reach us on the phone, that's all.'
'I forgot,' said the director of Special Projects quietly. 'You've been here before.'
'I've been here,' agreed Manny, without comment.
'Wait a minute!' exclaimed Payton. 'You said three were dead, but you're talking to me, you're all right.'
'The three were them, not us, Mr. CIA Incompetent.'
'What? . . .Jesus Christ
'He wasn't much help. Try Abraham.'
'Please be clearer, Mr. Weingrass.'
'I had to kill them. But the fourth's alive and under sedation. Get your experts out here before I kill him, too.'
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 29
The CIA station chief in the Bahamas, a short, deeply tanned man with broad features, manoeuvred quickly from his office at the embassy on Queen Street. An armed escort was sent by the Nassau police to the Cable Beach Hotel, on the shores of Bay Road, where four uniformed officers rapidly accompanied a tall man with light brown hair and a striking olive-skinned woman from their suite on the seventh floor to a waiting vehicle in the efficiently emptied drive outside the imposing marble lobby. The hotel's director of operations, an alert Scotsman named McLeod, had mapped out a route through the service corridors, where his most trusted security guards stood watch, to the brightly lit entrance fronted by two enormous fountains sending floodlit sprays up into the dark sky. McLeod's two assistants, an immense good-humoured man with a booming laugh and the improbable name of Vernal, accompanied by an attractive young hostess, courteously explained to those arriving and departing that the delays would be brief. They persuasively explained while the five-man motorcycle unit swept the dramatically shadowed grounds. The station chief had personalized everything; favours were done for him. He knew by name everyone there was to know in the Bahamas. And they knew him. In silence. Evan and Khalehla, shielded by the wall of police, climbed into the government vehicle, the CIA man in the front seat. Kendrick was beyond talking; Khalehla could only grip his hand, knowing only too well what he was experiencing. Clarity of thought eluded him; burning sorrow and a furious anger had replaced it. Tears had welled in his eyes over the deaths of Kashi and Sabri Hassan; he did not have to be told of the mutilations, he could easily, horribly imagine what they were. Yet those tears had been quickly, impulsively wiped away by a clenched fist. A reckoning was coming, that, too, was in his eyes, in the cores of his pupils. Fury.
'As you can understand, Congressman,' said the station chief, turning partially around in the seat beside the driver, 'I don't know what's going on but I can tell you that a plane from Holmstead Air Force Base in Florida is on its way to take you back to Washington. It should arrive about five or ten minutes after we get to the airport.'
'We know that,' said Khalehla pleasantly.
'It would have been here by now but they said there's rotten weather in Miami and several commercial flights are on the same route. That probably means they wanted to stock up the aircraft properly for you, sir—I mean the two of you, of course.'
'That's most kind of them,' said the field agent from Cairo, squeezing Evan's hand, conveying the fact that he did not have to speak.
'If there's anything you think you might have left behind at the hotel, we'll gladly take care of it—’
'There's nothing,' exclaimed Kendrick, whispering harshly.
'He means we've taken care of everything, thank you,' said Khalehla, pulling Evan's hand against her leg and grasping it even more firmly. 'This is obviously an emergency and the congressman has a great deal on his mind. May I assume we've been cleared through customs?'
'This parade is driving straight through the cargo gates,' replied the government man, glancing briefly, closely at Kendrick then turning away as if he had unwittingly invaded another's privacy. The rest of the trip was made in silence until the high steel gates of the cargo terminal swung open and the procession drove through over the tarmac to the end of the first runway.
