but not where contacts are concerned.'
'You must have assumed the operation involved the hostages.'
'Of course, we all did, and to tell you the truth I was torn. Your friendship with Ahmat and his wife was no secret to me, and I had to assume that others also knew. You see, I didn't want to submit your name to Les, but your past work with Projects called for it and your ties to the royal family demanded it. Also, I realized that if I left you out for personal reasons and you ever learned about it, you'd have my head.'
'I certainly would have.'
'I'll confess to a minor sin, however,' said Payton, smiling a sad smile. 'When it was all over I walked into Crawford's office and made it clear that I understood the rules, but I must know that you were all right. He looked up at me with those fish eyes of his and said you were back in Cairo. I think it bothered him even to tell me that… And now you tell me that the whole damned operation was blown open by one of us! A Four-Zero strategy can't be unsealed for years, often decades! There are records going back to World War Two that won't see the light of day until the middle of the next century, if then.'
'Who controls those records, MJ, those files?'
'They're carted off to oblivion—stored in warehouses around the country controlled by government custodians with armed guards and alarm systems so high-tech they reach instantly back to Washington, alerting us here, as well as the Departments of State and Defense and the White House strategy rooms. Of course for the past twenty years or so, with the proliferation of sophisticated computers, most are stored in data banks with access codes that have to be coordinated between a minimum of three intelligence services and the Oval Office. Where original documents are considered vital, they're sealed and packed off.' Payton shrugged, his palms upturned. 'Oblivion, my dear. It's all foolproof, theft proof.'
'It obviously isn't,' disagreed the field agent from Cairo.
'It is when those records reach the level of security controls,' countered MJ. 'So I think you'd better tell me everything you know and everything the congressman told you. Because if what you say is true, we've got a bastard somewhere between the decision to go maximum and the data banks.'
Adrienne Khalehla Rashad leaned back in the chair and began. She withheld nothing from her once and always 'Uncle Mitch', not even the sexual accident that had occurred in Bahrain. 'I can't say I'm sorry, professionally or otherwise, MJ. We were both stretched and scared and, frankly, he's a hell of a decent man—out of his depth, but kind of fine, I guess. I reconfirmed it this morning in Maryland.'
'In bed?’
'Good Lord, no. In what he said, what he's reaching for. Why he did what he did, why he even became a congressman and now wants out as I've told you. I'm sure he's got warts all over him, but he's also got a good anger.'
'I think I detect certain feelings in my “niece” that I've wanted to see for a long, long time.'
'Oh, they're there, I'd be a hypocrite to deny them, but I doubt that there's anything permanent. In a way, we're alike. I'm projecting, but I think we're both too consumed with what we have to do, as two separate people, and only then interested in what the other wants. Yet I like him, MJ, I really do like him. He makes me laugh, and not just at him but with him.'
'That's terribly important,' said Payton wistfully, his smile and his gentle frown even sadder than before. 'I've never found anyone who could genuinely make me laugh… not with her. Of course, it's a flaw in my own make-up. I'm too damned demanding, and worse off for it.'
'You have no flaws, or warts,' insisted Rashad. 'You're my Uncle Mitch and I won't hear of it.'
'Your father always made your mother laugh. I envied them at times, despite the problems they faced. He did make her laugh.'
'It was a defence mechanism. Mother thought he could say “divorce” three times and she'd have to split.'
'Rubbish. He adored her.' Then as deftly as if they had not strayed from the Masqat crisis, Payton returned to it. 'Why did Kendrick insist on anonymity in the first place? I know you've told me, but run it by me again, will you?'
'You sound suspicious and you shouldn't be. It's a perfectly logical explanation. He intended to go back and take up where he left off five—six years ago. He couldn't do that with the baggage of Oman around his neck. He can't do it now because everyone wants his head, from the Palestinian fanatics to
