Authors: Robert Ludlum
“Yosef …
Yosef
,” cried the boy, rolling over in the underbrush by the edge of the road. “Where are you? I’m hit, I’m
hit
!”
The child did not know, thought Weingrass. From where the wounded boy lay writhing he could not see, and the wind from the mountains further muffled the muted gunshot. The maniacal young terrorist did not realize that his comrade Yosef was dead, that he alone had survived. And his survival was uppermost in Manny’s mind; there could be no new martyr for a holy cause brought on by self-inflicted death. Not here, not now; there were facts to be learned, facts that could save the life of Evan Kendrick.
Especially
now!
Weingrass shoved his bleeding fingers into his overcoat pocket and dropped the silenced weapon on the ground. Summoning what strength he had left, he pushed himself away from the tree and made his way as quickly as he could south through the woods, stumbling again and again, his frail arms pushing the branches from his face and body. He veered toward the road; he reached it and saw the killer’s car in the darkening distance. He had gone far enough. He turned and started back on the mercifully smooth surface—
faster … faster! Move your goddamned spindly legs! That boy must not move, he must not crawl, he must not see!
Manny felt the blood rushing to his head, the pounding in his rib cage deafening.
There
was the young Arab! He
had
moved—was moving, crawling into the woods. In moments he would see his dead companion! It could not happen!
“
Aman!
” shouted Weingrass breathlessly, remembering the name used by the half-Jew, Yosef, as if it were his own. “
Ayn ent? Kaif el-ahwal?
” he continued in Arabic, urgently asking the boy where he was and how he was. “
Itkallem!
” he roared against the wind, ordering the young terrorist to respond.
“Here, in here!” yelled the teenage Arab in his own language. “I’ve been shot! In the hip. I can’t find Yosef!” The young man rolled over on his back to greet an expected comrade. “
Who are you?
” he screamed, struggling to reach under his field jacket for a gun as Manny approached. “I don’t
know
you!”
Weingrass smashed his foot against the boy’s elbow, and as the empty hand whipped out from under the cloth he stepped on it, pinning it to the young Arab’s chest. “No more of that, you fool of a child!” said Manny, his Arabic that of a Saudi officer reprimanding a lowly recruit. “We haven’t covered you
to have you cause even
more
trouble. Of course you were shot, and I trust you realize that you were merely wounded, not killed, which could have been easily managed!”
“What are you
saying
?”
“What were you
doing
?” shouted Manny in reply. “Running in the road, raising your voice, crawling around our objective like a thief in the night! Yosef was right, you should be shipped back to the Baaka.”
“
Yosef?
… Where
is
Yosef?”
“Up in the house with the others. Come, I’ll help you. Join them.” Afraid of falling over, Weingrass held on to the branch of a sapling as the terrorist pulled himself up, gripping Manny’s hand. “First, give me your weapon!”
“
What?
”
“They think you’re stupid enough. They don’t want you armed.”
“I don’t
understand
—”
“You don’t have to.” Weingrass slapped the bewildered young fanatic across the face and simultaneously shoved his right hand between the buttoned fold of the boy’s jacket to pull out the would-be killer’s gun. It was appropriate; it was a .22 caliber pistol. “You can shoot gnats with this,” said Manny, grabbing the teenager’s arm. “Come along. Hop on one foot if it’s easier. We’ll paste you up.”
What remained of the late afternoon sun was obscured by the swirling dark clouds of a gathering storm surging out of the mountains. The drained, exhausted old man and the wounded youngster were halfway across the road when suddenly the roar of an engine was heard and headlights of a racing automobile caught them in the beams. The car was bearing down on them, thundering up from the south out of Mesa Verde. Tires shrieking, the powerful vehicle side-slipped into a skid and pounded to a stop only yards away from Weingrass and his captive, who were lunging toward the hedges, Manny’s grip tightening on the Arab’s field jacket. A man leaped from the large black sedan as Weingrass—lurching, stumbling—reached into his overcoat pocket for his own .38 automatic. The figure rushing toward him was a blur in the old architect’s eyes; he raised his gun to fire.
“
Manny!
” yelled Gee-Gee Gonzalez.
Weingrass fell to the ground, his hand still gripping the wounded terrorist. “
Grab
him!” he ordered Gee-Gee with what seemed like the last breath in his lungs. “Don’t let him go—hold his
arms
. They sometimes carry cyanide!”
* * *
The young Arab was given a needle by one of the two nurses; he would be unconscious until morning. His bullet wound was bloody, not serious, the bullet itself having passed through the flesh; it was cleansed, the openings butterflied with heavy tape and the bleeding stopped. He was then carried by Gonzalez to a guest room, his arms and legs strapped to the four corners of the bed, where the nurses covered his naked body with two blankets to help prevent conceivable trauma.
“He’s so terribly young,” said the nurse placing the pillow under the teenage Arab’s head.
“He’s a killer,” responded Weingrass icily, staring at the terrorist’s face. “He’d kill you without thinking for an instant about the life he was taking—the way he wants to kill Jews. The way he
will
kill us if we let him live.”
“That’s revolting, Mr. Weingrass,” said the other nurse. “He’s a child.”
“Tell that to the parents of God knows how many Jewish children who were never permitted his years.” Manny left the room to rejoin Gonzalez, who had hastily gone outside to drive his all too recognizable car into a garage; he had returned and was pouring himself a large glass of whisky at the bar on the veranda.
“Help yourself,” said the architect, walking into the enclosed porch and heading for his leather armchair. “I’ll put it on your bill like you do with me.”
“You crazy old man!” spat out Gee-Gee. “
Loco!
You plain
loco
, you know that? You coulda been killed!
Muerto!
You
comprende
?
Muerto, muerto
—dead, dead,
dead
, you old fool! Maybe that I could live with, but not when you give me a heart attack! I don’t live so good with a heart attack when it’s fatal, you
comprende
, you know what I mean?”
“Okay, okay. So you can have that drink on the house—”
“
Loco!
” shouted Gonzalez again, drinking the whisky in what appeared to be a single swallow.
“You’ve made your point,” agreed Manny. “Have another. I won’t start charging until the third.”
“I don’t know whether to go or whether to stay!” said Gee-Gee, once more pouring a drink.
“The police?”
“Like I told you, who had time for the
police
? And if
I
called them, they’d come around in a month!… Your girl, the
ama de cría
—the nurse—she’s calling them. I only hope she found
one of those
payasos
. Sometimes you gotta call Durango to get someone out here.”
The phone on the bar rang—it
rang
, but it was not the ring of a telephone; instead it was a steady whir-toned sound. Weingrass was so startled that he nearly fell to the floor pushing himself out of the chair.
“You want me to get it?” asked Gonzalez.
“
No!
” roared Manny, walking rapidly, unsteadily, toward the bar.
“Don’t bite off my
cabeza
.”
“Hello?” said the old man into the phone, forcing control on himself.
“Mr. Weingrass?”
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Who are you?”
“We’re on a laser patch into your telephone line. My name is Mitchell Payton—”
“I know all about you,” interrupted Manny. “Is my boy all
right
?”
“Yes, he is. I’ve just spoken to him in the Bahamas. A military aircraft has been dispatched from Homestead Air Force Base to pick him up. He’ll be in Washington in a few hours.”
“
Keep
him there! Surround him with guards! Don’t let anyone
near
him!”
“Then it’s happened out there?… I feel so useless, so incompetent. I should have posted guards.… How many were killed?”
“Three,” said Manny.
“Oh, my
God
.… How much do the police know?”
“They don’t. They haven’t got here yet.”
“They
haven’t
.… Listen to me, Mr. Weingrass. What I’m about to say will appear strange if not insane to you, but I know what I’m talking about. For the time being, this tragic event
must
be contained. We’ll have a far greater chance to catch the bastards by avoiding panic and letting our own experts go to work.
Can
you understand that, Mr. Weingrass?”
“Understood and arranged,” answered an old man who had worked with the Mossad, a certain impatient condescension creeping into his voice. “The police will be met outside and told it was a false alarm—a neighbor whose car had broken down and couldn’t reach us on the phone, that’s all.”
“I forgot,” said the director of Special Project quietly. “You’ve been here before.”
“I’ve been here,” agreed Manny, without comment.
“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Payton. “You said three were dead, but you’re talking to me, you’re
all right
.”
“The three were
them
, not us, Mr. CIA Incompetent.”
“
What?
… Jesus
Christ
!”
“He wasn’t much help. Try Abraham.”
“Please be
clearer
, Mr. Weingrass.”
“I had to kill them. But the fourth’s alive and under sedation. Get your experts out here before I kill him, too.”
The CIA station chief in the Bahamas, a short, deeply tanned man with broad features, maneuvered quickly from his office at the embassy on Queen Street. An armed escort was sent by the Nassau police to the Cable Beach Hotel, on the shores of Bay Road, where four uniformed officers rapidly accompanied a tall man with light brown hair and a striking olive-skinned woman from their suite on the seventh floor to a waiting vehicle in the efficiently emptied drive outside the imposing marble lobby. The hotel’s director of operations, an alert Scotsman named McLeod, had mapped out a route through the service corridors, where his most trusted security guards stood watch, to the brightly lighted entrance fronted by two enormous fountains sending floodlit sprays up into the dark sky. McLeod’s two assistants—an immense good-humored man with a booming laugh and the improbable name of Vernal, accompanied by an attractive young hostess—courteously explained to arrivals and departures that their delays would be brief. They persuasively explained while the five-man motorcycle unit swept the dramatically shadowed grounds. The station chief had personalized everything; favors were done for him. He knew by name everyone there was to know in the Bahamas. And they knew him. In silence.
Evan and Khalehla, shielded by the wall of police, climbed into the government vehicle, the CIA man in the front seat. Kendrick was beyond talking; Khalehla could only grip his hand, knowing only too well what he was experiencing. Clarity of thought eluded him; burning sorrow and a furious anger had replaced it. Tears had welled in his eyes over the deaths of Kashi and Sabri Hassan; he did not have to be told of the mutilations,
he could easily, horribly imagine what they were. Yet those tears had been quickly, impulsively wiped away by a clenched fist. A reckoning was coming—that, too, was in his eyes, in the cores of his pupils.
Fury
.
“As you can understand, Congressman,” said the station chief, turning partially around in the seat beside the driver. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I can tell you that a plane from Holmstead Air Force Base in Florida is on its way to take you back to Washington. It should arrive about five or ten minutes after we get to the airport.”
“We know that,” said Khalehla pleasantly.
“It would have been here by now, but they said there’s rotten weather out of Miami and several commercial flights are on the same route. That probably means they wanted to stock up the aircraft properly for you, sir—I mean the two of you, of course.”
“That’s most kind of them,” said the field agent from Cairo, squeezing Evan’s hand, conveying the fact that he did not have to speak.
“If there’s anything you think you might have left behind at the hotel, we’ll gladly take care of it—”
“There’s
nothing
,” exclaimed Kendrick, whispering harshly.
“He means we’ve taken care of everything, thank you,” said Khalehla, pulling Evan’s hand against her leg and grasping it even more firmly. “This is obviously an emergency, and the Congressman has a great deal on his mind. May I assume we’ve been cleared through customs?”
“This parade is driving straight through the cargo gates,” replied the government man, glancing briefly, closely at Kendrick, then turning away as if he had unwittingly invaded another’s privacy. The rest of the trip was made in silence until the high steel gates of the cargo terminal swung open and the procession drove through over the tarmac to the end of the first runway. “The F-106 from Homestead should be landing soon,” said the station chief.
“I’m getting out.” Evan reached for the handle of the door and yanked it back. It was locked.
“I’d rather you didn’t, Congressman Kendrick.”
“Let me out of this car.”
“Evan, it’s his job.” Khalehla gently but firmly held Kendrick’s arm. “He has to go by the rules.”
“Do they include suffocating me?”
“I’m breathing fine—”
“You’re not
me
!”
“I know, darling. No one can be you right now.” Rashad angled her head and looked out the rear window, scanning the terminal’s buildings and the grounds. “Our status is as clean as it could be,” she said, turning back to the intelligence officer. “Let him walk. I’ll stay with him and so can the men.”