‘Goddamn it, Kendrick! Where the hell are you?’
That voice was no hallucination! Nor were the pounding footsteps on the narrow staircase! And other footsteps! Jesus Christ, was he already dead? ‘Manny…? Manny?’ he screamed.
‘Here it is! This is the room! Break it down, musclehead!’
The door of the small room crashed open like a deafening crack of thunder.
‘Goddamn, boy!’ cried Emmanuel Weingrass, seeing Kendrick stagger up from his cell cot. ‘Is this any way for a respectable congressman to behave? I thought I taught you better!’
Tears in their eyes, father and son embraced.
They were all in Hassan’s Westernized living room on the outskirts of the city. Ben-Ami had monopolized the telephone since Weingrass relinquished it after a lengthy call to Masqat and a spirited conversation with the young sultan, Ahmat. Fifteen feet away, around the large dining room table, sat seven officials representing the governments of Bahrain, Oman, France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. As agreed, there was no representative from Washington, but there was nothing to fear in terms of America’s clandestine interests where a certain congressman was concerned. Emmanuel Weingrass was at that table, sitting between the Israeli and the man from the PLO.
Evan was next to the wounded Yaakov, both in armchairs beside each other, a courtesy for the two most in pain. Code Blue spoke. ‘I listened to your words at the Aradous,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve been thinking about them.’
‘That’s all I ask you to do.’
‘It’s hard, Kendrick. We’ve been through so much, not me, of course, but our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers—’
‘And generations before them,’ added Evan. ‘No one with a grain of intelligence or sensitivity denies it. But in a way, so have they. The Palestinians weren’t responsible for the pogroms or the Holocaust, but because the free world was filled with guilt—as it damn well should have been—they became the new victims without knowing why.’
‘I know.’ Yaakov nodded his head slowly. ‘I’ve heard the zealots in the West Bank and the Gaza. I’ve listened to the Meir Kahanes and they frighten me so—’
‘Frighten you?’
‘Of course. They use the words that were used against us, for, as you say, generations… Yet still, they kill! They killed my two brothers and so many countless others!’
‘It’s got to stop sometime. It’s all such a terrible waste.’
‘I have to think.’
‘It’s a beginning.’
The men around the dining room table abruptly rose from their chairs. They nodded to one another and, one by one, walked through the living room to the front door and out to their staff cars without acknowledging the presence of anyone else in the house. The host, Hassan, came through the archway and addressed his last guests. At first it was difficult to hear his words, as Emmanuel Weingrass was doubled up with a coughing seizure in the dining room. Evan started to rise. Yaakov, shaking his head, gripped Kendrick’s arm. Evan understood; he nodded and sat back.
‘The American Embassy in Masqat will be relieved in three hours, the terrorists granted safe escort to a ship on the waterfront provided by Sahibe al Farrahkhaliffe.’
‘What happens to him? asked Kendrick angrily.
‘In this room, and only in this room, will that answer be given. I am instructed by the Royal House to inform you that it is to go no further. Is that understood and accepted?’
All heads nodded.
‘Sahibe al Farrahkhaliffe, known to you as the Mahdi, will be executed without trial or sentence, for his crimes against humanity are so outrageous they do not deserve the dignity of jurisprudence. As the Americans say, we’ll do it “our way”.’
‘May I speak?’ said Ben-Ami.
‘Of course,’ answered Hassan.
‘Arrangements have been made for me and my colleagues to be flown back to Israel. Since none of us has passports or papers, a special plane and procedures have been provided by the Emir. We must be at the airport concourse within the hour. Forgive us for our abrupt departure. Come along, gentlemen.’
‘Forgive us,’ said Hassan, nodding. ‘For not having the wherewithal to thank you.’
‘Have you got any whisky?’ asked code Red.
‘Anything you wish.’
‘Anything you can part with. It’s a long, terrible trip back and I hate flying. It frightens me.’
Evan Kendrick and Emmanuel Weingrass sat next to each other in the armchairs in Hassan’s living room. They waited for their instructions from a harried, bewildered American ambassador, who was permitted to make contact only by telephone. It was as though the two old friends had never been apart—the oft-times bewildered student and the strident teacher. Yet the student was the leader, the shaker; and the teacher understood.
‘Ahmat must be up in space with relief,’ said Evan, drinking brandy.
‘A couple of things are keeping him grounded.’
‘Oh?’
‘Seems there’s a group that wanted to get rid of him, send him back to the States because they thought he was too young and inexperienced to handle things. He called them his arrogant merchant princes. He’s bringing them to the palace to straighten them out.’
‘That’s one item. What else?’
‘There’s another bunch who wanted to take things in their own hands, blow up the embassy if they had to, anything to get their country back. They’re machine-gun nuts; they’re also the ones who were recruited by Cons Op to get you out of the airport.’
‘What’s he going to do about them?’
‘Not a hell of a lot unless you want your name shouted from the minarets. If he calls them in, they’ll scream State Department connections and all the crazies in the Middle East will have another cause.’
‘Ahmat knows better. Let them alone.’
‘There’s a last item and he’s got to do it for himself. He’s got to blow that boat out of the water, and kill every one of those filthy bastards.’
‘No, Manny, that’s not the way. The killing will just go on and on—’
‘Wrong!’ shouted Weingrass. ‘You’re wrong! Examples must be made over and over again until they all learn the price they have to pay!’ Suddenly the old architect was seized by a prolonged, echoing, rattling cough that came from the deepest, rawest cavities of his chest. His face reddened and the veins in his neck and forehead were blue and distended.
Evan gripped his old friend’s shoulder to steady him. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ he said as the coughing subsided. ‘I want you to come back with me, Manny.’
‘Because of this? Weingrass shook his head defensively. ‘It’s just a chest cold. Lousy weather in France, that’s all.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ lied Kendrick, he hoped convincingly. ‘I need you.’
‘What for?’
‘I may be going into several projects and I want your advice.’ It was another lie, a weaker one, so he added quickly, ‘Also I want to completely redesign my house.’
‘I thought you just built it.’
‘I was involved with other things and wasn’t paying attention. It’s terrible; I can’t see half the things I was supposed to see, the mountains and the lakes.’
‘You never were any damned good reading exterior schematics.’
‘I need you. Please.’
‘I have business in Paris. I’ve got to send out money. I gave my word.’
‘Send mine.’
‘Like a million?’
‘Ten, if you like. I’m here and not in some shark’s stomach… I’m not going to beg you, Manny, but please, I really do need you.’
‘Well, maybe for a week or two,’ said the irascible old man. ‘They need me in Paris, too, you know.’
‘Gross profits will drop all over the city, I know that,’ replied Evan softly, relieved.
‘What?’
Fortunately the telephone rang, preventing Kendrick from having to repeat his statement. Their instructions had arrived.
I’m the man you never met, never spoke to,’ said Evan into the pay phone at Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia. ‘I’m heading out to the white water and the mountains where I’ve been for the past five days. Is that understood?’
‘Understood,’ answered Frank Swann, deputy director of the State Department’s Consular Operations. ‘I won’t even try to thank you.’
‘Don’t.’
‘I can’t. I don’t even know your name.’
Ultra Maximum Secure
No Existing Intercepts
Proceed
The figure sat hunched over the keyboard, his eyes alive, his mind alert, though his body was racked with exhaustion. He kept breathing deeply as if each breath would keep his brain functioning. He had not slept for nearly forty-eight hours, waiting for developments out of Bahrain. There had been a blackout, a suspension of communications… silence. The small circle of need-to-know personnel at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency may now themselves be breathing deeply, he considered, but not before. Instead, they had been holding their collective breath. Bahrain represented the irreversible, hard edge of finality, the ending unclear. Not any longer. It was over, the subject airborne. He had won. The figure proceeded to type.