Kendrick snapped off the third replay he had watched on television of President Langford Jennings’s suddenly called press conference regarding one Congressman Evan Kendrick of Colorado. It was more outrageous than Dennison had projected, filled with gut-wrenching pauses accompanied by a constant series of well-rehearsed grins that so obviously conveyed the pride and the agony beneath the surface of the smile. The President once again said everything in general terms and nothing specific—except in one area: Until all proper security measures are in place I have asked Congressman Kendrick, a man we are all so proud of, to remain in protective seclusion. And with this request, I hereby give dire warning. Should cowardly terrorists anywhere make any attempt on the life of my good friend, my close colleague, someone I look upon no less than I would a younger brother, the full might of the United States will be employed by ground, sea and air against determined enclaves of those responsible. Determined? Oh, my God!
A telephone rang. Evan looked around trying to find out where it was. It was across the room on a desk; he swung his legs down and walked to the startlingly intrusive instrument.
‘Yes?’
‘She’s flying over on military transport with a senior attach้ from the embassy in Cairo. She’s listed as a secretarial aide, the name’s unimportant. The ETA is seven o’clock in the morning our time. She’ll be in Maryland by ten at the latest.’
‘What does she know?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You had to say something,’ insisted Kendrick.
‘She was told it was new and urgent instructions from her government, instructions that could be transmitted only in person over here.’
‘She bought that nonsense?’
‘She didn’t have a choice. She was picked up at her flat in Cairo and has been in protective custody ever since. Have a lousy night, you bastard.’
‘Thanks, Herbie.’ Evan hung up the phone, both relieved and frightened by the prospect of tomorrow morning’s confrontation with the woman he had known as Khalehla, a woman he had made love to in a frenzy of fear and exhaustion. That impulsive act and the desperation that led to it must be forgotten. He had to determine whether he was re-meeting an enemy or a friend. But at least there was now a schedule for the next twelve or fifteen hours. It was time to call Ann O’Reilly and, through her, contact Manny. It did not matter who knew where he was; he was the official guest of the President of the United States.
* * *
Chapter 23
Emmanuel Weingrass sat in the red plastic booth with the stocky, moustached owner of the Mesa Verde cafe. The past two hours had been stressful for Manny, somewhat reminiscent of those crazy days in Paris when he had worked with the Mossad. The current situation was nowhere near as melodramatic and his adversaries were hardly lethal, but still he was an elderly man who had to get from one place to another without being seen or stopped. In Paris he had to run a gauntlet of terrorist scouts without being noticed from. Sacre-Coeur to the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Here in Colorado he had to get from Evan’s house to the town of Mesa Verde without being stopped and locked up by his team of nurses, all of whom were charging about because of the activity outside.
‘How did you do it?’ asked Gonzalez-Gonzalez, the cafe’s owner, as he poured Weingrass a glass of whisky.
‘Civilized man’s second oldest need for privacy, Gee-Gee. The toilet. I went to the toilet and climbed out a window. Then I mingled with the crowd taking pictures with one of Evan’s cameras, like a real photographer, you know, until I got a taxi here.’
‘Hey, man,’ interrupted Gonzalez-Gonzalez. ‘Those cats are making dinero today!’
‘Thieves, they are! I climbed in and the first thing the goniff said to me was “One hundred dollars to the airport, mister.” So I said to him, taking off my hat, “The State Taxi Commission will be interested to hear about the new Verde rates,” and he says to me, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Weingrass, just a joke, Mr. Weingrass,” and I then tell him, “Charge ’em two hundred and take me to Gee-Gee’s!”‘
Both men broke into loud laughter as the pay telephone on the wall beyond the booth erupted in a staccato ring. Gonzalez placed his hand on Manny’s arm. ‘Let Garcia get it,’ he said.
‘Why? You said my boy called twice before!’
‘Garcia knows what to say. I just told him.’
‘Tell me!’
‘He’ll give the Congressman the number of my office phone and tell him to call back in two minutes.’
‘Gee-Gee, what the hell are you doing?’
‘A couple of minutes after you came in, a gringo I don’t know arrived.’
‘So what? You get plenty of people in here you don’t know.’
‘He doesn’t belong here, Manny. He ain’t got no raincoat or no hat or no camera, but he still don’t belong here. He’s got on a suit—with a vest.’ Weingrass started to turn his head. ‘Don’t,I ordered Gonzalez, now gripping Weingrass’s arm. ‘Every now and then he looks over here from his table. He’s got you on his mind.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Just wait and get up when I tell you to.’
The waiter named Garcia hung up the pay phone, coughed once and went over to the dark-suited, red-haired stranger. He leaned down and said something close to the well-dressed customer’s face. The man stared coldly at his unexpected messenger; the waiter shrugged and crossed back to the bar. The man slowly, unobtrusively, put several bills on the table, got up, and walked out by the nearby entrance.
‘Now,’ whispered Gonzalez-Gonzalez, rising and gesturing for Manny to follow him. Ten seconds later they were in the owner’s dishevelled office. ‘The Congressman will call back in about a minute,’ said Gee-Gee, indicating the chair behind a desk that had seen better days decades before.
‘You’re sure it was Kendrick?’ asked Weingrass.
‘Garcia’s cough told me yes.’
‘What did he say to the guy at the table?’
‘That he believed the message on the telephone must be for him since no other customer fitted his description.’
‘What was the message?’
‘Quite simple, amigo. It was important for him to contact his people outside.’
‘Just that?’
‘He left, didn’t he? That tells us something, doesn’t it?’
‘Like what?’
‘Una, he has people to reach, no? Dos, they are either outside this grand establishment or he can talk to them by other means of communication, namely, a fancy telephone in an automobile, yes? Tres, he did not come in here in his also-fancy suit to have a Tex-Mex beer that practically chokes him—as my fine sparkling wine chokes you, no? Cuatro, he is no doubt federal.’
‘Government?’ asked Manny astonished.
‘Personally, of course, I have never been involved with illegal immigrants crossing the borders from my beloved country to the south, but the stories reach even such innocents as myself… We know what to look for, my friend. Comprende, hermano?’
‘I always said,’ said Weingrass, sitting behind the desk, ‘find the classiest non-class joints in town and you can learn more about life than in all the sewers of Paris.’
‘Paris, France, means a great deal to you, doesn’t it, Manny?’
‘It’s fading, amigo. I’m not sure why, but it’s fading. Something’s happening here with my boy and I can’t understand it. But it’s important.’
‘He means much to you also, yes?’
‘He is my son.’ The telephone rang, and Weingrass yanked it up to his ear as Gonzalez-Gonzalez went out of the door. ‘Airhead, is that you?’
‘What have you got out there, Manny?’ asked Kendrick over the line from the sterile house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. ‘A Mossad unit covering you?’
‘Far more effective,’ answered the old architect from the Bronx. ‘There are no accountants, no CPAs counting the shekels over an egg cream. Now, you. What the hell happened?’
‘I don’t know, I swear I don’t know!’ Evan recounted his day in detail, from Sabri Hassan’s startling news about the Oman revelations while he was in his pool to his hiding out in a cheap motel in Virginia; from his confrontation with Frank Swann of the State Department to his arrival at the White House under escort; from his hostile meeting with the White House chief of staff to his eventual presentation to the President of the United States, who proceeded to louse up everything by scheduling an award ceremony in the Blue Room next Tuesday—with the Marine Band. Finally, to the fact that the woman named Khalehla, who had first saved his life in Bahrain, was in reality a case officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and was being flown over for him to question.
‘From what you’ve told me, she had nothing to do with exposing you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you believed her when she said she was an Arab filled with shame, you told me that. In some ways, Airhead, I know you better than you know yourself. You are not easily fooled about such matters. It’s what made you so good with the Kendrick Group… For this woman to expose you would only add to her shame and further inflame the crazy world she lives in.’