The Icarus Agenda

'Amreekánee,' said the male voice, its flat monotone conveying hatred. 'You leave that royal house before morning and you are a dead man. Tomorrow you go quietly back to where you came from, where you belong.'

The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 14

Emmanuel Weingrass pulled code Grey's radio to his lips and spoke. 'Go ahead and remember to keep the line open. I've got to hear everything!’

'If you'll forgive me, Weingrass,' replied Ben-Ami from the shadows across Government Road. 'I would feel somewhat more secure if our colleague Grey also heard. You and I are not so adept in these situations as those young men.'

'They haven't a brain in their collective head. We have two.'

'This is not shul, Emmanuel, this is what's called the field and it can be very unpleasant.'

'I have every confidence in you, Benny boy, so long as you guarantee these kiddie radios can be heard through steel.'

'They're as clear as any electronic bug ever developed, with the added function of direct transmission. One just pushes the right buttons.'

'One doesn't,' said Weingrass, 'you do. Go on, we'll follow when we hear what this MacDonald-Strickland says.'

'Send code Grey first, please.' Out of the shadows near the marquee of the Tylos Hotel, Ben-Ami joined the bustling crowds around the entrance. People came and went, mostly male, mostly in Western dress, along with a smattering of women exclusively in Western dress. Taxis disgorged passengers, as others filled them, tipping a harried doorman whose sole job was to open and close doors, and every now and then to blow a strident whistle for a lowly, thobed bellhop to carry luggage. Ben-Ami melted into this melee and went inside. Moments later, through the background noise of the lobby, he could be heard dialling; squinting in irritation, Manny held up the radio between himself and the much taller, muscular code Grey. The first words from Room 202 were obscured; then the Mossad agent spoke.

'Shaikh Strickland?'

'Who's this?' The Englishman's cautious whisper was now distinct; Ben-Ami had adjusted the radio.

'I'm downstairs… Anah henah littee gáhrah—'

'Bloody damn black fool!' cried MacDonald. 'I don't speak that gibberish! Why are you calling from the lobby?'

'I was testing you, Mr. Strickland,' Ben-Ami broke in quickly. 'A man under stress often gives himself away. You might have asked me where my business trip was taking me, perhaps leading to a subsequent code. Then I would have known you were not the man—'

'Yes, yes, I understand! Thank Christ you're here! It's taken you long enough. I expected you a half-hour ago. You were to say something to me. Say it!'

'Not over the telephone,' answered the Mossad infiltrator firmly. 'Never over the telephone, you should know that.'

'If you think I'm just going to let you into my room—'

'I wouldn't if I were you,' interrupted Ben-Ami once again. 'We know you're armed.'

'You do?'

'Every weapon sold under a counter is known to us.'

'Yes… yes, of course.'

'Open your door with the latch on. If my words are incorrect, kill me.'

'Yes… very well. I'm sure it won't be necessary. But understand me, whoever you are, one misplaced syllable and you're a corpse!'

' I shall practise my English, Shaikh Strickland.'

A tiny green light suddenly began blinking on the small radio in Weingrass's hand. 'What the hell is that?' asked Manny.

'Direct transmission,' replied code Grey. 'Give it to me.' The Masada commando took the instrument and pressed a button. 'Go ahead.'

'He's alone!' said Ben-Ami's voice. 'We have to move quickly, take him now!'

'We don't make any moves, you Mossad imbecile!' countered Weingrass, grabbing the radio. 'Even those mutants from the State Department's Consular Operations can hear what they've just been told, but not the holy Mossad! They hear only their own voices, and maybe Abraham's if he's got a code ring out of a box of corn flakes!'

'Manny, I don't need this,' said Ben-Ami slowly, painfully over the radio.

'You need ears, that's what you need, ganza macher! That daffodil expects a contact from the Mahdi any minute—someone who's not to call from the lobby but who's to go directly to his room. He's got the words to get MacDonald to open the door, that's when we join the party and take them both! What did you have in mind? Breaking the door down courtesy of the Neanderthal here beside me?'

'Well, yes—’

'I don't need this, either,' muttered Grey quietly.

'No wonder you idiots blew it in Washington. You thought Password was a Mossad drop and not a television show!'

'Manny!'

'Get your secret ass up to the second floor! We'll be there in two minutes, right, Tinker Bell?'

'Mr. Weingrass,' said code Grey, the muscles of his lean, muscular jaw working furiously as he snapped off the radio. 'You are probably the most irritatingly vexatious man I have ever met.'

'Oy, such words! In the Bronx you would have been beaten up for that—if ten or twelve of my Irish or Italian buddies could have handled you. Come on!' Manny started across Government Road, followed by Grey, who kept shaking his head, not in disagreement but only to purge the thoughts he was thinking.

The hotel corridor was long, the carpet worn. It was the dinner hour and most of the guests were out. Weingrass stood at one end; he had tried to smoke a Gauloise but had crushed it out, burning a hole in the carpet, as it had started a devastating rumble in his chest. Ben-Ami was by the farthest elevator, the ever-present, irritated hotel guest waiting for a conveyance that never came. Code Grey was nearest to Room 202, leaning casually against the wall next to a door fifteen feet diagonally across the hall from 'Mr. Strickland's'. He was a professional; he assumed the posture of a young man eagerly awaiting a woman he was perhaps not meant to meet, even to the point of seeming to talk through the door.

It happened, and Weingrass was impressed. The uniformed doorman from the Tylos's marqueed entrance suddenly walked out of an elevator, his gold-braided cap in his hand; he approached Room 202. He stopped, knocked, waited for the chained door to be partially opened and spoke. The chain was unlatched. Suddenly, with the aggressive speed and purpose of an Olympic athlete, code Grey spun away from the wall, hurling himself at the two figures in the doorway, somehow managing to withdraw a handgun from some unseen place as he crashed his body, surging up laterally into his two enemies, his feet and arms, again somehow, pulling them together as one entity and sending them across the floor. Two muted shots erupted from the commando's pistol; the automatic in Anthony MacDonald's hand was blown away, as were two of his fingers.

Weingrass and Ben-Ami converged on the door and rushed inside, slamming it shut behind them.

'My God, look at me!' screamed the Englishman on the floor, grabbing his bleeding right hand. 'Jesus Christ! I have no—'

'Get a towel from the bathroom,' ordered Grey calmly, addressing Ben-Ami. The Mossad agent did as he was told by the younger man.

'I am only a messenger!' yelled the doorman, writhing next to the bed in fear. 'I was only to deliver a message!'

'The hell you're a messenger,' said Emmanuel Weingrass, standing over the man. 'You're perfect, you son of a bitch. You see who comes, who goes—you're their goddamned eyes. Oh, I want to talk to you.'

'I have no hand!' shrieked the obese MacDonald, the blood rolling in tiny rivers down his arm.

'Here!' said Ben-Ami, kneeling down and wrapping a towel around the Englishman's blown-apart fingers.

'Don't do that,' ordered code Grey, grabbing the towel and throwing it aside.

'You told me to get it,' protested Ben-Ami, confused.

'I've changed my mind,' said Grey, his voice suddenly cold, holding MacDonald's arm down, the blood now rushing out of his two stumped fingers. 'Blood,' continued the Masada commando speaking calmly to the Englishman, 'especially blood from the right arm—from the aorta expelling it from the heart—will have nowhere to go but on this floor. Do you read me, khanzeer? Do you understand me, pig? Tell us what we must know or be drained of life. Where is this Mahdi? Who is he?'