Ludlum, Robert - The Icarus Agenda

The Icarus Agenda

The Icarus Agenda

The Icarus Agenda

The Icarus Agenda

Prologue

The silhouetted figure in the doorway rushed into the dark, windowless room. He closed the door and, by rote, quickly made his way across the spotless black vinyl floor to a brass table lamp on his left. He switched on the light, the low-wattage bulb creating shadows throughout the confined, panelled study. The room was small and confining but not without ornamentation. The objets d'art, however, were neither from antiquity nor from the progressive stages of historical artistry. Instead, they represented the most contemporary equipment of high technology.

The right wall glistened with the reflection of stainless steel, and the quiet whirr of a dust-inhibiting, dust-removing air-conditioning unit ensured pristine cleanliness. The owner and sole occupant of this room crossed to a chair in front of a computer-driven word processor and sat down. He turned on a switch; the screen came alive and he typed in a code. Instantly, the bright green letters responded.

Ultra Maximum Secure

No Existing Intercepts

Proceed

The figure hunched over the keyboard, his anxiety at fever pitch, and proceeded to enter his data.

I start this journal now for the events that follow I believe will alter the course of a nation. A man has come from seemingly nowhere, like an artless messiah without an inkling of his calling or his destiny. He is marked for things beyond his understanding, and if my projections are accurate, this will be a record of his journey… I can only imagine how it began, but I know it began in chaos.

The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 1

Masqat, Oman. Southwest Asia

Tuesday, 10 August, 6:30 pm

The angry waters of the Oman Gulf were a prelude to the storm racing down through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea. It was sundown, marked by the strident prayers nasally intoned by bearded muezzins in the minarets of the port city's mosques. The sky was darkening under the black thunderheads that swirled ominously across the lesser darkness of evening like roving behemoths. Blankets of heat lightning sporadically fired the eastern horizon over the Makran Mountains of Turbat, two hundred miles across the sea in Pakistan. To the north beyond the borders of Afghanistan, a senseless, brutal war continued. To the west an even more senseless war raged, fought by children led to their deaths by the diseased madman in Iran intent on spreading his malignancy. And to the south, there was Lebanon where men killed without compunction, each faction with religious fervour calling the others terrorists when all—without exception—indulged in barbaric terrorism.

The Middle East, especially Southwest Asia, was on fire, and where the fires had previously been repelled, they were no longer. As the waters of the Gulf of Oman furiously churned this early evening and the skies promised a sweep of ravage, the streets of Masqat, the capital of the Sultanate of Oman, matched the approaching storm. The prayers over, the crowds again converged with flaming torches, streaming out of side streets and alleyways, a column of hysterical protest, the target the floodlit iron gates of the American Embassy. The facade of pink stucco beyond was patrolled by scrubby long-haired children awkwardly gripping automatic weapons. The trigger meant death, but in their wild-eyed zealotry they could not make the connection with that finality. They were told there was no such thing as death, no matter what their eyes might tell them. The rewards of martyrdom where everything, the more painful the sacrifice the more glorious the martyr—the pain of their enemies meant nothing. Blindness! Madness!

It was the twenty-second day of this insanity, twenty-one days, since the civilized world had been forced once again to accept the dreary fact of incoherent fury. Masqat's fanatical ground swell had burst from nowhere and now was suddenly everywhere, and no one knew why. No one, except the analysts of the darker arts of brush fire insurrections, those men and women who spent their days and nights probing, dissecting, finally perceiving the roots of orchestrated revolt. For the key was 'orchestrated'. Who? Why? What do they really want and how do we stop them?

Facts: Two hundred and forty-seven Americans had been rounded up under guns and taken hostage. Eleven had been killed, their corpses thrown out of the embassy windows, each body accompanied by shattering glass, each death via a different window. Someone had told these children how to emphasize each execution with a jolting surprise. Wagers were excitedly made beyond the iron gates by shrieking maniacal betters mesmerized by blood. Which window was next? Would the corpse be a man or a woman? How much is your judgment worth? How much? Bet!

Above on the open roof was the luxurious embassy pool behind an Arabic latticework not meant for protection against bullets. It was around that pool that the hostages knelt in rows as wandering groups of killers aimed machine pistols at their heads. Two hundred and thirty-six frightened, exhausted Americans awaiting execution.

Madness!

Decisions: Despite well-intentioned Israeli offers, keep them out! This was not Entebbe and all their expertise notwithstanding, the blood Israel had shed in Lebanon would, in Arab eyes, label any attempt an abomination: The United States had financed terrorists to fight terrorists. Unacceptable. A rapid deployment strike force? Who could scale four storeys or drop down from helicopters to the roof and stop the executions when the executioners were only too willing to die as martyrs? A naval blockade with a battalion of marines prepared for an invasion of Oman? Beyond a show of overpowering might, to what purpose? The sultan and his ruling ministers were the last people on earth who wanted this violence at the embassy. The peacefully-oriented Royal Police tried to contain the hysteria, but they were no match for the roving, wild bands of agitators. Years of quiescence in the city had not prepared them for such chaos; and to recall the Royal Military from the Yemenite borders could lead to unthinkable problems. The armed forces patrolling that festering sanctuary for international killers were as savage as their enemies. Beyond the inevitable fact that with their return to the capital the borders would collapse in carnage, blood would surely flow through the streets of Masqat and the gutters choke with the innocent and the guilty.

Checkmate.

Solutions: Give in to the stated demands? Impossible, and well understood by those responsible though not by their puppets, the children who believed what they chanted, what they screamed. There was no way governments throughout Europe and the Middle East would release over 8,000 terrorists from such organizations as the Brigate Rosse and the PLO, the Baader Meinhof, the IRA and scores of their squabbling, sordid offspring. Continue to tolerate the endless coverage, the probing cameras and reams of copy that riveted the world's attention on the publicity-hungry fanatics? Why not? The constant exposure, no doubt, kept additional hostages from being killed since the executions had been ‘temporarily suspended' so that the 'oppressor nations' could ponder their choices. To end the news coverage would only inflame the wild-eyed seekers of martyrdom. Silence would create the need for shock. Shock was newsworthy and killing was the ultimate shock.

Who?

What?

How?

Who…? That was the essential question whose answer would lead to a solution—a solution that had to be found within five days. The executions had been suspended for a week, and two days had passed, frantically chewed up as the most knowledgeable leaders of the intelligence services from six nations gathered in London. All had arrived on supersonic aircraft within hours of the decision to pool resources, for each knew its own embassy might be next. Somewhere. They had worked without rest for forty-eight hours. Results: Oman remained an enigma. It had been considered a rock of stability in Southwest Asia, a sultanate with educated, enlightened leadership as close to representative government as a divine family of Islam could permit. The rulers were from a privileged household that apparently respected what Allah had given them—not merely as a birthright, but as a responsibility in the last half of the twentieth century.