The Mahdi’s strategy was obvious. Isolate the American and wait for the terrorist to approach the meeting ground alone. Take the young killer, thus aborting the trap, for there is no trap without the American, only an expendable Palestinian on the loose. Kill him, but first find out what happened in Masqat.
Where was Azra? Thirty-seven minutes had passed since they talked; the Arab called Blue was thirty-two minutes late! Evan looked at his watch for the eleventh time and swore silently, furiously, his unspoken words at once a plea for help and an outburst of anger at the swirling clouds of frustration. He had to move, do something! Find out where Azra was, for without the terrorist there was no trap for the Mahdi, either. The Mahdi’s contact would not show himself to someone he did not know, someone he did not recognize. So close! So far in the distance of reality!
Kendrick threw the plastic shopping bag containing his starched clothes from Masqat into the densest interior of the bushes bordering the pavement of the Wadi Al Ahd. He walked across the boulevard towards the employees’ entrance, a postured, upright Royal Guard arrogantly on royal business. As he went rapidly down the cobblestone alley towards the service entrance, several of the departing servants bowed obsequiously, obviously hoping not to be stopped and searched for small treasures they had stolen from the hotel, namely, soap, toilet paper and morsels of food scraped from the plates of jet-lagged or drunken Westerners too far gone to eat. Standard procedure; Evan had been there; it was why he had chosen the Aradous Hotel. Again Emmanuel Weingrass. He and the unpredictable Manny had once fled the Aradous by way of the kitchen because a stepbrother of the Emir had heard that Weingrass had promised a stepsister of that royal brother citizenship in the United States if she would sleep with him—a privilege that Manny in no way could provide.
Kendrick passed through the kitchen, reached the south staircase and walked cautiously up the steps to the second floor. He withdrew the gun from under his scarlet jacket and opened the door. The corridor was empty and, indeed, it was the hour of the evening when affluent visitors to Bahrain were out in the cafes and the hidden casinos. He sidestepped down the left wall to Room 201, careful of every footstep. He listened; there was no sound. He knocked quietly.
‘Odkh๚loo,’ said the voice in quiet Arabic, addressing not one, but more than one to enter.
Strange—wrong, thought Evan as he reached for the doorknob. Why the plural, why more than one? He turned the knob, spun back into the wall, and kicked the door open with his right foot.
Silence, as if the room were an empty cave, the eerie voice a disembodied recording. Gripping hard the unfamiliar, unwanted but necessary weapon, Kendrick slipped around the frame and went inside… Oh, God! What he saw made him freeze in horror! Azra was slumped against the wall, a knife embedded in his neck, his eyes wide in death, blood still dripping in rivulets down over his chest.
‘Your friend, the pig, is dead,’ said the quiet voice behind him.
Evan whipped around to face a young man as bloodied as Azra. The wounded killer leaned against the wall, barely able to stand, and in his hands was an Uzi machine pistol. ‘Who are you?’ whispered Kendrick. ‘What the hell have you done?’ he added, now shouting.
The man limped rapidly to the door and closed it, the weapon remaining on Evan. ‘I killed a man who would kill my people as swiftly as he could find them, who would have killed me.’
‘Good Christ, you’re Israeli!’
‘You’re the American.’
‘Why did you do it? What are you doing here?’
‘It’s not my choice.’
‘That’s no answer!’
‘My orders are to give no answers.’
‘You had to kill him?’ cried Kendrick, turning and wincing at the sight of the dead, mutilated Palestinian.
‘To use his words, “Why not?” They slaughter our children in school playgrounds, blow up planes and buses filled with our citizens, execute our innocent athletes in Munich, shoot old men in the head simply because all are Jews. They crawl up on beaches and murder our young, our brothers and sisters—why? Because we are Jews living finally on an infinitesimal strip of arid, wild land that we tamed. We! Not others.’
‘He never had the chance—’
‘Spare me, American! I know what’s coming and it fills me with disgust. At the last it’s the same as it has always been. Underneath, in whispers, the world still wants to blame the Jew. After everything that’s been done to us, we’re still the irksome troublemakers. Well, hear this, you interfering amateur, we don’t want your comments or your guilt or your pity. We only want what belongs to us! We’ve marched out of the camps and the ovens and the gas chambers to claim what is ours.’
‘Goddamn you!’ roared Evan, gesturing angrily at the bleeding corpse of the terrorist. ‘You sound like him! Like him! When will you all stop?’
‘What difference does it make to you? Go back to your safe condominium and your fancy country club, American. Leave us alone. Go back where you belong.’
Whether it was the repeated words he had heard barely an hour ago over the phone, or the sudden images of cascading blocks of concrete crashing down on seventy-eight screaming, helpless loved ones, or the realization that the hated Mahdi was slipping away from him, he would never know. All he knew at that moment was that he hurled himself at the startled, wounded Israeli, tears of fury rolling down his cheeks. ‘You arrogant bastard!’ he screamed, ripping the Uzi out of the young man’s grip and throwing it across the room, hammering the weakened commando against the wall. ‘What right do you have telling me what to do or where to go? We watch you people kill each other and blow yourselves and everything else up in the name of blind credos! We spend lives and money, and exhaust brains and energy trying to instil a little reason, but no, none of you will move an inch! Maybe we should leave you alone and let you massacre each other, let the zealots hack each other to death, just so somebody’s left who’ll make some sense!’ Suddenly, Kendrick broke away and raced across the room, picking up the Uzi. He returned to the Israeli, the weapon ominously levelled at the commando. ‘Who are you and why are you here?’
‘I am code name Blue. That is my response and I will give no other—’
‘Code name what?
‘Blue.’
‘Oh, my God …” whispered Evan, glancing over at the dead Azra. He turned back to the Israeli and, without comment, handed the Uzi machine pistol to the stunned commando. ‘Go ahead,’ he said softly. ‘Shoot up the fucking world. I don’t give a damn.’ With those words, Kendrick walked to the door and let himself out.
Yaakov stared after the American, at the closed door and then over at the corpse slumped on the floor against the wall. He angled the weapon down with his left hand and with his right pulled out the powerful miniaturized radio from his belt. He pressed a button.
‘Itklem,’ said the voice of code Black outside the hotel.
‘Did you contact the others?’
‘Code R did. They’re here—or I should say I can see them walking up the Al Ahd now. Our elder colleague is with R; G is with the eldest, but something’s wrong with the latter. G is holding him. How about you?’
‘I’m no good to you now, maybe later.’
‘Orange?’
‘He’s gone—’
‘What?’
‘No time. So’s the pig. The subject’s on his way out; he’s in a red and blue uniform. Follow him. He’s gone over the edge. Call me at my room, I’ll be there.’
As if in a daze, Evan crossed the Wadi Al Ahd and went directly to the line of shrubbery where he had thrown the plastic shopping bag. Whether it was there or not did not really matter; it was simply that he would feel more comfortable, certainly be able to move more quickly and be less of a target now in the clothes from Masqat. Whatever the case, he had gone this far; he could not turn back. Only one man, he kept repeating to himself. If he could find him within the parameters of the meeting ground—the Mahdi! He had to find him!
The shopping bag was where he had left it, and the shadows of the shrubbery were adequate for his purpose. Crouching in the deepest bushes he slowly, article by article, changed clothes. He walked out on the pavement and started west towards the Shaikh Isa Road and the Juma Mosque.
* * *
‘Itklem,’ said Yaakov into the radio while lying on the bed in his unsullied room, towels wrapped tightly around his wounds, wet lukewarm towels scattered about the bedspread.