'He probably is.'
'Out.'
Kendrick changed his mind and his route to the Juma. Instinct told him to stay with crowds on his way to the mosque. After he turned north on the wide Bab Al Bahrain, he would head right at the huge Bab Al Square into the Al Khalifa Road. Thoughts bombarded him, but they were scattered, unconnected, unclear. He was walking into a labyrinth, he knew that, but he also knew that within that maze there would be a man or men, watching, waiting for the dead Azra to appear. That was his only advantage, but it was considerable. He knew who and what they were looking for, but they did not know him. He would circle the rendezvous like an earthbound hawk until he saw someone, the right kind of someone, who understood he could lose his life if he failed to bring the crown prince of terrorists to the Mahdi. That man would betray himself, perhaps even stop people to stare into their faces, anxiety growing with each passing minute. Evan would find that someone and isolate him—take him and break him… Or was he deluding himself, his obsession blinding him? It did not matter any longer, nothing mattered, only one step after another on the hard pavement, weaving his way through the night crowds of Bahrain.
The crowds. He sensed it. Men were crowding around him. A hand touched his shoulder! He spun around and lashed out his arm to break the grip. And suddenly he felt the sharp point of a needle entering his flesh somewhere near the base of his spine. Then there was darkness. Complete.
The telephone jarred Yaakov awake; he grabbed it. 'Yes?'
'They've got the American!' said code Grey. 'More to the point, they exist!'
'Where did it happen? How?'
'That doesn't matter; I don't know the streets anyway. What matters is we know where they've taken him!'
'You what? How? And don't tell me that doesn't matter!'
'Weingrass did it. Damn, it was Weingrass. He knew he couldn't take it any longer on foot so he gave a delirious Arab ten thousand dollars for his broken-down taxi! That al harmmee will be drunk for six months! We piled in and followed the subject and saw the whole thing happen. Damn, it was Weingrass!'
'Control your homicidal tendencies,' ordered Yaakov with an uncontrollable smile that vanished quickly. 'Where is the subject—shit!—Kendrick being held?'
'In a building called the Sahalhuddin on Tujjar Road—’
'Who owns it?'
'Give us time, Blue. Give Weingrass time. He's calling in every debt that's owed him in Bahrain, and I'd hate to think what the Morals Commission in Jerusalem would say if we're tied in with him.'
'Answer me!'
'Apparently six firms occupy the complex. It's a matter of narrowing them down—’
'Someone come and get me,' commanded Yaakov.
'So you've found the Mahdi, Congressman,' said the dark-skinned Arab in a pure white robe and a white silk headdress with a cluster of sapphires on the crown. They were in a large room with a domed ceiling covered with mosaic tiles; the windows were high and narrow, the furniture sparse and all in dark burnished wood, the huge ebony desk more like an altar or a throne than a functional work surface. There was a mosquelike quality to the room, like the chambers of some high priest of a strange but powerful order in a land removed from the rest of the world. 'Are you satisfied now?' continued the Mahdi from behind the desk. 'Or possibly disappointed to find that I am a man like you—no, not like you or anyone else—but still a man.'
'You're a killer, you son of a bitch! Evan lurched from the thick, straight-backed chair only to be grabbed by two flanking guards and thrown back. 'You murdered seventy-eight innocent people—men, women and children screaming as the building collapsed on them! You're filth!'
'It was the start of a war, Kendrick. All wars have casualties not restricted to combatants. I submit that I won that very important battle—you disappeared for four years and during those years I made extraordinary progress, progress I might not have made with you here. Or with that abominable Jew, Weingrass,
