command.
'All right,' mumbled Kendrick, bewildered. 'There's a side entrance back there.'
'I see it,' said Adrienne-Khalehla, moving towards the door at the rear of the room. They walked outside on to a flagstone patio that joined a manicured lawn and a path leading down to the dock. If there had been boats lashed to the pilings or secured to the empty moorings bouncing on the water beyond, they had been removed for the autumn winds. 'Keep up your harangue, Congressman,' continued the undercover case officer for the CIA. 'You shouldn't be deprived of that.'
'Just hold it, Miss Rashad or whatever the hell your name is!' Evan stopped on the white concrete path halfway to the shoreline. 'If you think what I'm talking about amounts to a “harangue”, you're sadly mistaken—'
'For God's sake, keep walking! You'll get all the conversation you want, more than you want, you damn fool.' The bay shore to the right of the dock was a mixture of dark sand ands tones so common to the Chesapeake; to the left was the boathouse, also common. What was not common, however, except to the larger estates, was a profusion of tall trees some fifty yards both north and south of the dock and the boat-house. They provided a measure of privacy, more in appearance than in reality, but the sight of them had appealed to the field agent from Cairo. She headed to the right, over the sand and the stones close to the gently lapping waves. They passed the border of trees and kept going until they reached a large rock that rose out of the ground by the water's edge. Above, the immense house could not be seen. 'This'll do,' said Adrienne Rashad.
'Do?' exclaimed Kendrick. 'What was that little exercise all afeowf? And while we're at it let's get a couple of things straight. I appreciate the fact that you probably saved my life—probably, not by any manner of means provable—but I don't take orders from you, and in my considered opinion I'm not a damn fool, and regardless of my amateur status you're answering to me, I'm not answering to you! Check and double check, lady?'
'Are you finished?'
'I haven't even begun.'
'Then before you do, let me address the specifics you've just raised. That little exercise was to get us out of there. I presume you know it's a safe house.'
'Certainly.'
'And that anything you say in every room, including the toilet and the shower, is recorded.'
'Well, I knew the telephone was—’
'Thank you, Mr. Amateur.'
'I don't have a damn thing to hide—'
'Keep your voice down. Talk into the water as I am.'
'What? Why?'
'Electronic voice surveillance. The trees will distort sound because there's no direct visual beam—’
'What?'
'Lasers have improved the technology—’
'What?'
'Shut up! Whisper.'
'I repeat, I haven't got a damn thing to hide. Maybe you do, but I don't!'
'Really?' asked Rashad, leaning against the huge rock and talking down into the small, slowly encroaching waves. 'You want to involve Ahmat?'
'I've mentioned him. To the President. He should know how much help that kid was—'
'Oh, Ahmat will appreciate that. And his personal doctor? And his two cousins who helped you and protected you? And El-Baz, and the pilot who flew you to Bahrain?… They could all be killed.'
'Apart from Ahmat, I never mentioned anyone specifically—'
'Names are irrelevant. Functions aren't.'
'For Christ's sake, it was the President of the United States!'
