Ludlum, Robert - The Icarus Agenda

'I was forced to grow up swiftly—not by choice. From student to teacher, without the proper qualifications, I'm afraid.'

'You're respected, I've heard that.'

'The office does it, not the man. I must learn to fill the office. Come on, let's talk—away from here.' The sultan, Ahmat, took Kendrick's arm and started through his circle of guards only to be stopped by the officer who had searched Evan.

'Your Highness!' cried the soldier. 'Your safety is our lives! Please remain within the cordon.'

'And be a target by the light of the fire?'

'We surround you, sir, and the men will continuously sidestep around the circle. The ground is flat.'

'Instead, point your weapons beyond the shadows, sahbee,' said Ahmat, calling the soldier his friend. 'We'll only be a few metres away.'

'With pain in our hearts, Your Highness.'

'It will pass.' Ahmat ushered Kendrick through the cordon. 'My countrymen are given to trivial melodramatics.'

'It's not so trivial if they're willing to make a moving ring and take a bullet meant for you.'

'It's nothing special, Evan, and, frankly, I don't know all the men in those bodies. What we may have to say to each other could be for our ears only.'

'I didn't realize…" Kendrick looked at the young sultan of Oman as they walked into the darkness. 'Your own guards?'

'Anything's possible during this madness. You can study the eyes of a professional soldier but you can't see the resentments or the temptations behind them. Here, this is far enough.' Both men stopped in the sand.

'The madness,' said Evan flatly in the dim light of the fire and the intermittent moonlight. 'Let's talk about it.'

'That's why you're here, of course.'

'That's why I'm here,' Kendrick said.

'What the hell do you want me to do! cried Ahmat in a harsh whisper. 'Whatever move I make, another hostage could get shot and one more bullet-riddled body thrown out of a window!' The young sultan shook his head. 'Now, I know you and my father worked well together—you and I discussed a few projects at a couple of dinner parties, but I don't expect you to remember.'

'I remember,' broke in Kendrick. 'You were home from Harvard, your second year in graduate school, I think. You were always on your father's left, the position of inheritance.'

'Thanks a bunch, Evan. I could have had a terrific job at E. F. Hutton.'

'You have a terrific job here.'

'I know that,' said Ahmat, his whispered voice again rising. 'And that's why I have to make sure I do it right. Certainly I can call back the army from the Yemen border and take the embassy by blowing it apart—and in doing so I guarantee the deaths of two hundred and thirty-six Americans. I can see your headlines now. Arab sultan kills, et cetera, et cetera. Arab. The Knesset in Jerusalem has a field day! No way, pal. I'm no hair-trigger cowboy who risks innocent lives and somehow in the confusion gets labelled anti-Semitic in your press. God in Heaven! Washington and Israel seem to have forgotten that we're all Semites, and not all Arabs are Palestinians and not all Palestinians are terrorists! And I won't give those pontificating, arrogant Israeli bastards another reason to send their American F-14s to kill more Arabs just as innocent as your hostages! Do you read me, Evan Shaikh?'

'I read you,' said Kendrick. 'Now will you cool off and listen to me?'

The agitated young sultan exhaled audibly, nodding his head. 'Of course I'll listen to you, but listening isn't agreeing to a damn thing.'

'All right.' Evan paused, his eyes intense, wanting to be understood despite the strange, obscure information he was about to impart. 'You've heard of the Mahdi?'

'Khartoum, the 1880s.'

'No. Bahrain, the 1980s.'

'What?'

Kendrick repeated the story he had told Frank Swann at the State Department. The story of an unknown, obsessed financier who called himself the Mahdi, and whose purpose was to drive out the Westerner from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, keeping the immense wealth of industrial expansion in Arab hands—specifically his hands. How this same man who had spread his gospel of Islamic purity throughout the fanatic fringes had formed a network, a silent cartel of scores, perhaps hundreds, of hidden companies and corporations all linked together under the umbrella of his own concealed organization. Evan then described how his old Israeli architect, Emmanuel Weingrass, had perceived the outlines of this extraordinary economic conspiracy, initially by way of threats levelled against the Kendrick Group—threats he had countered with his own outrageous warnings of retribution—and how the more Manny learned, the more he was convinced that the conspiracy was real and growing and had to be exposed.

'Looking back, I'm not proud of what I did,' continued Evan in the dim light of the campfire and the flitting desert moon. 'But I rationalized it because of what had happened. I just had to get out of this part of the world, and so I walked away from the business, walked away from the fight Manny said we must confront. I told him his imagination was working overtime, that he was giving credence to irresponsible—and often drunken—goons. I remember so clearly what he said to me. “Could my wildest imaginings,” he said, “or even less conceivably theirs, come up with a Mahdi? Those killers did it to us—he did it!” Manny was right then and he's right now. The embassy is stormed, homicidal lunatics kill innocent people, and the ultimate statement is made. “Stay away, Western Boy. You come over here, you'll be another corpse thrown out of a window.” Can't you see, Ahmat? There is a Mahdi and he's systematically squeezing everyone else out through sheer, manipulative terror.'

'I can see that you're convinced,' replied the young sultan skeptically.

'So are others here in Masqat. They just don't understand. They can't find a pattern, or an explanation, but they're so frightened they refused to meet with me. Me, an old friend of many years, a man they worked with and trusted.'

'Terror breeds anxiety. What would you expect? Also, there's something else. You're an American disguised as an Arab. That in itself must frighten them.'

'They didn't know what I was wearing or what I looked like. I was a voice over the telephone.'

'An American voice. Even more frightening.'

'A Western boy?'

'There are many Westerners here. But the United States government, understandably, has ordered all Americans out, and prohibited all incoming American commercial flights. Your friends ask themselves how you got here. And why. With lunatics roaming the streets, perhaps they, also understandably, don't care to involve themselves in the embassy crisis.'

'They don't. Because children have been killed—the children of men who did want to involve themselves.'

Ahmat stood rigidly in place, his dark eyes bewildered, angry again. 'There's been crime, yes, and the police do what they can, but I've heard nothing about this—about children being killed.'

'It's true. A daughter was raped, her face disfigured; a son was murdered, his throat slit.'

'Goddamn you, if you're lying! I may be helpless where the embassy is concerned but not outside! Who were they? Give me names!'

'None were given to me, not the real ones. I wasn't to be told.'

'But Mustapha had to do the telling. There was no one else.'

'Yes.'

'He'll tell me, you can bet your ass on that!'

'Then you see now, don't you?' Kendrick was close to pleading. 'The pattern, I mean. It's there, Ahmat. An underground network is being formed. This Mahdi and his people are using terrorists to drive out all current and potential competition. They want total control; they want all the money funnelled to them.'

The young sultan delayed his reply, then shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Evan, I can't accept that because they wouldn't dare try it.'