climate.'
'What are you talking about?' exclaimed the astounded Dickie. 'I meant the gun!'
'Well, yes, old chap. You're in ferrous metals and I'm in textiles.'
'Really, you leave me dumbfounded! We both see a twenty-stone bugger, who, fifteen minutes ago, was so squiffed we had to carry him upstairs, suddenly running around cold sober in the street, issuing orders to some bloke and brandishing a gun while he jumps into a madly driven car he obviously had signalled—and all you see are his clothes.'
'Well, actually, there's more to it than that, old boy. I saw the gun, of course, and the jack-rabbit Arab, and that car—obviously driven by a maniac—and the contrariness of it all was why the clothes struck me as odd, don't you see?'
'Not a ha'penny worth!'
'Perhaps “odd” is the wrong choice of word—’
'Try the right one, Jack.'
'All right, I'll try… That fat bugger may or may not have been squiffed but he was a dandy of the first water. Best featherweight worsted stripe, an Angelo shirt, the finest pure silk tie, and Benedictine shoes—leather from the veldt and sewn to order in Italy. He's dressed to kill, I thought to myself, and everything right for the climate.'
'So?' asked the exasperated Dickie.
'So out there in the street just now, he's in a jacket and trousers of quite ordinary quality, ill-fitting and far too heavy for this blasted weather, and certainly not the sort of outfit that would stand out in a crowd, much less appropriate for a dawn social or an Ascot breakfast. And while I'm at it, there isn't a textile firm in Manchester I'm not familiar with, and there's no Twillingame or Burlingame or any name remotely similar.'
'You don't say?'
'I do say.'
'That's a wicket, isn't it?'
'I also say we shouldn't take that plane this morning.'
'My God, why?'
'I think we should go over to our embassy and wake someone up.'
'What… ?’
'Dickie, suppose that bugger is dressed to kill?'
Ultra Maximum Secure
No Existing Intercepts
Proceed
The journal continued.
The latest report is troubling and insofar as my appliances haven't broken Langley's access codes, I don't even know whether data was withheld or not. The subject has made contact. The shadow speaks of a high-risk option that was 'inevitable'—inevitable!—but extremely dangerous.
What is he doing and how is he doing it? What are his methods and who are his contacts? I must have specifics! If he survives, I will need every detail, for it is the details that lend credence to any extraordinary action, and it is the action that will propel the subject into the conscience of the nation.
But will he survive or will he be yet another buried statistic in an unrevealed series of events? My appliances cannot tell me, they can only attest to his potential which means nothing if he's dead. Then all my work will have been for nothing.
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 8
The four terrorist prisoners were shackled, two sitting on the right side of the speeding, violently shaking police van, the other two opposite them on the left. As arranged, Kendrick sat with the young, wild-eyed fanatic whose harelip impeded his screeching pronouncements; Azra was across the way with the gruff, older
