“Why not?” said Adrienne coldly.
“Look,” he continued as they climbed the wooded slope side by side, “say I believe you—”
“Thank you so much.”
“All right, I do believe you! And because I do I’m going to tell you something that only Swann and Dennison know; the others don’t, at least I don’t think they do.”
“Are you sure you should?”
“I need help and they can’t help me. Maybe you can; you were there—with me—and you know so many things I don’t know. How events are kept quiet, how secret information gets passed to those who should have it, procedures like that.”
“I know some, not all by any means. I’m based in Cairo, not here. But go ahead.”
“Some time ago a man came to see Swann, a blond man with a European accent who had a great deal of information about me—Frank called it PD.”
“Prior data,” said Rashad, interrupting. “It’s also called ‘privileged detail,’ and usually comes from the vaults.”
“Vaults? What vaults?”
“It’s the vernacular for classified intelligence files. Go on.”
“After impressing Frank, really impressing him, he came right out and made his point. He told Swann that he had concluded that I’d been sent to Masqat by the State Department during the hostage crisis.”
“What?” She exploded, her hand on Kendrick’s arm. “Who was he?”
“Nobody knows. No one can find him. The identity he used to get to Frank was false.”
“Good Christ,” whispered Rashad as she looked up at the ascending path; bright sunlight broke through the wall of trees above. “We’ll stay here for a moment,” she said quietly, urgently. “Sit down.” They both lowered themselves on the dirt path surrounded by thick trunks and foliage. “And?” pressed the woman from Cairo.
“Well, Swann tried to throw him off; he even showed him a note to the Secretary of State that we both mocked up rejecting me. Obviously the man didn’t believe Frank and kept digging, deeper and deeper until he got it all. What came out yesterday morning was so accurate it could only have come from the Oman file—from the vaults, as you call them.”
“I know that,” whispered Rashad, her anger indelibly mixed with fear. “My God, someone was reached!”
“One of the seven—six?” he amended quickly.
“Who were they? I don’t mean Swann and his OHIO-Four computer man, but outside of Dennison, Grayson and me?”
“The secretaries of State and Defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
“None of them could even be approached.”
“What about the computer man? His name is Bryce, Gerald Bryce, and he’s young. Frank swore by him, but that’s only his judgment.”
“I doubt it. Frank Swann’s a bastard, but I don’t think he could be fooled that way. Someone like Bryce is the first person you’d think of, and if he’s smart enough to run that kind of operation, he knows it. He also knows he could face thirty years in Leavenworth.”
Evan smiled. “I understand Dennison threatened you with five years there.”
“I told him it was a men’s prison,” said Adrienne, responding with a grin.
“So did I,” said Kendrick, laughing.
“So then I said if he had any more goodies in store for me, I wouldn’t get in Cleopatra’s barge, never mind the government car.”
“Why did you get in?”
“Sheer curiosity. It’s the only answer I can give you.”
“I accept it … So where are we? The seven are out and a blond European is in.”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly Rashad touched his arm again. “I’ve got to ask you some questions, Evan—”
“Evan? Thank you.”
“I’m sorry. Congressman. That was a slip.”
“Don’t be, please. I think we’re entitled to first names.”
“Now you stop—”
“But do you mind if I call you Khalehla? I’m more comfortable with it.”
“So am I. The Arab part of me has always resented the deniability of Adrienne.”
“Ask your questions—Khalehla.”
“All right. When did you decide to come to Masqat? Considering the circumstances and what you were able to do, you were late getting there.”
Kendrick took a deep breath. “I’d been riding the rapids in Arizona when I reached a base camp called Lava Falls and heard a radio for the first time in several weeks. I knew I had to get to Washington.…” Evan recounted the details of those frantic sixteen hours going from a comparatively primitive campsite in the mountains to the halls of the State Department and finally down to the sophisticated computer complex that was OHIO-Four-Zero. “That’s where Swann and I made our agreement and I was off and running.”
“Let’s go back a minute,” said Khalehla, only at that moment taking her eyes off Kendrick’s face. “You hired a river plane to take you to Flagstaff, where you tried to charter a jet to D.C., is that right?”
“Yes, but the charter desk said it was too late.”
“You were anxious,” suggested the field agent. “Probably angry. You must have thrown your weight around a bit. A congressman from the great state of Colorado, et cetera.”
“More than a bit—and lots more of the et cetera.”
“You reached Phoenix and got the first commercial flight out. How did you pay for your ticket?”
“Credit card.”
“Bad form,” said Khalehla, “but you had no reason to think so. How did you know whom to reach at the State Department?”
“I didn’t, but remember, I’d worked in Oman and the Emirates for years, so I knew the sort of person I wanted to find. And since I had inherited an experienced D.C. secretary who has the instincts of an alley cat, I told her what to look for. I made it clear that it would undoubtedly be someone in State’s Consular Operations, Middle East, or Southwest Asia sections. Most Americans who’ve worked over there are familiar with those people—frequently up to their teeth.”
“So this secretary with the instincts of an alley cat began calling around asking questions. That must have raised a few eyebrows. Did she keep a list of whom she called?”
“I don’t know. I never asked her. Everything was kind of frantic and I kept in touch with her on one of those air-to-ground phones during the flight from Phoenix. By the time I landed she had narrowed the possibilities down to four or five men, but only one was considered an expert on the Emirates and he was also a deputy director of Cons Op. Frank Swann.”
“It would be interesting to know if your secretary did keep a list,” said Khalehla, arching her neck, thinking.
“I’ll phone her.”
“Not from here you won’t. Besides, I’m not finished … So you went to State to find Swann, which means you checked in with security.”
“Naturally.”
“Did you check out?”
“Well, no, not actually, not at the lobby desk. Instead, I was taken down to the parking area and driven home in a State Department car.”
“To your house?”
“Yes, I was on my way to Oman and had to get some things together—”
“What about the driver?” interrupted Khalehla. “Did he address you by name?”
“No, never. But he did say something that shook me up. I asked him if he wanted to come in for a snack or coffee while I packed, and he said, ‘I might get shot if I got out of this car,’ or words to that effect. Then he added, ‘You’re from OHIO-Four-Zero.’ ”
“Which means he wasn’t,” said Rashad quickly. “And you were in front of your house?”
“Yes. Then I stepped out and saw another car about a hundred feet behind us at the curb. It had to have been following us; there are no other houses on that stretch of road.”
“An armed escort.” Khalehla nodded. “Swann covered you from minute-one and he was right. He didn’t have the time or the resources to trace everything that had happened to you minus-one.”
&
nbsp; Evan was bewildered. “Would you mind explaining that?”
“Minus-one is before you reached Swann. An angry rich congressman using a chartered plane to Flagstaff makes a lot of noise about getting to Washington. He’s turned down, so he flies to Phoenix, where he no doubt insists on the first flight out and pays with a credit card, and starts calling his secretary, who has the instincts of an alley cat, telling her to find a man he doesn’t know but is sure exists at the Department of State. She makes her calls—frantically, I think you said—reaching a number of people who have to wonder why. She gets you a narrowed-down quorum—which means she’s reached a lot of her contacts who could give her the information and who also had to wonder why, and you turn up at State demanding to see Frank Swann. Am I right? In your state of mind, did you demand to see him?”
“Yes. I was given a runaround, told he wasn’t there, but I knew he was, my secretary had confirmed it. I guess I was pretty adamant. Finally, they let me go up to his office.”
“Then after you talked with him he made his decision to send you to Masqat.”
“So?”
“That tight little circle you spoke of wasn’t very little or very tight, Evan. You did what anyone else would do under the circumstances—under the stress you felt. You left a number of impressions during that agitated journey from Lava Falls to Washington. You could easily be traced back through Phoenix to Flagstaff, your name and your loud insistence on fast transportation remembered by a lot of people, especially because of the time of night. Then you show up at the State Department, where you made more noises—incidentally, checking in with security but not checking out—until you were permitted to go up to Swann’s office.”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me finish, please,” interrupted Khalehla again. “You’ll understand, and I want us both to have the full picture … You and Swann talk, make your agreement of anonymity, and as you said, you’re off and running to Masqat. The first leg was made to your house with a driver who was not part of OHIO-Four-Zero any more than the guards in the lobby. The driver was simply assigned by a dispatcher and the guards on duty were merely doing their jobs. They’re not in the rarefied circles; nobody up there brings them in on top-secret agendas. But they’re human; they go home and talk to their wives and their friends because something different happened in their normally dull jobs. They might also answer questions casually put to them by people they thought were government bureaucrats.”
“And one way or another they all knew who I was—”
“As did a lot of other people in Phoenix and Flagstaff, and one thing was clear to all of them. This important man’s upset; this congressman’s in a hell of a hurry; this big shot’s got a problem. Do you see the trail you left?”
“Yes, I do, but who would look for it?”
“I don’t know, and that troubles me more than I can tell you.”
“Troubles you? Whoever it was has blown my life apart! Who would do it?”
“Someone who found an opening, a gap that led to the rest of the trail from a remote campsite called Lava Falls to the terrorists in Masqat. Someone who picked up on something that made him want to look further. Perhaps it was the calls your secretary made, or the commotion you caused at the State Department’s security desk, or even something as crazy as hearing the rumor that an unknown American had interceded in Oman—it wasn’t crazy at all; it was printed and squashed—but it could have started somebody thinking. Then the other things fell in place and you were there.”
Evan put his hand over hers. “I have to know who it was, Khalehla, I have to know.”
“But we do know,” she said softly, correcting herself, her voice flat as if seeing something she should have seen before. “A blond man with a European accent.”
“Why?” Kendrick removed his hand as the word exploded from his throat.
Khalehla looked at him, her gaze compassionate, yet beneath her concern was that cold analytical intelligence in her eyes. “The answer to that has to be your overriding concern, Evan, but I have another problem and it’s why I’m frightened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Whoever the blond man was, whomever he represents, he reached way down deep in our cellars and took out what he should never have been given. I’m stunned, Evan, petrified, and those words aren’t strong enough for the way I feel. Not only by what’s been done to you, but by what’s been done to us. We’ve been compromised, penetrated where such penetration should have been impossible. If they—whoever they are—can dig you up out of the deepest, most secure archives we have, they can learn a lot of other things no one should have access to. Where people like me work that can cost a great many lives—very unpleasantly.”
Kendrick studied her taut, striking face, seeing the fear in her eyes. “You mean that, don’t you? You are frightened.”
“So would you be if you knew the men and women who help us, who trust us, who risk their lives to bring us information. Every day they wonder if something they did or didn’t do will trip them up. A lot of them have committed suicide because they couldn’t stand the strain, others have gone mad and disappeared into the deserts preferring to die at peace with their Allah than go on. But most do go on because they believe in us, believe that we’re fair and really want peace. They deal with gun-wielding lunatics at every turn, and as bad as things are, it’s only through them that they’re not worse, with a great deal more blood in the streets … Yes, I’m frightened because many of those people are friends—of mine and my father and mother. The thought of them being betrayed, as you were betrayed—and that’s what you were, Evan, betrayed—makes me want to crawl out on the sands and die like those we’ve driven mad. Because someone way down deep is opening our most secret files to others outside. All he or she needed in your case was a name, your name, and people are afraid for their lives in Masqat and Bahrain. How many other names can be fed? How many other secrets learned?”
Evan reached over, not covering her hand but now holding it, gripping it. “If you believe that, why don’t you help me?”
“Help you?”
“I have to know who’s doing this to me, and you have to know who’s over there, or down there, making it possible. I’d say our objectives dovetail, wouldn’t you? I’ve got Dennison in a vise he can’t squirm out of, and I can get you a quiet White House directive to stay over here. Actually, he’d jump at the chance to find a leak; it’s an obsession with him.”
Khalehla frowned. “It doesn’t work that way. Besides, I’d be out of my class. I’m very good where I am, but out of my element, my Arab element, I’m not first-rate.”
“Number one,” countered Kendrick firmly. “I consider you first-rate because you saved my life and I consider my life relatively important. And two, as I mentioned, you have expertise in areas I know nothing about. Procedures. ‘Covert avenues of referral’—I learned that one as a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, but I haven’t the vaguest idea what it means. Hell, lady, you even know what the ‘cellars’ are, when I always thought they were the basements of a suburban development, which, thank God, I never had to build. Please, you said in Bahrain that you wanted to help me. Help me now! Help yourself.”
Adrienne Rashad replied, her dark eyes searching his coldly. “I could help, but there might be times when you’d have to do as I tell you. Could you do that?”
“I’m not wild about jumping off bridges or tall buildings—”
“It would be in the area of what you’d say, and to certain people I’d want you to say it. There might also be times when I wouldn’t be able to explain things to you. Could you accept that?”
“Yes. Because I’ve watched you, listened to you, and I trust you.”
“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand and released it. “I’d have to bring someone with me.”
“Why?”
“First of all, it’s necessary. I’d need a temporary transfer and he can get it for me without giving an explanation—forget
the White House, it’s too dangerous, too unstable. Second, he could be helpful in areas way beyond my reach.”
“Who is he?”
“Mitchell Payton. He’s director of Special Projects—that’s a euphemism for ‘Don’t ask.’ ”
“Can you trust him? I mean totally, no doubts at all.”
“No doubts at all. He processed me into the Agency.”
“That’s not exactly a reason.”
“The fact that I’ve called him ‘Uncle Mitch’ since I was six years old in Cairo is, however. He was a young operations officer posing as an instructor at the university. He became a friend of my parents—my father was a professor there and my mother’s an American from California; so was Mitch.”
“Will he give you a transfer?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“He has no choice. I just told you, someone’s giving away a part of our soul that’s not for sale. It’s you this time. Who’s it going to be next?”
25
Mitchell Jarvis Payton was a trim sixty-three-year-old academic who had been suckered into the Central Intelligence Agency thirty-four years ago because he fit a description someone had given to the personnel procurement division at the time. That someone had disappeared into other endeavors and no job had been listed for Payto—only the requirements, marked urgent. However, by the time his prospective employers realized that they had no specific employment for the prospect it was too late. He had been signed up by the Agency’s aggressive recruiters in Los Angeles and sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for indoctrination. It was an embarrassing situation, as Dr. Payton, in a rush of personal and patriotic fervor, had submitted his resignation, effective immediately, to the State Board of Regents. It was an inauspicious beginning for a man whose career would develop so auspiciously.