The Icarus Agenda

'There it is!' exclaimed Azra, exaltation and relief in his voice. 'I knew I could find it!'

'What is it?' yelled Kendrick, trying to be heard over the crashing waves.

'An old sewer line,' roared Blue. 'Built hundreds of years ago, a communal toilet continuously washed down by sea water carried up by slaves.'

'They bored through rock?'

'No, Amal. They creased the surface and angled the rocks above; nature took care of the rest. A reverse aqueduct, if you like. It's a steep climb but as someone had to build it, there are ridges for feet—slaves' feet, like our Palestinian feet, no?'

'How do we get in there?'

'We walk through water. If the prophet Jesus can walk on it, the least we can do is walk through it. Come. The embassy!'

Perspiring heavily, Anthony MacDonald climbed the open waterfront staircase on the side of the old warehouse. The creaking of the steps under his weight joined the sounds of wood and rope that erupted from the piers where hulls and stretched halyards scraped the slips along the docks. The first yellow rays of the sun pulsated over the waters of the harbour, broken by intruding skiffs and aged trawlers heading out for the day's catch, passing observant marine patrols that every now and then signalled a boat to stop for closer inspection.

Tony had ordered his driver to crawl the car back towards Masqat on the deserted road without headlights until they reached a back street in the As Saada that cut across the city to the waterfront. Only when they encountered streetlamps did MacDonald instruct the driver to switch on the lights. He had no idea where the three fugitives were running or where they expected to hide in the daylight with an army of police searching for them, but he assumed it would be with one of the Mahdi's more unlikely agents in the city. He would avoid them; there was too much to learn, too many contradictory things to understand before a chance confrontation with the young ambitious Azra. But there was one place he could go, one man he could see without fear of being seen himself. A hired killer who followed orders blindly for money, a stick of human garbage who made contact with potential clients only in the filthy alleyways of the el Shari el Mish kwayis. Only those who had to know knew where he lived.

Tony heaved his way up the last flight of steps to the short, thick door at the top that led to the man he had come to see. As he reached the final step he froze, mouth gaping, eyes bulging. Suddenly, without warning, the door whipped open on greased hinges as the half-naked killer lunged out on the short platform, a knife in his left hand, its long, razor-sharp blade glistening in the new sun, while in his right was a small .22 calibre pistol. The blade was poised across MacDonald's throat, the barrel of the gun jammed into his left temple; unable to breathe, the obese Englishman gripped both railings with his hands to keep from falling back down the steps.

'It is you,' said the gaunt, hollow-cheeked man, withdrawing the pistol but keeping the knife in place. 'You are not to come here. You are never to come here!'

Swallowing air, his immense body rigid, MacDonald spoke hoarsely, feeling the psychopath's blade across his throat. 'If it were not an emergency, I would never have done so, that should be perfectly clear.'

'What is clear is that I was cheated!' replied the man, wiggling the knife. 'I killed that importer's son in the same way I could kill you at this moment. I carved up that girl's face and left her in the streets with her skirt above her head and I was cheated.'

'No one meant to.'

'Someone did!'

'I'll make it up to you. We must talk. As I mentioned, it's an emergency.'

'Talk here. You don't come inside. No one comes inside!'

'Very well. If you'll be so kind as to permit me to stand rather than hang on for dear life half over this all too ancient staircase—'

'Talk.'

Tony steadied himself on the third step from the top, taking out a handkerchief and blotting his perspiring forehead, his gaze on the knife below. 'It's imperative I reach the leaders inside the embassy. Since they cannot, of course, come out, I must go in to them.'

'It is too dangerous, especially for the one who gets you inside, since he remains outside.' The bone-gaunt killer pulled the blade away from MacDonald's throat, only to readjust it with a twist of his wrist, the glistening point now resting at the base of the Englishman's neck. 'You can talk to them on the telephone, people do all the time.'

'What I have to say—what I must ask them—can't be spoken over the phone. It's vital that only the leaders hear my words and I theirs.'

'I can sell you a number that is not published in the listings.'

'It's published somewhere and if you have it, others do also. I cannot take the risk. Inside. I must get inside.'

'You are difficult,' said the psychopath, his left eyelid flickering, both pupils dilated. 'Why are you difficult?'

'Because I am immensely rich and you are not. You need money for your extravagances… your habits.'

'You insult me!' spat out the killer-for-hire, his voice strident but not loud, the half-crazed man aware of the fishermen and dock labourers trudging to their morning chores three storeys below.

'I'm only being realistic. Inside. How much?'

The killer coughed his foul breath in MacDonald's face, pulling the blade back and settling his rheumy stare on his past and present benefactor. 'It will cost a great deal of money. More than you have ever paid before.'

'I'm prepared for a reasonable increase, not exorbitant, mind you, but reasonable. We'll always have work for you—’

'There's an embassy press conference at ten o'clock this morning,' interrupted the partially drugged man. 'As usual, the journalists and television people will be selected at the last minute, their names called out at the gates. Be there, and give me a telephone number so I can give you a name within the next two hours.'

Tony did so: his hotel and his room. 'How much, dear boy?' he added.

The killer lowered the knife and stated the amount in Omani rials; it was equivalent to three thousand English pounds, or roughly five thousand American dollars. 'I have expenses,' he explained. 'Bribes must be paid or the one who bribes is dead.'

'It's outrageous! cried MacDonald.

'Forget the whole thing.'

'Accepted,' said the Englishman.

Khalehla paced her hotel room, and although she had given up cigarettes for the sixth time in her thirty-two years, she smoked one after another, her eyes constantly straying to the telephone. Under no condition could she operate from the palace. That connection had been jeopardized enough. Damn that son of a bitch!

Anthony MacDonald—cipher, drunk… someone's agent-extraordinary—had his efficient network in Masqat, but she was not without resources herself, thanks to a roommate at Radcliffe who was now a sultan's wife—thanks to Khalehla's having introduced a fellow Arab to her best friend a number of years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts. God, how the world moved in smaller, swifter and ever more familiar circles! Her mother, a native Californian, had met her father, an exchange-student from Port Said, while both were in graduate school at Berkeley, she an Egyptologist, he working for his doctorate in Western Civilization, both aiming for academic careers. They fell in love and got married. The blonde California girl and the olive-skinned Egyptian.