‘You know that?’ asked Kendrick, unpleasantly surprised, thinking he was the only one who knew where they were.
‘Not this exact road, perhaps, although there are only a few,’ answered the blunt, older terrorist, ‘but they are the same. From the sands towards the Gulf the earth changes. Everything is greener and there are small hills. Suddenly, one is in Masqat. It happens quickly.’
‘Yosef was part of the scouting team under Ahbyahd’s command,’ explained Azra. ‘They came here five days before we captured the embassy.’
‘I see. I also see that the entire Black Forest couldn’t help us when the light comes up, and Oman isn’t the Schwarzwald. There’ll be troops and police and helicopters combing every inch of ground. There’s no place for us to hide except Masqat.’ Evan directed his next words to the man called Blue. ‘Certainly you have contacts in the city.’
‘Numerous.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Between ten and twenty, several highly placed. They fly in and out, of course.’
‘Call them together in Masqat and bring me to them. I’ll choose one.’
‘You’ll choose one—’
‘All I need is one, but it must be the right one. He’ll carry a message for me and I’ll have you in Bahrain in three hours.’
To the Mahdi?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you said—you implied—that you don’t know who he is.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Still, you know how to reach him then?’
‘No,’ answered Kendrick, a sudden hollow pain in his chest. ‘Another insult but more readily understood. My operations are in Europe, not here. I simply assumed that you knew where to find him in Bahrain.’
‘Perhaps it was in the note you destroyed in the Al Kabir, a code—’
‘There are always emergency procedures!’ broke in Evan harshly, trying to control his anxiety.
‘Yes, there are,’ said Azra thoughtfully. ‘But none that ever directly involve the Mahdi. As you must know, his name is spoken in whispers to only a few.’
‘I don’t know. I told you, I don’t operate in this part of the world—which was why I was chosen… obviously.’
‘Yes, obviously,’ agreed Blue. ‘You are far away from your base, the unexpected messenger.’
‘I don’t believe this!’ exploded Kendrick. ‘You receive instructions—no doubt daily, don’t you?’
‘We do.’ Azra looked briefly at Yosef. ‘But like yourself I am a messenger.’
‘What?’
‘I am a member of the council, and young and strong, and not a woman. But I am not a leader; my years do not permit it. Nassir, my sister Zaya, and Ahbyahd; they were appointed the leaders of the council. Until Nassir’s death the three of them shared responsibility for the operation. When sealed instructions came, I delivered them but I did not break the seals. Only Zaya and Ahbyahd know how to reach the Mahdi—not personally, of course, but through a series of contacts that lead to him, get word to him.’
‘Can you make radio contact with your sister—over a secure frequency or perhaps a sterile telephone? She’d give you the information.’
‘Impossible. The enemy’s scanning equipment is too good. We say nothing on the radio or the telephone that we would not say in public; we must assume it’s one and the same.’
‘Your people in Masqat!’ continued Evan rapidly, emphatically, feeling the beads of perspiration on his hairline. ‘Could one of them go inside and bring it out?’
‘Information concerning the Mahdi, no matter how remote?’ asked Azra. ‘She’d execute the one who sought it.’
‘We’ve got to have it! I’m to take you to Bahrain—to him—by tonight, and I won’t risk our sources of operating funds in Europe because I’m held responsible for a failure here that isn’t mine!’
‘There is only one solution,’ said Azra. ‘The one I spoke of below. We go to the embassy, into the embassy.’
‘There’s no time for such complications,’ insisted Kendrick desperately, terrified now of being discovered. ‘I know Bahrain. I’ll choose a location and we’ll call one of your people here to get the word inside to your sister. She or Ahbyahd will find a way to reach one of the Mahdi’s contacts. There can’t be any mention of either of us, of course—we’ll have them say an emergency has arisen. That’s it, an emergency; they’ll know what it means! I’ll fix the meeting ground. A street, a mosque, a section of the piers or the outskirts of the airport. Someone will come. Someone has to!’
The lean, muscular young terrorist once more was silent as he studied the face of the man he believed to be his counterpart in far off Europe. ‘I ask you, Bahrudi,’ he said after the better part of ten seconds. ‘Would you be so free, so undisciplined, with your financial sources in Berlin? Would Moscow, or the Bulgarian banks in Sofia, or the unseen money in Zagreb tolerate such loose communications?’
‘In an emergency they would understand.’
‘If you allowed such an emergency, they would slit your throat with a shearing knife and replace you!’
‘You take care of your sources and I’ll take care of mine, Mr. Blue.’
‘I will take care of mine. Here, now. We go to the embassy!’
The winds from the Gulf of Oman swept over the scrubby grass and the gnarled, dwarfed trees, but they could not prohibit the sound of the persistent two-note siren in the distance coming up from the desert valley. It was the signal. Conceal yourselves. Kendrick expected it.
‘Run!’ roared Yosef, grabbing Azra’s shoulder and propelling his superior forward on the road. ‘Run, my brothers, as you have never run before in your lives!’
‘The embassy!’ cried the man called Blue. ‘Before the light comes up!’
For Evan Kendrick, congressman from the ninth district of Colorado, the nightmare that would live with him the rest of his life was about to begin.
* * *
Chapter 9
Khalehla gasped. Her eyes had been suddenly drawn to the rearview mirror—a speck of light, an image of black upon darker black, something. And then it was there. Far away on the hill above Masqat, a car was following her! There were no headlights, just a dark, moving shadow in the distance. It was rounding a curve on the deserted road that led to the twisting descent into the valley—to the beginning of the sands of Jabal Sham where the ‘escape’ was to take place. There was only one entrance to and one exit from the desert valley and her strategy had been to drive off the road out of sight and follow Evan Kendrick and his fellow fugitives on foot once they had broken out of the van. That strategy was now void.
Oh, my God, I can’t be caught! They’ll kill every hostage in the embassy! What have I done? Get out. Get away!
Khalehla spun the wheel; the powerful car swung around on the soft, sandy earth, leaping over ruts on the primitive road and reversing its direction. She slammed her foot on the accelerator, stabbing it into the floor, and within moments, her headlights on high beam, she passed the car now rushing towards her. A figure beside the astonished driver tried to lunge down, concealing his face and body, but it was impossible.
And Khalehla did not believe what she saw!
But then she had to. In a sudden moment of utter clarity she saw it was so right, so perfect—so unmistakably perfect. Tony! Fumbling, bumbling, inarticulate Anthony MacDonald. The company reject whose position was secure because the firm was owned by his wife’s father but who was nevertheless sent to Cairo, where he could do the least damage. A representative without portfolio, apart from hosting dinner parties where he and his equally inept and boring wife invariably got drunk. It was as though a company memorandum had been tattooed on their foreheads: Not permitted in the UK except for obligatory family funerals. Return flight tickets mandatory. How perfectly ingenious! The overweight, over-indulged, underbrained fop in sartorial plumage that could not hide his excesses. The Scarlet Pimpernel could not have matched his cover, and it was a cover, Khalehla was convinced of it. In building one for herself she had forced a master to expose his own.
She tried to think back, to reconstruct how he had snared her, but the steps were blurred because she had not thought about it at the time. She had no reason whatsoever to doubt that Tony MacDonald, the alcoholic cipher, was beside himself at the thought of travelling to Oman alone without someone knowledgeable beside him. He had complained several times, nearly trembling, that his firm had accounts in Masqat and he was expected to service them despite the horrors going on over there. She had replied—several times—with comforting words that it was basically a US-Israeli problem, not a British one, so he would not be harmed. It was as though he had expected her to be sent there, and when the orders came she had remembered his fears and telephoned him, believing he was her perfect escort to Oman. Oh, just perfect!