Authors: Robert Ludlum
“I thought you just gave me an order to kiss you. What changed?”
“You had to talk and I had to start thinking again.… And I don’t think I’m ready for you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a professional and I have work to do and if I’m screwed up with you—figuratively and literally—I can’t do it.”
“Again, why not?”
“Because, you idiot, I’m very close to being in love with you.”
“That’s all I’m asking for. Because I do love you.”
“Oh, those words are so easy, so facile. But not in my business, not in the world I live in. The word comes down: Have so-and-so killed, or let him be killed—whichever it is, it solves a multitude of problems.… And what happens if it turns out to be you … my darling. Could
you
do it if you were me?”
“Could it really ever come down to that?”
“It has; it might. It’s called third-party omission, as in what do
I
know, but
they
know what I’ll permit. You see, you’re one human being—terrific or despicable, depending on the point of view—and by giving you away we might save two hundred or four hundred people on a plane because ‘
they
’ couldn’t get
you
unless we gave you away before a flight.… Oh, my little world is filled with benignly neglected morality because all we deal with is malignant immorality.”
“Why stay in it? Why not get out?”
Khalehla paused, looking at him, her eyes unwavering. “Because we save lives,” she answered finally. “And every now and then something happens that reduces the malignancy, showing it for what it is, and peace is just a little closer. More often than not we’ve been a part of that process.”
“You’ve got to have a life beyond that, a life of your own.”
“Oh, I will one day, because one day I won’t be useful anymore, at least not where I want to be. I’ll be a known commodity—first you’re suspected, then you’re exposed and then you’re useless, and that’s when you’d better get out of town. My superiors will try to convince me I can be valuable in other posts; they’ll dangle the bait of a pension in front of me and a nice choice of sectors, but I don’t think I’ll bite.”
“According to that scenario, what will you do?”
“Good Lord, I speak six languages fluently and read and write four. Coupled with my background, I’d say my qualifications are ample for any number of jobs.”
“That sounds reasonable except for one thing. There’s a missing ingredient.”
“What are you talking about.”
“Me.… That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, come on, Evan.”
“No,” said Kendrick, shaking his head. “No more ‘Oh, come on’ or ‘Please, Evan.’ I won’t settle for that. I know what I feel and I think I know what you feel and to disregard those feelings is both stupid and a waste.”
“I told you, I’m not ready—”
“I never thought I’d
ever
be ready,” interrupted Kendrick, his voice soft and flat. “You see, I’ve done some thinking, too, and I’ve been pretty harsh on myself. I’ve been selfish most of my life. I’ve always loved the freedom I have, to go and do what I’ve wanted to do—badly or well, it didn’t make much difference as long as I could do it. Self-sufficient, I guess is the term—self, self,
self
. Then you come along and blow the whole damn thing to pieces. You show me what I
don’t
have, and by showing me you make me feel like an idiot.… I have no one to share anything with, it’s as simple as that. No one I care for enough to run to and say ‘Look, I did it,’ or even ‘Sorry, I didn’t do it.’ … Sure, Manny’s there,
when
he’s there, but his own opinion notwithstanding, he’s not immortal. You said last night that you were scared … well, I’m the one who’s scared now, frightened beyond any fear I thought I’d ever experience. That’s the fear of losing you. I’m not much good at begging or groveling, but I’ll beg and
grovel or do anything you like, but please,
please
, don’t leave me.”
“Oh, my
God
,” said Khalehla, closing her eyes, the tears rolling separately, slowly, down her cheeks. “You son of a bitch.”
“It’s a start.”
“I
do
love you!” She rushed into his arms. “I shouldn’t, I
shouldn’t
!”
“You can always change your mind in twenty or thirty years.”
“You’ve loused up my life—”
“You haven’t made mine any easier.”
“
Very
nice!” came the sonorous voice from the stone archway.
“
Manny!
” cried Khalehla, releasing Evan, pushing him away and looking over his shoulder.
“How long have you
been
there?” asked Kendrick harshly, snapping his head around.
“I came in on the begging and the groveling,” replied Weingrass in a scarlet bathrobe. “It always works, boy. The strong-man-on-his-knees bit. Never fails.”
“You’re
impossible
!” shouted Evan.
“He’s adorable.”
“I’m both, but keep your voices down, you’ll wake up the coven.… What the hell are you doing out here at this hour?”
“This hour is eight o’clock in Washington,” said Khalehla. “How are you feeling?”
“
Ahnnh
,” answered the old man, flicking the palm of his right hand as he walked into the living room. “I slept but I didn’t sleep, you know what I mean? And you clowns didn’t help, opening the door every five minutes, you also know what I mean?”
“It was hardly every five minutes,” said Khalehla.
“You’ve got your wristwatch, I’ve got mine.… So what did my friend Mitchell say? That’s the eight o’clock in Washington, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You’re not,” agreed the intelligence officer from Cairo. “I was about to explain—”
“Some explanation. The violins were in full
vibrato
.”
“Manny!”
“Shut up. Let her talk.”
“I have to leave—for a day, perhaps two.”
“Where are you going?” asked Kendrick.
“I can’t tell you that … my darling.”
Welcome to Stapleton Airport in Denver, ladies and gentlemen. If you need information regarding connecting flights, our personnel will gladly assist you inside the terminal. The time here in Colorado is five minutes past three in the afternoon
.
Among the disembarking passengers spilling out of the exit ramp were five priests whose features were Caucasian but whose skin was darker than that of most Occidentals. They moved together and talked quietly among themselves, their English stilted, yet understandable. They might have been from a diocese in southern mainland Greece or from the Aegean islands, or possibly Sicily or Egypt. They might have been, but they were not. They were Palestinians and they were not priests. Instead, they were killers from the most radical branch of the Islamic jihad. Each held a small carry-on bag of soft black cloth; together they walked into the terminal heading for a newsstand.
“
La!
” exclaimed one of the younger Arabs under his breath as he picked up a newspaper and scanned the headlines. “
Laish!
”
“
Iskut!
” whispered an older companion, pulling the young man away and telling him to be quiet. “If you speak, speak English.”
“There is nothing! They still report
nothing
! Something is wrong.”
“We know something is wrong, you fool,” said the leader known throughout the terrorist world as Ahbyahd, the name meaning “the white-haired one” despite the fact that his close-cropped prematurely gray head was more salt-and-pepper than white. “That’s why we’re here.… Carry my bag and take the others to Gate Number Twelve. I’ll meet you there shortly. Remember, if anyone stops you,
you
do the talking. Explain that the others do not speak English, but don’t elaborate.”
“I shall give them a Christian blessing with the blood of Allah all over their throats.”
“Keep your tongue and your knife to yourself. No more Washingtons!” Ahbyahd continued across the terminal, glancing around as he walked. He saw what he had to find and
approached a Travelers Aid courtesy desk. A middle-aged woman looked up at him, smiling pleasantly at his obviously bewildered expression.
“May I help you, Father?”
“I believe this is where I was instructed to be,” replied the terrorist humbly. “We have no such fine accommodations on the island of Lyndos.”
“We try to be of service.”
“Perhaps you have a … a notice for me—further instructions, I’m afraid. The name is Demopolis.”
“Oh, yes,” said the woman, opening the top right-hand drawer of the desk. “Father Demopolis. You’re certainly a long way from home.”
“The Franciscan retreat, an opportunity of a lifetime to visit your splendid country.”
“Here we are.” The woman pulled out a white envelope and handed it to the Arab. “It was delivered to us around noontime by a charming man who made a most generous contribution to Travelers Aid.”
“Perhaps I may add my gratitude,” said Ahbyahd, feeling the small hard, flat object in the center of the envelope as he reached for his billfold.
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t hear of it. We’ve been paid handsomely for such a little thing as holding a letter for a man of the cloth.”
“You are very kind, madam. May the Lord of Hosts bless you.”
“Thank you, Father. I appreciate that.”
Ahbyahd walked away, quickening his steps, veering to a crowded corner of the airport terminal. He tore open the envelope. Taped to the blank card inside was a key to a storage locker in Cortez, Colorado. Their weapons and explosives had been delivered on schedule, as well as money, articles of clothing, an untraceable rented automobile, alternate passports of Israeli origin for nine Maronite priests, and airline tickets to Riohacha, Colombia, where arrangements had been made to fly them to Baracoa, Cuba, and points east. Their rendezvous for the trip home—home yet not home, not the Baaka; that was
not
home!—was a highway motel near the airport in Cortez; a flight the next morning would take them to Los Angeles, where nine holy men would be “assistance pre-cleared” on Avianca for Riohacha. Everything had gone according to schedule—
schedules
worked out once the amazing offer had reached the Baaka Valley in Lebanon:
Find him. Kill him. Bring honor to
your cause. We’ll give you everything you need, but never our identities
. Yet had those so precise schedules, those so precious gifts, borne fruit? Ahbyahd did not know; he could not know and it was why he had called a relay telephone number in Vancouver, Canada, demanding that new and lethal supplies be included in the Cortez delivery. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the attack on the house in Fairfax, Virginia, and close to eighteen hours after the storming of the hated enemy’s home in Colorado. Their mission had been conceived as a combined assault that would stun the Western world with blood and death, avenging the brothers who had been killed, proving that the ultimate security ordered by the President of the United States for a single man was no match for the skills and the commitments of a dispossessed people. Operation Azra demanded the life of an ordained American hero, an impostor who had claimed to be one of them, who had broken bread and sorrow with them, and who finally had betrayed them. That man had to die, along with all who surrounded him, protected him. A lesson had to be
taught
!
That most loathsome of enemies had not been found in Fairfax; it was presumed that Yosef’s unit would find him and kill him at his house in the western mountains. Yet there was nothing,
nothing
! The five of them from Command One had waited in their adjoining hotel rooms—waiting,
waiting
for the telephone to ring and hear the words spoken:
Operation Azra is now complete. The hated pig is dead!
… Nothing. And most strange of all, there were no screaming headlines in the newspapers, no shocked, anguished men or women on television revealing yet another triumph for the holy cause. What had
happened
?
Ahbyahd had gone over every step of the mission and could fault none. Every conceivable problem but one had been anticipated and solutions found in advance, either through the byways of official corruption in Washington or with sophisticated technology and bribed or blackmailed telephone technicians in Virginia and Colorado. The one unforeseen and unforeseeable problem was a suddenly suspicious aide to the despicable politician who quite simply had to be killed quickly. Ahbyahd had sent the one “priest” of their small brigade who had not been in Oman to Kendrick’s office late Wednesday afternoon before the attack on Fairfax. The purpose was merely to crosscheck the latest intelligence that confirmed the American congressman’s presence in the capital. The “priest’s” cover was immaculate; his papers—religious and official—were in order
and he brought with him “greetings” from numerous “old friends,” each of them a living person from Kendrick’s past.
The “priest” had been caught reading a secretary’s desk calendar while waiting for the aide to come out into the deserted office. The aide had promptly gone back inside; the “priest” had quietly opened the door and heard the young man on the telephone asking for Congressional Security. He had to die. Quickly, efficiently, taken under a gun to the bowels of the massive Capitol and dispatched swiftly. Yet even that death had not been made public.
What had
happened
? What
was
happening? The martyrs of the holy mission would not,
could
not, return to the Baaka Valley without the trophy of vengeance they so desperately sought and so richly deserved. It was unthinkable! If there was no rendezvous in Cortez, blood would flow over blood at a place called Mesa Verde. The terrorist put the key in his pocket, threw the blank card and the envelope on the terminal floor, and started toward Gate 12.
“
Sweetie!
” shouted Ardis Vanvlanderen, walking into the living room from the office she had built for herself out of a guest room in San Diego’s Westlake Hotel.
“What is it, babe?” asked her husband, sitting in a velour armchair in front of a television set.
“Your problems are over. Those zillions of millions are safe for the next five years! Keep building your missiles and super-duper sonics until the cows shit uranium.… I mean it, lover, your worries are
over
!”