The waiter named Garcia hung up the pay phone, coughed once and went over to the dark-suited, red-haired stranger. He leaned down and said something close to the well-dressed customer's face. The man stared coldly at his unexpected messenger; the waiter shrugged and crossed back to the bar. The man slowly, unobtrusively, put several bills on the table, got up, and walked out by the nearby entrance.
'Now,' whispered Gonzalez-Gonzalez, rising and gesturing for Manny to follow him. Ten seconds later they were in the owner's dishevelled office. 'The Congressman will call back in about a minute,' said Gee-Gee, indicating the chair behind a desk that had seen better days decades before.
'You're sure it was Kendrick?' asked Weingrass.
'Garcia's cough told me yes.'
'What did he say to the guy at the table?'
'That he believed the message on the telephone must be for him since no other customer fitted his description.'
'What was the message?'
'Quite simple, amigo. It was important for him to contact his people outside.'
'Just that?'
'He left, didn't he? That tells us something, doesn't it?'
'Like what?'
'Una, he has people to reach, no? Dos, they are either outside this grand establishment or he can talk to them by other means of communication, namely, a fancy telephone in an automobile, yes? Tres, he did not come in here in his also-fancy suit to have a Tex-Mex beer that practically chokes him—as my fine sparkling wine chokes you, no? Cuatro, he is no doubt federal.'
'Government?' asked Manny astonished.
'Personally, of course, I have never been involved with illegal immigrants crossing the borders from my beloved country to the south, but the stories reach even such innocents as myself… We know what to look for, my friend. Comprende, hermano?'
'I always said,' said Weingrass, sitting behind the desk, 'find the classiest non-class joints in town and you can learn more about life than in all the sewers of Paris.'
'Paris, France, means a great deal to you, doesn't it, Manny?'
'It's fading, amigo. I'm not sure why, but it's fading. Something's happening here with my boy and I can't understand it. But it's important.'
'He means much to you also, yes?'
'He is my son.' The telephone rang, and Weingrass yanked it up to his ear as Gonzalez-Gonzalez went out of the door. 'Airhead, is that you?'
'What have you got out there, Manny?' asked Kendrick over the line from the sterile house on Maryland's Eastern Shore. 'A Mossad unit covering you?'
'Far more effective,' answered the old architect from the Bronx. 'There are no accountants, no CPAs counting the shekels over an egg cream. Now, you. What the hell happened?'
'I don't know, I swear I don't know!' Evan recounted his day in detail, from Sabri Hassan's startling news about the Oman revelations while he was in his pool to his hiding out in a cheap motel in Virginia; from his confrontation with Frank Swann of the State Department to his arrival at the White House under escort; from his hostile meeting with the White House chief of staff to his eventual presentation to the President of the United States, who proceeded to louse up everything by scheduling an award ceremony in the Blue Room next Tuesday—with the Marine Band. Finally, to the fact that the woman named Khalehla, who had first saved his life in Bahrain, was in reality a case officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and was being flown over for him to question.
'From what you've told me, she had nothing to do with exposing you.'
'Why not?'
'Because you believed her when she said she was an Arab filled with shame, you told me that. In some ways, Airhead, I know you better than you know yourself. You are not easily fooled about such matters. It's what made you so good with the Kendrick Group… For this woman to expose you would only add to her shame and
