homicidal lunatics kill innocent people, and the ultimate statement is made. “Stay away, Western Boy. You come over here, you'll be another corpse thrown out of a window.” Can't you see, Ahmat? There is a Mahdi and he's systematically squeezing everyone else out through sheer, manipulative terror.'

'I can see that you're convinced,' replied the young sultan skeptically.

'So are others here in Masqat. They just don't understand. They can't find a pattern, or an explanation, but they're so frightened they refused to meet with me. Me, an old friend of many years, a man they worked with and trusted.'

'Terror breeds anxiety. What would you expect? Also, there's something else. You're an American disguised as an Arab. That in itself must frighten them.'

'They didn't know what I was wearing or what I looked like. I was a voice over the telephone.'

'An American voice. Even more frightening.'

'A Western boy?'

'There are many Westerners here. But the United States government, understandably, has ordered all Americans out, and prohibited all incoming American commercial flights. Your friends ask themselves how you got here. And why. With lunatics roaming the streets, perhaps they, also understandably, don't care to involve themselves in the embassy crisis.'

'They don't. Because children have been killed—the children of men who did want to involve themselves.'

Ahmat stood rigidly in place, his dark eyes bewildered, angry again. 'There's been crime, yes, and the police do what they can, but I've heard nothing about this—about children being killed.'

'It's true. A daughter was raped, her face disfigured; a son was murdered, his throat slit.'

'Goddamn you, if you're lying! I may be helpless where the embassy is concerned but not outside! Who were they? Give me names!'

'None were given to me, not the real ones. I wasn't to be told.'

'But Mustapha had to do the telling. There was no one else.'

'Yes.'

'He'll tell me, you can bet your ass on that!'

'Then you see now, don't you?' Kendrick was close to pleading. 'The pattern, I mean. It's there, Ahmat. An underground network is being formed. This Mahdi and his people are using terrorists to drive out all current and potential competition. They want total control; they want all the money funnelled to them.'

The young sultan delayed his reply, then shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Evan, I can't accept that because they wouldn't dare try it.'

'Why not?'

'Because the computers would pick up a pattern of payments to a central hub of the network, that's why. How do you think Cornfeld and Vesco got caught? Somewhere there has to be linkage, a convergence.'

'You're way ahead of me.'

'Because you're way behind in computer analyses,' retorted Ahmat. 'You can have a hundred thousand dispersals for twenty thousand separate projects, and whereas before it would have taken months, even years, to find the hidden linkages between, say, five hundred corporations, dummy and otherwise, those disks can do it in a couple of hours.'

'Very enlightening,' said Kendrick, 'but you're forgetting something.'

'What?'

'Finding those linkages would take place after the fact, after all those “dispersals” were made. By then the network's in place, and the fox has got one hell of a lot of chickens. If you'll excuse a couple of mixed metaphors, not too many people will be interested in setting traps or sending out hounds under the circumstances. Who could care? The trains are running on time and no one's blowing them up. Of course, there's also a new kind of government around now that has its own set of rules, and if you and your ministers don't happen to like them, you might just be replaced. But again, who cares? The sun comes up every morning and people have jobs to go to.'

'You make it sound almost attractive.'

'Oh, it always is in the beginning. Mussolini did get those damned trains on schedule, and the Third Reich certainly revitalized industry.'

'I see your point, except you're saying that it's the reverse here. An industrial monopoly could move into a void and take over my government because it represents stability and growth.'

'Two points for the sultan,' agreed Evan. 'He gets another jewel for his harem.'

'Tell my wife about it. She's a presbyterian from New Bedford, Massachusetts.'

'How did you get away with that?'

'My father died and she's got a hell of a sense of humour.'

'Again, I can't follow you.'

'Some other time. Let's suppose you're right, and this is a shakedown cruise to see if their tactics can take the weather. Washington wants us to keep talking while you people come up with a plan that obviously combines some kind of penetration followed by a Delta Force. But let's face it, America and its allies are hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough because any strategy that depends on force could be disastrous. They've called in every nut leader in the Middle East and short of making Arafat mayor of New York City, they'll deal with anyone, holier-than-thou statements notwithstanding. What's your idea?'

'The same as what you say those computers of yours could do in a couple of years from now when it'd be too late. Trace the source of what's being sent into the embassy. Not food or medical supplies, but ammunition and weapons… and somewhere among those items the instructions that someone's sending inside. In other words, find this manipulator who calls himself the Mahdi and rip him out.'

The T-shirted sultan looked at Evan in the flickering light. 'You're aware that much of the “Western press have speculated that I, myself, might be behind this. That I somehow resent the Western influence spreading throughout the country. Otherwise, they say, ”Why doesn't he do something?"'

'I'm aware of it, but like the State Department, I think it's nonsense. No one with half a brain gives any credence to those speculations.'

'Your State Department,' said Ahmat reflectively, his eyes still on Kendrick. 'You know, they came to me in 1979 when Tehran blew up. I was a student then, and I don't know what those two guys expected to find, but whatever it was, it wasn't me. Probably some Bedouin in a long flowing aba, sitting cross-legged and smoking a hashish water pipe. Maybe if I'd dressed the part, they would have taken me seriously.'

'You've lost me again.'

'Oh, sorry. You see, once they realized that neither my father nor the family could do anything, that we had no real connection with the fundamentalist movements, they were exasperated. One of them almost begged me, saying that I appeared to be a reasonable Arab—meaning that my English was fluent, if tainted by early British schooling—and what would I do if I were running things in Washington. What they meant here was what advice would I offer, if my advice were sought… Goddamn it, I was right!'

'What did you tell them?'

'I remember exactly. I said… “What you should have done in the beginning. It could be too late now, but you might still pull it off.” I told them to put together the most efficient insurgency force they could mount and send it—not to Tehran but to Qum —Khomeini's backwoods headquarters in the north. Send ex-SAVAK agents in first; those bastards would figure out a way to do it if the firepower and compensation were guaranteed. “Take Khomeini in Qum,” I told them. “Take the illiterate mullahs around him and get them all out alive, then parade them on world television.” He'd be the ultimate bargaining chip, and those hairy fanatics that are his court would serve to point up how ridiculous they all are. A deal could have been made.'

Evan studied the angry young man. 'It might have worked,' he said softly, 'but what if Khomeini had decided to stand-to and fast as a martyr?'

'He wouldn't have, believe me. He would have settled; there would have been a compromise, offered by others, of course, but designed by him. He has no desire to go so quickly to that heaven he extols, or to opt for that martyrdom he uses to send twelve-year-old kids into minefields.'

'Why are you so sure?' asked Kendrick, himself unsure.

'I met that half-wit in Paris—that's not to justify Pahlevi or his SAVAK or his plundering relatives, I couldn't do that—but Khomeini's a senile zealot who wants to believe in his own immortality and will do anything to further it. I heard him tell a group of fawning imbeciles that instead of two or three, he had twenty, perhaps thirty, even forty sons. “I have spread my seed and I will continue to spread it,” he claimed. “It is Allah's will that my seed reach far and wide.” Bullshit! He's a dribbling, dirty old man and a classic case for a funny-farm. Can you imagine? Populating this sick world with little Ayatollahs? I told your people that once they had him, to catch him on video tape with his guard down, sermonizing to his hick high-priests—one-way mirror stuff, that kind of thing. His holy persona would have collapsed in a global wave of laughter.'

'You're drawing some kind of parallel between Khomeini and this Mahdi I've described, aren't you?'

'I don't know, I suppose so, if your Mahdi exists, which I doubt. But if you're right and he does exist, he's coming from the opposite pole, a very practical, non-religious pole. Still, anybody who feels he has to spread the spectre of the Mahdi in these times has a few dangerous screws loose… I'm still not convinced, Evan, but you're persuasive, and I'll do everything I can to help you, help all of us. But it's got to be from a distance, an untraceable distance. I'll give you a telephone number to call; it's buried—non-existent, in fact—I and only two other people have it. You'll be able to reach me, but only me. You see, Shaikh Kendrick, I can't afford to know you.'

'I'm very popular. Washington doesn't want to know me, either.'

'Of course not. Neither of us wants the blood of American hostages on our hands.'

I'll need papers for myself and probably lists of air and sea shippers from areas I'll pinpoint.'

'Spoken, nothing written down, except for the papers. A name and an address will be delivered to you; pick up the papers from that man.'

'Thank you. Incidentally, the State Department said the same thing. Nothing they gave me could be written down.'

'For the same reasons.'

'Don't worry about it. Everything coincides with what I've got in mind. You see, Ahmat, I don't want to know you either.'

'Really?'

'That's the deal I've cut with State. I'm a non person in their books and I want to be the same in yours.'

The young sultan frowned pensively, his eyes locked with Evan's. 'I accept what you say but I can't pretend to understand. You lose your life, that's one thing, but if you have any measure of success, that's another. Why? I'm told you're a politician now. A congressman.'

'Because I'm getting out of politics and coming back here, Ahmat. I'm picking up the pieces and going back to work where I worked best, but I don't want any excess baggage with me that might make me a target. Or anyone with me.'

'All right, I'll accept that, gratefully on both counts. My father claimed that you and your people were the best. I remember, he once said to me, “Those retarded camels never over-run on cost.” He meant it kindly, of course.'

'And, of course, we usually got the next project, so we weren't so retarded, were we? Our idea was to work on reasonable margins, and we were pretty good at controlling costs… Ahmat, we have only four days left before the executions start again. I had to know that if I needed help I could go to you, and now I do know it. I accept your conditions and you accept mine. Now, please, I haven't an hour to waste. What's the number where I can reach you?'

'It can't be written down.'

'Understood.'

The sultan gave Kendrick the number. Instead of the usual Masqat prefix of 745, it was 555, followed by three zeros and a fourth five. 'Can you remember that?'

'It's not difficult,' answered Kendrick. 'Is it routed through a palace switchboard?'

'No. It's a direct line to two telephones, both locked in steel drawers, one in my office, the other in the bedroom. Instead of ringing, small red lights flash on; in the office the light is built into the right rear leg of my desk, and in the bedroom it's recessed in the bedside table. Both phones become answering machines after the tenth ring.'

'The tenth?'

'To give me the time to get rid of people and talk privately. When I travel outside the palace, I carry a beeper that tells me when that phone has been called. At an appropriate time, I use the remote control and hear the message—over a scrambler, of course.'

'You mentioned that only two other people had the number. Should I know who they are or isn't it any of my business?'

'It doesn't matter,' replied Ahmat, his dark brown eyes riveted on the American. 'One is my minister of security, and the other is my wife.'

Thanks for that kind of trust.'

His gaze still rigid on Kendrick, the young sultan continued. 'A terrible thing happened to you here in our part of the world, Evan. So many dead, so many close friends, a horrible senseless tragedy, far more so for the greed that was behind it. I must ask you. Has this madness in Masqat dredged up such painful memories that you delude yourself, reaching for implausible theories if only to strike out at phantoms?'

'No phantoms, Ahmat. I hope to prove that to you.'

'Perhaps you will—if you live.'

"I'll tell you what I told the State Department. I have no intention of mounting a one-man assault on the embassy.'

'If you did something like that you could be considered enough of a lunatic to be spared. Lunacy recognizes its own.'

'Now you're the one being implausible.'

'Undoubtedly,' agreed the sultan of Oman, his eyes still levelled at the congressman from Colorado. 'Have you considered what might happen—not if you're discovered and taken by the terrorists; you wouldn't live long enough to speculate—but if the very people you say you wanted to meet with actually confronted you and demanded to know your purpose here? What would you tell them?'

'Essentially the truth—as close to it as possible. I'm acting on my own, as a private citizen, with no connection to my government, which can be substantiated. I made a great deal of money over here and I'm coming back. If I can help in any way, it's in my own best interests.'

'So the bottom line is self-serving. You intend to return here and if this insane killing can be stopped, it will be infinitely more profitable for you. Also, if it isn't stopped, you have no business to return to.'

'That's about it.'

'Be careful, Evan. Few people will believe you, and if the fear you spoke of is as pervasive among your friends as you say, it may not be the enemy who tries to kill you.'

I've already been warned,' said Kendrick.

'What?'

'A man in a truck, a sahbee who helped me.'

Kendrick lay on the bed, his eyes wide, his thoughts churning, turning from one possibility to another, one vaguely remembered name to another, a face, another face, an office, a street… the harbour, the waterfront. He kept going back to the waterfront, to the docks—from Masqat south to Al Qurayyat and Ra's al Hadd. Why?

Then his memory was jogged and he knew why. How many times had he and Manny Weingrass made arrangements for equipment to be brought in by purchasable surplus space on freighters from Bahrain and the Emirates in the north? So many they were uncountable. That hundred-mile stretch of coastline south of Masqat and its sister port of Matrah was open territory, even more so beyond Ra's al Hadd. But from there until one reached the short Strait of Masirah, the roads were worse than primitive, and travellers heading into the interior risked being attacked by haraamiya on horseback—mounted thieves looking for prey… usually other thieves transporting contraband. Still, considering the numbers and depth of the combined intelligence efforts of at least six Western nations concentrating on Masqat, the southern coastline of Oman was a logical area to examine intensively. This was not to say that the Americans, British, French, Italians, West Germans and whoever else were co-operating in the effort to analyze and resolve the hostage crisis in Masqat had overlooked that stretch of Oman's coast, but the reality was that few American patrol boats, those swift, penetrating bullets on the water, were in the Gulf. Those which were there would not shirk their duties, but they did not possess that certain fury that grips men in the heat of the search when they know their own are being slaughtered. There might even be a degree of reluctance to engage terrorists for fear of being held responsible for additional executions. The southern coast of Oman could bear some scrutiny.

The sound erupted as harshly as if a siren had split the hot, dry air of the hotel room. The telephone screamed; he picked it up. 'Yes?'

'Get out of your hotel,' said the quiet, strained voice on the line.

'Ahmat?' Evan swung his legs on to the floor.

'Yes! We're on a direct scrambler. If you're bugged, all they'll hear me say is gibberish.'

'I just said your name.'

'There are thousands like it.'

'What's happened?'

'Mustapha. Because of the children you spoke of, I called him and ordered him to come immediately to the palace. Unfortunately in my anger I mentioned my concern. He must have phoned someone, said something to someone else.'

'Why do you say that?'

'On his way here he was gunned down in his car.'

'My God!'

'If I'm wrong, the only other reason for killing him was his meeting with you.'

'Oh, Christ—’

'Leave the hotel right away and don't leave any identification behind. It could be dangerous to you. You'll see two policemen; they'll follow you, protect you, and somewhere in the street one of them will give you the name of the man who will provide you with papers.'

I'm on my way,' said Kendrick, getting to his feet, focusing his mind on removing such items as his passport, money belt, airline tickets and whatever articles of clothing might be traced to an American on a plane from Riyadh.

'Evan Shaikh,' Ahmat's voice over the line was low, firm. 'I'm convinced now. Your Mahdi exists. His people exist. Go after them. Go after him.'