Men huddled in doorways, to Evan’s annoyance, for they obscured the barely legible numbers on the sandstone walls. He was further annoyed by the filthy intersecting alleys that unaccountably caused the numbers to skip from one section of the street to the next. El-Baz. Number 77 Shari el Balah—the street of dates. Where was it?
There it was. A deeply recessed heavy door with thick iron bars across a closed slot that was built into the upper panel at eye level. However, a man in disheveled robes squatting diagonally against the stone blocked the door on the right side of the tunnellike entrance.
“Esmahlee?” said Kendrick, excusing himself and stepping forward.
“Lay?” replied the haunched figure, asking why.
“I have an appointment,” continued Evan in Arabic. “I’m expected.”
“Who sends you?” said the man without moving.
“That’s not your concern.”
“I am not here to receive such an answer.” The Arab raised his back, angling it against the door; the robes of his aba parted slightly, revealing the handle of a pistol tucked into an undersash. “Again, who sends you?”
Evan wondered if the sultan’s police officer had forgotten to give him a name or a code or a password that would gain him entrance. He had so little time! He did not need this obstruction; he reached for an answer. “I visited a bakery in the Sabat Aynub,” he said rapidly. “I spoke—”
“A bakery?” broke in the squatting man, his brows arched beneath his headdress. “There are at least three bakeries in the Sabat Aynub.”
“Goddamnit, baklava!” spat out Kendrick, his frustration mounting, his eyes on the handle of the gun. “Some asinine orange—”
“Enough,” said the guard, abruptly rising to his feet and pulling his robes together. “It was a simple reply to a simple question, sir. A baker sent you, you see?”
“All right. Fine! May I go inside, please?”
“First we must determine whom you visit. Whom do you visit, sir?”
“For God’s sake, the man who lives here … works here.”
“He is a man without a name?”
“Are you entitled to know it?” Evan’s intense whisper carried over the street noises beyond.
“A fair question, sir,” said the Arab, nodding pensively. “However, since I was aware of a baker in the Sabat Aynub—”
“Christ on a raft!” exploded Kendrick. “All right. His name is El-Baz! Now will you let me in? I’m in a hurry!”
“It will be my pleasure to alert the resident, sir. He will let you in if it is his pleasure. Certainly you can understand the necessity for—”
It was as far as the ponderous guard got before snapping his head toward the pavement outside. The undercurrent of noises from the dark street had suddenly erupted. A man screamed; others roared, their strident voices echoing off the surrounding stone.
“Elhahoonai!”
“Udam!”
And then piercing the chorus of outrage was a woman’s voice. “Siboni fihalee!” she cried frantically, demanding to be left alone. Then came in perfect English, “You bastards!”
Evan and the guard rushed to the edge of the stone as two gunshots shattered the human cacophony, escalating it into frenzy, the ominous rings of ricocheting bullets receding in the cavernous distance. The Arab guard spun around, hurling himself to the hard stone floor of the entranceway. Kendrick crouched; he had to know! Three robed figures accompanied by a young man and woman dressed in slovenly Western clothes raced past, the male in torn khaki trousers clutching his bleeding arm. Evan stood up and cautiously peered around the edge of the stone corner. What he saw astonished him.
In the shadows of the confining street stood a bareheaded woman, a short-bladed knife in her left hand, her right gripping an automatic. Slowly, Kendrick stepped out on the uneven layers of stone. Their eyes met and locked. The woman raised her gun; Evan froze, trying desperately to decide what to do and when to do it, knowing that if he moved quickly she would fire. Instead, to his further astonishment, she began stepping backward into the deeper shadows, her weapon still leveled at him. Suddenly, with the approach of excited voices punctuated by the repeated penetrating sounds of a shrill whistle, the woman turned and raced away down the dark narrow street. In seconds she had disappeared. She had followed him! To kill him? Why? Who was she?
“Here!” In a panicked whisper the guard was calling him. Evan whipped his head around; the Arab was gesturing wildly for him to come to the heavy, forbidding door in the recessed entranceway. “Quickly, sir! You have gained admittance. Hurry! You must not be observed here!”
The door swung open and Evan ran inside, and was instantly pulled to his left by the strong hand of a very small man who shouted to the guard in the entranceway. “Get away from here!” he cried. “Quickly!” he added. The diminutive Arab slammed the door shut, slapping in place two iron bolts as Kendrick squinted his eyes in the dim light. They were in some kind of foyer, a wide, run-down hallway with several closed doors set progressively down both sides of the corridor. Numerous small Persian rugs covered the rough wood of the floor—rugs, Kendrick mused, that would bring very decent prices at any Western auction—and on the walls were more rugs, larger rugs that Evan knew would bring small fortunes. The man called El-Baz put his profits into intricately woven treasures. Those who knew about such things would be instantly impressed that they were dealing with an important man. The others, which included most of the police and other regulating authorities, would undoubtedly think that this secretive man covered his floors and his walls with tourist cloth to avoid repairing flaws in his residence. The artist called El-Baz knew his marketing procedures.
“I am El-Baz,” said the small, slightly bent Arab in English, extending a veined, large hand. “You are whoever you say you are and I am delighted to meet you, preferably not with the name your revered parents gave you. Please come this way, the second door on the right, please. It is our first and most vital procedure. In truth, the rest has been accomplished.”
“Accomplished? What’s been accomplished?” asked Evan.
“The essentials,” answered El-Baz. “The papers are prepared according to the information delivered to me.”
“What information?”
“Who you may be, what you may be, where you might come from. That is all I needed.”
“Who gave this information to you?”
“I have no idea,” said the aged Arab, touching Kendrick’s arm, insinuating him down the foyer. “An unknown person instructing me over the telephone, from where I know not. However, she used the proper words and I knew I was to obey.”
“She?”
“The gender was insignificant, ya Shaikh. The words were all-important. Come. Inside.” El-Baz opened the door to a small photographic studio; the equipment appeared out of date. Evan’s rapid appraisal was not lost on El-Baz. “The camera on the left duplicates the grainy quality of government identifications,” he explained, “which, of course, is as much due everywhere to government processing as it is to the eye of the camera. Here. Sit on the stool in front of the screen. It will be painless and swift.”
El-Baz worked quickly, and as the film was non-negative instant, he had no difficulty selecting a print. Burning the others, the old man put on a pair of thin surgical gloves, held the single photo, and gestured toward a wide-curtained area beyond the stretched gray fabric that served as a screen. Approaching it, he pulled back the heavy drapery, revealing a blank distressed wall; the appearance was deceiving. Placing his right foot next to a spot on the chipped floor molding, his gloved right hand reaching for another specific location above, he simultaneously pressed both. A jagged crack in the wall slowly separated, the left side disappearing behind the curtain; it stopped, leaving a space roughly two feet wide. The small purveyor of false papers stepped inside, beckoning Kendrick to follow him.
What Evan saw now was as modern as any machine in his Washington office and of even higher quality. There were two large co
mputers, each with its own printer, and four telephones in four different colors, all with communication modems, all situated on a long white table kept spotlessly clean in front of four typist’s chairs.
“Here,” said El-Baz, pointing to the computer on the left, where the dark screen was alive with bright green letters. “See how privileged you are, ya Shaikh. I was told to provide you with complete information and the sources thereof, but not, however, with any written documents other than the papers themselves. Sit. Study yourself.”
“Study myself?” asked Kendrick.
“You are a Saudi from Riyadh named Amal Bahrudi. You are a construction engineer and there is some European blood in your veins—a grandfather, I think; it’s written on the screen.”
“European …?”
“It explains your somewhat irregular features should anyone comment.”
“Wait a minute.” Evan bent over, looking closer at the computer screen. “This is a real person?”
“He was. He died last night in East Berlin—that is the green telephone.”
“Died? Last night?”
“East German intelligence, controlled, of course, by the Soviets, will keep his death quiet for days, perhaps weeks, while their bureaucrats examine everything with an eye toward KGB advantage, naturally. In the meantime, Mr. Bahrudi’s arrival here has been duly entered on our immigration lists—that’s the blue telephone—with a visa good for thirty days.”
“So if anyone runs a check,” added Kendrick, “this Bahrudi is legitimately here and not dead in East Berlin.”
“Exactly.”
“What happens if I’m caught?”
“That would hardly concern you. You’d be an immediate corpse.”
“But the Soviets could make trouble for us here. They’d know I’m not Bahrudi.”
“Could they? Would they?” The old Arab shrugged. “Never pass up an opportunity to confuse or embarrass the KGB, ya Shaikh.”
Evan paused, frowning. “I think I see what you mean. How did you get all this? For God’s sake, a dead Saudi in East Berlin—covered up—his dossier, even some grandfather, a European grandfather. It’s unbelievable.”
“Believe, my young friend, whom I do not know nor have ever met. Of course, there must be confederates in many places for men like me, but that is not your concern, either. Simply study the salient facts: revered parents’ names, schools, universities—two, I believe, one in the United States, so like the Saudis. You won’t need any more than that. If you do, it won’t matter. You’ll be dead.”
Kendrick walked out of the underworld city within a city, skirting the grounds of the Waljat Hospital in the northeast section of Masqat. He was less than a hundred fifty yards from the gates of the American embassy. The wide street was now only half filled with die-hard spectators. The torches and the rapid bursts of gunfire from within the grounds of the embassy created the illusion that the crowds were much larger and more hysterical than they actually were. Such witnesses to the terror inside were interested only in entertainment; their ranks thinned as one by one they were overcome by sleepiness. Ahead, less than a quarter of a mile beyond the Harat Waljat, was Alam Palace, the young sultan’s seaside mansion. Evan looked at his watch; the hour and his location were an advantage; he had so little time and Ahmat had to move quickly. He looked for a street phone, vaguely remembering that there were several near the hospital entrance—again thanks to Manny Weingrass. Twice the reprobate old architect had claimed his brandy was poisoned, and once an Omani woman had bitten his wandering hand so severely that he required seven stitches.
The white plastic shells of three public phones in the distance reflected the light from the streetlamps. Gripping the inside pocket of his robes where he had put his false papers, he broke into a run, then immediately slowed down. Instinct told him not to appear obvious … or threatening. He reached the first booth, inserted a larger coin than was necessary, and dialed the strange number indelibly printed on his mind. 555-0005.
Beads of sweat formed at his hairline as the progressively slower rings reached eight. Two more and an answering machine would replace the human voice! Please!
“Iwah?” came the simple greeting saying, Yes?
“English,” said Evan.
“So quickly?” replied Ahmat, astonished. “What is it?”
“First things first.… A woman followed me. The light was dim, but from what I could see she was of medium height, with long hair, and dressed in what looked like expensive Western clothes. Also, she was fluent in both Arabic and English. Anybody come to mind?”
“If you mean someone who would follow you into El-Baz’s neighborhood, absolutely no one. Why?”
“I think she meant to kill me.”
“What?”
“And a woman gave El-Baz the information about me—over a telephone, of course.”
“I know that.”
“Could there be a connection?”
“How?”
“Someone moving in, someone looking to steal false papers.”
“I hope not,” said Ahmat firmly. “The woman who spoke to El-Baz was my wife. I would not trust your presence here with anyone else.”
“Thank you for that, but someone else knows I’m here.”
“You spoke to four men, Evan, and one of them, our mutual friend, Mustapha, was killed. I agree that someone else knows you’re here. It’s why the other three are under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Perhaps you should stay out of sight, in hiding, for at least a day. I can arrange it, and we might learn something. Also, I have something I must discuss with you. It concerns this Amal Bahrudi. Go in hiding for a day. I think that would be best, don’t you?”
“No,” answered Kendrick, his voice hollow at what he was about to say. “Out of sight, yes, but not in hiding.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to be arrested, seized as a terrorist. I want to be thrown into that compound you’ve got somewhere. I’ve got to get in there tonight!”
6
The robed figure raced down the middle of the wide avenue known as the Wadi Al Kabir. He had burst out of the darkness from beyond the massive Mathaib Gate several hundred yards from the waterfront west of the ancient Portuguese fortress called the Mirani. His robes were drenched with the oil and flotsam of the harbor, his headdress clinging to the back of his wet hair. To observers—and there were still many in the street at this late hour—the desperately running man was one more dog from the sea, an alien who had leaped from a ship to gain illegal entrance into this once peaceful sultanate, a fugitive, or a terrorist.
Strident eruptions of a two-note siren grew louder as a patrol car careened around the corner from the Wadi Al Uwar into the Al Kabir. The chase was joined; a police informant had betrayed the point of entry, and the authorities were ready. These days they were always ready, ready and eager and frenzied. A blinding light split the dimly lit street, its beam coming from a movable lamp mounted on the patrol car. The powerful light caught the panicked illegal; he spun to his left, facing a series of shops, their dark storefronts protected by iron shutters, protection that had not been thought of barely three weeks ago. The man pivoted, lurching across the Al Kabir to his right. Suddenly he stopped, blocked by a number of late-night strollers who moved together, stood together, their stares not without fear but somehow collectively saying they had had enough. They wanted their city back. A short man in a business suit but in Arab headdress stepped forward—cautiously, to be sure, but with purpose. Two larger men in robes, perhaps more cautiously but with equal purpose, joined him, followed hesitantly by others. Down the Al Kabir to the south a crowd had gathered; tentatively they formed a line, robed men and veiled women creating a human wall across the street, courage reluctantly summoned out of both exasperation and fury. It all had to stop!
“Get away! Spread yourselves! He may have grenades!” A police officer had jumped out of the patrol car and was racing forward, his automatic weapon leveled at the quarry.
<
br /> “Disperse!” roared a second policeman, sprinting down the left side of the street. “Don’t get caught in our fire!”
The cautious strollers and the hesitant crowd beyond scattered in all directions, running for the protection of distance and the shelters of doorways. As if on cue, the fugitive grappled with his drenched robes, pulling them apart and menacingly reaching inside the folds of cloth. A staccato burst of gunfire shattered the Al Kabir; the fugitive screamed, calling on the powers of a furious Allah and a vengeful Al Fatah as he gripped his shoulder, arched his neck and dropped to the ground. He seemed to be dead, but in the dim light no one could determine the extent of his wounds. He screamed again, a roar, summoning the furies of all Islam to descend on the hordes of impure unbelievers everywhere. The two police officers fell on him as the patrol car skidded to a stop, its tires screeching; a third policeman leaped from the open rear door shouting orders.
“Disarm him! Search him!” His two subordinates had anticipated both commands. “It could be he!” added the superior officer, crouching to examine the fugitive more closely, his voice even louder than before. “There!” he continued, still shouting. “Strapped to his thigh. A packet. Give it to me!”