“I don’t understand you.”
“Suppose during the next twenty-odd months you decide you like it here? What happens then?”
“It’s not possible and it couldn’t happen, Mr. Swann. Let’s get back to Masqat. It’s a goddamned mess, or do I have sufficient ‘clearance’ to make that observation?”
“You’re cleared because I’m the one who clears.” The deputy director shook his gray head. “A goddamned mess, Congressman, and we’re convinced it’s externally programmed.”
“I don’t think there’s any question about it,” agreed Kendrick.
“Do you have any ideas?”
“A few,” answered the visitor. “Wholesale destabilization’s at the top of the list. Shut the country down and don’t let anyone in.”
“A takeover?” asked Swann. “A Khomeini-style putsch?… It wouldn’t work; the situation’s different. There’s no Peacock, no festering resentments, no SAVAK.” Swann paused, adding pensively, “No Shah with an army of thieves and no Ayatollah with an army of fanatics. It’s not the same.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that it was. Oman’s only the beginning. Whoever it is doesn’t want to take over the country; he—or they—simply want to stop others from taking the money.”
“What? What money?”
“Billions. Long-range projects that are on drafting boards everywhere in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and all of Southwest Asia, the only areas in that part of the world that can be relatively stabilized because even hostile governments demand it. What’s happening over in Oman now isn’t much different from tying up the transport and the construction trades over here, or shutting down the piers in New York and New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Nothing’s legitimized by strikes or collective bargaining—there’s just terror and the threats of more terror provided by whipped-up fanatics. And everything stops. The people over the drafting boards and those in the field on surveying teams and in equipment compounds just want to get out as fast as they can.”
“And once they’re out,” added Swann quickly, “those behind the terrorists move in and the terror stops. It just goes away. Christ, it sounds like a waterfront Mafia operation!”
“Arabic style,” said Kendrick. “To use your words, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Yes. Our company was threatened a number of times, but to quote you again, we had a secret weapon. Emmanuel Weingrass.”
“Weingrass? What the hell could he do?”
“Lie with extraordinary conviction. One moment he was a reserve general in the Israeli army who could call an air strike on any Arab group who harassed us or replaced us, and the next, he was a high-ranking member of the Mossad who would send out death squads eliminating even those who warned us. Like many aging men of genius, Manny was frequently eccentric and almost always theatrical. He enjoyed himself. Unfortunately, his various wives rarely enjoyed him for very long. At any rate, no one wanted to tangle with a crazy Israeli. The tactics were too familiar.”
“Are you suggesting we recruit him?” asked the deputy director.
“No. Outside of his age, he’s winding up his life in Paris with the most beautiful women he can hire and certainly with the most expensive brandy he can find. He couldn’t help.… But there’s something you can do.”
“What’s that?”
“Listen to me.” Kendrick leaned forward. “I’ve been thinking about this for the past eight hours and with every hour I’m more convinced it’s a possible explanation. The problem is that there are so few facts—almost none, really—but a pattern’s there, and it’s consistent with things we heard four years ago.”
“What things? What pattern?”
“Only rumors to begin with, then came the threats and they were threats. No one was kidding.”
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“While defusing those threats in his own way, usually with prohibited whisky, Weingrass heard something that made too much sense to be dismissed as drunken babbling. He was told that a consortium was silently being formed—an industrial cartel, if you like. It was quietly gaining control of dozens of different companies with growing resources in personnel, technology and equipment. The objective was obvious then, and if the information’s accurate, even more obvious now. They intend to take over the industrial development of Southwest Asia. As far as Weingrass could learn, this underground federation was based in Bahrain—nothing surprising there—but what came as a shocker and amused the hell out of Manny was the fact that among the unknown board of directors was a man who called himself the ‘Mahdi’—like the Muslim fanatic who threw the British out of Khartoum a hundred years ago.”
“The Mahdi? Khartoum?”
“Exactly. The symbol’s obvious. Except that this new Mahdi doesn’t give a damn about religious Islam, much less its screaming fanatics. He’s using them to drive the competition out and keep it out. He wants the contracts and the profits in Arab hands—specifically his hands.”
“Wait a minute,” Swann interrupted thoughtfully as he picked up his phone and touched a button on the console. “This ties in with something that came from MI-Six in Masqat last night,” he continued quickly, looking at Kendrick. “We couldn’t follow it up because there wasn’t anything to follow, no trail, but it sure as hell made wild reading.… Get me Gerald Bryce, please.… Hello, Gerry? Last night—actually around two o’clock this morning—we got a nothing-zero from the Brits in Ohio. I want you to find it and read it to me slowly because I’ll be writing down every word.” The deputy covered the mouthpiece and spoke to his suddenly alert visitor. “If anything you’ve said makes any sense at all, it may be the first concrete breakthrough we’ve had.”
“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Swann, probably reeking of smoked fish.”
The deputy director nodded aimlessly, impatiently, waiting for the man he had called Bryce to return to the phone. “A shower wouldn’t hurt, Congressman.… Yes, Gerry, go ahead!… ‘Do not look where you would logically expect to look. Search elsewhere.’ Yes, I’ve got that. I remember that. It was right after, I think … ‘Where grievances are not born of poverty or abandonment.’ That’s it! And something else, right around there … ‘Where Allah has bestowed favor in this world, although perhaps not in the after one.’… Yes. Now go down a bit, something about whispers, that’s all I remember.… There! That’s it. Give it to me again.… ‘The whispers speak of those who will benefit from the bloodshed.’ Okay, Gerry, that’s what I needed. The rest was all negative, if I recall. No names, no organizations, just crap.… That’s what I thought.… I don’t know yet. If anything breaks, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, oil up the equipment and work on a printout of all the construction firms in Bahrain. And if there’s a listing for what we call general or industrial contractors, I want that, too.… When? Yesterday, for God’s sake!” Swann hung up the phone, looked down at the phrases he had written, and then up at Kendrick. “You heard the words, Congressman. Do you want me to repeat them?”
“It’s not necessary. They’re not kalam-faregh, are they?”
“No, Mr. Kendrick, none of it’s garbage. It’s all very pertinent and I wish to hell I knew what to do.”
“Recruit me, Mr. Swann,” said the Congressman. “Send me to Masqat on the fastest transport you can find.”
“Why?” asked the deputy, studying his visitor. “What can you do that our own experienced men in the field can’t? They not only speak fluent Arabic, most of them are Arabs.”
“And working for Consular Operations,” completed Kendrick.
“So?”
“They’re marked. They were marked four years ago and they’re marked now. If they make any miswired moves, you could have a dozen executions on your hands.”
“That’s an alarming statement,” said Swann slowly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his visitor’s face. “They’re marked? Would you care to explain it?”
“I told you a
few minutes ago that your Cons Op briefly became a household name over there. You then made a gratuitous remark about my elaborating on congressional rumors, but I wasn’t. I meant what I said.”
“A household name?”
“I’ll go further, if you like. A household joke. An ex-army engineer and Manny Weingrass even did a number on them.”
“A number …?”
“I’m sure it’s in your files somewhere. We were approached by Hussein’s people to submit plans for a new airfield after we’d completed one at Qufar in Saudi Arabia. The next day two of your men came to see us, asking technical questions, pressing the point that as Americans it was our duty to relay such information, since Hussein frequently conferred with the Soviets—which, of course, was immaterial. An airport’s an airport, and any damn fool can fly over an excavation site and determine the configuration.”
“What was the number?”
“Manny and the engineer told them that the two main runways were seven miles long, obviously designed for very special flying equipment. They ran out of the office as if they both were struck by acute diarrhea.”
“And?” Swann leaned forward.
“The next day, Hussein’s people called and told us to forget the project. We’d had visitors from Consular Operations. They didn’t like that.”
The deputy director leaned back in his chair, his weary smile conveying futility. “Sometimes it’s all kind of foolish, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s foolish now,” offered Kendrick.
“No, of course it isn’t.” Swann instantly sat forward in his chair. “So the way you read it, this whole goddamned thing is all about money. Lousy money!”
“If it isn’t stopped, it’ll get worse,” said Kendrick. “Much worse.”
“Jesus, how?”
“Because it’s a proven formula for economic takeover. Once they’ve crippled the government in Oman, they’ll use the same tactics elsewhere. The Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, even the Saudis. Whoever controls the fanatics gets the contracts, and with all those massive operations under one entity—regardless of the names they use—there’s a dangerous political force in the area calling a lot of vital shots we definitely won’t like.”
“Good Lord, you have thought this out.”
“I’ve done nothing else for the past eight hours.”
“Say I sent you over there, what could you do?”
“I won’t know until I’m there, but I’ve got a few ideas. I know a number of influential men, powerful Omanis who know what goes on there and who couldn’t possibly be any part of this insanity. For various reasons—probably the same mistrust we felt whenever your Cons Op flunkies showed up—they might not talk to strangers but they will talk to me. They trust me. I’ve spent days, weekends, with their families. I know their unveiled wives and their children—”
“Unveiled wives and children,” repeated Swann, interrupting. “The ultimate shorbet in the Arab vocabulary. The broth of friendship.”
“A harmonious mixture of ingredients,” agreed the congressman from Colorado. “They’ll work with me, perhaps not with you. Also, I’m familiar with most of the suppliers on the docks and the lading offices, even people who avoid anything official because they make money out of what you can’t get officially. I want to trace the money and the instructions that come with the money and end up inside the embassy. Someone somewhere is sending both.”
“Suppliers?” asked Swann, his eyebrows arched, his voice incredulous. “You mean, like food and medical supplies, that kind of thing?”
“That’s only—”
“Are you crazy?” exclaimed the deputy director. “Those hostages are our people! We’ve opened the vaults, anything they need, anything we can get to them!”
“Like bullets and weapons and spare parts for weapons?”
“Of course not!”
“From all the accounts I read, what I could get my hands on at the newsstands in Flagstaff and Phoenix, every night after el Maghreb there’s four or five hours of fireworks—thousands of rounds shot off, whole sections of the embassy sprayed with rifle and machine-gun fire.”
“It’s part of their goddamned terror!” exploded Swann. “Can you imagine what it’s like inside? Lined up against a wall under floodlights and all around you everything’s being blasted with bullets, thinking, Jesus, I’m going to be killed any second! If we ever get those poor souls out, they’ll be on couches for years trying to get rid of the nightmares!”
Kendrick let the emotion of the moment pass. “Those hotheads don’t have an arsenal in there, Mr. Swann. I don’t think the people running them would allow it. They’re supplied. Just as the mimeograph machines are supplied because they don’t know how to operate your copiers and word processors for the daily bulletins they print for the television cameras. Please try to understand. Maybe one in twenty of those crazies has a minimum intellect, much less a thought-out ideological position. They’re the manipulated dregs of humanity given their own hysterical moments in the sun. Maybe it’s our fault, I don’t know, but I do know they’re being programmed, and you know it, too. And behind that programming is a man who wants all of Southwest Asia to himself.”
“This Mahdi?”
“Whoever he is, yes.”
“You think you can find him?”
“I’ll need help. Getting out of the airport, Arab clothes; I’ll make a list.”
The deputy director again leaned back in his chair, his fingers touching his chin. “Why, Congressman? Why do you want to do this? Why does Evan Kendrick, multimillionaire-entrepreneur want to put his very rich life on the line? There’s nothing left for you over there. Why?”
“I suppose the simplest and most honest answer is that I might be able to help. As you’ve pointed out, I made a lot of money over there. Maybe this is the time to give a little of myself back.”
“If it was just money or ‘a little’ of yourself, I’d have no trouble with that,” said Swann. “But if I let you go, you’ll be walking into a minefield with no training on how to survive. Has that thought struck you, Congressman? It should have.”
“I don’t intend to storm the embassy,” answered Evan Kendrick.
“You might not have to. Just ask the wrong person the wrong question and the results could be the same.”
“I could also be in a cab at Twenty-third Street and Virginia Avenue at noontime today and be in an accident.”
“I presume that means you were.”
“The point is I wasn’t driving. I was in a taxi. I’m careful, Mr. Swann, and in Masqat I know my way around the traffic, which isn’t as unpredictable as Washington’s.”
“Were you ever in the service?”
“No.”
“You were the right age for Vietnam, I’d guess. Any explanation?”
“I had a graduate school deferment. It kept me out.”
“Have you ever handled a gun?”
“I’ve had limited experience.”
“Which means you know where the trigger is and which end to point.”
“I said limited, not imbecilic. During the early days in the Emirates, we kept ourselves armed at our construction sites. Sometimes later also.”
“Ever had to fire one?” pressed the deputy director.
“Certainly,” replied Kendrick, his voice calm, not rising to the bait. “So I could learn where the trigger was and which end to point.”
“Very funny, but what I meant was did you ever have to fire a gun at another human being?”
“Is this necessary?”
“Yes, it is. I have to make a judgment.”
“All right, then yes, I did.”
“When was that?”
“When were they,” corrected the Congressman. “Among my partners and our American crew was a geologist, an equipment-logistics man and several refugees from the Army Corps of Engineers—foreman types. We made frequent trips to potential sites for soil and shale testings and to set up fenced compounds for machine
ry. We drove a camper, and on several occasions we were attacked by bandits—wandering nomad gangs looking for strays. They’ve been a problem for years, and the authorities warn everyone heading into the interior to protect themselves. Not much different from any large city over here. I used a gun then.”
“To frighten or to kill, Mr. Kendrick?”
“By and large to frighten, Mr. Swann. However, there were times when we had to kill. They wanted to kill us. We reported all such incidents to the authorities.”
“I see,” said the deputy director of Consular Operations. “What kind of shape are you in?”
The visitor shook his head in exasperation. “I smoke an occasional cigar or a cigarette after a meal, Doctor, and I drink moderately. I do not, however, lift weights or run in marathons. However, again, I do ride Class Five white water and backpack in the mountains whenever I can. I also think this is a bunch of bullshit.”
“Think what you like, Mr. Kendrick, but we’re pressed for time. Simple, direct questions can help us assess a person just as accurately as a convoluted psychiatric report from one of our clinics in Virginia.”
“Blame that on the psychiatrists.”
“Tell me about it,” said Swann, with a hostile chuckle.
“No, you tell me,” countered the visitor. “Your show-and-tell games are over. Do I go or don’t I, and if not, why not?”
Swann looked up. “You go, Congressman. Not because you’re an ideal choice but because I don’t have a choice. I’ll try anything, including an arrogant son of a bitch, which, under that cool exterior, I think you probably are.”
“You’re probably right,” said Kendrick. “Can you give me briefing papers on whatever you’ve got?”
“They’ll be delivered to the plane before takeoff at Andrews Air Force Base. But they can’t leave that plane, Congressman, and you can’t make any notes. Someone will be watching you.”
“Understood.”
“Are you sure? We’ll give you whatever deep-cover help we can under severe restrictions, but you’re a private citizen acting on your own, your political position notwithstanding. In short words, if you’re taken by hostile elements, we don’t know you. We can’t help you then. We won’t risk the lives of two hundred thirty-six hostages. Is that understood?”