The Icarus Agenda (68 page)

“That’ll add at least ten minutes—”

“I know, but it’s what I want you to do. Go directly to Gee-Gee’s as fast as you can and tell him to call the police—”

“
Manny!
” cried the nurse, interrupting as she tightly gripped the wheel.

“I’m sure it’s nothing at all,” said Weingrass quickly, reassuringly. “Probably just someone whose car broke down or a hiker who’s lost. Nevertheless, it’s better to check these things out, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know
what
to think, but I’m certainly not letting you out of this car!”

“Yes, you will,” disagreed Manny, casually raising the automatic as if studying the trigger housing, no threat at all in his action.

“Good
God
!” yelled the nurse.

“I’m perfectly safe, my dear, because I’m a cautious man to the point of cowardice.… Stop here, please.” The near-panicked woman did as she was told, her frightened eyes shifting rapidly back and forth between the weapon and the old man’s face. “Thank you,” said Weingrass, opening the door, the sound of the wind sudden, powerful. “I’ll probably find our harmless visitor inside having coffee with the girls,” he added, stepping out and closing the door by pressing it shut. Wheels spinning, the Saab raced away. No matter, thought Manny, the gusts of wind covered the sound.

As it also covered whatever sounds he made heading back toward the house, unavoidable sounds, as he stayed out of sight on the border of the road, his feet cracking the fallen branches at the edge of the woods. He was as grateful for the racing dark clouds above in the sky as he was for the dark overcoat; both kept his being seen to a minimum. Five minutes later and several yards deeper into the woods, he stood by a thick tree at midpoint opposite the wall of hedges. He again shielded his face from the wind and, squinting, peered across the road.

They were there! And they were not lost. His disturbing thoughts had been valid. And rather than being lost the intruders were waiting—for something or someone. Both men wore leather jackets and were crouched in front of the hedges talking rapidly to each other, the man on the right constantly, impatiently glancing at his wristwatch. Weingrass did not have to be told what that meant; they were waiting for someone or
more
than someone. Awkwardly, feeling his age physically but not in his imagination, Manny lowered himself to the ground and began prowling around on his hands and knees, not sure what he was looking for but knowing he had to find it, whatever it was.

It was a thick, heavy limb newly blown down by the wind, sap still oozing from the shards where it had been snapped from a larger source in the trunk. It was about forty inches long; it was swingable. Slowly, more awkwardly and painfully, the old man rose to his feet and made his way back to the tree where he had been standing, diagonally across the road from the two intruders no more than fifty feet away.

It was a gamble, but then so was what was left of his life, and the odds were infinitely better than they were at roulette or chemin de fer. The results, too, would be known more quickly, and the gambler in Emmanuel Weingrass was willing to place a decent bet that one of the intruders would stay where he was out of basic common sense. The aged architect moved back in the woods, selecting his position as carefully as if he were refining a final blueprint for the most important client of his life. He was; the client was himself.
Make total use of the natural surroundings
had been axiomatic with him all his professional life; he did not veer from that rule now.

There were two poplars, both wide and about seven feet apart forming an abstract forest gate. He concealed himself behind the trunk on the right, gripped the heavy limb and raised it until it leaned against the bark above his head. The wind careened through the trees, and through the multiple sounds of the forest he opened his mouth and roared a short singsong chant, one-third human, two-thirds animal. He craned his neck and watched.

Between the trunks and the lower foliage, he could see the startled figures across the road. Both men spun around in their crouching positions, the man on the right gripping his companion’s shoulder, apparently—
hopefully
, prayed Manny—issuing orders. He
had
. The man on the left got to his feet, pulled a gun
from inside his jacket, and started for the forest across the road to Mesa Verde.

Everything was timing now. Timing and direction, the brief, seductive sounds leading the quarry into the fatal sea of green as surely as the sirens lured Ulysses. Twice more Weingrass emitted the eerie calls, and then a third that was so pronounced that the intruder rushed forward, slapping branches in front of him, his weapon leveled, his feet digging into the soft earth—toward and finally into the forest gate.

Manny pulled back on the thick, heavy limb and swung it with all his strength down and across into the head of the racing man. The face was shattered, blood spurting out of every feature, the skull a mass of broken bone and cartilage. The man was dead. Breathlessly, Weingrass walked out from behind the trunk and knelt down.

The man was an Arab.

The winds from the mountains continued their assault. Manny pulled the gun from the corpse’s still-warm hand and, even more awkwardly, far more painfully, edged his way back toward the road. The dead intruder’s companion was a wild core of misdirected energy; he kept spinning his head toward the woods, toward the road from Mesa Verde and down at his watch. The only thing he had not done was display a weapon, and that told Weingrass something else. The terrorist—and he
was
a terrorist;
both
were terrorists—was either a rank amateur or a thorough professional, nothing in between.

Feeling the pounding echo in his frail chest, Manny permitted himself a few moments to breathe, but only moments. The opportunity might not come again. He moved north, from tree trunk to tree trunk, until he was sixty feet above the anxious man, who kept glancing south. Again timing; Weingrass walked as fast as he could across the road and stood motionless, watching. The would-be killer was now close to apoplectic; twice he started into the road toward the woods, both times returning to the hedges and crouching, staring at his watch. Manny moved forward, his automatic gripped in his veined right hand. When he was within ten feet of the terrorist, he shouted.

“
Jezzar!
” he roared, calling the man a butcher in Arabic. “If you move, you’re dead!
Fahem?
”

The dark-skinned man spun around, clawing the earth as he rolled into the hedges, loose dirt flying up into the old architect’s face. Through the hurling debris, Weingrass understood why the terrorist had not displayed a weapon; it was on the ground
beside him, inches from his hand. Manny fell to his left on the road as the man grabbed the gun, now lunging backward, enmeshing himself in prickly green web, and fired twice; the reports were barely heard! They were two eerily muted spits in the wind; a silencer was attached to the terrorist’s pistol. The bullets, however, were not silent; one shrieked through the air above Weingrass, the second ricocheted off the cement near his head. Manny raised his automatic and pulled the trigger, the calm of experience, despite the years, steadying his hand. The terrorist screamed through the rushing wind and collapsed forward in the hedges, his eyes wide, a rivulet of blood trickling from the base of his throat.

Hurry up, you decrepit bastard!
cried Weingrass to himself, struggling to his feet.
They were waiting for someone! You want to be a senile ugly duck in a gallery? Your meshugenah head blown off would serve you right. Shush! Every bone is boiling in pain!
Manny lurched toward the body wedged in the hedges. He bent down, pulled the corpse forward, then gripped the man’s feet, and, grimacing, using every iota of strength that was in him, dragged the body across the road and into the woods.

He wanted only to lie on the ground and rest, to let the hammering in his chest subside and swallow air, but he knew he could not do that. He had to keep going; he had to be ready; above all, he had to take someone alive. These people were after his
son
! Information had to be learned … all manner of death to follow.

He heard the sound of an engine in the distance … and then the sound disappeared. Bewildered, he sidestepped slowly, cautiously, between the trees to the edge of the woods and peered out. A car was coming up the road from Mesa Verde, but it was either idling or coasting, or the wind was too strong. It was
coasting
, for now only the rolling tires could be heard as it approached the wall of tall hedges, barely moving, finally stopping before the first entrance to the circular drive. Two men were inside; the driver, a stocky man, not young but not much over forty, got out first and looked around, obviously expecting to be met or signaled. He squinted in the dark afternoon light and, seeing no one, crossed the road to the wooded side and started walking forward. Weingrass shoved his automatic into his belt and bent down for the second killer’s pistol with the perforated silencer attached to the barrel. It was too large for a pocket, so, like the Arab, he placed it at his feet. He stood up and stepped farther back into the overgrowth; he checked the
weapon’s cylinder. There were four bullets left. The man approached; he was now directly in front of Manny.

“
Yosef!
” The name was suddenly carried on the wind, half shouted by the driver’s companion, who had left the car and was racing down the road, his quickening steps impeded by a pronounced limp. Manny was perplexed; Yosef was a Hebrew name, yet these killers were not Israelis.

“Be
quiet
, boy!” commanded the older man gruffly in Arabic as his partner stopped breathlessly in front of him. “You raise your voice like that again—
anywhere
—I’ll ship you back to the Baaka in a coffin!”

Weingrass watched and listened to the two men no more than twenty feet away on the edge of the road. He was mildly astonished, but now understood the use of the Arabic word,
walad
, or “boy.” The driver’s companion
was
a boy, a youngster barely sixteen or seventeen, if that.

“You’ll send me nowhere!” answered the young man angrily, a speech impediment obvious, undoubtedly a harelip. “I’ll never walk properly again because of that pig! I could have become a great martyr of our holy cause but for
him
!”

“Very well, very well,” said the older Arab with a Hebrew name, not without a degree of compassion. “Throw cool water on your neck or your head will explode. Now, what is it?”

“The American radio! I just heard it and I understand enough to—understand!”

“Our people at the other
house
?”

“No, nothing like that. The
Jews
! They executed old Khouri. They
hanged
him!”

“What did you expect, Aman? Forty years ago he was still working with the German Nazis left in northern Africa. He killed Jews; he blew up kibbutzim, even a hotel in Haifa.”

“Then we must kill the murderer, Begin, and all the old men of the Irgun and the Stern! Khouri was a symbol of greatness for us—”

“Oh, be quiet, boy. Those old men fought the British more than they did us. They,
or
old Khouri, have nothing to do with what we must do today. We must teach a lesson to a filthy politician who pretended to be one of us. He hid in our clothes and used our tongue and betrayed the friendship we offered him.
Now
, boy! Concentrate on
now
.”

“Where are the others? They were to come out on the road.”

“I don’t know. They may have learned something or seen something and gone inside the house. Lights are being turned on
now; you can see through those high bushes. Each of us will crawl up from either side of the half-circle entrance. Go through the grass to the windows. We will probably learn that our comrades are having coffee with whoever is there before slicing their throats.”

Emmanuel Weingrass raised the silenced pistol, firming it against the trunk of a tree, moving it back and forth between the two terrorists. He wanted both
alive
! The words in Arabic referring to the “other house” so shocked him that in fury he might well blow both their heads away. They wanted to kill his
son
! If they
had
they would pay dearly, in agony—misguided youth or age irrelevant. Terrible pain would be the only consequence. He leveled the weapon at the pelvic region of both killers, back and forth, back and forth.…

He fired just as a sudden gust of wind swirled along the road, two rounds into the older man, one into the boy. It was as if neither could possibly comprehend. The child collapsed screaming, writhing on the ground; his elder companion was made of stronger—
much
stronger—stuff. He staggered to his feet, turning to the source of fire, and lurched forward, the stocky hulk a furious monster in pain.

“Don’t come any closer,
Yosef
!” yelled Manny, exhausted almost beyond endurance and holding on to the tree. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will!
You
of the Hebrew name who kills
Jews
!”

“My
mother
!” screamed the approaching giant of a man. “She renounced
all
of you! You are killers of my
people
! You take everything that is ours and
spit
on us! I am half Jew, but who are the
Jews
to kill my father and shave the head of my mother because she loved an
Arab
? I will take you to
hell
!”

Weingrass held on to the trunk of the tree, his fingernails bleeding as he dug into the bark, his long black overcoat billowing in the wind. The broad, dark figure lunged out of the forest darkness, his enormous hands gripping the old man’s throat.

“
Don’t!
” screamed Manny, knowing instantly that there was no choice. He fired the last shell, the bullet penetrating the wrinkled forehead above him. Yosef fell away, his final gesture one of defiance. Trembling and gasping for breath, Weingrass leaned against the tree, staring down at the ground, at the body of a man who had been in torment over an insignificant territorial arrangement that forced humans to kill each other. In that moment, Emmanuel Weingrass came to a conclusion that had eluded him from the moment he was capable of thinking; he knew
the answer now. The arrogance of blind belief led all the mendacities of human thought. It pitted man viciously against man in the pursuit of the ultimate unknowable. Who had the
right
?