‘It’s G,’ said code Grey. ‘How bad are you?’
‘Cuts, mainly. Some loss of blood. I’ll make it.’
‘Then you agree that until you do, I take over?’
That’s the line.’
‘I wanted to hear it from you.’
‘You’ve heard it.’
‘I’ve got to hear something else. With the pig eliminated do you want us to abort and head back to Masqat? I can force it if your answer’s yes.’
Yaakov stared at the ceiling, the conflicts raging inside him, the scathing words of the American still scalding his ears. ‘No,’ he said haltingly. ‘He came too far, he risks too much. Stay with him.’
‘About W. I’d like to leave him behind. With you, perhaps—’
‘He’d never permit it. That’s his “son” out there, remember?’
‘You’re right, forget it. I might add he’s impossible.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know—’
‘I will,’ interrupted code Grey. ‘The subject dropped the uniform and has just passed us across the street. W spotted him. He’s walking like a dead man.’
‘He probably is.’
‘Out.’
Kendrick changed his mind and his route to the Juma. Instinct told him to stay with crowds on his way to the mosque. After he turned north on the wide Bab Al Bahrain, he would head right at the huge Bab Al Square into the Al Khalifa Road. Thoughts bombarded him, but they were scattered, unconnected, unclear. He was walking into a labyrinth, he knew that, but he also knew that within that maze there would be a man or men, watching, waiting for the dead Azra to appear. That was his only advantage, but it was considerable. He knew who and what they were looking for, but they did not know him. He would circle the rendezvous like an earthbound hawk until he saw someone, the right kind of someone, who understood he could lose his life if he failed to bring the crown prince of terrorists to the Mahdi. That man would betray himself, perhaps even stop people to stare into their faces, anxiety growing with each passing minute. Evan would find that someone and isolate him—take him and break him… Or was he deluding himself, his obsession blinding him? It did not matter any longer, nothing mattered, only one step after another on the hard pavement, weaving his way through the night crowds of Bahrain.
The crowds. He sensed it. Men were crowding around him. A hand touched his shoulder! He spun around and lashed out his arm to break the grip. And suddenly he felt the sharp point of a needle entering his flesh somewhere near the base of his spine. Then there was darkness. Complete.
The telephone jarred Yaakov awake; he grabbed it. ‘Yes?’
‘They’ve got the American!’ said code Grey. ‘More to the point, they exist!’
‘Where did it happen? How?’
‘That doesn’t matter; I don’t know the streets anyway. What matters is we know where they’ve taken him!’
‘You what? How? And don’t tell me that doesn’t matter!”
‘Weingrass did it. Damn, it was Weingrass. He knew he couldn’t take it any longer on foot so he gave a delirious Arab ten thousand dollars for his broken-down taxi! That al harmmee will be drunk for six months! We piled in and followed the subject and saw the whole thing happen. Damn, it was Weingrass!’
‘Control your homicidal tendencies,’ ordered Yaakov with an uncontrollable smile that vanished quickly. ‘Where is the subject—shit!—Kendrick being held?’
‘In a building called the Sahalhuddin on Tujjar Road—’
‘Who owns it?’
‘Give us time, Blue. Give Weingrass time. He’s calling in every debt that’s owed him in Bahrain, and I’d hate to think what the Morals Commission in Jerusalem would say if we’re tied in with him.’
‘Answer me!’
‘Apparently six firms occupy the complex. It’s a matter of narrowing them down—’
‘Someone come and get me,’ commanded Yaakov.
‘So you’ve found the Mahdi, Congressman,’ said the dark-skinned Arab in a pure white robe and a white silk headdress with a cluster of sapphires on the crown. They were in a large room with a domed ceiling covered with mosaic tiles; the windows were high and narrow, the furniture sparse and all in dark burnished wood, the huge ebony desk more like an altar or a throne than a functional work surface. There was a mosquelike quality to the room, like the chambers of some high priest of a strange but powerful order in a land removed from the rest of the world. ‘Are you satisfied now?’ continued the Mahdi from behind the desk. ‘Or possibly disappointed to find that I am a man like you—no, not like you or anyone else—but still a man.’
‘You’re a killer, you son of a bitch! Evan lurched from the thick, straight-backed chair only to be grabbed by two flanking guards and thrown back. ‘You murdered seventy-eight innocent people—men, women and children screaming as the building collapsed on them! You’re filth!’
‘It was the start of a war, Kendrick. All wars have casualties not restricted to combatants. I submit that I won that very important battle—you disappeared for four years and during those years I made extraordinary progress, progress I might not have made with you here. Or with that abominable Jew, Weingrass, and his flatulent mouth.’
‘Manny…? He kept talking about you, warning us!’
‘I silence such mouths with a terribly swift sword! You may interpret that as a bullet in their heads… But when I heard about you, I knew you’d come back because of that first battle five years ago. You led me, as they say, a merry chase until nine hours ago, Amal Bahrudi.’
‘Oh?’
‘The Soviets are not without men who prefer to be on additional payrolls. Bahrudi, the Euro-Arab, was killed several days ago in East Berlin… Kendrick’s name surfaces; a dead Arab with blue eyes and pronounced Occidental features is suddenly in Masqat—the equation was imaginative in the extreme, almost unbelievable, but it balanced. You must have had help, you’re not that experienced in these matters.’
Evan stared at the striking face with the high cheekbones and the fired eyes that gazed steadily back at him. ‘Your eyes,’ said Kendrick, shaking his head, pushing away the last effects of the drug administered to him in the street. ‘That flat mask of a face. I’ve seen you before.’
‘Of course you have, Evan. Think,’ The Mahdi slowly removed his ghotra, revealing a head of tightly ringleted black hair salted with eruptions of grey. The high, smooth forehead was now emphasized by the dark, arched eyebrows; it was the face of a man easily given to obsession, instantly summoning it for whatever purpose it served. ‘Do you find me in an Iraqi tent? Or perhaps on a podium in a certain Midwest armoury?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ whispered Kendrick, the images coming into focus. ‘You came to see us in Basrah seven or eight years ago and told us you’d make us rich if we turned down the job. You said there were plans to break Iran, break the Shah, and you didn’t want any updated airfields in Iraq.’
‘It happened. A true Islamic society.’
‘Bullshit! You must broker their oil fields by now. And you’re as Islamic as my Scots grandfather. You’re from Chicago—that’s the Midwest armoury—and you were thrown out of Chicago twenty years ago because even your own black constituency—which you bled dry—couldn’t take your screaming, fascist crap! You took their millions and came over here to spread your garbage and make millions more. My God, Weingrass knew who the hell you were and he told you to shove it! He said you were slime—two-bit slime, if I remember correctly—and if you didn’t get the hell out of that tent in Basrah, he’d really lose his temper and throw bleach in your face so he could say he only shot a white Nazi!’
‘Weingrass is—or was—a Jew,’ said the Mahdi calmly. ‘He vilified me because the greatness he expected eluded him, but it had started to flower for me. The Jews hate success in anyone but their own kind. It’s why they are the agitators of the world—’
‘Who the hell are you kidding? He called you one rotten Shvartzeh and it had nothing to do with whites or blacks or anything else! You’re pus and hate, Al Falfa, or whatever you called yourself, and the colour of your skin is irrelevant… After Riyadh—that very important battle—how many others did you kill, did you slaughter?
‘Only what was called for in our holy war to maintain the purity of race, culture and belief in this part of the world.’ The lips of the Mahdi from Chicago, Illinois, formed a slow, cold smile.
‘You goddamned fucking hypocrite!’ shouted Kendrick. Unable to control himself, Evan again lunged out of the chair, his hands like two claws flying across the desk towards the robes of the killer-manipulator. Other hands reached him before he could touch the Mahdi; he was hurled to the floor, kicked simultaneously in his stomach and his spine. Coughing, he tried to get up; while on his knees the guard on the left gripped his hair, yanking back his head as the man on the right held a knife laterally across his throat.