Authors: Robert Ludlum
“Yes, but—”
“Let me finish, please,” interrupted Khalehla again. “You’ll understand, and I want us both to have the full picture … You and Swann talk, make your agreement of anonymity, and as you said, you’re off and running to Masqat. The first leg was made to your house with a driver who was not part of OHIO-Four-Zero any more than the guards in the lobby. The driver was simply assigned by a dispatcher and the guards on duty were merely doing their jobs. They’re not in the rarefied circles; nobody up there brings them in on top-secret agendas. But they’re human; they go home and talk to their wives and their friends because something
different
happened in their normally dull jobs. They might also answer questions casually put to them by people they thought were government bureaucrats.”
“And one way or another they all knew who I was—”
“As did a lot of other people in Phoenix and Flagstaff, and one thing was clear to all of them. This important man’s upset; this congressman’s in a hell of a hurry; this big shot’s got a problem. Do you see the trail you left?”
“Yes, I do, but who would
look
for it?”
“I don’t know, and that troubles me more than I can tell you.”
“Troubles
you
? Whoever it was has blown my life apart! Who would do it?”
“Someone who found an opening, a gap that led to the rest of the trail from a remote campsite called Lava Falls to the terrorists in Masqat. Someone who picked up on something that made him want to look further. Perhaps it was the calls your secretary made, or the commotion you caused at the State Department’s security desk, or even something as crazy as hearing the rumor that an unknown American had interceded in Oman—it wasn’t crazy at all; it was printed and squashed—but it could have started somebody thinking. Then the other things fell in place and you were there.”
Evan put his hand over hers. “I have to know who it was, Khalehla, I have to
know
.”
“But we
do
know,” she said softly, correcting herself, her
voice flat as if seeing something she should have seen before. “A blond man with a European accent.”
“
Why
?” Kendrick removed his hand as the word exploded from his throat.
Khalehla looked at him, her gaze compassionate, yet beneath her concern was that cold analytical intelligence in her eyes. “The answer to that has to be your overriding concern, Evan, but I have another problem and it’s why I’m frightened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Whoever the blond man was, whomever he represents, he reached way down deep in our cellars and took out what he should never have been given. I’m stunned, Evan,
petrified
, and those words aren’t strong enough for the way I feel. Not only by what’s been done to you, but by what’s been done to us. We’ve been compromised, penetrated where such penetration should have been impossible. If they—whoever they are—can dig you up out of the deepest, most secure archives we have, they can learn a lot of other things
no one
should have access to. Where people like me work that can cost a great many lives—very unpleasantly.”
Kendrick studied her taut, striking face, seeing the fear in her eyes. “You mean that, don’t you? You
are
frightened.”
“So would you be if you knew the men and women who help us, who trust us, who risk their lives to bring us information. Every day they wonder if something they did or didn’t do will trip them up. A lot of them have committed suicide because they couldn’t stand the strain, others have gone mad and disappeared into the deserts preferring to die at peace with their Allah than go on. But most
do
go on because they believe in us, believe that we’re fair and really want peace. They deal with gun-wielding lunatics at every turn, and as bad as things are, it’s only through them that they’re not worse, with a great deal more blood in the streets … Yes, I’m frightened because many of those people are friends—of mine and my father and mother. The thought of them being betrayed, as you were betrayed—and that’s what you were, Evan,
betrayed
—makes me want to crawl out on the sands and die like those we’ve driven mad. Because someone way down deep is opening our most secret files to others outside. All he or she needed in your case was a name, your name, and people are afraid for their lives in Masqat and Bahrain. How many other names can be fed? How many other secrets learned?”
Evan reached over, not covering her hand but now holding it, gripping it. “If you believe that, why don’t you help me?”
“Help you?”
“I have to know who’s doing this to me, and you have to know who’s over there, or down there, making it possible. I’d say our objectives dovetail, wouldn’t you? I’ve got Dennison in a vise he can’t squirm out of, and I can get you a quiet White House directive to stay over here. Actually, he’d jump at the chance to find a leak; it’s an obsession with him.”
Khalehla frowned. “It doesn’t work that way. Besides, I’d be out of my class. I’m very good where I am, but out of my element, my
Arab
element, I’m not first-rate.”
“Number
one
,” countered Kendrick firmly. “
I
consider you first-rate because you saved my life and I consider my life relatively important. And two, as I mentioned, you have expertise in areas I know nothing about.
Procedures
. ‘Covert avenues of referral’—I learned that one as a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, but I haven’t the vaguest idea what it means. Hell, lady, you even know what the ‘cellars’ are, when I always thought they were the basements of a suburban development, which, thank God, I never had to build. Please, you said in Bahrain that you wanted to help me. Help me
now
! Help yourself.”
Adrienne Rashad replied, her dark eyes searching his coldly. “I
could
help, but there might be times when you’d have to do as I tell you. Could you do that?”
“I’m not wild about jumping off bridges or tall buildings—”
“It would be in the area of what you’d say, and to certain people I’d want you to say it. There might also be times when I wouldn’t be able to explain things to you. Could you accept that?”
“Yes. Because I’ve watched you, listened to you, and I trust you.”
“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand and released it. “I’d have to bring someone with me.”
“Why?”
“First of all, it’s necessary. I’d need a temporary transfer and he can get it for me without giving an explanation—forget the White House, it’s too dangerous, too unstable. Second, he could be helpful in areas way beyond my reach.”
“Who is he?”
“Mitchell Payton. He’s director of Special Projects—that’s a euphemism for ‘Don’t ask.’ ”
“Can you trust him? I mean totally, no doubts at all.”
“No doubts at all. He processed me into the Agency.”
“That’s not exactly a reason.”
“The fact that I’ve called him ‘Uncle Mitch’ since I was six years old in Cairo is, however. He was a young operations officer posing as an instructor at the university. He became a friend of my parents—my father was a professor there and my mother’s an American from California; so was Mitch.”
“Will he give you a transfer?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“He has no choice. I just told you, someone’s giving away a part of our soul that’s not for sale. It’s you this time. Who’s it going to be next?”
Mitchell Jarvis Payton was a trim sixty-three-year-old academic who had been suckered into the Central Intelligence Agency thirty-four years ago because he fit a description someone had given to the personnel procurement division at the time. That someone had disappeared into other endeavors and no job had been listed for Payto—only the requirements, marked
urgent
. However, by the time his prospective employers realized that they had no specific employment for the prospect it was too late. He had been signed up by the Agency’s aggressive recruiters in Los Angeles and sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for indoctrination. It was an embarrassing situation, as Dr. Payton, in a rush of personal and patriotic fervor, had submitted his resignation, effective immediately, to the State Board of Regents. It was an inauspicious beginning for a man whose career would develop so auspiciously.
MJ, as he was called for as long as he could remember, had been a twenty-nine-year-old associate professor with a doctorate in Arabian Studies from the University of California, where he subsequently taught. One bright morning he was visited by two gentlemen from the government who convinced him that his country urgently needed his talents. What the specifics entailed they were not at liberty,
of course
, to disclose, but insofar as they represented the most exciting sphere of government service, they assumed that the position was overseas, in the area of his expertise. The young bachelor had leaped at the opportunity, and
when faced with perplexed superiors in Langley, who wondered what to do with him, he adamantly suggested that he had cut his ties in L.A. because he had at least assumed that he would be sent to Egypt. So he had been sent to Cairo (
We can’t get enough observers in Egypt who understand the goddamned language
). As an undergraduate he had studied American literature, chosen because Payton did not think there was a hell of a lot of it. It was for this reason that an employment agency in Rome, in reality a CIA subsidiary, had placed him at the Cairo University as an Arabic-speaking instructor of American literature.
There he had met the Rashads, a lovely couple who became an important part of his life. At Payton’s first faculty meeting he sat beside the renowned Professor Rashad, and in their pre-conference small talk he learned that Rashad had not only gone to graduate school in California but had married a classmate of MJ’s. A deep friendship blossomed, as did MJ’s reputation within the Central Intelligence Agency. Through talents he had no idea he possessed, and which at times actually frightened him, he discovered that he was an exceptionally convincing liar. They were days of turmoil, of rapidly shifting alliances that had to be monitored, the spreading American penetration kept out of sight. He was able, through his fluent Arabic and his understanding that people could be motivated with sympathetic words backed up with money, to organize various groups of opposing factions who reported on each other’s movements to him. In return, he provided funds for their causes—minor expenditures for the then sacrosanct CIA but major contributions to the zealots’ meager coffers. And through his efforts in Cairo, Washington averted a number of potentially explosive embarrassments. So, typical of the old-school-tie network in D.C.’s intelligence community, if a good fellow did such a fine job where he was, forget the convergence of specific factors that made him good where he was and bring him back to Washington to see what he could do there. M.J. Payton was the exception in a long line of failures. He succeeded James Jesus Angleton, the Gray Fox of clandestine operations, as the director of Special Projects. And he never forgot what his friend Rashad told him when he reached his ascendancy.
“You never could have made it, MJ, if you had married. You have the self-confidence of never having been manipulated.”
Perhaps.
Yet a test of manipulation had come full force to him when
the headstrong daughter of his dear friends had arrived in Washington, as adamant as he had ever seen her. A terrible thing had happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and she was determined to devote her life—at least a part of her life—to lessening the fires of hatred and violence that were ripping her Mediterranean world apart. She never told “Uncle Mitch” what had happened to her—she did not have to, really—but she would not take no for an answer. She was qualified; she was as fluent in English and French as she was in Arabic, and she was currently learning both Yiddish and Hebrew. He had suggested the Peace Corps and she had slammed her purse down on the floor in front of his desk.
“
No!
I’m not a child, Uncle Mitch, and I don’t have those kinds of benevolent impulses. I’m concerned only with where I come from, where I was born. If you won’t use me, I’ll find others who will!”
“They could be the wrong others, Adrienne.”
“Then stop me. Hire me!”
“I’ll have to talk to your parents—”
“You
can’t
! He’s retired—
they’re
retired, and they live up north in Baltim-on-the-Sea. They’d only worry about me, and in their worrying cause problems. Find me translating jobs, or a floating consultant’s position with exporters—certainly you can do that! Good
God
, Uncle Mitch, you were a small-time instructor at the university and
we
never said anything!”
“You didn’t know, my dear—”
“The hell I didn’t! The whispers around the house when a
friend
of Uncle Mitch’s was coming and how I had to stay in my room, and then one night when suddenly three men came, all wearing
guns
on their belts, which I’d never
seen
—”
“Those were emergencies. Your father understood.”
“Then you understand me now, Uncle Mitch. I have to do this!”
“All
right
,” consented M.J. Payton. “But you understand
me
, young lady. You’ll be put through a concentrated course in Fairfax, Virginia, in a compound that’s not on any map. If you fail, I can’t help you.”
“Agreed,” had said Adrienne Khalehla Rashad, smiling. “Do you want to bet?”
“Not with you, you young tigress. Come on, let’s go to lunch. You don’t drink, do you?”
“Not really.”
“I do and I will, but I won’t bet you.”
And it was good for Payton’s wallet that he did not bet. Candidate No. 1344 finished the excruciating ten-week course in Fairfax, Virginia, at the head of her class. Women’s liberation be damned, she was better than twenty-six men. But then, her “Uncle Mitch” thought, she had a motive the others did not have: one half of her was Arab.
All that was more than nine years ago. But now on this Friday afternoon nearly ten years later, Mitchell Jarvis Payton was appalled! Field agent Adrienne Rashad, currently on duty in the West Mediterranean Sector, Cairo Post, had just called him from a pay telephone at the Hilton Hotel here in Washington! What in the name of God was she doing
here
? On whose authority was she removed from her post? All officers attached to Special Projects, especially
this
officer, had to have their orders cleared through
him
. It was incredible! And the fact that she would not come out to Langley but, instead, insisted on meeting him at an out-of-the-way restaurant in Arlington did not calm MJ’s nerves. Especially after she said to him, “It’s absolutely vital that I don’t run into anyone I know, or who might know me, Uncle Mitch.” Beyond the ominous tone of her statement, she had not called him Uncle Mitch in years, not since she was in college. His unrelated “niece” was a troubled woman.