The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

‘I will reveal nothing!’

‘You don’t know anything,’ said the man called Blue. ‘Tie him up, Yosef. Make the leg as comfortable as possible.’ Azra bent over the youngster. ‘There are better ways to fight than dying needlessly. Let the enemy heal you so you can fight again. Come back to us, my stubborn freedom fighter. We need you… Yosef, hurry!’

As the older terrorist carried out his orders, Azra and Kendrick walked back to the road hewn from rock. Far below the white sands began, stretching endlessly in the moonlight, a vast alabaster floor, its roof the dark sky above. In the distance, intruding on the blanket of white, was a small, pulsating eruption of yellow. It was a desert fire, the rendezvous that was an intrinsic part of the ‘escape’. It was too far away for the figures to be seen clearly but they were there and rightly assumed to be Omani soldiers or police. But they were not the executioners Amal Bahrudi’s companions imagined.

‘You’re much more familiar with the terrain than I am,” said Evan in English. ‘How far do you judge the camp to be?’

Ten kilometers, perhaps twelve, no more than that. The road straightens out below; they’ll be there soon.’

‘Then let’s go.’ Kendrick turned, watching the older Yosef carrying the injured teenager to the road. He started towards them.

Azra, however, did not move. ‘Where, Amal Bahrudi?’ he called out. ‘Where should we go?’

Evan snapped his head back. ‘Where?’ he repeated contemptuously. ‘To begin with, away from here. It’ll be light soon, and if I know what I’m talking about, which I do, there’ll be a dozen helicopters criss-crossing at low altitude looking for us. We can melt in the city, not here.’

‘Then what do we do? Where do we go?’

Kendrick could not see clearly in the dim moonlight, but felt the intense, questioning stare levelled at him. He was being tested. ‘We get word to the embassy. To your sister, Yateem, or the one named Ahbyahd. Stop the photographs and kill the ones involved.’

‘How do we do that? Get word into the embassy? Did your people tell you that, Amal Bahrudi?’

Evan was prepared; it was the inevitable question. ‘Frankly, they weren’t sure where the pipeline was and they assumed if any of you had any brains it would change daily. I was to pass a note through the gates directed to your operations council to let me through—through the pipeline wherever it was at the moment.’

‘Many such notes could be passed as a trap. Why would yours be accepted?’

Kendrick paused; when he answered his voice was low and calm and laced with meaning. ‘Because it was signed by the Mahdi.’

Azra’s eyes widened. He nodded, slowly and held up his hand. ‘Who?’ he asked.

‘The envelope was sealed with wax and not to be broken. It was an insult I found hard to accept, but even I follow orders from those who pay the freight, if you know what I mean.’

‘Those who give us the money to do what we do—’

‘If there was a code signifying authenticity, it was for one or all of you on the council to know, not I.’

‘Give me the note,’ said Azra.

‘Idiot!’ yelled the congressman from Colorado’s ninth district, exasperated. ‘When I saw the police closing in on me, I tore it to shreds and scattered it through the Al Kabir! Would you have done otherwise?’

The Palestinian remained motionless. ‘No, obviously not,’ he replied. ‘At any rate we won’t need it. I’ll get us into the embassy. The pipeline, as you call it, is well regulated both inside and out.’

‘It’s so well regulated that films are slipped out under the noses of your well-regulated guards. Send word in to your sister. Change them, every one of them, and start a search immediately for the camera. When it’s found, kill the owner and anyone who seems to be a friend. Kill them all.’

‘On such surface observation?’ protested Azra. ‘We risk wasting innocent lives, valuable fighters.’

‘Let’s not be hypocritical,’ laughed Amal Bahrudi. ‘We have no such hesitations with the enemy. We’re not killing “valuable fighters”, we’re killing innocent people quite properly to make the world listen, a world that’s blind and deaf to our struggles, our very survival.’

‘By your almighty Allah, now you’re the one who’s blind and deaf!’ spat out Azra. ‘You believe the Western press; it’s not to be questioned! Of the eleven corpses, four were already dead including two of the women—one by her own hand for she was paranoid about rape, Arab rape; the other, a much stronger woman not unlike the marine who attacked Nassir, threw herself on a young imbecile whose only reaction was to fire his weapon. The two men were old and infirm and died of heart failure. It does not absolve us from causing innocent death, but no guns were raised against them. All this was explained by Zaya and no one believed us. They never will!’

‘Not that it matters, but what about the others? Seven, I believe.’

‘Condemned by our council and rightly so. Intelligence officers building networks against us throughout the Gulf and the Mediterranean; members of the infamous Consular Operations—even two Arabs—who sold their souls to sell us into oblivion, paid by the Zionists and their American puppets. They deserved death, for they would have seen us all die, but not before we were dishonoured, made caricatures of evil when there is no evil in us—only the desire to live in our own lands—’

‘That’s enough, poet,’ broke in Kendrick, looking over at Yosef and the boy terrorist who longed for the arms of Allah. ‘There’s no time for your sermons; we have to get out of here.’

‘To the embassy,’ agreed Azra. ‘Through the pipeline.’

Kendrick walked back to the Palestinian, approaching him slowly. ‘To the embassy, yes,’ he said. ‘But not through the pipeline, just to the gates. There you’ll send in the message to your sister spelling everything out for her. With those orders my job is finished here and so is yours—yours at least for a day or two.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked the bewildered Blue.

‘My instructions are to take one of you to Bahrain as soon as possible. It will only be for a short time, but it’s urgent.’

‘Bahrain?’

‘To the Mahdi. He has new orders for you, orders he won’t trust to anyone but a member of the council.’

‘The airport’s watched,’ said Azra firmly. ‘It’s patrolled by guards and attack dogs; no one can get in or out except by passing through interrogation. We’d never make it. It’s the same on the waterfront. Every boat is flagged down and searched or blown out of the water if it does not comply.’

‘None of that has stopped your people from coming and going through the pipeline. I saw the results in Berlin.’

‘But you said “urgent”, and the pipeline is a twenty-four to forty-eight-hour process.’

‘Why so long?’

‘We travel south only at night and in the uniforms of the Yemen border garrisons. If we’re stopped, we say we’re patrolling the coastline. We then rendezvous with the fast, deepwater boats—supplied by Bahrain, of course.’

‘Of course.’ He had been right, thought Evan. The southern coast as far as Ra’s al Hadd and beyond to the Strait of Masirah was open territory, a cruel wasteland of rock-filled shores and inhospitable interiors, heaven-sent for thieves and smugglers and above all for terrorists. And what better protection than the uniforms of the border garrisons, those soldiers chosen for both their loyalty and especially their brutality that equalled or bettered that of the international desperadoes given sanctuary in Yemen? ‘That’s very good,’ continued Amal Bahrudi, his tone professional. ‘How in Allah’s name did you get hold of the uniforms? I understand they’re unusual; a lighter colour, different epaulettes, boots designed for desert and water—’

‘I had them made,’ interrupted Azra, his eyes on the valley below. ‘In Bahrain, of course. Each is accounted for and locked up when not in use… You’re right, we must go. That truck will reach the camp in less than two minutes. We’ll talk along the way. Come!’

Yosef had placed the bound, injured young terrorist across the road, calming him and giving him quiet but firm instructions. Azra and Kendrick approached; Evan spoke. ‘We’ll make better time here on the road,’ he said. ‘We’ll stay on it until we see the headlights coming up from the valley. Hurry.’

Final words of encouragement given to their fallen colleague, the three fugitives started running up the curving ascent to the flat ground several hundred feet above. The terrain was a combination of dry, scrubby brush weaving over the mostly arid earth and short, gnarled trees encouraged by the night moisture blown in from the sea only to be dwarfed by the windless, blistering heat of day. For as far as their eyes could see in the moon’s dull wash, the road was straight. Breathing hard, his barrel-chest heaving, Yosef spoke. ‘Three or four kilometers north there are more trees, taller trees, much more foliage to hide in.’