“Read your press. Watch it!”
“That’s the press, not you and me!”
“You are you—one more arrogant bastard out of your blind, holier-than-thou Judeo-Christian hypocrisies—and I am me, an Islamic Arab. And you won’t spit on me any longer!”
“I never would, never could—”
“Nor on my brothers, whose lands you decreed should be stolen from them, forcing whole villages to abandon their homes and their jobs and their insignificantly small businesses—small and insignificant but theirs for generations!”
“For Christ’s sake, Ahmat, you’re sounding like one of them!”
“No kidding?” said the young sultan, both anger and sarcasm in his words. “By ‘them’ I assume you mean like a kid from one of those thousands upon thousands of families marched under guns into camps fit for pigs. For pigs, not families! Not for mothers and fathers and children!… Good gracious, Mr. all-knowing, eminently fair American. If I sound like one of them, gosh, I’m sorry! And I’ll tell you what else I’m sorry about: I got here so late. I understand so much more today than I did yesterday.”
“What the hell does that mean.”
“I repeat. Read your press, watch your television, listen to your radio. Are you superior people getting ready to nuke all the, dirty Arabs so you won’t have to contend with us anymore? Or are you going to leave it to your cool pals in Israel who tell you what to do anyway? You’ll simply give them the bombs.”
“Now, just hold it!” cried Kendrick. “Those Israelis saved my life!”
“You’re damned right they did, but you were incidental! You were just a bridge to what they really flew in here for.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I might as well tell you because no one else will, nobody’s going to print that. They didn’t give a shit about you, Mr. Hero. That unit came here to get one man out of the embassy, a Mossad agent, a high-ranking strategist posing as a naturalized American under contract to the State Department.”
“Oh, my God,” whispered Evan. “Did Weingrass know?”
“If he did he kept his mouth shut. He forced them to go after you in Bahrain. That’s how they saved your life. It wasn’t planned. They don’t give a good goddamn about anyone or anything but themselves. The Jews! Just like you, Mr. Hero.”
“Damn it, listen to me, Ahmat! I’m not responsible for what’s happened here, for what’s been printed in the papers or what’s on television. It’s the last thing I wanted—”
“Bullshit!” broke in the young Harvard alumnus and sultan of Oman. “None of it could have been reported without you. I learned things I had no idea about. Who are these intelligence agents of yours running around my country? Who are all those contacts you reached?”
“Mustapha, for one!”
“Killed. Who flew you in under cover without apprising me? I run the goddamn place; who has the right? Am I a fucking ‘aggie’ in a game of marbles?”
“Ahmat, I don’t know about these things. I only knew. I had to get there.”
“And I’m incidental? Wasn’t I to be trusted?…. Of course not, I’m an Arab!”
“Now that’s bullshit. You were being protected.”
“From what? An American-Israeli cover-up?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop it! I didn’t know anything about a Mossad agent at the embassy until you just told me. If I did I would have told you! And while we’re at it, my sudden young fanatic, I had nothing to do with the refugee camps or marching families into them under guns—”
“You all did!” shouted the sultan of Oman. “One genocide for another, but we had nothing to do with the other! Out!”
The line went dead. A good man and a good friend who had been instrumental in saving his life was gone from his life. As were his plans to return to a part of the world he dearly loved.
Before he showed himself in public, he had to find out what had happened and who had made it happen and why! He had to start somewhere and that somewhere was the State Department and a man named Frank Swann. A frontal assault on State was, of course, out of the question. The minute he identified himself alarms would go off, and insofar as his face was seen repeatedly, ad nauseam, on television and half of Washington was searching for him, his every move had to be carefully thought out. First things first: how to reach Swann without Swann or his office knowing it. His office? Evan remembered. A year ago he had walked into Swann’s office and spoken to a secretary, giving her several words in Arabic so as to convey the urgency of his visit. She had disappeared into another office and ten minutes later he and Swann were talking in the underground computer complex. That secretary was not only efficient but also exceedingly protective, as apparently were most secretaries in serpentine Washington. And since that protective secretary was very much aware of one Congressman Kendrick, whom she had spoken to a year ago, she just might be receptive to another voice also protective of her boss. It was worth a try; it was also the only thing he could think of. He picked up the phone, dialed the 202 area code for Washington, and waited for the hoarse manager of the Three Bears motel to come on the line.
“Consular Operations, Director Swann’s office,” said the secretary.
“Hi, this is Ralph over in ID,” began Kendrick. “I’ve got some news for Frank.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s okay, I’m a friend of Frank’s. I just want to tell him that there may be an interdivision meeting called for later this afternoon—”
“Another one? He doesn’t need that.”
“How’s his schedule?”
“Overworked! He’s in conference until four o’clock.”
“Well, if he doesn’t want to be put on the grill again, maybe he should have a short day and drive home early.”
“Drive? Him? He’ll parachute into the jungles of Nicaragua, but he won’t take chances in Washington traffic.”
“You know what I mean. Things are a little jumpy around here. He could be put on the spit.”
“He’s been on it since six this morning.”
“Just trying to help out a buddy.”
“Actually, he’s got a doctor’s appointment,” said the secretary suddenly.
“He does?”
“He does now. Thanks, Ralph.”
“I never called you.”
“Of course not, sweetie. Someone in ID was just checking schedules.”
Evan stood in the crowd waiting for a bus at the corner of Twenty-first Street within clear sight of the entrance to the Department of State. After speaking to Swann’s secretary, he had left the cabin and driven rapidly up to Washington, stopping briefly at a shopping mall in Alexandria where he bought dark glasses, a wide-brimmed canvas fishing hat and a soft cloth jacket. It was 3:48 in the afternoon; if the secretary had pursued her protective inclinations, Frank Swann, deputy director of Consular Operations, would be coming out of the huge glass doors within the next fifteen or twenty minutes.
He did. At 4:03 and in a hurry, turning left on the pavement away from the bus stop. Kendrick rushed out of the crowd and started after the man from the State Department, staying thirty feet behind him, wondering what means of transportation the nondriving Swann would take. If he intended to walk, Kendrick would stop him in front of a vest-pocket park, or someplace else where they could talk undisturbed.
He was not going to walk; he was about to take a bus heading east on Virginia Avenue. Swann joined several others waiting for the same vehicle now lumbering down the street toward the stop. Evan hurried to the corner; he could not allow the Cons Op director to get on that bus. He approached Swann and touched his shoulder. “Hello, Frank,” said Kendrick pleasantly, taking off the dark glasses.
“You!” shouted the astonished Swann, startling the other passengers as the doors of the bus cracked open.
“Me,” admitted Evan quietly. “I think we’d better talk.”
“Good Christ! You’ve got to be out of your mind!”
“If I am
, you’ve driven me there, even if you don’t drive—”
It was as far as their brief conversation got, for suddenly an odd voice filled the street, echoing off the side of the bus. “It’s him!” roared a strange-looking, disheveled man with wide, popping eyes and long, wild hair that fell over his ears and his forehead. “See! Look! It’s him! Commando Kendrick! I seen him all day long on the television—I got seven televisions in my apartment! Nothin’ goes on I don’t know about! It’s him!”
Before Evan could react the man grabbed the fishing hat off his head. “Hey!” shouted Kendrick.
“See! Look! Him!”
“Let’s get out of here!” cried Swann.
They started running up the street, the odd-looking man in pursuit, his baggy trousers flopping in the wind he created, Evan’s hat in his hand, his arms flailing.
“He’s following us!” said the Cons Op director, looking back.
“He’s got my hat!” said Kendrick.
Two blocks later, a doddering blue-haired lady with a cane was climbing out of a cab. “There!” yelled Swann. “The taxi!” Dodging traffic, they raced across the wide avenue. Evan climbed in the near door as the man from the State Department ran around the trunk to the far side; he helped the elderly passenger out and inadvertently kicked the cane with his foot. It fell to the pavement; so did the blue-haired lady. “Sorry, dear,” said Swann, jumping into the backseat.
“Let’s go!” yelled Kendrick. “Hurry up! Get out of here!”
“You clowns hold up a bank or somethin’,” said the driver, shifting into gear.
“You’ll be richer for it if you’ll just hurry,” added Evan.
“I’m hurryin’, I’m hurryin’. I ain’t got no pilot’s license. I gotta stay earthbound, y’know what I mean?”
As one, Kendrick and Swann whipped around to look out the rear window. Back at the corner the odd-looking man with the wild hair and baggy trousers was writing something down on a newspaper, Evan’s hat now on his head. “The name of the company and the cab’s number,” said the Cons Op director quietly. “Wherever we’re going, we’ll have to switch vehicles at least a block behind this one.”
“Why? Not the switch but the block away?”
“So our driver doesn’t see which cab we get into.”
“You even sound like you know what you’re doing.”
“I hope you do,” replied Swann breathlessly, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his sweat-drenched face.
Twenty-eight minutes and a second taxi later, the Congressman and the man from the Department of State walked rapidly down the street in a run-down section of Washington. They looked up at a red neon sign with three letters missing. It was a seedy bar that belonged in its environs. They nodded to each other and walked inside, somewhat startled by the intensely dark interior, if only in contrast to the bright October day out in the street. The single glaring, blaring source of light was a television set bolted into the wall above the shabby distressed bar. Several hunched-over, disheveled, bleary-eyed patrons confirmed the status of the establishment. Both squinting in the receding dim wash of light, Kendrick and Swann moved toward the darker regions to the right of the bar; they found a frayed booth and slid in opposite each other.
“You really insist we talk?” asked the gray-haired Swann, breathing deeply, his face flushed and still perspiring.
“I insist to the point of making you the newest candidate for the morgue.”
“Watch it, I’m a black belt.”
“In what?”
Swann frowned. “I was never quite sure, but it always works in the movies when they show us doing our thing. I need a drink.”
“You signal a waiter,” said Kendrick. “I’ll stay in the shadows.”
“Shadows?” questioned Swann, raising his hand cautiously for a heavy black waitress with flaming red hair. “Where’s any light in here?”
“When did you last do three push-ups in succession, Mr. Karate Kid?”
“Sometime in the sixties. Early, I think.”
“That’s when they replaced the light bulbs in this place.… Now about me. How the hell could you, you liar?”
“How the hell could you think I would?” cried the man from State, suddenly silent as the grotesque waitress stood by the table, arms akimbo. “What’ll you have?” he asked Evan.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nice here. Or healthy, I suspect. Two ryes, double, thank you. Canadian, if you have it.”
“Forget it,” said the waitress.
“Forgotten,” agreed Swann as the waitress left, his eyes again on Kendrick. “You’re funny, Mr. Congressman, I mean really hilarious. Consular Operations wants my head! The Secretary of State has put out a directive that makes it clear he doesn’t know who I am, that vacillating, academic fleabag! And the Israelis are screaming because they think their precious Mossad may be compromised by anyone digging, and the Arabs on our payroll are bitching because they’re not getting any credit! And at three-thirty this afternoon the President—the goddamned President—is chewing me out for ‘dereliction of duty.’ Let me tell you, he intoned that phrase just like he knew what the hell he was talking about, which meant I knew there were at least two other people on the line.… You’re running? I’m running! Damn near thirty years in this dumb business—”
“That’s what I called it,” interrupted Evan quickly, quietly. “Sorry.”
“You should be,” said Swann without missing a beat. “Because who’s going to do this shit except us bastards dumber than the system? You need us, Charlie, and don’t you forget it. The problem is we don’t have much to show for it. I mean I don’t have to rush home to make sure the pool in my backyard has been treated for algae because of the heat.… Mainly because I don’t have a pool, and my wife got the house in the divorce settlement because she was sick and tired of my going out for a loaf of bread and coming back three months later with the dirt of Afghanistan still in my ears! Oh, no, Mr. Undercover Congressman, I didn’t blow the whistle on you. Instead, I did my best to stop the blowing. I haven’t got much left, but I want to stay clean and get out with what I can.”
“You tried to stop the blowing? The whistle?”
“Low-key, very offhand, very professional. I even showed him a copy of the memo I sent upstairs rejecting you.”
“Him?”
Swann looked forlornly at Kendrick as the waitress brought their drinks and stood there, tapping the tabletop while the man from State reached into his pocket, glanced at the bill and paid it. The woman shrugged at the tip and walked away.
“Him?” repeated Evan.
“Go ahead,” said Swann, his voice flat, drinking a large portion of his whisky. “Drive another nail in, what difference does it make? There’s not that much blood left.”
“I assume that means you don’t know who he is. Who him is.”
“Oh, I’ve got a name and a position and even a first-rate recommendation.”
“Well?”
“He doesn’t exist.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“He doesn’t exist?” pressed a frustrated Kendrick.
“Well, one of them does, but not the man who came to see me.” Swann finished his first drink.
“I don’t believe this—”
“Neither did Ivy, that’s my secretary. Ivy the terrible.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Kendrick plaintively.
“Ivy got a call from Senator Allison’s office, from a guy she used to date a couple of years ago. He’s one of the Senator’s top aides now. He asked her to set up an appointment for a staffer doing some confidential work for Allison, so she did. Well, he turns out to be a blond spook with an accent I placed somewhere in middle Europe, but he’s for real, he had you down cold. If you’ve got a scar that only your mother knows about, believe me, he has a close-up of it.”
“That’s crazy,” broke in Evan softly. “I wonder why?”
“So did
I. I mean the questions he asked were loaded with PD—”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Prior data on you. He was giving almost as much as he could get from me. He was so pro I was ready to offer him a Euro-job on the spot.”
“But why me?”
“As I said, I wondered, too. So I asked Ivy to check with Allison’s office. To begin with, why would a laid-back senator have that kind of SS—”
“What?”
“Not what you think. ‘Super-spook.’ Come to think of it, I suppose there’s a connection.”
“Will you please stick to the point!”
“Sure,” said Swann, drinking his second whisky. “Ivy calls her old boyfriend, and he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He never made any call to her and he never heard of any staffer named—whatever his name was.”
“But she had to know who she was talking to, for God’s sake! His voice—the small talk, what they said to each other.”
“Her old beau was thick from Georgia and had laryngitis when he phoned her, that’s what Ivy claimed. But the cracker who really called her knew the places they went—even down to a couple of motels in Maryland that Ivy would rather not have her husband know about.”
“Christ, it’s an operation.” Kendrick reached over and took Swann’s drink. “Why?”
“Why did you just take my whisky? I don’t have a swimming pool, remember? Or even a house.”
Suddenly the blaring television set above the bar burst forth with the sharply consonated name of “Kendrick!”
Both men snapped their heads over to the source, their eyes wide, unbelieving.
“Newsbreak! The story of the hour, perhaps the decade!” yelled a TV journalist among a crowd of leering faces peering into the camera. “For the last twelve hours all Washington has been trying to find Congressman Evan Kendrick of Colorado, the hero of Oman, but to no avail. The worst fears, of course, center around the possibility of Arab retaliation. We’re told the government has directed the police, the hospitals and the morgues to be on the alert. Yet only minutes ago he was seen on this very street corner, specifically identified by one Kasimer Bola—Bola … slawski. Where are you from, sir?”