The guard fell to the floor, unconscious, and again without really thinking, Evan sat down at the desk and ate faster than he had ever eaten in his life. Twelve minutes later, the soldier was bound and gagged on the bed as Kendrick studied himself in front of a closet mirror. The creased red and blue uniform might have been improved by the experienced fingers of a tailor, but withal and in the shadows of the evening streets, it was acceptable.
He ransacked the row of cupboards until he found a plastic shopping bag and stuffed his Masqat clothing into it. He looked at the telephone. He knew he would not use that phone, could not use it. If he survived the street outside, he would call Azra from another.
His jacket off, the shoulder holster in place, Azra angrily paced the room at the Aradous Hotel consumed by thoughts of betrayal. Where was Amal Bahrudi— the man with blue eyes who called himself Bahrudi? Was he in reality someone else, someone the foolish, bloated Englishman called ‘Kendrick’? Was everything a trap, a trap to capture a member of Masqat’s organization council, a trap to take the terrorist known as the Arabic Blue?… Terrorist? How typical of the Zionist killers from the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Haganah! How easily they erase the massacres of ‘Jepthah’ and Deir Yasin, to say nothing of their surrogate executioners at Sabra and Shatila! They steal a homeland and sell what is not theirs to sell, and kill a child for carrying the Palestinian flag—’an accident of excess’, they call it—and yet we are the terrorists!… If the Aradous Hotel was a trap, he could not remain caged in the room; yet if it was not a trap, he had to be where he could be contacted. The Mahdi was everything, his summons a command, for he gave them the means for hope, for spreading their message of legitimacy. When would the world understand them? When would the Mahdis of the world be irrelevant?
The telephone rang and Azra raced to it. ‘Yes?’
‘I was delayed but I’m on my way. They found me; I was nearly killed at the airport but I escaped. They may even have traced you by now.’
‘What?’
‘Leaks in the system. Get out, but don’t go through the lobby. There’s a staircase designed for a fire exit. It’s at the south end of the hallway, I think. North or south, one or the other. Use it and go through the restaurant’s kitchen to the employees’ exit. You’ll come out on the Wadi Al Ahd. Walk across the road; I’ll pick you up.’
‘You are you, Amal Bahrudi? I can trust you?’
‘Neither of us has a choice, do we?’
‘That is not an answer.’
I’m not your enemy,’ lied Evan Kendrick. ‘We’ll never be friends but I’m not your enemy. I can’t afford it. And you’re wasting time, poet, part of which is mine. I’ll be there in five minutes. Hurry!’
‘I go—’
‘Be careful.’
Azra hung up the phone and went to his weapons which he had cleaned repeatedly and placed in a neat row on the bureau. He took the small Heckler and Koch P9S automatic, knelt down, pulling up his left trouser leg, and inserted the weapon in the criss-crossing calf straps that rested below the back of his knee. Standing up he removed the larger, more powerful Mauser Parabellum pistol and shoved it into his shoulder holster, this followed by the sheathed hunting knife resting alongside the gun. He walked to a chair where he had thrown the coat of his newly purchased suit, put on the jacket and crossed to the door, rapidly letting himself out into the corridor.
Nothing would have seemed odd to him were it not for his concentration on the whereabouts of the staircase and his desire to save time—time now measured in minutes and segments of minutes. He started to his right, to the south end of the hallway, his eyes only partially aware of a door being closed, not an open door but one barely ajar. Meaningless: a careless guest; a Western woman carrying too many shopping boxes. Then, unable to see an exit sign for a staircase, he turned quickly to check the other end, the north end of the hallway. A second door, this one open no more than two inches, was closed swiftly, silently. The first was now no longer meaningless, for surely the second was not. They had found him! His room was being watched. By whom? Who were they? Azra continued walking, now to the north end of the corridor, but the instant he passed the second door he pivoted against the wall, reached inside his jacket for the long-bladed hunting knife, and waited. In seconds the door opened; he spun around the frame instantly facing a man he knew was his enemy, a deeply tanned, muscular man near his own age—desert training was written all over him, an Israeli commando! Instead of a weapon the startled Jew held a radio in his hand; he was unarmed!
Azra thrust the knife directly forward towards the Israeli’s throat. In a lightning move the blade was deflected; the terrorist then arced it down, slicing into the Hebrew’s wrist; the radio fell to the carpeted floor as Azra kicked the door shut; the automatic lock clicked.
Gripping his wrist, the Israeli lashed out his right foot, expertly catching the Palestinian’s left kneecap. Azra stumbled; another steel toe caught him in the side of his neck, then still another crashed into his ribs. But the angle was right; the Israeli was off balance! The terrorist lunged, the knife an extension of his arm as he sent it directly into the commando’s stomach. Blood erupted, covering Azra’s face, as the Israeli, code name Orange of the Masada Brigade, fell back on the floor.
The Palestinian struggled to get up, sharp bolts of pain surging through his ribs and his knee, the tendons in his neck nearly paralysed. Suddenly, without a scratch or a footstep, the door crashed open, the hotel lock blown out of its mount. The second commando, younger, his thick bare arms bulging in tension, his furious eyes surveying the scene in front of him, whipped his hand beyond his right hip for a holstered weapon. Azra hurled himself against the Israeli, smashing the commando into the door slamming it shut. Code Blue’s gun spiralled across the floor, freeing his right hand to intercept the Palestinian’s arm as it slashed down with the blood-streaked blade of the knife. The Israeli hammered his knee up into the terrorist’s rib cage as he swung the gripped arm clockwise, forcing Azra towards the floor. Still the Palestinian would not release the knife! Both men parted, crouching, staring at each other, contempt and hatred in both pairs of eyes.
‘You want to kill Jews, try to kill me, pig!’ cried Yaakov.
‘Why not?’ replied Azra, thrusting his knife forward to draw out the Israeli. ‘You kill Arabs! You killed my mother and father as if you’d pulled the trigger yourself!’
‘You killed my two brothers on the Sidon patrols!’
‘I may have! I hope so! I was there!’
‘You are Azra!’
Like two crazed animals the young men flung themselves at each other with violence incarnate, the taking of life—hated life—their only reason for being on earth. Blood burst out of punctured flesh as ligaments were torn and bones broken amid throated cries of vengeance and loathing. Finally it happened, the ending as volcanic as the initial eruption; sheer, brutal strength was the victor.
The knife was lodged in the terrorist’s throat, reversed and forced to its mark by the commando from the Masada Brigade.
Exhausted and drenched in blood, Yaakov pushed himself off the body of his enemy. He looked over at his slain comrade, code Orange, and closed his eyes. ‘Shalom,’ he whispered. ‘Find the peace we all seek, my friend.’
There was no time for mourning, he thought, as his eyes flashed open. The body of his comrade, as well as that of his enemy, had to be moved. He had to be at the source for what came next; he had to reach the others. The killer Azra was dead! They could now fly back to Masqat, they had to. To his father! In pain, Blue limped to the bed and yanked back the bedspread, revealing his dead comrade’s Uzi machine pistol. He picked it up, awkwardly strapped it over his shoulder, and went to the door to check the hallway. His father!
In the far shadows of the Wadi Al Ahd, Kendrick knew he could not wait any longer, nor could he risk using a telephone. Conversely, he could not remain in the foliage opposite the Aradous and do nothing!. Time was winding down and the contact from the Mahdi expected to find the puppet Azra, newly crowned prince of terrorists, at the rendezvous. It was so clear now, he realized. He had been found out, either through the events at the airport or through a leak in Masqat—the panicked men from the past he had talked to, men who, unlike Mustapha, refused to see him and might have betrayed him for their own safety, as surely as one of them had killed Musty for the same reason. We cannot be involved! It’s madness. Our families are dead! Our children raped, disfigured… dead!