‘You’ve been busy.’
‘So have you,’ said the congressman, nodding his head at the door and the huge outer office with the banks of computers. ‘I assume you understood my message or else I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the deputy director. ‘You said you might be able to help. Is that true?’
‘I don’t know. I only knew I had to offer.’
‘Offer? On what basis?’
‘May I sit down?’
‘Please. I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just tired.’ Kendrick sat down; Swann did the same, looking strangely at the freshman politician. ‘Go ahead, Congressman. Time’s valuable, every minute, and we’ve been concerned with this “problem”, as you described it to my secretary, for a few long, hairy weeks. Now I don’t know what you’ve got to say or whether it’s relevant or not, but if it is, I’d like to know why it’s taken you so long to get here.’
‘I hadn’t heard anything about the events over in Oman. About what’s happened—what’s happening.’
‘That’s damn near impossible to believe. Is the Congressman from Colorado’s ninth district spending the House recess at a Benedictine retreat?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Or is it possible that a new ambitious congressman who speaks some Arabic,’ went on Swann rapidly, quietly, unpleasantly, ‘elaborates on a few cloakroom rumours about a certain section over here and decides to insert himself for a little political mileage down the road? It wouldn’t be the first time.’
Kendrick sat motionless in the chair, his face without expression, but not his eyes. They were at once observant and angry. ‘That’s offensive,’ he said.
‘I’m easily offended under the circumstances. Eleven of our people have been killed, mister, including three women. Two hundred and thirty-six others are waiting to get their heads blown off! And I ask you if you can really help and you tell me you don’t know, but you have to offer! To me that has the sound of a hissing snake so I watch my step. You walk in here with a language you probably learned making big bucks with some oil company and figure that entitles you to special consideration—maybe you’re a “consultant”; it has a nice ring to it. A freshman pol is suddenly a consultant to the State Department during a national crisis. Whichever way it goes, you win. That’d lift a few hats in Colorado’s ninth district, wouldn’t it?’
‘I imagine it would if anyone knew about it.’
‘What?’ Once again the deputy director stared at the congressman, not so much in irritation now but because of something else. Did he know him?
‘You’re under a lot of stress so I won’t add to it. But if what you’re thinking is a barrier, let’s get over it. If you decide I might be of some value to you, the only way I’d agree is with a written guarantee of anonymity, no other way. No one’s to know I’ve been here. I never talked to you or anyone else.’
Nonplussed, Swann leaned back in his chair and brought his hand to his chin. ‘I do know you,’ he said softly.
‘We’ve never met.’
‘Say what you want to say, Congressman. Start somewhere.’
‘I’ll start eight hours ago,’ began Kendrick. ‘I’ve been riding the Colorado white water into Arizona for almost a month—that’s the Benedictine retreat you conjured up for the congressional recess. I passed through Lava Falls and reached a base camp. There were people there, of course, and it was the first time I’d heard a radio in nearly four weeks.’
‘Four weeks?’ repeated Swann. ‘You’ve been out of touch all that time? Do you do this sort of thing often?’
‘Pretty much every year,’ answered Kendrick. ‘It’s become kind of a ritual,’ he added quietly. ‘I go alone; it’s not pertinent.’
‘Some politician,’ said the deputy, absently picking up a pencil. ‘You can forget the world, Congressman, but you still have a constituency.’
‘No politician,’ replied Evan Kendrick, permitting himself a slight smile. ‘And my constituency’s an accident, believe me. Anyway, I heard the news and moved as fast as I could. I hired a river plane to fly me to Flagstaff and tried to charter a jet to Washington. It was too late at night, too late to clear a flight plan, so I flew on to Phoenix and caught the earliest plane here. Those in-flight phones are a marvel. I’m afraid I monopolized one, talking to a very experienced secretary and a number of other people. I apologize for the way I look; the airline provided a razor but I didn’t want to take the time to go home and change clothes. I’m here, Mr. Swann, and you’re the man I want to see. I may be of absolutely no help to you, and I’m sure you’ll tell me if I’m not. But to repeat, I had to offer.’
While his visitor spoke, the deputy had written the name ‘Kendrick’ on the pad in front of him. Actually, he had written it several times, underlining the name. Kendrick. Kendrick. Kendrick. ‘Offer what?’ he asked, frowning and looking up at the odd intruder. ‘ What, Congressman?’
‘Whatever I know about the area and the various factions operating over there. Oman, the Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar—Masqat, Dubai, Abu Dhabi—up to Kuwait and down to Riyadh. I lived in those places. I worked there. I know them very well.’
‘You lived—worked—all over the Southwest map?’
‘Yes. I spent eighteen months in Masqat alone. Under contract to the family.’
‘The sultan?’
‘The late sultan; he died two or three years ago, I think. But yes, under contract to him and his ministers. They were a tough group and good. You had to know your business.’
‘Then you worked for a company,’ said Swann, making a statement, not asking a question.
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
‘Mine,’ answered the new congressman.
‘Yours?’
‘That’s right.’
The deputy stared at his visitor, then lowered his eyes to the name he had written repeatedly on the pad in front of him. ‘Good Lord,’ he said softly. ‘The Kendrick Group! That’s the connection, but I didn’t see it. I haven’t heard your name in four or five years—maybe six.’
‘You were right the first time. Four to be exact.’
‘I knew there was something. I said so—’
‘Yes, you did, but we never met.’
‘You people built everything from water systems to bridges—race tracks, housing projects, country clubs, airfields—the whole thing.’
‘We built what we were contracted to build.’
‘I remember. It was ten or twelve years ago. You were the American wonder boys in the Emirates—and I do mean boys. Dozens of you in your twenties and thirties and filled with high tech, piss and vinegar.’
‘Not all of us were that young—’
‘No,’ interrupted Swann, frowning in thought. ‘You had a late-blooming secret weapon, an old Israeli, a whiz of an architect. An Israeli, for heaven’s sake, who could design things in the Islamic style and broke bread with every rich Arab in the neighbourhood.
‘His name was Emmanuel Weingrass—is Manny Weingrass—and he’s from Garden Street in the Bronx in New York. He went to Israel to avoid legal entanglements with his second or third wife. He’s close to eighty now and living in Paris. Pretty well, I gather, from his phone calls.’
‘That’s right,’ said the deputy director. ‘You sold out to Bechtel or somebody For thirty or forty million.’
‘Not to Bechtel. It was Trans-International, and it wasn’t thirty or forty, it was twenty-five. They got a bargain and I got out. Everything was fine.’
Swann studied Kendrick’s face, especially the light blue eyes that held within them circles of enigmatic reserve the longer one stared at them. ‘No, it wasn’t,’ he said softly, even gently, his hostility gone. ‘I do remember now. There was an accident at one of your sites outside Riyadh—a cave-in caused when a faulty gas line exploded—more than seventy people were killed including your partners, all your employees, and some kids.’
‘Their kids,’ added Evan quietly. ‘All of them, all their wives and children. We were celebrating the completion of the third phase. We were all there. The crew, my partners—everyone’s wife and child. The whole shell collapsed while they were inside, and Manny and I were outside—putting on some ridiculous clown costumes.’
‘But there was an investigation that cleared the Kendrick Group completely. The utility firm that serviced the site had installed inferior conduit falsely labelled as certified.’
‘Essentially, yes.’
‘That’s when you packed it all in, wasn’t it?’
‘This isn’t pertinent,’ said the congressman simply. ‘We’re wasting time. Since you know who I am, or at least who I was, is there anything I can do?’
‘Do you mind if I ask you a question? I don’t think it’s a waste of time and I think it is pertinent. Clearances are part of the territory and judgments have to be made. I meant what I said before. A lot of people on the Hill continuously try to make political mileage out of us over here.’