At the end it was as he had conceived it in the beginning. Himself and the Mahdi. Himself or the Mahdi. Now he had lost, as surely as if he were in the shell of a building with a thousand tons of concrete and steel crashing down on him.
There was a sharp tapping at the door. “Odkhul,” he said in Arabic, telling the visitor to come in, instinctively picking up his weapon from the white rug. The guard walked in, expertly balancing a large tray in the palm of his left hand. Evan shoved the gun under a pillow and stood up as the soldier carried his food to the white desk.
“All is in readiness, sir!” exclaimed the guard, no little triumph in his voice. “I personally selected each item for its proper deliciousness. My wife tells me I should have been a chef rather than a warrior—”
Kendrick did not actually hear the rest of this warrior’s paean to himself. Instead, he was suddenly mesmerized by the sight of the man. He was about six feet tall, give or take an inch, with respectable shoulders and an enviably trim waist. Except for that irritating waist, he was Evan’s size or close to it. Kendrick glanced over at the clean, starched clothes on the chaise and then back at the colorful red-and-blue uniform of the frustrated chef-warrior. Without really thinking, Evan reached down for the hidden weapon as the soldier, humming like an Italian cuciniere supremo, placed the steaming plates on the desk. The only thought that kept racing through Kendrick’s mind was that a cleaned-up terrorist’s outfit would be a target for a salvo of bullets, but not the uniform of a Bahrainian Royal Guard, especially one walking out of a royal house. Actually, there was no alternative. If he did nothing, he was dead in the morning—somewhere, somehow. He had to do something, so he did it. He walked around the outsized bed, stood behind the guard, and with all his strength smashed the handle of the gun into the soldier’s bobbing, humming head.
The guard fell to the floor, unconscious, and again without really thinking, Evan sat down at the desk and ate faster than he had ever eaten in his life. Twelve minutes later, the soldier was bound and gagged on the bed as Kendrick studied himself in front of a closet mirror. The creased red-and-blue uniform might have been improved by the experienced fingers of a tailor, but withal and in the shadows of the evening streets, it was acceptable.
He ransacked the row of closets until he found a plastic shopping bag and stuffed his Masqat clothing into it. He looked at the telephone. He knew he would not use that phone, could not use it. If he survived the street outside, he would call Azra from another.
His jacket off, the shoulder holster in place, Azra angrily paced the room at the Aradous Hotel consumed by thoughts of betrayal. Where was Amal Bahrudi—the man with blue eyes who called himself Bahrudi? Was he in reality someone else, someone the foolish, bloated Englishman called “Kendrick”? Was everything a trap, a trap to capture a member of Masqat’s organization council, a trap to take the terrorist known as the Arabic Blue?… Terrorist? How typical of the Zionist killers from the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Haganah! How easily they erase the massacres of “Jephthah” and Deir Yasin, to say nothing of their surrogate executioners at Sabra and Shatila! They steal a homeland and sell what is not theirs to sell, and kill a child for carrying the Palestinian flag—“an accident of excess,” they call it—and yet we are the terrorists!… If the Aradous Hotel was a trap, he could not remain caged in the room; yet if it was not a trap, he had to be where he could be contacted. The Mahdi was everything, his summons a command, for he gave them the means for hope, for spreading their message of legitimacy. When would the world understand them? When would the Mahdis of the world be irrelevant?
The telephone rang and Azra raced to it. “Yes?”
“I was delayed but I’m on my way. They found me; I was nearly killed at the airport but I escaped. They may even have traced you by now.”
“What?”
“Leaks in the system. Get out, but don’t go through the lobby. There’s a staircase designed for a fire exit. It’s at the south end of the hallway, I think. North or south, one or the other. Use it and go through the restaurant’s kitchen to the employees’ exit. You’ll come out on the Wadi Al Ahd. Walk across the road; I’ll pick you up.”
“You are you, Amal Bahrudi? I can trust you?”
“Neither one of us has a choice, do we?”
“That is not an answer.”
“I’m not your enemy,” lied Evan Kendrick. “We’ll never be friends but I’m not your enemy. I can’t afford it. And you’re wasting time, poet, part of which is mine. I’ll be there in five minutes. Hurry!”
“I go.”
“Be careful.”
Azra hung up the phone and went to his weapons, which he had cleaned repeatedly and placed in a neat row on the bureau. He took the small Heckler and Koch P9S automatic, knelt down, pulling up his left trouser leg, and inserted the weapon in the crisscrossing calf straps that rested below the back of his knee. Standing up he removed the larger, more powerful Mauser Parabellum pistol and shoved it into his shoulder holster, this followed by the sheathed hunting knife resting alongside the gun. He walked to a chair where he had thrown the coat of his newly purchased suit, put on the jacket and crossed to the door, rapidly letting himself out into the corridor.
Nothing would have seemed odd to him were it not for his concentration on the whereabouts of the staircase and his desire to save time—time now measured in minutes and segments of minutes. He started to his right, to the south end of the hallway, his eyes only partially aware of a door being closed, not an open door but one barely ajar. Meaningless: a careless guest; a Western woman carrying too many shopping boxes. Then, unable to see an exit sign for a staircase, he turned quickly to check the other end, the north end of the hallway. A second door, this one open no more than two inches, was closed swiftly, silently. The first was now no longer meaningless, for surely the second was not. They had found him! His room was being watched. By whom? Who were they? Azra continued walking, now to the north end of the corridor, but the instant he passed the second door he pivoted against the wall, reached inside his jacket for the long-bladed hunting knife, and waited. In seconds the door opened; he spun around the frame, instantly facing a man he knew was his enemy, a deeply tanned, muscular man near his own age—desert training was written all over him, an Israeli commando! Instead of a weapon the startled Jew held a radio in his hand; he was unarmed!
Azra thrust the knife directly forward toward the Israeli’s throat. In a lightning move the blade was deflected; the terrorist then arced it down, slicing into the Hebrew’s wrist; the radio fell to the carpeted floor as Azra kicked the door shut; the automatic lock clicked.
Gripping his wrist, the Israeli lashed out his right foot, expertly catching the Palestinian’s left kneecap. Azra stumbled; another steel toe caught him in the side of his neck, then still another crashed into his ribs. But the angle was right; the Israeli was off-balance! The terrorist lunged, the knife an extension of his arm as he sent it directly into the commando’s stomach. Blood erupted, covering Azra’s face, as the Israeli, code name Orange of the Masada Brigade, fell back on the floor.
The Palestinian struggled to get up, sharp bolts of pain surging through his ribs and his knee, the tendons in his neck nearly paralyzed. Suddenly, without a scratch or a footstep, the door crashed open, the hotel lock blown out of its mount. The second commando—younger, his thick bare arms bulging in tension, his furious eyes surveying the scene in front of him—whipped his hand beyond his right hip for a holstered weapon. Azra hurled himself against the Israeli, smashing the commando into the door, slamming it shut. Code Blue’s gun spiraled across the floor, freeing his right hand to intercept the Palestinian’s arm as it slashed down with the blood-streaked blade of the knife. The Israeli hammered his knee up into the terrorist’s rib cage as he swung the gripped arm clockwise, forcing Azra toward the floor. Still the Palestinian would not release the knife! Both men parted, crouching, staring at each other, contempt and hatred in both pairs of eyes.
“You want to kill Jews, tr
y to kill me, pig!” cried Yaakov.
“Why not?” replied Azra, thrusting his knife forward to draw out the Israeli. “You kill Arabs! You killed my mother and father as if you’d pulled the trigger yourself!”
“You killed my two brothers on the Sidon patrols!”
“I may have! I hope so! I was there!”
“You are Azra!”
Like two crazed animals, the young men flung themselves at each other with violence incarnate, the taking of life—hated life—their only reason for being on earth. Blood burst out of punctured flesh as ligaments were torn and bones broken amid throated cries of vengeance and loathing. Finally it happened, the ending as volcanic as the initial eruption; sheer, brute strength was the victor.
The knife was lodged in the terrorist’s throat, reversed and forced to its mark by the commando from the Masada Brigade.
Exhausted and drenched in blood, Yaakov pushed himself off the body of his enemy. He looked over at his slain comrade, code Orange, and closed his eyes. “Shalom,” he whispered. “Find the peace we all seek, my friend.”
There was no time for mourning, he thought as his eyes flashed open. The body of his comrade, as well as that of his enemy, had to be moved. He had to be at the source for what came next; he had to reach the others. The killer Azra was dead! They could now fly back to Masqat, they had to. To his father! In pain, Blue limped to the bed and yanked back the spread, revealing his dead comrade’s Uzi machine pistol. He picked it up, awkwardly strapped it over his shoulder, and went to the door to check the hallway. His father!
In the far shadows of the Wadi Al Ahd, Kendrick knew he could not wait any longer, nor could he risk using a telephone. Conversely, he could not remain in the foliage across from the Aradous and do nothing! Time was winding down and the contact from the Mahdi expected to find the puppet Azra, newly crowned prince of terrorists, at the rendezvous. It was so clear now, he realized. He had been found out, either through the events at the airport or through a leak in Masqat—the panicked men from the past he had talked to, men who, unlike Mustapha, refused to see him and may have betrayed him for their own safety, as surely as one of them had killed Musty for the same reason. “We cannot be involved! It’s madness. Our families are dead! Our children raped, disfigured … dead!”
The Mahdi’s strategy was obvious. Isolate the American and wait for the terrorist to approach the meeting ground alone. Take the young killer, thus aborting the trap, for there is no trap without the American, only an expendable Palestinian on the loose. Kill him, but first find out what happened in Masqat.
Where was Azra? Thirty-seven minutes had passed since they talked; the Arab called Blue was thirty-two minutes late! Evan looked at his watch for the eleventh time and swore silently, furiously, his unspoken words at once a plea for help and an outburst of anger at the swirling clouds of frustration. He had to move, do something! Find out where Azra was, for without the terrorist there was no trap for the Mahdi, either. The Mahdi’s contact would not show himself to someone he did not know, someone he did not recognize. So close! So far in the distance of reality!
Kendrick threw the plastic shopping bag containing his starched clothes from Masqat into the densest interior of the bushes bordering the pavement of the Wadi Al Ahd. He walked across the boulevard toward the employees’ entrance, a postured, upright Royal Guard arrogantly on royal business. As he went rapidly down the cobblestone alley toward the service entrance, several of the departing help bowed obsequiously, obviously hoping not to be stopped and searched for small treasures they had stolen from the hotel—namely, soap, toilet paper and plates of food scraped from the dinners of jet-lagged or drunken Westerners too far gone to eat. Standard procedure; Evan had been there; it was why he had chosen the Aradous Hotel. Again Emmanuel Weingrass. He and the unpredictable Manny had fled the Aradous by way of the kitchen because a stepbrother of the Emir had heard that Weingrass had promised a stepsister of that royal brother citizenship in the United States if she would sleep with him—a privilege that Manny in no way could provide.
Kendrick passed through the kitchen, reached the south staircase, and walked cautiously up the steps to the second floor. He withdrew the gun from under his scarlet jacket and opened the door. The corridor was empty, and indeed it was the hour of the evening when the affluent visitors to Bahrain were out in the cafés and in the hidden casinos. He sidestepped down the left wall to Room 202, careful of every footstep on the worn carpet. He listened; there was no sound. He knocked quietly.
“Odkhúloo,” said the voice in quiet Arabic, addressing not one, but more than one to enter.
Strange—wrong, thought Evan as he reached for the doorknob. Why the plural, why more than one? He turned the knob, spun back into the wall, and kicked the door open with his right foot.
Silence, as if the room were an empty cave, the eerie voice a disembodied recording. Gripping hard the unfamiliar, unwanted, but necessary weapon, Kendrick slipped around the frame and went inside.… Oh, God! What he saw made him freeze in horror! Azra was slumped against the wall, a knife embedded in his neck, his eyes wide in death, blood still dripping in rivulets down over his chest.
“Your friend, the pig, is dead,” said the quiet voice behind him.
Evan whipped around to face a young man as bloodied as Azra. The wounded killer leaned against the wall, barely able to stand, and in his hands was an Uzi machine pistol. “Who are you?” whispered Kendrick. “What the hell have you done?” he added, now shouting.
The man limped rapidly to the door and closed it, the weapon remaining on Evan. “I killed a man who would kill my people as swiftly as he could find them, who would have killed me.”
“Good Christ, you’re Israeli!”
“You’re the American.”
“Why did you do it? What are you doing here?”
“It’s not my choice.”
“That’s no answer!”
“My orders are to give no answers.”
“You had to kill him?” cried Kendrick, turning and wincing at the sight of the dead, mutilated Palestinian.
“To use his words, ‘Why not?’ They slaughter our children in schoolyards, blow up planes and buses filled with our citizens, execute our innocent athletes in Munich, shoot old men in the head simply because all are Jews. They crawl up on beaches and murder our young, our brothers and sisters—why? Because we are Jews living finally on an infinitesimal strip of arid, wild land that we tamed. We! Not others.”
“He never had the chance—”
“Spare me, American! I know what’s coming and it fills me with disgust. At the last it’s the same as it has always been. Underneath, in whispers, the world still wants to blame the Jew. After everything that’s been done to us, we’re still the irksome troublemakers. Well, hear this, you interfering amateur, we don’t want your comments or your guilt or your pity. We only want what belongs to us! We’ve marched out of the camps and the ovens and the gas chambers to claim what is ours.”
“Goddamn you!” roared Evan, gesturing angrily at the bleeding corpse of the terrorist. “You sound like him! Like him! When will you all stop?”
“What difference does it make to you? Go back to your safe condominium and your fancy country club, American. Leave us alone. Go back where you belong.”
Whether it was the repeated words he had heard barely an hour ago over the phone, or the sudden images of cascading blocks of concrete crashing down on seventy-eight screaming, helpless loved ones, or the realization that the hated Mahdi was slipping away from him, he would never know. All he knew at that moment was that he hurled himself at the startled, wounded Israeli, tears of fury rolling down his cheeks. “You arrogant bastard!” he screamed, ripping the Uzi out of the young man’s grip and throwing it across the room, hammering the weakened commando against the wall. “What right do you have telling me what to do or where to go? We watch you people kill each other and blow yourselves and everything else up in the name of blind credos! We spend lives and money
, and exhaust brains and energy trying to instill a little reason, but no, none of you will move an inch! Maybe we should leave you alone and let you massacre each other, let the zealots hack each other to death, just so somebody’s left who’ll make some sense!” Suddenly, Kendrick broke away and raced across the room, picking up the Uzi. He returned to the Israeli, the weapon ominously leveled at the commando. “Who are you and why are you here?”
“I am code name Blue. That is my response and I will give no other—”
“Code name what?”
“Blue.”
“Oh, my God …” whispered Evan, glancing over at the dead Azra. He turned back to the Israeli and, without comment, handed the Uzi machine pistol to the stunned commando. “Go ahead,” he said softly. “Shoot up the fucking world. I don’t give a damn.” With those words, Kendrick walked to the door and let himself out.
Yaakov stared after the American, at the closed door, and then over at the corpse slumped on the floor against the wall. He angled the weapon down with his left hand and with his right pulled out the powerful miniaturized radio from his belt. He pressed a button.
“Itklem,” said the voice of code Black outside the hotel.
“Did you reach the others?”
“Code R did. They’re here—or I should say I can see them walking up the Al Ahd now. Our elder colleague is with R; G is with the eldest, but something’s wrong with the latter. G is holding him. How about you?”