The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 45

It was the thirty-second day since the wild departure from the island of Passage to China, and Emmanuel Weingrass walked slowly into the enclosed veranda in Mesa Verde; his words, however, were rushed. 'Where's the bum?' he asked.

'Jogging in the grounds,' replied Khalehla from the couch, where she was having her breakfast coffee and reading the newspaper. 'Or up in the mountains by now, who knows?"

'It's two o'clock in the afternoon in Jerusalem,' said Manny.

'And four o'clock in Masqat,' added Rashad. 'They're all so clever over there.'

'My daughter, the smart mouth.'

'Sit down, child,' said Khalehla, patting the cushion beside her.

'Smarter mouth infant,' mumbled Weingrass, walking over and removing his short cylinder of oxygen to lower himself to the couch. 'The bum looks good,' continued Manny, leaning back and breathing heavily.

'You'd think he was training for the Olympics.'

'Speaking of which, you got a cigarette?'

'You're not supposed to have one.'

'So give.'

'You're impossible.' Khalehla reached into her bathrobe pocket, withdrew a pack of cigarettes and shook one up while reaching for a ceramic lighter on the coffee table. She lit Weingrass's cigarette and repeated, 'You are impossible.'

'And you're my Arab Mother Superior,' said Manny, inhaling as though he were a child wallowing in a forbidden third dessert. 'How are things in Oman?'

'My old friend the sultan is a little confused, but my younger friend his wife will straighten him out… Incidentally, Ahmat sends you his best.'

'He should. He owes me for his grades at Harvard, and he never paid me for the broads I got him in Los Angeles.'

'Somehow you always get to the heart of things… How is everyone in Jerusalem?'

'Speaking of sending regards, Ben-Ami sends you his.'

'Benny?' cried Rashad, sitting forward. 'Good Lord, I haven't thought of him in years! Does he still wear those silly designer blue jeans and strap his weapon back over his tail?'

'He probably always will and charge the Mossad double for both.'

'He's a good guy and one of the best control agents Israel's ever had. We worked together in Damascus; he's small and a little cynical, but a good man to have on your side. Tough as nails, actually.'

'As your bum would say, “Tell me about it.” We were closing in on the hotel in Bahrain and all he did was give me lectures over the radio.'

'He'll join us in Masqat?'

'He'll join you, you not very nice person who has shut me out.'

'Come on, Manny—’

'I know, I know. I'm a burden.'

'What do you think?'

'All right, I'm a burden, but even burdens are kept informed.'

'At least twice a day. Where's Ben-Ami going to meet us? And how? I can't imagine that the Mossad wants any part of this.'

'After the Iranian mess the moon's too close, especially with CIA input and banks in Switzerland. Ben will leave a telephone number at the palace switchboard for a Miss Adrienne—my idea… Also, someone's coming with him.'

'Who?'

'A lunatic.'

'That helps. Does he have a name?'

'Only one I knew was code Blue.'

'Azra!'

'No, that was the other one.'

'I know, but the Israeli killed Azra, the Arabic Blue. Evan told me it sickened him, two kids with such hatred.'

'With the kids it's all sickening. Instead of baseball bats, they carry repeating rifles and grenades… Has Payton straightened out your transportation?'

'He worked it out with us yesterday. Air Force cargo to Frankfurt and on to Cairo, where we go under cover in small craft to Kuwait and Dubai, with the last leg by helicopter. We'll reach Oman at night, landing in the Jabal Sham, where one of Ahmat's unmarked cars will meet us and drive us to the palace.'

"That's really underground,' said Weingrass, nodding, impressed.

'It has to be. Evan's got to disappear while stories are planted that he was seen in Hawaii and is supposedly holed up at an estate on Maui. Graphics is working up some photos showing him over there and they'll hit the newspapers.'

'Mitchell's imagination is improving.'

'There's none better, Manny.'

'Maybe he should run the Agency.'

'No, he hates administrative work and he's a terrible politician. If he doesn't like someone or something, everybody knows it. He's better off where he is.'

The sound of the front door opening and closing had an immediate effect on Weingrass. 'Oy!' he cried, shoving his cigarette into the startled Khalehla's mouth and blowing away the smoke above him, waving his hands to move the incriminating evidence towards Rashad. 'Naughty sheiks!' he whispered. 'Smoking in my presence!'

'Impossible,' said Khalehla softly, removing the cigarette and crushing it in an ashtray as Kendrick walked through the living room and on to the porch.

'She'd never smoke that close to you,' admonished Evan, dressed in a blue sweat suit, perspiration rolling down his face.

'Now you've got the ears of a Dobermann?'

'And you've got the brains of a hooked snapper.'

'Very smart fish.'

'Sorry,' said Rashad calmly. 'He can be terribly demanding.'

‘Tell me about it.'

'What did I just say?' shouted Weingrass. 'He says that all the time. It's the sign of a highly developed, misplaced superiority complex and very irritating to really superior intellects… Have a good workout, dummy?'

Kendrick smiled and walked to the bar where there was a jug of orange juice. 'I'm up to thirty minutes, fast pace,' he answered, pouring himself a glass of juice.

'That's very nice if you're a cowboy's horse on a roundup.'

'He says things like that all the time,' protested Kendrick. 'It's aggravating.'

'Tell me about it,' Khalehla replied, drinking her coffee.

'Any calls?' asked Evan.

'It's barely past seven, darling.'

'Not in Zurich. It's past one in the afternoon over there. I was talking to them before I went out.'

'Talking to whom?' asked Rashad.

'Mainly to the director of the Gemeinschaft Bank. Mitch scared his bladder dry with the information we have and he's trying to co-operate… Wait a minute. Did anyone check the telex in the study?'

'No, but I heard the damn thing clacking away about twenty minutes ago,' said Weingrass.

Kendrick put down his glass, turned and walked rapidly out of the porch and across the living room to a door beyond the stone hallway. Khalehla and Manny watched him, then looked at each other and shrugged. Within moments the congressman returned, gripping a telex sheet in his hand, his expression conveying his excitement. 'They did it!' he exclaimed.

'Who did what?' asked Weingrass.

'The bank. You remember the fifty million line of credit Grinell and his consortium of thieves in California set up for my buy-out?'

'My God,' exclaimed Khalehla. 'They couldn't have left it standing!'

'Of course not. It was cancelled the moment Grinell got off the island.'

'So?' said Manny.

'In this age of complicated telecommunications, computer errors crop up now and then and a beaut was just made. There's no record of the cancellation having been received. The credit's on! only it's been transferred to a sister bank in Bern with a new, coded account number. It's all there.'

'They'll never pay!' Weingrass was emphatic.

'It'll be charged against their reserves, which are ten times fifty million.'

"They'll fight it, Evan,' insisted Khalehla, as emphatic as the old man.

'And parade themselves in the Swiss courts? Somehow I doubt it.'

The Cobra helicopter without markings stuttered across the desert at an altitude of less than five hundred feet. Evan and Khalehla, exhausted from nearly twenty-six hours in the air and racing to covert connections on the ground, sat next to each other, Rashad's head on Kendrick's shoulder, his own slumped down into his chest; both were asleep. A man in belted khaki overalls with no insignia walked out of the flight deck and down the fuselage. He shook Evan's arm in the dim light.

'We'll be there in about fifteen minutes, sir.'

'Oh?' Kendrick snapped up his head, blinking his eyes and opening them wide to rid them of sleep. 'Thanks. I'll wake my friend here; they always do things before arriving anywhere, don't they?'

'Not this “they”,' said Khalehla out loud without moving. 'I sleep to the very last minute.'

'Well, forgive me, but I don't. I can't. Necessity calls.'

'Men,' remarked the agent from Cairo, removing her head from his shoulder and shifting to the other side of the seat and into the bulkhead. 'No control,' she added, her eyes still closed.

'We'll keep you posted,' said the Air Force flight officer, laughing quietly, and returning to the deck.

Sixteen minutes passed and the pilot spoke over the intercom. 'Flare spotted directly ahead. Buckle up for touchdown, please.' The helicopter decelerated and hovered over the ground, where the headlights of two cars facing each other had replaced the flare. Slowly, the chopper was lowered into its threshold. 'Depart the aircraft as quickly as possible, please,' continued the pilot. 'We have to get out of here fast, if you catch my drift.'

No sooner had they stepped down the metal ladder to the ground than the Cobra, its rotors thundering, rose in the night sky; it turned, stuttering in the desert moonlight, kicking up what sand there was, and headed north, accelerating rapidly, the noise receding in the darkness above. Walking into the beams of a car's headlights was the young sultan of Oman. He was in slacks, an open-necked white shirt replacing the New England Patriots football jersey he had worn that first night he met with Evan in the desert sixteen months ago.

'Let me talk first, okay?' he said, as Kendrick and Rashad approached.

'Okay,' replied Kendrick.

'First reactions can be not too smart, agreed?'

'Agreed,' agreed Evan.

'But I'm supposed to be smart, right?'

'Right.'

'Still, consistency is the product of small minds, isn't that so?'

'Within reasonable boundaries.'

'Don't qualify.'

'Don't you play lawyer. The only bar you ever passed was with Manny in Los Angeles.'

'Why, that hypocritical Israeli nut—’

'At least you didn't say Jew.'

'I wouldn't. I don't like the sound of it any more than I like the sound of “dirty Arab”… Anyway, Manny and I didn't pass too many bars in LA that we didn't go into.'

'What's your point, Ahmat?'

The young ruler breathed deeply and spoke quickly. 'I know the whole story now and I feel like a damned idiot.'

'The whole story?'

'Everything. That Inver Brass crowd, Bollinger's munitions bandits, that bastard Hamendi who my royal Saudi brothers in Riyadh should have executed the moment they caught him… the whole ball of wax. And I should have known you wouldn't do what I thought you did. “Commando Kendrick” versus the rotten Arab isn't you, it never was you… I'm sorry, Evan.' Ahmat walked forward and embraced the congressman from Colorado's ninth district.

'You're going to make me cry,' said Khalehla, smiling at the sight in front of her.

'You, you Cairo tigress!' cried the sultan, releasing Kendrick and taking Rashad in his arms. 'We had a girl, you know. Half American, half Omani. Sound familiar?'

'I know. I wasn't permitted to contact you—’

'We understood.'

'But I was so touched. Her name's Khalehla.'

'If it weren't for you, Khalehla One, there'd be no Khalehla Two… Come on, let's go.' As they started for Ahmat's limousine the sultan turned to Evan. 'You look pretty fit for a guy who's been through so much.'

'I heal rapidly for an old man,' said Kendrick. 'Tell me something, Ahmat. Who told you the whole story, the whole “ball of wax”?'

'A man named Payton, Mitchell Payton, CIA. Your President Jennings phoned me and said I was to expect a call from this Payton and would I please accept it; it was urgent. Hey, that Jennings is one charming character, isn't he?… Although I'm not sure he knew everything that Payton told me.'

'Why do you say that?'

'I don't know, it was just a feeling.' The young sultan stood by the car door and looked at Evan. 'If you can pull this off, my friend, you'll do more for the Middle East and us on the Gulf than all the diplomats in ten United Nations.'

'We're going to pull it off. But only with your help.'

'You've got it.'

Ben-Ami and code Blue walked down the narrow street into the Al Kabir bazaar looking for the outdoor cafe that served evening coffee. They were dressed in neat, dark business suits, as befitted their Bahrainian visas which stated that they were executives with the Bank of England in Manamah. They saw the pavement cafe, threaded their way through the crowds and the stalls, and sat at the empty table nearest the street as instructed. Three minutes later a tall man in white robes and Arab headdress joined them.

'Have you ordered coffee?' asked Kendrick.

'Nobody's come around,' replied Ben-Ami. 'It's a busy night. How are you, Congressman?'

'Let's try Evan, or better yet, Amal. I'm here, which in a way answers your question.'

'And Weingrass?'

'Not very well, I'm afraid… Hello, Blue?'

'Hello,' said the young man, staring at Kendrick.

'You look very businesslike, very unmilitary in those clothes. I'm not sure I'd recognize you if I didn't know you were going to be here.'

'I'm not military any longer. I had to leave the Brigade.'

'It'll miss you.'

'I miss it, but my wounds didn't heal properly—various tendons, they tell me. Azra was a good fighter, a good commando.'

'Still the hatred?'

'There's no hatred in my voice. Anger, of course, over many things, but not hatred for the man I had to kill.'

'What are you doing now?'

'I work for the government.'

'He works for us,' interrupted Ben-Ami. 'For the Mossad.'

'Speaking of which, Ahmat apologizes for not having you to the palace—’

'Is he crazy"? All he needs is members of the Mossad in his house. It wouldn't do us much good if anyone found out, either.’

'How much did Manny tell you?'

'With his big mouth what didn't he tell me? He also called after you left the States with more information that Blue was able to use.'

'How, Blue?… Incidentally, do you have another name?'

'With respect, sir, not for an American. In consideration for us both.'

'All right, I accept that. What did Weingrass say that you could use, and how?'

The young man leaned over the table; all their heads were closer. 'He gave us the figure of fifty million—’

'A brilliant manipulation!' broke in Ben-Ami. 'And I don't believe for a minute that it was Manny's idea.'

'What…? Well, it could have been. Actually, the bank had no choice. Washington leaned hard on it. What about the fifty million?'

'South Yemen,' answered Blue.

'I don't understand.'

'Fifty million is a very large amount,' said the former leader of the Masada Brigade, 'but there are larger amounts, especially in the cumulative sense. Iran, Iraq, et cetera. So we must match the people with purses. Therefore, South Yemen. It is terrorist and poor, but its distant, almost inaccessible location, sandwiched between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, makes it strategically important to other terrorist organizations supported by far wealthier sources. They constantly seek out land, secret training grounds to develop their forces and spread their poison. The Baaka is constantly infiltrated, and no one cares to deal with Gaddafi. He's mad and can't be trusted and any week may be overthrown.'

'I should tell you,' interrupted Ben-Ami again, 'that Blue has emerged as one of our more knowledgeable experts on counter terrorism.'

'I'm beginning to see that. Go on, young man.'

'You are not so much older than me.'

Try twenty years, or close to it. Go ahead.'

'Your idea, as I understand it, is to have air shipments of munitions from Hamendi's suppliers all over Europe and America pass through Masqat, where supposedly corrupt officials close their eyes and let them fly on to Lebanon and the Baaka Valley. Correct?'

'Yes, and as each cargo plane comes in the damage is done by the sultan's guards posing as Palestinians, checking the supplies for which they've paid Hamendi while the crews are in quarantine. Each plane holds, say, sixty to seventy crates, which will be prised open by teams of ten men per plane and saturated with corroding acid. The process won't take more than fifteen to twenty minutes an aircraft; the timing's acceptable and we're in total control. The Masqat garrison will cordon off the area and no one but our people will be allowed inside.'

'Commendable,' said Blue, 'but I suggest that the process would also be too rushed and too risk-prone. Pilots object to leaving their planes in this part of the world, and the crews, by and large hoodlums with strong backs and no minds, will cause trouble when pushed around by strangers; they smell officialdom, believe me… Instead, why not persuade the most prominent leaders in the Baaka Valley to go to South Yemen with their veteran troops. Call it a new provisional movement financed by the enemies of Israel, of which there are quite a few around. Tell them there is an initial fifty million in arms and equipment for advanced training as well as for sending their assault forces up to Gaza and the Golan Heights—more to be supplied as needed. It will be irresistible to those maniacs… And instead of many air cargo shipments, one ship, loaded in Bahrain, rounding the Gulf here and proceeding south along the coast on its way to the port of Nishtun in South Yemen.'

'Where something will happen?' suggested Kendrick.

'I'd say in the waters west of Ra's al Hadd.'

'What happens?'

'Pirates,' answered Blue, a slight smile creasing his lips. 'Once in control of the ship, they would have two days at sea to accomplish what they must far more subtly and thoroughly than they would racing around an airport's cargo area, where, indeed, Hamendi might station his own people.'

A harried waiter arrived, whining his apologies and cursing the crowds. Ben-Ami ordered cardamom coffee as Kendrick studied the young Israeli counter terrorist. 'You say “once in control”,' said Evan, 'but suppose it doesn't happen? Suppose something goes wrong… say, our hijackers can't take the ship, or just one message is radioed back to Bahrain—only a word, “Pirates”. Then there's no control. The undamaged weapons get through and Hamendi walks away free, more millions in his pocket. We'd be risking too much for too little.'

'You risk far more at the airport in Masqat,' argued Blue, his whisper emphatic. 'You must listen to me. You came back here for only a few days a year and a half ago. You haven't lived here in years; you don't know what airports have become. They are zoos of corruption!… Who is bringing in what? Who has been bribed and how do I blackmail him? Why is there a change in procedure? Tell me, my Arab astiga, or my good Hebrew freund! They are zoos! Nothing escapes the eyes of the jackals looking for money, and money is paid for such information… Taking a ship at sea is the lesser risk with the greater benefit, believe me.'

'You're convincing.'

'He's right,' said Ben-Ami as their coffee arrived. 'Shukren,' said the Mossad control agent, thanking and paying the waiter as the man raced to another table. 'It must, of course, be your decision, Amal Bahrudi.'

'Where do we find these pirates?' asked Evan. 'If they can be found and if they are acceptable?'

'Being convinced of my projections,' replied Blue, his eyes rigid on Kendrick's face, which went in and out of the shadows created by the passing crowds, 'I broached the possibility of such an assignment to my former comrades in the Masada. I had more volunteers than I could count. As you loathed the Mahdi, we loathe Abdel Hamendi, who supplies the bullets that kill our people. I chose six men.'

'Only six?'

'This must not be solely an Israeli operation. I contacted six others I knew on the West Bank… Palestinians who are as sickened by the Hamendis of this world as I am. Together we will form a unit, but it is still not enough. We need six others.'

'From where?'

'From the host Arab country that willingly, knowingly breaks the back of Abdel Hamendi. Can your sultan provide them from his personal guards?'

'Most are his relatives, cousins, I think.'

'That helps.'

The illegal purchase of armaments on the international market is a relatively simple procedure, which accounts for the fact that relatively simple people from Washington to Beirut can master it. There are basically three prerequisites. The first is immediate access to undisclosed and undisclosable funds. The second is the name of an intermediary, usually supplied over lunch—not over the telephone—by any senior executive of an arms-producing company or a bribable member of an intelligence organization. This intermediary must be capable of reaching the primary middleman, who will put the package together and co-ordinate the processing of end-user certificates. This aspect in the United States simply means that export licences are granted for armaments on their way to friendly nations; they are rerouted en route. The third prerequisite should be the easiest but is usually the most difficult because of the extraordinary variety and complexity of the merchandise. It is the preparation of the list of weapons and auxiliary equipment desired for purchase. Apparently no five buyers can agree on the lethal capabilities and effectiveness of an arms inventory, and not a few lives have been lost during heated debates over these decisions, the buyers frequently given to outbursts of hysteria.

Which was why young code Blue's management talents were most welcome in terms of time and specificity. The Mossad's agents in the Baaka Valley forwarded a list of the currently most favoured merchandise, including the usual crates of repeating weapons, hand grenades, time-fused explosives, black PVC landing craft, long-range underwater tank and demolition accoutrements and assorted training and assault equipment, such as grappling hooks, heavy ropes and rope ladders, infrared binoculars, electronic mortars, flamethrowers and anti-aircraft rocket missiles. It was an impressive inventory that chewed up approximately eighteen million of the estimated twenty-six millions' worth one could buy from an arms merchant for fifty million American dollars—the fluctuating rates of exchange being always in favour of the merchant. Therefore, Blue added three small Chinese tanks under the technical umbrella of 'location defence' and the list was complete—not only complete but entirely believable.

The unknown, unrecorded, never-to-be-acknowledged agent of control, namely one Ben-Ami, now dressed in his favourite Ralph Lauren blue jeans, operated out of the Mossad safe house next to the Portuguese cemetery in the Jabal Sa'ali. To his fury, the intermediary for Abdel Hamendi was an Israeli in Bet Shemesh. He concealed his contempt and negotiated the huge purchase, knowing in the forefront of his mind that there would be a death in Bet Shemesh if and when they all survived.

The two units of six commandos arrived, one after another, at night in the desert of Jabal Sham above flares that directed the two helicopters into their thresholds. The sultan of Oman greeted the volunteers and introduced them to their comrades, six highly skilled personal guards from the Masqat garrison. Eighteen men—Palestinians, Israeli and Omani—gripped hands in their common objective. Death to the merchant of death.

The training began the next morning beyond the shoals of Al Ashkarah in the Arabian Sea.

Death to the merchant of death.

Adrienne Khalehla Rashad walked into Ahmat's office cradling the infant named Khalehla in her arms. Beside her was the child's mother, Roberta Yamenni, from New Bedford, Massachusetts, among the elite of Oman known as Bobbie. 'She's so beautiful!' exclaimed the agent from Cairo.

'She had to be,' said the father behind the desk, Evan Kendrick in a chair beside him. 'She has a name to live up to.'

'Oh, nonsense.'

'Not from where I'm sitting,' said the American congressman.

'You're an oversexed bear.'

'I'm also leaving tonight.'

'And so am I,' added the sultan of Oman.

'You can't—’

'You can't!' The high female voices were in concert. 'What the hell do you think you're doing?' yelled the sultan's wife.

'What I wish to do,' replied Ahmat calmly. 'In these areas of royal prerogative, I don't have to consult anyone.'

'That's bullshit!' cried the wife and mother.

'I know, but it works.'

The training was over in seven days, and on the eighth day twenty-two passengers climbed into a trawler off the coast of Ra's al Hadd, their equipment stowed below the gunwales. On the ninth day, at sundown in the Arabian Sea, the cargo ship from Bahrain was picked up on the radar. When darkness came the trawler headed south to the intercept-co-ordinates. Death to the merchant of death.