The Icarus Agenda: A Novel

  It happened again! Someone grabbed his neck from behind! Lifesaving procedure. Why did it come to mind? Pinch the nerve under the elbow! It releases the grip of a drowning man! Red Cross Senior Lifesaving Certificate. Summer money on the lake. In panic, he slid his hand down the exposed arm, reached the soft flesh under the elbow and pressed with all the strength that was in him. The terrorist screamed; it was enough. Kendrick hunched his shoulders and threw the man over his back, slamming him down onto the cement floor.

  “Do any of you want more?” whispered the newest prisoner harshly, crouching, turning, his height still apparent. “You are fools! If it weren’t for you idiots, I would not have been taken! I despise all of you! Now, leave me alone! I told you, I must think!”

  “Who are you to insult us and give us orders?” screeched a wild-eyed postadolescent, a harelip impeding his diction. It was all a scene out of Kafka—half-crazed prisoners prone to instant violence, yet nervously aware of more brutal punishment from the guards. Whispers became harsh commands, suppressed insults screams of defiance, while those who spoke looked continuously toward the door, making sure the babble beyond covered whatever they said, keeping it from eavesdropping enemy ears.

  “I am who I am! And that is enough for she-goat fools—”

  “The guards told us your name!” stammered another inmate, this one perhaps thirty, with an unkempt beard and filthy long hair; he cupped his lips with his hands as though they would stifle his words. “ ‘Amal Bahrudi!’ ” he yelled. “ ‘The trusted one from East Berlin and we’ve caught him!’ … So what? Who are you to us? I don’t even like the way you look. You look very odd to me! What is an Amal Bahrudi? Why should we care?”

  Kendrick glanced over at the door and the agitated group of prisoners talking excitedly. He took a step forward, again whispering harshly. “Because I was sent by others much higher than anyone here or in the embassy. Much, much higher. Now, I’m telling you for the last time, let me think! I have to get information out—”

  “You try and you’ll put us all in front of a firing squad!” exclaimed another prisoner through his teeth; he was short and strangely well groomed, except for unaccountable splotches of urine staining his prison trousers.

  “That bothers you?” replied Evan, staring at the terrorist, his voice low and filled with loathing. It was the moment to establish his credo further. “Tell me, pretty little boy, are you afraid to die?”

  “Only because I could no longer serve our cause!” gushed the boy-man defensively, his eyes darting about, seeking justification. A few in the crowd agreed; there were emotional, knee-jerk nods from those close enough to hear him, swept up in his fears. Kendrick wondered how pervasive was this deviation from zealotry.

  “Keep your voice down, you fool!” said Evan icily. “Your martyrdom is service enough.” He turned and walked through the hesitantly parting bodies to the stone wall of the immense cell where there was an open rectangular window with iron bars embedded in the concrete.

  “Not so fast, odd-looking one!” The rough voice, barely heard above the noise, came from the outer fringes of the crowd. A stocky, bearded man stepped forward. Those in front of him gave way as men casually do in the presence of a noncommissioned superior—a sergeant or a foreman, perhaps; not a colonel or a corporate vice president. Was there someone with more authority in that compound? wondered Evan. Someone else watching closely, someone else giving orders?

  “What is it?” asked Kendrick quietly, abrasively.

  “I also don’t like the way you look! I don’t like your face. That’s enough for me.”

  “Enough for what?” said Evan contemptuously, dismissing the man with a shrug of his head as he leaned into the wall, his hands gripping the iron bars of the small cell window, his gaze on the floodlit grounds outside.

  “Turn around!” ordered the surrogate foreman, or sergeant, in a harsh voice directly behind him.

  “I’ll turn when I care to,” said Kendrick, wondering if he was heard.

  “Now,” rejoined the man in a voice no louder than Evan’s—a quiet prelude to his strong hand suddenly crashing down on Kendrick’s right shoulder, gripping the flesh around the bleeding wound.

  “Don’t touch me, that’s an order!” Evan shouted, holding his ground, his hands vising the iron bars so as not to betray the pain he felt, his antennae alert for what he wanted to learn.… It came. The fingers clenching his shoulder spastically separated; the hand fell away on Evan’s command, but tentatively returned a moment later. It revealed enough: the noncom gave orders bluntly, yet he received and executed them with alacrity when they were given by an authoritative voice. Enough. He was not the man here in the compound. He was high on the totem pole but not high enough. Was there really another? A further test was called for.

  Kendrick stood rigid, then without motion or warning swung swiftly around to his right, dislodging the hand as the stocky man was ignominiously thrown off-balance by the clockwise movement. “All right!” he spat out, his sharp whisper not a statement but an accusation. “What is it about me you don’t like? I’ll convey your judgment to others. I’m sure they’ll be interested, for they would like to know who’s making judgments here in Masqat!” Evan again paused, then abruptly continued, his voice rising in a one-on-one challenge. “Those judgments are considered by many to be curdled in ass’s milk. What is it, imbecile? What don’t you like about me?”

  “I do not make judgments!” shouted the muscular terrorist as defensively as the boy-man who feared a firing squad. Then just as quickly as his outburst had erupted, the wary sergeant-foreman, momentarily frightened that his words might have been heard above the babble, regained his suspicious composure. “You’re free with words,” he whispered hoarsely, squinting his eyes, “but they mean nothing to us. How do we know who you are or where you come from? You don’t even look like one of us. You look different.”

  “I move in circles you don’t move in—can’t move in. I can.”

  “He has light-colored eyes!” The stifled cry came from the older, bearded prisoner with the long filthy hair peering forward. “He’s a spy! He’s come to spy on us!” Others crowded in, studying the suddenly more menacing stranger.

  Kendrick slowly turned his head toward his accuser. “So might you have these eyes if your grandfather was European. If I cared to change them for your grossly stupid benefit, a few drops of fluid would have been sufficient for a week. Naturally, you’re not aware of such techniques.”

  “You have words for everything, don’t you?” said the sergeant-foreman. “Liars are free with words, for they cost nothing.”

  “Except one’s life,” replied Evan, moving his eyes, staring at individual faces. “Which I have no intention of losing.”

  “You are afraid to die, then?” challenged the well-groomed youngster with the soiled trousers.

  “You yourself answered that question for me. I have no fear of death—none of us should have—but I do fear not accomplishing what I’ve been sent here to accomplish. I fear that greatly—for our most holy cause.”

  “Words again!” choked the stocky would-be leader, annoyed that a number of the prisoners were listening to the strange-looking Euro-Arab with the fluid tongue. “What is this thing you are to accomplish here in Masqat? If we are so stupid, why don’t you tell us, enlighten us!”

  “I will speak only to those I was told to find. No one else.”

  “I think you should speak to me,” said the sergeant—now more sergeant than foreman—as he took a menacing step toward the rigid American congressman. “We do not know you but you may know us. That gives you an advantage I don’t like.”

  “And I don’t like your stupidity,” said Kendrick, immediately gesturing with both hands, one pointing to his right ear, the other at the moving, chattering crowd by the door. “Can’t you understand?” he exclaimed, his whisper a shout into the man’s face. “You could be heard! You must admit you are stupid.”

  “Oh, yes, we are that, sir.?
?? The sergeant—definitely a sergeant—turned his head, looking at an unseen figure somewhere in the huge concrete cell. Evan tried to follow the man’s gaze; with his height he saw a row of open toilets at the end of the hall; several were in use, each occupant’s eyes watching the excitement. Other inmates, curious, many frantic, rushed alternately between the loud group by the heavy door and the crowd around the new prisoner. “But then, sir, great sir,” continued the heavy-set terrorist mockingly, “we have methods to overcome our stupidity. You should give inferior people credit for such things.”

  “I give credit when it is due—”

  “Our account is due now!” Suddenly, the muscular fanatic shot up his left arm. It was a cue, and with the signal voices swelled, raised in an Islamic chant, followed instantly by a dozen others, and then more, until the entire compound was filled with the reverberating echoes of fifty-odd zealots shrieking the praises of the obscure stations leading into the arms of Allah. And then it happened. A sacrifice was in the making.

  Bodies fell on him; fists crashed into his abdomen and face. He could not scream—his lips were clamped by strong clawlike fingers, the flesh stretched until he thought his mouth would be torn away. The pain was excruciating. And then abruptly, his lips were free, his mouth halfway in place.

  “Tell us!” screamed the sergeant-terrorist into Kendrick’s ear, his words lost to the wiretaps by the wildly accelerating Islamic chanting. “Who are you? What place in hell do you come from?”

  “I am who I am!” shouted Evan, grimacing and holding on as long as he could manage, convinced he knew the Arabic mind, believing a moment would come when respect for an enemy’s death would induce a few seconds of silence before the blow was administered; it would be enough. Death was revered in Islam, of friend and adversary alike. He needed those seconds! He had to let the guards know! Oh, Christ, he was being killed! A clenched fist hammered down on his testicles—when, when would it stop for those few, precious moments?

  A blurred figure was suddenly above him, bending over, studying him. Another fist crashed into his left kidney; the inward scream did not emerge from his mouth. He could not permit it.

  “Stop!” cried the voice of the blurred outline above. “Tear off his shirt. Let me see his neck. It is said there is a mark he can’t wash away.”

  Evan felt the cloth being ripped from his chest, his breath sinking, knowing the worst was about to be revealed. There was no scar on his neck.

  “It is Amal Bahrudi,” intoned the man above. The barely conscious Kendrick heard the words and was stunned.

  “What do you look for?” asked the bewildered sergeant-foreman, furious.

  “What is not there,” said the echoing voice. “Throughout Europe, Amal Bahrudi is marked by the scar on his throat. A photograph was circulated to authorities confirmed to be him, a picture obscuring the face but not the bare neck where the scar of a knife wound was in clear focus. It has been his best cover, an ingenious device of concealment.”

  “You confuse me!” shouted the squatting, stocky man, his words nearly drowned out by the cacophonous chanting. “What concealment? What scar?”

  “A scar that never was, a mark that never existed. They all look for a lie. This is Bahrudi, the blue-eyed man who can take pain with silence, the trusted one who moves about Western capitals unnoticed because of the genes of a European grandfather. Word must have reached Oman that he was reported to be on his way here, but regardless, he’ll be released in the morning, no doubt with great apologies. You see, there is no scar on his throat.”

  Through the haze and the terrible pain, Evan knew it was the moment to react. He forced a smile across his burning lips, his light blue eyes centering on the blurred figure above. “A sane man,” he coughed in agony. “Please, get me up, get them away from me before I see them all in hell.”

  “Amal Bahrudi speaks?” asked the unknown man, reaching out with his hand. “Let him up.”

  “No!” roared the sergeant-terrorist, plunging down and pinning Kendrick’s shoulders. “There’s no sense in what you say! He is who he says he is because of a scar that does not exist? Where’s the sense in that, I ask you?”

  “I will know if he lies,” replied the figure above, slowly coming into focus for Kendrick. The gaunt face was that of a man in his early twenties, with high cheekbones and intense, dark intelligent eyes flanking a sharp, straight nose. The body was slender, bordering on thin, but there was a supple strength in the way he crouched and held his head. The muscles of his neck stood out. “Let him up,” repeated the younger terrorist, his voice casual but no less a command for that. “And instruct the others to gradually stop their chanting—gradually, you understand—but then keep talking among themselves. All must appear normal, including the incessant arguing, which you don’t have to encourage.”

  The angry subordinate gave Evan a last shove into the floor, widening the cut in his shoulder so severely that new blood burst out onto the concrete. The surly man got to his feet, turning to the crowd to carry out his orders.

  “Thank you,” said Evan, breathless, trembling and getting to his knees, wincing at the pain he felt everywhere, conscious of the bruises on his face and body, aware of the hot lacerations where his flesh had been punctured—again seemingly everywhere. “I would have joined Allah in a minute.”

  “You still may, which is why I won’t bother to stem your bleeding.” The young Palestinian shoved Kendrick against the wall into a sitting position, his legs stretched out on the floor. “You see, I have no idea whether you’re really Amal Bahrudi or not. I acted on instinct. From the descriptions I’ve heard, you could be he, and you speak an educated Arabic, which also fits. In addition, you withstood extreme punishment when a gesture of submission on your part would have meant you were prepared to deliver the information demanded of you. Instead, you reacted with defiance, and you had to know that at any moment you could have been strangled.… That is not the way of an infiltrator who values his life here on earth. It is the way of one of us who will not harm the cause, for, as you remarked, it’s a holy cause. And it is. Most holy.”

  Good God! thought Kendrick, assuming the cold expression of a dedicated partisan. How wrong you are! If I had thought—if I’d been able to think.… Forget it! “What will finally convince you? I tell you now I’m not about to reveal things I shouldn’t.” Evan paused, his hand covering the swallow in his throat. “Even to the point where you may resume the punishment and strangle me, if you like.”

  “Both are statements I would expect,” said the intense, slender terrorist, lowering himself, now crouching in front of Evan. “You can, however, tell me what it is you came here for. Why were you sent to Masqat? Whom were you told to find? Your life depends on your answers, Amal Bahrudi, and I’m the only one who can make that decision.”

  He had been right. In spite of the odds he had been right!

  Escape. He had to escape with this young killer in a holy cause.

  7

  Kendrick stared at the Palestinian as if, indeed, the eyes held the meaning of a man’s soul, although Evan’s own eyes were too swollen to betray anything other than overwhelming physical pain.… The remaining taps are in the flushing mechanisms of the toilets: Dr. Amal Faisal, contact to the sultan.

  “I was sent here to tell you that among your people in the embassy there are traitors.”

  “Traitors?” The terrorist remained motionless in his crouching position in front of Evan; beyond a slight frown there was no reaction whatsoever. “That’s impossible,” he said after several moments of intensely studying ‘Amal Bahrudi’s’ face.

  “I’m afraid it’s not,” contradicted Kendrick. “I saw the proof.”

  “Consisting of what?”

  Evan suddenly winced, grabbing his wounded shoulder, his hand instantly covered with blood. “If you won’t stop this bleeding, I will!” He started to push himself up against the stone wall.

  “Stay put!” commanded the young killer.

  “W
hy? Why should I? How do I know you’re not part of the treason—making money out of our work?”

  “Money …? What money?”

  “You won’t know that until I know you have the right to be told.” Again Evan pressed himself against the wall, his hands on the floor, trying to rise. “You talk like a man but you’re a boy.”

  “I grew up quickly,” said the terrorist, shoving his strange prisoner down again. “Most of us have over here.”

  “Grow up now. My bleeding to death will tell neither of us anything.” Kendrick ripped the blood-soaked shirt away from his shoulder. “It’s filthy,” he said, nodding at the wound. “It’s filled with dirt and slime, thanks to your animal friends.”

  “They’re not animals and they’re not friends. They are my brothers.”

  “Write poetry on your own time, mine’s too valuable. Is there any water in here—clean water?”

  “The toilets,” answered the Palestinian. “There’s a sink on the right.”

  “Help me up.”

  “No. What proof? Whom were you sent to find?”

  “Fool!” exploded Evan. “All right.… Where is Nassir? Everyone asks: Where is Nassir?”

  “Dead,” replied the young man, his expression without comment.

  “What?”

  “A marine guard jumped him, took his weapon, and shot him. The marine was killed instantly.”

  “Nothing was said—”

  “What could be said that was productive?” countered the terrorist. “Make a martyr out of a single American guard? Show one of our own to have been overcome? We don’t parade weakness.”