'What?'
Fortunately the telephone rang, preventing Kendrick from having to repeat his statement. Their instructions had arrived.
I'm the man you never met, never spoke to,' said Evan into the pay phone at Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia. 'I'm heading out to the white water and the mountains where I've been for the past five days. Is that understood?'
'Understood,' answered Frank Swann, deputy director of the State Department's Consular Operations. 'I won't even try to thank you.'
'Don't.'
'I can't. I don't even know your name.'
Ultra Maximum Secure
No Existing Intercepts
Proceed
The figure sat hunched over the keyboard, his eyes alive, his mind alert, though his body was racked with exhaustion. He kept breathing deeply as if each breath would keep his brain functioning. He had not slept for nearly forty-eight hours, waiting for developments out of Bahrain. There had been a blackout, a suspension of communications… silence. The small circle of need-to-know personnel at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency may now themselves be breathing deeply, he considered, but not before. Instead, they had been holding their collective breath. Bahrain represented the irreversible, hard edge of finality, the ending unclear. Not any longer. It was over, the subject airborne. He had won. The figure proceeded to type.
Our man has done it. My appliances are ecstatic, for although they refused to commit themselves, they indicated that he could succeed. In their inanimate way they saw my vision.
The subject arrived here this morning under deep cover thinking that everything is finished, that his life will return to its abnormal normalcy, but he is wrong. Everything is in place, the record written. The means must be found and they will be found. Lightning will strike and he will be the bolt that changes a nation. For him it is only the beginning.
Book Two
Ultra Maximum Secure No Existing Intercepts Proceed
The means have been found! As in the ancient Vedic scriptures, a god of fire has arrived as a messenger to the people. He has made himself known to me and I to him. The Oman file is now completed. Everything! And I have obtained everything through access and penetration and I have given everything to him. He's a remarkable man, as I realistically believe I am, and he has a dedication that matches my own.
With the file completed and entered in its entirety, this journal is finished. Another is about to begin.
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 16
One year later. Sunday, 22 August 8:30 pm
One by one, like quiet, graceful chariots, the four limousines had deposited their owners in front of the marble steps leading to the pillared entrance of the estate on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. The arrivals were erratically spaced so that no sense of urgency was conveyed to suddenly curious onlookers, either on the highway or through the streets of the wealthy village in Maryland's Eastern Shore. It was merely another subdued social gathering of the immensely rich, a common sight in this enclave of financial power brokers. A prosperous local banker might glance out of his window and see the glistening cars roll by and wish he were privileged to hear the men talk over their brandy or billiards, but that was the extent of his ruminations.
The immensely rich were generous to their suburban environs and the townspeople were richer for them. Crumbs from their tables provided frequent bonuses: there were the armies of domestic and gardening help whose relatives swelled the payrolls with never a complaint from the owners so long as the estates were shipshape for their return from London, Paris or Gstaad. And for those in the professions, there was the occasional stock market tip over a friendly drink at the commercially quaint tavern in the centre of the town. The bankers, the merchants and the perpetually awed residents were fond of their 'lairds'; they guarded the privacy of these distinguished men and women with quiet firmness. And if
