The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 44

'We'll look in on him at least once an hour, Miss Rashad,' said the middle-aged naval nurse behind the counter. 'Rest assured of it… Did you know the President himself called the congressman this afternoon?'

'Yes, I was there. And speaking of phones, there are to be no calls put through to his room.'

'We understand. Here's the note; it's a copy of the one each operator has at the switchboard. All calls are to be referred to you at the Westlake Hotel.'

'That's correct. Thank you very much.'

'It's a pity, isn't it? Here it is Christmas Eve and instead of being with friends and singing carols or whatever, he's bandaged up in a hospital and you're stuck by yourself in a hotel room.'

'I'll tell you something, Nurse. The fact that he's here and alive makes it the best Christmas I could ever hope to have.'

'I know, dear. I've seen you two together.'

'Take care of him. If I don't get some sleep, he won't consider me much of a present in the morning.'

'He's our number one patient. And you rest, young lady. You look a mite haggard and that's a medical opinion.'

'I'm a mess is what I am.'

'In my best days I should be such a mess.'

'You're sweet,' said Khalehla, putting her hand on the nurse's arm and squeezing it. 'Good night. See you tomorrow.'

'Merry Christmas, dear.'

'It is. And have a merry one yourself.' Rashad walked down the white corridor to the bank of elevators and pressed the lower button. She had meant it about needing sleep; except for a brief twenty minutes when both she and Evan dozed off, she had not closed her eyes in nearly forty-eighth hours. A hot shower, a warm room-service meal, and bed was the order of the night. In the morning she would shop in one of those stores that stayed open for the benefit of errant people who had forgotten someone and buy a few silly presents for her… intended? My God, she thought. For my fiancé. Too much.

It was funny, though, how Christmas undeniably brought out the gentler, kinder aspects of human nature—regardless of race, creed, or lack of both. The nurse, for instance. She was sweet, and probably a rather lonely woman with too large a body and a pudgy face unlikely to be chosen for a recruitment poster. Yet, she had tried to be warm and kind. She had said that she knew how the congressman's lady felt because she had seen them together. She had not. Khalehla remembered every person who had come into Evan's room and the nurse was not one of them. Kindness… reaching-out, whatever one cared to call it, it was Christmas. And her man was safe. The elevator doors parted and she walked into the descending cage feeling secure and warm and kind.

Kendrick opened his eyes to the darkness. Something had awakened him… what was it? The door to his room… Yes, of course, it was the door. Khalehla had told him he was going to be checked and re-checked all night long. Where did she think he would go? Out dancing? He sank back into the pillow, breathing deeply, no strength in him, all energy elusive… No. It was not the door. It was a presence. Someone was there in the room!

Slowly he moved his head, inch by inch on the pillow. There was a blurred splash of white in the dark, no upper or lower extensions, just a dull space of white in the darkness.

'Who is it?' he said, finding his barely audible voice. 'Who's there?'

Silence.

'Who the hell are you? What do you want?

Then, like a rushing onslaught, the white mass came towards him out of the dark and crashed into his face. A pillow. He could not breathe! He swung his right hand up, pushing against a muscular arm, then sliding off the flesh into a face, a soft face, then into the scalp of… woman's hair! He yanked the strands in his grip with all the strength he could summon, rolling to the right on the narrow hospital bed, pulling his predator down to the floor beneath him. He released the hair and hammered the face under him, his shoulder in torment, the stitches broken, blood spreading through the bandages. He tried to yell, but all that emerged was a throated cry. The heavy woman clawed at his neck, her fingers sharp, hard points breaking his skin… then up into his eyes, tearing his lids and scraping his forehead. He surged up, spinning out of her grip, beyond her reach, crashing into the wall. The pain was intolerable. He lurched towards the door but she was on him, hurling him into the side of the bed. His hand struck the carafe of water on the table; he grabbed it and, spinning again, swung it up into the head, into the maniacal face above him. The woman was stunned; he rushed forward throwing his right shoulder into her heavy body, smashing her into the wall, then lunged for the door and yanked it open. The white antiseptic hall was bathed in dim grey light except for a bright lamp behind the desk halfway down the corridor. He tried again to scream.

'Someone…! Help me!' The words were lost; only guttural, muted cries came out of his mouth. He limped, his swollen ankle and damaged leg barely able to support him. Where was everybody? No one was there… no one at the desk! Then two nurses came casually through a door at the far end of the hallway, and he raised his right hand, waving it frantically as the words finally came. 'Help me… !'

'Oh, my God!' screamed one of the women as both rushed forward. Simultaneously, Kendrick heard another set of racing feet. He spun around only to watch helplessly as the heavy, muscular nurse ran out of his room and down the hall to a door beneath a red-lettered Exit sign. She crashed it open and disappeared.

'Call the doctor down in emergency!' cried the nurse who reached him first. 'Hurry. He's bleeding all over the place!'

'Then I'd better call the Rashad girl,' said the second nurse, heading for the desk. 'She's to be called with any change of status, and, Jesus, this is certainly that!'

'No!' yelled Evan, his voice at last a clear, if breathless, roar. 'Leave her alone!'

'But Congressman—'

'Please do as I say. Don't call her! She hasn't slept in two or three days. Just get the doctor and help me back to my room… Then I have to use the phone.'

Forty-five minutes later, his shoulder restitched and his face and neck cleaned up, Kendrick sat in bed, the telephone in his lap, and dialled the number in Washington he had committed to memory. Against strenuous objections he had ordered the doctor and the nurses not to call the military police or even the hospital's security. It had been established that no one on the floor knew the heavyset woman other than as a name, obviously false, through transfer papers presented that afternoon from the base hospital in Pensacola, Florida. Highly qualified nurses were coveted additions to any staff; no one questioned her arrival and no one would stop her in her swift departure. And until the whole picture was clearer, there could be no official investigations triggering news stories in the media. The blackout was still in effect.

'Sorry to wake you, Mitch—’

'Evan?'

'You'd better know what happened.' Kendrick described the all too real nightmare he had lived through, including his decision to avoid the police, civilian and military. 'Maybe I was wrong, but I reckoned once she reached that exit door there wasn't much chance of getting her and every chance of hitting the papers if they tried.'

'You were right,' agreed Payton, speaking rapidly. 'She was a hired gun—'

'Pillow,' corrected Evan.

'Every bit as lethal if you hadn't woken up. The point is, hired killers plan ahead, usually with several different exits and an equal number of changes of clothes. You did the right thing.'

'Who hired her, Mitch?'

'I'd say it's pretty obvious. Grinell did. He's been a malignantly busy man since he got off that island.'

'What do you mean? Khalehla didn't tell me.'

'Khalehla, as you call her, doesn't know. She has enough stress with you on her hands. How is she taking tonight?'

'She hasn't been told. I wouldn't let them call her.'

'She'll be furious.'

'At least she'll get some sleep. What about Grinell?'

'Ardis Vanvlanderen's lawyer is dead and the ledger is nowhere to be found. Grinell's people got to San Jacinto first.'

'Goddamn it!' shouted Kendrick hoarsely. 'We've lost it!'

'It would appear so, but there's something that doesn't quite add up… Do you recall my telling you that all Grinell needed in order to know we were closing in was someone watching the attorney's house?'

'Certainly.'

'Gingerbread found him.'

'And?'

'If they did get that book, why station a lookout after the fact? Indeed, why risk it?'

'Force the lookout to tell you! Drug him up, you've done it before.'

'Gingerbread thinks not.'

'Why not?'

'Two reasons. The man may be a low-scale watchman who knows absolutely nothing, and second, Gingerbread wants to follow him.'

'You mean this Gingerbread found the lookout but the lookout doesn't know it?'

'I told you he was good. Grinell's man doesn't even know we found the dead lawyer. All he saw was a company truck and two gardeners in overalls who proceeded to mow the lawns.'

'But if the lookout's so low-scale, what will Gingerbread—Christ, that's a dumb name—what will he learn by following him?'

'I said he may be low-scale with only a relay telephone number to call periodically that wouldn't tell us anything. On the other hand, he may not be. If he's upscale he could lead us to others.'

'For God's sake, Mitch, drug him and find out!'

'You're not following me, Evan. A relay phone is called periodically … at specific times. If the schedule's broken, we send Grinell the wrong message.'

'You're all convoluted fruitcakes,' said a weakened, exasperated Kendrick.

'It's not much of a living, either… I'll have a couple of Shore Patrols placed at your door. Try to get some rest.'

'What about you? I know you said you couldn't fly out here and now I understand why, but you're still at the office, aren't you?'

'Yes, I'm waiting to hear from Gingerbread. I can work faster from here.'

'You don't want to talk about yesterday morning—about your meeting with the top dog from that Inver Brass?'

'Perhaps tomorrow. It's no longer urgent. Without him there is no Inver Brass.'

'Without him?'

'He killed himself… Merry Christmas, Congressman.'

Khalehla Rashad dropped the packages in her arms and screamed. 'What happened?' she cried, rushing to the bed.

'Medicare's a bunch of bullshit,' replied Evan.

'That's not funny!… The SPs at your door and the way they looked at my ID downstairs when I said I was coming to see you—what happened?'

He told her, omitting the parts about the replaced stitches and the blood in the hallway. 'Mitch agrees with what I did.'

‘I’ll have his head!' yelled Khalehla. 'He should have called me!'

'Then you wouldn't look as lovely as you do. The shadows around your eyes are only half black. You slept.'

'Twelve hours,' she admitted, sitting on the edge of the bed. That sweet, pudgy nurse? I can't believe it!'

'I could have used some of your black belt, first class, training. I don't make a point of fighting very often, and hardly ever with women—except hookers who overcharge.'

'Remind me never to let you pay… Oh, God, Evan, I knew I should have insisted on a larger room with two beds and stayed with you!'

'Don't carry this protective routine too far, kid. I am the man, remember?'

'And you remember that if we're ever mugged, let me make the moves, all right?'

'There goeth all my masculine pride… Be my guest, just feed me bonbons and champagne while you beat the hell out of the bastards.'

'Only a man could even joke like that,' said Rashad, bending down and kissing him. 'I love you so, that's my problem.'

'Not mine.' They kissed again and quite naturally the telephone rang. 'Don't yell!' he insisted. 'It's probably Mitch.' It was.

'Breakthrough!' exclaimed the director of Special Projects from Langley, Virginia. 'Has Evan told you? About Grinell?'

'No, nothing.'

'Put him on, he can explain things to you—’

'Why didn't you call me last night—this morning?'

'Put him on!'

'Yes, sir.'

'What is it, Mitch?'

'The break we've needed—we've got it!'

'Gingerbread?'

'Oddly enough, no. From an entirely different source. You look for crazy things in this business and sometimes you find them. On an outside chance we sent a man to the offices of Mrs. Vanvlanderen's attorney with a mocked-up document permitting him access to the files of the Vice President's late chief of staff. In her employer's absence the secretary wasn't about to let anyone prowl around the files, so she called the Sanjacinto house. Knowing she wouldn't get an answer, our man hung in there for a couple of hours playing the angry Washington official with orders from the National Security Council while she kept trying to reach the lawyer. Apparently she was genuinely upset; he was supposed to be in an all-day conference out there with important clients… Whether it was frustration or self-defence that made her say it, we don't know and don't care, but she blurted out the fact that our man probably wanted all those confidential pages she'd Xeroxed, but he couldn't get them anyway because they were all in a safety box down in a bank vault.'

'Bingo,' said Evan quietly, inwardly shouting.

'Unquestionably. She even described the ledger… Our astute attorney was perfectly willing to sell Grinell the book, then proceed to blackmail him with the copy. Grinell's lookout was there out of simple curiosity, nothing more, and the ledger will be ours within the hour.'

'Get it, Mitch, and break it down! Look for a man named Hamendi, Abdel Hamendi.'

'The arms dealer,' said Payton audibly, nodding. 'The photographs in Vanvlanderen's apartment—Lausanne, Amsterdam.'

'That's the one. They'll use a code name for him, of course, but trace the money, the transfers in Geneva and Zurich—the Gemeinschaft Bank in Zurich.'

'Naturally.'

'There's something else, Mitch. Let's clean house as much as we can. A man like Hamendi supplies arms to all the fanatic splinter groups he can find, each side killing the other with what he sells them. Then he looks for other killers, the ones in thousand-dollar suits sitting in plush offices whose only cause is money, and he brings them into his network… Production increases ten times what it was, then twenty, and there's more killing, more causes to sell to, more maniacs to fuel… Let's take him out, Mitch. Let's give a part of this screwed-up world a chance to breathe—without his supplies.'

'It's a tall order, Evan.'

'Give me a few weeks to get patched together, then send me back to Oman.'

'What?'

'I'm going to make the biggest purchase of weapons Hamendi ever dreamed of.'

Sixteen days passed, Christmas a painful memory, the New Year greeted cautiously, with suspicion. On the fourth day Evan had visited Emilio Carallo and gave him a photograph of a fine new fishing boat, along with its ownership papers, a prepaid course for his captain's licence, a bank book and a guarantee that no one from the island of Passage to China would ever bother him in El Descanso. It was the truth; of the selected brethren of the inner government who had conferred on that insidious government's island, none cared to acknowledge it. Instead, they huddled with their batteries of lawyers, and several had fled the country. They were not concerned with a crippled fisherman in El Descanso. They were concerned with saving their lives and their fortunes.

On the eighth day the ground swell came out of Chicago and rolled through the Middle West. It started with four independent newspapers within a sixty-mile radius editorially proposing the candidacy of Congressman Evan Kendrick for the vice presidential nomination. Within seventy-two hours three more were added, in addition to six television stations owned by five of the papers. Proposals became endorsements and the voices of the journalistic turtles were heard in the land. From New York to Los Angeles, Bismarck to Houston, Boston to Miami, the brotherhood of media giants began studying the concept, and the editors of Time and Newsweek called emergency meetings. Kendrick was moved to an isolated wing of the base hospital and his name removed from the roster of patients. In Washington, Annie Mulcahy O'Reilly and the staff informed hundreds of callers that the representative from Colorado was out of the country and not available for comment.

On the eleventh day the congressman and his lady returned to Mesa Verde, where to their astonishment they found Emmanuel Weingrass, a small cylinder of oxygen strapped to his side in case of a respiratory emergency, overseeing an army of carpenters repairing the house. Manny's pace was slower and he sat down a great deal, but his illness had no effect on his ever-present irascibility. It was a constant; the only time he lowered his voice even a decibel was when he spoke with Khalehla—his 'lovely new daughter, worth much more than the bum who was always hanging around'.

On the fifteenth day Mitchell Payton, working with a young computer genius he had borrowed from Frank Swann at State, broke the codes of Grinell's ledger, the bible according to the inner government. Working through the night with Gerald Bryce at the keyboard, the two men compiled a report for the President, Langford Jennings, who told them exactly how many printouts were to be made. One additional report rolled out of the word processor before the disk was destroyed, but MJ was not aware of it.

One by one the big cars arrived at night, not at a darkened estate on Chesapeake Bay but instead at the south portico of the White House. The passengers were escorted by marine guards to the Oval Office of the President of the United States. Langford Jennings sat behind his desk, his feet on a favourite ottoman to the left of his chair, acknowledging with a nod everyone who came—all but one. Vice President Orson Bollinger was simply stared at, no greeting extended, only contempt. The chairs were arranged in a semicircle in front of the desk and the awesome man behind it. Included in the entourage, each carrying a single manila envelope, were the majority and minority leaders of both Houses of Congress, the Acting Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, the directors of the Central Intelligence and the National Security agencies, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, and Mitchell Jarvis Payton, Special Projects, CIA. All sat down and waited in silence. The waiting was not long.

'We're in a pile of deep shit,' said the President of the United States. 'How it happened I'll be damned if I know, but I'd better get some answers tonight or I'll see a number of people in this town spending twenty years on a rock pile. Do I make myself clear?'

There was a scattered nodding of heads but more than a few objected, angry faces and voices resenting the President's implications.

'Hold on!' continued Jennings, quieting the dissenters. 'I want the ground rules thoroughly understood. Each of you has received and presumably read the report prepared by Mr. Payton. You've all brought it with you and again presumably, as ordered, none of you has made copies. Are these statements accurate?… Please answer individually, starting on my left with the Attorney General.'

Each of the assembled group repeated the action and the words of the nation's chief law enforcement officer. Each held up the manila envelope and said, 'No copies, Mr. President.'

'Good.' Jennings removed his feet from the ottoman and leaned forward, his forearms on the desk. 'The envelopes are numbered, gentlemen, and limited to the number of people in this room. Furthermore, they will remain in this room when you leave. Again, understood?' The nods and the mutterings were affirmative. 'Good… I don't have to tell you that the information contained in these pages is as devastating as it is incredible. A network of thieves and killers and human garbage who hired killers and paid for the services of terrorists. Wholesale slaughter in Fairfax, in Colorado—and, oh my God—in Cyprus, where a man worth any five of you bastards was blown up with his whole delegation… It's a litany of horrors; of boardrooms across the country in constant collusion, of setting prices for outrageous margins of profit, buying influence in all sectors of the government, turning the nation's defence industry into a grab bag of riches. It's also a litany of deceptions, of illegal transactions with arms merchants all over the world, lying to armaments control committees, buying licences for export, re-routing shipments where they're disallowed. Christ, it's a fucking mess!… And there's not one of you here that isn't touched by it. Now, did I hear a few objections?'

'Mr. President—’

'Mr. President—'

'I've spent thirty years in the Corps and no one has ever dared—'

‘I dare!' roared Jennings. 'And who the hell are you to tell me I can't? Anyone else?'

'Yes, Mr. President,' replied the Secretary of Defense. 'To indulge in your language, I don't know what the fuck you're specifically alluding to and I object to your innuendos.'

'Specifics? Innuendos? Screw you, Mac, read the figures! Three million dollars for a tank that's estimated to cost roughly one million five to produce? Thirty million for a fighter aircraft that's been so overloaded with Pentagon goodies it can't perform, then goes back to the drawing board and another ten million per machine? Forget the toilet seats and the goddamned wrenches, you've got much bigger problems.'

'They're all minor expenditures compared to the totality, Mr. President.'

'As a friend of mine said on television, tell that to the poor son of a bitch who has to balance a budget. Maybe you're in the wrong job, Mr. Secretary. We keep telling the country that the Soviet economy is a shambles, its technology light years behind ours, and yet every year when you produce a budget, you tell us we're up shit creek because Russia's outperforming us economically and technologically. There's a slight contradiction there, wouldn't you say?'

'You don't understand the complexities—’

'I don't have to. I understand the contradictions… And what about you, you four glorious stalwarts from the House and Senate—members of my party and the loyal opposition? You never smelled anything?'

'You're an extremely popular President,' said the leader of the opposition. 'It's politically difficult to oppose your positions.'

'Even when the fish is rotten?'

'Even when the fish is rotten, sir.'

'Then you should get out, too… And our astute military elite, our Olympian Joint Chiefs of Staff. Who's watching the goddamned store, or are you so rarefied you forgot the address of the Pentagon? Colonels, generals, admirals, marching in step out of Arlington into the ranks of defence contractors and selling the taxpayers down the drain.'

'I object!' shouted the chairman of the JCS, spitting through his capped teeth. 'It's not our job, Mr. President, to keep tabs on every officer's employment in the private sector.'

'Perhaps not, but your approval of recommendations makes damned sure who gets the rank that makes it possible… And how about the country's super spies, the CIA and the NSA? Mr. Payton here excluded—and if any of you try to railroad him to Siberia, you'll answer to me for the next five years—where the hell were you? Arms sent all over the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf—to ports the Congress and I said were off limits! You couldn't trace the traffic? Who the hell was on the switch?'

'In a number of cases, Mr. President,' said the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 'when we had reason to question certain activities, we assumed they were being carried out with your authority, for they reflected your policy position. Where the laws were involved we believed you were being advised by the Attorney General, as is the accepted procedure.'

'So you shut your eyes and said, “Let Joe Blow handle the pot of hot potatoes.” Very commendable for saving your ass, but why didn't you check with me?'

'Speaking for the NSA,' broke in the director of the National Security Agency, 'we spoke several times with both your chief of staff and your National Security adviser about several unorthodox developments that turned up on our desks. Your NSC adviser insisted that he knew nothing about what he termed “vicious rumours”, and Mr. Dennison claimed they were—and I quote him accurately, Mr. President—“a bunch of shit spread by ultra liberal wimps taking cheap shots at you”. Those were his words, sir.'

'You'll notice,' remarked Jennings coldly, 'that neither of those men is in this room. My NSC adviser has retired, and my chief of staff is on leave attending to personal business. In Herb Dennison's defence, he may have run a tight, pretty autocratic ship, but his navigation wasn't always accurate… Now we come to our chief law enforcement officer, the guardian of our nation's legal system. Considering the laws that were broken, bent and circumvented, I have the idea that you went out to lunch three years ago and never came back. What are you running over at Justice? Bingo games or marbles? Why are we paying several hundred lawyers over there to look into criminal activities against the government and not one of the goddamned crimes listed in this report was ever uncovered?'

'They were not in our purview, Mr. President. We've concentrated on—'

'What the hell is a purview? Corporate price-fixing and outrageous overruns aren't in your purview? Let me tell you something, whack-a-doo, they damn well better be!… To hell with you, let's turn to my esteemed running mate—the last is by far not the least in terms of vital importance. Our grovelling, snivelling tool of very special interests is the big man on the campus! They're all your boys, Orson! How could you do it?'

'Mr. President, they're your men, too! They raised the money for your first campaign. They raised millions more than your opposition, virtually assuring your election. You espoused their causes, supported their cries for the unencumbered expansion of business and industry—’

'Reasonably unencumbered, yes,' said Jennings, the veins in his forehead pronounced, 'but not manipulated. Not corrupted by dealings with arms merchants all over Europe and the Mediterranean, and, goddamn you, not by collusion, extortion and terrorists for hire!'

'I knew nothing about such things!' screamed Bollinger, leaping to his feet.

'No, you probably didn't, Mr. Vice President, because you were all too useful peddling influence for them to risk losing you through panic. But you sure as hell knew there was a lot more fat in the fire than there was smoke in the kitchen. You just didn't want to know what was burning and smelling so rotten. Sit down!' Bollinger sat, and Jennings continued. 'But get this clear, Orson. You're not on the ticket and I don't want you near the convention. You're out, finished, and if I ever learn that you're peddling again or sitting on a board other than for charity… well, just don't.'

'Mr. President!' said the leather-faced chairman of the Joint Chiefs as he stood up. 'In light of your remarks and all too obvious disposition, I tender my resignation, effective immediately!'

The declaration was followed by half a dozen others, all standing and emphatic. Langford Jennings leaned back in his chair and spoke calmly, his voice chilling. 'Oh, no, you're not getting off that easy, any of you. There's not going to be a reverse Saturday night massacre in this administration, no crawling off the ship and into the hills. You're going to stay right where you are and make damned sure we get back on course… Understand me clearly, I don't care what people think of me or you or the house I'm temporarily occupying, but I do care about the country, I care about it deeply. So deeply in fact that this preliminary report—preliminary because it isn't finished by a long shot—is going to remain the sole property of this President under the statutes of executive nondisclosure until I think the time is right to release it… which it will be. To release it now would cripple the strongest presidency this nation has had in forty years and do irreparable damage to the country, but I repeat, it will be released… Let me explain something to you. When a man, and I trust some day a woman, reaches this office, there's only one thing left, and that's his mark on history. Well, I'm taking myself out of that race for immortality within the next five years of my life, because during that time this completed report, with all its horrors, will be made public. But not until every wrong committed on my watch has been righted, every crime paid for. If that means working night and day, then that's what you're all going to do—all but my pandering, sycophantic Vice President who's going to fade away and with any luck will have the grace to blow his brains out… A final word, gentlemen. Should any of you be tempted to jump this rotten ship we've all created by omission and commission, please remember that I'm the President of the United States with incredible powers. In the broadest sense they include life and death—that's merely a statement of fact, but if you care to take it as a threat… Well, that's your privilege. Now, get out of here and start thinking. Payton, you stay.'

'Yes, Mr. President.'

'Did they get the message, Mitch?' asked Jennings, pouring himself and Payton a drink from a bar recessed in the left wall of the Oval Office.

'Let's put it this way,' replied the director of Special Projects. 'If I don't have that whisky in a matter of seconds, I'm going to start shaking again.'

The President grinned his famous grin as he brought Payton's drink to him at the window. 'Not bad for a guy who's supposedly got the IQ of a telephone pole, huh?'

'It was an extraordinary performance, sir.'

That's what this office has been largely reduced to, I'm afraid.'

'I didn't mean it that way, Mr. President.'

'Of course you did and you're right. It's why the king, with all his clothes on or naked, needs a strong prime minister who, in turn, creates his own royal family—from both parties, incidentally.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Kendrick. I want him on the ticket.'

'Then you'll have to convince him, I'm afraid. According to my niece—I call her my niece but she's not really—’

'I know all about it, all about her,' interrupted Jennings. 'What does she say?'

'That Evan's perfectly aware of what's happened—what's happening—but hasn't made up his mind. His closest friend, Emmanuel Weingrass, is extremely ill and not expected to live.'

'I'm aware of that, too. You didn't use his name but it's in your report, remember?'

'Oh, sorry. I haven't had much sleep lately. I forget things … At any rate, Kendrick insists on going back to Oman and I can't dissuade him. He's obsessed with the arms merchant Abdel Hamendi. He quite rightly believes that Hamendi's selling at least eighty per cent of all the firepower used in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, destroying his beloved Arab countries. In his way, he's like a modern day Lawrence, trying to rescue his friends from international contempt and ultimate oblivion.'

'What exactly does he think he can accomplish?'

'From what he's told me, it's basically a sting operation. I don't think it's clear to him yet, but the objective is. That's to expose Hamendi for what he is, a man who makes millions upon millions by selling death to anyone who'll buy it.'

'What makes Evan believe Hamendi gives a damn what his buyers think of him? He's in the arms business, not evangelism.'

'He might if more than half the weapons he's sold do not function, if the explosives don't explode, and the guns don't fire.'

'Good God,' whispered the President, turning slowly and walking back to his desk. He sat down and placed his glass on the blotter, staring in silence at the far wall. Finally, he turned in his chair and looked up at Payton by the window. 'Let him go, Mitch. He'd never forgive either one of us if we stopped him. Give him everything he needs, but make goddamned sure he comes back… I want him back. The country needs him back.'

Across the world, pockets of mist drifted in from the Persian Gulf, blanketing Bahrain's Tujjar Road, causing inverted halos beneath the streetlamps and obscuring the night sky above. It was precisely four-thirty in the morning as a large black car intruded upon this deserted waterfront section of the sleeping city. It came to a stop in front of the glass doors of the building known as the Sahalhuddin, until sixteen months ago the princely high chambers of the man-monster who called himself the Mahdi. Two robed Arabs emerged from rear doors of the imposing vehicle and walked into the wash of dull neon lights that illuminated the entrance; the limousine quietly drove away. The taller man tapped softly on the glass; inside, the guard at the reception desk glanced at his wristwatch, got out of his chair and walked rapidly to the door. He unlocked it and bowed to the odd-hour visitors.

'All is prepared, great sirs,' he said, his voice at first barely above a whisper. 'The outside guards have been granted early dismissal; the morning shift arrives at six o'clock.'

'We'll need less than half that time,' said the younger, shorter visitor, obviously the leader. 'Has your well-paid preparedness included an unlocked door upstairs?'

'Most assuredly, great sir.'

'And only one elevator is in use?' asked the older, taller Arab.

'Yes, sir.'

'We'll lock it above.' The shorter man started towards the bank of elevators on the right, his companion instantly catching up with him. 'If I'm correct,' he continued, speaking loudly, 'we walk up the final flight of stairs, is that so?'

'Yes, great sir. All the alarms have been disengaged and the room restored exactly as it was… before that terrible morning. Also, as instructed, the item you requested has been brought up; it was in the cellars. You may be aware, sir, that the authorities tore the room apart, then sealed it for many months. We could not understand, great sir.'

'It wasn't necessary that you did… You will alert us if anyone seeks entrance into the building or even approaches the doors.'

'With the eyes of a hawk, great sir!'

Try the telephone, please.' The two men reached the elevators and the taller subordinate pressed the button; a panel opened immediately. They walked inside and the door closed. 'Is that man competent?' asked the shorter Arab as the machinery whirred and the elevator began its ascent.

'He does what he is told to do and what he has been told is not complicated… Why was the Mahdi's office sealed for so many months?'

'Because the authorities were looking for men like us, waiting for men like us.'

'They tore the room apart…?' said the subordinate hesitantly, questioningly.

'As with us, they did not know where to look.' The elevator slowed down, then stopped and the panel opened. With quickening steps the two visitors walked to the staircase that led to the Mahdi's floor and former 'temple'. They reached the office door and the shorter man stopped, his hand on the knob. 'I've waited over a year for this moment,' he said, breathing deeply. 'Now that it's arrived, I'm trembling.'

Inside the huge, strange mosquelike room with its high domed ceiling filled with brilliantly coloured mosaic tiles, the two intruders stood in silence, as if in the presence of some awesome spirit. The sparse furniture of dark burnished wood was in place like ancient statues of ferocious soldiers guarding the inner tomb of a great pharaoh; the outsized desk recalled the sarcophagus of a dead revered ruler. And standing against the far right wall, in clashing contradiction, was a modern metal scaffold rising to a height of eight feet, side bars permitting access to the top. The taller Arab spoke.

'This could be Allah's resting place—may His will be done.'

'You didn't know the Mahdi, my innocent friend,' replied the associate's superior. 'Try Midas the Phrygian king… Quickly now, we waste time. Move the scaffold to where I tell you, then climb above.' The subordinate walked rapidly to the raised platform and looked back at his companion. 'To the left,' continued the leader. 'Just beyond the second slit of the window.'

'I don't understand you,' said the tall man, stepping on the slip clamps and climbing to the top of the scaffold.

'There are many things you don't understand and there's no reason why you should… Now count to the left, six tiles from the window seam, then five above.'

'Yes, yes… it is a stretch for me and I am not short.'

'The Mahdi was far taller, far more impressive—but not without his faults.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'No matter… Press the four corners of the tile at the very edges, then force the palm of your hand with all your strength into the centre. Now!'

The mosaic tile literally burst from its recess; it was all the tall Arab could do to hold on to it without falling. 'Beloved Allah!' he exclaimed.

'Simple suction balanced by weights,' said the shorter man below without elaboration. 'Now reach inside and withdraw the papers; they should all be together.' The subordinate did as he was told, pulling out layered sheets of an extensive computer printout held together by two rubber bands. 'Drop them to me,' continued the leader, 'and replace the tile exactly as you removed it, starting first with pressure in the centre.'

The tall Arab awkwardly carried out his orders, then climbed down the scaffold's crossbars on to the floor. He approached his superior, who had unfolded several sheets of the printout and was scanning them intently. 'This was the treasure you spoke of?' he asked softly.

'From the Persian Gulf to the western shores of the Mediterranean, there is no greater,' answered the younger man, his eyes racing across the papers. 'They executed the Mahdi, but they could not destroy what he created. Retreat was necessary, retrenchment demanded—but not dismemberment. The myriad branches of the enterprise were not crushed nor even exposed. They merely fell away and returned to the earth, ready to sprout trunks of their own one day.'

'Those odd-looking pages tell you that?' The superior nodded, still reading. 'What in Allah's name do they say?'

The shorter man looked curiously up at his taller companion. 'Why not?' he said, smiling. 'These are the lists of every man, every woman, every firm, company and corporation, every contact and conduit to the terrorists ever reached by the Mahdi. It will take months, perhaps several years, to put everything back together again, but it will be done. You see, they're waiting. For ultimately the Mahdi was right: This is our world. We will surrender it to no one.'

'The word will spread, my friend!' cried the older, taller subordinate. 'It will, will it not?

'Very carefully,' replied the young leader. 'We live in different times,' he added enigmatically. 'Last week's equipment is obsolete.'

'I cannot pretend to understand you.'

'Again it's not necessary.'

'Where do you come from?' asked the bewildered subordinate. 'We are told to obey you, that you know things that men like me are not privileged to know. But how, from where?

'From thousands of miles away, preparing for years for this moment… Leave me now. Quickly. Go downstairs and tell the guard to have the scaffold removed to the cellars, then signal the car as it circles the street. The driver will take you home; we'll meet tomorrow. Same time, same place.'

'May Allah and the Mahdi be with you,' said the tall Arab bowing and rushing out of the door, closing it behind him.

The young man watched his companion leave, then reached under his robes and pulled out a small hand-held radio. He pressed a button and spoke. 'He'll be outside in two or three minutes. Pick him up and drive to the rocks of the south coast. Kill him, strip him, and throw the gun into the sea.'

'So ordered,' replied the limousine's driver several streets away.

The youthful leader replaced the radio inside his robes and crossed solemnly towards the huge ebony desk. He removed his ghotra, dropping it on the floor as he walked to the thronelike chair, and sat down. He opened a tall wide drawer on his lower left and lifted out the jewel-encrusted headdress of the Mahdi. He placed it on his head and spoke softly to the mosaic ceiling.

'I thank you, my Father,' said the inheritor with a doctorate in computer sciences from the University of Chicago. 'To be chosen among all your sons is both an honour and a challenge. My weak white mother will never understand, but as you incessantly made clear to me, she was merely a vessel… However, I must tell you, Father, that things are different now. Subtlety and long-range objectives are the order of the times. We will employ your methods where they are called for—killing is no problem for us—but it is a far larger part of the globe that we seek than you ever sought. We will have cells in all of Europe and the Mediterranean, and we will communicate in ways you never thought of—secretly, by satellite, interception impossible. You see, my Father, the world no longer belongs to one race or another. It belongs to the young and the strong and the brilliant, and we are they.'

The new Mahdi stopped whispering and lowered his eyes to the top of the desk. Soon what he needed would be there. The greater son of the great Mahdi would continue the march.

We must control.

Everywhere!

Book Three