'That's not a household name, Mr. Kendrick,' interrupted Swann again, again with emphasis.
'In my house it was once—briefly. Anyway, I wasn't just looking for a Middle East hand, but an expert in Southwest Arab affairs, someone who knew the language and a dozen dialects fluently. The man I wanted would have to be someone like that… You were there, Mr. Swann.'
'You've been busy.'
'So have you,' said the congressman, nodding his head at the door and the huge outer office with the banks of computers. 'I assume you understood my message or else I wouldn't be here.'
'Yes,' agreed the deputy director. 'You said you might be able to help. Is that true?'
'I don't know. I only knew I had to offer.'
'Offer? On what basis?'
'May I sit down?'
'Please. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just tired.' Kendrick sat down; Swann did the same, looking strangely at the freshman politician. 'Go ahead, Congressman. Time's valuable, every minute, and we've been concerned with this “problem”, as you described it to my secretary, for a few long, hairy weeks. Now I don't know what you've got to say or whether it's relevant or not, but if it is, I'd like to know why it's taken you so long to get here.'
'I hadn't heard anything about the events over in Oman. About what's happened—what's happening.'
'That's damn near impossible to believe. Is the Congressman from Colorado's ninth district spending the House recess at a Benedictine retreat?'
'Not exactly.'
'Or is it possible that a new ambitious congressman who speaks some Arabic,' went on Swann rapidly, quietly, unpleasantly, 'elaborates on a few cloakroom rumours about a certain section over here and decides to insert himself for a little political mileage down the road? It wouldn't be the first time.'
Kendrick sat motionless in the chair, his face without expression, but not his eyes. They were at once observant and angry. 'That's offensive,' he said.
'I'm easily offended under the circumstances. Eleven of our people have been killed, mister, including three women. Two hundred and thirty-six others are waiting to get their heads blown off! And I ask you if you can really help and you tell me you don't know, but you have to offer! To me that has the sound of a hissing snake so I watch my step. You walk in here with a language you probably learned making big bucks with some oil company and figure that entitles you to special consideration—maybe you're a “consultant”; it has a nice ring to it. A freshman pol is suddenly a consultant to the State Department during a national crisis. Whichever way it goes, you win. That'd lift a few hats in Colorado's ninth district, wouldn't it?'
'I imagine it would if anyone knew about it.'
'What?' Once again the deputy director stared at the congressman, not so much in irritation now but because of something else. Did he know him?
'You're under a lot of stress so I won't add to it. But if what you're thinking is a barrier, let's get over it. If you decide I might be of some value to you, the only way I'd agree is with a written guarantee of anonymity, no other way. No one's to know I've been here. I never talked to you or anyone else.'
Nonplussed, Swann leaned back in his chair and brought his hand to his chin. 'I do know you,' he said softly.
'We've never met.'
'Say what you want to say, Congressman. Start somewhere.'
'I'll start eight hours ago,' began Kendrick. 'I've been riding the Colorado white water into Arizona for almost a month—that's the Benedictine retreat you conjured up for the congressional recess. I passed through Lava Falls and reached a base camp. There were people there, of course, and it was the first time I'd heard a radio in nearly four weeks.'
'Four weeks?' repeated Swann. 'You've been out of touch all that time? Do you do this sort of thing often?'
'Pretty much every year,' answered Kendrick. 'It's become kind of a ritual,' he added quietly. 'I go alone; it's not pertinent.'
'Some politician,' said the deputy, absently picking up a pencil. 'You can forget the world, Congressman, but you still have a constituency.'
'No politician,' replied Evan Kendrick, permitting himself a slight smile. 'And my constituency's an accident, believe me. Anyway, I heard the news and moved as fast as I could. I hired a river plane to fly me to Flagstaff and tried to charter a jet to Washington. It was too late at night, too late to clear a flight plan, so I flew on to Phoenix and caught the earliest plane here. Those in-flight phones are a marvel. I'm afraid I monopolized one, talking to a very experienced secretary and a number of other people. I apologize for the way I look; the airline provided a razor but I didn't want to take the time to go home and change clothes. I'm here, Mr. Swann, and you're the man I want to see. I may be of absolutely no help to you, and I'm sure you'll tell me if I'm not. But to repeat, I had to offer.'
While his visitor spoke, the deputy had written the name 'Kendrick' on the pad in front of him. Actually, he had written it several times, underlining the name. Kendrick. Kendrick. Kendrick. 'Offer what?' he asked, frowning and looking up at the odd intruder. ' What, Congressman?'
'Whatever I know about the area and the various factions operating over there. Oman, the Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar—Masqat, Dubai, Abu Dhabi—up to Kuwait and down to Riyadh. I lived in those places. I worked there. I know them very well.'
'You lived—worked—all over the Southwest map?'
'Yes. I spent eighteen months in Masqat alone. Under contract to the family.'
'The sultan?'
'The late sultan; he died two or three years ago, I think. But yes, under contract to him and his ministers. They were a tough group and good. You had to know your business.'
'Then you worked for a company,' said Swann, making a statement, not asking a question.
'Yes.'
'Which one?'
'Mine,' answered the new congressman.
'Yours?'
'That's right.'
The deputy stared at his visitor, then lowered his eyes to the name he had written repeatedly on the pad in front of him. 'Good Lord,' he said softly. 'The Kendrick Group! That's the connection, but I didn't see it. I haven't heard your name in four or five years—maybe six.'
'You were right the first time. Four to be exact.'
'I knew there was something. I said so—’
'Yes, you did, but we never met.'
'You people built everything from water systems to bridges—race tracks, housing projects, country clubs, airfields—the whole thing.'
'We built what we were contracted to build.'
'I remember. It was ten or twelve years ago. You were the American wonder boys in the Emirates—and I do mean boys. Dozens of you in your twenties and thirties and filled with high tech, piss and vinegar.'
'Not all of us were that young—’
'No,' interrupted Swann, frowning in thought. 'You had a late-blooming secret weapon, an old Israeli, a whiz of an architect. An Israeli, for heaven's sake, who could design things in the Islamic style and broke bread with every rich Arab in the neighbourhood.
'His name was Emmanuel Weingrass—is Manny Weingrass—and he's from Garden Street in the Bronx in New York. He went to Israel to avoid legal entanglements with his second or third wife. He's close to eighty now and living in Paris. Pretty well, I gather, from his phone calls.'
'That's right,' said the deputy director. 'You sold out to Bechtel or somebody For thirty or forty million.'
'Not to Bechtel. It was Trans-International, and it wasn't thirty or forty, it was twenty-five. They got a bargain and I got out. Everything was fine.'
Swann studied Kendrick's face, especially the light blue eyes that held within them circles of enigmatic reserve the longer one stared at them. 'No, it wasn't,' he said softly, even gently, his hostility gone. 'I do remember now. There was an accident at one of your sites outside Riyadh—a cave-in caused when a faulty gas line exploded—more than seventy people were killed including your partners, all your employees, and some kids.'
'Their kids,' added Evan qui
etly. 'All of them, all their wives and children. We were celebrating the completion of the third phase. We were all there. The crew, my partners—everyone's wife and child. The whole shell collapsed while they were inside, and Manny and I were outside—putting on some ridiculous clown costumes.'
'But there was an investigation that cleared the Kendrick Group completely. The utility firm that serviced the site had installed inferior conduit falsely labelled as certified.'
'Essentially, yes.'
'That's when you packed it all in, wasn't it?'
'This isn't pertinent,' said the congressman simply. 'We're wasting time. Since you know who I am, or at least who I was, is there anything I can do?'
'Do you mind if I ask you a question? I don't think it's a waste of time and I think it is pertinent. Clearances are part of the territory and judgments have to be made. I meant what I said before. A lot of people on the Hill continuously try to make political mileage out of us over here.'
'What's the question?'
'Why are you a congressman, Mr. Kendrick? With your money and professional reputation, you don't need it. And I can't imagine how you'd benefit, certainly not compared to what you could do in the private sector.'
'Do all people seeking elective office do so solely for personal gain?'
'No, of course not.' Swann paused, then shook his head. 'Sorry, that's too glib. It's a stock answer to a loaded stock question… Yes, Congressman, in my biased opinion, most ambitious men—and women—who run for such offices do so because of the exposure and, if they win, the clout. Combined, it all makes them very marketable. Sorry again, this is a cynic talking. But then I've been in this city for a long time and I see no reason to alter that judgment. And you confuse me. I know where you come from, and I've never heard of Colorado's ninth district. It sure as hell isn't Denver.'
'It's barely on the map,' said Kendrick, his voice noncommittal. 'It's at the base of the southwest Rockies, doing pretty much its own thing. That's why I built there. It's off the beaten track.'
'But why? Why politics? Did the boy-wonder of the Arab Emirates find a district he could carve out for his own base, a political launching pad maybe?'
'Nothing could have been farther from my mind.'
'That's a statement, Congressman. Not an answer.'
Evan Kendrick was momentarily silent, returning Swann's gaze. Then he shrugged his shoulders. Swann sensed a certain embarrassment. 'All right,' he said firmly. 'Let's call it an aberration that won't happen again. There was a vacuous, overbearing incumbent who was lining his pockets in a district that wasn't paying attention. I had time on my hands and a big mouth. I also had the money to bury him. I'm not necessarily proud of what I did or how I did it, but he's gone and I'll be out in two years or less. By then I'll have found someone better qualified to take my place.'
'Two years?' asked Swann. 'Come November it'll be a year since your election, correct?'
'That's right.'
'And you started serving last January?'
'So?'
'Well, I hate to disabuse you, but your term of office is for two years. You've either got one more year or three, but not two or less.'
'There's no real opposition party in the ninth, but to make sure the seat doesn't go to the old political machine, I agreed to stand for re-election—then resign.'
'That's some agreement.'
'It's binding as far as I'm concerned. I want out.'
'That's blunt enough, but it doesn't take into account a possible side effect.'
'I don't understand you.'
'Suppose during the next twenty-odd months you decide you like it here? What happens then?'
'It's not possible and it couldn't happen, Mr. Swann. Let's get back to Masqat. It's a goddamned mess, or do I have sufficient “clearance” to make that observation?'
'You're cleared because I'm the one who clears.' The deputy director shook his grey head. 'A goddamned mess, Congressman, and we're convinced it's externally programmed.'
'I don't think there's any question about it,' agreed Kendrick.
'Do you have any ideas?'
'A few,' answered the visitor. 'Wholesale destabilization's at the top of the list. Shut the country down and don't let anyone in.'
'A takeover?' asked Swann. 'A Khomeini-style Putsch?… It wouldn't work; the situation's different. There's no Peacock, no festering resentments, no SAVAK.' Swann paused, adding pensively, 'No Shah with an army of thieves and no Ayatollah with an army of fanatics. It's not the same.'
'I didn't mean to imply that it was. Oman's only the beginning. Whoever it is doesn't want to take over the country, he—or they—simply want to stop others from taking the money.'
'What? What money?'
'Billions. Long-range projects that are on drafting boards everywhere in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and all of Southwest Asia, the only stable areas in that part of the world. What's happening over there now isn't much different from tying up the transport and the construction trades over here, or shutting down the piers in New York and New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Nothing's legitimized by strikes or collective bargaining—there's just terror and the threats of more terror provided by whipped-up fanatics. And everything stops. The people at the drafting boards and those in the field on surveying teams and in equipment compounds just want to get out as fast as they can.'
'And once they're out,' added Swann quickly, ‘those behind the terrorists move in and the terror stops. It just goes away. Christ, it sounds like a waterfront Mafia operation!'
'Arabic style,' said Kendrick. 'To use your words, it wouldn't be the first time.'
'You know that for a fact?'
'Yes. Our company was threatened a number of times, but to quote you again, we had a secret weapon. Emmanuel Weingrass.'
'Weingrass? What the hell could he do?'
'Lie with extraordinary conviction. One moment he was a reserve general in the Israeli Army who could call an air strike on any Arab group who harassed or replaced us, and the next, he was a high-ranking member of the Mossad who would send out death squads eliminating even those who warned us. Like many ageing men of genius, Manny was frequently eccentric and almost always theatrical. He enjoyed himself. Unfortunately, his various wives rarely enjoyed him for very long. At any rate, no one wanted to tangle with a crazy Israeli. The tactics were too familiar.'
'Are you suggesting we recruit him?' asked the deputy director.
'No. Apart from his age, he's winding up his life in Paris with the most beautiful women he can hire and certainly with the most expensive brandy he can find. He couldn't help… But there's something you can do.'
'What's that?'
'Listen to me.' Kendrick leaned forward. 'I've been thinking about this for the past eight hours and with every hour I'm more convinced it's a possible explanation. The problem is that there are so few facts—almost none, really—but a pattern's there, and it's consistent with things we heard five years ago.'
'What things? What pattern?'
'Only rumours to begin with, then came the threats and they were threats. No one was kidding.'
'Go on. I'm listening.'
'While defusing those threats in his own way, usually with prohibited whisky, Weingrass heard something that made too much sense to be dismissed as drunken babbling. He was told that a consortium was silently being formed—an industrial cartel, if you like. It was quietly gaining control of dozens of different companies with growing resources in personnel, technology and equipment. The objective was obvious then, and if the information's accurate, even more obvious now. They intend to take over the industrial development of Southwest Asia. As far as Weingrass could learn, this underground federation was based in Bahrain—nothing surprising there—but what came as a shocker and amused the hell out of Manny was the fact that among the unknown board of directors was a man who called himself the “Mahdi”—like the Muslim fanatic who threw the British out of Khartoum a hundred years ago.'
'T
he Mahdi? Khartoum?'
'Exactly. The symbol's obvious. Except this new Mahdi doesn't give a damn about religious Islam, much less its screaming fanatics. He's using them to drive the competition out and keep it out. He wants the contracts and the profits in Arab hands—specifically his hands.'
'Wait a minute." Swann interrupted thoughtfully as he picked up his phone and touched a button on the console. 'This ties in with something that came from MI-6 in Masqat last night,' he continued quickly, looking at Kendrick. 'We couldn't follow it up because there wasn't anything to follow, no trail, but it sure as hell made wild reading… Get me Gerald Bryce, please… Hello, Gerry? Last night—actually around two o'clock this morning—we got a nothing-zero from the Brits in OHIO. I want you to find it and read it to me slowly because I'll be writing down every word.' The deputy covered the mouthpiece and spoke to his suddenly alert visitor. 'If anything you've said makes any sense at all, it may be the first concrete breakthrough we've had.'
'That's why I'm here, Mr. Swann, probably reeking of smoked fish.'
The deputy director nodded aimlessly, impatiently, waiting for the man he had called Bryce to return to the phone. 'A shower wouldn't hurt, Congressman… Yes, Gerry, go ahead!… “Do not look where you would logically expect to look. Search elsewhere.” Yes, I've got that. I remember that. It was right after, I think… “Where grievances are not born of poverty or abandonment.” That's it! And something else, right around there… “Where Allah has bestowed favour in this world, although perhaps not in the after one.”… Yes. Now go down a bit, something about whispers, that's all I remember… There! That's it. Give it to me again… “The whispers speak of those who will benefit from the bloodshed.” Okay, Gerry, that's what I needed. The rest was all negative, if I recall. No names, no organizations, just crap… That's what I thought… I don't know yet. If anything breaks, you'll be the first to know. In the meantime, oil up the equipment and work on a printout of all the construction firms in Bahrain. And if there's a listing for what we call general or industrial contractors, I want that, too… When? Yesterday for God's sake!' Swann hung up the phone, looked down at the phrases he had written, and then up at Kendrick.
The Icarus Agenda Page 2