The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 9

Khalehla gasped. Her eyes had been suddenly drawn to the rearview mirror—a speck of light, an image of black upon darker black, something. And then it was there. Far away on the hill above Masqat, a car was following her! There were no headlights, just a dark, moving shadow in the distance. It was rounding a curve on the deserted road that led to the twisting descent into the valley—to the beginning of the sands of Jabal Sham where the 'escape' was to take place. There was only one entrance to and one exit from the desert valley and her strategy had been to drive off the road out of sight and follow Evan Kendrick and his fellow fugitives on foot once they had broken out of the van. That strategy was now void.

Oh, my God, I can't be caught! They'll kill every hostage in the embassy! What have I done? Get out. Get away!

Khalehla spun the wheel; the powerful car swung around on the soft, sandy earth, leaping over ruts on the primitive road and reversing its direction. She slammed her foot on the accelerator, stabbing it into the floor, and within moments, her headlights on high beam, she passed the car now rushing towards her. A figure beside the astonished driver tried to lunge down, concealing his face and body, but it was impossible.

And Khalehla did not believe what she saw!

But then she had to. In a sudden moment of utter clarity she saw it was so right, so perfect—so unmistakably perfect. Tony! Fumbling, bumbling, inarticulate Anthony MacDonald. The company reject whose position was secure because the firm was owned by his wife's father but who was nevertheless sent to Cairo, where he could do the least damage. A representative without portfolio, apart from hosting dinner parties where he and his equally inept and boring wife invariably got drunk. It was as though a company memorandum had been tattooed on their foreheads: Not permitted in the UK except for obligatory family funerals. Return flight tickets mandatory. How perfectly ingenious! The overweight, over-indulged, underbrained fop in sartorial plumage that could not hide his excesses. The Scarlet Pimpernel could not have matched his cover, and it was a cover, Khalehla was convinced of it. In building one for herself she had forced a master to expose his own.

She tried to think back, to reconstruct how he had snared her, but the steps were blurred because she had not thought about it at the time. She had no reason whatsoever to doubt that Tony MacDonald, the alcoholic cipher, was beside himself at the thought of travelling to Oman alone without someone knowledgeable beside him. He had complained several times, nearly trembling, that his firm had accounts in Masqat and he was expected to service them despite the horrors going on over there. She had replied—several times—with comforting words that it was basically a US-Israeli problem, not a British one, so he would not be harmed. It was as though he had expected her to be sent there, and when the orders came she had remembered his fears and telephoned him, believing he was her perfect escort to Oman. Oh, just perfect!

My God, what a network he must have! she thought. A little over an hour ago he was apparently paralysed with alcohol, making an ass of himself in a hotel bar, and here he was at five o'clock in the morning following her in a large blacked-out car. One assumption was unavoidable: He had put her under twenty-four-hour surveillance and picked her up after she had driven out of the palace gate, which meant that his informers had unearthed her connection to the sultan of Oman. But for whom was the profoundly clever MacDonald playing out his charade, a cover that gave him access to an efficient Omani network of informers and drivers of powerful vehicles at any hour of the day and night in this besieged country where every foreigner was put under a microscope? Which side was he on, and if it was the wrong one, for how many years had the ubiquitous Tony MacDonald been playing his murderous game?

Who was behind him? Did this contradictory Englishman's visit to Oman have anything to do with Evan Kendrick? Ahmat had spoken cautiously, abstractly, about the American congressman's covert objective in Masqat but would not elaborate except to say that no theory should be overlooked no matter how implausible it seemed. He revealed only that the former construction engineer from Southwest Asia believed that the bloody seizure of the embassy might be traced to a man and an industrial conspiracy whose origins were perceived four years ago in Saudi Arabia—perceived, not proved. It was far more than she had been told by her own people. Yet an intelligent, successful American did not risk going under cover among terrorists without extraordinary convictions. For Ahmat, sultan of Oman and fan of the New England Patriots football team, this was enough. Apart from getting him here, Washington would not acknowledge him, would not help him. 'But we can, I can!' Ahmat had exclaimed. And now Anthony MacDonald was a profoundly disturbing factor in the terrorist equation.

Her professional instincts demanded that she walk away, race away, but Khalehla could not do that. Something had happened; someone had altered the delicate balances of past and impending violence. She would not call for a small jet to fly her out of an unknown, rock-based plateau to Cairo. Not yet. Not yet. Not now! There was too much to learn and so little time! She could not stop!

'Don't stop!' roared the obese MacDonald, clutching the hand strap above his seat as he yanked his heavy body upright. 'She was driving out here for a reason, certainly not for pleasure at this hour.'

'She may have seen you, Effendi.'

'Not likely, but if she did I'm merely a client tricked by a whore. Keep going and switch on your lights. Someone may be waiting for them and we have to know who it is.'

'Whoever it is may be unfriendly, sir.'

'In which case I'm just another drunken infidel you've been hired by the firm to protect from his own outrageous behaviour. No different from other times, old sport.'

'As you wish, Effendi.' The driver turned on the headlights.

'What's ahead?' asked MacDonald.

'Nothing, sir. Only an old road that leads down to the Jabal Sham.'

'What the hell is that?'

'The start of the desert. It ends with the far off mountains that are the Saudi borders.'

'Are there other roads?'

'A number of kilometers to the east and less passable, sir, very difficult.'

'When you say there's nothing ahead, exactly what do you mean?'

'Exactly what I said, sir. Only the road to the Jabal Sham.'

'But this road, the one we're on,' pressed the Englishman. 'Where does it go?'

'It does not, sir. It turns left into the road down to the—’

'This Jabal-whatever,' completed MacDonald, interrupting. 'I see. So we're not talking about two roads, but one that happens to head left down to your bloody desert.'

'Yes, sir—’

'A rendezvous,' broke in the Mahdi's conduit, whispering to himself. 'I've changed my mind, old boy,' he continued quickly. 'Douse the damned headlights. There's enough of a moon for you to see, isn't there?'

'Oh, yes!' replied the driver in minor triumph, while turning off the lights. 'I know this road very well. I know every road in Masqat and Matrah very, very well. Even the unpassable ones to the east and to the south. But I must say, Effendi, I do not understand.'

'Quite simple, my boy. If our busy little whore didn't head down to whatever and whomever she intended to reach, someone else will come up here—before the light does, I expect, which won't be too long now.'

'The sky brightens quickly, sir.'

'Quite so.' MacDonald placed his pistol on top of the dashboard, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a short pair of binoculars with bulging, thickly coated lenses. He brought them to his eyes and scanned the area ahead.

'It is still too dark to see, Effendi,' said the driver.

'Not for these little dears,' explained the Englishman as they approached another curve in the dim moonlight. 'Black out the entire sky and I'll count you the number of those stubby trees a thousand metres away.' They rounded the sharp curve, the driver squinting and braking the large car. The road was now straight and flat, disappearing into the darkness ahead.

'Another two kilometers and we reach the descent into the Jabal Sham, sir. I will have to go very slowly as there are many turns, many rocks—’

'Good Christ!' roared MacDonald, peering through the infrared binoculars. 'Get off the road! Quickly!'

'What, sir?'

'Do as I say! Cut your engine!'

'Sir?'

'Turn it off! Coast as far as you can into the sand grass!'

The driver swung the car to the right, lurching over the hard, rutted ground, gripping the wheel and spinning it repeatedly to avoid the scattered squat trees barely seen in the night light. Seventy-odd feet into the grass the car came to a jolting stop; an unseen, gnarled tree close to the ground had been caught in the undercarriage.

'Sir…?'

'Be quiet whispered the obese Englishman, replacing the binoculars in his pocket and reaching for his weapon above the dashboard. With his free hand he grabbed the door handle, then abruptly stopped. 'Do the lights go on when the door is opened?' he asked.

'Yes, sir,' answered the driver, pointing to the roof of the car. 'The overhead light, sir.'

MacDonald smashed the barrel of his pistol up into the glass of the ceiling light. 'I'm going outside,' he said, again whispering. 'Stay here, stay still and stay the hell away from the damned horn, If I hear a sound you're a dead man, do you understand me?'

'Clearly, sir. In case of emergency, however, may I ask why?'

'There are men on the road up ahead—I couldn't say whether three or four; they were just specks—but they're coming this way and they're running.' Silently, the Englishman opened the door and rapidly, uncomfortably, climbed out. Staying as close to the ground as possible, he made his way swiftly across the sand grass to within twenty feet of the road. In his dark suit and black silk shirt, he lowered his bulk beside the stub of a dwarfed tree, put his weapon to the right of the twisted trunk and took the infrared binoculars out of his pocket. He trained them on the road, in the path of the approaching figures. Suddenly they were there.

Blue! It was Azra. Without his beard but unmistakable! The junior member of the council, brother of Zaya Yateem, the only set of brains on that council. And the man on his left… MacDonald could not recall the name but he had studied the photographs as though they were his passage to infinite wealth—which they were—and he knew it was he. A Jewish name, an older man, a terrorist for nearly twenty years… Yosef? Yes, Yosef! Trained in the Libyan forces after fleeing the Golan Heights… But the man on Azra's left was puzzling; because of his appearance the Englishman felt he should know him. Focusing the infrared lenses on the bouncing, rushing face, MacDonald was perplexed. The running man was nearly as old as Yosef, and the few people in the embassy over thirty years of age were generally there for a reason known to Bahrain; the remainder were imbeciles and hot-heads—fundamentalist zealots easily manipulated. Then MacDonald noticed what he should have seen at first: The three men were in prison clothes. They were escaped prisoners. Nothing made sense! Were these the men the whore, Khalehla, was racing to meet? If so, everything was doubly incomprehensible. The bitch-whore was working for the enemy in Cairo. The information was confirmed in Bahrain; it was irrefutable! It was why he had cultivated her, repeatedly telling her of his firm's interests in Oman and how frightened he was to go there under the circumstances and how grateful he would be for a knowledgeable companion. She had swallowed the bait, accepting his offer, even to the point of insisting that she could not leave Cairo until a specific day, a specific time which meant a very specific flight, of which there was only one a day. He had phoned Bahrain and was told to comply. And watch her! which he did. There was no meeting with anyone, no hint of eye contact whatsoever. But in the chaos of Masqat's security-conscious immigration she had strayed away. Damn! Damn! She had wandered—wandered—out to the air freight warehouse, and when he found her she was alone by her petulant self. Had she made contact with someone there, passed instructions to the enemy? And if she had, did either have anything to do with the escaped prisoners now racing up the road?

That there was a connection would seem to be irrefutable. And totally out of place!

As the three figures passed him, a perspiring Anthony MacDonald pushed himself off the ground, grunting as he got to his feet. Reluctantly—very reluctantly—considering that millions upon millions could depend on the next few hours, he reached a conclusion: the sudden enigma that was Khalehla had to be resolved and the answers he so desperately needed were inside the embassy. Not only could the millions be lost without those answers, but if the bitch-whore was pivotal to some hideous coup and he failed to stop her, it was entirely possible that Bahrain would order his execution. The Mahdi did not suffer failure.

He had to get inside the embassy and all the hell that it stood for.

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules with Israeli insignia cruised at 31,000 feet above the Saudi desert east of Al Ubaylah. The flight plan from Hebron was an evasive one: south across the Negev into the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, proceeding south again equidistant from the coasts of Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. At Hamdanah, the course change was north-northeast, splitting the radar grids between the airports in Mecca and Qal Bishah, then due east at Al Khurmah into the Rub al Khali desert in southern Arabia. The plane had been refuelled in mid-air by a tanker from Sudan west of Jiddah over the Red Sea; it would do so again on the return flight, without, however, its five passengers.

They sat in the cargo hold, five soldiers in coarse civilian clothes, each a volunteer from the little known elite Masada Brigade, a strike force specializing in interdiction, rescue, sabotage and assassination. None was over thirty-two years old and all were fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic and English. They were superb physical specimens, deeply bronzed from their desert training, and imbued with a discipline that demanded split-second decisions based on instantaneous reactions; each had an intelligence quotient in the highest percentile, and all were motivated in the extreme for all had suffered in the extreme—either they themselves or their immediate families. Although they were capable of laughing, they were better at hating.

They sat, leaning forward, on a bench on the port side of the aircraft, absently fingering the straps of their parachutes, which had only recently been mounted on their backs. They talked quietly among themselves, that is to say four talked, one did not. The silent man was their leader; he was sitting in the forward position and stared blankly across at the opposite bulkhead. He was, perhaps, in his late twenties with hair and eyebrows bleached a yellowish-white by the unrelenting sun. His eyes were large and dark brown, his cheekbones high, fencing a sharp Semitic nose, his lips thin and firmly set. He was neither the oldest nor the youngest of the five men, but he was their leader; it was in his face, in his eyes.

Their assignment in Oman had been ordered by the highest councils of Israel's Defence Ministry. Their chances of success were minimal, the possibility of failure and death far greater, but the attempt had to be made. For among the two hundred and thirty-six remaining hostages held inside the American Embassy in Masqat was a deep-cover field director of the Mossad, Israel's unparalleled intelligence service. If he was discovered, he would be flown to any one of a dozen 'medical clinics' of both friendly and unfriendly governments where intravenous chemicals would be far more effective than torture. A thousand secrets could be learned, secrets that could imperil the state of Israel and emasculate the Mossad in the Middle East. The objective: Get him out if you can. Kill him if you cannot.

The leader of this team from the Masada Brigade was named Yaakov. The Mossad agent held hostage in Masqat was his father.

'Adonim,' said the voice in Hebrew over the aircraft's loudspeaker—a calm and respectful voice addressing the passengers as Gentlemen. 'We are starting our descent,' he continued in Hebrew. 'The target will be reached in six minutes thirty-four seconds unless we encounter unexpected head winds over the mountains which will extend our time to six minutes forty-eight seconds or perhaps fifty-five seconds, but then who's counting?' Four men laughed; Yaakov blinked, his eyes still on the opposite bulkhead. The pilot went on. 'We will circle once over the target at eight thousand feet, so if you have to make any adjustments, mental or physical, with respect to those crazy bedsheets you've got on your dorsal fins, do so now. Personally, I do not care to go out and take a walk at eight thousand feet, but then I can read and write.' Yaakov smiled; the others laughed louder than before. The voice again interrupted. 'The hatch will be opened at eight thousand five hundred by our brother, Jonathan Levy, who, like all experienced doormen in Tel Aviv, will expect a generous tip from each of you for his service. lOUs are not acceptable. The flashing red light will mean you must depart this luxurious hotel in the sky; however, the boys in the parking lot below refuse to retrieve your automobiles under the circumstances. They, too, can read and write and have been judged mentally competent, as opposed to certain unnamed tourists on this airborne cruise.' The laughter now echoed off the walls of the plane; Yaakov chuckled. The pilot once more broke in, his voice softer, the tone altered. 'Our beloved Israel, may she exist through eternity through the courage of her sons and daughters. And may Almighty God go with you, my dear, dear friends. Out.'

One by one the parachutes cracked open in the night sky above the desert, and one by one the five commandos from the Masada Brigade landed within a hundred and fifty yards of the amber light shining up from the sands. Each man held a miniaturized radio that kept him in contact with the others in case of emergencies. Where each touched ground, each dug a hole and buried his chute, inserting the wide-bladed shovel down beside the fabric and the canvas. Then all converged on the light; it was extinguished, replaced by the single torch held by a man who had come from Masqat, a senior intelligence officer of the Mossad.

'Let me look at you,' he said, turning his beam on each soldier. 'Not bad. You look like ruffians from the docks.'

'Your instructions, I believe,' said Yaakov.

'They're not always followed,' replied the agent. 'You must be—'

'We have no names,' interrupted Yaakov sharply.

'I stand rebuked,' said the man from the Mossad. 'Truthfully, I know only yours, which I think is understandable.'

'Put it out of your mind.'

'What shall I call all of you?'

'We are colours, only colours. From right to left they are Orange, Grey, Black and Red.'

'A privilege to meet you,' said the agent, shining his light on each man—from right to left. 'And you?' he asked, the beam on Yaakov.

'I am Blue.'

'Naturally. The flag.'

'No,' said the son of the hostage in Masqat. 'Blue is the hottest fire, and that is all you have to understand.'

'It is also in refraction the coldest ice, young man, but no matter. My vehicle is several hundred metres north. I'm afraid I must ask you to walk after your exhilarating glide in the sky.'

'Try me,' said Grey, stepping forward. 'I hate those terrible jumps. A man could get hurt, you know what I mean?'

The vehicle was a Japanese version of a Land-Rover without the amenities and sufficiently bashed and scraped to be unobtrusive in an Arab country where speed was a relative abstraction and collisions frequent. The hour-plus drive into Masqat, however, was suddenly interrupted. A small amber light flashed repeatedly on the road several miles from the city.

'It's an emergency,' said the Mossad agent to Yaakov who was beside him in the front seat. 'I don't like it. There were to be no stops whatsoever when we approached Masqat. The sultan has patrols everywhere. Draw your weapon, young man. One never knows who may have been broken.'

'Who's to break! asked Yaakov angrily, his gun instantly out of his jacket holster. 'We're in total security. Nobody knows about us—my own wife thinks I'm in the Negev on manoeuvres!'

'Underground lines of communication have to be kept open, Blue. Sometimes our enemies dig too deeply into the earth… Instruct your comrades. Prepare to fire.'

Yaakov did so; weapons were drawn, each man at a window. The aggressive preparation, however, was unnecessary.

'It is Ben-Ami!' cried the man from the Mossad, stopping the van, the tyres screeching and hurtling over the crevices in the badly paved road. 'Open the door!'

A small, slender man in blue jeans, a loose white cotton shirt and a ghotra over his head leaped inside, squeezing Yaakov into the seat. 'Keep driving,' he ordered. 'Slowly. There are no patrols out here and we have at least ten minutes before we might be stopped. Do you have a torch?' The Mossad driver reached down and brought up his flashlight. The intruder snapped it on, inspecting the human cargo behind and the one beside him. 'Good!' he exclaimed. 'You look like scum from the waterfront. If we're stopped, slur your Arabic and shout about your fornications, do you understand?'

'Amen,' said three voices. The fourth, Orange, was contrary. 'The Talmud insists on the truth,' he intoned. 'Find me a big-breasted houri and I may go along.'

'Shut up!' cried Yaakov, not amused.

'What has happened to bring you here?' asked the Mossad officer.

'Insanity,' answered the newcomer. 'One of our people in Washington got through an hour after you left Hebron. His information concerned an American. A congressman, no less. He's here and interfering—going under cover, can you believe it?'

'If it's true,' replied the driver, gripping the steering wheel, 'then every thought of incompetence I've ever entertained about the American intelligence community has blossomed to full flower. If he's caught, they'll be the pariahs of the civilized world. It is not a risk to be taken.'

'They've taken it. He's here.'

'Where?'

'We don't know.'

'What has it to do with MS?' objected Yaakov. 'One American. One fool. What are his credentials?'

'Considerable, I'm sorry to say,' answered Ben-Ami. 'And we are to give him what leverage we can.'

'What?' said the young leader from the Masada Brigade. 'Why?'

'Because, my colleague notwithstanding, Washington is fully aware of the risks, of the potentially tragic consequences, and therefore has cut him off. He's on his own. If he's captured there's no appeal to his government, for it won't acknowledge him, can't acknowledge him. He's acting as a private individual.'

'Then I must ask again,' insisted Yaakov. 'If the Americans won't touch him, why should we?'

'Because they never would have let him come here in the first place unless someone very highly placed thought he was on to something extraordinary.'

'But why us? We have our own work to do. I repeat, why us?

'Perhaps because we can—and they can't.'

'It's politically disastrous!' said the driver emphatically. 'Washington sets whatever it is in motion then walks away covering its collective ass and dumps it on us. That kind of policy decision must have been made by the Arabists in the State Department. We fail—which is to say, he fails while we're there with him—and whatever executions take place they blame it on the Jews! The Christ-killers did it again!'

'Correction,' interrupted Ben-Ami. 'Washington did not “dump” this on us because no one' in Washington has any idea we know about it. And if we do our jobs correctly, we won't be in evidence; we give only untraceable assistance, if it's needed.'

'You will not answer me!' shouted Yaakov. 'Why?'

'I did, but you weren't listening, young fellow; you have other things on your mind. I said that we do what we do because perhaps we can. Perhaps, no guarantees at all. There are two hundred and thirty-six human beings in that horrible place, suffering as we as a people know only too well. Among them is your father, one of the most valuable men in Israel. If this man, this congressman, has even a shadow of a solution we must do what we can, if only to prove him right or prove him wrong. First, however, we must find him.'

'Who is he?' asked the Mossad driver contemptuously. 'Does he have a name or did the Americans bury that also?'

'His name is Kendrick—’

The large, shabby vehicle swerved, cutting off Ben-Ami's words. The man from the Mossad had reacted so joltingly to the name that he nearly drove off the road. 'Evan Kendrick?' he said, steadying the wheel, his eyes wide in astonishment.

'Yes.'

'The Kendrick Group!'

'The what?' asked Yaakov, watching the driver's face.

'The company he ran over here.'

'His dossier is being flown over from Washington tonight,' said Ben-Ami. 'We'll have it by morning.'

'You don't need it!' cried the Mossad agent. 'We've got a file on him as thick as Moses' tablets. We've also got Emmanuel Weingrass—whom we frequently wish we did not have!'

'You're too swift for me.'

'Not now, Ben-Ami. It would take several hours and a great deal of wine—damn Weingrass; he made me say that!'

'Would you be clearer, please?'

'Briefer, my friend, not necessarily clearer. If Kendrick is back, he is on to something and he's here for a four-year-old score—an explosion that took the lives of seventy-odd men, women and children. They were his family. You'd have to know him to understand that.'

'You knew him?' asked Ben-Ami, leaning forward. 'You know him?'

'Not well, but enough to understand. The one who knew him best—father-figure, drinking companion, confessor, counsellor, genius, best friend—was Emmanuel Weingrass.'

'The man you obviously disapprove of,' interjected Yaakov, his eyes still on the driver's face.

'Disapprove wholeheartedly,' agreed the Israeli intelligence officer. 'But he's not totally without value. I wish he were but he isn't.'

'Value to the Mossad?' asked Ben-Ami.

It was as if the agent at the wheel felt a sudden rush of embarrassment. He lowered his voice in reply. 'We've used him in Paris,' he said, swallowing. 'He moves in odd circles, has contact with fringe people. Actually—God, I hate to admit it—he's been somewhat effective. Through him we tracked down the terrorists who bombed the kosher restaurant on the rue du Bac. We resolved the problem ourselves, but some damn fool allowed him to be in on the kill. Stupid, stupid! And to his credit,' added the driver grudgingly, gripping the wheel firmly, 'he called us in Tel Aviv with information that aborted five other such incidents.'

'He saved many lives,' said Yaakov. 'Jewish lives. And yet you disapprove of him?'

'You don't know him! You see, no one pays much attention to a seventy-nine-year-old bon-vivant, a boulevardier who struts down the Avenue Montaigne with one, if not two, Parisienne “models” whom he's outfitted in the St Honore with the funds he received from the Kendrick Group.'

'Why does that detract from his value?' asked Ben-Ami.

'He bills us for dinners at La Tour d'Argent! Three thousand, four thousand shekels! How can we refuse? He does deliver and he was a witness at a particularly violent event where we took matters into our own hands. A fact he now and then reminds us of if the payments are late.'

'I'd say he's entitled,' said Ben-Ami, nodding his head. 'He's an agent of the Mossad in a foreign country and must maintain his cover.'

'Caught, strangled, our testicles in a vice,' whispered the driver softly to himself. 'And the worst is yet to come.'

'I beg your pardon?' said Yaakov.

'If anyone can find Evan Kendrick in Oman, it's Emmanuel Weingrass. When we get to Masqat, to our headquarters, I'll make a call to Paris. Damn!'

'Je regretted said the switchboard operator at the Pont Royal Hotel in Paris. 'But Monsieur Weingrass is away for a few days. However, he has left a telephone number in Monte Carlo—’

'Je suis desolee,' said the operator at the L'Hermitage in Monte Carlo. 'Monsieur Weingrass is not in his suite. He was to have dinner this evening at the Hotel de Paris, opposite the casino.'

'Do you have the number, please?'

'But of course,' replied the ebullient woman. 'Monsieur Weingrass is a most charming man. Only tonight he brought us all flowers; they fill up the office! Such a beautiful person. The number is—'

'Desole,' intoned the male operator at the Hotel de Paris with unctuous charm. 'The dining room is closed, but the most generous Monsieur Weingrass informed us that he would be at Table Eleven at the casino for at least the next two hours. If any calls come for him, he suggested that the person telephoning should ask for Armand at the casino. The number is—’

'Je suis tres desole,' gurgled Armand, obscure factotum at the Casino de Paris in Monte Carlo. 'The delightful Monsieur Weingrass and his lovely lady did not have luck at our roulette this evening, so he decided to go to the Loew's gaming room down by the water—an inferior establishment, of course, but with competent croupiers; the French, naturally, not the Italians. Ask for Luigi, a barely literate Cretan but he will find Monsieur Weingrass for you. And do send him my affectionate greetings and tell him I expect him here tomorrow when his luck will change. The number is—’

'Naturalmente!' roared the unknown Luigi in triumph. 'My dearest friend in all my life! Signer Weingrass. My Hebrew brother who speaks the language of Como and Lago di Garda like a native—not the Boot or even Napoletano; barbarians, you understand—he is in front of my eyes!'

'Would you please ask him to come to the telephone. Please.'

'He is very engrossed, Signore. His lady is winning a great deal of money. It is not good fortuna to interfere.'

'Tell that bastard to get on this phone right now or his Hebrew balls will be put in boiling Arabian goat's milk!'

'Che cosa?'

'Do as I say! Tell him the name is Mossad!'

'Pazzo!' said Luigi to no one, placing the telephone on his lectern. 'Instabile!' he added, cautiously stepping forward towards the screaming craps table.

Emmanuel Weingrass, his perfectly waxed moustache below an aquiline nose that bespoke an aristocratic past and his perfectly groomed white hair that rippled across his sculptured head, stood quietly amid the gyrating bodies of the frenetic players. Dressed in a canary-yellow jacket and a red-checked bow tie, he glanced around the table more interested in the gamblers than in the game, every now and then aware that an idle player or one of the excited crowd of onlookers was staring at him. He understood, as he understood most things about himself, approving of some, disapproving of many, many more. They were looking at his face, somewhat more compact than it might be, an old man's face that had not lost its childhood configurations, still young no matter the years and aided by his stylish if rather extreme clothing. Those who knew him saw other things. They saw that his eyes were green and alive, even in blank repose, the eyes of a wanderer, both intellectually and geographically, never satisfied, never at peace, constantly roving over landscapes he wanted to explore or create. One knew at first glance that he was eccentric; but one did not know the extent of the eccentricity. He was artist and businessman, mammal and Babel. He was himself, and to his credit he had accepted his architectural genius as part of life's infinitely foolish game, a game that would involuntarily end for him soon, hopefully while he was asleep. But there were things to live, to experience while he was alive; approaching eighty he had to be realistic, much as it annoyed and frightened him. He looked at the garishly voluptuous girl beside him at the table, so vibrant, so vacuous. He would take her to bed, perhaps fondle her breasts—and then go to sleep. Mea culpa. What was the point?

'Signore?' whispered the tuxedoed Italian into Weingrass's ear. 'There is a telephone call for you, someone I could never in my life have respect for.'

'That's a strange remark, Luigi.'

'He insulted you, my dear friend and most considerate guest. If you wish, I will dismiss him in the language of barbarians which he so justly deserves.'

'Not everyone loves me as you do, Luigi. What did he say?'

'What he said I would not repeat in front of the grossest French croupier here!'

'You're very loyal, my friend. Did he give you his name?'

'Yes, a Signer Mossad. And I tell you he is deranged, pazzol'

'Most of them are,' said Weingrass as he walked quickly to the telephone.