be otherwise? A wave of revulsion will spread over the so-called democracies—the fumbling warlike giant has done it again without regard for the lives of its own.'
'You—' Evan leaped up, grabbing the wrist that held the knife, wrenching his head away from the hand that gripped his hair. He was struck in the back of the neck, pummelled again to the floor.
'The executions have been moved forward,' continued the Mahdi. 'They will resume tomorrow morning—provoked by your insidious activities, which will be made public. Chaos and bloodshed will result because of the rash, contemptible Americans, until a solution is found, our solution—my solution. But none of this will concern you, Congressman. You will have vanished from the face of the earth, thanks no doubt to your terribly embarrassed government, which is not above punishing traceable failure while issuing feverish denials. There'll be no corpus delicti, no inkling of your whereabouts whatsoever. Tomorrow, with first light, you'll be flown out to sea, a bleeding, skinned pig strapped to your naked body, and dropped into the shark-infested shoals of Qatar.'
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 15
'There's nothing here!' shouted Weingrass, standing and poring over the papers on the table in the dining room of a Bahrainian official he had known since the Kendrick Group had built an island country club on the archipelago years before. 'After all I did for you, Hassan, all the little and not so little fees I passed your way, this is what you give me?'
'More is coming, Emmanuel,' replied the nervous Arab, nervous because Weingrass's words were heard by Ben-Ami and the four commandos sitting twenty feet away in the Westernized living room on the outskirts of the city. A doctor had been summoned to stitch and bandage Yaakov, who refused to lie down; instead, he sat up in an armchair. The man named Hassan glanced at him, mentioning, if only to change the subject of his past with the old architect: 'The boy doesn't look well, Manny.'
'He gets in scraps, what can I tell you? Someone tried to steal his roller skates. What's coming and when? These are companies, and the products or services they sell. I have to see names, people!'
'That's what's coming. It's not easy to persuade the Minister of Industrial Regulations to leave his house at two o'clock in the morning and go down to his office to commit an illegal act.'
'Industrial and regulations in Bahrain are mutually exclusive words.'
'Those are secret papers!'
'A Bahrainian imperative.'
'That's not true, Manny!'
'Oh, shut up and get me a whisky.'
'You're incorrigible, my old friend.'
'Tell me about it.' The voice of code Grey drifted out from the living room. He had returned from the telephone which he had been using with permission but without being questioned every fifteen minutes.
'May I get you something, gentlemen?' asked Hassan, walking through the dining room arch.
'The cardamom coffee is more than sufficient,' answered the older Ben-Ami. 'It's also delicious.'
'There are spirits, if you wish—as, of course, you've just gathered from Mr. Weingrass. This is a religious house but we do not impose our beliefs on others.'
'Would you put that in writing, sir?' said code Black, chuckling. ‘I’ll deliver it to my wife and tell her you're a mullah. I have to go across the city to get bacon with my eggs--'
'Thank you, but no spirits, Mr. Hassan,' added Grey, slapping Black's knee, 'With luck we'll have work to do tonight.'
'With greater luck my hands will not be cut off,' said the Arab quietly, heading towards the kitchen. He stopped, interrupted by the sound of the front door chimes. The high-placed courier had arrived.
Forty-eight minutes later, with computer print-outs scattered
