The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

‘Tell us!’ screamed the sergeant-terrorist into Kendrick’s ear, his words lost to the wiretaps by the wildly accelerating Islamic chanting. ‘Who are you? What place in hell do you come from?’

‘I am who I am!’ shouted Evan, grimacing and holding on as long as he could manage, convinced he knew the Arabic mind, believing a moment would come when respect for an enemy’s death would induce a few seconds of silence before the blow was administered; it would be enough. Death was revered in Islam, by friend and adversary alike. He needed those seconds! He had to let the guards know! Oh, Christ, he was being killed! A clenched fist hammered down on his testicles—when, when would it stop for those few, precious moments?

A blurred figure was suddenly above him, bending over, studying him. Another fist crashed into his left kidney; the inward scream did not emerge from his mouth. He could not permit it.

‘Stop!’ cried the voice of the blurred outline above. ‘Tear off his shirt. Let me see his neck. It is said there is a mark he can’t wash away.’

Evan felt the cloth being ripped from his chest, his breath sinking, knowing the worst was about to be revealed. There was no scar on his neck.

‘It is Amal Bahrudi,’ intoned the man above. The barely conscious Kendrick heard the words and was stunned.

‘What do you look for?’ asked the bewildered sergeant-foreman, furious.

‘What is not there,’ said the echoing voice. ‘Throughout Europe, Amal Bahrudi is marked by the scar on his throat. A photograph was circulated to the authorities that was confirmed to be of him, a picture obscuring the face but not the bare neck where the scar of a knife wound was in clear focus. It had been his best cover, an ingenious device of concealment.’

‘You confuse me!’ shouted the squatting, stocky man, his words nearly drowned out by the cacophonous chanting. ‘What concealment? What scar!’

‘A scar that never was, a mark that never existed. They all look for a lie. This is Bahrudi, the blue-eyed man who can take pain with silence, the trusted one who moves about Western capitals unnoticed because of the genes of a European grandfather. Word must have reached Oman that he was reported to be on his way here, but even so he’ll be released in the morning, no doubt with great apologies. You see, there is no scar on his throat.’

Through the haze and the terrible pain, Evan knew it was the moment to react. He forced a smile across his burning lips, his light blue eyes centering on the blurred figure above. ‘A sane man,’ he coughed in agony. ‘Please, get me up, get them away from me before I see them all in hell.’

‘Amal Bahrudi speaks?’ asked the unknown man, reaching out with his hand. ‘Let him up.’

‘No!’ roared the sergeant-terrorist, plunging down and pinning Kendrick’s shoulders. ‘There’s no sense in what you say! He is who he says he is because of a scar that does not exist? Where’s the sense in that, I ask you?’

‘I will know if he lies,’ replied the figure above, slowly coming into focus for Kendrick. The gaunt face was that of a man in his early twenties, with high cheekbones and intense, dark, intelligent eyes flanking a sharp, straight nose. The body was slender, bordering on thin, but there was a supple strength in the way he crouched and held his head. The muscles of his neck stood out. ‘Let him up,’ repeated the younger terrorist, his voice casual but no less a command for that. ‘And instruct the others to gradually stop their chanting—gradually, you understand—but then keep talking among themselves. All must appear normal, including the incessant arguing, which you don’t have to encourage.’

The angry subordinate gave Evan a last shove into the floor, widening the cut in his shoulder so severely that new blood burst out on to the concrete. Then the surly man got to his feet, turning to the crowd to carry out his orders.

‘Thank you,’ said Evan, breathless, trembling and getting to his knees, wincing at the pain he felt everywhere, conscious of the bruises on his face and body, aware of the hot lacerations where his flesh had been punctured—again seemingly everywhere. ‘I would have joined Allah in a minute.’

‘You still may, which is why I won’t bother to stem your bleeding.’ The young Palestinian shoved Kendrick against the wall, into a sitting position, his legs stretched out on the floor. ‘You see, I have no idea whether you’re really Amal Bahrudi or not. I acted on instinct. From the descriptions I’ve heard, you could be he, and you speak an educated Arabic, which also fits. In addition, you withstood extreme punishment when a gesture of submission on your part would have meant you were prepared to deliver the information demanded of you. Instead, you reacted with defiance, and you must have known that at any moment you could have been strangled… That is not the way of an infiltrator who values his life here on earth. It is the way of one of us who will not harm the cause for, as you remarked, it’s a holy cause. And it is. Most holy.’

Good God! thought Kendrick, assuming the cold expression of a dedicated partisan. How wrong you are! If I had thought—if I’d been able to think… Forget it! ‘What will finally convince you? I tell you now I shall not reveal things I shouldn’t.’ Evan paused, his hand covering the swallow in his throat. ‘Even to the point where you may resume the punishment and strangle me, if you like.’

‘Both are statements I would expect,’ said the intense slender terrorist, lowering himself to crouch in front of Evan. ‘You can, however, tell me what it is you came here for. Why were you sent to Masqat? Whom were you told to find? Your life depends on your answers, Amal Bahrudi, and I’m the only one who can make that decision.’

He had been right. In spite of the odds he had been right!

Escape. He had to escape with this young killer in a holy cause.

* * *

Chapter 7

Kendrick stared at the Palestinian as if, indeed, the eyes held the meaning of a man’s soul, although Evan’s own eyes were too swollen to betray anything other than overwhelming physical pain… The remaining taps are in the flushing mechanisms of the toilets: Dr Amal Faisal, contact to the sultan.

‘I was sent here to tell you that among your people in the embassy there are traitors.’

‘Traitors?’ The terrorist remained motionless in his crouching position in front of Evan; beyond a slight frown there was no reaction whatsoever. ‘That’s impossible,’ he said after several moments of intensely studying ‘Amal Bahrudi’s’ face.

‘I’m afraid it’s not,’ contradicted Kendrick. ‘I saw the proof.’

‘Consisting of what?’

Evan suddenly winced, grabbing his wounded shoulder, his hand instantly covered with blood. ‘If you won’t stop this bleeding, I will!’ He started to push himself up against the stone wall.

‘Stay put!’ commanded the young killer.

‘Why? Why should I? How do I know you’re not part of the treason—making money out of our work?’

‘Money…? What money?’

‘You won’t know that until I know you have the right to be told.’ Again Evan pressed himself against the wall, his hands on the floor, trying to rise. ‘You talk like a man but you’re a boy.’

‘I grew up quickly,’ said the terrorist, shoving his strange prisoner down again. ‘Most of us have over here.’

‘Grow up now. My bleeding to death will tell neither of us anything.’ Kendrick ripped the blood-soaked shirt away from his shoulder. ‘It’s filthy,’ he said, nodding at the wound. ‘It’s filled with dirt and slime, thanks to your animal friends.’

‘They’re not animals and they’re not friends. They are my brothers.’

‘Write poetry in your own time, mine’s too valuable. Is there any water in here—clean water?’

‘The toilets,’ answered the Palestinian. ‘There’s a sink on the right.’

‘Help me up.’

‘No. What proof? Who were you sent to find?’

‘Fool!’ exploded Evan. ‘All right. Where is Nassir? Everyone asks, Where is Nassir?’

‘Dead,’ replied the young man, his expression without comment.

‘What?’

‘A marine guard jumped him, took his weapon and shot him. The marine was killed instantly.’

‘Nothing was said—’

‘What could be said that was productive?’ countered the terrorist. ‘Make a martyr out of a single American guard? Show one of our own to have been overcome? We don’t parade weakness.’

‘Nassir?’ asked Kendrick, hearing a rueful note in the young killer’s voice. ‘Nassir was weak?’

‘He was a theoretician and not suited to this work.’

‘A theoretician?’ Evan arched his brows. ‘Our student is an analyst?’

‘This student can determine those moments when active involvement must replace passive debate, when force takes over from words. Nassir talked too much, justified too much.’