He walked across the hotel lobby and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Studying the numbered arrows, he started down the hall towards Khalehla’s room both anxious and depressed—anxious to see her and hold her, depressed about Manny, about the wholesale slaughter in Cyprus, about so much, but mainly Emmanuel Weingrass, scheduled victim of murder. He reached the door and rapped four times, hearing the racing footsteps inside before he removed his hand. The door swung back and she was in his arms.
‘My God, I love you,’ he whispered into her dark hair, the words rushed. ‘And everything’s so rotten, so goddamned rotten!’
‘Quickly. Inside.’ Khalehla closed the door and returned to him, holding his face in her hands. ‘Manny?’
‘He’s got somewhere between three and six months to live,’ replied Evan, his voice flat. ‘He’s dying of a virus he couldn’t possibly have got except through an injection.’
‘The non-existent Dr Lyons,” said Rashad, making a statement.
‘I’ll find him if it takes me twenty years.’
‘You’ll have all the help Washington can give you.’
‘The news is rotten everywhere. Cyprus, the best man in the administration blown to bits—’
‘It’s tied in here, Evan. Here in San Diego.’
‘What?’
Khalehla backed away and took his hand, leading him across the room to where there were two chairs, a small round table between them. ‘Sit down, darling. I’ve got a lot to tell you that I couldn’t tell you before. Then there’s something you have to do… it’s why I asked you to fly out here.’
‘I think I know one of the things you’re going to tell me,’ said Kendrick, sitting down. ‘Ardis Montreaux, the widow Vanvlanderen. I heard it on the radio; they say she committed suicide.’
‘She did that when she married her late husband.’
‘You came to see her, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Rashad nodded as she sat down at the table. ‘You’ll hear and read everything. There are tapes and transcripts of all of it; they were delivered to me an hour ago.’
‘What about Cyprus?’
‘The order came from here. A man named Grinell.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Few people have… Evan, it’s worse than anything we could imagine.’
‘You learned that from Ardis?… Yes, she was Ardis and I was Evan.’
‘I know that. No, not from her; with her we only glimpsed the outline and that was frightening enough. Our main source is a man who was killed last night out by the airport.’
‘For God’s sake, who?’
‘The blond European, darling.’
‘What?’ Kendrick fell back in the seat, his face flushed.
‘He taped not only my interview but a subsequent conversation that blew the lid off the top. Except for Grinell we don’t have names, but we can piece together a picture, like in a puzzle with blurred figures, and it’s terrifying.’
‘A government within the government,’ said Evan quietly. ‘Those were Manny’s words. “The servants running the master’s house.”‘
‘As usual, Manny’s right.’
Kendrick got up from the chair and walked to a window, leaning against the sill and staring outside. ‘The blond man, who was he?’
‘We never learned, but whoever he was he died delivering us the information.’
‘The Oman file. How did he get it?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me except to say that his source was a good person who supported you for higher political office.’
‘That doesn’t tell me anything!’ shouted Evan, whipping around from the window. ‘There has to be more!’
‘There isn’t.’
‘Did he have any idea what they’ve done? The lives that were lost, the butchering!’
‘He said he’d grieve over the errors of judgment more than anyone else. He didn’t know that his grief would only last a couple of hours.’
‘Goddamn it!’ roared Kendrick at the walls of the room. ‘What about this Grinell? Have they got him?’
‘He’s disappeared. His plane left San Diego for Tucson, Arizona. No one knew about it until morning. It was on the ground for about an hour then took off without filing a flight plan, that’s how we found out.’
‘Planes can collide that way.’
‘Not if they patch into Mexican air traffic across the border.
MJ has an idea that Grinell’s security may have spotted the federal vehicles waiting for him near his house in Lajolla.’
Evan returned to the table and sat down, a man exhausted, beaten. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Downstairs to the Vanvlanderen suite. Our European wanted you to look at something—photographs, actually. I don’t know why, but he said the man was a Saudi and you might remember. Something about millions and an escape. We’ve secured the apartment. No one goes in or out under the national security statutes insofar as she was Bollinger’s chief of staff and there could be confidential papers.’
‘All right, let’s go.’
They took the elevator down to the third floor and approached the doors of the Vanvlanderen apartment. The two armed, uniformed police officers in front nodded as the man on the left turned. He inserted the key and opened the door.
‘It’s an honour to meet you, Congressman,’ said the officer on the right, impetuously extending his hand.
‘A pleasure to meet you,’ said Kendrick, shaking the hand and going inside.
‘How does it feel being such a celebrity?’ asked Khalehla, closing the door.
‘Neither comfortable nor gratifying,’ replied Evan as they walked across the marble foyer and down into the sunken living room. ‘Where are the photographs?’
‘He wasn’t specific, only that they were in her office, and you should find ones taken in Lausanne and Amsterdam.’
‘Over there,’ said Kendrick, seeing a lighted desk lamp in a room to the left. ‘Come on.’
They walked across the carpeted room into the study. Evan adjusted his eyes to the shadowed interior, then crossed to another lamp across the room and turned it on. The crisscrossing arrangement of photographs sprang into light.
‘Good Lord, how do we start?’ said Khalehla.
‘Slowly and carefully,’ answered Kendrick, quickly dismissing the panel on the left and concentrating on the right wall. ‘This is Europe,’ he said, his eyes roaming. ‘That’s Lausanne,’ he added, focusing on two people in an enlarged snapshot with the Leman Marina in the background. ‘It’s Ardis and… no, it couldn’t be.’
‘What couldn’t be?’
‘Wait a minute.’ Evan followed the pattern to the lower right, concentrating on another framed enlargement, the faces clearer. ‘Lausanne, again. This is in the gardens of the Beau Rivage… Is it possible?’
‘Is what?… He mentioned the Beau Rivage, the blond man, I mean. Also Amsterdam, the rose something-or-other.’
‘The Rozengracht. Here it is.’ Kendrick pointed at a photograph in which the two subjects’ faces were even sharper, more distinct. ‘My God, it’s him!’
‘Who?’
‘Abdel Hamendi. I knew him years ago in Riyadh. He was a minister for the Saudis until the family caught him working on his own, making millions with false leases and ersatz contracts. He was to be publicly executed, but he got out of the country… They say he built a fortress for himself somewhere in the Alps near Divonne and went into a new brokering business. Armaments. I was told he’s become the most powerful arms merchant in the world with the lowest profile.’
‘Ardis Vanvlanderen mentioned Divonne on the second tape. It was a quick reference, but now it makes sense.’
Evan stepped back and looked at Khalehla. ‘Our dead European’s instincts were right. He didn’t remember the details, but he saw the blood on Hamendi as surely as if it were coming out of that photograph… A government within the government dealing with a global brokerage house for all the illicit weapons in the world.’ Kendrick suddenly frowned, his expression startled. ‘Is it all tied in with Bollinger?’
‘The European said there was no way to tell. What does he know or what doesn’t he know? There’s only one thing that’s certain. He’s the rallying point for the heaviest political contributors in the country.’
‘My God, they’re entrenched—’
‘There’s something else you should know. Ardis Vanvlanderen’s husband was the one who made contact with the terrorists. He arranged for the attacks on your homes.’
‘Jesus!’ roared Evan. ‘Why?’
‘You,’ answered Khalehla softly. ‘You were the target; he wanted you killed. He acted alone—it’s why his wife was murdered when the others found out; to cut off any ties to them—but they’re all afraid of you. Starting next week there’s going to begin a nationwide campaign to put you on the ticket replacing Bollinger as the new Vice President.’
‘The blond European’s people?’
‘Yes. And the men around Bollinger can’t tolerate that. They think you’ll squeeze them out, reduce their influence to nothing.’
‘I’m going to do more than that,’ said Evan. ‘I’m not going to squeeze them out, I’m going to rip them out… Cyprus, Fairfax, Mesa Verde—bastards! Who are they? Is there a list?’
‘We can compile one with a great many names, but we don’t know who’s involved and who isn’t.’
‘Let’s find out.’