“There’s a fruit stand about a mile down the road. I know the owner and they have a phone.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“Take me to dinner when you get out of the hospital.”
The perplexed owner of the fruit store handed Varak the phone as the naval officer watched, concerned for his damaged passenger. Milos dialed the Westlake Hotel. “Room Fifty-one, if you please?”
“Hello, hello?” cried Khalehla from out of a deep sleep.
“Do you have an answer for me?”
“Milos?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not terribly well, Miss Rashad. Do you have an answer?”
“You’re hurt!”
“Your answer!”
“Green light. Payton will back off. If Evan can get the nomination, it’s his. The race is on.”
“He’s needed more than you’ll ever know.”
“I don’t know that he’ll agree.”
“He has to! Keep your line free. I’ll call you right back.”
“You are hurt!”
The Czech depressed the bar on the phone and immediately redialed.
“Yes?”
“Sound Man?”
“Prague?”
“How are things progressing?”
“We’ll be done in a couple of hours. The typist’s got the earphones on and is pounding away.… She’s rough on all-night overtime.”
“Whatever the cost, it’s … covered.”
“What’s wrong with you? I can barely hear you.”
“A slight cold.… You’ll find ten thousand in your studio mailbox.”
“Yes, come on, I’m not a thief.”
“I roll high, remember?”
“You really don’t sound right, Prague.”
“In the morning, take everything to the Westlake, Room Fifty-one. The name of the woman is Rashad. Give it only to her.”
“Rashad. Room Fifty-one. I’ve got it.”
“Thank you.”
“Listen, if you’re in trouble, let me know about it, okay? I mean if there’s anything I can do—”
“Your car’s at the airport, somewhere in Section C,” said the Czech, hanging up. He lifted the phone for the last time and dialed again. “Room Fifty-one,” he repeated.
“Hello?”
“You will receive … everything in the morning.”
“Where are you? Let me send help!”
“In the … morning. Get it to Mr. B!”
“Goddamn you, Milos, where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter.… Reach Kendrick. He may know.”
“Know what?”
“Photographs.… The Vanvlanderen woman … Lausanne, the Leman Marina. The Beau-Rivage—the gardens. Then Amsterdam, the Rozengracht. In the hotel … her study. Tell him! The man is a Saudi and things happened to him … millions, millions!” Milos could hardly talk; he had so little breath. Go on … go on! “Escape … millions!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He may be the key! Don’t let anyone remove the photographs.… Reach Kendrick. He may remember!” The Czech lost control of his movements; he swung the telephone back onto the counter missing the cradle, then fell to the ground in front of the fruit stand on a backcountry road beyond the airport in San Diego. Milos Varak was dead.
38
The morning’s headlines and related articles obscured all other news. The Secretary of State and his entire delegation had been brutally killed in a hotel on Cyprus. The Sixth Fleet was heading toward the island, all weapons and aircraft at the ready. The nation was transfixed, furious, and not a little frightened. The horror of some uncontrollable force of evil seemed to loom on the horizon, edging the country toward the brink of wholesale confrontation, provoking the government to respond with equal horror and brutality. But in a stroke of rare intuitive geopolitical brillance, President Langford Jennings controlled the storm. He reached Moscow, and the result of those communications had brought forth dual condemnations from the two superpowers. The monstrous event on Cyprus was labeled an isolated act of terrorism that enraged the entire world. Words of praise and sorrow for a great man came from all the capitals of the globe, allies and adversaries alike.
And on pages 2, 7 and 45, respectively, in the San Diego Union, and pages 4, 50 and 51 in the Los Angeles Times, were the following far less important wire service reports.
San Diego, Dec. 22—Mrs. Ardis Vanvlanderen, chief of staff for Vice President Orson Bollinger, whose husband, Andrew Vanvlanderen, died yesterday of a cerebral hemorrhage, took her own life early this morning in apparent grief. Her body washed up on the beach in Coronado, death attributed to drowning. On his way to the airport, her attorney, Mr. Crayton Grinell, of La Jolla, had dropped her off at the funeral home for a last viewing of her husband.
According to sources at the home, the widow was under severe strain and barely coherent. Although a limousine waited for her, she slipped out a side door and apparently took a taxi to the Coronado beach.…
Mexico City, Dec. 22—Eric Sundstrom, one of America’s leading scientists and creators of highly complex space technology, died of a cerebral hemorrhage while on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Few details are available at this time. A full report of his life and work will appear in tomorrow’s editions.
San Diego, Dec. 22—An unidentified man without papers, but carrying a gun, died of gunshot wounds on a back road south of the International Airport. Lt. Commander John Demartin, a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, picked him up, telling the police the man claimed to have been in an automobile accident. Due to the proximity of the private field adjacent to the airport, authorities suspect that the death may have been drug-oriented.…
Evan flew to San Diego on the first morning flight from Denver. He had insisted on seeing Manny at 6:00 A.M. and would not be denied. “You’re going to be fine,” he had lied. “And you’re a horseshit artist,” Weingrass had shot back. “Where are you going?” “… Khalehla. San Diego. She needs me.” “… Then get the hell out of here! I don’t want to see your ugly face another second. Go to her, help her. Get those bastards!”
The taxi from the airport to the hotel in the early traffic seemed interminable, the situation hardly relieved by the driver, who recognized him and kept up a flow of inane chatter laced with invective directed at all Arabs and all things Arabic.
“Every fuckin’ one of ’em should be taken out and shot, right?”
“Women and children, too, of course.”
“Right! The brats grow up and the broads make more brats!”
“That’s quite a solution. You might even call it final.”
“It’s the only way, right?”
“Wrong. When you consider the numbers and the price of ammunition, the cost would be too high. Taxes would go up.”
“No kiddin’? Shit, I pay enough. There’s gotta be another way.”
“I’m sure you’ll come up with one.… Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have some reading to do.” Kendrick returned to his copy of the Denver Post and the terrible news from Cyprus. And, either miffed or feeling he had been put down, the driver turned on the radio. Again, as in the newspapers, the coverage was almost exclusively about the abominable ac of terrorism in the Mediterranean, on-site recordings and repeated interviews from world figures in various translated languages condemning the barbaric act. And as if death had to follow death, a stunned Evan heard the newscaster’s words:
“Here in San Diego there was another tragedy. Mrs. Ardis Vanvlanderen, Vice President Bollinger’s chief of staff, was found dead early this morning when her body washed up on the beach in Coronado, an apparent suicide.…”
Kendrick shot forward on the seat.… Ardis? Ardis Vanvlanderen …? Ardis Montreaux! The Bahamas … a dissolute minor player from Off Shore Investments of years ago said Ardis Montreaux had married a wealthy Californian! Good Christ! That was why Khalehla had flown to San Diego. Mitchell Payton had f
ound the “money whore”—Bollinger’s chief of staff! The announcer went on to speculate on the new widow’s grief, a speculation Kendrick thought suspect.
He walked across the hotel lobby and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Studying the numbered arrows, he started down the hall toward Khalehla’s room both anxious and depressed—anxious to see her and hold her, depressed about Manny, about the wholesale slaughter on Cyprus, about so much, but mainly Emmanuel Weingrass, scheduled victim of murder. He reached the door and rapped four times, hearing the racing footsteps inside before he removed his hand. The door swung back and she was in his arms.
“My God, I love you,” he whispered into her dark hair, the words rushed. “And everything’s so rotten, so goddamned rotten!”
“Quickly. Inside.” Khalehla closed the door and returned to him, holding his face in her hands. “Manny?”
“He’s got somewhere between three and six months to live,” replied Evan, his voice flat. “He’s dying of a virus he couldn’t possibly have gotten except through injection.”
“The nonexistent Dr. Lyons,” said Rashad, making a statement.
“I’ll find him if it takes me twenty years.”
“You’ll have all the help Washington can give you.”
“The news is rotten everywhere. Cyprus, the best man in the administration blown to bits—”
“It’s tied in here, Evan. Here in San Diego.”
“What?”
Khalehla backed away and took his hand, leading him across the room to where there were two chairs, a small round table between them. “Sit down, darling. I’ve got a lot to tell you that I couldn’t tell you before. Then there’s something you have to do … it’s why I asked you to fly out here.”
“I think I know one of the things you’re going to tell me,” said Kendrick, sitting down. “Ardis Montreaux, the widow Vanvlanderen. I heard it on the radio; they say she committed suicide.”
“She did that when she married her late husband.”
“You came to see her, didn’t you.”
“Yes.” Rashad nodded as she sat down at the table. “You’ll hear and read everything. There are tapes and transcripts of all of it; they were delivered to me an hour ago.”
“What about Cyprus?”
“The order came from here. A man named Grinell.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Few people have.… Evan, it’s worse than anything we could imagine.”
“You learned that from Ardis?… Yes, she was Ardis and I was Evan.”
“I know that. No, not from her; with her we only glimpsed the outline and that was frightening enough. Our main source is a man who was killed last night out by the airport.”
“For God’s sake, who?”
“The blond European, darling.”
“What?” Kendrick fell back in the seat, his face flushed.
“He taped not only my interview but a subsequent conversation that blew the lid off the top. Except for Grinell, we don’t have names, but we can piece together a picture, as in a puzzle with blurred figures, and it’s terrifying.”
“A government within the government,” said Evan quietly. “Those were Manny’s words. ‘The servants running the master’s house.’ ”
“As usual, Manny’s right.”
Kendrick got up from the chair and walked to a window, leaning against the sill and staring outside. “The blond man, who was he?”
“We never learned, but whoever he was he died delivering us the information.”
“The Oman file. How did he get it?”
“He wouldn’t tell me other than to say that his source was a good person who supported you for higher political office.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything!” shouted Evan, whipping around from the window. “There has to be more!”
“There isn’t.”
“Did he have any idea what they’ve done? The lives that were lost, the butchering!”
“He said he’d grieve over the errors of judgment more than anyone else. He didn’t know that his grief would only last a couple of hours.”
“Goddamnit!” roared Kendrick at the walls of the room. “What about this Grinell? Have they got him?”
“He’s disappeared. His plane left San Diego for Tucson. No one knew about it until morning. It was on the ground for about an hour, then took off without filing a flight plan—that’s how we found out.”
“Planes can collide that way.”
“Not if they patch into Mexican air traffic across the border. MJ has an idea that Grinell’s security may have spotted the federal vehicles waiting for him near his house in La Jolla.”
Evan returned to the table and sat down, a man exhausted, beaten. “Where do we go from here?”
“Downstairs to the Vanvlanderen suite. Our European wanted you to look at something—photographs, actually. I don’t know why, but he said the man was a Saudi and you might remember. Something about millions and an escape. We’ve secured the apartment. No one goes in or out under the national security statutes insofar as she was Bollinger’s chief of staff and there could be confidential papers.”
“All right, let’s go.”
They took the elevator down to the third floor and approached the doors of the Vanvlanderen apartment. The two armed, uniformed police officers in front nodded as the man on the left turned. He inserted the key and opened the door.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Congressman,” said the officer on the right, impetuously extending his hand.
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Kendrick, shaking the hand and going inside.
“How does it feel being such a celebrity?” asked Khalehla, closing the door.
“Neither comfortable nor gratifying,” replied Evan as they walked across the marble foyer and down into the sunken living room. “Where are the photographs?”
“He wasn’t specific—only that they were in her office, and you should find ones taken in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in Amsterdam.”
“Over there,” said Kendrick, seeing a lighted desk lamp in a room to the left. “Come on.”
They walked across the carpeted room into the study. Evan adjusted his eyes to the shadowed interior, then crossed to another lamp across the room and turned it on. The crisscrossing arrangement of photographs sprang into light.
“Good Lord, how do we start?” said Khalehla.
“Slowly and carefully,” answered Kendrick, quickly dismissing the panel on the left and concentrating on the right wall. “This is Europe,” he said, his eyes roaming. “That’s Lausanne,” he added, focusing on two people in an enlarged snapshot with the Leman Marina in the background. “It’s Ardis and … no, it couldn’t be.”
“What couldn’t be?”
“Wait a minute.” Evan followed the pattern to the lower right, concentrating on another framed enlargement, the faces clearer. “Lausanne, again. This is in the gardens of the Beau-Rivage.… Is it possible?”
“Is what?… He mentioned the Beau-Rivage, the blond man, I mean. Also Amsterdam, the rose something-or-other.”
“The Rozengracht. Here it is.” Kendrick pointed at a photograph in which the two subjects’ faces were even sharper, more distinct. “My God, it’s him!”
“Who?”
“Abdel Hamendi. I knew him years ago in Riyadh. He was a minister for the Saudis until the family caught him working on his own, making millions with false leases and ersatz contracts. He was to be publicly executed, but he got out of the country.… They say he built a fortress for himself somewhere in the Alps near Divonne and went into brokering a new business. Armaments. I was told he’s become the most powerful arms merchant in the world with the lowest profile.”
“Ardis Vanvlanderen mentioned Divonne on the second tape. It was a quick reference, but now it makes sense.”
Evan stepped back and looked at Khalehla. “Our dead European’s instincts were right. He didn’t remember the details, but he saw the blood on Hamendi as surely as if it wer
e coming out of that photograph.… A government within the government dealing with a global brokerage house for all the illicit weapons in the world.” Kendrick suddenly frowned, his expression startled. “Is it all tied in with Bollinger?”
“The European said there was no way to tell. What does he know or what doesn’t he know? There’s only one thing that’s certain. He’s the rallying point for the heaviest political contributors in the country.”
“My God, they’re entrenched—”
“There’s something else you should know. Ardis Vanvlanderen’s husband was the one who made contact with the terrorists. He arranged for the attacks on your homes.”
“Jesus!” roared Evan. “Why?”
“You,” answered Khalehla softly. “You were the target; he wanted you killed. He acted alone—it’s why his wife was murdered when the others found out; to cut off any ties to them—but they’re all afraid of you. Starting next week there’s going to begin a nationwide campaign to put you on the ticket replacing Bollinger as the new Vice President.”
“The blond European’s people?”
“Yes. And the men around Bollinger can’t tolerate that. They think you’ll squeeze them out, reduce their influence to nothing.”
“I’m going to do more than that,” said Evan. “I’m not going to squeeze them out, I’m going to rip them out.… Cyprus, Fairfax, Mesa Verde—bastards! Who are they? Is there a list?”
“We can compile one with a great many names, but we don’t know who’s involved and who isn’t.”
“Let’s find out.”
“How?”
“I’m going inside Bollinger’s camp. They’re going to see another Congressman Kendrick—one who can be bought off a national ticket.”
Mitchell Jarvis Payton stared out the window from his desk in Langley, Virginia. There was so much to think about he could not think about Christmas, which was a minor blessing. He had no regrets about the life he had chosen, but Christmas was a bit trying. He had two married sisters in the Midwest and assorted nieces and nephews to whom he had sent the usual presents appropriately purchased by his secretary of many years, but he had no desire to join them for the holidays. There was simply nothing much to talk about; he had been too long on the other side of the world for conversations about a lumberyard and an insurance firm, and, of course, he could say nothing about his own work. Too, the children, most of them grown, were an unremarkable lot, not a scholar among them, and adamant in their collective pursuit of parental decrees for the good, stolid life of financial security. It was all better left alone. It was probably why he gravitated to his fictional niece, Adrienne Rashad—he had better get used to calling her Khalehla, he reflected. She was part of his world, hardly by any choice of his, but part of it, and outstanding. Payton wished for a moment that they were all back in Cairo when the Rashads insisted he come over for their yearly Christmas dinners, complete with a brilliantly decorated tree and recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing carols.
The Icarus Agenda Page 68