“If you’re referring to the time I spent in the Arab Emirates, please remember I was a construction engineer whose only concerns were jobs and profits.”
“Is that so?”
“The average tourist knew more about the politics and cultures of those countries than I did. All of us in construction stayed pretty much to ourselves; we had our own circles and rarely stepped outside them.”
“I find that hard to believe—damn near impossible, in fact. I got the congressional background report on you, young fella, and I tell ya it blew my good New England socks off. Here you are right here in Washington and you built airfields and government buildings for the Arabs, which certainly means you had to have a hell of a lot of conversations with the high muck-a-mucks over there. I mean airfields; that’s military intelligence, son! Then I learn you speak several Arab languages, not one but several!”
“It’s one language, the rest are simply dialects—”
“I tell you you’re invaluable, and it’s no less than your patriotic duty to serve your country by sharing what you know with other experts.”
“I’m not an expert!”
“Besides,” broke in the Speaker, leaning back in his chair, his expression pensive, “under the circumstances, what with your background and all, if you refused the appointment it’d look like you had somethin’ to hide, somethin’ maybe we ought to look into. You got somethin’ to hide, Congressman?” The Speaker’s eyes were suddenly leveled at Evan.
Something to hide? He had everything to hide! Why did the Speaker look at him like that? No one knew about Oman, about Masqat and Bahrain. No one would ever know! That was the agreement.
“There’s not a damn thing to hide, but there’s everything to let hang out,” said Kendrick firmly. “You’d be doing the subcommittee a disservice based on a misplaced appraisal of my credentials. Do yourself a favor. Call one of the others.”
“The beautiful book, that most holy of books, has so many answers, doesn’t it?” asked the Speaker aimlessly, his eyes once again straying. “Many might be called, but few are chosen, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, for God’s sake—”
“That might well be the case, young fella,” broke in the old Irishman, nodding his head. “Only time will tell, won’t it? Meanwhile, the congressional leadership of your party has decided that you’re chosen. So you’re chosen—unless you’ve got something to hide, something we ought to look into.… Now, skedaddle. I’ve got work to do.
“Skedaddle?”
“Get the fuck out of here, Kendrick.”
20
The two bodies of Congress, the Senate and the House, have several committees of matching purpose with similar or nearly similar names. There is Senate Appropriations and House Appropriations, the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, this last with a powerful Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation. This counterpartism is one more example of the republic’s effective system of checks and balances. The legislative branch of government, actively reflecting the current views of a far wider spectrum of the body politic than either an entrenched executive branch or the life-tenured judiciary, must negotiate within itself and reach a consensus on each of the hundredfold issues presented to its two deliberative arms. The process is patently frustrating, patently exasperating, and generally fair. If compromise is the art of governance within a pluralistic society, no one does it better, or with more aggravation, than the legislative branch of the United States government with its innumerable, often insufferable, and frequently ridiculous committees. This assessment is accurate; a pluralistic society is, indeed, numerous, usually insufferable to would-be tyrants, and almost always ridiculous in the eyes of those who would impose their will on the citizenry. One man’s morality should never by way of ideology become another’s legality, as many in the executive and the judiciary would have it. More often than not these quasi zealots grudgingly retreat in the face of the uproars emanating from those lower-class, troublesome committees on the Hill. Despite infrequent and unforgivable aberrations, the vox populi is usually heard and the land is better for it.
But there are some committees on Capitol Hill where voices are muted by logic and necessity. These are the small, restricted councils that concentrate on the strategies formed by the various intelligence agencies within the government. And perhaps because the voices are essentially quiet and the members of these committees are examined in depth by stringent security procedures, a certain aura descends over those selected to the select committees. They know things others are not privileged to know; they are different, conceivably a better breed of men and women. There also exists a tacit understanding between the Congress and the media for the latter to restrain themselves in areas concerning these committees; a senator or a congressman is appointed, but his or her appointment does not become a cause célèbre. Yet neither is there secrecy; the appointment is made and a basic reason given, both the act and reason stated simply, without embellishment. In the case of the representative from the Ninth District of Colorado, one Congressmen Evan Kendrick, it was put forth that he was a construction engineer with extensive experience in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf. Since few knew little or anything about the area, and it was accepted that the Congressman had been an executive employed somewhere in the Mediterranean years ago, the appointment was considered reasonable and nothing unusual was made of it.
However, editors, commentators and politicians are keenly aware of the nuances of growing recognition, for recognition accompanies power in the District of Columbia. There are committees and then again there are committees. A person appointed to Indian Affairs is not in the same league with another sent to Ways and Means—the first does the minimum to look after a discarded, basically disfranchised people; the latter explores the methods and procedures to pay for the entire government to stay in business. Nor is Environment on a par with Armed Services—the former’s budgets are continuously, abusively reduced, while the expenditures for weaponry reach beyond all horizons. The allocation of monies is the mother’s milk of influence. Yet, simply put, few committees on the Hill can match the nimbus, the quiet mystique, that hovers over those associated with the clandestine world of intelligence. When sudden appointments are made to these select councils, eyes watch, colleagues whisper in cloakrooms, and the media is poised at the ready in front of word processors, microphones and cameras. Usually nothing comes of these preparations and the names fade into comfortable or uncomfortable oblivion. But not always, and had Evan Kendrick been aware of the subtleties, he might have risked telling the crafty Speaker of the House to go to hell.
However, he was not aware, and it would not have made any difference if he had been; the progress of Inver Brass was not to be denied.
It was six-thirty in the morning, a Monday morning; the early sun about to break over the Virginia hills, as Kendrick, naked, plunged into his pool, trusting that ten or twenty laps in the cold October water would remove the cobwebs obscuring his vision and painfully spreading through his temples. Ten hours ago he had been drinking far too many brandies with Emmanuel Weingrass in Colorado while sitting in a ridiculously opulent gazebo, both laughing at the visible streams rushing below the glass floor.
“Soon you will see whales!” Manny had exclaimed.
“Like you promised the kids in that half dried-up river wherever it was.”
“We had lousy bait. I should have used one of the mothers. That black girl. She was gorgeous!”
“Her husband was a major, a big major, in the Army Engineers. He might have objected.”
“Their daughter was a beautiful child.… She was killed with all the others.”
“Oh, Christ, Manny. Why?”
“It’s time for you to go.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You must! You have a meeting in the morning, already two hours ahead of us.”
br /> “I can skip it. I’ve skipped one or two others.”
“One, and at great harm to my well-being. Your jet is waiting at the airfield in Mesa Verde. You’ll be in Washington in four hours.”
As he swam through the water, each length faster than the last, he thought of Oversight’s upcoming morning conference, admitting to himself that he was glad Manny insisted he return to the capital. The subcommittee’s meetings had fascinated him—fascinated him, angered him, astonished him, appalled him, but, most of all, fascinated him. There were so many things going on in the world that he knew nothing about, both for and against the interests of the United States. But it wasn’t until his third meeting that he understood a recurring error in his colleagues’ approach to the witnesses from the various intelligence branches. The mistake was that they would look for flaws in the witnesses’ strategies for carrying out certain operations when what they should have been questioning were the operations themselves.
It was understandable, for the men who were paraded in front of Oversight to plead their cases—exclusively men, which should have been a clue—were soft-spoken professionals from a violent clandestine world who downplayed the melodramatics associated with that world. They delivered their esoteric jargon quietly, swelling the heads of those listening. It was heady stuff to be a part of that global underground, even in a consulting capacity; it fed the adolescent fantasies of mature adults. There were no Colonel Robert Barrishes among these witnesses; instead, they were a stream of attractive, well-dressed, consistently modest and moderate men who appeared before the subcommittee to explain in coldly professional terms what they could accomplish if monies were provided, and why it was imperative for the nation’s security that it be done. More often than not the question was: Can you do it? Not whether it was right, or even if it made sense.
These lapses of judgment occurred often enough to disturb the congressman from Colorado, who had briefly been part of that savage, violent world the witnesses dealt with. He could not romanticize it; he loathed it. The terrible, breathless fear that was part of the terrifying game of taking and losing human life in shadows belonged to some dark age where life itself was measured solely by survival. One did not live in that kind of world; one endured it with sweat and with hollow pains in his stomach, as Evan had endured his abrupt exposure to it. Yet he knew that world went on; inhabitants of it had saved him from the sharks of Qatar. Nevertheless, during the coming sessions he probed, asking harsher and harsher questions. He understood that his name was being quietly, electrically, emphatically bounced around the halls of Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, and even the White House. Who was this agitator, this troublemaker? He did not give a damn; they were legitimate questions and he would ask them. Who the hell was sacrosanct? Who was beyond the laws?
There was a commotion above him, wild gestures and shouts he dimly perceived through the water rushing past his face in the pool. He stopped at mid-length and shook his head while treading. The intruder was Sabri, but it was a Sabri Hassan he rarely saw. The ever-calm middle-aged Ph.D. from Dubai was beside himself, fiercely trying to control his actions and his words, but only barely succeeding.
“You must leave!” he shouted as Evan cleared his ears of water.
“What … what?”
“Oman! Masqat! The story is on all the channels, all the stations! There are even photographs of you dressed as one of us—in Masqat! Both the radio and the television keep interrupting programs to report the latest developments! It was just released within the past few minutes; newspapers are holding up their late morning editions for further details—”
“Jesus Christ!” roared Kendrick, leaping out of the pool as Sabri threw a towel around him.
“The reporters and the rest of those people will undoubtedly be here in a matter of minutes,” said the Arab. “I took the phone off the hook and Kashi is loading our car—forgive me, the car you most generously provided us—”
“Forget that stuff!” yelled Evan, starting toward the house. “What’s your wife doing with the car?”
“Putting in your clothes, enough for several days if necessary. Your own automobile might be recognized; ours is always in the garage. I assumed you wanted some time to think.”
“Some time to plan a couple of murders!” agreed Evan, dashing through the patio door and up the back staircase, Dr. Hassan following closely. “How the hell did it happen? God-damnit!”
“I fear it’s only the beginning, my friend.”
“What?” asked Kendrick, racing into the huge master bedroom, which overlooked the pool, and going to his bureau, where he hurriedly opened drawers, whipping out socks, underwear and a shirt.
“The stations are calling all manner of people for their comments. They’re most laudatory, of course.”
“What else could they say?” said Evan, putting on his socks and shorts while Sabri unfolded his laundered shirt and handed it to him. “That they were all rooting for their terrorist buddies in Palestine?” Kendrick put on the shirt and ran to his closet, yanking out a pair of trousers. Sabri’s wife, Kashi, walked through the door.
“Anahasfa!” she exclaimed, asking to be pardoned and turning away.
“No time for eltakaled, Kashi,” cried the congressman, telling her to forget her traditions. “How are you doing with the clothes?”
“They might not be your choices, dear Evan, but they will cover you,” replied the sweet-faced anxious wife. “It also occurred to me that you could call us from wherever you are and I can bring things to you. Many people on the newspapers know my husband but none know me. I am never in evidence.”
“Your choice, not mine,” said Kendrick, putting on a jacket and returning to the bureau for his wallet, money clip and lighter. “We may be closing up this place, Kashi, and heading out to Colorado. Out there you can be my official hostess.”
“Oh, that’s foolish, dear Evan,” giggled Mrs. Hassan. “It’s not proper.”
“You’re the professor, Sabri,” added Kendrick, rapidly running a comb through his hair. “When are you going to teach her?”
“When will she listen? Our women must have advantages we men know nothing about.”
“Let’s go!”
“The keys are in the car, dear Evan—”
“Thanks, Kashi,” said Kendrick, going out the door and down the staircase with Sabri. “Tell me,” continued Evan as both men crossed through the portico into the large garage that housed his Mercedes convertible and Hassan’s Cadillac Cimarron. “How much of the story do they have?”
“I can only compare what I’ve heard with what Emmanuel told me, for you have said literally nothing.”
“It’s not that I wanted to keep anything from you—”
“Please, Evan,” interrupted the professor. “How long have I known you? You are uncomfortable praising yourself, even indirectly.”
“Praise, hell!” exclaimed Kendrick, opening the garage door. “I blew it! I was a dead man with a bleeding pig strapped to my back about to be dropped over the shoals of Qatar! Others did it, not me. They saved my overachieving ass.”
“Without you they could have done nothing—”
“Forget it,” said Evan, standing by the door of the Cadillac. “How much have they learned?”
“In my opinion, very little. Not an iota of what Emmanuel told me, even discounting his natural exaggerations. The journalists are scratching for details, and apparently those details are not forthcoming.”
“That doesn’t tell me much. Why did you say it was only ‘the beginning’ when we left the pool?”
“Because of a man who was interviewed—roused willingly out of his house, obviously—a colleague of yours on the House Intelligence Subcommittee, a congressman named Mason.”
“Mason …?” said Kendrick, frowning. “He’s got a big profile in Tulsa or Phoenix—I forget which—but he’s a zero. A few weeks ago there was a quiet movement to get him off the committee.”
“That’s hardly
the way he was presented, Evan.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t. What did he say?”
“That you were the most astute member of the committee. You were the brilliant one whom everyone looked up to and listened to.”
“Bullshit! I talked some and asked a few questions but never that much, and in the second place I don’t think Mason and I ever said more than ‘hello’ to each other! It’s bullshit!”
“It’s also all over the country—”
The sound of one, then two automobiles screeching to a stop in front of the house broke through the silence of the enclosed garage.
“Good Christ!” whispered Evan. “I’m cornered!”
“Not yet,” said Dr. Hassan. “Kashi knows what to do. She will admit the early arrivals, speaking Hebrew, incidentally, and usher them into the solarium. She will pretend not to understand them and thus will stall them—for only a few minutes, of course. Go, Evan, take the pasture road south until you reach the highway. In an hour I’ll replace the phone. Call us. Kashi will bring you whatever you need.”
Kendrick kept dialing repeatedly, punching the button down with each repeated busy signal until finally, to his relief, he heard the sound of a ring.
“Congressman Kendrick’s residence—”
“It’s me, Sabri.”
“Now I am truly astonished you got through. I’m also delighted, for I can once again take the telephone off the hook.”
“How are things going?”
“Calamitously, my friend. Also at your office and at your home in Colorado. All are under siege.”
“How do you know?”
“Here no one will leave, and, like you, Emmanuel finally reached us—with a great deal of profanity. He claimed to have been trying for nearly half an hour—”
“I’ve got ten minutes on him. What did he say?”