“For God’s sake, Roberta, this isn’t The King and I and I’m not Yul Brynner.”
“You are now, pal!” Laughing, Ahmat’s wife looked at Khalehla. “Of course, if you touch him, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”
“Not to fear, my dear,” said Khalehla in mock seriousness. “Not after what you’ve told me.”
“All right, you two,” Ahmat interrupted. His brief look expressed the gratitude he felt toward both women.
“We have to laugh now and then,” said his wife. “Otherwise I think we’d go stark raving mad.”
“Raving as in mad,” agreed Ahmat quietly, settling his eyes on the woman from Cairo. “How’s your British businessman friend?”
“Raving as in drunk,” answered Khalehla. “He was last seen half upright in the hotel’s American Bar still calling me names.”
“It’s not the worst thing that could happen to your cover.”
“Certainly not. I obviously go to the highest bidder.”
“What about our superpatriots, the elder merchant princes who’d just as soon see me flee to the West in frustration as stay here? They still believe you’re working with them, don’t they?”
“Yes. My ‘friend’ told me in the Sabat Aynub market that they’re convinced you met with Kendrick. His logic was such that I had to go along with him and agree that you were a damn fool; you were asking for the worst kind of trouble. Sorry.”
“What logic?”
“They know that a garrison car picked up the American a few blocks away from his hotel. I couldn’t argue, I was there.”
“Then they were looking for that car. Garrison vehicles are all over Masqat.”
“Sorry, again, it was a wrong move, Ahmat. I could have told you that if I’d have been able to reach you. You see, the circle was broken; they knew Kendrick was here—”
“Mustapha,” interrupted the young sultan angrily. “I mourn his death but not the closing of his big mouth.”
“Perhaps it was he, perhaps not,” said Khalehla. “Washington itself could be responsible. Too many people were involved in Kendrick’s arrival, I saw that also. As I understand, it was a State Department operation; there are others who do these things better.”
“We don’t know who the enemy is or where to look!” Ahmat clenched his fist, bringing his knuckles to his teeth. “It could be anyone, anywhere—right in front of our eyes. Goddamnit, what do we do?”
“Do as he’s told you,” said the woman from Cairo. “Let him go in under deep cover. He’s made contact; wait for him to reach you.”
“Is that all I can do? Wait?”
“No, there’s something else,” added Khalehla. “Give me the escape route and one of your fast cars. I brought along my courtesan’s equipment—it’s in a suitcase outside in the hall—and while I change clothes you coordinate the details with your cousins and that doctor you call an old friend.”
“Hey, come on!” protested Ahmat. “I know you and Bobbie go back a long time but that doesn’t give you the right to order me to endanger your life! No way, José.”
“We’re not talking about my life,” said Khalehla icily, her brown eyes staring at Ahmat. “Or yours, frankly. We’re talking about raw terrorism and the survival of Southwest Asia. Nothing may come of tonight, but it’s my job to try to find out, and it’s your job to permit me. Isn’t that what we’ve both been trained for?”
“And also give her the number where she can reach you,” said Roberta Yamenni calmly. “Reach us.”
“Go change your clothes,” said the young sultan of Oman, shaking his head, his eyes closed.
“Thank you, Ahmat. I’ll hurry, but first I have to reach my people. I don’t have much to say, so it’ll be quick.”
The drunken baldheaded man in the disheveled Savile Row pinstripes was escorted out of the elevator by two countrymen. The girth and weight of their inebriated charge were such that each struggled to hold up his part of the body.
“Bloody disgrace, is what he is!” said the man on the left, awkwardly glancing at a hotel key dangling from the fingers of his right hand, which was even more awkwardly shoved up under the drunk’s armpit.
“Come now, Dickie,” retorted his companion, “we’ve all swigged our several too many on occasion.”
“Not in a goddamned country going up in flames fueled by nigger barbarians! He could start a bloody brawl and we’d be hanged by our necks from two lampposts! Where’s the damned room?”
“Down the hall. Heavy bugger, isn’t he?”
“All lard and straight whisky is my guess.”
“I don’t know about that. He seemed like a pleasant enough chap who got taken by a fast-talking whore. That sort of thing makes anyone pissed, you know. Did you get whom he worked for?”
“Some textile firm in Manchester. Twillingame or Burlingame, something like that.”
“Never heard of it,” said the man on the right, arching his brows in surprise. “Here, give me the key; there’s the door.”
“We’ll just throw him on the bed, no courtesies beyond that, I tell you.”
“Do you think that fellow will keep the bar open for us? I mean, while we’re doing our Christian duty the bugger could lock the doors, you know.”
“The bastard had better not!” exclaimed the man named Dickie as the three figures lurched into the darkened room, the light from the hallway outlining the bed. “I gave him twenty pounds to keep the place open, if only for us. If you think I’m shutting my eyes for a single second until I’m on that plane tomorrow, you’re ready for the twit farm! I’ll not have my throat slit by some wog with a messianic complex, I tell you that, too! Come on, heave!”
“Good night, fat prince,” said the companion. “And may all kinds of black bats carry you to wherever.”
The heavy man in the pin-striped suit raised his head from the bed and turned his face toward the door. The footsteps in the hallway receded; inelegantly he rolled his bulk over and got to his feet. In the shadowed light provided by the dull streetlamps below outside the window, he removed his jacket and hung it up carefully in the open closet, smoothing out the wrinkles. He proceeded to undo his regimental tie, slipping it off his neck. He then unbuttoned his soiled shirt reeking of whisky, removed it also and threw it into a wastebasket. He went into the bathroom, turned on both faucets, and sponged his upper torso; satisfied, he picked up a bottle of cologne and splashed it generously over his skin. Drying himself, he walked back into the bedroom to his suitcase on a luggage rack in the corner. He opened it, selected a black silk shirt, and put it on. As he buttoned it and tucked it under the belt around his thick stomach, he walked over to a window, taking out a book of matches from his trousers pocket. He struck a match, let the flame settle, and made three semicircles in front of the large glass pane. He waited ten seconds, then crossed to the desk in the center of the left wall and switched on the lamp. He went to the door, unlatched the automatic lock and returned to the bed, where he meticulously removed the two pillows from under the spread, fluffed both up for a backrest, and lowered his large frame. He looked at his watch and waited.
The scratching at the door made three distinct eruptions, each semicircular on the wood, if one listened. “Come in,” said the man on the bed in the black silk shirt.
A dark-skinned Arab entered hesitantly, in apparent awe of his surroundings and the person within those surroundings. His robes were clean, if not brand-new, and his headdress spotless; his was a privileged mission. He spoke in a quiet, reverent voice. “You made the holy sign of the crescent, sir, and I am here.”
“Much thanks,” said the Englishman. “Come in and close the door, please.”
“Of course, Effendi.” The man did as he was told, holding his position of distance.
“Did you bring me what I need?”
“Yes, sir. Both the equipment and the information.”
“The equipment first, please.”
“Indeed.” The Arab reached under his robes and withdrew a larg
e pistol, its outsized appearance due to a perforated cylinder attached to the barrel; it was a silencer. With his other hand the messenger pulled out a small gray box; it contained twenty-seven rounds of ammunition. He walked dutifully forward to the bed, extending the handle of the weapon. “The gun is fully loaded, sir. Nine shells. Thirty-six shells in all.”
“Thank you,” said the obese Englishman, accepting the equipment. The Arab stepped back obsequiously. “Now the information, if you please.”
“Yes, sir. But first I should tell you that the woman was recently driven to the palace from her hotel in the next street—”
“What?” Astonished, the British businessman bolted upright on the bed, his heavy legs swinging around, pounding the floor. “Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir. A royal limousine picked her up.”
“When?”
“Roughly ten to twelve minutes ago. Naturally, I was informed immediately. She is there by now.”
“But what about the old men, the merchants?” The fat man’s voice was low and strained, as if he were doing his utmost to control himself. “She made contact, didn’t she?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the Arab tremulously, as though he feared a beating if he replied in the negative. “She had coffee with an importer named Hajazzi in the Dakhil, then much later met with him at the Sabat market. She was taking photographs, following someone—”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, sir. The Sabat was crowded and she fled. I could not follow her.”
“The palace …?” whispered the businessman hoarsely as he slowly stood up. “Incredible!”
“It is true, sir. My information is accurate, or I would not deliver it to such an august personage as yourself.… In truth, Effendi, I shall praise Allah with all my heart in my every prayer for having met a true disciple of the Mahdi!”
The Englishman’s eyes snapped up at the figure of the messenger. “Yes, you’ve been told that, haven’t you?” he said softly.
“I was blessed with this gift of knowledge, singled out among my brothers for the privilege.”
“Who else knows?”
“On my life, no one, sir! Yours is a sacred pilgrimage to be made in silence and invisibly. I shall go to my grave with the secret of your presence in Masqat!”
“Splendid idea,” said the large man in shadows as he raised the pistol.
The two gunshots were like rapid, muted coughs but their power belied the sound. Across the room the Arab was blown into the wall, his spotless robes suddenly drenched with blood.
The hotel’s American Bar was dark except for the dull glow of fluorescent tubes from under the counter. The aproned bartender slouched in a corner of his domain, every now and then glancing wearily at the two figures sitting in a booth by a front window, the view outside partially blocked by the lowered, half-closed blinds. The Englishmen are fools, thought the bartender. Not that they should disregard their fears—who lived without them in these mad-dog days, foreigner and sane Omani alike? But these two would be safer from a mad-dog assault behind the locked doors of hotel rooms, unnoticed, unseen.… Or would they? mused the bartender, reconsidering. He himself had told the management that they insisted on remaining where they were, and the management, not knowing what the foreigners carried on their persons or who else might know and be looking for them, had stationed three armed guards in the lobby near the American Bar’s only entrance.… Regardless, the bartender concluded, yawning, wise or unwise, dull-witted or very clever, the Englishmen were extremely generous, that was all that mattered. That and the sight of his own weapon covered by a towel under the bar. Ironically, it was a lethal Israeli submachine gun he had bought from an accommodating Jew on the waterfront. Hah! Now the Jews were really clever. Since the madness began, they were arming half of Masqat.
“Dickie, look!” whispered the more tolerant of the two Englishmen, his right hand separating a pair of slats in the lowered blind covering the window.
“What, Jack …?” Dickie jerked his head up, blinking his eyes; he had been dozing.
“Isn’t that our squiffed countryman out there?”
“Who? Where …? My God, you’re right!”
Outside in the deserted, dimly lit street, the heavy man—upright, agitated, pacing the curb while rapidly looking back and forth—suddenly struck several matches, one after another. He appeared to raise and lower the flames, snapping each match angrily down on the pavement before lighting the next. Within ninety seconds a dark sedan appeared racing down the street; as it abruptly stopped the headlights were extinguished. Astonished, Dickie and his companion watched through the slats of the blind as the fat man, with startling agility and purpose, strode around the hood of the automobile. As he approached the passenger door an Arab wearing a headdress but in a dark Western suit leaped out. Instantly, the heavy Britisher began speaking rapidly, repeatedly jabbing his index finger into the face of the man in front of him. Finally he heaved his large torso around, spun his jowled head and pointed at an area in the upper floors of the hotel; the Arab turned and raced across the pavement. Then, in clear view, the obese businessman pulled a large weapon from his belt as he opened the car door further and quickly, again angrily, lowered himself inside.
“My God, did you see that?” cried Dickie.
“Yes. He’s changed his clothes.”
“His clothes?”
“Of course. The light’s poor but not for the practiced eye. The white shirt’s gone and so are the pinstripes. He’s wearing a dark shirt now and his jacket and trousers are a dull black, coarse-woven wool, I should think, hardly becoming the climate.”
“What are you talking about?” exclaimed the astounded Dickie. “I meant the gun!”
“Well, yes, chap. You’re in ferrous metals and I’m in textiles.”
“Really, chap, you leave me dumbfounded! We both see a twenty-stone bugger who, fifteen minutes ago, was so squiffed we had to carry him upstairs suddenly running around cold sober in the street, issuing orders to some bloke and brandishing a gun while he jumps into a madly driven car he obviously had signaled—and all you see are his clothes!”
“Well, actually, there’s more to it than that, old boy. I saw the gun, of course, and the jackrabbit Arab, and that car—obviously driven by a maniac—and the contrariness of it all was why the clothes struck me as odd, don’t you see?”
“Not a ha’penny’s worth!”
“Perhaps ‘odd’ is the wrong choice of word—”
“Try the right one, Jack.”
“All right, I’ll try.… That fat bugger may or may not have been squiffed but he was a dandy of the first water. Best featherweight worsted stripe, an Angelo shirt from East Bond, the finest foulard tie Harrods has to offer, and Benedictine shoes—leather from the veldt and sewn to order in Italy. He’s dressed to kill, I thought to myself, and everything right for the climate.”
“So?” asked the exasperated Dickie.
“So out there in the street just now, he’s in a jacket and trousers of quite ordinary quality, ill-fitting and far too heavy for this blasted weather, and certainly not the sort of outfit that would stand out in a crowd, much less appropriate for a dawn social or an Ascot breakfast. And while I’m at it, there isn’t a textile firm in Manchester I’m not familiar with, and there’s no Twillingame or Burlingame or any name remotely similar.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say.”
“That’s a wicket, isn’t it?”
“I also say we shouldn’t take that plane this morning.”
“My God, why?”
“I think we should go over to our embassy and wake someone up.”
“What …?”
“Dickie, suppose that bugger is dressed to kill?”
Ultra Maximum Secure
No Existing Intercepts
Proceed
The journal continued.
The latest report is troubling, and insofar as my appliances haven’t broken Langley’s access
codes, I don’t even know whether data was withheld or not. The subject has made contact. The shadow speaks of a high-risk option that was ‘inevitable’—inevitable!—but extremely dangerous.
What is he doing and how is he doing it? What are his methods and who are his contacts? I must have specifics! If he survives, I will need every detail, for it is the details that lend credence to any extraordinary action, and it is the action that will propel the subject into the conscience of the nation.
But will he survive or will he be yet another buried statistic in an unrevealed series of events? My appliances cannot tell me, they can only attest to his potential, which means nothing if he’s dead. Then all of my work will have been for nothing.
8
The four terrorist prisoners were shackled, two sitting on the right side of the speeding, violently shaking police van, the other two opposite them on the left. As arranged, Kendrick sat with the young wild-eyed fanatic whose harelip impeded his screeching pronouncements; Azra was across the way with the gruff older killer who had challenged and attacked Evan, the man he thought of as a sergeant-foreman. By the rattling steel door of the van stood a police guard, his left hand gripping a crossbar on the roof, trying to keep himself upright. In his right, held in place by a taut leather shoulder strap, was a MAC-10 machine pistol. A single scattershot burst would turn the four breathing prisoners into bloodied breathless corpses pinned to the walls of the racing van. Yet, also—as arranged—a ring of keys was hooked to the guard’s belt, the same keys that had secured the prisoners’ shackles. Everything had been a race against time, precious time. Minutes became hours and hours brought about another day.
“You’re insane, you know that, don’t you?”
“Doctor, we don’t have a choice! That man is Azra—color him Blue.”
“Wrong, wrong, wrong! Azra has a chin beard and long hair—we’ve all seen him on television—”