The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 21

If there was an answer to either question, neither would be found in the newspapers. They were packed with 'authoritative' and 'highly placed' and even 'confidential' sources, most countered by 'no comment' and 'we have nothing to say at this time' and 'the events in question are being analysed', all of which were evasive statements of confirmation.

What had started the furore was a maximum-classified inter-division memorandum under the letterhead of the Department of State. It had surfaced, unsigned, from buried files and was presumably leaked by an employee or employees who felt a great injustice had been done to a man under the unreasonable strictures of national security, paranoid fear of terrorist reprisals undoubtedly heading the list. Copies of the memorandum had been sent out in concert to the newspapers, wire services and TV networks, all arriving between 5:00 and 6:00 am, Eastern Daylight time. Accompanying each memorandum were three different photographs of the congressman in Masqat. Deniabihty denied.

It was planned, thought Evan. The timing was chosen to startle the nation as it woke up across the country, bulletins mandatory throughout the day.

Why?

What was remarkable were the facts revealed—as remarkable for what they omitted as for those they paraded. They were astonishingly accurate, down to such points as his having been flown to Oman under deep cover and spirited out of the airport in Masqat by intelligence agents who had provided him with Arab garments and even the skin-darkening gel that made his features compatible with the 'area of operations'. Christ! Area of operations!

There were sketchy, often hypothesized details of contacts he made with men he had known in the past, the names scissored out—black spaces in the memorandum for obvious reasons. There was a paragraph dealing with his voluntary internment in a terrorist compound where he nearly lost his life, but where he learned the names he had to know in order to trace the men behind the Palestinian fanatics at the embassy, specifically one name—name scissored out, a black space in the copy. He had tracked down that man—scissored out, a black space—and forced him to dismantle the terrorist cadre occupying the embassy in Masqat. That pivotal man was shot—details scissored out, a black paragraph— and Evan Kendrick, representative from the ninth district of Colorado, was returned under protective cover to the United States.

Experts had been summoned to examine the photographs. Each print was subjected to spectrographic analysis for authenticity with respect to the age of the negative and the possibility of laboratory alterations. Everything was confirmed, even down to the day and the date extracted from 20 X magnification of a newspaper carried by a pedestrian in the streets of Masqat. The more responsible papers noted the lack of alternative sources that might or might not lend credibility to the facts as they were sketchily presented, but none could question the photographs or the identity of the man in them. And that man, Congressman Evan Kendrick, was nowhere to be found to confirm or deny the incredible story. The New York Times and the Washington Post unearthed what few friends and neighbours they could find in the capital as well as in Virginia and Colorado. None could recall having seen or heard from the congressman during the period in question fourteen months ago—not that they would necessarily have expected to, which in itself meant that they probably would have remembered if he had been in touch with them.

The Los Angeles Times went further and, without revealing its sources, ran a telephone check on Mr. Kendrick. Apart from calls to various local shops and a certain James Olsen, a gardener, only five possibly relevant calls were made from the congressman's residence in Virginia over a four-week period. Three were to the Arabian Studies departments at Georgetown and Princeton universities, one to a diplomat from the Arab Emirate of Dubai, who had returned home seven months before, and the fifth to an attorney in Washington, who refused to talk to the press. Relevance be damned, the bird dogs were pointing even though the quarry had disappeared.

The less responsible papers, which meant most of those without the resources to finance extensive investigations, and all of the tabloids, which did not care a whit about verification, if they could spell it, had a pseudo-journalistic field day. They took the exposed maximum-classified memorandum and used it as a springboard for the wild waters of heroic speculation, knowing their issues would be grabbed by their unsceptical readership. Words in print are more often than not words of truth to the uninformed—a patronizing judgment, to be sure, but all too true.

What was missing in every one of the stones, however, were truths, deep truths, that went beyond the astonishingly accurate revelations. There was no mention of a brave young sultan of Oman, who had risked his life and lineage to help him. Or of the Omanis who had guarded him both at the airport and in the back streets of Masqat. Or of a strange and strikingly professional woman who had rescued him in a congested concourse of another airport in Bahrain after he had been nearly killed, who had found him sanctuary and a doctor who ministered to his wounds. Above all, there was not a word about the Israeli unit, led by a Mossad officer, who had saved him from a death that still made him shiver in horror. Or even of another American, an elderly architect from the Bronx, without whom he would have been dead a year ago, his remains expunged by the sharks of Qatar.

Instead, a common theme ran through all the articles. Everything Arab was tainted with the brush of inhuman brutality and terrorism. The very word Arab was synonymous with ruthlessness and barbarism, not a vestige of decency allowed to a whole people. The longer Evan studied the newspapers, the angrier he became. Suddenly, in a burst of fury, he swept them all off the bed.

Why?

Who?

And then he felt a hollow, terrible pain in his chest Ahmat! Oh, my God, what had he done? Would the young sultan understand, could he understand? By omission—by silence—the American media had condemned the entire country of Oman, leaving to insidious speculation its Arab impotence in the face of terrorists, or worse, its Arab complicity in the wanton, savage killing of American citizens.

He had to call his young friend, reach him and tell him that he had no control over what had happened Kendrick sat on the edge of the bed, he grabbed the telephone while reaching into his trousers pocket for his wallet, balancing the phone under his chin as he extracted his credit card. Not remembering the sequence of numbers to reach Masqat, he dialled 0 for an operator. Suddenly the dial tone disappeared and for a moment he panicked, his eyes wide, glancing around at the windows.

'Yeah, twenty-three' came the hoarse male voice over the line.

'I was trying to call the operator.'

'You dial even an area code you get the board here.'

'I . . . I have to make an overseas call,' stammered Evan, bewildered.

'Not on this phone you don't.'

'On a credit card. How do I get an operator—I'm charging it to my credit card number.'

'I'll listen in till I hear you give the number and it's accepted for real, understand?'

He did not understand. Was it a trap? Had he been traced to a run-down motel in Woodbridge, Virginia? 'I don't really think that's acceptable,' he said haltingly. 'It's a private communication.'

'Fancy that,' replied the voice derisively. 'Then go find yourself a pay phone. There's one at the diner about five miles down the road. Ta-ta, asshole, I've been stuck enough—'

'Wait a minute! All right, stay on the line. But when the operator clears it, I want to hear you click off, okay?'

'Well, actually, I was gonna call Louella Parsons.'

'Who?'

'Forget it, asshole. I'm dialling. People who stay all day are either sex freaks or shooting up.'

Somewhere in the far reaches of the Persian Gulf an English-speaking, Arabic-accented operator volunteered that there was no exchange in Masqat, Oman, with the prefix 555. 'Dial it, please!' insisted Evan, adding a more plaintive 'Please.'

Eight rings passed until he heard Ahmat's harried voice. 'Iwah?'

'It's Evan, Ahmat,' said Kendrick in English. 'I have to talk to you—'

'Talk to me?' exploded the young sultan. 'You've got the balls to call me, you bastard?'

'You know, then? About—what they're saying about me.'

'Know? One of the nicer things about being a rich kid is that I've got dishes on the roof that pick up whatever I want from wherever I want! I've even got an edge on you, ya Shaikh. Have you seen the reports from over here and the Middle East? From Bahrain and Riyadh, from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?'

'Obviously not. I've only seen these—’

'They're all the same garbage, a nice pile for you to sit on! Do well in Washington, just don't come back here.'

'But I want to come back. I am coming back!'

'Don't, not to this part of the world. We can read and we can hear and we watch television. You did it all by yourself! You stuck it to the Arabs'. Get out of my memory, you son of a bitch!'

'Ahmat!'

'Out, Evan! I would never have believed it of you. Do you become powerful in Washington by calling us all animals and terrorists? Is that the only way?'

'I never did that, I never said it!'

'Your world did! The way it keeps saying it again and again and again, until it's pretty fucking obvious you want us all in chains! And the latest goddamned scenario is yours!'

'No!' protested Kendrick, shouting. 'Not mine!'

'Read your press. Watch it!'

'That's the press, not you and me!'

'You are you—one more arrogant bastard within your blind, holier-than-thou Judaeo-Christian hypocrisies—and I am me, an Islamic Arab. And you won't spit on me any longer!'

'I never would, never could—'

'Nor on my brothers, whose lands you decreed should be stolen from them, forcing whole villages to abandon their homes and their jobs and their insignificantly small businesses—small and insignificant but theirs for generations!'

'For Christ's sake, Ahmat, you're sounding like one of them!'

'No kidding?' said the young sultan, both anger and sarcasm in his words. 'By “them” I assume you mean like a kid from one of those thousands upon thousands of families marched under guns into camps fit for pigs. For pigs, not families! Not for mothers and fathers and children!… Good gracious, Mr. All-knowing, eminently fair American. If I sound like one of them, gosh, I'm sorry! And I'll tell you what else I'm sorry about: I got here so late. I understand so much more today than I did yesterday.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'I repeat. Read your press, watch your television, listen to your radio. Are you superior people getting ready to nuke all the dirty Arabs so you won't have to contend with us any more? Or are you going to leave it to your cool pals in Israel who tell you what to do anyway? You'll simply give them the bombs.'

'Now, just hold it!' cried Kendrick. 'Those Israelis saved my life!'

'You're damned right they did, but you were incidental! You were just a bridge to what they really flew in here for.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I might as well tell you because no one else will, nobody's going to print that. They didn't give a shit about you, Mr. Hero. That unit came here to get one man out of the embassy, a Mossad agent, a high-ranking strategist posing as a naturalized American under contract to the State Department.'

'Oh, my God,' whispered Evan. 'Did Weingrass know?'

'If he did he kept his mouth shut. He forced them to go after you in Bahrain. That's how they saved your life. It wasn't planned. They don't give a goddamn about anyone or anything but themselves. The Jews! Just like you, Mr. Hero.'

'Damn it, listen to me, Ahmat! I'm not responsible for what's happened here, for what's been printed in the papers or what's on television. It's the last thing I wanted—’

'Bullshit!' broke in the young Harvard alumnus and sultan of Oman. 'None of it could have been reported without you. I learned things I had no idea about. Who are these intelligence agents of yours running around my country? Who are all those contacts you reached?'

'Mustapha, for one!'

'Killed. Who flew you in under cover without apprising me? I run the goddamn place; who has the right? Am I a fucking “aggie” in the game of marbles?'

'Ahmat, I don't know about these things. I only knew I had to get there.'

'And I'm incidental? Wasn't I to be trusted?… Of course not, I'm an Arab!'

'Now that's bullshit. You were being protected.'

'From what? An American-Israeli cover-up?'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, stop it! I didn't know anything about a Mossad agent at the embassy until you just told me. If I did I would have told you! And while we're at it, my sudden young fanatic, I had nothing to do with the refugee camps or marching families into them under guns—'

'You all did!' shouted the sultan of Oman. 'One genocide for another, but we had nothing to do with the other! Out!'

The line went dead. A good man and a good friend who had been instrumental in saving his life was gone from his life. As were his plans to return to a part of the world he dearly loved.

Before he showed himself in public, he had to find out what had happened and who had made it happen and why! He had to start somewhere and that somewhere was the State Department and a man named Frank Swann. A frontal assault on State was, of course, out of the question. The minute he identified himself alarms would go off and insofar as his face was seen repeatedly, ad nauseam, on television and half Washington was searching for him, his every move had to be carefully thought out. First things first: how to reach Swann without Swann or his office knowing it. His office? Evan remembered. A year ago he had walked into Swann's office and spoken to a secretary, giving her several words in Arabic so as to convey the urgency of his visit. She had disappeared into another office and ten minutes later he and Swann were talking in the underground computer complex. That secretary was not only efficient but also exceedingly protective, as apparently were most secretaries in serpentine Washington. And since that protective secretary was very much aware of one Congressman Kendrick whom she had spoken to a year ago, she just might be receptive to another voice also protective of her boss. It was worth a try; it was also the only thing he could think of. He picked up the phone, dialled the 202 area code for Washington, and waited for the hoarse manager of The Three Bears motel to come on the line.

'Consular Operations, Director Swann's office,' said the secretary.

'Hi, this is Ralph over in ID,' began Kendrick. 'I've got some news for Frank.'

‘Who’s this?'

'It's okay, I'm a friend of Frank's. I just want to tell him that there may be an inter-division meeting called for later this afternoon—’

'Another one? He doesn't need that.'

'How's his schedule?'

'Overworked! He's in conference until four o'clock.'

'Well, if he doesn't want to be put on the grill again maybe he should have a short day and drive home early.'

'Drive? Him? He'll parachute into the jungles of Nicaragua but he won't take chances in Washington traffic.'

'You know what I mean. Things are a little jumpy around here. He could be put on the spit.'

'He's been on it since six this morning.'

'Just trying to help out a buddy.'

'Actually, he's got a doctor's appointment,' said the secretary suddenly.

'He does?'

'He does now. Thanks, Ralph.'

'I never called you.'

'Of course not, sweetie. Someone in ID was just checking schedules.'

Evan stood in the crowd waiting for a bus at the corner of Twenty-first Street within clear sight of the entrance to the Department of State. After speaking to Swann's secretary, he had left the cabin and driven rapidly up to Washington, stopping briefly at a shopping mall in Alexandria, where he bought dark glasses, a wide-brimmed canvas fishing hat and a soft cloth jacket. It was 3:48 in the afternoon; if the secretary had pursued her protective inclinations, Frank Swann, deputy director of Consular Operations, would be coming out of the huge glass doors within the next fifteen or twenty minutes.

He did. At 4:03 and in a hurry, turning left on the pavement away from the bus stop. Kendrick rushed out of the crowd and started after the man from the State Department, staying thirty feet behind him, wondering what means of transportation the nondriving Swann would take. If he intended to walk, Kendrick would stop him somewhere they could talk undisturbed.

He was not going to walk; he was about to take a bus heading east on Virginia Avenue. Swann joined several others waiting for the same vehicle now lumbering rapidly down the street towards the stop. Evan hurried to the corner; he could not allow the Cons Op director to get on that bus. He approached Swann and touched his shoulder. 'Hello, Frank,' said Kendrick pleasantly, taking off the dark glasses.

'You!' shouted the astonished Swann, startling the other passengers as the doors of the bus cracked open.

'Me,' admitted Evan quietly. 'I think we'd better talk.'

'Good Christ! You've got to be out of your mind!'

'If I am, you've driven me there, even if you don't drive—’

It was as far as their brief conversation got, for suddenly an odd voice filled the street, echoing off the side of the bus. 'It's him?' roared a strange-looking, dishevelled man with wide, popping eyes and long, wild hair that fell over his ears and his forehead. 'See! Look! It's him! Commando Kendrick! I seen him all day long on the television—I got seven televisions in my apartment! Nothin' goes on I don't know about! It's him!'

Before Evan could react the man grabbed the fishing hat off his head. 'Hey!' shouted Kendrick.

'See! Look! Him!'

'Let's get out of here!' cried Swann.

They started running up the street, the odd-looking man in pursuit, his baggy trousers flopping in the wind he created, Evan's hat in his hand, his arms flailing.

'He's following us!' said the Cons Op director, looking back.

'He's got my hat!' said Kendrick.

Two blocks later, a doddering, blue-haired lady with a cane was climbing out of a cab. 'There!' yelled Swann. 'The taxi!' Dodging traffic, they raced across the wide avenue. Evan climbed in the near door as the man from the State Department ran around the back to the far side; he helped the elderly passenger out and inadvertently kicked the cane with his foot. It fell to the pavement; so did the blue-haired lady. 'Sorry, dear,' said Swann, jumping into the back seat.

'Let's go!' yelled Kendrick. 'Hurry up! Get out of here!'

'You clowns hold up a bank or somethin'?' said the driver, shifting into gear.

'You'll be richer for it if you'll just hurry,' added Evan. " 'I'm hurryin', I'm hurryin'. I ain't got no pilot's licence. I gotta stay earthbound, y'know what I mean?'

As one, Kendrick and Swann whipped around to look out of the rear window. Back at the corner the odd-looking man with the wild hair and baggy trousers was writing something down on a newspaper, Evan's hat now on his head. 'The name of the company and the cab's number,' said the Cons Op director quietly. 'Wherever we're going, we'll have to switch vehicles at least a block behind this one.'

'Why? Not the switch but the block away?'

'So our driver doesn't see which cab we get into.'

'You even sound like you know what you're doing.'

'I hope you do,' replied Swann breathlessly, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his sweat-drenched face.

Twenty-eight minutes and a second taxi later, the congressman and the man from the Department of State walked rapidly down the street in a run-down section of Washington. They looked up at a red neon sign with three letters missing. It was a seedy bar that belonged in its environs. They nodded to each other and walked inside, somewhat startled by the intensely dark interior, if only in contrast to the bright October day out in the street. The single glaring, blaring source of light was a television set bolted into the wall above the shabby distressed bar. Several hunched-over, dishevelled, bleary-eyed patrons confirmed the status of the establishment. Both squinting in the receding dim wash of light, Kendrick and Swann moved towards the darker regions to the right of the bar; they found a frayed booth and slid in opposite each other.

'You really insist we talk?' asked the grey-haired Swann, breathing deeply, his face flushed and still perspiring.

'I insist to the point of making you the newest candidate for the morgue.'

'Watch it, I'm a black belt.'

'In what?'

Swann frowned. 'I was never quite sure, but it always works in the movies when they show us doing our thing. I need a drink.'

'You signal a waiter,' said Kendrick. 'I'll stay in the shadows.'

'Shadows?' questioned Swann, raising his hand cautiously for a heavy black waitress with flaming red hair. 'Where's any light in here?'

'When did you last do three push-ups in succession, Mr. Karate Kid?'

'Sometime in the sixties. Early, I think.'

'That's when they replaced the light bulbs in this place… Now about me. How the hell could you, you liar?'

'How the hell could you think I would?' cried the man from State, suddenly silent as the grotesque waitress stood by the table, arms akimbo. 'What'll you have?' he asked Evan.

'Nothing.'

'That's not nice here. Or healthy, I suspect. Two ryes, double, thank you. Canadian, if you have it.'

'Forget it,' said the waitress.

'Forgotten,' agreed Swann as the waitress left, his eyes again on Kendrick. 'You're funny, Mr. Congressman, I mean really hilarious. Consular Operations wants my head! The Secretary of State has put out a directive that makes it clear he doesn't know who I am, that vacillating, academic fleabag! And the Israelis are screaming because they think their precious Mossad may be compromised by anyone digging, and the Arabs on our payroll are bitching because they're not getting any credit! And at three-thirty this afternoon the President—the goddamned President—is chewing me out for “dereliction of duty”. Let me tell you, he intoned that phrase just like he knew what the hell he was talking about, which meant I knew there were at least two other people on the line… You're running? I'm running! Damn near thirty years in this dumb business—’

'That's what I called it,' interrupted Evan quickly, quietly. 'Sorry.'

'You should be,' said Swann without missing a beat. 'Because who's going to do this shit except us bastards dumber than the system? You need us, Charlie, and don't you forget it. The problem is we don't have much to show for it. I mean I don't have to rush home to make sure the pool in my backyard has been treated for algae because of the heat… Mainly because I don't have a pool, and my wife got the house in the divorce settlement because she was sick and tired of my going out for a loaf of bread and coming back three months later with the dirt of Afghanistan still in my ears! Oh, no, Mr. Undercover Congressman, I didn't blow the whistle on you. Instead, I did my best to stop the blowing. I haven't got much left, but I want to stay clean, and get out with what I can.'

'You tried to stop the blowing? The whistle?'

'Low key, very offhand, very professional. I even showed him a copy of the memo I sent upstairs rejecting you.'

'Him?'

Swann looked forlornly at Kendrick as the waitress brought their drinks and stood there, tapping the tabletop, while the man from State reached into his pocket, glanced at the bill, and paid it. The woman shrugged at the tip and walked away.

'Him?' repeated Evan.

'Go ahead,' said Swann, his voice flat, drinking a large portion of his whisky. 'Drive another nail in, what difference does it make? There's not that much blood left.'

'I assume that means you don't know who he is. Who him is.'

'Oh, I've got a name and a position and even a first-rate recommendation.'

'Well?'

'He doesn't exist.'

'What?'

'You heard me.'

'He doesn't exist?' pressed a frustrated Kendrick.

'Well, one of them does, but not the man who came to see me.' Swann finished his first drink.

'I don't believe this—’

'Neither did Ivy, that's my secretary. Ivy the terrible.'

'What are you talking about?' asked Kendrick plaintively.

'Ivy got a call from Senator Allison's office, from a guy she used to date a couple of years ago. He's one of the Senator's top aides now. He asked her to set up an appointment for a staffer doing some confidential work for Allison, so she did. Well, he turns out to be a blond spook with an accent I placed somewhere in middle Europe, but he's for real, he had you down cold. If you've got a scar that only your mother knows about, believe me, he has a close-up of it.'

'That's crazy,' broke in Evan softly. 'I wonder why?'

'So did I. I mean the questions he asked were loaded with PD--'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Prior data on you. He was giving almost as much as he could get from me. He was so pro I was ready to offer him a Euro-job on the spot.'

'But why we?'

'As I said, I wondered, too. So I asked Ivy to check with Allison's office. To begin with, why would a laid-back senator have that kind of SS—’

'What?'

'Not what you think. “Super-spook”. Come to think of it, I suppose there's a connection.'

'Will you please stick to the point!'

'Sure,' said Swann, drinking his second whisky. 'Ivy calls her old boyfriend, and he doesn't know what she's talking about. He never made any call to her and he never heard of any staffer named—whatever his name was.'

'But she had to know who she was talking to, for God's sake! His voice—the small talk, what they said to each other.'

'Her old beau had a strong Southern accent and was suffering from laryngitis when he phoned her, that's what Ivy claimed. But the cracker who really called her knew the places they went—even down to a couple of motels in Maryland that Ivy would rather not have her husband know about.'

'Christ, it's an operation.' Kendrick reached over and took Swann's drink. 'Why?'

'Why did you just take my whisky? I don't have a swimming pool, remember? Or even a house.'

Suddenly the blaring television set above the bar burst forth with the sharply consonanted name of 'Kendrick!'

Both men snapped their heads over to the source, their eyes wide, unbelieving.

'Newsbreak! The story of the hour, perhaps the decade!’ yelled a TV journalist among a crowd of leering faces peering into the camera. 'For the last twelve hours all Washington has been trying to find Congressman Evan Kendrick of Colorado, the hero of Oman, but to no avail. The worst fears, of course, centre around the possibility of Arab retaliation. We're told the government has directed the police, the hospitals and the morgues to be on the alert. Yet only minutes ago he was seen on this very street corner, specifically identified by one Kasimir Bola—Bola… slawski. Where are you from, sir?'

'Jersey City,' replied the wild-eyed man with Kendrick's hat on his head, 'but my roots are in Warsaw! God's holy Warsaw!'

'You were born in Poland, then.'

'Not exactly. In Newark.'

'But you saw Congressman Kendrick?'

'Positively. He was talking to a grey-haired man a couple blocks back outside a bus. Then when I shouted “Commando Kendrick, it's him,” they started running! I know! I got television sets in every room, including the toilet. I never miss anything!'

'When you say a couple of blocks back, sir, you're actually referring to a corner two and a half streets from the Department of State, are you not?'

'You betcha!'

'We're certain,' added the sincerely confidential newscaster looking into the camera, 'that the authorities are checking State to see if any such person as our witness has described could be a part of this extraordinary rendezvous.'

'I chased them!' yelled the witness in baggy pants, removing Evan's hat. 'I got his hat! See, it's the commando's own hat!'

'But what did you hear, Mr. Bolaslawski? Back by the bus?'

'I tell you, things are not always what they seem! You can't be too careful. Before they ran away, the man with grey hair gave Commando Kendrick an order. I think he had a Russian accent, maybe Jewish! The Commies and the Jews—you can't trust 'em, you know what I mean? They never seen the inside of a church! They don't know what the Holy Mass is—'

The television channel abruptly switched to a commercial extolling the virtues of an underarm deodorant.

'I surrender,' said Swann, forcibly taking his drink back from Evan and swallowing it whole. 'Now I'm a mole. A Russian Jew from the KGB who doesn't know what Mass is. Anything else you want to do for me?'

'No, because I believe you. But you can do something for me, and it's in both our interests. I've got to find out who's doing this to me, who's done what you're being blamed for, and why.'

'And if you do find out,' interrupted Swann, leaning forward, 'you'll tell me? That's in my interest, my only interest right now. I've got to get off this hook and put someone else on it.'

'You'll be the first to know.'

'What do you want?'

'A list of everyone who knew I went to Masqat.'

'That's not a list, it's a tight little circle.' Swann shook his head, not so much to be negative as to explain. 'There wouldn't have been that if you hadn't said you might need us if it came down to something you couldn't handle. I made it clear. We couldn't afford to acknowledge you because of the hostages.'

'How tight is the circle?'

'Everything was verbal, you understand.'

'Understood. How tight?'

'Nonoperational was restricted to that unmitigated prick, Herbert Dennison, the ball-breaking White House chief of staff, then to the secretaries of State and Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I was the liaison to all four, and you can rule them out. They all had too much to lose and nothing to gain by your surfacing.' Swann leaned back in the booth, frowning. 'The operational section was on a strict need-to-know basis. There was Lester Crawford at Langley. Les is the CIA's analyst for covert activities in the area, and at the end his station chief in Bahrain—something-or-other Grayson—James Grayson, that's it. He was kicking up a fuss about letting you and Weingrass out of his area, thinking the Company had gone nuts and was ploughing right into one oft hose caught-in-the-act situations. Caught-In-the-Act, CIA, get it?'

'I'd rather not.'

'Then there were four or five on-scene Arabs, the best we and the Company have, each of whom studied your photograph but weren't given your identity. They couldn't tell what they didn't know. The last two did know who you were, one was on the scene, the other here at OHIO-Four-Zero running the computers.'

'The computers?' asked Kendrick. 'Printouts?'

'You were programmed only on his; you were zapped from the central unit. His name's Gerald Bryce and if he's the whistleblower, I'll turn myself in to the FBI as Mr. Bolaslawski's Jewish mole for the Soviets. He's bright and quick and a whiz with the equipment, no one better. He'll run Cons Op some day if the girls leave him alone long enough to punch a clock.'

'A playboy?'

'Landsakes, Reverend, shall we go to vespers? The kid's twenty-six and better looking than he has a right to be. He's also unmarried, and one hell of a cocksman—others talk about it; he never does. I think that's why I like him. There aren't too many gentlemen left in this world.'

'I like him already. Who was the last person, the one on the scene who knew me?'

Frank Swann leaned forward, fingering his empty glass, staring at it before raising his eyes to Kendrick. 'I thought you might have figured that out for yourself.'

'What? Why?'

'Adrienne Rashad.'

'Doesn't mean a thing."

'She used a cover—’

'Adrienne…? A woman? Swann nodded. Evan frowned, then suddenly opened his eyes wide, his brows arched. 'Khalehla?' he whispered. The man from the State Department nodded again. 'She was one of you?'

'Well, not one of mine, but one of us.'

'Christ, she got me out of the airport in Bahrain! That big son of a bitch MacDonald slammed me into the concourse traffic—I was damn near killed and didn't know where I was. She got me out of there—how the hell she did it, I don't know!'

'I do,' said Swann. 'She threatened to blow the heads off a few Bahrainian police unless they passed her code name up the line and got clearance to take you out. She not only got clearance but also a car from the royal garage.'

'You say she was one of us, but not one of you. What does that mean?'

'She's Agency but she's also special, a real untouchable. She has contacts all over the Gulfs and the Mediterranean; the CIA doesn't allow anyone to mess with her.'

'Without her my cover might have been blown at the airport.'

'Without her you would have been a target for every terrorist walking around Bahrain, including the Mahdi's soldiers.'

Kendrick was briefly silent, his eyes wandering, his lips parted, a memory. 'Did she tell you where she hid me?'

'She refused.'

'She could do that?'

'I told you, she's special.'

'I see,' said Evan softly.

'I think I do, too,' said Swann.

'What do you mean by that?'

'Nothing. She got you out of the airport and roughly six hours later made contact.'

'Is that unusual?'

'Under the circumstances, you could say it was extraordinary. Her job was to keep you under surveillance and to immediately report any drastic moves on your part directly to Crawford at Langley, who was to contact me for instructions. She didn't do that, and in her official debriefing, she omitted any reference to those six hours.'

'She had to protect the place where we were hiding.'

'Of course. It had to be royal, and nobody screws around with the Emir or his family.'

'Of course.' Kendrick again was silent and again he looked into the dark regions of the decrepit bar. 'She was a nice person,' he said slowly, hesitantly. 'We talked. She understood so many things. I admired her.'

'Hey, come on, Congressman.' Swann leaned over his empty glass. 'You think it's the first time?'

'What?'

'Two people in a hairy situation, a man and a woman, neither one knowing whether he or she'll see another day or another week. So they get together, it's natural. So what?'

'That's offensive as hell, Frank. She meant something to me.'

'All right, I'll be blunt. I don't think you meant anything to her. She's a professional who's gone through a few black wars in her AOO.'

'Her what? Will you please speak English, or Arabic, if you like, but something that makes sense.'

'Area of Operations—'

'They used that in the newspapers.'

'Not my fault. If it was up to me, I'd neutralize every bastard who wrote those articles.'

'Please don't tell me what “neutralize” means.'

'I won't. I'm only telling you that in the field we all slip now and then when we're exhausted, or just plain scared. We take a few hours of secure pleasure and write it off as a long overdue bonus. Would you believe we even have lectures on the subject for people we send out?'

'I believe it now. To be honest with you—the circumstances crossed my mind at the time.'

'Good. Write her off. She's strictly Mediterranean and hasn't anything to do with the local scene. For starters, you'd probably have to fly to North Africa to find her.'

'So all I've got is a man named Crawford in Langley and a station chief in Bahrain."

'No. You've got a blond man with a Middle-European accent operating here in Washington. Operating very deep. He got information somewhere and not from me, not from OHIO-Four-Zero. Find him.'

Swarm gave Evan the standard private numbers at both his office and his apartment and rushed out of the dark, seedy bar as if he needed air. Kendrick ordered a rye from the heavy black waitress with the flaming red hair and asked her where the pay telephone was, if it existed. She told him.

'If you slam it twice on the lower left corner, you'll get your quarter back,' offered the woman.

'If I do, I'll give it to you, okay?' said Evan.

'Give it to your friend,' replied the woman. 'Crumbs in suits never leave no tips, white or black, makes no difference.'

Kendrick got up from the booth and walked cautiously to the dark wall and the phone. It was time to call his office. He could not put any more pressure on Mrs. Ann Mulcahy O'Reilly. Squinting, he inserted the coin and dialled.

'Congressman Kendrick's—'

'It's me, Annie,' broke in Evan.

'My God, where are you? It's after five and this place is still a madhouse!'

'That's why I'm not there.'

'Before I forget!' cried Mrs. Mulcahy breathlessly, 'Manny called a while ago and was very emphatic but not loud—which I think means he's as serious as he can be.'

'What did he say?'

'That you're not to reach him on the Colorado line.'

'What?'

'He told me to say “allcott massghoul”, whatever the hell that is.'

'It's very clear, Annie.' Weingrass had said alkhatt mash-ghool, Arabic for 'the line is engaged', a simple euphemism for tampered with, or tapped. If Manny was right, a trace could be lasered out and the origin of any incoming call identified in a matter of moments. 'I won't make any calls to Colorado,' added Evan.

'He said to tell you that when things calm down, he'll drive to Mesa Verde and call me here and give me a number where you can reach him.'

'I'll check back with you.'

'Now then, Mr. Superman, is it true what everyone's saying? Did you really do all those things in Oman or wherever it is?'

'Only a few of them. They left out a lot of people who should have been included. Someone's trying to make me out to be something I'm not. How are you handling things?'

'The standard “No comment” and “Our boss is out of town”,' answered O'Reilly.

'Good. Glad to hear it.'

'No, Congressman, it's not good because some things can't be handled standard-wise. We can control the loonies and the press and even your peers, but we can't control Sixteen Hundred.'

'The White House?'

'The obnoxious chief of staff himself. We can't say “No comment” to the President's mouthpiece.'

'What did he say?'

'He gave me a telephone number you're to call. It's his private line, and he made sure I understood that less than ten people in Washington had it—’

'I wonder if the President's one of them,' interrupted Kendrick only half facetiously.

'He claimed he is, and in point of fact he said it's a direct presidential order that you call his chief of staff immediately.'

'A direct what?'

'Presidential order.'

'Will somebody please read those clowns the Constitution. The legislative branch of this government does not take direct orders from the executive, presidential or otherwise.'

'His choice of words was stupid, I grant you,' went on Ann O'Reilly quickly, 'but if you'll let me finish telling you what he said, you might be more amenable.'

'Goon.'

'He said they understood why you were keeping out of sight, and that they'd arrange an unmarked pick-up for you wherever you say… Now, may I speak as your elder here in Funny Town, sir?'

'Please.'

'You can't keep on running, Evan. Sooner or later you'll have to show up, and it's better that you know what's on their minds over there before you do. Like it or not, they're on your case. Why not find out how they're coming down? It could avoid a disaster.' 'What's the number?'