“May I see that, please?” asked Payton, stepping forward, his hand outstretched.
“I thought you might want to,” said Jennings, handing the elongated page to the director of Special Projects. “I wondered if you’d take it as seriously as Sam Winters took you.”
“I do, sir,” answered Payton, now rapidly, carefully scanning the eye-irritating computer print.
“If there’s any substance to that paranoia of yours, you may find a basis there,” said the President, watching his unexpected visitor closely. “My press people say it could fly … fly fast and high. As of next week, seven respectable newspapers in the Midwest will do more than raise Kendrick’s name, they’ll damn near editorially endorse him. Three of those papers own radio and television stations in concentrated areas north and south, and, speaking of coincidences, audio and visual tapes of the Congressman’s television appearances were supplied to all of them.”
“By whom? I can’t find it here.”
“You won’t. There’s only a half-assed ad hoc committee in Denver no one’s ever heard of and they don’t know anything. Everything’s fed to Chicago.”
“It’s incredible!”
“Not really,” disagreed Jennings. “The Congressman could prove to be an attractive candidate. There’s a quiet electricity about him. He projects confidence and strength. He could catch on—fast and high, as my people say. Orson Bollinger’s crowd, which I suppose is my crowd, could be having a collective case of the trots.”
“That’s not the incredibility I’m talking about, Mr. President. When I’m presented with such an obvious connection, even I have to back off. It’s too simple, too obvious. I can’t believe Bollinger’s crowd could be that stupid. It’s too incriminating, entirely too dangerous.”
“You’re losing me, Doctor. I thought you’d say something like ‘Aha, my dear Watson, here’s the proof!’ But you’re not, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“If I’m going to sign this goddamned impeachable piece of paper, I think I’m entitled to know why.”
“Because it really is too obvious. Bollinger’s people learn that Evan Kendrick is about to be launched in a nationwide campaign to replace their Vice President, so they hire Palestinian terrorists to kill him? Only a maniac could invent that scenario. One flaw among a hundred-odd arrangements, one killer taken alive—which we have—and they could be traced … will be traced, if you’ll sign that paper.”
“Who will you find, then? What will you find?”
“I don’t know, sir. We may have to start with that ad hoc committee in Denver. For months Kendrick has been maneuvered into a political limelight he never sought—has run from, actually. Now, on the eve of the real push there’s the obscenity of Fairfax and the aborted assault on Mesa Verde, aborted by an old man who apparently doesn’t let his age interfere with his actions. He killed three terrorists.”
“I want to meet him, by the way,” interrupted Jennings.
“I’ll arrange it, but you may regret it.”
“What’s your point?”
“There are two factions, two camps, and neither is unsophisticated. Yet, on the surface, one may have committed an extraordinary blunder, which doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re losing me again—”
“I’m lost myself, Mr. President.… Will you sign that paper? Will you give me five days?”
“I will, Dr. Payton, but why do I have the feeling that I’m about to face a guillotine?”
“Wrong projection, sir. The public would never allow your head to be chopped off.”
“The public can be terribly wrong,” said the President of the United States, bending over the Queen Anne desk and signing the document. “That’s also part of history, Professor.”
The streetlamps along Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive flickered in the falling snow, creating tiny bursts of light on the ceiling of the room at the Drake Hotel. It was shortly past two in the morning and the muscular blond man was asleep in the bed, his breathing deep and steady, as if his self-control never left him. Suddenly his breathing stopped as the sharp, harsh bell of the telephone erupted. He bolted up to a sitting position, swinging his legs out from under the loose covers to the floor, and yanked the phone out of its cradle. “Yes?” said Milos Varak, no sleep in his voice.
“We have a problem,” said Samuel Winters from his study in Cynwid Hollow, Maryland.
“Can you discuss it, sir?”
“I don’t see why not, at least briefly and with abbreviations. This line is clean and I can’t imagine anyone plugging into yours.”
“Abbreviations, please.”
“Roughly seven hours ago something horrible happened at a house in the Virginia suburbs—”
“A storm?” broke in the Czech.
“If I understand you, yes, a terrible storm with enormous loss.”
“Icarus?” Varak nearly shouted.
“He wasn’t there. Neither was he in the mountains, where a similar attempt was made but thwarted.”
“Emmanuel Weingrass!” whispered the Czech under his breath. “He was the target. I knew it would happen!”
“It wouldn’t appear so, but why do you say that?”
“Later, sir.… I drove down from Evanston around twelve-thirty—”
“I knew you were out, I started calling you hours ago but didn’t leave word, of course. Is everything on schedule?”
“Ahead of it, but that’s not what I mean. There was nothing on the radio about either event, and that’s astonishing, isn’t it?”
“If things go as I expect,” answered Winters, “there’ll be nothing for at least several days, if then.”
“That’s even more astonishing. How do you know that, sir?”
“Because I believe I’ve arranged it. A man I trust has gone privately to Sixteen Hundred through my intervention. He’s there now. If there’s any hope of catching those responsible, he needs the blackout.”
With enormous relief, Milos Varak instantly understood that Samuel Winters was not the traitor within Inver Brass. Whoever the informer was, he would never prolong the hunt for killers if they were sent out by San Diego. Beyond that truth, that relief, the Czech coordinator had someone to confide in.
“Sir, please listen to me carefully. It’s imperative—I repeat, imperative—that you call a meeting tomorrow as early as possible. It must be during the day, sir, not at night. Every hour will count in each of the time zones.”
“That’s a startling request.”
“Call it an emergency. It is an emergency, sir.… And somehow, some way, I must find another emergency. I must force someone to make a move.”
“Without specifics, can you give me a reason?”
“Yes. The one thing we never thought could happen within the group has happened. There’s someone who shouldn’t be there.”
“Good God!… You’re certain?”
“I’m certain. Seconds ago I eliminated you as a possibility.”
It was four twenty-five in the morning, California time; seven twenty-five in the eastern United States. Andrew Vanvlanderen sat in his overstuffed velour chair, his eyes glazed, his heavy body weaving, his white wavy hair disheveled. In a burst of frenzy he suddenly threw a thick-based glass of whisky across the space into the television set; it glanced off the mahogany cabinet and dropped ineffectually on the white rug. In fury he picked up a marble ashtray and heaved it into the screen of the twenty-four-hour All News program. The convex glass picture shattered and the set imploded with a loud, sharp report as black smoke rushed out of the electronic entrails. Vanvlanderen roared incoherently at nothing and everything, his quivering lips trying to form words he could not find. In seconds his wife ran out of the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
“There’s—augh!—nothing, not a goddamned thing!” he shrieked, his speech garbled, his neck and face flushed, the veins in his throat and forehead distended. “Not a fucking thing! What’s happened? What’s going on? They can’
t do this! I paid them a straight two million!” And then, without warning or the slightest indication of anything other than being in the grip of rage, Vanvlanderen lurched out of the chair, his arms trembling, his hands shaking violently, pressing a wall of air he could not see through his bulging eyes, and fell forward on the floor. As his face crashed into the rug a furious guttural cry was the last sound from his throat.
His fourth wife, Ardis Wojak Montreaux Frazier-Pyke Vanvlanderen, took several steps forward, her face white, her skin stretched to the parchment of a mask, her large eyes staring down at her dead husband. “You son of a bitch!” she whispered. “How could you leave me with this mess, whatever it is? Whatever the hell you’ve done!”
32
Ahbyahd called his four “priests” together in the motel room he shared with the young member of the mission who spoke fluent English and who had never been in Oman. It was 5:43 A.M., Colorado time, and the long vigil was over. There would be no rendezvous. Command Two had not made contact, which meant that Yosef and his men were dead; there was no other explanation. The hardened veteran who was half Jew but with a consummate hatred of all things Western and Israeli would never permit a single member of his team to be taken alive. It was why he had demanded that the crippled, harelipped boy who would not be denied should be at his side at all times.
At the first sign of even conceivable capture, I will put a bullet in your head, child. Do you understand?
I will do it first, old man. I seek my glorious death far more than my miserable life.
I believe you, you young fool. But please remember the words of Azra. Alive you can fight, dead you cannot.
The martyred Azra was right, thought Ahbyahd. However, Azra had not defined the ultimate sacrifice sought by all who truly believed. It was to die while fighting. That was why the jihad was impervious to traps, even to death. And the thunderous silence that resulted from the attack on the house in Virginia and the absence of Yosef and his men could only be a trap. It was the Western way of thinking: Deny the accomplishment, acknowledge nothing; force the hunters to search further and lead them into a trap. It was so meaningless. If the trap meant killing the enemy, in this instance the possibility of killing a great enemy, what did death matter? In their martyrdom they would find an exhilaration of happiness unknown in the life they led here on earth. There was no greater glory for the believer than to walk into the gentle clouds of Allah’s heavens with the blood of their enemies on his hands in a just war.
It was this reasoning that confused Ahbyahd. Did not the Christians incessantly talk about walking into the arms of Christ for the causes of Christ, calling for wars in his name? Did not the Jews exalt their chosen status under Abraham’s God to the exclusion of all others, fighting for deliverance as the Maccabees did, dying for their beliefs atop the Masada? Was Allah to be deemed unworthy in this company? Who decreed it? The Christians and the Jews? Ahbyahd was no scholar, barely a student of such difficult subjects, if the truth be known, but these were things taught by the elders, men steeped in the holy Koran. The lessons were clear: their enemies were quick to invent and fight for their own grievances but quicker still to deny the pain of others. The Christians and the Jews were very free in calling upon their Almighties in any conflict that threatened them, and they would certainly continue to deny the just cause of the lowly Palestinian, but they could not deny him his martyrdom. They would not in a distant place called Mesa Verde, thousands of kilometers from Mecca.
“My brothers,” began the white-haired one, facing the four men of his command in the small, dingy motel room. “Our time has come and we approach it with rapture, knowing that a far better world lies before us, a heaven where we will be free, neither slaves nor pawns to others here on earth. If through the grace of Allah we survive to fight again, we will bring home to our brothers and sisters the holy kill of vengeance that so justly belongs to us. And the world will know that we have done it, know that five men of valor penetrated and destroyed all within two fortresses built by the great enemy to stop us.… Now we must prepare. First with prayers, and then with the more practical applications of our cause. Depending on what we learn, we strike when they will least expect an attack—not with the cover of night but in sunlight. By sundown we will either be with the holy hour of Salat el Maghreb or in the arms of Allah.”
It was shortly past noon when Khalehla walked off the plane and into the lounge at San Diego’s international airport. She was instantly aware of being watched mainly because her observer made no pretense of not doing so. The nondescript overweight man in an unpressed, ill-fitting gabardine suit was eating popcorn from a white cardboard container. He nodded his head once, turned, and started walking down the wide, crowded corridor toward the terminal. It was a signal. In moments Rashad caught up with him, slowing her pace to his at his side.
“I gather you weren’t waiting to pick me up,” she said without looking at him.
“If I was, you’d be on your knees begging me to take you home, which I’ll probably have to do.”
“Your modesty is as irresistible as you are.”
“That’s what my wife says, except she adds ‘beauty.’ ”
“What is it?”
“Call Langley. I have a feeling that all hell’s broken loose, but call from one of these phones, not my place, if it’s going to be my place. I’ll wait up ahead; if we’re a team, just nod and follow me … at a respectful distance, naturally.”
“I think I’d like a name. Something.”
“Try Shapoff.”
“Gingerbread?” said Khalehla, briefly shifting her eyes to glance at the field officer so highly regarded that he was practically a legend at the Agency. “East Berlin? Prague? Vienna—”
“Actually,” interrupted the man in the disheveled gabardine suit. “I’m a left-handed periodontist from Cleveland.”
“I guess I had a different picture of you.”
“That’s why I’m ‘Gingerbread’ … stupid goddamned name. Make your call.”
Rashad peeled off at the next pay telephone. Anxious and not familiar with the latest phone procedures, she pushed the Operator button and, while feigning a bewildered French accent, placed a collect call to a number she had long since committed to memory.
“Yes?” said Mitchell Payton at the other end of the line.
“MJ, it’s me. What’s happened?”
“Andrew Vanvlanderen died early this morning.”
“Killed?”
“No, it was a stroke; we’ve established that. There was a fair amount of alcohol in his blood and he was a mess—unshaven, eyes bloodshot, reeking of body sweat and worse—but it was a stroke.”
“Damn … damn!”
“There was also an interesting set of circumstances—always circumstances, nothing clean. He’d been sitting in front of a television set for hours on end and obviously smashed it with a marble ashtray.”
“Touchy, touchy,” said the agent from Cairo. “What does his wife say?”
“Between excessive tears and pleas for seclusion, the stoic widow claims he was depressed over heavy losses in the market and other investments. Which, of course, she insists she knows nothing about, which of course she does. That marriage had to be consummated above a financial statement under the mattress.”
“Did you check on her information?”
“Naturally. His portfolio could support several small nations. Two of his horses even won the daily double at Santa Anita last week and, along with a few others, are galloping toward millions in stud fees.”
“So she was lying.”
“She was lying,” agreed Payton.
“But not necessarily about the depression.”
“Let’s try substituting another word. Rage, perhaps. Manic rage coupled with hysterical fear.”
“Something didn’t happen?” suggested Khalehla.
“Something was not made public as having happened. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t … perhaps it was botched. Perhaps, and this
could be the trigger, perhaps several of the killers were taken alive, as, indeed, one was in Mesa Verde.”
“And captured people can be made to talk volumes without knowing it.”
“Precisely. All that’s needed is one source who can describe one location, a method of travel, a drop. We have such a source, such a person. There are too many complications to hide everything. Whoever’s behind these killings has to realize that, at least suspect it. That may have been on Andrew Vanvlanderen’s mind.”
“How are things going with the prisoner?”
“He’s under now, or, as the doctors say, he’s being taken up. He’s a maniac. He’s tried everything from self-asphyxiation to swallowing his tongue. As a result, they had to inject tranquilizers before they could give him the serums, slowing things a bit. The doctors tell me that we should have the first reports within an hour or so.”
“What do I do now, MJ? I can’t very well barge in on the grieving widow—”
“On the contrary, my dear,” interrupted Payton. “That’s exactly what you’re going to do. We’re going to turn this damned circumstantial liability into an asset. When a person like Mrs. Vanvlanderen accepts a position involving close ties with the potential successor to the President of the United States, personal considerations become secondary.… You’ll apologize profusely, of course, but then stay with the scenario as we’ve outlined it.”
“When you think about it,” said Khalehla, “given the circumstances, the timing couldn’t be better. I’m the last person she’ll expect. It’ll shake her up.”
“I’m glad you agree. Remember, you may show compassion, but the cold business of national security comes first.”
“What about Shapoff? Are we a team?”
“Only if you need him. We’ve lent him to naval intelligence, consultant status, and I’m glad he’s there, but I’d rather you start solo. Work out contact arrangements.”
“I gather he hasn’t been briefed.”
“No, only to give you whatever assistance you may ask for.”
“I understand.”
“Adrienne,” said the director of Special Projects, drawing out the name. “There’s something else you should also know. We may be a step closer to our blond-haired European and, equally important, what he’s all about.”