But there are some committees on Capitol Hill where voices are muted by logic and necessity. These are the small, restricted councils that concentrate on the strategies formed by the various intelligence agencies within the government. And perhaps because the voices are essentially quiet and the members of these committees are examined in depth by stringent security procedures, a certain aura descends over those selected to the select committees. They know things others are not privileged to know; they are different, conceivably a better breed of men and women. There also exists a tacit understanding between the Congress and the media for the latter to restrain themselves in areas concerning these committees; a senator or a congressman is appointed, but his or her appointment does not become a cause celebre. Yet neither is there secrecy; the appointment is made and a basic reason given, both the act and reason stated simply, without embellishment. In the case of the representative from the ninth district of Colorado, one Congressman Evan Kendrick, it was put forth that he was a construction engineer with extensive experience in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf. Since few knew little or anything about the area, and it was accepted that the congressman had been an executive employed somewhere in the Mediterranean years ago, the appointment was considered reasonable and nothing unusual was made of it.
However, editors, commentators and politicians are keenly aware of the nuances of growing recognition, for recognition accompanies power in the District of Columbia. There are committees and then again there are committees. A person appointed to Indian Affairs is not in the same league with another sent to Ways and Means—the first does the minimum to look after a discarded, basically disenfranchised people; the latter explores the methods and procedures to pay for the entire government to stay in business. Nor is Environment on a par with Armed Services—the former’s budgets are continuously, abusively reduced, while the expenditure on weaponry reaches beyond all horizons. The allocation of moneys is the mother’s milk of influence. Yet, simply put, few committees on the Hill can match the nimbus, the quiet mystique, that hovers over those associated with the clandestine world of intelligence. When sudden appointments are made to these select councils, eyes watch, colleagues whisper in cloakrooms, and the media is poised at the ready in front of word processors, microphones and cameras. Usually nothing comes of these preparations and the names fade into comfortable or uncomfortable oblivion. But not always, and had Evan Kendrick been aware of the subtleties, he might have risked telling the crafty Speaker of the House to go to hell.
However, he was not aware, and it would not have made any difference if he had been; the progress of Inver Brass was not to be denied.
It was six-thirty in the morning, a Monday morning, the early sun about to break over the Virginia hills, as Kendrick, naked, plunged into his pool, trusting that ten or twenty laps in the cold October water would remove the cobwebs obscuring his vision and painfully spreading through his temples. Ten hours ago he had been drinking far too many brandies with Emmanuel Weingrass in Colorado while sitting in a ridiculously opulent gazebo, both laughing at the visible streams rushing below the glass floor.
‘Soon you will see whales!’ Manny had exclaimed.
‘Like you promised the kids in that half dried-up river wherever it was.’
‘We had lousy bait. I should have used one of the mothers. That black girl. She was gorgeous!’
‘Her husband was a major, a big major, in the Army Engineers. He might have objected.’
‘Their daughter was a beautiful child… She was killed with all the others.’
‘Oh, Christ, Manny. Why?’
‘It’s time for you to go.’
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘You must! You have a meeting in the morning, already two hours ahead of us.’
‘I can skip it. I’ve skipped one or two others.’
‘One, and at great harm to my well-being. Your jet is waiting at the airfield in Mesa Verde. You’ll be in Washington in four hours.’
As he swam through the water, each length faster than the last, he thought of Oversight’s morning conference, admitting to himself that he was glad Manny had insisted he return to the capital. The subcommittee’s meetings had fascinated him—fascinated him, angered him, astonished him, appalled him, but most of all fascinated him. There were so many things going on in the world that he knew nothing about, both for and against the interests of the United States. But it wasn’t until his third meeting that he understood a recurring error in his colleagues’ approach to the witnesses from the various intelligence branches. The mistake was that they would look for flaws in the witnesses’ arguments for carrying out certain operations when what they should have been questioning were the operations themselves.
It was understandable, for the men who were paraded in front of Oversight to plead their cases—exclusively men, which should have been a clue—were soft-spoken professionals from a violent clandestine world who played down the melodrama associated with that world. They delivered their esoteric jargon quietly, swelling the heads of those listening. It was heady stuff to be a part of that global underground, even in a consulting capacity; it fed the adolescent fantasies of mature adults. There were no Colonel Robert Barrishes among these witnesses; instead, they were a stream of attractive, well-dressed, consistently modest and moderate men who appeared before the subcommittee to explain in coldly professional terms what they could accomplish if moneys were provided, and why it was imperative for the nation’s security that it be done. More often than not the question was: Can you do it? Not whether it was right, or even if it made sense.
These lapses of judgment occurred often enough to disturb the congressman from Colorado who had briefly been part of that savage, violent world the witnesses dealt with. He could not romanticize it; he loathed it. The terrible, breathless fear that was part of the terrifying game of taking and losing human life in shadows belonged to some dark age where life itself was measured solely by survival. One did not live in that kind of world; one endured it with sweat and with hollow pains in the stomach, as Evan had endured his abrupt exposure to it. Yet he knew that world went on; inhabitants of it had saved him from the sharks of Qatar. Nevertheless, during the coming sessions he probed, asking harsher and harsher questions. He understood that his name was being quietly, electrically, emphatically bounced around the halls of Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, even the White House. Who was this agitator, this troublemaker? He did not give a damn; they were legitimate questions and he would ask them. Who the hell was sacrosanct? Who was beyond the laws?
There was a commotion above him, wild gestures and shouts he dimly perceived through the water rushing past his face in the pool. He stopped at mid-length and shook his head while treading water. The intruder was Sabri, but it was a Sabri Hassan he rarely saw. The ever calm middle-aged PhD from Dubai was beside himself, fiercely trying to control his actions and his words, but only barely succeeding.
‘You must leave!’ he shouted as Evan cleared his ears of water.
‘What… what?
‘Oman! Masqat! The story is on all the channels, all the stations! There are even photographs of you dressed as one of us—in Masqat! Both the radio and the television keep interrupting programmes to report the latest developments! It was just released within the past few minutes; newspapers are holding up their late morning editions for further details—’
‘Jesus Christ!’ roared Kendrick, leaping out of the pool as Sabri threw a towel around him.
‘The reporters and the rest of those people will undoubtedly be here in a matter of minutes,’ said the Arab. ‘I took the phone off the hook and Kashi is loading our car—forgive me, the car you most generously provided us—’
‘Forget that stuff!’ yelled Evan, starting towards the house. ‘What’s your wife doing with the car?’
‘Putting in your clothes, enough for several days if necessary. Your own car might be recognized; ours is always in the garage. I assumed you wanted some time to think.’
‘Some time to plan a couple of murders!’ agreed Evan, dashing through the patio door and up the back staircase, Dr Hassan following closely. ‘How the hell did it happen? Goddamn it!’
‘I fear it’s only the beginning, my friend.’
‘What?’ asked Kendrick, racing into the huge master bedroom overlooking the pool and going to his bureau, where he hurriedly opened drawers, whipping out socks, underwear and a shirt.
‘The stations are calling all manner of people for their comments. They’re most laudatory, of course.’
‘What else could they say?’ said Evan, putting on his socks and shorts while Sabri unfolded his laundered shirt and handed it to him. ‘That they were all rooting for their terrorist buddies in Palestine?’ Kendrick put on the shirt and ran to his closet, yanking out a pair of trousers. Sabri’s wife, Kashi, walked through the door.