The Icarus Agenda

'What girlfriend from—’

'Button it,' ordered Mrs. O'Reilly. 'Manny let it drop yesterday when he was a mite squiffed and couldn't find his broth of a boy either. Hurry along now. I'll wait for the call here.'

'What about my beef stew?'

'I've got one frozen,' lied the lass born Ann Mary Mulcahy.

Thirty-eight minutes later, after taking two wrong turns in the dark Virginia countryside, Detective First Grade O'Reilly found the road that led to Kendrick's house. It was a road he had travelled over exactly four times but never at night. Each trip had been made to see old Weingrass after he got out of the hospital and to bring him a freshly re-minted bottle of Listerine since his nurses kept the Scotch whisky beyond his reach. Paddy had righteously figured that if Manny, who was about to be eighty and who should have croaked on the operating table, wanted to go out a little pickled, who was to call it a sin? Christ in all his glory turned water into wine, so why shouldn't a miserable sinner named O'Reilly turn a little pint of mouthwash into Scotch? Both were for good Christian causes and he was only following the holy example.

There were no streetlamps on the back country road, and were it not for the wash of his headlights, Paddy would have missed the brick wall and the white wrought-iron gate. Then he understood why: there were no lights on in the house beyond. To all intents and purposes it was closed up, deserted, shut down while its owners were away. Yet its owner was not away and even if he were, there was the Arab couple from a place called Dubai who kept the place open and ready for the owner's return. Any change in that routine or the dismissal of the Agency guards would certainly be conveyed to Annie O'Reilly, the congressman's number one girl in the office. Paddy stopped the car on the side of the road; he snapped open the glove compartment, removed a torch, and got out. Instinctively, he reached under his jacket and felt the handle of his revolver in his shoulder holster. He approached the gate, expecting at any moment floodlights to be tripped on or the screeching sounds of multiple sirens to suddenly fill the quiet night. Those were the ways of Agency controls, methods of total protection.

Nothing.

O'Reilly arced his arm slowly through the bars of white wrought iron… Nothing. He then placed his hand on the centre plate between the two joining gates and pushed. Both opened and still nothing.

He walked inside, pushing the thumb of his left hand against the switch of the torch, his right hand reaching beneath his jacket. What he saw in seconds under the roving beam caused him to spin away, crouching into the wall, his weapon yanked out of the holster.

'Holy Mary, mother of God, forgive me for my sins!' he whispered.

Ten feet away lay the dead body of a young, business-suited guard from the Central Intelligence Agency, sickeningly drenched in blood from the throat above, his head nearly severed from the rest of him. O'Reilly pressed his back against the brick wall, instantly extinguishing the light, trying to calm his all too experienced nerves. He was familiar with violent death, and because he was, he knew that there was more to be found. He rose slowly to his feet and began his search for death, knowing also that the killers had disappeared.

He found three other corpses, each mutilated, each life taken in shock, each positioned at 90 degrees of the compass for protection. Jesus! How? He bent down and examined the body of the fourth man; what he found was extraordinary. Lodged in the guard's neck was a snapped-off needle; it was the remnants of a dart. The patrol had been immobilized by a narcotic and then, without defences, obscenely killed. They never knew what happened. None of them knew.

Patrick O'Reilly walked slowly, cautiously to the front door of the house, once again knowing that caution was irrelevant. The god-awful, terrible deeds had been done; there was nothing left but to total the casualties.

There were six. Each throat was slit, each corpse covered with drying blood, each face in torment. Yet the most obscene of all were the naked bodies of Kendrick's couple from Dubai. The husband was on top of his wife in the coital position, both red-soaked faces pressed against each other. And on the wall, scratched in human blood, were the words:

Death to God's traitors! Death to the fornicators of the Great Satan!

Where was Kendrick? Mother of God! Where was he? O'Reilly raced back through the house, going from the cellar to the attic and room to room, turning on every switch he could find until the entire estate was a blaze of light. There was no sign of the congressman! Paddy ran out of the house through the attached garage, noting that Evan's Mercedes was gone, the Cadillac empty. He began searching the grounds again, criss-crossing every foot of woods and foliage within the fenced compound. Nothing. There were no signs of struggle, no broken shrubbery, no breaks in the fence or scratches on the newly constructed brick wall. Forensic! The department's forensic division would find evidence… no! He was thinking police procedures and this was beyond the police—far, far beyond! O'Reilly ran back to the white wrought-iron gate, now awash with light, and raced to his car. He leaped inside and, disregarding the radio, yanked the police cellular phone from its recess under the dashboard. He dialled, only at that moment realizing that his face and shirt were drenched with sweat in the cold night air.

'Congressman Kendrick's office.'

'Annie, let me do the talking,' broke in the detective rapidly, softly. 'And don't ask questions—’

'I know that tone of voice, Paddy, so I have to ask one. Is he all right?'

There's no sign of him. His car's gone; he's not here.'

'But others are—’

'No more questions, tiger, but I've got one for you, and by the saints you'd better be able to answer it.'

'What?'

'Who's Evan's contact at the Agency?'

'He deals directly with the unit.'

'No. Someone else. Higher up. There has to be somebody!'

'Wait a minute!' cried Annie, her voice rising. 'Of course, there is. He just doesn't talk about him… a man named Payton. A month or so ago he told me that if this Payton ever called, I was to put him through immediately, and if Evan wasn't here I was to find him.'

'You're sure he's with the CIA?'

'Yes, yes I am,' said Mrs. O'Reilly thoughtfully. 'One morning he called me from Colorado saying he needed this Payton's number and where I could find it in his desk—in the bottom drawer of his desk under a cheque book. It was a Langley exchange.'

'Would it be there now?'

'I'll look. Hold on.' The wait of no more than twenty seconds was nearly unbearable for the detective, made worse by the sight of the large brightly lit house beyond the open gate. It was both an invitation and a target. 'Paddy?'

'Yes!'

'I've got it.'

'Give it to me. Quickly!' She did so, and O'Reilly issued an order that was not to be disobeyed. 'Stay in the office until I call you or pick you up. Understood?'

'Is there a reason?'

'Let's say I don't know how far up, or down, or sideways, this kind of thing reaches, and I happen to like beef stew.'

'Oh, my God,' whispered Annie.

O'Reilly did not hear his wife; he had disconnected the line and within seconds was dialling the number Annie had given him. After eight agonizing rings a woman's voice came over the phone. 'Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Payton's office.'

'Are you his secretary?'

'No, sir, this is the reception desk. Mr. Payton has gone for the day.'

'Listen to me, please,' said the Washington detective with absolute control. 'It's urgent that I reach Mr. Payton immediately. Whatever the regulations, they can be broken, can you understand me, girl? It's an emergency.'

'Please identify yourself, sir.'

'Hell's fire, I don't want to, but I will. I'm Lieutenant Patrick O'Reilly, Detective First Grade, District of Columbia Police Department. You've got to find him for me!'