As the State Department's Swann so unequivocally confirmed, no one in the Washington intelligence community was aware of Emmanual Weingrass. They had no idea that 'the old Arab' who had flown back from Bahrain with Evan Kendrick was Weingrass. In Swann's words, his 'thank you' to Evan Kendrick for the congressman's efforts in Oman was to get Weingrass secretly out of Bahrain and with equal secrecy into the United States by using a disguise and a cover. The man and the cover had bureaucratically disappeared; Weingrass was virtually a 'nonperson'. Also, Swann's deception was mandatory because of Weingrass's Mossad connection, a deception thoroughly understood by Kendrick. In point of fact, the congressman himself had taken extreme measures to conceal the presence and the identity of his elderly friend. Milos had learned that the old man had been entered into the hospital under the name of Manfred Weinstein, and put in a room in a private wing with its own secluded entrance, and that upon release he had been flown to Colorado in a private jet to Mesa Verde.
Everything was private; Weingrass's name was never recorded anywhere. And during the months of his convalescence the irascible architect only infrequently left the house and never for places where the congressman was known. Damn! thought Varak. Except for Kendrick's close personal circle that excluded everyone but a trusted secretary, her husband, an Arab couple in Virginia and three overpaid nurses whose generous salaries included total confidentiality, Emmanuel Weingrass did not exist!
Varak walked back to the console table, disengaged the Record button, rewound the tape and found the words he wanted to hear again.
Then I can assume that no one in Washington intelligence circles knows that Weingrass was involved in Oman?
Absolutely. Forget Masqat, he's a nonperson. He's just not among the living over here.
Dennison didn't even know who he was—
Of course not.
He's being followed, Frank. Out in Colorado, he's under someone's surveillance.
Not ours.
'Not ours…’ Whose?
That question was what alarmed Varak. The only people who knew that there was an Emmanuel Weingrass, who had been told how much that old man meant to Evan Kendrick, were the five members of Inver Brass. Could one of them—?
Milos did not want to think any more. At the moment it was too painful for him.
Adrienne Rashad was snapped awake by the sudden turbulence encountered by the military aircraft. She looked across the aisle in the dimly lit cabin with its less-than-first-class accommodation. The attache from the embassy in Cairo was obviously upset—afraid, to be precise. Yet the man was experienced enough with such transport to bring along a comforting friend, specifically an outsized leather-bound flask which he literally ripped out of his briefcase and drank from until he was aware that his 'cargo' was looking at him. Sheepishly he held up the flask towards her. She shook her head and spoke over the sound of the jet engines. 'Just potholes,' she said.
'Hey, pals!' cried the voice of the pilot over the intercom. 'Sorry about the potholes but I'm afraid this weather's unavoidable for about another thirty minutes or so. We have to stick to our channel and away from commercial routes. You should have flown the friendly skies, buddies. Hang on!'
The attache drank once again from the flask, this time longer and more fully than before. Adrienne turned away, the Arab in her telling her not to observe a man's fear, the Western woman in her makeup saying that as an experienced military flier she should allay her companion's fear. The synthesis in her won the argument; she smiled reassuringly at the attache and returned to her thoughts that had been broken off by sleep.
Why had she been so peremptorily ordered back to Washington? If there were new instructions so delicate that they could not be put on scramblers, why hadn't Mitchell Payton called her with at least a clue? It wasn't like 'Uncle Mitch' to permit any interference with her work unless he told her something about it. Even with the Oman mess last year, and if ever there was a priority situation that was it, Mitch had sent sealed instructions to her by diplomatic courier telling her without explanation to co-operate with the State Department's Consular Operations no matter how offended she might be. She had, and it had offended her, indeed. Now out of the blue she had been ordered back to the States, virtually incommunicado, without a single word from Mitchell Payton.
Congressman Evan Kendrick. For the past eighteen hours his name had rolled across the world like the sound of approaching
