The Icarus Agenda: A Novel

  “So do I,” whispered Milos to himself. He looked at his watch; he was late for the Sound Man downstairs. No matter, he thought, the man was quick and would quickly grasp what he wanted from the tapes and the transcripts. Then he would borrow the Sound Man’s car and park it in the lot at San Diego’s international airport. There in a private strip south of the main runways he would find the traitor of Inver Brass. He would find him and kill him.

  The telephone rang, jarring Kendrick out of a fitful sleep. Disoriented, his eyes centered on a hotel window and the heavy snow whirling in circles in the winds beyond the glass. The phone rang again; blinking, he found the source, turned on the bedside lamp, and picked it up, glancing at his watch as he did so. It was five-twenty in the morning. Khalehla?

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Atlanta stayed up all night,” said the hospital’s chief of pathology. “They just called me and I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “You may not care to. All the tests are positive, I’m afraid.”

  “Cancer?” asked Evan, swallowing.

  “No. I could give you the medical term, but it wouldn’t mean anything to you. You could call it a form of salmonella, a strain of virus that attacks the lungs, clotting the blood until it closes off the oxygen. I can understand why, on the surface, Mr. Weingrass thought it was the cancer. It’s not, but that’s no gift.”

  “The cure?” said Kendrick, gripping the phone.

  After a brief silence the pathologist replied quietly, “None known. It’s irreversible. In the African Kasai districts they slaughter the cattle and burn them, raze whole villages and burn them, too.”

  “I don’t give a goddamn about cattle and African villages!… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to yell at you.”

  “It’s perfectly all right, it goes with the job. I looked on the map; he must have eaten in an Omani restaurant that served central African food for imported laborers perhaps. Unclean dishes, that sort of thing. It’s the way it’s transmitted.”

  “You don’t know Emmanuel Weingrass; those are the last places he’d eat at.… No, Doctor, it wasn’t transmitted, it was planted.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. How long has he got?”

  “The CDC says it can vary. A month to three, perhaps four. No more than six.”

  “May I tell him it could stretch to a couple of years.”

  “You can tell him anything you like, but he may tell you otherwise. His breathing isn’t going to get any easier. Oxygen will have to be readily available.”

  “It will be. Thank you, Doctor.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kendrick.”

  Evan got out of the bed and paced about the room in growing anger. A phantom doctor unknown in Mesa Verde but not unknown to certain officials in the United States government. A pleasant doctor who only wished to take a little blood … and then disappeared. Suddenly Evan shouted, his cry hoarse, the tears rolling down his face. “Lyons, where are you? I’ll find you!”

  In frenzy he smashed his fist through the window nearest him, shattering the glass, so that the wind and the snow careened through the room.

  37

  Varak approached the last of the maintenance hangars in the private area of San Diego’s international airport. Police and armed customs personnel in electric carts and motorbikes drove continuously through the exposed narrow streets of the huge flat complex, voices and static erupting sporadically from the vehicles’ radios. The individual rich and the highly profitable corporations who were the area’s clients might avoid the irritations of normal air travel, but they could not avoid the scrutiny of federal and municipal agencies patrolling the sector. Each plane prepped for departure underwent not only the usual flight plan and route clearances but thorough inspections of the aircraft itself. Furthermore, each person boarding was subject to the possibility of being searched on probable cause, almost as if he or she were a member of the unwashed. Certain of the questionable rich did not really have it that good.

  The Czech had casually gone into the comfortable preflight lounge where the elite passengers waited in luxury before takeoff. He inquired about the Grinell plane, and the attractive clerk behind the counter was far more cooperative than he had expected.

  “Are you on the flight, sir?” she had asked, about to type his name into her computer.

  “No, I’m only here to deliver some legal papers.”

  “Oh, then I suggest you go down to Hangar Seven. Mr. Grinell rarely stops in here, he goes straight to preclearance and then to the aircraft when it’s rolled out for inspection.”

  “If you could direct me …?”

  “We’ll have one of our carts drive you down.”

  “I’d prefer to walk, if you don’t mind. I’d like to stretch my legs.”

  “Suit yourself, but stay in the street. Security here is touchy and there are all kinds of alarms.”

  “I’ll run from streetlight to streetlight,” Milos said, smiling. “Okay?”

  “Not a bad idea,” the girl replied. “Last week a Beverly Hills hotshot got juiced in here and wanted to walk, too. He took a wrong turn and ended up in the San Diego jail.”

  “For simply walking?”

  “Well, he had some funny pills on him—”

  “I don’t even have aspirin.”

  “Go outside, turn right to the first street, and right again. It’s the last hangar on the edge of the strip. Mr. Grinell has the best location. I wish he’d come in here more often.”

  “He’s a very private person.”

  “He’s invisible, that’s what he is.”

  Varak kept glancing around while nodding his head at the drivers of carts and low-slung motor scooters who approached him from both directions, some slowing down, others rushing past. He saw what he wanted to see. There were trip lights between the row of hangars on the right, connecting beams from opposing short poles in the ground designed to look like demarcations—of what? wondered the Czech. Lawns between suburban houses of the future where neighbor feared neighbor? On the left side of the street there was nothing but a vacant expanse of tall grass that bordered an auxiliary runway. It would be his way out of the private field once his business was concluded.

  The clerk at the preflight lounge had been accurate, Milos mused, as he neared the immense open doors of the final hangar. Grinell’s plane was in the best location. Once cleared, the aircraft could move out to the field through the opposite door, takeoff imminent as controlled by the tower—no minutes wasted during slow hours. Certain of the rich had it better than he thought.

  Two uniformed guards stood inside the hangar at the edge of the drive where the blacktop met the concrete floor of the interior. Beyond them a Rockwell jet with men crawling over its silver wings stood immobile, a metal bird soon to soar into the night sky. Milos studied the guards’ uniforms; they were neither federal nor municipal; they were from a private security firm. The realization gave birth to another thought as he noted that one of the men was quite large and very full in the waist and shoulders. Nothing was lost in trying; he had reached his post for the kill, but how much more satisfying it would be to execute a traitor at close range, making certain of the execution.

  Varak walked casually down the asphalt toward the imposing entrance of the hangar. Both guards stepped forward, one crushing out a cigarette under his foot.

  “What’s your business here?” asked the large man on the Czech’s right.

  “Business, I think,” answered Varak pleasantly. “Rather confidential business, I believe.”

  “What does that mean?” said the shorter guard on the left.

  “You’ll have to ask Mr. Grinell, I’m afraid. I’m merely a messenger, and I was told to speak to only one person, who should convey the information to Mr. Grinell when he arrives.”

  “More of that bullshit,” added the shorter patrol to his companion. “If you got papers or cash, you gotta get ’em precleared. They find someth
in’ on the plane they don’t know about, it don’t head out, and Mr. Grinell will explode, you get me?”

  “Loud and clear, my friend. I have only words that must be repeated accurately. Do you get me?”

  “So talk.”

  “One person,” said Varak. “And I choose him,” continued Milos, pointing at the large man.

  “He’s dumb. Take me.”

  “I was told whom to choose.”

  “Shit!”

  “Please come with me,” said the Czech, gesturing to the right behind the trip lights. “I’m to record our conversation but without anyone in earshot.”

  “Why don’t you tell the boss himself?” objected the overlooked guard on the left. “He’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

  “Because we’re never to meet face-to-face—anywhere. Would you care to ask him about it?”

  “More bullshit.”

  Once around the corner of the hangar, Varak raised his cupped left hand. “Would you please speak directly into this?” he said, again pleasantly.

  “Sure, mister.”

  They were the last words the guard would remember. The Czech sent the hard flat base of his right hand into the man’s shoulder blade, following the blow with three chops to his throat and a final two-knuckled assault on his upper eyelids. The guard collapsed, and Varak swiftly began to remove his clothes. A minute and twenty seconds later he was overdressed in the large man’s private security uniform; he cuffed the trouser legs and shoved up his sleeves, pulling the uniform over his wrists. He was ready.

  Forty seconds later a black limousine drove down the street and stopped at the base of the asphalt entrance to the hangar. The Czech moved out of the shadows and walked slowly into the chiaroscuro light. A man emerged from the huge car, and although Milos had never seen him, he knew that man was Crayton Grinell.

  “Hi, boss!” yelled the guard at the left of the hangar as the overcoated gray-faced figure walked quickly, angrily across the blacktop. “We got your message, Benny’s recording something—”

  “Why isn’t the goddamned plane out on the strip?” roared Grinell. “Everything’s cleared, you idiots!”

  “Benny talked to them, boss, I didn’t! Five, ten minutes, they told him. It would have been different if I was on the phone! Shit, I don’t put up with no shit, you know what I mean? You should’a told that guy to speak to me, that Benny—”

  “Shut up! Get my driver and tell him to move this son of a bitch out! If they can’t fly it, he can!”

  “Sure, boss. Anything you say, boss!… They’re starting the jets now!”

  As the guard started shouting to the driver of the limousine the Czech joined the rush of activity and began running toward the outsized automobile.

  “Thanks!” cried the passing chauffeur, seeing Varak’s uniform. “He goes on at the last minute!”

  Milos raced around the trunk of the car to the street side, yanked open the backseat, and leaped inside to a jump seat. He sat rigid, staring at the puffed face of an astonished Eric Sundstrom. “Hello, Professor,” he said softly.

  “It was a trap—you set a trap for me!” screamed the scientist in the dark shadows of the seat as the roar of jet engines filled the night outside. “But you don’t know what you’re doing, Varak! We’re on the edge of a breakthrough in space! So many wondrous things to learn! We were wrong—Inver Brass is wrong! We must go on!”

  “Even if we blow up half the planet?”

  “Don’t be an ass!” cried Sundstrom, pleading. “Nobody’s going to blow up anything! We’re a civilized people on both sides, civilized and frightened. The more we build, the more fear we instill—that’s the world’s ultimate protection, don’t you see?”

  “You call that civilized?”

  “I call it progress. Scientific progress! You wouldn’t understand, but the more we build, the more we learn.”

  “Through weapons of destruction?”

  “Weapons …? You’re pitifully naive! ‘Weapons’ is merely a label. Like ‘fish’ or ‘vegetables.’ It’s the excuse we employ to fund scientific advancement on a scale that would be otherwise prohibitive! The ‘bigger bang for the buck’ theory is obsolete—we have all the bang we’ll ever need. It’s in the delivery systems—orbital guidance and hookups, directional lasers that can be refracted in space to pinpoint a manhole cover from thousands of miles above.”

  “And deliver a bomb?”

  “Only if someone tries to stop us,” answered the scientist, his voice strained, as if the mere prospect was enough to summon his fury. Then that fury broke. His cherubic features suddenly turned into the grotesque components of some monstrous gargoyle. “Research, research, research!” he cried, his strident speech like the squeals of a furious pig. “Let no one dare stop us! We’re moving into a new world where science will rule all civilization! You’re meddling with a political faction that understands our needs! You can’t be tolerated! Kendrick is dangerous! You’ve seen him, heard him … he’d hold hearings, ask stupid questions, obstruct our progress!”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.” Varak slowly reached beneath the uniform to the fold of his jacket. “Do you know the universal penalty for treason, Professor?”

  “What are you talking about?” His hands trembling, his heavy body shaking as the sweat rolled down his face, Sundstrom edged toward the door. “I’ve betrayed no one … I’m trying to stop a terrible wrong, a horrible mistake committed by misguided lunatics! You’ve got to be stopped, all of you! You cannot interfere with the greatest scientific machine the world has ever known!”

  In the shadows Varak withdrew his automatic; a reflection of light beamed up from the barrel into Sundstrom’s eyes. “You’ve had months to say those things; instead you were silent while the others trusted you. Through your betrayal lives were lost, bodies mutilated … you’re filth, Professor.”

  “No!” screamed Sundstrom, crashing into the door, his trembling fingers hitting the handle as the door swung out, the scientist’s rotund body following in frenzied panic. Milos fired; the bullet seared into Sundstrom’s lower spine as the traitor fell to the asphalt shrieking. “Help me, help me! He’s trying to kill me! Oh, my God, he shot me!… Kill him, kill him!” Varak fired again, his aim now steady, the bullet accurate. The back of the scientist’s skull blew apart.

  In seconds, amid screams of confusion, gunfire was returned from the hangar. The Czech was hit in the chest and left shoulder. He sprang out of the street-side door, rolling on the ground, over and over again directly behind the limousine until he reached the opposite curb. In pain he crawled above it, scrambling on his hands and knees into the darkness of the tall grass that was the border of an auxiliary airstrip. He almost did not make it; from all directions there were the sounds of sirens and racing engines. The entire security force was converging on Hangar Seven, as across the street the guard and Grinell’s chauffeur closed in on the limousine, firing repeatedly into the vehicle. Varak was hit again. An aimless ricochet, a wild shot, burned its way into his stomach. He had to get away! His business was not concluded!

  He turned and started running through the tall grass, ripping first the uniformed jacket off, then stopping briefly to remove the trousers. Blood was spreading through his shirt, and his legs grew unsteady. He had to conserve his strength! He had to get across the field and reach a road, find a telephone. He had to!

  Searchlights. From a tower behind him! He was back in Czechoslovakia, in prison, racing across the compound to a fence and freedom. A beam swung close, and as he had done in that prison outside Prague, he lurched to the ground and lay motionless until it passed. He struggled to his feet, knowing he was growing weaker but could not stop. In the distance there were other lights—streetlights! And another fence …! Freedom, freedom.

  Straining every muscle, grip by grip, he scaled the fence, only to confront coiled barbed wire at the top. It did not matter. With what seemed like his last vestige of strength, he propelled himself over, shredding his
clothes and his flesh as he dropped to the ground. He lay there breathing deeply, alternately holding his stomach and his chest. Go on! Now!

  He reached the road; it was one of those unkempt narrow thoroughfares that frequently surround airports, no real estate development because of the noise. Still, cars sped by, shortcuts known to natives. Awkwardly, unsteadily, he walked onto it, holding up his arms at an approaching automobile. The driver, however, was having no part of him. He swung to the left and raced by. Moments later a second car approached from his right; he stood as straight as he could and raised one hand, a civilized signal of distress. The car slowed down; it stopped as the Czech reached into his holster for his gun.

  “What’s the problem?” asked the man in a naval uniform behind the wheel. The gold wings signified that he was a pilot.

  “I’m afraid I’ve had an accident,” replied Varak. “I drove off the road a mile or so back and no one has stopped to help me.”

  “You’re pretty smashed up, pal.… Climb in and I’ll get you to the hospital. Jesus, you’re a mess! Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”

  “Don’t bother, I can manage,” said Varak, walking around the hood. He opened the door and climbed in. “If I soil your car I’ll gladly pay—”

  “Let’s worry about that in a month of Tuesdays.” The naval officer shifted into gear and raced off as the Czech replaced his unseen automatic in the holster.

  “You’re very kind,” said Milos, digging a scrap of paper out of his pocket and removing his pen, writing brief words and numbers in the darkness.

  “You’re very hurt, pal. Hang on.”

  “Please, I must find a telephone. Please!”

  “The fucking insurance can wait, buddy.”

  “No, not insurance,” stammered Varak. “My wife. She expected me hours ago.… She has psychological problems.”

  “Don’t they all?” said the pilot. “Do you want me to make the call?”