Authors: Robert Ludlum
“Let’s go!” yelled Kendrick. “Hurry up! Get out of here!”
“You clowns hold up a bank or somethin’,” said the driver, shifting into gear.
“You’ll be richer for it if you’ll just hurry,” added Evan.
“I’m hurryin’, I’m hurryin’. I ain’t got no pilot’s license. I gotta stay earthbound, y’know what I mean?”
As one, Kendrick and Swann whipped around to look out the rear window. Back at the corner the odd-looking man with the wild hair and baggy trousers was writing something down on a newspaper, Evan’s hat now on his head. “The name of the company and the cab’s number,” said the Cons Op director quietly. “Wherever we’re going, we’ll have to switch vehicles at least a block behind this one.”
“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, disheveled, bleary-eyed patrons confirmed the status of the establishment. Both squinting in the receding dim wash of light, Kendrick and Swann moved toward 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 gray-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
me
?”
“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 was thick from Georgia and had 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 consonated 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, center 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 Kasimer 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 Kendrick?
”
“
Positively. He was talking to a gray-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 gray 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 Swan, 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 was 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 plowing right into one of those 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 whistle-blower, 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 someday if the girls leave him alone long enough to punch a clock.”
“A playboy?”
“Land sakes,
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.”