The Icarus Agenda

'Anything you can part with. It's a long, terrible trip back and I hate flying. It frightens me.'

Evan Kendrick and Emmanuel Weingrass sat next to each other in the armchairs in Hassan's living room. They waited for their instructions from a harried, bewildered American ambassador, who was permitted to make contact only by telephone. It was as though the two old friends had never been apart—the oft-times bewildered student and the strident teacher. Yet the student was the leader, the shaker; and the teacher understood.

'Ahmat must be up in space with relief,' said Evan, drinking brandy.

'A couple of things are keeping him grounded.'

'Oh?'

'Seems there's a group that wanted to get rid of him, send him back to the States because they thought he was too young and inexperienced to handle things. He called them his arrogant merchant princes. He's bringing them to the palace to straighten them out.'

'That's one item. What else?'

'There's another bunch who wanted to take things in their own hands, blow up the embassy if they had to, anything to get their country back. They're machine-gun nuts; they're also the ones who were recruited by Cons Op to get you out of the airport.'

'What's he going to do about them?'

'Not a hell of a lot unless you want your name shouted from the minarets. If he calls them in, they'll scream State Department connections and all the crazies in the Middle East will have another cause.'

'Ahmat knows better. Let them alone.'

'There's a last item and he's got to do it for himself. He's got to blow that boat out of the water, and kill every one of those filthy bastards.'

'No, Manny, that's not the way. The killing will just go on and on—’

'Wrong!' shouted Weingrass. 'You're wrong! Examples must be made over and over again until they all learn the price they have to pay!' Suddenly the old architect was seized by a prolonged, echoing, rattling cough that came from the deepest, rawest cavities of his chest. His face reddened and the veins in his neck and forehead were blue and distended.

Evan gripped his old friend's shoulder to steady him. 'We'll talk about it later,' he said as the coughing subsided. 'I want you to come back with me, Manny.'

'Because of this? Weingrass shook his head defensively. 'It's just a chest cold. Lousy weather in France, that's all.'

'I wasn't thinking of that,' lied Kendrick, he hoped convincingly. 'I need you.'

'What for?'

'I may be going into several projects and I want your advice.' It was another lie, a weaker one, so he added quickly, 'Also I want to completely redesign my house.'

'I thought you just built it.'

'I was involved with other things and wasn't paying attention. It's terrible; I can't see half the things I was supposed to see, the mountains and the lakes.'

'You never were any damned good reading exterior schematics.'

'I need you. Please.'

'I have business in Paris. I've got to send out money. I gave my word.'

'Send mine.'

'Like a million?'

'Ten, if you like. I'm here and not in some shark's stomach… I'm not going to beg you, Manny, but please, I really do need you.'

'Well, maybe for a week or two,' said the irascible old man. 'They need me in Paris, too, you know.'

'Gross profits will drop all over the city, I know that,' replied Evan softly, relieved.

'What?'

Fortunately the telephone rang, preventing Kendrick from having to repeat his statement. Their instructions had arrived.

I'm the man you never met, never spoke to,' said Evan into the pay phone at Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia. 'I'm heading out to the white water and the mountains where I've been for the past five days. Is that understood?'

'Understood,' answered Frank Swann, deputy director of the State Department's Consular Operations. 'I won't even try to thank you.'

'Don't.'

'I can't. I don't even know your name.'

Ultra Maximum Secure

No Existing Intercepts

Proceed

The figure sat hunched over the keyboard, his eyes alive, his mind alert, though his body was racked with exhaustion. He kept breathing deeply as if each breath would keep his brain functioning. He had not slept for nearly forty-eight hours, waiting for developments out of Bahrain. There had been a blackout, a suspension of communications… silence. The small circle of need-to-know personnel at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency may now themselves be breathing deeply, he considered, but not before. Instead, they had been holding their collective breath. Bahrain represented the irreversible, hard edge of finality, the ending unclear. Not any longer. It was over, the subject airborne. He had won. The figure proceeded to type.

Our man has done it. My appliances are ecstatic, for although they refused to commit themselves, they indicated that he could succeed. In their inanimate way they saw my vision.

The subject arrived here this morning under deep cover thinking that everything is finished, that his life will return to its abnormal normalcy, but he is wrong. Everything is in place, the record written. The means must be found and they will be found. Lightning will strike and he will be the bolt that changes a nation. For him it is only the beginning.

Book Two

Ultra Maximum Secure No Existing Intercepts Proceed

The means have been found! As in the ancient Vedic scriptures, a god of fire has arrived as a messenger to the people. He has made himself known to me and I to him. The Oman file is now completed. Everything! And I have obtained everything through access and penetration and I have given everything to him. He's a remarkable man, as I realistically believe I am, and he has a dedication that matches my own.

With the file completed and entered in its entirety, this journal is finished. Another is about to begin.

The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 16

One year later. Sunday, 22 August 8:30 pm

One by one, like quiet, graceful chariots, the four limousines had deposited their owners in front of the marble steps leading to the pillared entrance of the estate on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. The arrivals were erratically spaced so that no sense of urgency was conveyed to suddenly curious onlookers, either on the highway or through the streets of the wealthy village in Maryland's Eastern Shore. It was merely another subdued social gathering of the immensely rich, a common sight in this enclave of financial power brokers. A prosperous local banker might glance out of his window and see the glistening cars roll by and wish he were privileged to hear the men talk over their brandy or billiards, but that was the extent of his ruminations.

The immensely rich were generous to their suburban environs and the townspeople were richer for them. Crumbs from their tables provided frequent bonuses: there were the armies of domestic and gardening help whose relatives swelled the payrolls with never a complaint from the owners so long as the estates were shipshape for their return from London, Paris or Gstaad. And for those in the professions, there was the occasional stock market tip over a friendly drink at the commercially quaint tavern in the centre of the town. The bankers, the merchants and the perpetually awed residents were fond of their 'lairds'; they guarded the privacy of these distinguished men and women with quiet firmness. And if guarding their privacy meant bending a few laws now and then, it was a small price to pay, and in a sense even moral when one considered how the gossip pedlars and the scandal sheets twisted everything out of all proportion to sell their newspapers and magazines. The ordinary man in the street could get roaring drunk or have a bloody fight with his wife or his neighbour, even be in a car accident, and no one took grotesque photographs of him to splatter all over the tabloids. Why were the rich singled out to provide lurid reading for people without an iota of their talents? The rich were different. They provided jobs and gave generously to charity and often made life just a little bit easier for those they came in contact with, so why should they be persecuted?