'Know what?'
'Photographs… The Vanvlanderen woman… Lausanne, the Leman Marina. The Beau Rivage—the gardens. Then Amsterdam, the Rozengracht. In the hotel… her study. Tell him! The man is a Saudi and things happened to him… millions, millions!' Milos could hardly talk; he had so little breath. Go on… go on! Escape… millions!'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'He may be the key! Don't let anyone remove the photographs… Contact Kendrick. He may remember!' The Czech lost control of his movements; he swung the telephone back on to the counter missing the cradle, then fell to the ground in front of the fruit stand on a back country road beyond the airport in San Diego. Milos Varak was dead.
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 38
The morning's headlines and related articles obscured all other news. The Secretary of State and his entire delegation had been brutally killed in a hotel in Cyprus. The Sixth Fleet was heading towards the island, all weapons and aircraft at the ready. The nation was transfixed, furious, and not a little frightened. The horror of some uncontrollable force of evil seemed to loom on the horizon, edging the country towards the brink of wholesale confrontation, provoking the government to respond with equal horror and brutality. But in a stroke of rare intuitive geopolitical brilliance, President Langford Jennings controlled the storm. He contacted Moscow, and the result of that communication had brought forth dual condemnations from the two superpowers. The monstrous event in Cyprus was labelled an isolated act of terrorism that enraged the entire world. Words of praise and sorrow for a great man came from all the capitals of the globe, allies and adversaries alike.
And on pages 2, 7 and 45, respectively, in the San Diego Union, and pages 4, 50 and 51 in the Los Angeles Times, were the following far less important wire service reports.
San Diego, 22 Dec.—Mrs. Ardis Vanvlanderen, chief of staff for Vice President Orson Bollinger, whose husband, Andrew Vanvlanderen, died yesterday from cardiac arrest, took her own life early this morning in apparent grief. Her body washed up on the beach in Coronado, death attributed to drowning. On his way to the airport, her attorney, Mr. Crayton Grinell, of La Jolla, had dropped her off at the funeral home for a last viewing of her husband. According to sources at the home, the widow was under severe strain and barely coherent. Although a limousine waited for her, she slipped out a side door and apparently took a taxi to the Coronado beach…
Mexico City, 22 Dec.—Eric Sundstrom, one of America's leading scientists and creators of highly complex space technology, died of a cerebral haemorrhage while on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Few details are available at this time. A full report of his life and work will appear in tomorrow's editions.
San Diego, 22 Dec.—An unidentified man without papers, but carrying a gun, died of gunshot wounds on a back road south of the International Airport. Lt Commander John Demartin, a US Navy fighter pilot, picked him up, telling the police the man claimed to have been in an automobile accident. Due to the proximity of the private field adjacent to the airport, authorities suspect that the death may have been drug oriented…
Evan flew to San Diego on the first morning flight from Denver. He had insisted on seeing Manny at 6:00 am and would not be denied. 'You're going to be fine,' he had lied. 'And you're a horseshit artist,' Weingrass had shot back. 'Where are you going?' '… Khalehla. San Diego. She needs me.''… Then get the hell out of here! I don't want to see your ugly face another second. Go to her, help her. Get those bastards!'
The taxi from the airport to the hotel in the early traffic seemed interminable, the situation hardly relieved by the driver, who recognized him and kept up a flow of inane chatter laced with invective directed at all Arabs and all things Arabic.
'Every fuckin' one of 'em should be taken out and shot, right?'
'Women and children, too, of course.'
'Right! The brats grow up and the broads make more brats!'
'That's quite a solution. You might even call it final.'
'It's the only way, right'?'
'Wrong. When you consider the numbers and the price of ammunition, the cost would be too high. Taxes would go up.'
'No kiddin'? Shit, I pay enough. There's gotta be another way.'
'I'm sure you'll come up with one… Now, if you'll forgive me, I have some reading to do.' Kendrick returned to his copy of the Denver Post and the terrible news from Cyprus. And, either miffed or feeling he had been put down, the driver turned on the radio. Again, as in the newspapers, the coverage was almost exclusively about the abominable act of terrorism in the Mediterranean, on-site recordings and repeated interviews from world figures in various translated languages condemning the barbaric act. And as if death had to follow death, a stunned Evan heard the newscaster's words.
'Here in San Diego there was another tragedy. Mrs. Ardis Vanvlanderen, Vice President Bollinger's chief of staff, was found dead early this morning when her body washed up on the beach in Coronado, an apparent suicide…'
Kendrick shot forward on the seat… Ardis? Ardis Vanvlanderen …? Ardis Montreaux! The Bahamas… a dissolute minor player from Off Shore Investments of years ago said Ardis Montreaux had married a wealthy Californian! Good Christ! That was why Khalehla had flown to San Diego. Mitchell Payton had found the 'money whore'—Bollinger's chief of staff! The announcer went on to speculate on the new widow's grief, a speculation Kendrick thought suspect.
He walked across the hotel lobby and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Studying the numbered arrows, he started down the hall towards Khalehla's room both anxious and depressed—anxious to see her and hold her, depressed about Manny, about the wholesale slaughter in Cyprus, about so much, but mainly Emmanuel Weingrass, scheduled victim of murder. He reached the door and rapped four times, hearing the racing footsteps inside before he removed his hand. The door swung back and she was in his arms.
'My God, I love you,' he whispered into her dark hair, the words rushed. 'And everything's so rotten, so goddamned rotten!'
'Quickly. Inside.' Khalehla closed the door and returned to him, holding his face in her hands. 'Manny?'
'He's got somewhere between three and six months to live,' replied Evan, his voice flat. 'He's dying of a virus he couldn't possibly have got except through an injection.'
'The non-existent Dr Lyons," said Rashad, making a statement.
‘I’ll find him if it takes me twenty years.'
'You'll have all the help Washington can give you.'
'The news is rotten everywhere. Cyprus, the best man in the administration blown to bits—’
'It's tied in here, Evan. Here in San Diego.'
'What?'
Khalehla backed away and took his hand, leading him across the room to where there were two chairs, a small round table between them. 'Sit down, darling. I've got a lot to tell you that I couldn't tell you before. Then there's something you have to do… it's why I asked you to fly out here.'
'I think I know one of the things you're going to tell me,' said Kendrick, sitting down. 'Ardis Montreaux, the widow Vanvlanderen. I heard it on the radio; they say she committed suicide.'
'She did that when she married her late husband.'
'You came to see her, didn't you?'
'Yes.' Rashad nodded as she sat down at the table. 'You'll hear and read everything. There are tapes and transcripts of all of it; they were delivered to me an hour ago.'
'What about Cyprus?'
'The order came from here. A man named Grinell.'
'Never heard of him.'
'Few people have… Evan, it's worse than anything we could imagine.'
'You learned that from Ardis?… Yes, she was Ardis and I was Evan.'
'I know that. No, not from her; with her we only glimpsed the outline and that was frightening enough. Our main source is a man who was killed last night out by the airport.'