The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 13

Evan struggled against the constricting tape around his left shoulder and then was aware of a stinging sensation that extended throughout his upper chest accompanied by the sharp smell of rubbing alcohol. He opened his eyes, startled to find that he was sitting up in a bed, pillows supporting his back. He was in a woman's bedroom. A dressing table with a low, gold-rimmed chair against the wall stood on his left. A profusion of lotions and perfumes were in small ornate bottles in front of a large three-sided mirror bordered with tiny bulbs. Tall windows flanked the table, the cascading peach-coloured curtains made of a translucent material that virtually shouted—as did the rest of the rococo furniture—a hefty decorator's fee. A satin chaise-lounge was in front of the far window, beside it a small telephone table-cum-magazine rack with a top of rose marble. The wall directly in front of the bed, some twenty feet away, consisted of a long row of mirrored cupboards. On his right, beyond the bedside table, was an ivory-coloured writing desk with another gold-rimmed chair—and then the longest single bureau he had ever seen; it was lacquered peach—peche, as Manny Weingrass would insist upon—and extended the entire length of the wall. The floor was covered with soft thick white carpeting, the pile of which appeared capable of massaging the bare feet of anyone walking across it if he dared. The only item lacking was a mirror over the bed.

The sculptured door was closed, yet he could hear voices beyond it, a man's and a woman's. He turned his wrist to look at his watch; it was gone. Where was he? How did he get here? Oh, Christ! The airport concourse… He was slammed into a car—two rushing cars—and a crowd had gathered around him until, limping, he was led away. Azra! Azra was waiting for him at the Aradous Hotel!… And MacDonald! Gone! Oh, my God, everything's blown apart! Close to panic, only vaguely aware of the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows, he threw off the sheet and climbed out of bed, unsteady, wincing, gritting his teeth with each move he made, but he could move and that was all that mattered. He was also naked and suddenly the door opened.

'I'm glad you could get up,' said the olive-skinned woman as Kendrick lurched back to the bed and the peche sheet while she closed the door. 'It confirms the doctor's diagnosis; he just left. He said you were badly banged up but the X rays showed no broken bones.'

'X rays? Where are we and who the hell are you, lady?'

'You don't remember me, then?'

'If this,' exclaimed Evan angrily, sweeping his hand over the room, 'is your modest pied-d-terre in Bahrain, I assure you I've never seen it before. It's not a place one easily forgets.'

'It's not mine,' said Khalehla, shaking her head with a trace of a smile and walking to the foot of the bed. 'It belongs to a member of the royal family, a cousin of the Emir, an elderly man with a young wife—his youngest—both of whom are in London. He's quite ill, which accounts for the medical equipment in the basement, a great deal of equipment. Rank and money have their privileges everywhere, but especially here in Bahrain. Your friend the sultan of Oman made this possible for you.'

'But someone had to make it possible for him to know what happened—for him to make it possible!'

'That was me, of course—'

'I do know you,' interrupted Kendrick, frowning. 'I just can't remember where or how.'

'I wasn't dressed like this, and we saw each other under equally unpleasant circumstances. In Masqat, in a dark, filthy alleyway that serves as a street—'

'Rot town!' cried Evan, eyes wide, head rigid. 'Slime town. El-Baz. You're the woman with the gun; you tried to kill me.'

'No, not true. I was protecting myself from four thugs, three men and a girl.'

Kendrick briefly closed his eyes. 'I remember that. A kid in cut-off khakis holding his arm.'

'He wasn't a kid,' objected Khalehla. 'He was a drug addict as stretched out as his girlfriend and they both would have killed me to pay their Arab suppliers for what they needed. I was following you, nothing more, nothing less. Information, that's my job.'

'For whom?'

'The people I work for.'

'How did you know about me?'

'That I won't answer.'

'Whom do you work for?'

'In the broad sense, an organization that seeks to find solutions for the multiple horrors of the Middle East.'

'Israeli?'

'No,' replied Khalehla calmly. 'My roots are Arab.'

'That doesn't tell me a damn thing but it sure scares me.'

'Why? Is it so impossible for an American to think we Arabs might want to find equitable solutions?'

'I've just come from the embassy in Masqat. What I saw there wasn't pretty—Arab pretty.'

'Nor to us. However, may I quote an American congressman who said on the floor of the House of Representatives that “a terrorist isn't born, he's made.”'

Astonished, Evan looked hard at the woman. 'That was the only comment I ever made for the Congressional Record. The only one.'

'You did so after a particularly vicious speech by a congressman from California who practically called for the wholesale slaughter of all Palestinians living in what he termed Eretz Israel.'

'He didn't know Eretz from Biarritz! He was a WASP grubber who thought he was losing the Jewish vote in Los Angeles. He told me that himself the day before. He mistook me for an ally thinking that I'd approve—goddamn it, he winked at me!'

'Do you still believe what you said?'

'Yes,' replied Kendrick hesitantly, as if questioning his own response. 'No one who's walked through the squalor of the refugee camps can think anything remotely normal can come out of them. But what I saw in Masqat went too far. Forget about the screaming and the wild chants, there was something ice cold, a methodical brutality that thrived on itself. Those animals were enjoying themselves.'

'The majority of those young animals never had a home. Their earliest memories are of wandering through the filth of the camps trying to find enough to eat, or clothes for their younger brothers and sisters. Only a pitiful few have any skills, even basic schooling. These things were not available to them. They were outcasts in their own land.'

'Tell that to the children of Auschwitz and Dacha!' said Evan in quiet, cold fury. 'These people are alive. They're part of the human race.'

'Checkmate, Mr. Kendrick. I have no answer, only shame.'

'I don't want your shame. I want to get out of here.'

'You're in no condition to continue what you were doing. Look at you. You're exhausted, and on top of that you've been severely damaged.'

The sheet across his waist, Kendrick supported himself on the edge of the bed. He spoke slowly. 'I had a gun, a knife and a watch among several other valuable items. I'd like them back, please.'

'I think we should discuss the situation—’

'There's nothing to discuss,' said the congressman. 'Absolutely nothing.'

'Suppose I were to tell you we've found Tony MacDonald?'

'Tony?'

'I work from Cairo. I wish I could say we were on to him months ago, perhaps years ago, but it wouldn't be true. The first inkling I had was early this morning, before daybreak in fact. He followed me in a car with no headlights—'

'On the road above the Jabal Sham?' asked Evan, interrupting.

'Yes.'

'Then you're Crawly or something like that. Cawley the—enemy, among other things.'

'My name is Khalehla, the first two syllables pronounced like the French seaport Calais; and I am indeed his enemy, but not the other things which I can easily imagine.'

'You were following me.' A statement.

'Yes.'

'Then you knew about the “escape”.'

'Again, yes.'

'Ahmat?'

'He trusts me. We go back a long time.'

'Then he must trust the people you work for.'

'I can't answer that. I said he trusts me.'

'That's a corkscrew statement—two corkscrew statements.'

'It's a corkscrew situation.'

'Where's Tony?'

'Holed up in a room at the Tylos Hotel on Government Road under the name of Strickland.'

'How did you find him?'

'Through the taxi company. On the way he stopped at a sporting goods store suspected of selling illegal weapons. He's armed… Let's say the driver was co-operative.'

'“Let's say”?'

'It'll suffice. If MacDonald makes a move, you'll be informed immediately. He's already made eleven phone calls.'

'To whom?'

'The numbers were unpublished. A man will go over to the Central Exchange in an hour or so when the calling lets up and get the names. They'll be given to you as soon as he has them and can reach an official or a public phone.'

'Thanks. I need those numbers.'

Khalehla pulled over the small rococo chair in front of the dressing table and sat down opposite Kendrick. 'Tell me what you're doing, Congressman. Let me help.'

'Why should I? You won't give me my gun or my knife or my watch—or a certain piece of clothing you've probably sold by now. You won't even tell me whom you work for.'

'As to your gun, your knife, your watch and your wallet, and a money belt with some fifty thousand American dollars, and your gold cigarette lighter, and a squashed pack of not-for-export American cigarettes—which was very foolish of you—you may have them all if you'll just convince me that what you're doing won't result in the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-six Americans in Masqat. We Arabs can't tolerate that possibility; we're despised enough for the horrible things we can't control. As to whom I work for, why should it matter to you any more than it does to your friend and my friend, Ahmat? You trust him, he trusts me. So you can trust me, too. A equals B equals C. A therefore equals C. Incidentally, your clothes have been fumigated, laundered and pressed. They're in the first closet on the left.'

Evan, perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, stared at the intense young woman, his lips slightly parted. 'That's a hell of a mouthful, lady. I'll have to think about your alphabetical logic.'

'I don't know your schedule, but you can't have much time.'

'Between eleven-thirty and midnight tonight,' said Kendrick, with no intention of revealing anything but a time span. 'A young man was with me on the plane. He's a terrorist from the embassy in Masqat.'

'He registered at the Aradous Hotel on the Wadi Al Ahd as “T. Farouk”.'

'How…?'

'Another co-operative driver,' answered Khalehla, permitting herself a broader smile. '“Let's say,'” she added.

'Whoever you work for has a lot of input in a lot of places.'

'Oddly enough, the people I work for have nothing to do with it. They wouldn't go this far.'

'But you did.'

'I had to. Personal reasons; they're off limits, too.'

'You're something, Cawley.'

'Khalehla—Kah-lay-la—in English. Why don't you call your friend at the Aradous? He bought clothes at the hotel and also got a haircut. I assume these were your instructions. But call him; relieve his mind.'

'You're almost too co-operative—like the drivers.'

'Because I'm not your enemy and I want to co-operate. Call Ahmat, if you wish. He'll tell you the same thing. Incidentally, like you, I have the triple five number.'

It was as if an unseen veil had been lifted off the Arab woman's face, a lovely, striking face, thought Evan as he studied the large brown eyes that held such care and curiosity in them. Yet still he swore silently at himself for being the amateur, not knowing who was real and who was false!

Between eleven-thirty and midnight. That was the zero hour, the 30-minute span when he would catch a link, the link to the Mahdi. Could he trust this terribly efficient female who told him only so much and no more? Then again, could he do it himself? She had the triple five number… how did she get it? Suddenly, the room started to spin around, the sunlight through the windows became a sprayed burst of orange. Where were the windows?

'No, Kendrick!' shouted Khalehla. 'Not now! Don't collapse now! Make the call, I'll help you! Your friend must know that everything is all right! He's a terrorist in Bahrain!. He has nowhere to go—you must make the call!'

Evan felt the hard slaps against his face, the harsh, stinging blows that rushed the blood to his head, his head that was suddenly cradled in Khalehla's right arm as her left hand reached for a glass on the bedside table. 'Drink this!' she commanded, holding the glass to his lips. He did so. The liquid exploded in his throat.

'Jesus!' he roared.

'A hundred and twenty proof vodka and brandy,' said Khalehla smiling, still holding him. 'It was given to me by a British Mi-Sixer named Melvyn. “Get someone to have three of these and you can sell him a gross of anything on the rack,” that's what Melvyn told me. Can I sell you something, Congressman? Like a phone call?'

'I'm not buying. I don't have any money. You've got it.'

'Make that call, please,' said Khalehla, releasing her prisoner as she retreated to the gold-rimmed dressing table chair. 'I think it's terribly important.'

Kendrick shook his head, trying to focus on the telephone. 'I don't know the number.'

'I have it here.' Khalehla reached into the pocket of her flight jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. 'The number is five-nine-five-nine-one.'

'Thank you, madame secretary.' Evan reached for the phone, feeling a thousand aches in his body as he bent over and picked it up, pulling it to his lap. The exhaustion was spreading through him; he could barely move, barely dial. Azra?' he said, hearing the terrorist's voice. 'Have you studied the map of Manamah? Good. I'll pick you up at the hotel at ten o'clock.' Kendrick paused, darting his eyes up at Khalehla. 'If for any reason I'm delayed, I'll meet you in the street at the north end of the Juma Mosque where it joins the Al Khalifa Road. I'll find you. Understood? Good.' Kendrick, trembling, hung up the phone.

'You have one more call to make, Congressman.'

'Give me a couple of minutes.' Kendrick leaned back on the pillows. God, he was tired!

'You really should make it now. You must tell Ahmat where you are, what you've done, what is happening. He expects it. He deserves to hear it from you, not me.'

'All right, all right.' With enormous effort, Evan sat forward and picked up the phone which was still on the bed. 'It's direct dialling here in Bahrain. I forgot. What's the code for Masqat?'

'Nine-six-eight,' replied Khalehla. 'Dial zero-zero-one first.'

'I should reverse the goddamned charges,' said Kendrick, dialling, barely able to see the numbers.

'When did you last sleep?' asked Khalehla.

'Two—three days ago.'

'When did you eat last?'

'Can't remember… How about you? You've been pretty busy yourself, Madame Not-Such-Butterfly.'

'I can't remember, either… Oh, yes, I did eat. When I left the el Shari el Mish kwayis I stopped at that awful bakery in the square and got some orange baklava. More to find out who was there than anything—'

Evan held up his hand; the sultan's buried private line was ringing.

'Iwah?'

'Ahmat, it's Kendrick.'

'I'm relieved!'

'I'm pissed off.'

'What? What are you talking about?'

'Why didn't you tell me about her?'

'Her? Who?'

Evan handed the phone to a startled Khalehla.

'It's me, Ahmat,' she said, embarrassed. Eight seconds later, during which the voice of the perplexed and angry young sultan could be heard across the room, Khalehla continued. 'It was either this or having the press learn that an American congressman, armed and with fifty thousand dollars on him, had flown into Bahrain without going through customs. How long would it be before it was learned that he flew in on a plane ordered by the royal house of Oman? And how soon after that would there be speculation about his mission in Masqat?… I used your name with a brother of the Emir I've known for years and he arranged a place for us… Thank you, Ahmat. Here he is.'

Kendrick took the phone. 'She's a biscuit, my old-young friend, but I suppose I'm better off here than where I might be. Just don't give me any more surprises, okay?… Why are you so quiet?… Forget it, here's the schedule and, remember, no interference unless I ask for it! I've got our boy from the embassy at the Aradous Hotel; and the MacDonald situation, which I assume you know about—' Khalehla nodded, and Evan continued rapidly, 'I gather you do. He's being monitored at the Tylos; we'll be given a list of the calls he's been making when he stops making them. Incidentally, they're both armed.' Exhausted, Kendrick then described the specifics of the meeting ground as they had been relayed to the agents of the Mahdi. 'We only need one, Ahmat, one man who can lead us to him. I'll personally turn the rack until we get the information because I wouldn't have it any other way.'

Kendrick hung up the phone and fell back on to the pillows.

'You need food,' said Khalehla.

'Send out for Chinese,' said Evan. 'You've got the fifty thousand, not me.'

'I'll get the kitchen to prepare you something.'

'Me?' His lids half closed, Kendrick looked at the olive-skinned woman in the ridiculously rococo gold-rimmed chair. The whites of her dark brown eyes were bloodshot, the sockets blue from exhaustion, the lines of her striking face far more pronounced than her age called for. 'What about you?'

'I don't matter. You do.'

'You're about to fall out of that Lilliputian throne of yours, Queen Mother.'

'I'll handle it, thank you,' said Khalehla, sitting upright, blinking in defiance.

'Since you won't give me my watch, what time is it?'

'Ten minutes past four.'

'Everything's in place,' said Evan, swinging his legs out on to the floor under the sheet, 'and I'm sure this garishly-civilized establishment can accommodate a wake-up call. “Rest is a weapon,” I read that once. Battles have been won and lost more through sleep and the lack of sleep than firepower… If you'll modestly look away, I'll grab a towel from what I assume is the largest bathroom in Bahrain over there, and find myself another bed.'

'We can't leave this room except to leave the house.'

'Why not?'

'Those are the arrangements. The Emir doesn't care for his cousin's young wife; therefore, the defilement caused by your person is restricted to her quarters. There are guards outside to enforce the order.'

'I don't believe this!'

'I didn't make up the rules, I simply got you a place to stay.'

His eyes closing, Kendrick rolled back on the bed and over to the far side, holding up the sheet to negotiate the distance. 'All right, Miss Cairo. Unless you want to keep slipping off that silly-looking couch or fall flat on your face on the floor, here's your siesta pad. Before you relent, two things: Don't snore, and make sure I'm up by eight-thirty.'

Twenty agonizing minutes later, unable to keep her eyes open and having fallen off the chaise-lounge twice, Khalehla crept into the bed.

The incredible happened, incredible because neither expected it, nor was it sought, nor had either remotely considered the possibility. Two frightened, exhausted people felt each other's presence and, more asleep than awake, drew closer, at first touching, then slowly, haltingly, reaching, finally holding, grasping at each other; swollen, parted lips seeking, searching, desperately needing the moist contact that promised release from their fears. They made love in a burst of frenzy—not as strangers imitating animals, but as a man and a woman who had communicated, and somehow knew that there had to be a touch of warmth, of comfort, in a world gone mad.

'I suppose I should say I'm sorry,' said Evan, his head on the pillows, his chest heaving as if he were swallowing his last breaths of air.

'Please don't,' said Khalehla quietly. 'I'm not sorry. Sometimes… sometimes we all need to be reminded that we're part of the human race. Weren't those your words?'

'In a different context, I think.'

'Not really. Not when you really think about it… Go to sleep, Evan Kendrick. I won't say your name again.'

'What does that mean?'

'Go to sleep.'

Three hours later, nearly to the minute, Khalehla got out of the bed, picked up her clothes from the white carpet and, glancing at the unconscious American, quietly dressed. She wrote a note on a sheet of royal stationery and placed it on the bedside table next to the phone. She then went to the dressing table, opened a drawer and removed Kendrick's possessions, including the gun, the knife, the watch and his money belt. She put everything on the floor by the bed except the half-used pack of American cigarettes, which she crushed and shoved into her pocket. She crossed to the door and silently let herself out.

'Ismah!' she whispered to the uniformed Bahrainian guard, telling him in a single word to heed her orders. 'He is to be awakened at precisely eight-thirty. I myself will contact this royal house to see that it is done. Do you understand?"

'Iwah, iwah!' replied the guard, stiff-necked and nodding his head in obedience.

'There may be a phone call for him, asking for “the visitor”. It's to be intercepted, the information written down, placed in an envelope and pushed under the door. I'll clear it with the authorities. They're just names and telephone numbers of people doing business with his firm. Understood?'

'Iwah, iwah!'

'Good.' Khalehla gently, pointedly placed Bahrainian diners worth fifty American dollars into the guard's pocket. He was hers for a lifetime, or at least for five hours. She walked down the ornate curved staircase to the enormous foyer and the carved front door, which was opened by another guard bowing obsequiously. She went out on the bustling pavement, where robes and dark business suits rushed in both directions, and looked for a public telephone. She saw one on the corner and moved quickly towards it.

'This call will be accepted, I assure you, operator,' said Khalehla, having given the numbers she had been instructed to give in an extreme emergency.

'Yes?' The voice five thousand miles away was harsh, abrupt.

'My name is Khalehla. You're the one I was to reach, I believe.'

'No one else. The operator said Bahrain. Do you confirm it?'

'Yes. He's here. I've been with him for several hours.'

'What's going down?'

'There's a meeting between eleven-thirty and midnight near the Juma Mosque and the Al Halifax Road. I should be there, sir. He's not equipped; he can't handle it.'

'No way, lady!'

'He's a child where these people are concerned! I can help!'

'You can also involve us, which is out of the question and you know it as well as I do! Now, get out of there!'

'I thought you'd say that… sir. But may I please explain what I consider to be the negative odds of the equation in this particular operation?'

'I don't want to hear any of that spook bullshit! Get out of there!'

Khalehla winced as Frank Swann slammed down the telephone in Washington DC.

'The Aradous and the Tylos, I know them both,' said Emmanuel Weingrass into the phone in the small, secure office at the airport in Muharraq. T. Farouk and Strickland—good God, I can't believe it! That daffodil drunk from Cairo?… Oh, sorry, Stinker, I forgot. I mean that French lilac from Algiers, that's what I meant to say. Go on.' Weingrass wrote down the information from Masqat, given by a young man for whom he was beginning to have enormous respect. He knew men twice Ahmat's age and with three times his experience who would have buckled under the stress the sultan of Oman was enduring, not excluding the outrageous Western press that had no concept of his courage. The courage for risks that could bring about his downfall and his death. 'Okay, I've got it all… Hey, Stinker, you're quite a guy. You grew up to be a real mensch. Of course, you probably learned it all from me.'

'I learned one thing from you, Manny, a very important truth. That was to face things as they were and not to make excuses. Whether it was for fun or in pain, you said. You told me a person could live with failure but not with the excuses that took away his right to fail. It took me a long time to understand that.'

'That's very nice of you, young fellow. Pass it on to the kid I read you're expecting. Call it the Weingrass addendum to the Ten Commandments.'

'But, Manny—’

'Yes?'

'Please don't wear one of those yellow or red polka-dotted bow ties in Bahrain. They kind of mark you, you know what I mean?'

'Now you're my tailor… I'll be in touch, mensch. Wish us all good hunting.'

'I do, my friend. Above all, I wish I could be with you.'

'I know that. I wouldn't be here if I didn't know it—if our friend didn't know it.' Weingrass hung up the phone and turned to the six men behind him. They were perched on tables and chairs, several holding their small secondary side arms, others checking the battery charges in their hand-held radios, all watching and listening intently to the old man.

'We split up,' he said. 'Ben-Ami and Grey will come with me to the Tylos. Blue, you take the others to the Aradous Hotel—' Manny stopped, gripped by a sudden coughing seizure; his face reddened and his slender frame shook violently. Ben-Ami and the members of the Masada unit glanced at one another; none moved, each knowing instinctively that Weingrass would rebuff any assistance. But one thing was clear to all of them. They were looking at a dying man.

'Water?' asked Ben-Ami.

'No,' replied Manny curtly, the coughing seizure subsiding. 'Lousy chest cold, lousy weather in France… All right, where were we?'

'I was to take the others to the Aradous Hotel,' answered Yaakov, code name Blue.

'Get yourself some decent clothes so you won't get thrown out of the lobby. There are shops here in the airport, clean jackets will be enough.'

'These are our working clothes,' objected Black.

'Paper bag 'em,' said Weingrass.

'What are we to do at the Aradous?' Blue got off the table he was sitting on.

Manny looked down at his notes, then up at the young leader. 'In Room two-zero-one is a man called Azra.'

'Arabic for “blue”,' interrupted code Red, glancing at Yaakov.

'He's on the terrorist council in Masqat,' broke in Orange. 'They say he led the team that stormed the Teverya kibbutz near the Galilee, killing thirty-two, including nine children.'

'He planted bombs in three settlements on the West Bank,' added Grey, 'and blew up a pharmacy, paint-spraying the name “Azra” on a wall. After the blast the wall was pieced together like a puzzle, and there it was. The name Azra. I've seen him on television.'

'Pig,' said Yaakov quietly, adjusting the straps of his weapon under the jacket. 'When we get to the Aradous, what do we do? Give him tea and cakes or just a medal for humanitarianism?'

'You stay out of his sight!' replied Weingrass harshly. 'But don't let him out of yours. Two of you get rooms near his; watch the door. Don't get a glass of water, don't go to the toilet, just watch his door every minute. The two others take up positions in the street, one in front, the other by the employees' exit. Stay in radio contact with each other. Work out simple codes, one-word codes—in Arabic. If he moves, you move with him, but don't let him suspect for even a moment that you're there. Remember, he's as good as you are; he's had to survive, too.'

'Are we silently escorting him to a private dinner party?' asked code Blue sarcastically. 'This is a plan without the most rudimentary blueprint!'

'The blueprint will come from Kendrick,' said Manny, for once not rising to the insult. 'If he really has one,' he added softly, concern in his voice.

'What?' Ben-Ami rose from his chair, not, however, in anger but in astonishment.

'If everything goes according to schedule, he'll pick up the Arab at ten o'clock. With his Masqat terrorist in tow, he expects to make contact with one of the Mahdi's agents, someone who can lead them either to the Mahdi himself or to someone else who can.'

'On what basis?' asked the incredulous Ben-Ami from the Mossad.

'Actually, it's not bad. The Mahdi's people think there's an emergency, but they don't know what it is.'

'An amateur!' roared code Red of the Masada unit. 'There'll be back-ups, and blind drones, and back-ups for them. What the hell are we doing here?'

'You're here to take out the back-ups and the drones and the back-ups behind them!'' shouted Weingrass in reply. 'If I have to tell you what to look for, go back and start all over again with the Boy Scouts in Tel Aviv. You follow; you protect; you take out the bad guys. You clear a path for that amateur who's putting his life on the line. This Mahdi's the key, and if you haven't understood that by now, there's nothing I can do about it. One word from him, preferably with a gun to his head, and everything stops in Oman.'

'It's not without merit,' said Ben-Ami.

'But it's without sense!' cried Yaakov. 'Suppose this Kendrick does reach your Mahdi. What does he do, what does he say?' Code Blue shifted to a broad caricature of an American accent. '“Say, pardner, Ah gotta hell of a deal for you, buddy. You call off your dumb goons and Ah'll give you mah new leather boots.” Ridiculous! He'll be shot in the head the moment he's asked “What's the emergency?”'

'That's not without merit, either,' repeated Ben-Ami.

'Lawyers now I've got!' yelled Manny. 'You think my son is stupid? He built a construction empire on mishegoss? The minute he has something concrete—a name, a location, a company—he contacts Masqat, and our mutual friend, the sultan, calls the Americans, the British, the French and anyone else he trusts who's set up shop in Oman and they go to work. Their people here in Bahrain close in.'

'Merit,' said Ben-Ami once again, nodding.

'Not totally without,' agreed code Black.

'And what will you be doing?' asked a somewhat subdued yet still challenging Yaakov.

'Caging a fat fox who's been devouring a lot of chickens in a coop no one ever knew about,' said Weingrass.

Kendrick's eyes snapped open. A sound, a scrape—an intrusion on the silence of the bedroom that had nothing to do with the traffic outside the tall windows. It was closer, more personal, somehow intimate. Yet it was not the woman, Khalehla; she was gone. He blinked for a moment at the indented pillows beside him, and despite everything that his mind was putting together, he felt a sudden sadness. For those brief few hours with her he had cared, feeling a warmth between them that was only a part of their frantic love-making, which in itself would not have happened without that sense of warmth.

What time was it? He turned his wrist and—his watch was not there. Goddamn it, the bitch still had it! He rolled over on the bed and swung his legs out on the floor without regard for the sheet covering him. The soles of his feet landed on hard objects; he looked down at the polar-bear white rug and blinked again. Everything that had been in his pockets was there—everything but the pack of cigarettes which he very much wanted at the moment. And then his eyes were drawn to a gold-bordered page of notepaper on the bedside table; he picked it up.

I think we were both kind to each other when each of us needed some kindness. No regrets other than one. I won't see you again. Goodbye.

No name, no forwarding address, just Ciao, amico. So much for two passing ships in the Persian Gulf or two uptight, damaged people on a late afternoon in Bahrain. But it was not afternoon any longer, he realized. He was barely able to read Khalehla's note; only the last orange sprays of sundown now streamed through the windows. He reached for his watch; it was seven-fifty-five; he had slept nearly four hours. He was famished, and his years in the deserts, the mountains and the white water had taught him not to travel hard on an empty stomach. A 'guard', she had said. 'Outside,' she had explained. Evan yanked the sheet off the bed, wrapped it around himself and walked across the room. He stopped; on the floor was an envelope. That was the sound he had heard, an envelope shoved under a door, forced under, sliding back and forth because of the thick rug. He picked it up, tore it open and read it. A list of sixteen names, addresses and telephone numbers. MacDonald! The roster of calls he had made in Bahrain. One step closer to the Mahdi!

Evan opened the door; the greetings between himself and the uniformed guard were dispensed with rapidly in Arabic. 'You are awake now, sir. You were not to be disturbed until eight-thirty o'clock.'

'I'd be most grateful if you would disturb me now with some food. The woman said I might get something to eat from your kitchen.'

'Indeed, whatever you wish, sir.'

'Whatever you can find. Meat, rice, bread… and milk, I'd like some milk. Everything as soon as possible, please.'

'Very quick, sir!' The guard turned and rushed down the hallway towards the staircase. Evan closed the door and stood for a moment finding his bearings in the now darkened room. He switched on a lamp at the edge of the endless bureau, then started across the thick-piled rug to another door that led to one of the most opulent bathrooms in Bahrain.

Ten minutes later he emerged, showered and shaved, now dressed in a short terrycloth robe. He walked to the cupboard where Khalehla had said his clothes were—'fumigated, laundered and pressed'. He opened the mirrored door and barely recognized the odd assortment of apparel he had collected at the embassy in Masqat; it looked like a respectable paramilitary uniform. Leaving everything on hangers he draped the starched outfit over the chaise-lounge, walked back to the bed and sat down, gazing at his belongings on the floor. He was tempted to check his money belt to see if any of the large bills were missing, then decided against it. If Khalehla was a thief, he did not want to know it, not at the moment.

The telephone rang, its harsh bell less a ring than a prolonged metallic shriek. For a moment he stared at the instrument wondering… who? He had MacDonald's list; that was the only call Khalehla said he could expect. Khalehla? Had she changed her mind? With a rush of unanticipated feeling he reached for the phone, yanking it to his ear. Eight seconds later he wished to God he had not.

'Amreekánee,' said the male voice, its flat monotone conveying hatred. 'You leave that royal house before morning and you are a dead man. Tomorrow you go quietly back to where you came from, where you belong.'