Instead, a common theme ran through all the articles. Everything Arab was tainted with the brush of inhuman brutality and terrorism. The very word Arab was synonymous with ruthlessness and barbarism, not a vestige of decency allowed to a whole people. The longer Evan studied the newspapers, the angrier he became. Suddenly, in a burst of fury, he swept them all off the bed.
Why?
Who?
And then he felt a hollow, terrible pain in his chest Ahmat! Oh, my God, what had he done? Would the young sultan understand, could he understand? By omission—by silence—the American media had condemned the entire country of Oman, leaving to insidious speculation its Arab impotence in the face of terrorists, or worse, its Arab complicity in the wanton, savage killing of American citizens.
He had to call his young friend, reach him and tell him that he had no control over what had happened Kendrick sat on the edge of the bed, he grabbed the telephone while reaching into his trousers pocket for his wallet, balancing the phone under his chin as he extracted his credit card. Not remembering the sequence of numbers to reach Masqat, he dialled 0 for an operator. Suddenly the dial tone disappeared and for a moment he panicked, his eyes wide, glancing around at the windows.
‘Yeah, twenty-three’ came the hoarse male voice over the line.
‘I was trying to call the operator.’
‘You dial even an area code you get the board here.’
‘I . . . I have to make an overseas call,’ stammered Evan, bewildered.
‘Not on this phone you don’t.’
‘On a credit card. How do I get an operator—I’m charging it to my credit card number.’
‘I’ll listen in till I hear you give the number and it’s accepted for real, understand?’
He did not understand. Was it a trap? Had he been traced to a run-down motel in Woodbridge, Virginia? ‘I don’t really think that’s acceptable,’ he said haltingly. ‘It’s a private communication.’
‘Fancy that,’ replied the voice derisively. ‘Then go find yourself a pay phone. There’s one at the diner about five miles down the road. Ta-ta, asshole, I’ve been stuck enough—’
‘Wait a minute! All right, stay on the line. But when the operator clears it, I want to hear you click off, okay?’
‘Well, actually, I was gonna call Louella Parsons.’
‘Who?’
‘Forget it, asshole. I’m dialling. People who stay all day are either sex freaks or shooting up.’
Somewhere in the far reaches of the Persian Gulf an English-speaking, Arabic-accented operator volunteered that there was no exchange in Masqat, Oman, with the prefix 555. ‘Dial it, please!’ insisted Evan, adding a more plaintive ‘Please.’
Eight rings passed until he heard Ahmat’s harried voice. ‘Iwah?’
‘It’s Evan, Ahmat,’ said Kendrick in English. ‘I have to talk to you—’
‘Talk to me?’ exploded the young sultan. ‘You’ve got the balls to call me, you bastard?’
‘You know, then? About—what they’re saying about me.’
‘Know? One of the nicer things about being a rich kid is that I’ve got dishes on the roof that pick up whatever I want from wherever I want! I’ve even got an edge on you, ya Shaikh. Have you seen the reports from over here and the Middle East? From Bahrain and Riyadh, from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?’
‘Obviously not. I’ve only seen these—’
‘They’re all the same garbage, a nice pile for you to sit on! Do well in Washington, just don’t come back here.’
‘But I want to come back. I am coming back!’
‘Don’t, not to this part of the world. We can read and we can hear and we watch television. You did it all by yourself! You stuck it to the Arabs’. Get out of my memory, you son of a bitch!’
‘Ahmat!’
‘Out, Evan! I would never have believed it of you. Do you become powerful in Washington by calling us all animals and terrorists? Is that the only way?’
‘I never did that, I never said it!’
‘Your world did! The way it keeps saying it again and again and again, until it’s pretty fucking obvious you want us all in chains! And the latest goddamned scenario is yours!’
‘No!’ protested Kendrick, shouting. ‘Not mine!’
‘Read your press. Watch it!’
‘That’s the press, not you and me!’
‘You are you—one more arrogant bastard within your blind, holier-than-thou Judaeo-Christian hypocrisies—and I am me, an Islamic Arab. And you won’t spit on me any longer!’
‘I never would, never could—’
‘Nor on my brothers, whose lands you decreed should be stolen from them, forcing whole villages to abandon their homes and their jobs and their insignificantly small businesses—small and insignificant but theirs for generations!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Ahmat, you’re sounding like one of them!’
‘No kidding?’ said the young sultan, both anger and sarcasm in his words. ‘By “them” I assume you mean like a kid from one of those thousands upon thousands of families marched under guns into camps fit for pigs. For pigs, not families! Not for mothers and fathers and children!… Good gracious, Mr. All-knowing, eminently fair American. If I sound like one of them, gosh, I’m sorry! And I’ll tell you what else I’m sorry about: I got here so late. I understand so much more today than I did yesterday.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘I repeat. Read your press, watch your television, listen to your radio. Are you superior people getting ready to nuke all the dirty Arabs so you won’t have to contend with us any more? Or are you going to leave it to your cool pals in Israel who tell you what to do anyway? You’ll simply give them the bombs.’
‘Now, just hold it!’ cried Kendrick. ‘Those Israelis saved my life!’
‘You’re damned right they did, but you were incidental! You were just a bridge to what they really flew in here for.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I might as well tell you because no one else will, nobody’s going to print that. They didn’t give a shit about you, Mr. Hero. That unit came here to get one man out of the embassy, a Mossad agent, a high-ranking strategist posing as a naturalized American under contract to the State Department.’
‘Oh, my God,’ whispered Evan. ‘Did Weingrass know?’
‘If he did he kept his mouth shut. He forced them to go after you in Bahrain. That’s how they saved your life. It wasn’t planned. They don’t give a goddamn about anyone or anything but themselves. The Jews! Just like you, Mr. Hero.’
‘Damn it, listen to me, Ahmat! I’m not responsible for what’s happened here, for what’s been printed in the papers or what’s on television. It’s the last thing I wanted—’
‘Bullshit!’ broke in the young Harvard alumnus and sultan of Oman. ‘None of it could have been reported without you. I learned things I had no idea about. Who are these intelligence agents of yours running around my country? Who are all those contacts you reached?’
‘Mustapha, for one!’
‘Killed. Who flew you in under cover without apprising me? I run the goddamn place; who has the right? Am I a fucking “aggie” in the game of marbles?’
‘Ahmat, I don’t know about these things. I only knew I had to get there.’
‘And I’m incidental? Wasn’t I to be trusted?… Of course not, I’m an Arab!’
‘Now that’s bullshit. You were being protected.’
‘From what? An American-Israeli cover-up?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop it! I didn’t know anything about a Mossad agent at the embassy until you just told me. If I did I would have told you! And while we’re at it, my sudden young fanatic, I had nothing to do with the refugee camps or marching families into them under guns—’
‘You all did!’ shouted the sultan of Oman. ‘One genocide for another, but we had nothing to do with the other! Out!’
The line went dead. A good man and a good friend who had been instrumental in saving his life was gone from his life. As were his plans to return to a part of the world he dearly loved.
Before he showed himself in public, he had to find out what had happened and who had made it happen and why! He had to start somewhere and that somewhere was the State Department and a man named Frank Swann. A frontal assault on State was, of course, out of the question. The minute he identified himself alarms would go off and insofar as his face was seen repeatedly, ad nauseam, on television and half Washington was searching for him, his every move had to be carefully thought out. First things first: how to reach Swann without Swann or his office knowing it. His office? Evan remembered. A year ago he had walked into Swann’s office and spoken to a secretary, giving her several words in Arabic so as to convey the urgency of his visit. She had disappeared into another office and ten minutes later he and Swann were talking in the underground computer complex. That secretary was not only efficient but also exceedingly protective, as apparently were most secretaries in serpentine Washington. And since that protective secretary was very much aware of one Congressman Kendrick whom she had spoken to a year ago, she just might be receptive to another voice also protective of her boss. It was worth a try; it was also the only thing he could think of. He picked up the phone, dialled the 202 area code for Washington, and waited for the hoarse manager of The Three Bears motel to come on the line.