The Icarus Agenda

'Talking to whom?' asked Rashad.

'Mainly to the director of the Gemeinschaft Bank. Mitch scared his bladder dry with the information we have and he's trying to co-operate… Wait a minute. Did anyone check the telex in the study?'

'No, but I heard the damn thing clacking away about twenty minutes ago,' said Weingrass.

Kendrick put down his glass, turned and walked rapidly out of the porch and across the living room to a door beyond the stone hallway. Khalehla and Manny watched him, then looked at each other and shrugged. Within moments the congressman returned, gripping a telex sheet in his hand, his expression conveying his excitement. 'They did it!' he exclaimed.

'Who did what?' asked Weingrass.

'The bank. You remember the fifty million line of credit Grinell and his consortium of thieves in California set up for my buy-out?'

'My God,' exclaimed Khalehla. 'They couldn't have left it standing!'

'Of course not. It was cancelled the moment Grinell got off the island.'

'So?' said Manny.

'In this age of complicated telecommunications, computer errors crop up now and then and a beaut was just made. There's no record of the cancellation having been received. The credit's on! only it's been transferred to a sister bank in Bern with a new, coded account number. It's all there.'

'They'll never pay!' Weingrass was emphatic.

'It'll be charged against their reserves, which are ten times fifty million.'

"They'll fight it, Evan,' insisted Khalehla, as emphatic as the old man.

'And parade themselves in the Swiss courts? Somehow I doubt it.'

The Cobra helicopter without markings stuttered across the desert at an altitude of less than five hundred feet. Evan and Khalehla, exhausted from nearly twenty-six hours in the air and racing to covert connections on the ground, sat next to each other, Rashad's head on Kendrick's shoulder, his own slumped down into his chest; both were asleep. A man in belted khaki overalls with no insignia walked out of the flight deck and down the fuselage. He shook Evan's arm in the dim light.

'We'll be there in about fifteen minutes, sir.'

'Oh?' Kendrick snapped up his head, blinking his eyes and opening them wide to rid them of sleep. 'Thanks. I'll wake my friend here; they always do things before arriving anywhere, don't they?'

'Not this “they”,' said Khalehla out loud without moving. 'I sleep to the very last minute.'

'Well, forgive me, but I don't. I can't. Necessity calls.'

'Men,' remarked the agent from Cairo, removing her head from his shoulder and shifting to the other side of the seat and into the bulkhead. 'No control,' she added, her eyes still closed.

'We'll keep you posted,' said the Air Force flight officer, laughing quietly, and returning to the deck.

Sixteen minutes passed and the pilot spoke over the intercom. 'Flare spotted directly ahead. Buckle up for touchdown, please.' The helicopter decelerated and hovered over the ground, where the headlights of two cars facing each other had replaced the flare. Slowly, the chopper was lowered into its threshold. 'Depart the aircraft as quickly as possible, please,' continued the pilot. 'We have to get out of here fast, if you catch my drift.'

No sooner had they stepped down the metal ladder to the ground than the Cobra, its rotors thundering, rose in the night sky; it turned, stuttering in the desert moonlight, kicking up what sand there was, and headed north, accelerating rapidly, the noise receding in the darkness above. Walking into the beams of a car's headlights was the young sultan of Oman. He was in slacks, an open-necked white shirt replacing the New England Patriots football jersey he had worn that first night he met with Evan in the desert sixteen months ago.

'Let me talk first, okay?' he said, as Kendrick and Rashad approached.

'Okay,' replied Kendrick.

'First reactions can be not too smart, agreed?'

'Agreed,' agreed Evan.

'But I'm supposed to be smart, right?'

'Right.'

'Still, consistency is the product of small minds, isn't that so?'

'Within reasonable boundaries.'

'Don't qualify.'

'Don't you play lawyer. The only bar you ever passed was with Manny in Los Angeles.'

'Why, that hypocritical Israeli nut—’

'At least you didn't say Jew.'

'I wouldn't. I don't like the sound of it any more than I like the sound of “dirty Arab”… Anyway, Manny and I didn't pass too many bars in LA that we didn't go into.'

'What's your point, Ahmat?'

The young ruler breathed deeply and spoke quickly. 'I know the whole story now and I feel like a damned idiot.'

'The whole story?'

'Everything. That Inver Brass crowd, Bollinger's munitions bandits, that bastard Hamendi who my royal Saudi brothers in Riyadh should have executed the moment they caught him… the whole ball of wax. And I should have known you wouldn't do what I thought you did. “Commando Kendrick” versus the rotten Arab isn't you, it never was you… I'm sorry, Evan.' Ahmat walked forward and embraced the congressman from Colorado's ninth district.

'You're going to make me cry,' said Khalehla, smiling at the sight in front of her.

'You, you Cairo tigress!' cried the sultan, releasing Kendrick and taking Rashad in his arms. 'We had a girl, you know. Half American, half Omani. Sound familiar?'

'I know. I wasn't permitted to contact you—’

'We understood.'

'But I was so touched. Her name's Khalehla.'

'If it weren't for you, Khalehla One, there'd be no Khalehla Two… Come on, let's go.' As they started for Ahmat's limousine the sultan turned to Evan. 'You look pretty fit for a guy who's been through so much.'

'I heal rapidly for an old man,' said Kendrick. 'Tell me something, Ahmat. Who told you the whole story, the whole “ball of wax”?'

'A man named Payton, Mitchell Payton, CIA. Your President Jennings phoned me and said I was to expect a call from this Payton and would I please accept it; it was urgent. Hey, that Jennings is one charming character, isn't he?… Although I'm not sure he knew everything that Payton told me.'

'Why do you say that?'

'I don't know, it was just a feeling.' The young sultan stood by the car door and looked at Evan. 'If you can pull this off, my friend, you'll do more for the Middle East and us on the Gulf than all the diplomats in ten United Nations.'

'We're going to pull it off. But only with your help.'

'You've got it.'

Ben-Ami and code Blue walked down the narrow street into the Al Kabir bazaar looking for the outdoor cafe that served evening coffee. They were dressed in neat, dark business suits, as befitted their Bahrainian visas which stated that they were executives with the Bank of England in Manamah. They saw the pavement cafe, threaded their way through the crowds and the stalls, and sat at the empty table nearest the street as instructed. Three minutes later a tall man in white robes and Arab headdress joined them.

'Have you ordered coffee?' asked Kendrick.

'Nobody's come around,' replied Ben-Ami. 'It's a busy night. How are you, Congressman?'

'Let's try Evan, or better yet, Amal. I'm here, which in a way answers your question.'

'And Weingrass?'

'Not very well, I'm afraid… Hello, Blue?'

'Hello,' said the young man, staring at Kendrick.

'You look very businesslike, very unmilitary in those clothes. I'm not sure I'd recognize you if I didn't know you were going to be here.'

'I'm not military any longer. I had to leave the Brigade.'

'It'll miss you.'

'I miss it, but my wounds didn't heal properly—various tendons, they tell me. Azra was a good fighter, a good commando.'

'Still the hatred?'

'There's no hatred in my voice. Anger, of course, over many things, but not hatred for the man I had to kill.'

'What are you doing now?'

'I work for the government.'

'He works for us,' interrupted Ben-Ami. 'For the Mossad.'

'Speaking of which, Ahmat apologizes for not having you to the palace—’