The Icarus Agenda

by Ludlum, Robert

  The memories stopped with the sight of a man running inside the gates of the embassy.

  'Blue!' cried Ahbyahd, the streaks of white in his hair apparent in the growing light, his voice a harsh, astonished whisper as he raced across the courtyard. 'In Allah's name what happened? Your sister is beside herself but she cannot come outside, not as a woman, not at this hour, and especially not with you here. Eyes are everywhere—what happened to you?'

  'I'll tell you once we're inside. There's no time now. Hurry!'

  'We?'

  'Myself, Yosef, and a man named Bahrudi—he comes from the Mahdi! Quickly! The light's nearly up. Where do we go?'

  'Almighty God… the Mahdi!'

  'Please, Ahbyahd!'

  'The east wall, about forty metres from the south corner, there's an old sewer line—’

  'I know it! We've been working on it. It's clear now?'

  'One must crouch low and climb slowly, but yes, it's clear. There is an opening—’

  'Beneath the three large rocks on the water,' said Azra nodding rapidly. 'Have someone there. We race against the light!'

  The terrorist called Blue slipped away from the chained gates and with gathering speed, slowly, subtly discarding his previous posture, quickly rounded the south edge of the wall. He stopped, pressing his back into the stone, his eyes roaming up the line of barricaded shops. Yosef stepped partially out of a boarded-up recessed doorway; he had been watching Azra and wanted the young leader to know it. The older man hissed and in seconds 'Amal Bahrudi' emerged from a narrow alleyway between the buildings; staying in the shadows, he raced up the pavement, joining Yosef in the doorway. Azra gestured to his left, indicating a barely-paved road in front of him that ran parallel to the embassy wall; it was beyond the stretch of shops on the square; across the way there was only a wasteland of rubble and sand grass. In the distance, towards the fiery horizon, was the rock-laden coastline of the Oman Gulf. One after the other the fugitives raced down the road in their torn prison clothes and hard leather sandals, past the walls of the embassy into the sudden, startling glare of the bursting sun. Azra leading, they reached a small promontory above the crashing waves. With sure-footed agility, the world's new crown prince of killers started down over the huge boulders, stopping every now and then to gesture behind him, pointing out the areas of green sea moss where a man could lose his life by slipping and plunging down into the jagged rocks below. In less than a minute they reached an oddly-shaped indentation at the bottom of the short cliff where the huge stones met the water. It was marked by three boulders forming a strange triangle at the base of which was a cavelike opening no more than three feet wide and continuously assaulted by the pounding surf.

  'There it is!' exclaimed Azra, exaltation and relief in his voice. 'I knew I could find it!'

  'What is it?' yelled Kendrick, trying to be heard over the crashing waves.

  'An old sewer line,' roared Blue. 'Built hundreds of years ago, a communal toilet continuously washed down by sea water carried up by slaves.'

  'They bored through rock?'

  'No, Amal. They creased the surface and angled the rocks above; nature took care of the rest. A reverse aqueduct, if you like. It's a steep climb but as someone had to build it, there are ridges for feet—slaves' feet, like our Palestinian feet, no?'

  'How do we get in there?'

  'We walk through water. If the prophet Jesus can walk on it, the least we can do is walk through it. Come. The embassy!'

  Perspiring heavily, Anthony MacDonald climbed the open waterfront staircase on the side of the old warehouse. The creaking of the steps under his weight joined the sounds of wood and rope that erupted from the piers where hulls and stretched halyards scraped the slips along the docks. The first yellow rays of the sun pulsated over the waters of the harbour, broken by intruding skiffs and aged trawlers heading out for the day's catch, passing observant marine patrols that every now and then signalled a boat to stop for closer inspection.

  Tony had ordered his driver to crawl the car back towards Masqat on the deserted road without headlights until they reached a back street in the As Saada that cut across the city to the waterfront. Only when they encountered streetlamps did MacDonald instruct the driver to switch on the lights. He had no idea where the three fugitives were running or where they expected to hide in the daylight with an army of police searching for them, but he assumed it would be with one of the Mahdi's more unlikely agents in the city. He would avoid them; there was too much to learn, too many contradictory things to understand before a chance confrontation with the young ambitious Azra. But there was one place he could go, one man he could see without fear of being seen himself. A hired killer who followed orders blindly for money, a stick of human garbage who made contact with potential clients only in the filthy alleyways of the el Shari el Mish kwayis. Only those who had to know knew where he lived.

  Tony heaved his way up the last flight of steps to the short, thick door at the top that led to the man he had come to see. As he reached the final step he froze, mouth gaping, eyes bulging. Suddenly, without warning, the door whipped open on greased hinges as the half-naked killer lunged out on the short platform, a knife in his left hand, its long, razor-sharp blade glistening in the new sun, while in his right was a small .22 calibre pistol. The blade was poised across MacDonald's throat, the barrel of the gun jammed into his left temple; unable to breathe, the obese Englishman gripped both railings with his hands to keep from falling back down the steps.

  'It is you,' said the gaunt, hollow-cheeked man, withdrawing the pistol but keeping the knife in place. 'You are not to come here. You are never to come here!'

  Swallowing air, his immense body rigid, MacDonald spoke hoarsely, feeling the psychopath's blade across his throat. 'If it were not an emergency, I would never have done so, that should be perfectly clear.'

  'What is clear is that I was cheated!' replied the man, wiggling the knife. 'I killed that importer's son in the same way I could kill you at this moment. I carved up that girl's face and left her in the streets with her skirt above her head and I was cheated.'

  'No one meant to.'

  'Someone did!'

  'I'll make it up to you. We must talk. As I mentioned, it's an emergency.'

  'Talk here. You don't come inside. No one comes inside!'

  'Very well. If you'll be so kind as to permit me to stand rather than hang on for dear life half over this all too ancient staircase—'

  'Talk.'

  Tony steadied himself on the third step from the top, taking out a handkerchief and blotting his perspiring forehead, his gaze on the knife below. 'It's imperative I reach the leaders inside the embassy. Since they cannot, of course, come out, I must go in to them.'

  'It is too dangerous, especially for the one who gets you inside, since he remains outside.' The bone-gaunt killer pulled the blade away from MacDonald's throat, only to readjust it with a twist of his wrist, the glistening point now resting at the base of the Englishman's neck. 'You can talk to them on the telephone, people do all the time.'

  'What I have to say—what I must ask them—can't be spoken over the phone. It's vital that only the leaders hear my words and I theirs.'

  'I can sell you a number that is not published in the listings.'

  'It's published somewhere and if you have it, others do also. I cannot take the risk. Inside. I must get inside.'

  'You are difficult,' said the psychopath, his left eyelid flickering, both pupils dilated. 'Why are you difficult?'

  'Because I am immensely rich and you are not. You need money for your extravagances… your habits.'

  'You insult me!' spat out the killer-for-hire, his voice strident but not loud, the half-crazed man aware of the fishermen and dock labourers trudging to their morning chores three storeys below.

  'I'm only being realistic. Inside. How much?'

  The killer coughed his foul breath in MacDonald's face, pulling the blade back and settling his rheumy stare on his past and presen
t benefactor. 'It will cost a great deal of money. More than you have ever paid before.'

  'I'm prepared for a reasonable increase, not exorbitant, mind you, but reasonable. We'll always have work for you—’

  'There's an embassy press conference at ten o'clock this morning,' interrupted the partially drugged man. 'As usual, the journalists and television people will be selected at the last minute, their names called out at the gates. Be there, and give me a telephone number so I can give you a name within the next two hours.'

  Tony did so: his hotel and his room. 'How much, dear boy?' he added.

  The killer lowered the knife and stated the amount in Omani rials; it was equivalent to three thousand English pounds, or roughly five thousand American dollars. 'I have expenses,' he explained. 'Bribes must be paid or the one who bribes is dead.'

  'It's outrageous! cried MacDonald.

  'Forget the whole thing.'

  'Accepted,' said the Englishman.

  Khalehla paced her hotel room, and although she had given up cigarettes for the sixth time in her thirty-two years, she smoked one after another, her eyes constantly straying to the telephone. Under no condition could she operate from the palace. That connection had been jeopardized enough. Damn that son of a bitch!

  Anthony MacDonald—cipher, drunk… someone's agent-extraordinary—had his efficient network in Masqat, but she was not without resources herself, thanks to a roommate at Radcliffe who was now a sultan's wife—thanks to Khalehla's having introduced a fellow Arab to her best friend a number of years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts. God, how the world moved in smaller, swifter and ever more familiar circles! Her mother, a native Californian, had met her father, an exchange-student from Port Said, while both were in graduate school at Berkeley, she an Egyptologist, he working for his doctorate in Western Civilization, both aiming for academic careers. They fell in love and got married. The blonde California girl and the olive-skinned Egyptian.

  In time, with Khalehla's birth, the stunned, racially-absolute grandparents on both sides discovered that there was more to children than the purity of strain. The barriers fell in a sudden rush of love. Four elderly individuals, two couples predisposed to abhor each other, had bridged the gaps of culture, skin and belief by finding joy in a child and other mutually shared pleasures. They became inseparable, the banker and his wife from San Diego and the wealthy exporter from Port Said and his only Arab wife.

  'What am I doing?' cried Khalehla to herself. This was no time to think about the past, the present was everything! Then she realized why her mind had wandered—two reasons really. Firstly the pressures had become too great; she needed a few minutes to herself, to think about herself and those she loved if only to try to understand the hatred that was everywhere. The second was the more important reason. The faces and the words spoken at a dinner party long ago had been lurking in the background, especially the words, quietly echoing off the walls of her mind; they had made an impression on an eighteen-year-old girl about to leave for America.

  'The monarchs of the past had precious little to their overall credit,' her father had said that night in Cairo when the whole family was together, including both sets of grandparents. 'But they understood something our present leaders don't consider—can't consider actually, unless they try to become hereditary rulers themselves, which wouldn't be seemly in these times although some do try.'

  'What's that, young man?' asked the California banker. 'I haven't entirely given up on monarchy, with the proper right-wing principles, of course.'

  'Well, throughout history, they arranged marriages to make alliances, to bring the diverse nations into their central families. Once a person knows another under those circumstances—dining, dancing, hunting, even telling jokes—it's difficult to maintain a stereotyped bias, isn't it?'

  Everyone around the table had looked at one another, smiles and gentle nods emerging.

  'In such circles, however, my son,' remarked the exporter from Port Said, 'things did not always work out so felicitously as here. I'm no scholar, but there were wars, families against their own, ambitions thwarted.'

  'True, revered Father, but how much worse might it have all been without such arranged marriages? Far, far worse, I'm afraid.'

  'I refuse to be seen as a geopolitical tool!' Khalehla's mother had exclaimed, laughing.

  'Actually, my dear, everything between us was arranged by our devious parents here. Have you any idea how they've profited from our alliance?'

  'The only profit I've ever seen is the lovely young lady who's my granddaughter,' said the banker.

  'She's off to America, my friend,' said the exporter. 'Your profits may dwindle.'

  'How does it feel, darling? Quite an adventure for you, I'd think.'

  'It's hardly the first time, Grandmother. We've visited you and Grandfather a lot, and I've been to quite a few cities.'

  'It will be different now, dear.' Khalehla forgot who had said those words but they were the beginning of one of the strangest chapters of her life. 'You'll be living there,' added whoever it was.

  'I can't wait. Everyone's so friendly, you feel so wanted, so liked.'

  Once again those around the table looked at one another. It was the banker who had broken the silence. 'You may not always feel that way,' he said quietly. 'There will be times when you're not wanted, not liked, and it will confuse you, certainly hurt you.'

  'That's hard to believe, Grandfather,' said an ebullient young girl Khalehla only vaguely remembered.

  The Californian had briefly looked at his son-in-law, his eyes pained. 'As I think back, it's hard for me to believe it, too. Don't ever forget, young lady, if problems arise or if things become difficult, pick up the phone and I'll be on the next plane.'

  'Oh, Grandfather, I can't imagine doing that.'

  And she hadn't, although there were times when she came close, only pride and what strength she could summon stopping her. Shvartzeh Arviyah!… 'Nigger-Arab!' was her first introduction to one-on-one hatred. Not the blind, irrational hatred of mobs running amok in the streets, brandishing placards and crudely made signs, cursing an unseen enemy far away across distant borders, but of young people like herself, in a pluralistic community of learning, sharing classrooms and cafeterias, where the worth of the individual was paramount, from entrance through constant evaluation to graduation. Each contributed to the whole, but as himself or herself, not as an institutional robot except perhaps on the playing fields, and even there individual performance was recognized, often more so in defeat, touchingly more so. ' Yet for so long she had not been an individual; she had lost herself. That had been eradicated, transferred to an abstract, insidious racial collective called Arab. Dirty Arab, devious Arab, murderous Arab—Arab, Arab, Arab—until she couldn't stand it any longer! She stayed by herself in her room, turning down offers from dormitory acquaintances to visit the collegiate drinking halls; twice had been enough.

  The first should have been enough. She had gone to the ladies' room only to find it blocked by two male students; they were Jewish students, to be sure, but they were also American students.

  'Thought you Arabs didn't drink!' shouted the drunken young man on her left.

  'It's a choice one makes,' she had replied.

  'I'm told you Arviyah piss on the floor of your tents!' cried the other, leering.

  'You were misinformed. We're quite fastidious. May I please go inside—'

  'Not here, Arab. We don't know what you'd leave on the toilet seat and we have a couple of yehudiyah with us. Got the message, Arab?

  The breaking point, however, came at the end of her second term. She had done well in a course taught by a renowned Jewish professor, well enough to have been singled out by the sought-after teacher as the student he deemed to have achieved the most. The prize, an annual event in his class, was a personally inscribed copy of one of his works. Many of her classmates, Jews and non-Jews alike, had come around to congratulate her, but when she left the building three others in st
ocking masks had stopped her on a wooded path back to her dormitory.

  'What did you do?' one asked. 'Threaten to blow his house up?'

  'Maybe knife his kids with a sharp Arab dagger?'

  'Hell, no! She'd call in Arafat!'

  'We're going to teach you a lesson, Shvartzeh Arviyah't'

  'If the book means so much to you, take it!'

  'No, Arab, you take it.'

  She had been raped. 'This is for Munich!' 'This is for the children in the Golan kibbutz!' 'This is for my cousin on the beaches of Ashdod where you bastards killed him!' There had been no sexual gratification for the attackers, only the fury of inflicting punishment on the Arab.

  She had half crawled, half stumbled back towards her dormitory when a very important person came into her life. One Roberta Aldridge, the inestimable Bobbie Aldridge, the iconoclastic daughter of the New England Aldridges.

  'Scum!'' she had screamed into the trees of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  'You must never tell!' pleaded the young Egyptian girl. 'You don't understand!’

  'Don't you worry about that, honey. In Boston we have a phrase that means the same thing from Southie to Beacon Hill. “Them that gives, gets!” And those motherfuckers will get, take my word!'

  'No! They'll come after me—they won't understand, either! I don't hate Jews… my dearest friend since childhood is the daughter of a rabbi, one of my father's closest colleagues. I don't hate Jews. They'll say I do because to them I'm just a dirty Arab, but I don't! My family's not like that. We don't hate.'

  'Hold it, kid. I didn't say anything about Jews, you did. I said motherfuckers, which is an all-inclusive term, so to speak.'

  'It's finished here. I'm finished. I'll leave.'

  'The hell you will! You're seeing my doctor, who'd better know his marbles, and then you move in with me. Christ, I haven't had a cause in almost two years!'

  Praise God and Allah, and all those other deities above. I have a friend. And somehow, within the pain and the hatred of those days, an idea was born that grew into a commitment. An eighteen-year-old girl knew what she was going to do with the rest of her life.