Ludlum, Robert - The Icarus Agenda

'There has to be more than one person involved,' began Evan coughing, each cough more pronounced, more violent, his whole body trembling. 'As people leave they take them out—' Suddenly, Kendrick bent over, clutching his throat, lurching for the first toilet to the left of the filthy sink. 'I'm retching!' he cried, grabbing the edges of the bowl with both hands.

'Take what out?'

'Films!' spat out Evan, his voice directed towards the area around the toilet's handle. 'Films smuggled out of the embassy!… For sale!'

'Films? Photographs?'

'Two rolls. I intercepted them, bought them both! Identities, methods—'

Nothing further could be heard in the enormous concrete terrorist cell. Ear-shattering bells erupted; deafening sounds signalling an emergency reverberated off the walls as a group of uniformed guards rushed in, weapons levelled, eyes frantically searching. In seconds they spotted the object of their search; six soldiers bolted forward towards the row of toilets.

'Never!' screamed the prisoner known as Amal Bahrudi. 'Kill me, if you wish, but you will learn nothing, for you are nothing!'

The first two guards approached. Kendrick lunged at them, hurling his body at the stunned soldiers, who thought they were rescuing an infiltrator about to be killed. He swung his arms and smashed his fists into the confused faces.

Mercifully, a third soldier hammered the stock of his rifle into the skull of Amal Bahrudi.

All was darkness but he knew he was on the examining table in the prison laboratory. He could feel the cold compresses on his eyes and ice packs over various parts of his body; he reached up and removed the thick, wet compresses. Faces above him came into focus—bewildered faces, angry faces. He had no time for them!

'Faisal!' he choked, speaking Arabic. 'Where is Faisal, the doctor?'

'I am down here by your left foot,' answered the Omani physician in English. 'I'm sponging out a rather strange puncture wound. Someone bit you, I'm afraid.'

'I can see his teeth,' said Evan, now also speaking English. 'They were like those of a saw-toothed fish only yellow.'

'Proper diets are lacking in this part of the world.'

'Get everyone out, Doctor,' interrupted Kendrick. 'Now. We've got to talk—now!'

'After what you did in there I doubt they'd leave and I'm not even sure I'd let them. Are you crazy? They came to save your life and you tore into them, fracturing one man's nose and breaking apart another's bridgework.'

'I had to be convincing, tell them that—no, don't. Not yet. Get them out. Tell them anything you like but we've got to talk. Then you have to reach Ahmat for me… How long have I been here?'

'Nearly an hour—’

'Christ! What time is it?'

'Four-fifteen in the morning.'

'Hurry! For God's sake, hurry!'

Faisal dismissed the soldiers with calming words, reassuring them, explaining that there were things he could not explain. As the last guard went out of the door, he paused, removed his automatic from its holster and handed it to the doctor. 'Should I aim this at you while we talk?' asked the Omani after the soldier had left.

'Before sunrise,' said Kendrick, pushing away the ice packs and sitting up, painfully swinging his legs over the table. 'I want a number of guns aimed at me. But not as accurately as they might be.'

'What are you saying? You can't be serious.'

'Escape. Ahmat has to arrange an escape.'

'What? You are crazy!'

'Never saner, Doctor, and never more serious. Pick two or three of your best men, which means men you completely trust, and set up some kind of transfer—’

'Transfer?'

Evan shook his head and blinked his eyes, the swelling still apparent although reduced by the cold compresses. He tried to find the words he needed for the astonished doctor. 'Let me put it this way. Somebody's decided to move a few prisoners from here to somewhere else.'

'Who would do that? Why?'

'Nobody! You make it up and do it, don't explain. Do you have photographs of the men inside?'

'Of course. It's normal arrest procedure, although the names are meaningless. When they're given, they're always false.'

'Let me have them, all of them. I'll tell you whom to choose.'

'Choose for what?'

'The transfer. The ones you're moving out of here to some place else.'

'To where? Really, you're not making sense.'

'You're not listening. Somewhere along the way, a back street or a dark road outside the city, we'll overpower the guards and escape.'

'Overpower…? We?'

'I'm part of the group, part of the escape. I'm going back in there.'

'Complete madness!' exclaimed Faisal.

'Complete sanity,' countered Evan. 'There's a man inside who can take me where I want to go. Take us where we have to go! Get me the police photographs and then reach Ahmat on the triple-five number. Tell him what I've told you, he'll understand… Understand, hell! It's what that Ivy League juvenile delinquent had in mind from the beginning!'

'I think perhaps you did also, ya Shaikh ya Amreekdnee.'

'Maybe I did. Maybe I just want to blame it on someone else. I don't fit into this mould.'

'Then something inside is propelling you, re-shaping the man who was. It happens.'

Kendrick looked into the soft brown eyes of the Omani doctor. 'It happens,' agreed Evan. Suddenly his mind was filled with the outlines of a murky silhouette; the figure of a man emerged from the raging fires of an earth-bound hell. Whirlwinds of smoke enveloped the apparition as cascading rubble fell all around it, muting the screams of victims. The Mahdi. Killer of women and children, of friends dear to him, partners in a vision—his family, the only family he ever wanted. All gone, all dead, the vision joining the smoke of destruction, disappearing in the rising vapours until nothing was left but the cold and the darkness. The Mahdi! 'It happens,' repeated Kendrick softly, rubbing his forehead. 'Get me the photographs and call Ahmat. I want to be back in that compound in twenty minutes, and I want to be taken out ten minutes later. For God's sake, move!'

Ahmat, sultan of Oman, still in slacks and his New England Patriots T-shirt, sat in the high-backed chair, the red light of his private, secure telephone glowing below on the right leg of his desk. With the instrument next to his ear he was listening intensely.

'So it happened, Faisal,' he spoke quietly. 'Praise be to Allah, it happened.'

'He told me you expected it,' said the doctor over the line, his tone questioning.

'“Expected” is too strong, old friend. Hoped is more appropriate.'

'I removed your tonsils, great sultan, and I attended you over the years for minor illnesses including a great fear you had that proved groundless.'

Ahmat laughed, more to himself than into the phone. 'A wild week in Los Angeles, Amal. Who knew what I might have contracted?'

'We had a pact. I never told your father.'

'Which means you think I'm not telling you something now.'

'The thought occurred to me.'

'Very well, old friend—' Suddenly, the young sultan snapped his head up as the door of his royal office was opened. Two women entered; the first was obviously pregnant, an Occidental from New Bedford, Massachusetts, blonde and wearing a bathrobe. His wife. Next to appear was an olive-skinned, dark-haired female dressed fashionably in street clothes. She was known to the household simply as Khalehla. 'Apart from common sense, good Doctor,' continued Ahmat into the phone, 'I have certain sources. Our mutual acquaintance needed assistance, and who better to provide it than the ruler of Oman? We leaked information to the animals at the embassy. Prisoners were being held somewhere, subjected to brutal interrogation. Someone had to be sent there to maintain discipline, order—and Kendrick found him… Give our American anything he wants, but delay his schedule by fifteen or twenty minutes, until my two police officers arrive.'