‘And if it’s not?’
‘Then I’d advise you to weigh the consequences, Mr. B.’
‘Let me speak to my niece, if you please?’
‘As you wish.’ Varak turned to Khalehla and handed her the telephone as he headed back to his chair.
‘I’m here,’ said Rashad.
‘Just answer yes or no, and if you can’t answer, stay silent for a second or two. All right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you safe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would his material help us?’
‘Yes—emphatically.’
‘Just “yes” is sufficient, Agent Rashad… He’s obviously staying at the hotel—do you think he’ll remain there?’
‘No.’
‘Has he given you any information as to how he got the Oman file?’
‘No.’
‘Lastly, can we live with his demands?’
‘We’re going to—sorry to break the rules.’
‘I see,’ said the astonished director of Special Projects. ‘You will explain that extraordinary and extraordinarily insubordinate statement to me, won’t you?’
‘We’ll talk later.” Khalehla hung up the phone and turned to Varak. ‘My superior’s upset.’
‘With you or with me? It wasn’t difficult to imagine the gist of his questions.’
‘With both of us.’
‘Is he really your uncle?’
‘I’ve known him for over twenty years and that’s enough about him. Let’s talk about you for a moment. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a couple of his questions to you, either.’
‘Only a moment, please,’ insisted the Czech. ‘I really must leave.’
‘You told him that Grinell was with the Vanvlanderen woman and that the others were Grinell’s guards.’
‘I did.’
‘Yet you told me that there were two men in the Vanvlanderen suite and that the guards were outside.’
That’s true.’
‘Who was that other man, and why are you protecting him?’
‘Protecting? … I believe I also told you that they were both traitors. You’ll hear that on the tapes, read it on the transcripts I’ll deliver to you if your superior agrees to my conditions, as you have agreed.’
‘I’ll convince him.’
‘Then you’ll hear for yourself.’
‘But you know him! Who is he?’
Varak got out of the chair, his hands pressed in front of him. ‘Again, we are off limits, Miss Rashad. But I’ll tell you this much. He’s the reason I must leave. He’s human filth, whatever words you care to use… and he’s mine. I’ll scour this city all night until I find him, and if I don’t, I know where I can find him, tomorrow or the next day. I repeat, he’s mine.’
‘A jaremat thaแr, Mr. Milos?”
‘I do not speak Arabic, Miss Rashad.’
‘But you know what it means, I’ve told you.’
‘Good night,’ said the Czech, going to the door.
‘My uncle wants to know how you got the Oman file. I don’t think he’ll stop hunting you down until he finds out.’
‘We all have our priorities,’ said Varak, turning, his hand on the knob. ‘Right now his and yours are in San Diego and mine are elsewhere. Tell him that he has nothing to fear from my source. He would go to his grave before endangering one of your people, one of our people.’
‘Goddamn you, he already has! Evan Kendrick!’ The telephone rang; they both whipped their heads around, staring at it. Khalehla picked it up. ‘Yes?’
‘It happened!’ cried Payton in Langley, Virginia. ‘Oh, my God, they did it!’
‘What is it?’
‘The Larnaca Hotel in Cyprus! The west wing was blown up; there’s nothing left, just debris. The Secretary of State’s dead, they’re all dead!’
‘The hotel in Cyprus,’ repeated Khalehla, looking at the Czech, her voice a frightened monotone. ‘It was blown up, the Secretary’s dead, they’re all dead…’
‘Give me that phone!’ roared Varak, rushing across the room and grabbing it. ‘Did no one check the cellars, the air conditioning ducts, the structural underpinnings?’
‘The Cypriot security forces claimed they checked everything—’
‘Cypriot security?’ yelled the furious Czech. ‘It’s riddled with a dozen hostile elements! Fools, fools, fools!’
‘Do you want my job, Mr. A?’
‘I wouldn’t take it,’ said Varak, controlling his anger, lowering his voice. ‘I do not work with amateurs,’ he added contemptuously, hanging up and going to the door. He turned and spoke to Khalehla. ‘What was needed here today were the brains of Kendrick of Oman. He would have been the first to tell all of you what to do, what to look for. And you probably would not have listened to him.’ The Czech opened the door, let himself out, and slammed it shut.
The telephone rang. ‘He’s gone,’ said Rashad, picking it up, knowing instinctively who was on the line.
‘I offered him my job, but he made it clear that he didn’t work with amateurs… Strange, isn’t it? A man without any credentials that we know about alerts us, and we blow it. And a year ago, we send Kendrick to Oman and he does what five hundred professionals from at least six countries couldn’t do. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it… I’m getting old.’
‘No way, MJ!’ cried the agent from Cairo. ‘They happen to be bright guys and they hit jackpots, that’s all. You’ve done more than they’ll ever do!’
‘I’d like to believe that, but tonight’s pretty horrible for whatever ego I’ve got left.’
‘Which should be a bunch!… But it’s also a good moment for me to explain that insubordinate remark I made to you a few minutes ago.’
‘Please do. I’m receptive. I’m not even sure I have a hell of a lot of breath left.’
‘Whomever Milos works for, they want nothing from Evan. When I pressed him, he pointed out the obvious. If they made any demands on him, he’d throw them to the wolves, and he’s right, Evan would.’
‘I also agree. So what does he want?’
‘To back off and let events take their course. They want us to let the race go on.’
‘Evan won’t run—’
‘He may when he learns about the black knights who are running things in California. Say we stop them; there are hundreds more waiting to take their places. Milos is right, a voice is needed.’
‘But what do you say, niece?’
‘I want him alive, not dead. He can’t go back to the Emirates—he may persuade himself that he can but he’d be killed the moment he got off the plane. And he can’t vegetate in Mesa Verde, not with his energy and imagination—that’s a form of death, too, you know… The country could do worse, MJ.’
‘Fools, fools!’ whispered Varak to himself as he dialled while studying a diagram of the Vanvlanderen suite in his hand; there were small red Xs marked in each room. Seconds later a voice was on the other end of the line.
‘Yes?’
‘Sound Man?’
‘Prague?’
‘I need you.”
‘I can always use your money. You roll high.’
‘Pick me up in thirty minutes, the service entrance. I’ll explain what I want you to do on the way to your studio… There are no changes in the diagram?’
‘No. You found the key?’
‘Thank you for both.’
‘You paid. Thirty minutes.’
The Czech hung up the phone and looked at the packed recording equipment in front of the door. He had listened to Rashad’s interview with Ardis Vanvlanderen, and despite his anger over the tragedy of the Secretary of State’s death, he had smiled—grimly to be sure—at the bold strategy employed by the field agent from Cairo and her superior. Based on what they had learned, they had gambled on the presumed truth of Andrew Vanvlanderen’s actions and turned it into an irresistible lie: Palestinian hit teams, the target Bollinger, Kendrick never even mentioned! Brilliant! The appearance of Eric Sundstrom within two hours of Rashad’s astonishing, convoluted information—an appearance designed to trap a traitor of Inver Brass and not based on any presumption of
Vanvlanderen’s guilt—had completed a detonation that blew apart the cemented structure of deceit in San Diego. One took things where one could find them.
Varak went to the door, opened it cautiously and slipped out into the corridor. He walked rapidly to the Vanvlanderen suite down the hall and with the key provided by the Sound Man let himself inside, the diagram still in his hand. With swift catlike strides he went from room to room removing the tiny electronic intercepts from their recesses—under tables and chairs, secreted beneath the deep cushions of the sofa, behind mirrors in the four bedrooms, under the medicine cabinets in the various bathrooms and inside two burners in the kitchen. He left the widow’s office for last, counting the red Xs, satisfied that he had collected every tap so far. The office was dark; he found the desk lamp and switched it on. Ten seconds later he pocketed the four intercepts, three from the office itself, one from the small attached bathroom, and concentrated on the desk. He looked at his watch; the dismantling operation had taken nine minutes, leaving him at least fifteen to examine Mrs. Vanvlanderen’s domestic inner sanctum.
He started with the desk drawers, pulling one out after another, riffling through meaningless papers devoted to vice presidential trivia—schedules, letters from individuals and institutions deemed worthy of answering some day, position papers from the White House, State, Defense and various other administrative agencies that had to be studied so they could be explained to Orson Bollinger. There was nothing of value, nothing at all related to the subterranean manipulations taking place in southern California.