The Icarus Agenda

'By whom? I can't find it here.'

'You won't. There's only a half-assed ad hoc committee in Denver no one's ever heard of and they don't know anything. Everything's fed to Chicago.'

'It's incredible!'

'Not really,' disagreed Jennings. 'The congressman could prove to be an attractive candidate. There's a quiet electricity about him. He projects confidence and strength. He could catch on—fast and high, as my people say. Orson Bollinger's crowd, which I suppose is my crowd, could be having a collective case of the trots.'

'That's not the incredibility I'm talking about, Mr. President. When I'm presented with such an obvious connection, even I have to back off. It's too simple, too obvious. I can't believe Bollinger’s crowd could be that stupid. It's too incriminating, entirely too dangerous.'

'You're losing me, Doctor. I thought you'd say something like “Aha, my dear Watson, here's the proof!” But you're not, are you?'

'No, sir.'

'If I'm going to sign this goddamned impeachable piece of paper, I think I'm entitled to know why.'

'Because it really is too obvious. Bollinger’s people learn that Evan Kendrick is about to be launched in a nationwide campaign to replace their vice president so they hire Palestinian terrorists to kill him? Only a maniac could invent that scenario. One flaw among a hundred-odd arrangements, one killer taken alive—which we have— and they could be traced… will be traced, if you'll sign that paper.'

'Who will you find then? What will you find?'

'I don't know, sir. We may have to start with that committee in Denver. For months Kendrick has been manoeuvred into a political limelight he never sought—has run from, actually. Now, on the eve of the real push there's the obscenity of Fairfax and the aborted assault on Mesa Verde, aborted by an old man who apparently doesn't let his age interfere with his actions. He killed three terrorists.'

'I want to meet him, by the way,' interrupted Jennings.

'I'll arrange it, but you may regret it.'

'What's your point?'

'There are two factions, two camps, and neither is unsophisticated. Yet on the surface, one may have committed an extraordinary blunder which doesn't make sense.'

'You're losing me again—’

'I'm lost myself, Mr. President… Will you sign that paper? Will you give me five days?'

'I will, Dr Payton, but why do I have the feeling that I'm about to face a guillotine?'

'Wrong projection, sir. The public would never allow your head to be chopped off.'

'The public can be terribly wrong,' said the President of the United States bending over the Queen Anne desk and signing the document. 'That's also part of history, Professor.'

The streetlamps along Chicago's Lake Shore Drive flickered in the falling snow creating tiny bursts of light on the ceiling of the room at the Drake Hotel. It was shortly past two in the morning and the muscular blond man was asleep in the bed, his breathing deep and steady, as if his self-control never left him. Suddenly his breathing stopped as the sharp, harsh bell of the telephone erupted. He bolted up to a sitting position, swinging his legs out from under the loose covers to the floor, and yanked the phone out of its cradle. 'Yes?' said Milos Varak, no sleep in his voice.

'We have a problem,' said Samuel Winters from his study in Cynwid Hollow, Maryland.

'Can you discuss it, sir?'

'I don't see why not, at least briefly and with abbreviation. This line is clean and I can't imagine anyone plugging into yours.'

'Abbreviations, please.'

'Roughly seven hours ago something horrible happened at a house in the Virginia suburbs—'

'A storm?' broke in the Czech.

'If I understand you, yes, a terrible storm with enormous loss.'

'Icarus?' Varak nearly shouted.

'He wasn't there. Nor was he in the mountains, where a similar attempt was made but thwarted.'

'Emmanuel Weingrass!' whispered the Czech under his breath. 'He was the target. I knew it would happen.'

'It wouldn't appear so, but why do you say that?'

'Later, sir… I drove down from Evanston around twelve-thirty—’

'I knew you were out, I started calling you hours ago but didn't leave word, of course. Is everything on schedule?'

'Ahead of it, but that's not what I mean. There was nothing on the radio about either event, and that's astonishing, isn't it?'

'If things go as I expect,' answered Winters, 'there'll be nothing for at least several days, if then.'

'That's even more astonishing. How do you know that, sir?'

'Because I believe I've arranged it. A man I trust has gone privately to Sixteen Hundred through my intervention. He's there now. If there's any hope of catching those responsible, he needs the blackout.'

With enormous relief, Milos Varak instantly understood that Samuel Winters was not the traitor within Inver Brass. Whoever the informer was would never prolong the hunt for killers if they were sent out by San Diego. Beyond that truth, that relief, the Czech co-ordinator had someone to confide in.

'Sir, please listen to me carefully. It's imperative—I repeat, imperative—that you call a meeting tomorrow as early as possible. It must be during the day, sir, not at night. Every hour will count in each of the time zones.'

'That's a startling request.'

'Call it an emergency. It is an emergency, sir… and somehow, some way, I must find another emergency. I must force someone to make a move.'

'Without specifics, can you give me a reason?'

'Yes. The one thing we never thought could happen within the group has happened. There's someone who shouldn't be there.'

'Good God!… You're certain?'

'I'm certain. Seconds ago I eliminated you as a possibility.'

It was 4:25 in the morning, California time; 7:25 in the eastern United States. Andrew Vanvlanderen sat in his overstuffed velour chair, his eyes glazed, his heavy body weaving, his white, wavy hair dishevelled. In a burst of frenzy, he suddenly threw a thick-based glass of whisky across the space into the television set; it glanced off the mahogany cabinet and dropped ineffectually on the white rug. In fury, he picked up a marble ashtray and heaved it into the screen of the twenty-four-hour All News programme. The convex glass picture shattered and the set imploded with a loud, sharp report as black smoke rushed out of the electronic entrails. Vanvlanderen roared incoherently at nothing and everything, his quivering lips trying to form words he could not find. In seconds his wife ran out of the bedroom.

'What are you doing?' she screamed.

'There's—augh!—nothing, not a goddamned thing!' he shrieked, his speech garbled, his neck and face flushed, the veins in his throat and forehead distended. 'Not a fucking thing! What's happened? What's going on? They can't do this! I paid them a straight two million!' And then, without warning or the slightest indication of anything other than being in the grip of rage, Vanvlanderen lurched out of the chair, his arms trembling, his hands shaking violently, pressing a wall of air he could not see through his bulging eyes, and fell forward on the floor. As his face crashed into the rug, a furious guttural cry was the last sound from his throat.

His fourth wife, Ardis Wojak Montreaux Frazier-Pyke Vanvlanderen, took several steps forward, her face white, her uplifted skin stretched to the parchment of a mask, her large eyes staring down at her dead husband. 'You son of a bitch!' she whispered. 'How could you leave me with this mess, whatever it is? Whatever the hell you've done!'

The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 32

Ahbyahd called his four 'priests' together in the motel room he shared with the young member of the mission who spoke fluent English and who had never been in Oman. It was 5:43 am, Colorado time, and the long vigil was over. There would be no rendezvous. Command Two had not made contact, which meant that Yosef and his men were dead; there was no other explanation. The hardened veteran who was half Jew but with a consummate hatred of all things Western and Israeli would never permit a single member of his team to be taken alive. It was why he had insisted that the crippled, harelipped boy who would not be denied should be at his side at all times.