‘Must be a new exchange,’ said Manny.
‘It’s no exchange,’ said the young sultan. ‘Will you be at this number?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll call you back with the arrangements. If there’s a commercial flight leaving soon, it would be easier all around to get you on it.’
‘Sorry, can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Everything has to be blind and deaf. I’ve got seven peacocks with me.’
‘Seven…?’
‘Yes, and if you think there’d be trouble—like catastrophes—try those highly intelligent birds feathered in blue and white.’
Ahmat, sultan of Oman, gasped. ‘The Mossad?’ he whispered.
‘That’s about it.’
‘Holy shit!’ exclaimed Ahmat.
The small six-passenger Rockwell jet flew northwest at thirty-four thousand feet over the United Arab Emirates and into the Persian Gulf on its eight-hundred-mile course to the sheikdom of Bahrain. A disturbingly quiet, confident Anthony MacDonald sat alone in the first row of two seats, Azra and Kendrick in the last row together. The door to the pilot’s cabin was shut, and according to the man who had met them in the ‘stolen’ garrison car and ushered them through the cargo area to the far end of Masqat’s airfield and the plane, that door would remain shut until the passengers left the aircraft. No one was to see them; they would be met at Bahrain’s International Airport in Muharraq by someone who would escort them through immigration.
Evan and Azra had gone over the schedule several times, and as the terrorist had never been to Bahrain, he took notes—primarily locations and their spellings. It was imperative to Kendrick that he and Azra separate, at least for an hour or so. The reason was Anthony MacDonald, the most unlikely of the Mahdi’s agents. The Englishman might be a short cut to the Mahdi, and if he was, Evan would abandon the crown prince of terrorists.
‘Remember, we escaped together from the Jabal Sham, and when you consider Interpol, to say nothing of the combined intelligence units from Europe and America, there’ll be alerts out for us everywhere and with our photographs. We can’t take the chance of being spotted together in daylight. After sundown the risk is less, but even then we must take precautions.’
‘What precautions?’
‘Buy different clothes to begin with; these have the mark of lower-class roughnecks, all right for the conditions in Masqat but not here. Take a taxi to Manamah, that’s the city across the causeway on the big island, and get a room at the Aradous Hotel on the Wadi Al Ahd. There’s a men’s shop in the lobby; buy yourself a Western business suit and get a haircut at the barber’s. Write it all down!’
‘I am.’ Azra wrote faster.
‘Register under the name of—come to think of it, Yateem is a common name in Bahrain, but let’s not take the chance.’
‘My mother’s name, Ishaad?’
‘Their computers are too full. Use Farouk, everyone else does. T. Farouk. I’ll reach you in an hour or two.’
‘What will you be doing?’
‘What else?’ said Kendrick, about to tell the truth. ‘Stay with the English liar who claims to work for the Mahdi. If by any chance he does and his communications broke down, the meeting tonight will be easily arranged. But frankly, I don’t believe him, and if he’s the liar I think, I have to learn who he is working for.’
Azra looked at the man he knew as Amal Bahrudi and spoke softly. ‘You live in a more complicated world than I do. We know our enemies; we aim our weapons at them and try to kill them because they would kill us. Yet it appears to me that you cannot be sure, that instead of firing your guns in the heat of battle you must first concern yourselves over who is the enemy.’
‘You’ve had to infiltrate and consider the possibility of traitors; the precautions aren’t that much different.’
‘Infiltration isn’t difficult when thousands dress like we do, talk like we do. It’s a matter of attitude; we assume the enemy’s. As to traitors, we failed in Masqat, you taught us that.’
‘Me?’
‘The photographs, Bahrudi.’
‘Of course. Sorry. My mind’s on other things.’ It was, but he could not do that again, thought Kendrick. The young terrorist was looking curiously at him. He had to remove any doubts. Quickly! ‘But speaking of those photographs, your sister will have to provide proof that she’s ripped out the entire treacherous business. I suggest other photographs. Corpses in front of a smashed camera, with taped statements that can be circulated—taped confessions, of course.’
‘Zaya knows what to do; she’s the strongest among us, the most dedicated. She won’t rest until she’s torn apart every room, searched every brother and sister. Methodically.’
‘Words, poet!’ admonished Evan harshly. ‘Perhaps you don’t understand. What happened in Masqat—what was carelessly permitted to happen—could affect our operations everywhere. If it gets out and goes unpunished, agents everywhere will be flocking to infiltrate us, worming their way inside to expose us with cameras and recordings!’
‘All right, all right,’ said Azra, nodding, unwilling to hear further criticism. ‘My sister will take care of everything. I don’t think she was convinced until she understood what you did for us in the Jabal Sham, saw what you could do on the telephone. She will quickly take the actions she must, I assure you.’
‘Good! Rest now, angry poet. We’ve got a long afternoon and night ahead of us.’
Kendrick leaned far back in the seat as though prepared to doze, his half-closed eyes on the back of Anthony MacDonald’s large balding head in the first row. There was so much to think about, so many things to consider that he had not had time to analyse, even try to analyse. Yet above everything, there was a Mahdi, the Mahdi! Not surrounding and starving out Khartoum and General Gordon in the late 1800s, but living and manipulating terror a hundred years later in Bahrain! And there was a complex chain that led to the monster; it was concealed, buried, professionally fashioned, but it was there! He had found a terrorist appendage, only a tentacle, perhaps, but part of the host body. The killer beside him could lead to the main conduit as each electric cable in a building ultimately leads to the central power source. Five calls are made, ten times Jive to unlisted numbers in Bahrain and only one can reach the Mahdi: Zaya Yateem, who knew whereof she spoke. Fifty calls, fifty telephone numbers—one among fifty unknown men or women who knew where the Mahdi was, who he was!
He had created an emergency the way Manny Weingrass had always told him to invent emergencies when dealing with potential clients who would not or could not communicate with each other. Tell the fast bozo that you have to have an answer by Wednesday or we’re moving on to Riyadh. Tell the second clown we can’t wait beyond Thursday because there’s a hell of a job in Abu Dhabi that’s ours for the asking.
This was not the same, of course, only a variation of the technique. The terrorist leaders at the embassy in Masqat were convinced an emergency existed for their benefactor, the Mahdi, since he had arranged for East Berlin’s ‘Amal Bahrudi’ to bring one of them to Bahrain. Conversely, the forces of the Mahdi had been told on international television that an ‘urgent message’ had been sent out ‘to friends’ and it required an ‘immediate response’—emergency!
Manny, did I do it right? I have to find him, fight him—kill him for what he did to all of us!
Emmanuel Weingrass, mused Evan, his eyes beginning to close, the dead weight of sleep descending. Yet he could not prevent it; a quiet laugh echoed in his throat. He remembered their first trip to Bahrain.
‘Now for Christ’s sake, bear in mind that we’re dealing with a people who run an archipelago, not a land mass bordering another land mass that both sides conveniently call a country. This is a sheikdom consisting of over thirty goddamned islands in the Persian Gulf. It’s nothing you’re going to measure in acreage, and they never want you to—that’s their strength.’
‘What are you driving at, Manny?’
‘ Try to understand me, you unread mechanic. You appeal to that sense of strength. This is an independent state, a collection of eruptions from the sea that protects the ports from the storms of the Gulf and is conveniently situated between the Qatar peninsula and the Hasa coast of Saudi Arabia, the latter extremely important because of the Saudi leverage.’
‘What the hell has that got to do with a lousy island golf course? Do you play golf, Manny? I never could afford it.’
‘Chasing a little white ball over a hundred acres of grass while the arthritis is killing you and your heart is blowing apart in frustration has never been my idea of a civilized pursuit. However, I know what we put into this lousy golf course.’