The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

‘Give me a couple of minutes.’ Kendrick leaned back on the pillows. God, he was tired!

‘You really should make it now. You must tell Ahmat where you are, what you’ve done, what is happening. He expects it. He deserves to hear it from you, not me.’

‘All right, all right.’ With enormous effort, Evan sat forward and picked up the phone which was still on the bed. ‘It’s direct dialling here in Bahrain. I forgot. What’s the code for Masqat?’

‘Nine-six-eight,’ replied Khalehla. ‘Dial zero-zero-one first.’

‘I should reverse the goddamned charges,’ said Kendrick, dialling, barely able to see the numbers.

‘When did you last sleep?’ asked Khalehla.

‘Two—three days ago.’

‘When did you eat last?’

‘Can’t remember… How about you? You’ve been pretty busy yourself, Madame Not-Such-Butterfly.’

‘I can’t remember, either… Oh, yes, I did eat. When I left the el Shari el Mish kwayis I stopped at that awful bakery in the square and got some orange baklava. More to find out who was there than anything—’

Evan held up his hand; the sultan’s buried private line was ringing.

‘Iwah?’

‘Ahmat, it’s Kendrick.’

‘I’m relieved!’

‘I’m pissed off.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’

‘Her? Who?’

Evan handed the phone to a startled Khalehla.

‘It’s me, Ahmat,’ she said, embarrassed. Eight seconds later, during which the voice of the perplexed and angry young sultan could be heard across the room, Khalehla continued. ‘It was either this or having the press learn that an American congressman, armed and with fifty thousand dollars on him, had flown into Bahrain without going through customs. How long would it be before it was learned that he flew in on a plane ordered by the royal house of Oman? And how soon after that would there be speculation about his mission in Masqat?… I used your name with a brother of the Emir I’ve known for years and he arranged a place for us… Thank you, Ahmat. Here he is.’

Kendrick took the phone. ‘She’s a biscuit, my old-young friend, but I suppose I’m better off here than where I might be. Just don’t give me any more surprises, okay?… Why are you so quiet?… Forget it, here’s the schedule and, remember, no interference unless I ask for it! I’ve got our boy from the embassy at the Aradous Hotel; and the MacDonald situation, which I assume you know about—’ Khalehla nodded, and Evan continued rapidly, ‘I gather you do. He’s being monitored at the Tylos; we’ll be given a list of the calls he’s been making when he stops making them. Incidentally, they’re both armed.’ Exhausted, Kendrick then described the specifics of the meeting ground as they had been relayed to the agents of the Mahdi. ‘We only need one, Ahmat, one man who can lead us to him. I’ll personally turn the rack until we get the information because I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

Kendrick hung up the phone and fell back on to the pillows.

‘You need food,’ said Khalehla.

‘Send out for Chinese,’ said Evan. ‘You’ve got the fifty thousand, not me.’

‘I’ll get the kitchen to prepare you something.’

‘Me?’ His lids half closed, Kendrick looked at the olive-skinned woman in the ridiculously rococo gold-rimmed chair. The whites of her dark brown eyes were bloodshot, the sockets blue from exhaustion, the lines of her striking face far more pronounced than her age called for. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t matter. You do.’

‘You’re about to fall out of that Lilliputian throne of yours, Queen Mother.’

‘I’ll handle it, thank you,’ said Khalehla, sitting upright, blinking in defiance.

‘Since you won’t give me my watch, what time is it?’

‘Ten minutes past four.’

‘Everything’s in place,’ said Evan, swinging his legs out on to the floor under the sheet, ‘and I’m sure this garishly-civilized establishment can accommodate a wake-up call. “Rest is a weapon,” I read that once. Battles have been won and lost more through sleep and the lack of sleep than firepower… If you’ll modestly look away, I’ll grab a towel from what I assume is the largest bathroom in Bahrain over there, and find myself another bed.’

‘We can’t leave this room except to leave the house.’

‘Why not?’

‘Those are the arrangements. The Emir doesn’t care for his cousin’s young wife; therefore, the defilement caused by your person is restricted to her quarters. There are guards outside to enforce the order.’

‘I don’t believe this!’

‘I didn’t make up the rules, I simply got you a place to stay.’

His eyes closing, Kendrick rolled back on the bed and over to the far side, holding up the sheet to negotiate the distance. ‘All right, Miss Cairo. Unless you want to keep slipping off that silly-looking couch or fall flat on your face on the floor, here’s your siesta pad. Before you relent, two things: Don’t snore, and make sure I’m up by eight-thirty.’

Twenty agonizing minutes later, unable to keep her eyes open and having fallen off the chaise-lounge twice, Khalehla crept into the bed.

The incredible happened, incredible because neither expected it, nor was it sought, nor had either remotely considered the possibility. Two frightened, exhausted people felt each other’s presence and, more asleep than awake, drew closer, at first touching, then slowly, haltingly, reaching, finally holding, grasping at each other; swollen, parted lips seeking, searching, desperately needing the moist contact that promised release from their fears. They made love in a burst of frenzy—not as strangers imitating animals, but as a man and a woman who had communicated, and somehow knew that there had to be a touch of warmth, of comfort, in a world gone mad.

‘I suppose I should say I’m sorry,’ said Evan, his head on the pillows, his chest heaving as if he were swallowing his last breaths of air.

‘Please don’t,’ said Khalehla quietly. ‘I’m not sorry. Sometimes… sometimes we all need to be reminded that we’re part of the human race. Weren’t those your words?’

‘In a different context, I think.’

‘Not really. Not when you really think about it… Go to sleep, Evan Kendrick. I won’t say your name again.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Go to sleep.’

Three hours later, nearly to the minute, Khalehla got out of the bed, picked up her clothes from the white carpet and, glancing at the unconscious American, quietly dressed. She wrote a note on a sheet of royal stationery and placed it on the bedside table next to the phone. She then went to the dressing table, opened a drawer and removed Kendrick’s possessions, including the gun, the knife, the watch and his money belt. She put everything on the floor by the bed except the half-used pack of American cigarettes, which she crushed and shoved into her pocket. She crossed to the door and silently let herself out.

‘Ismah!’ she whispered to the uniformed Bahrainian guard, telling him in a single word to heed her orders. ‘He is to be awakened at precisely eight-thirty. I myself will contact this royal house to see that it is done. Do you understand?”

‘Iwah, iwah!’ replied the guard, stiff-necked and nodding his head in obedience.

‘There may be a phone call for him, asking for “the visitor”. It’s to be intercepted, the information written down, placed in an envelope and pushed under the door. I’ll clear it with the authorities. They’re just names and telephone numbers of people doing business with his firm. Understood?’

‘Iwah, iwah!’

‘Good.’ Khalehla gently, pointedly placed Bahrainian diners worth fifty American dollars into the guard’s pocket. He was hers for a lifetime, or at least for five hours. She walked down the ornate curved staircase to the enormous foyer and the carved front door, which was opened by another guard bowing obsequiously. She went out on the bustling pavement, where robes and dark business suits rushed in both directions, and looked for a public telephone. She saw one on the corner and moved quickly towards it.

‘This call will be accepted, I assure you, operator,’ said Khalehla, having given the numbers she had been instructed to give in an extreme emergency.

‘Yes?’ The voice five thousand miles away was harsh, abrupt.

‘My name is Khalehla. You’re the one I was to reach, I believe.’

‘No one else. The operator said Bahrain. Do you confirm it?’

‘Yes. He’s here. I’ve been with him for several hours.’

‘What’s going down?’

‘There’s a meeting between eleven-thirty and midnight near the Juma Mosque and the Al Halifax Road. I should be there, sir. He’s not equipped; he can’t handle it.’

‘No way, lady!’

‘He’s a child where these people are concerned! I can help!’

‘You can also involve us, which is out of the question and you know it as well as I do! Now, get out of there!’

‘I thought you’d say that… sir. But may I please explain what I consider to be the negative odds of the equation in this particular operation?’