The Icarus Agenda (19 page)

“Many such notes could be passed as a trap. Why would yours be accepted?”

Kendrick paused; when he answered his voice was low and calm and laced with meaning. “Because it was signed by the Mahdi.”

Azra’s eyes widened. He nodded slowly and held up his hand. “Who
is
?” he asked.

“The envelope was sealed with wax and not to be broken. It was an insult I found hard to accept, but even
I
follow orders from those who pay the freight, if you know what I mean.”

“Those who give us the money to do what we do—”

“If there was a code signifying authenticity, it was for one or all of you on the council to know, not I.”

“Give me the note,” said Azra.

“
Idiot!
” yelled the congressman from Colorado’s Ninth District, exasperated. “When I saw the police closing in on me, I tore it to shreds and scattered it through the Al Kabir! Would you have done
otherwise
?”

The Palestinian remained motionless. “No, obviously not,” he replied. “At any rate we won’t need it. I’ll get us into the embassy. The pipeline, as you call it, is well regulated both inside and out.”

“It’s so well regulated that films are slipped out under the noses of your well-regulated guards. Send word in to your sister. Change them, every one of them, and start a search immediately for the camera. When it’s found, kill the owner and anyone who seems to be a friend. Kill them all.”

“On such surface observation?” protested Azra. “We risk wasting innocent lives, valuable fighters.”

“Let’s not be hypocritical,” laughed Amal Bahrudi. “We have no such hesitations with the enemy. We’re not killing ‘valuable fighters,’ we’re killing innocent people quite properly to make
the world listen, a world that’s blind and deaf to our struggles, our very survival.”

“By your almighty Allah, now
you’re
the one who’s blind and deaf!” spat out Azra. “You believe the Western press; it’s not to be questioned! Of the eleven corpses, four were already dead, including two of the women—one by her own hand, for she was paranoid about rape,
Arabic
rape; the other, a much stronger woman not unlike the marine who attacked Nassir, threw herself on a young imbecile whose only reaction was to fire his weapon. The two men were old and infirm and died of heart failure. It does not absolve us from causing innocent death, but no guns were raised against them. All this was explained by Zaya and no one believed us. They never will!”

“Not that it matters, but what about the others? Seven, I believe.”

“Condemned by our council and rightly so. Intelligence officers building networks against us throughout the Gulf and the Mediterranean, members of the infamous Consular Operations—even two
Arabs
—who sold their souls to sell
us
into oblivion, paid by the Zionists and their American puppets. They deserved death, for they would have seen us all die, but not before we were dishonored, were made caricatures of evil when there is no evil in us—only the desire to live in our own lands—”

“That’s enough,
poet
,” broke in Kendrick, looking over at Yosef and the boy terrorist who longed for the arms of Allah. “There’s no time for your sermons, we have to get out of here.”

“To the embassy,” agreed Azra. “Through the pipeline.”

Kendrick walked back to the Palestinian, approaching him slowly. “To the embassy, yes,” he said. “But not through the pipeline, just to the gates. There you’ll send in the message to your sister spelling everything out for her. With those orders my job is finished here and so is yours—yours at least for a day or two.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the bewildered Blue.

“My instructions are to bring
one
of you to Bahrain as soon as possible, and you’re the one. I was captured and escaped and can’t take any more chances. Not now!”

“Bahrain?”

“To the Mahdi. It will only be for a few hours, but it’s urgent. He has new orders for you, orders he won’t trust to anyone but a member of the council. And you’re a member and we’re both outside, not inside.”

“The airport’s watched,” said Azra firmly. “It’s patrolled by
guards and attack dogs; no one can get in or out except by passing through interrogation. We’d never make it. It’s the same on the waterfront. Every boat is flagged down and searched or blown out of the water if it does not comply.”

“None of that has stopped your people from coming and going through the pipeline. I saw the results in Berlin.”

“But you said ‘urgent,’ and the pipeline is a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour process.”

“Why so long?”

“We travel south only at night and in the uniforms of the Yemeni border garrisons. If we’re stopped, we say we’re patrolling the coastline. We then rendezvous with the fast deepwater boats—supplied by Bahrain, of course.”

“Of course.”
He had been right, thought Evan. The southern coast as far as Ra’s al Hadd and beyond to the Strait of Masirah was open territory, a cruel wasteland of rock-filled shores and inhospitable interiors, heaven-sent for thieves and smugglers and, above all, for terrorists. And what better protection than the uniforms of the border garrisons, those soldiers chosen for both their loyalty and especially their brutality that equaled or bettered that of the international desperadoes given sanctuary in Yemen?
“That’s very good,” continued Amal Bahrudi, his tone professional. “How in Allah’s name did you get hold of the uniforms? I understand they’re unusual—a lighter color, different epaulets, boots designed for desert and water—”

“I had them made,” interrupted Azra, his eyes on the valley below. “In Bahrain, of course. Each is accounted for and locked up when not in use.… You’re right, we must go. That truck will reach the camp in less than two minutes. We’ll talk along the way. Come!”

Yosef had placed the bound injured young terrorist across the road, calming him and giving him quiet but firm instructions. Azra and Kendrick approached; Evan spoke. “We’ll make better time here on the road,” he said. “We’ll stay on it until we see the headlights coming up from the valley.
Hurry
.”

Final words of encouragement given to their fallen colleague, the three fugitives started running up the curving ascent to the flat ground several hundred feet above. The terrain was a combination of dry, scrubby brush weaving over the mostly arid earth and short, gnarled trees encouraged by the night moisture blown in from the sea only to be dwarfed by the windless, blistering heat of day. For as far as their eyes could see in the moon’s dull wash of light, the road was
straight. Breathing hard, his barrel chest heaving, Yosef spoke. “Three or four kilometers north there are more trees, taller trees, much more foliage to hide in.”

“You know that?” asked Kendrick, unpleasantly surprised, thinking he was the only one who knew where they were.

“Not this exact road, perhaps, although there are only a few,” answered the blunt, older terrorist, “but they are the same. From the sands toward the Gulf the earth changes. Everything is greener and there are small hills. Suddenly, one is in Masqat. It happens quickly.”

“Yosef was part of the scouting team under Ahbyahd’s command,” explained Azra. “They came here five days before we captured the embassy.”

“I see. I also see that the entire Black Forest couldn’t help us when the light comes up, and Oman isn’t the Schwarzwald. There’ll be troops and police and helicopters combing every inch of ground. There’s no place for us to hide except Masqat.” Evan directed his next words to the man called Blue. “Certainly you have contacts in the city.”

“Numerous.”

“What does that mean?”

“Between ten and twenty, several highly placed. Those fly in and out, of course.”

“Call them together in Masqat and bring me to them. I’ll choose one.”

“You’ll
choose
one—”

“All I need is one, but it must be the right one. He’ll carry a message for me and I’ll have you in Bahrain in three hours.”

“To the Mahdi?”

“Yes.”

“But you said—you implied—that you don’t know who he is.”

“I don’t.”

“Still, you know how to reach him?”

“No,” answered Kendrick, a sudden hollow pain in his chest. “Another insult but more readily understood. My operations are in Europe, not here. I simply assumed that you knew where to find him in Bahrain.”

“Perhaps it was in the note you destroyed in the Al Kabir, a code—”

“There are
always
emergency procedures!” broke in Evan harshly, trying to control his anxiety.

“Yes, there are,” said Azra thoughtfully. “But none that ever
directly involve the Mahdi. As you must know, his name is spoken in whispers to only a few.”

“I
don’t
know. I told you, I don’t
operate
in this part of the world—which was why I was chosen … obviously.”

“Yes, obviously,” agreed Blue. “You are far away from your base, the unexpected messenger.”

“I don’t
believe
this!” exploded Kendrick. “You receive instructions—no doubt
daily
, don’t you?”

“We do.” Azra looked briefly at Yosef. “But like yourself I am a messenger.”

“
What?
”

“I am a member of the council, and young and strong, and not a woman. But neither am I a leader; my years do not permit it. Nassir, my sister Zaya, and Ahbyahd—they were appointed the leaders of the council. Until Nassir’s death the three of them shared responsibility for the operation. When sealed instructions came, I delivered them but I did not break the seals. Only Zaya and Ahbyahd know how to reach the Mahdi—not personally, of course, but through a series of contacts that lead to him, get word to him.”

“Can you make radio contact with your sister—over a secure frequency or perhaps a sterile telephone? She’d give you the information.”

“Impossible. The enemy’s scanning equipment is too good. We say nothing on the radio or the telephone that we would not say in public; we must assume it’s one and the same.”

“Your people in Masqat!” continued Evan rapidly, emphatically, feeling the beads of perspiration on his hairline. “Could one of them go inside and bring it out?”

“Information concerning the Mahdi, no matter how remote?” asked Azra. “She’d execute the one who sought it.”

“We’ve got to
have
it! I’m to bring you to Bahrain—to
him
—by tonight, and I won’t risk our sources of operating funds in Europe because I’m held responsible for a failure here that isn’t mine!”

“There is only one solution,” said Azra. “The one I spoke of below. We go to the embassy,
into
the embassy.”

“There’s no time for such
complications
!” insisted Kendrick desperately. “I know Bahrain.
I’ll
choose a location and we’ll call one of your people here to get the word inside to your sister. She or Ahbyahd will find a way to reach one of the Mahdi’s contacts. There can’t be any mention of either of us, of course—we’ll have them say an emergency has arisen. That’s
it
, an
emergency
; they’ll know what it means! I’ll fix the meeting ground. A street, a mosque, a section of the piers or the outskirts of the airport. Someone will come. Someone
has
to!”

The lean, muscular young terrorist once more was silent as he studied the face of the man he believed to be his counterpart in far-off Europe. “I ask you, Bahrudi,” he said after the better part of ten seconds. “Would you be so free, so undisciplined, with your financial sources in Berlin? Would Moscow, or the Bulgarian banks in Sofia, or the unseen money in Zagreb tolerate such loose communications?”

“In an emergency they would understand.”

“If you
allowed
such an emergency, they would slit your throat with a shearing knife and replace you!”

“You take care of
your
sources and I’ll take care of mine, Mr. Blue.”

“I will take care of
mine
. Here, now. We go to the embassy!”

The winds from the Gulf of Oman swept over the scrubby grass and the gnarled, dwarfed trees, but they could not prohibit the sound of the persistent two-note siren in the distance coming up from the desert valley.
It was the signal
. Conceal yourselves. Kendrick expected it.

“
Run!
” roared Yosef, grabbing Azra’s shoulder and propelling his superior forward on the road. “Run, my brothers, as you have never run before in your lives!”

“The embassy!” cried the man called Blue. “Before the light comes up!”

For Evan Kendrick, congressman from the Ninth District of Colorado, the nightmare that would live with him the rest of his life was about to begin.

Khalehla gasped. Her eyes had been suddenly drawn to the rearview mirror—a speck of light, an image of black upon darker black,
something
. And then it was there. Far away on the hill above Masqat, a car was following her! There were no headlights, just a dark, moving shadow in the distance. It was rounding a curve on the deserted road that led to the twisting descent into the valley—to the beginning of the sands of Jabal Sham
where the “escape” was to take place. There was only one entrance to and one exit from the desert valley, and her strategy had been to drive off the road out of sight and follow Evan Kendrick and his fellow fugitives on foot once they had broken out of the van. That strategy was now void.

Oh, my God, I can’t be caught! They’ll kill every hostage in the embassy! What have I done? Get out. Get away!

Khalehla spun the wheel; the powerful car swung around on the soft, sandy earth, leaping over ruts on the primitive road, and reversing its direction. She slammed her foot on the accelerator, stabbing it into the floor, and within moments, her headlights on high beam, she passed the sedan now rushing toward her. A figure beside the astonished driver tried to lunge down, concealing his face and body, but it was impossible.

And Khalehla did not believe what she
saw
!

But then she had to. In a sudden moment of utter clarity she saw it was so right, so perfect—so unmistakably perfect.
Tony!
Fumbling, bumbling, inarticulate Anthony MacDonald. The company reject whose position was secure because the firm was owned by his wife’s father but who was nevertheless sent to Cairo, where he could do the least damage. A representative without portfolio, other than hosting dinner parties where he and his equally inept and boring wife invariably got drunk. It was as though a company memorandum had been tattooed on their foreheads:
Not permitted in the U.K. except for obligatory family funerals. Return flight tickets mandatory
. How perfectly ingenious! The overweight, overindulged, underbrained fop in sartorial plumage that could not hide his excesses. The Scarlet Pimpernel could not have matched his cover, and it
was
a cover, Khalehla was convinced of it. In building one for herself she had forced a master to expose his own.