'Why? Not the switch but the block away?'
'So our driver doesn't see which cab we get into.'
'You even sound like you know what you're doing.'
'I hope you do,' replied Swann breathlessly, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his sweat-drenched face.
Twenty-eight minutes and a second taxi later, the congressman and the man from the Department of State walked rapidly down the street in a run-down section of Washington. They looked up at a red neon sign with three letters missing. It was a seedy bar that belonged in its environs. They nodded to each other and walked inside, somewhat startled by the intensely dark interior, if only in contrast to the bright October day out in the street. The single glaring, blaring source of light was a television set bolted into the wall above the shabby distressed bar. Several hunched-over, dishevelled, bleary-eyed patrons confirmed the status of the establishment. Both squinting in the receding dim wash of light, Kendrick and Swann moved towards the darker regions to the right of the bar; they found a frayed booth and slid in opposite each other.
'You really insist we talk?' asked the grey-haired Swann, breathing deeply, his face flushed and still perspiring.
'I insist to the point of making you the newest candidate for the morgue.'
'Watch it, I'm a black belt.'
'In what?'
Swann frowned. 'I was never quite sure, but it always works in the movies when they show us doing our thing. I need a drink.'
'You signal a waiter,' said Kendrick. 'I'll stay in the shadows.'
'Shadows?' questioned Swann, raising his hand cautiously for a heavy black waitress with flaming red hair. 'Where's any light in here?'
'When did you last do three push-ups in succession, Mr. Karate Kid?'
'Sometime in the sixties. Early, I think.'
'That's when they replaced the light bulbs in this place… Now about me. How the hell could you, you liar?'
'How the hell could you think I would?' cried the man from State, suddenly silent as the grotesque waitress stood by the table, arms akimbo. 'What'll you have?' he asked Evan.
'Nothing.'
'That's not nice here. Or healthy, I suspect. Two ryes, double, thank you. Canadian, if you have it.'
'Forget it,' said the waitress.
'Forgotten,' agreed Swann as the waitress left, his eyes again on Kendrick. 'You're funny, Mr. Congressman, I mean really hilarious. Consular Operations wants my head! The Secretary of State has put out a directive that makes it clear he doesn't know who I am, that vacillating, academic fleabag! And the Israelis are screaming because they think their precious Mossad may be compromised by anyone digging, and the Arabs on our payroll are bitching because they're not getting any credit! And at three-thirty this afternoon the President—the goddamned President—is chewing me out for “dereliction of duty”. Let me tell you, he intoned that phrase just like he knew what the hell he was talking about, which meant I knew there were at least two other people on the line… You're running? I'm running! Damn near thirty years in this dumb business—’
'That's what I called it,' interrupted Evan quickly, quietly. 'Sorry.'
'You should be,' said Swann without missing a beat. 'Because who's going to do this shit except us bastards dumber than the system? You need us, Charlie, and don't you forget it. The problem is we don't have much to show for it. I mean I don't have to rush home to make sure the pool in my backyard has been treated for algae because of the heat… Mainly because I don't have a pool, and my wife got the house in the divorce settlement because she was sick and tired of my going out for a loaf of bread and coming back three months later with the dirt of Afghanistan still in my ears! Oh, no, Mr. Undercover Congressman, I didn't blow the whistle on you. Instead, I did my best to stop the blowing. I haven't got much left, but I want to stay clean, and get out with what I can.'
'You tried to stop the blowing? The whistle?'
'Low key, very offhand, very professional. I even showed him a copy of the memo I sent upstairs rejecting you.'
'Him?'
Swann looked forlornly at Kendrick as the waitress brought their drinks and stood there, tapping the tabletop, while the man from State reached into his pocket, glanced at the bill, and paid it. The woman shrugged at the tip and walked away.
'Him?' repeated Evan.
'Go ahead,' said Swann, his voice flat, drinking a large portion of his whisky. 'Drive another nail in, what difference does it make? There's not that much blood left.'
'I assume that means you don't know who he is. Who him is.'
'Oh, I've got a name and a position and even a first-rate recommendation.'
'Well?'
'He doesn't exist.'
'What?'
'You heard me.'
'He doesn't exist?' pressed a frustrated Kendrick.
'Well, one of them does, but not the man who came to see me.' Swann finished his first drink.
'I don't believe this—’
'Neither did Ivy, that's my secretary. Ivy the terrible.'
'What are you talking about?' asked Kendrick plaintively.
'Ivy got a call from Senator Allison's office, from a guy she used to date a couple of years ago. He's one of the Senator's top aides now. He asked her to set up an appointment for a staffer doing some confidential work for Allison, so she did. Well, he turns out to be a blond spook with an accent I placed somewhere in middle Europe, but he's for real, he had you down cold. If you've got a scar that only your mother knows about, believe me, he has a close-up of it.'
'That's crazy,' broke in Evan softly. 'I wonder why?'
'So did I. I mean the questions he asked were loaded with PD--'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Prior data on you. He was giving almost as much as he could get from me. He was so pro I was ready to offer him a Euro-job on the spot.'
'But why we?'
'As I said, I wondered, too. So I asked Ivy to check with Allison's office. To begin with, why would a laid-back senator have that kind of SS—’
'What?'
'Not what you think. “Super-spook”. Come to think of it, I suppose there's a connection.'
'Will you please stick to the point!'
'Sure,' said Swann, drinking his second whisky. 'Ivy calls her old boyfriend, and he doesn't know what she's talking about. He never made any call to her and he never heard of any staffer named—whatever his name was.'
'But she had to know who she was talking to, for God's sake! His voice—the small talk, what they said to each other.'
'Her old beau had a strong Southern accent and was suffering from laryngitis when he phoned her, that's what Ivy claimed. But the cracker who really called her knew the places they went—even down to a couple of motels in Maryland that Ivy would rather not have her husband know about.'
'Christ, it's an operation.' Kendrick reached over and took Swann's drink. 'Why?'
'Why did you just take my whisky? I don't have a swimming pool, remember? Or even a house.'
Suddenly the blaring television set above the bar burst forth with the sharply consonanted name of 'Kendrick!'
Both men snapped their heads over to the source, their eyes wide, unbelieving.
'Newsbreak! The story of the hour, perhaps the decade!’ yelled a TV journalist among a crowd of leering faces peering into the camera. 'For the last twelve hours all Washington has been trying to find Congressman Evan Kendrick of Colorado, the hero of Oman, but to no avail. The worst fears, of course, centre around the possibility of Arab retaliation. We're told the government has directed the police, the hospitals and the morgues to be on the alert. Yet only minutes ago he was seen on this very street corner, specifically identified by one Kasimir Bola—Bola… slawski. Where are you from, sir?'
'Jersey City,' replied the wild-eyed man with Kendrick's hat on his head, 'but my roots are in Warsaw! God's holy Warsaw!'
'You were born in Poland, then.'
'Not exactly. In Newark.'
'But you saw Congressman K
endrick?'
'Positively. He was talking to a grey-haired man a couple blocks back outside a bus. Then when I shouted “Commando Kendrick, it's him,” they started running! I know! I got television sets in every room, including the toilet. I never miss anything!'
'When you say a couple of blocks back, sir, you're actually referring to a corner two and a half streets from the Department of State, are you not?'
'You betcha!'
'We're certain,' added the sincerely confidential newscaster looking into the camera, 'that the authorities are checking State to see if any such person as our witness has described could be a part of this extraordinary rendezvous.'
'I chased them!' yelled the witness in baggy pants, removing Evan's hat. 'I got his hat! See, it's the commando's own hat!'
'But what did you hear, Mr. Bolaslawski? Back by the bus?'
'I tell you, things are not always what they seem! You can't be too careful. Before they ran away, the man with grey hair gave Commando Kendrick an order. I think he had a Russian accent, maybe Jewish! The Commies and the Jews—you can't trust 'em, you know what I mean? They never seen the inside of a church! They don't know what the Holy Mass is—'
The television channel abruptly switched to a commercial extolling the virtues of an underarm deodorant.
'I surrender,' said Swann, forcibly taking his drink back from Evan and swallowing it whole. 'Now I'm a mole. A Russian Jew from the KGB who doesn't know what Mass is. Anything else you want to do for me?'
'No, because I believe you. But you can do something for me, and it's in both our interests. I've got to find out who's doing this to me, who's done what you're being blamed for, and why.'
'And if you do find out,' interrupted Swann, leaning forward, 'you'll tell me? That's in my interest, my only interest right now. I've got to get off this hook and put someone else on it.'
'You'll be the first to know.'
'What do you want?'
'A list of everyone who knew I went to Masqat.'
'That's not a list, it's a tight little circle.' Swann shook his head, not so much to be negative as to explain. 'There wouldn't have been that if you hadn't said you might need us if it came down to something you couldn't handle. I made it clear. We couldn't afford to acknowledge you because of the hostages.'
'How tight is the circle?'
'Everything was verbal, you understand.'
'Understood. How tight?'
'Nonoperational was restricted to that unmitigated prick, Herbert Dennison, the ball-breaking White House chief of staff, then to the secretaries of State and Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I was the liaison to all four, and you can rule them out. They all had too much to lose and nothing to gain by your surfacing.' Swann leaned back in the booth, frowning. 'The operational section was on a strict need-to-know basis. There was Lester Crawford at Langley. Les is the CIA's analyst for covert activities in the area, and at the end his station chief in Bahrain—something-or-other Grayson—James Grayson, that's it. He was kicking up a fuss about letting you and Weingrass out of his area, thinking the Company had gone nuts and was ploughing right into one oft hose caught-in-the-act situations. Caught-In-the-Act, CIA, get it?'
'I'd rather not.'
'Then there were four or five on-scene Arabs, the best we and the Company have, each of whom studied your photograph but weren't given your identity. They couldn't tell what they didn't know. The last two did know who you were, one was on the scene, the other here at OHIO-Four-Zero running the computers.'
'The computers?' asked Kendrick. 'Printouts?'
'You were programmed only on his; you were zapped from the central unit. His name's Gerald Bryce and if he's the whistleblower, I'll turn myself in to the FBI as Mr. Bolaslawski's Jewish mole for the Soviets. He's bright and quick and a whiz with the equipment, no one better. He'll run Cons Op some day if the girls leave him alone long enough to punch a clock.'
'A playboy?'
'Landsakes, Reverend, shall we go to vespers? The kid's twenty-six and better looking than he has a right to be. He's also unmarried, and one hell of a cocksman—others talk about it; he never does. I think that's why I like him. There aren't too many gentlemen left in this world.'
'I like him already. Who was the last person, the one on the scene who knew me?'
Frank Swann leaned forward, fingering his empty glass, staring at it before raising his eyes to Kendrick. 'I thought you might have figured that out for yourself.'
'What? Why?'
'Adrienne Rashad.'
'Doesn't mean a thing."
'She used a cover—’
'Adrienne…? A woman? Swann nodded. Evan frowned, then suddenly opened his eyes wide, his brows arched. 'Khalehla?' he whispered. The man from the State Department nodded again. 'She was one of you?'
'Well, not one of mine, but one of us.'
'Christ, she got me out of the airport in Bahrain! That big son of a bitch MacDonald slammed me into the concourse traffic—I was damn near killed and didn't know where I was. She got me out of there—how the hell she did it, I don't know!'
'I do,' said Swann. 'She threatened to blow the heads off a few Bahrainian police unless they passed her code name up the line and got clearance to take you out. She not only got clearance but also a car from the royal garage.'
'You say she was one of us, but not one of you. What does that mean?'
'She's Agency but she's also special, a real untouchable. She has contacts all over the Gulfs and the Mediterranean; the CIA doesn't allow anyone to mess with her.'
'Without her my cover might have been blown at the airport.'
'Without her you would have been a target for every terrorist walking around Bahrain, including the Mahdi's soldiers.'
Kendrick was briefly silent, his eyes wandering, his lips parted, a memory. 'Did she tell you where she hid me?'
'She refused.'
'She could do that?'
'I told you, she's special.'
'I see,' said Evan softly.
'I think I do, too,' said Swann.
'What do you mean by that?'
'Nothing. She got you out of the airport and roughly six hours later made contact.'
'Is that unusual?'
'Under the circumstances, you could say it was extraordinary. Her job was to keep you under surveillance and to immediately report any drastic moves on your part directly to Crawford at Langley, who was to contact me for instructions. She didn't do that, and in her official debriefing, she omitted any reference to those six hours.'
'She had to protect the place where we were hiding.'
'Of course. It had to be royal, and nobody screws around with the Emir or his family.'
'Of course.' Kendrick again was silent and again he looked into the dark regions of the decrepit bar. 'She was a nice person,' he said slowly, hesitantly. 'We talked. She understood so many things. I admired her.'
'Hey, come on, Congressman.' Swann leaned over his empty glass. 'You think it's the first time?'
'What?'
'Two people in a hairy situation, a man and a woman, neither one knowing whether he or she'll see another day or another week. So they get together, it's natural. So what?'
'That's offensive as hell, Frank. She meant something to me.'
'All right, I'll be blunt. I don't think you meant anything to her. She's a professional who's gone through a few black wars in her AOO.'
'Her what? Will you please speak English, or Arabic, if you like, but something that makes sense.'
'Area of Operations—'
'They used that in the newspapers.'
'Not my fault. If it was up to me, I'd neutralize every bastard who wrote those articles.'
'Please don't tell me what “neutralize” means.'
'I won't. I'm only telling you that in the field we all slip now and then when we're exhausted, or just plain scared. We take a few hours of secure pleasure and write it off as a long overdue bonus. Would you believe we even have lectures on th
e subject for people we send out?'
'I believe it now. To be honest with you—the circumstances crossed my mind at the time.'
'Good. Write her off. She's strictly Mediterranean and hasn't anything to do with the local scene. For starters, you'd probably have to fly to North Africa to find her.'
'So all I've got is a man named Crawford in Langley and a station chief in Bahrain."
'No. You've got a blond man with a Middle-European accent operating here in Washington. Operating very deep. He got information somewhere and not from me, not from OHIO-Four-Zero. Find him.'
Swarm gave Evan the standard private numbers at both his office and his apartment and rushed out of the dark, seedy bar as if he needed air. Kendrick ordered a rye from the heavy black waitress with the flaming red hair and asked her where the pay telephone was, if it existed. She told him.
'If you slam it twice on the lower left corner, you'll get your quarter back,' offered the woman.
'If I do, I'll give it to you, okay?' said Evan.
'Give it to your friend,' replied the woman. 'Crumbs in suits never leave no tips, white or black, makes no difference.'
Kendrick got up from the booth and walked cautiously to the dark wall and the phone. It was time to call his office. He could not put any more pressure on Mrs. Ann Mulcahy O'Reilly. Squinting, he inserted the coin and dialled.
'Congressman Kendrick's—'
'It's me, Annie,' broke in Evan.
'My God, where are you? It's after five and this place is still a madhouse!'
'That's why I'm not there.'
'Before I forget!' cried Mrs. Mulcahy breathlessly, 'Manny called a while ago and was very emphatic but not loud—which I think means he's as serious as he can be.'
'What did he say?'
'That you're not to reach him on the Colorado line.'
'What?'
'He told me to say “allcott massghoul”, whatever the hell that is.'
'It's very clear, Annie.' Weingrass had said alkhatt mash-ghool, Arabic for 'the line is engaged', a simple euphemism for tampered with, or tapped. If Manny was right, a trace could be lasered out and the origin of any incoming call identified in a matter of moments. 'I won't make any calls to Colorado,' added Evan.
The Icarus Agenda Page 37