The Icarus Agenda

'Who the hell are you?' asked the man breathlessly, plummeting into the chair, still holding his arm.

'We've met, but you wouldn't know about it. A country road in Mesa Verde, west of a certain congressman's house.'

‘That was you?' The agent shot forward, only to be pushed back by Varak.

'When did you sell out, Federal man?'

The agent studied Milos in the wash of the desk lamp. 'If you're some kind of naturalized spook from a cross-over unit, you'd better get one thing straight. I'm here on special assignment to the Vice President.'

'A “cross-over” unit? I see you've been talking to some very excitable people… There is no cross-over unit and those vehicles around Grinell's house were dispatched from Washington—’

'They weren't! I just checked!'

'Perhaps the Bureau wasn't informed, or perhaps you were lied to, it doesn't matter. Like all privileged soldiers from elite organizations, I'm sure you can claim that you were merely following orders, as in removing fingerprints and searching for hidden documents of which you know nothing.'

'I don't!'

'But you did sell out and that's all that matters to me. You were prepared to accept money and privileges for services rendered under your official status. Are you also prepared to lose your life for these people?'

'What?'

'Now, you get this straight,' said Varak quietly, raising his automatic and suddenly pressing it into the agent's forehead. 'Whether you live or die means absolutely nothing to me, but there's a man I must find. Tonight.'

'You don't know Grinell—’

'Grinell is immaterial to me, leave him to others. The man I want is the one whose fingerprints you so carefully removed from this apartment. You'll tell me where he is right now or your brains will be all over this desk, and I will not bother to clean them up. The scene will add a further convincing nuance of evil consistent with everything that's taking place out here… Where is he?'

His entire body trembling, his breath short, the red-haired man spat out the words rapidly. 'I don't know and I'm not lying! I was ordered to meet them on a side street near the beach in Coronado. I swear I don't know where they were going.'

'You just called.'

'It's a cellular phone. He's mobile.'

'Who was in Coronado?'

'Just Grinell and this other guy who told me where he walked and everything he touched here in Vanvlanderen's place.'

'Where was she?'

'I don't know. Maybe she was sick or had an accident. There was an ambulance across the road from Grinell's limo.'

'But you do know where they're going. You were about to call the airport. What were your instructions?'

'To have maintenance get the plane ready for takeoff in an hour.'

'Where is the plane?'

'San Diego International. The private strip south of the main runways.'

'What's the destination?'

'That's between Grinell and his pilot. He never tells anyone.'

'You offered to call the pilot. What's his number?'

'Christ, I don't know! If Grinell wanted me to call him, he would have told me. He didn't.'

'Give me the cellular number.' The agent did and the Czech committed it to memory. 'You're certain it's accurate?'

'Go ahead and try it.'

Varak pulled the gun away and replaced it in his shoulder holster. 'I heard a term tonight that fits you, Federal man. Scum-rotten, that's what you are. But as I said, you're of no consequence to me, so I'm going to let you go. Perhaps you can start building your defences as the obedient soldier betrayed by his superiors, or perhaps you'd be better off heading to Mexico and points south. I don't know and I don't care. But if you call that mobile phone, you're a dead man. Do you understand that?'

'I just want to get out of here,' said the agent, bolting out of the chair and running into the sunken living room towards the marble steps and the foyer door.

'So do I,' whispered Milos to himself. He looked at his watch; he was late for the Sound Man downstairs. No matter, he thought, the man was quick and would quickly grasp what he wanted from the tapes and the transcripts. Then he would borrow the Sound Man's car and park it in the lot at San Diego's International Airport. There on a private strip south of the main runways he would find the traitor of Inver Brass. He would find him and kill him.

The telephone rang, jarring Kendrick out of a fitful sleep. Disoriented, his eyes centered on a hotel window and the heavy snow whirling in circles in the winds beyond the glass. The phone rang again; blinking, he found the source, turned on the bedside lamp and picked it up, glancing at his watch as he did so. It was five-twenty in the morning. Khalehla?'

'Yes, hello?'

'Atlanta stayed up all night,' said the hospital's chief of pathology. 'They just called me and I thought you'd want to know.'

'Thank you, Doctor.'

'You may not care to. All the tests are positive, I'm afraid.'

'Cancer?' asked Evan, swallowing.

'No. I could give you the medical term but it wouldn't mean anything to you. You could call it a form of salmonella, a strain of virus that attacks the lungs, clotting the blood until it closes off the oxygen. I can understand why, on the surface, Mr. Weingrass thought it was the cancer. It's not, but that's no gift.'

'The cure?' said Kendrick, gripping the phone.

After a brief silence, the pathologist replied quietly. 'None known. It's irreversible. In the African Kasai districts they slaughter the cattle and burn them, raze whole villages and burn them, too.'

'I don't give a goddamn about cattle and African villages!… I'm sorry, I don't mean to yell at you.'

'It's perfectly all right, it goes with the job. I looked on the map; he must have eaten in an Omani restaurant that served central African food for imported labourers perhaps. Unclean dishes, that sort of thing. It's the way it's transmitted.

‘You don't know Emmanuel Weingrass; those are the last places he'd eat… No, Doctor, it wasn't transmitted, it was planted.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Nothing. How long has he got?'

'The CDC says it can vary. A month to three, perhaps four. No more than six.'

'May I tell him it could stretch to a couple of years.'

'You can tell him anything you like, but he may tell you otherwise. His breathing isn't going to get any easier. Oxygen will have to be readily available.'

'It will be. Thank you, Doctor.'

'I'm sorry, Mr. Kendrick.'

Evan got out of the bed and paced in growing anger about the room. A phantom doctor unknown in Mesa Verde but not unknown to certain officials in the United States government. A pleasant doctor who only wished to take a little blood… and then disappeared. Suddenly Evan shouted, his cry hoarse, the tears rolling down his face. 'Lyons, where are you? I'll find you!'

In frenzy he smashed his fist through the window nearest him, shattering the glass so that the wind and the snow careened through the room.

The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 37

Varak approached the last of the maintenance hangars in the private area of San Diego's International Airport. Police and armed customs personnel in electric carts and on motorbikes drove continuously through the exposed narrow streets of the huge flat complex, voices and static erupting sporadically from the vehicles' radios. The individual rich and the highly profitable corporations who were the area's clients might avoid the irritations of normal air travel, but they could not avoid the scrutiny of federal and municipal agencies patrolling the sector. Each plane prepped for departure underwent not only the usual flight plan and route clearances, but thorough inspections of the aircraft itself. Furthermore, each person boarding was subject to the possibility of being searched, almost as if he or she were a member of the unwashed. Some of the questionable rich did not really have it that good.