The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 28

It was four-seventeen in the afternoon, Colorado time, and Emmanuel Weingrass's patience had run out. It had been close to eleven o'clock in the morning when he personally discovered that the phone was not working, subsequently learning that two of the nurses had known it several hours earlier when they tried to place calls. One of the girls had driven into Mesa Verde to use the grocery store phone and report the disruption of service to the telephone company; she returned with the assurance that the problem would be repaired as soon as possible. 'Possible' had now dragged out over five hours and that was unacceptable to Manny. A renowned congressman—to say nothing of the national hero that he was—demanded far better treatment; it was an affront Weingrass had no intention of tolerating. And although he said nothing to his coven of witches, he had bad thoughts—like disturbing thoughts.

'Hear this, you prognosticators for the Thane of Cawdor!' he shouted at the top of his lungs in the glass-enclosed veranda at the two nurses playing gin rummy.

'What in heaven's name are you talking about, Manny?' asked the third from a chair by the arch in the living room, lowering her newspaper.

'Macbeth, you illiterate. I'm laying down the law!'

'The law's the only thing you could handle in that department, Methuselah… Gin!'

'So little you know about the Bible, Miss Erudite… I will not remain beyond reach of the outside world any longer. One of you will either drive me into town where I can call the president of this mishegoss telephone company or I will urinate all over the kitchen.'

'You'll be in a straitjacket first,' said one of the girls playing cards.

'Wait a minute,' countered her partner. 'He can call the congressman and he could put on some pressure. I really have to reach Frank. He's flying out tomorrow—I told you—and I haven't been able to make a reservation at the motel in Cortez.'

'I'm for it,' said the nurse in the living room. 'He can call from Abe Hawkins's grocery store.'

'Knowing you dears, sex will out,' said Manny. 'But we call from the phone in Gee-Gee's office. I don't trust anyone named Abraham. He probably sold weapons to the Ayatollah and forgot to make a profit… I'll just get a sweater and my jacket.'

‘I’ll drive,' offered the nurse in the living room, dropping the newspaper beside the chair and rising. 'Put on your overcoat, Manny. It's cold and there's a strong wind from the mountains.'

Weingrass muttered a minor epithet as he passed the woman and headed for his bedroom in the south wing of the first floor. Once out of sight in the stone hallway, he hastened his pace; he had more to retrieve than a sweater. Inside his large room, redesigned by him to include sliding glass doors across the south wall opening on to a flagstone terrace, he walked rapidly to the tallboy, grabbing and dragging a chair from his desk to the high chest of drawers. Cautiously, holding on to the knobs, he climbed on the chair, reached over the curlicued top of the imposing piece of furniture and removed a shoe box. He lowered himself back to the floor, carried the box to the bed and opened it, revealing a .38 calibre automatic and three clips of shells.

The concealment was necessary. Evan had given orders that his shotgun case was to be locked and all ammunition removed, and that no handguns were permitted in the house. The reasons had been too painful for either man to bring up: Kendrick believed with more logic than less that if his old friend thought the cancer had returned, he would take his own life. But for Emmanuel Weingrass, after the life he had led, to be without a weapon was anathema. Gee-Gee Gonzalez had remedied the situation, and Manny had only once smashed open the shotgun case and that was when the media had descended on them pissing all over the grounds.

He slapped in one clip, put the other two into his pockets, and carried the chair back to the desk. He went to his cupboard, took a long, heavyknit sweater from the shelf and slipped it on; it covered the protrusions effectively. He then did something he had not done since the redesigned room had been built, not even when the reporters and the television crews had assaulted them. He inspected the locks on the sliding doors, crossed to a red switch hidden behind the curtains and turned on the alarm. He walked out of the bedroom, closing the door, and joined the nurse in the front hall; she was holding his overcoat for him.

'That's a handsome sweater, Manny.'

'I got it on sale in a Monte Carlo apres-ski shop.'

'Do you always have to have a flip answer?'

'No kidding, it's true.'

'Here, put on your coat.'

'I look like a Hasid in that thing.'

'A what?'

'Heidi in the edelweiss.'

'Oh, no, I think it's very masculine—’

'Oy, let's get out of here.' Weingrass started for the door, then stopped. 'Girls!' he shouted, his voice carrying to the veranda.

'Yes, Manny?'

'What?'

'Please listen to me, ladies, I'm serious. I'd feel much more comfortable, what with the phone being out, if you would please turn on the main alarm. Humour me, my lovelies. I'm a foolish old man to you, I realize that, but I really would feel better if you did this for me.'

'How sweet of him—'

'Of course we will, Manny.'

That humble crap always works, thought Weingrass, continuing towards the door. 'Come on, hurry up,' he said to the nurse behind him who was struggling with her parka. 'I want to get to Gee-Gee's before that phone company closes up for the month.'

The winds from the mountains were strong; the trek from the massive front door to Kendrick's Saab Turbo halfway down the circular drive was made by leaning into the gusts. Manny shielded his face with his left hand, his head turned to the right, when suddenly the wind and his discomfort became irrelevant. At first, he thought that the swirling leaves and erratic pockets of dust were distorting his still viable eyesight—and then he knew it was not so. There was movement, human movement, beyond the tall hedges that fronted the road. A figure had rushed to the right, lurching to the ground behind a particularly thick area of the foliage… Then another! This one following the first and going farther.

'You okay, Manny?' shouted the nurse as they approached the car.

'This stuff is kindergarten compared with the passes in the Maritime Alps!' yelled back Weingrass. 'Get in. Hurry up.'

'Oh, I'd love to see the Alps some day!'

'So would I,' mumbled Weingrass, climbing into the Saab, his right hand unobtrusively slipping under the overcoat and the sweater to reach his automatic. He pulled it out and lowered it between the seat and the door as the nurse inserted the key and started the engine. 'When you get to the road, turn left,' he said.

'No, Manny, you're wrong. The quickest way to Mesa Verde is to the right.'

'I know that, lovely thing, but I still want you to turn left.'

'Manny, if you're trying to pull something at your age I'm going to be furious!'

'Just turn left, drive around the curve, and stop.'

'Mister Weingrass, if you think for an instant—'

'I'm getting out,' broke in the old architect quietly. 'I don't want to alarm you, and I'll explain everything later, but right now you're going to do exactly as I tell you… Please. Drive.' The astonished nurse did not understand Manny's soft-spoken words but she understood the look in his eyes. There were no theatrics, no bombast; he was simply giving her an order. 'Thank you,' he continued, as she drove out between the wall of tall hedges and swung left. 'I want you to take the Mancos road back into Verde—’

'That'll add at least ten minutes—’

'I know, but it's what I want you to do. Go directly to Gee-Gee's as fast as you can and tell him to call the police—’

'Manny!' cried the nurse, interrupting as she tightly gripped the wheel.

'I'm sure it's nothing at all,' said Weingrass quickly, reassuringly. 'Probably just someone whose car broke down or a hiker who's lost. Nevertheless, it's better to check these things out, don't you think?'

'I don't know what to think but I'm certainly not letting you out of this car!'

'Yes, you will,' disagreed Manny, casually raising the automatic as if studying the trigger housing, no threat at all in his action.

'Good God!' yelled the nurse.

'I'm perfectly safe, my dear, because I'm a cautious man to the point of cowardice… Stop here, please.' The near panicked woman did as she was told, her frightened eyes shifting rapidly back and forth between the weapon and the old man's face. 'Thank you,' said Weingrass, opening the door, the sound of the wind sudden, powerful. ‘I’ll probably find our harmless visitor inside having coffee with the girls,' he added, stepping out and closing the door by pressing it shut. Wheels spinning, the Saab raced away. No matter, thought Manny, the gusts of wind covered the sound.

As it also covered whatever sound he made heading back towards the house, unavoidable sounds as he stayed out of sight on the border of the road, his feet cracking the fallen branches at the edge of the woods. He was as grateful for the racing dark clouds above in the sky as he was for the dark overcoat; both kept his being seen to a minimum. Five minutes later and several yards deeper into the woods, he stood by a thick tree at midpoint opposite the wall of hedges. He again shielded his face from the wind and, squinting, peered across the road.

They were there! And they were not lost. His disturbing thoughts had been valid. And rather than being lost the intruders were waiting—for something or someone. Both men wore leather jackets and were crouched in front of the hedges talking rapidly to each other, the man on the right constantly, impatiently glancing at his wristwatch. Weingrass did not have to be told what that meant; they were waiting for someone or more than someone. Awkwardly, feeling his age physically but not in his imagination, Manny lowered himself to the ground and began prowling around on his hands and knees, not sure what he was looking for but knowing he had to find it, whatever it was.

It was a thick, heavy limb newly blown down by the wind, sap still oozing from the shards where it had been snapped from a larger source in the trunk. It was about forty inches long; it was swingable. Slowly, more awkwardly and painfully, the old man rose to his feet and made his way back to the tree where he had been standing, diagonally across the road from the two intruders no more than fifty feet away.

It was a gamble, but then so was what was left of his life and the odds were infinitely better than they were at roulette or chemin de fer. The results, too, would be known more quickly, and the gambler in Emmanuel Weingrass was willing to place a decent bet that one of the intruders would stay where he was out of basic common sense. The aged architect moved back in the woods, selecting his position as carefully as if he were refining a final blueprint for the most important client of his life. He was; the client was himself. Make total use of the natural surroundings had been axiomatic with him all his professional life; he did not veer from that rule now.

There were two poplars, both wide and about seven feet apart, forming an abstract forest gate. He concealed himself behind the trunk on the right, gripped the heavy limb and raised it until it leaned against the bark above his head. The wind careened through the trees, and through the multiple sounds of the forest he opened his mouth and roared a short singsong chant, one-third human, two-thirds animal. He craned his neck and watched.

Between the trunks and the lower foliage he could see the startled figures across the road. Both men spun around in their crouching positions, the man on the right gripping his companion's shoulder, apparently—hopefully, prayed Manny—issuing orders. He had. The man on the left got to his feet, pulled a gun from inside his jacket and started for the forest across the road to Mesa Verde.

Everything was timing now. Timing and direction, the brief, seductive sounds leading the quarry into the fatal sea of green as surely as the sirens lured Ulysses. Twice more Weingrass emitted the eerie calls, and then a third that was so pronounced that the intruder rushed forward, slapping branches in front of him, his weapon levelled, his feet digging into the soft earth—towards and finally into the forest gate.

Manny pulled back on the thick, heavy limb and swung it with all his strength down and across into the head of the racing man. The face was shattered, blood spurting out of every feature, the skull a mass of broken bone and cartilage. The man was dead. Breathlessly, Weingrass walked out from behind the trunk and knelt down.

The man was an Arab.

The winds from the mountains continued their assault. Manny pulled the gun from the corpse's still warm hand and, even more awkwardly, far more painfully, edged his way back towards the road. The dead intruder's companion was a wild core of misdirected energy; he kept spinning his head towards the woods, towards the road from Mesa Verde and down at his watch. The only thing he had not done was display a weapon, and that told Weingrass something else. The terrorist—and he was a terrorist; both were terrorists—was either a rank amateur or a thorough professional, nothing in between.

Feeling the pounding echo in his frail chest, Manny permitted himself a few moments to breathe, but only moments. The opportunity might not come again. He moved north, from tree trunk to tree trunk, until he was sixty feet above the anxious man, who kept glancing south. Again timing; Weingrass walked as fast as he could across the road and stood motionless, watching. The would-be killer was now close to apoplectic; twice he started into the road towards the woods, both times returning to the hedges and crouching, staring at his watch. Manny moved forward, his automatic gripped in his veined right hand. When he was within ten feet of the terrorist, he shouted.

'Jezzar!' he roared, calling the man a butcher in Arabic. 'If you move, you're dead! Fahem?'

The dark-skinned man spun round, clawing the earth as he rolled into the hedges, loose dirt flying up into the old architect's face. Through the hurling debris, Weingrass understood why the terrorist had not displayed a weapon; it was on the ground beside him, inches from his hand. Manny fell to his left on the road as the man grabbed the gun, now lunging backwards, enmeshing himself in prickly green web, and fired twice; the reports were barely heard! They were two eerily muted spits in the wind; a silencer was attached to the terrorist's pistol. The bullets, however, were not silent; one shrieked through the air above Weingrass, the second ricocheted off the cement near his head. Manny raised his automatic and pulled the trigger, the calm of experience, despite the years, steadying his hand. The terrorist screamed through the rushing wind and collapsed forward into the hedge, his eyes wide, a rivulet of blood trickling from the base of his throat.

Hurry up, you decrepit bastard! cried Weingrass to himself, struggling to his feet. They were waiting for someone! You want to be a senile ugly duck in a gallery? Your meshuggah head blown off would serve you right. Shush! Every bone is boiling in pain! Manny lurched towards the body wedged in the hedge. He bent down, pulled the corpse forward, then gripped the man's feet and, grimacing, using every iota of strength that was in him, dragged the body across the road and into the woods.

He wanted only to lie on the ground and rest, to let the hammering in his chest subside and swallow air, but he knew he could not do that. He had to keep going; he had to be ready; above all he had to take someone alive. These people were after his son! Information had to be learned… all manner of death to follow.

He heard the sound of an engine in the distance… and then the sound disappeared. Bewildered, he side-stepped slowly, cautiously, between the trees to the edge of the woods and peered out. A car was coming up the road from Mesa Verde, but either it was idling or coasting or the wind was too strong. It was coasting, for now only the rolling tyres could be heard as it approached the wall of tall hedges, barely moving, finally stopping before the first entrance to the circular drive. Two men were inside; the driver, a stocky man, not young but not much over forty, got out first and looked around, obviously expecting to be met or signalled. He squinted in the dark afternoon light and seeing no one crossed the road to the wooded side and started walking forward. Weingrass shoved his automatic into his belt and bent down for the second killer's pistol with the perforated silencer attached to the barrel. It was too large for a pocket so, like the Arab, he placed it at his feet. He stood up and stepped farther back into the overgrowth; he checked the weapon's cylinder. There were four bullets left. The man approached; he was now directly in front of Manny.

'Yosef!' The name was suddenly carried on the wind, half shouted by the driver's companion, who had left the car and was racing down the road, his quickening steps impeded by a pronounced limp. Manny was perplexed; Yosef was a Hebrew name, yet these killers were not Israelis.

'Be quiet, boy!' commanded the older man gruffly in Arabic as his partner stopped breathlessly in front of him. 'You raise your voice like that again—anywhere—I'll ship you back to the Baaka in a coffin!'

Weingrass watched and listened to the two men no more than twenty feet away on the edge of the road. He was mildly astonished, but now understood the use of the Arabic word, walad, or 'boy'. The driver's companion was a boy, a youngster barely sixteen or seventeen, if that.

'You'll send me nowhere!' answered the young man angrily, a speech impediment obvious, undoubtedly a harelip.

‘I’ll never walk properly again because of that pig! I could have become a great martyr of our holy cause but for him!'

'Very well, very well,' said the older Arab with a Hebrew name, not without a degree of compassion. 'Throw cool water on your neck or your head will explode. Now, what is it?'

'The American radio! I just heard it and I understand enough to—understand!'

'Our people at the other house?'

'No, nothing like that. The Jews! They executed old Khouri. They hanged him!'

'What did you expect, Aman? Forty years ago he was still working with the German Nazis left in northern Africa. He killed Jews; he blew up kibbutzim, even a hotel in Haifa.'

'Then we must kill the murderer. Begin, and all the old men of the Irgun and the Stern! Khouri was a symbol of greatness for us—’

'Oh, be quiet, boy. Those old men fought the British more than they did us. Neither they nor old Khouri have anything to do with what we must do today. We must teach a lesson to a filthy politician who pretended to be one of us. He hid in our clothes and used our tongue and betrayed the friendship we offered him. Now, boy! Concentrate on now.'

'Where are the others? They were to come out on the road.'

'I don't know. They may have learned something or seen something and gone inside the house. Lights are being turned on now; you can see through those high bushes. Each of us will crawl up from either side of the half-circle entrance. Go through the grass to the windows. We will probably learn that our comrades are having coffee with whoever is there before slicing their throats.'

Emmanuel Weingrass raised the silenced pistol, firming it against the trunk of a tree, moving it back and forth between the two terrorists. He wanted both alive! The words in Arabic referring to the 'other house' so shocked him that in fury he might well blow both their heads away. They wanted to kill his son! If they had they would pay dearly—in agony—misguided youth or age irrelevant. Terrible pain would be the only consequence. He levelled the weapon at the pelvic region of both killers, back and forth, back and forth…

He fired just as a sudden gust of wind swirled along the road, two rounds into the older man, one into the boy. It was as if neither could possibly comprehend. The child collapsed screaming, writhing on the ground; his elder companion was made of stronger—much stronger—stuff. He staggered to his feet, turning to the source of the fire, and lurched forward, the stocky hulk a furious monster in pain.

'Don't come any closer, Yosef!' yelled Manny, exhausted beyond endurance and holding on to the tree. 'I don't want to kill you, but I will! You of the Hebrew name who kills Jews!'

'My mother!' screamed the approaching giant of a man. 'She renounced all of you! You are killers of my people! You take everything that is ours and spit on us! I am half Jew, but who are the Jews to kill my father and shave the head of my mother because she loved an Arab'? I will take you to hell!'

Weingrass held on to the trunk of the tree, his fingernails bleeding as he dug into the bark, his long black overcoat billowing in the wind. The broad dark figure lunged out of the forest darkness, his enormous hands gripping the old man's throat.

'Don't!' screamed Manny, knowing instantly that there was no choice. He fired the last shell, the bullet penetrating the wrinkled forehead above him. Yosef fell away, his final gesture one of defiance. Trembling and gasping for breath, Weingrass leaned against the tree, staring down at the ground, at the body of a man who had been in torment over an insignificant territorial arrangement that had forced humans to kill each other. In that moment, Emmanuel Weingrass came to a conclusion that had eluded him from the moment he was capable of thinking; he knew the answer now. The arrogance of blind belief led all the mendacities of human thought. It pitted man viciously against man in the pursuit of the ultimate unknowable. Who had the right?

'Yosef… Yosef,' cried the boy, rolling over in the undergrowth by the edge of the road. 'Where are you? I'm hit, I'm hit!'

The child did not know, thought Weingrass. From where the wounded boy lay writhing he could not see, and the wind from the mountains further muffled the muted gunshot. The maniacal young terrorist did not realize that his comrade Yosef was dead, that he alone had survived. And his survival was uppermost in Manny's mind; there could be no new martyr for a holy cause brought on by self-inflicted death. Not here, not now; there were facts to be learned, facts that could save the life of Evan Kendrick. Especially now!

Weingrass shoved his bleeding fingers into his overcoat pocket and dropped the silenced weapon on the ground. Summoning what strength he had left, he pushed himself away from the tree and made his way as quickly as he could south through the woods, stumbling again and again, his frail arms pushing the branches from his face and body. He veered towards the road; he reached it and saw the killer's car in the darkening distance. He had gone far enough. He turned and started back on the mercifully smooth surface—faster… faster! Move your goddamned spindly legs! That boy must not move, he must not crawl, he must not see! Manny felt the blood rushing to his head, the pounding in his rib cage deafening. There was the young Arab! He had moved—was moving, crawling into the woods. In moments he would see his dead companion! It could not happen!

'Aman!' shouted Weingrass breathlessly, remembering the name used by the half-Jew, Yosef, as if it were his own. 'Ayn ent? Kaif el-ahwal?' he continued in Arabic, urgently asking the boy where he was and how he was. 'Itkallem!' he roared against the wind, ordering the young terrorist to respond.

'Here, in here!' yelled the teenage Arab in his own language. 'I've been shot! In the hip. I can't find Yosef!' The young man rolled over on his back to greet an expected comrade. 'Who are you?’ he screamed, struggling to reach under his field jacket for a gun as Manny approached. 'I don't know you!'

Weingrass smashed his foot against the boy's elbow and as the empty hand whipped out from under the cloth he stepped on it, pinning it to the young Arab's chest. 'No more of that, you fool of a child!' said Manny, his Arabic that of a Saudi officer reprimanding a lowly recruit. 'We haven't covered you to have you cause even more trouble. Of course you were shot, and I trust you realize that you were merely wounded, not killed, which could have been easily managed!'

'What are you saying?'

'What were you doing?’ shouted Manny in reply. 'Running in the road, raising your voice, crawling around our objective like a thief in the night! Yosef was right, you should be shipped back to the Baaka.'

'Yosef?… Where is Yosef?'

'Up in the house with the others. Come, I'll help you join them.' Afraid of falling over, Weingrass held on to the branch of a sapling as the terrorist pulled himself up, gripping Manny's hand. 'First, give me your weapon!'

'What?'

'They think you're stupid enough. They don't want you armed.'

'I don't understand—'

'You don't have to.' Weingrass slapped the bewildered young fanatic across the face and simultaneously shoved his right hand between the buttoned fold of the boy's jacket to pull out the would-be killer's gun. It was appropriate; it was a .22 calibre pistol. 'You can shoot gnats with this,' said Manny, grabbing the teenager's arm. 'Come along. Hop on one foot, if it's easier. We'll paste you up.'

What remained of the late afternoon sun was obscured by the swirling dark clouds of a gathering storm surging out of the mountains. The drained, exhausted old man and the wounded youngster were halfway across the road when suddenly the roar of an engine was heard and headlights of a racing vehicle caught them in the beams. The car was bearing down on them, thundering up from the south from Mesa Verde. Tyres shrieking, the powerful car side-slipped into a skid and pounded to a stop only yards away from Weingrass and his captive who were lunging towards the hedge, Manny's grip tightening on the Arab's field jacket. A man leaped from the large black car as Weingrass—lurching, stumbling—reached into his overcoat pocket for his own .38 automatic. The figure rushing towards him was a blur in the old architect's eyes; he raised his gun to fire.

'Manny!' yelled Gee-Gee Gonzalez.

Weingrass fell to the ground, his hand still gripping the wounded terrorist. 'Grab him!' he ordered Gee-Gee with what seemed like the last breath in his lungs. 'Don't let him go—hold his arms. They sometimes carry cyanide!'

The young Arab was given a needle by one of the two nurses; he would be unconscious until morning. His bullet wound was bloody, not serious, the bullet itself having passed through the flesh; it was cleansed, the openings held together with heavy tape and the bleeding stopped. He was then carried by Gonzalez to a guest room, his arms and legs strapped to the four corners of the bed, where the nurses covered his naked body with two blankets to help prevent any possible trauma.

'He's so terribly young,' said the nurse placing the pillow under the teenage Arab's head.

'He's a killer,' responded Weingrass icily, staring at the terrorist's face. 'He'd kill you without thinking for an instant about the life he was taking—the way he wants to kill Jews. The way he will kill us if we let him live.'

'That's revolting, Mr. Weingrass,' said the other nurse. 'He's a child.'

'Tell that to the parents of God knows how many Jewish children who were never permitted his years.' Manny left the room to rejoin Gonzalez, who had hastily gone outside to drive his all too recognizable car into a garage; he had returned and was pouring himself a large glass of whisky at the bar on the veranda.

'Help yourself,' said the architect, walking into the enclosed porch and heading for his leather armchair. ‘I’ll put it on your bill like you do with me.'

'You crazy old man!' spat out Gee-Gee. 'Loco! You plain loco, you know that? You could'a been killed! Muerto! You comprende? Muerto, muerto— dead, dead, dead, you old fool! Maybe that I could live with, but not when you give me a heart attack! I don't live so good with a heart attack when it's fatal, you comprende, you know what I mean?'

'Okay, okay. So you can have that drink on the house—’

'Loco!' shouted Gonzalez again, drinking the whisky in what appeared to be a single swallow.

'You've made your point,' agreed Manny. 'Have another. I won't start charging until the third.'

'I don't know whether to go or whether to stay!' said Gee-Gee, once more pouring a drink.

'The police?'

'Like I told you, who had time for the police? And if I called them, they'd come around in a month!… Your girl, the ama de cria— the nurse, she's calling them. I only hope she found one of those payasos. Sometimes you gotta call Durango to get someone out here.'

The phone on the bar rang—it rang, but it was not the ring of a telephone; instead it was a steady whirr-toned sound. Weingrass was so startled that he nearly fell to the floor pushing himself out of the chair.

'You want me to get it?' asked Gonzalez.

'No!' roared Manny, walking rapidly, unsteadily, towards the bar.

'Don't bite off my cabeza.'

'Hello?' said the old man into the phone, forcing control on himself.

'Mr. Weingrass?'

'Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Who are you?'

'We're on a laser patch into your telephone line. My name is Mitchell Payton—’

'I know all about you,' interrupted Manny. 'Is my boy all right?'

'Yes, he is. I've just spoken to him in the Bahamas. A military aircraft has been dispatched from Holmstead Air Force Base to pick him up. He'll be in Washington in a few hours.'

'Keep him there! Surround him with guards! Don't let anyone near him!'

'Then it's happened out there?… I feel so useless, so incompetent. I should have posted guards… How many were killed?'

'Three,' said Manny.

'Oh, my God… How much do the police know?'

'They don't. They haven't got here yet.'

'They haven't… Listen to me, Mr. Weingrass. What I'm about to say will appear strange if not insane to you, but I know what I'm talking about. For the time being this tragic event must be contained. We'll have a far greater chance to catch the bastards by avoiding panic and letting our own experts go to work. Can you understand that, Mr. Weingrass?'

'Understood and arranged,' answered an old man who had worked with the Mossad, a certain impatient condescension creeping into his voice. 'The police will be met outside and told it was a false alarm—a neighbour whose car had broken down and couldn't reach us on the phone, that's all.'

'I forgot,' said the director of Special Projects quietly. 'You've been here before.'

'I've been here,' agreed Manny, without comment.

'Wait a minute!' exclaimed Payton. 'You said three were dead, but you're talking to me, you're all right.'

'The three were them, not us, Mr. CIA Incompetent.'

'What? . . .Jesus Christ

'He wasn't much help. Try Abraham.'

'Please be clearer, Mr. Weingrass.'

'I had to kill them. But the fourth's alive and under sedation. Get your experts out here before I kill him, too.'