“Nothing is solved at this juncture,” said the veiled woman, again sitting down. “There’s the problem of getting my brother and Mr. Bahrudi to Bahrain. How can it be done?”
“It’s been taken care of,” answered Evan, the pounding in his chest accelerating, astonished at his own control, at his casual voice. He was closer! Closer to the Mahdi! “I told Azra I have a telephone number, which I won’t give you—can’t give you—but with a few words will get us a plane.”
“Just like that?” exclaimed Ahbyahd.
“Your benefactor here in Oman has methods you haven’t dreamt of.”
“All phone calls in and out are intercepted,” objected Azra.
“What I say may be heard, but not what the person I’m calling says. I was assured of that.”
“A scrambling device?” asked Yateem.
“They’re part of our kits in Europe. A simple cone pressed over the mouthpiece. The distortion is absolute except on the direct connection.”
“Make your call,” said Zaya, getting up and walking rapidly around the desk as Kendrick did the same, replacing her in the chair. Holding his hand over the numbers, Evan dialed.
“Yes?” Ahmat’s voice came on the line before the second ring.
“A plane,” said Kendrick. “Two passengers. Where? When?”
“My God!” exploded the young sultan of Oman. “Let me think.… The airport, of course. There’s a turn in the road about a quarter of a mile before the cargo area. Someone will pick you up in a garrison car. Tell them it was stolen to get you past the guards.”
“When?”
“It will take time. The security’s heavy all over and arrangements have to be made. Can you give me a destination?”
“The twenty-second letter split in two.”
“V … split—a slanted I—Iran?”
“No. By the numbers.”
“Twenty-second … two. B?”
“Yes.”
“Bahrain!”
“Yes.”
“That helps. I’ll make some calls. How soon do you need it?”
“At the height of the festivities here. We have to get out in the confusion.”
“That would be around noon.”
“Whatever you say. Incidentally, there’s a doctor—he has something I may need for my health.”
“The money belt, of course. It will be slipped to you.”
“Good.”
“The turn before the cargo area. Be there.”
“We will.” Evan hung up the phone. “We’re to be at the airport by twelve noon.”
“The airport?” shouted Azra. “We’ll be picked up!”
“On the road before the airport. Someone will steal a garrison car and they’ll pick us up.”
“I’ll arrange for one of our contacts here in the city to drive you,” said Zaya Yateem. “He’ll be the one you will give the location to in Bahrain, the meeting ground. You have at least five hours before you leave.”
“We’ll need clothes, a shower and some rest,” said Azra. “I can’t remember when I last slept.”
“I’d like to look around your operation,” remarked Kendrick, getting out of the chair. “I might learn something.”
“Whatever you wish, Amal Bahrudi,” said Zaya Yateem, approaching Evan. “You saved my dear brother’s life, and for that there are no adequate words to express my thanks.”
“Just get me to that airport by noon,” replied Kendrick, no warmth in his voice. “Frankly, I want to get back to Germany as soon as possible.”
“By noon,” agreed the female terrorist.
“Weingrass will be here by noon!” exclaimed the Mossad officer to Ben-Ami and the five-man unit from the Masada Brigade. They were in the cellar of a house in the Jabal Sa’ali, minutes from the rows of English graves where scores of privateers were buried centuries ago. The primitive stone basement had been converted into a control center for Israeli intelligence.
“How will he get here?” asked Ben-Ami, who had taken the ghotra off his head, the blue jeans and the loose dark shirt far more natural to him. “His passport was issued in Jerusalem, not the most welcome of documents.”
“One does not question Emmanuel Weingrass. He undoubtedly has more passports than there are bagels in Tel Aviv’s Jabotinsky Square. He says for us to do nothing until he arrives. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ were his exact words.”
“You don’t sound so disapproving of him as you did before,” said Yaakov, code name Blue, son of a hostage and leader of the Masada unit.
“Because I will not have to sign his expense vouchers! There’ll be none. All I had to do was mention Kendrick’s name and he said he was on his way.”
“That hardly means he won’t submit his expenses,” countered Ben-Ami, chuckling.
“Oh, no, I was very specific. I asked him how much it would cost us for his assistance and he replied unequivocally, ‘Up yours, this is on me!’ It’s an American expression that absolves us from payment.”
“We’re wasting time!” cried Yaakov. “We should be scouting the embassy. We’ve studied the plans; there are a half-dozen ways we might enter and get out with my father!”
Heads snapped and eyes widened at the young leader called Blue. “We understand,” said the Mossad officer.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“You of all people have every right to say it,” said Ben-Ami.
“I shouldn’t have. I apologize again. But why should we wait for this Weingrass?”
“Because he delivers, my friend, and without him we may not.”
“I see! You people in the Mossad turn flip-flops. Now it’s the American you want to help, not our original objective! Damn it, yes, my father!”
“The result could be one and the same, Yaakov—”
“I’m not Yaakov!” roared the young leader. “To you I am only Blue—the son of a father who watched his own father and mother pulled apart in Auschwitz as they clung to each other before each was driven into the showers of gas. I want my father out and safe and I can do it! How much more can that man suffer? A childhood of horror, watching while children his own age were hanged for stealing garbage to eat, sodomized by Wehrmacht pigs, hiding, starving in forests all over Poland until the Allies came. Then later blessed with three sons, only to have two of them killed, my brothers killed, butchered in Sidon by filthy pig—terrorist Arabs! Now I should care about one American cowboy, a politician who wants to be a hero so he can act in films and have his picture on cereal boxes?”
“From what I’ve been told,” said Ben-Ami calmly, “none of that is true. This American risks his life without help from his own people, without the prospect of future rewards if he lives. As our friend here tells us, he does what he’s doing for a reason not much different from yours. To right a terrible wrong that was done to him, to his family, as it were.”
“To hell with him! That was a family, not a people! I say we go to the embassy!”
“I say you don’t,” said the officer, placing his pistol slowly on the table. “You are now under the command of the Mossad and you will follow our orders.”
“Pigs!” screamed Yaakov. “You’re pigs, all of you!”
“Ever so,” said Ben-Ami. “All of us.”
10:48 A.M. Oman time. The controlled press conference was over. The reporters and television crews were securing their notebooks and equipment, prepared to be ushered out through the embassy halls to the outside gates, patrolled by a hundred young men and veiled women marching back and forth with weapons at ready-fire. Inside the conference hall, however, a fat man broke through the guards with unctuous words and approached the table where Zaya Yateem sat. Rifles at his head, he spoke.
“I come from the Mahdi,” he whispered, “who pays every shilling you owe.”
“You, too? The emergency in Bahrain must be serious, indeed.”
“I beg your pardon—”
“He’s been searched?” asked Zaya of the guards, who nodded. ??
?Let him go.”
“Thank you, madame—what emergency in Bahrain?”
“Obviously we don’t know. One of our own is going there tonight to be told and will return to us with the news.”
MacDonald stared into the eyes above the veil, a sharp, hollow pain forming in his enormous chest. What was happening? Why was Bahrain going around him? What decisions had been made that excluded him? Why? What had the filthy Arab whore done? “Madame,” continued the Englishman slowly, his words measured. “The emergency in Bahrain is a new development, whereas I am concerned with another question equally serious. Our benefactor would like clarified—immediately clarified—the presence of the woman Khalehla here in Masqat.”
“Khalehla? There’s no woman named Khalehla among us here, but then names are meaningless, aren’t they?”
“Not here, not inside here, but outside and in contact with your people—your own brother, in fact.”
“My brother?”
“Precisely. Three escaped prisoners raced to meet her on the road to the Jabal Sham, to meet with the enemy!”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying, madame, I’m demanding. We are demanding an explanation. The Mahdi insists on it most emphatically.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about! It is true three prisoners escaped, one of them my brother along with Yosef and our benefactor’s other emissary, a man named Bahrudi from East Berlin.”
“East— Madame, you’re too quick for me.”
“If you’re really from the Mahdi, I’m astonished you’re not aware of him.” Yateem stopped, her penetrating large eyes roaming over MacDonald’s face. “On the other hand, you could be from anyone, anywhere.”
“While in Masqat I am the Mahdi’s only voice! Call Bahrain and hear it for yourself, madame.”
“You know perfectly well such calls are not permitted.” Zaya snapped her fingers for the guards; they rushed to the table. “Take this man and bring him to the council room. Then wake my brother and Yosef and find Amal Bahrudi. Another conference is called for. Now!”
The clothes Evan chose for himself were a blend of the terrorist dress code: unpressed khaki trousers, a soiled American-style field jacket and a dark shirt open to mid-chest. Except for his age and his eyes, he was similar in appearance to the majority of the fanatic punks who had captured the embassy. Even the years were obscured by his darkened flesh, and his eyes were shaded by the visor of a cloth cap. To complete the image he wanted, a sheathed knife was attached to his jacket and the bulge of a revolver apparent in the right pocket. The “trusted one” was trusted; he had saved the life of Azra, prince of terrorists, and moved freely about the seized embassy, from one sickening scene to another, one group of frightened, exhausted, hopeless group to another.
Hope. It was all he could give, knowing that in the final analysis it was probably false, but he had to give it, give them something to cling to, at least to think about in the darkest, most terrifying hours of the night.
“I’m an American!” he whispered to shocked hostages wherever he found three or more together, his eyes constantly glancing around at the roving punks who thought he was insulting their prisoners with sudden, audible bursts of anger. “Nobody’s forgotten you! We’re doing all we can! Don’t mind my shouting at you. I have to.”
“Thank God!” was the constant initial reply, followed by tears and descriptions of horror, invariably including the public execution of the seven condemned hostages.
“They’ll kill us all! They don’t care! The filthy animals don’t care about death—ours or theirs.”
“Do your best to stay calm and I mean that! Try not to show fear, that’s very, very important. Don’t antagonize, but don’t crawl to them. Seeing you afraid is like a narcotic to them. Remember that.”
At one point Kendrick suddenly stood up and shouted abusively at a group of five Americans. His straying eyes had picked out one of Zaya Yateem’s personal guards; the man was walking rapidly toward him.
“You! Bahrudi!”
“Yes.”
“Zaya must see you right away. Come, the council room!”
Evan followed the guard across the roof and down three flights of stairs into a long corridor. He removed his cap, now soaked with perspiration, and was led to the open door of a large embassy office. He walked inside, and four seconds later his world was shattered by the last words he could ever hope to hear.
“Good Christ! You’re Evan Kendrick!”
12
“Meen ir ráh-gill da?” said Evan, mind and body paralyzed, straining, forcing himself to move casually, as he asked Zaya who the obese man was who had spoken English.
“He says he is from the Mahdi,” Azra replied, standing between Yosef and Ahbyahd.
“What did he mean?”
“You heard him. He says you’re someone named Kendrick.”
“Who’s that?” asked Evan in English, addressing Anthony MacDonald, trying desperately to remain composed while adjusting not only to the sight of a man he had not seen in nearly five years, but to his very presence in that room. MacDonald! The fatuous society drunk from the British colony in Cairo! “My name is Amal Bahrudi, what is yours?”
“You know damned well who I am!” shouted the Englishman, jabbing his index finger in the air, looking in turn at the four Arab councillors, especially Zaya Yateem. “He’s not Amal-whatever and he’s not from the Mahdi! He’s an American named Evan Kendrick!”
“I studied at two American universities,” said Evan, smiling, “but no one ever called me a Kendrick. Other things, yes, but not Kendrick.”
“You’re lying!”
“On the contrary, I’d have to say you’re the liar if you claim to be working for the Mahdi. I was shown the photograph of every European in his—shall we say—confidential employ and you certainly were not among them. I would definitely remember because—shall we again say—you have a very distinctive face and figure.”
“Liar! Impostor! You work with Khalehla the whore, the enemy! Early this morning, before daybreak, she was on her way to meet you!”
“What are you talking about?” Kendrick glanced at Azra and Yosef. “I’ve never heard of a Khalehla, either as an enemy or a whore, and before daybreak my friends and I were running for our lives. We had no time for dalliances, I assure you.”
“I tell you he’s lying. I was there and I saw her! I saw all of you!”
“You saw us?” asked Evan, eyebrows arched. “How?”
“I drove off the road—”
“You saw us and you did not help us?” broke in Kendrick angrily. “And you say you’re from the Mahdi?”
“He has a point, Englishman,” said Zaya. “Why did you not help them?”
“There were things to learn, that’s why! And now I have learned them. Khalehla … him!”
“You have extraordinary fantasies, that’s what you have, whatever your name is, which I don’t know. One, however, we can easily dispose of. We’re on our way to Bahrain to meet the Mahdi. We’ll take you with us. The great man will undoubtedly be delighted to see you again, since you’re so important to him.”
“I agree,” said Azra firmly.
“Bahrain?” roared MacDonald. “How in hell are you going to get there?”
“You mean you don’t know?” said Kendrick.
Emmanuel Weingrass, his slender chest heaving in pain from the most recent fit of coughing, stepped out of the limousine in front of the cemetery at Jabal Sa’ali. He turned to the driver, who held the door, and spoke reverently in an exaggerated British accent. “I shall pray over my English ancestors—so few do, you know. Come back in an hour.”
“Howar?” asked the man, holding up one finger. “Iss’a?” he repeated in Arabic, using the word for hour.
“Yes, my Islamic friend. It is a profound pilgrimage I make every year. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, yes! El sallah. Allahoo Akbar!” answered the driver, rapidly nodding his head, saying
that he understood prayers and that God was great. He also held money in his hand, more money than he had expected, knowing that even more could be his when he returned in an hour.
“Leave me now,” said Weingrass. “I wish to be alone—sibni fihahlee.”
“Yes, yes!” The man closed the door, ran back to his seat and drove away. Manny permitted himself a brief spasm, one vibrating cough compounding the previous one, and looked around to ascertain his bearings, then started across the cemetery to the stone house that stood in a field several hundred yards away. Ten minutes later he was ushered down to the basement, where Israeli intelligence had set up its command post.
“Weingrass,” cried the Mossad officer, “it’s good to see you again!”
“No, it’s not. You’re never happy to see me or hear me on the telephone. You know nothing about the work you do, you’re only an accountant—a miserly one at that.”
“Now, Manny, let’s not start—”
“I say we start right away,” interrupted Weingrass, looking over at Ben-Ami and the five members of the Masada unit. “Do any of you misfits have whisky? I know this zohlah doesn’t,” he added, implying that the Mossad man was cheap.
“Not even wine,” replied Ben-Ami. “It was not included in our provisions.”
“No doubt issued by this one. All right, accountant, tell me everything you know. Where is my son, Evan Kendrick?”
“Here, but that’s all we know.”
“That’s standard. You were always three days behind the Sabbath.”
“Manny—”
“Calm yourself. You’ll have cardiac arrest and I don’t want Israel to lose its worst accountant. Who can tell me more?”
“I can tell you more!” shouted Yaakov, code name Blue. “We should be at this moment—hours ago—studying the embassy. We have a job to do that has nothing to do with your American!”
“So, besides an accountant you have a hothead,” said Weingrass. “Anyone else?”
“Kendrick is here without sanction,” replied Ben-Ami. “He was flown over under cover but is now left to his own devices. He’s unacknowledged if caught.”