contemptuously. 'To begin with, away from here. It'll be light soon, and if I know what I'm talking about, which I do, there'll be a dozen helicopters criss-crossing at low altitude looking for us. We can melt in the city, not here.'
'Then what do we do? Where do we go?'
Kendrick could not see clearly in the dim moonlight, but felt the intense, questioning stare levelled at him. He was being tested. 'We get word to the embassy. To your sister, Yateem, or the one named Ahbyahd. Stop the photographs and kill the ones involved.'
'How do we do that? Get word into the embassy? Did your people tell you that, Amal Bahrudi?'
Evan was prepared; it was the inevitable question. 'Frankly, they weren't sure where the pipeline was and they assumed if any of you had any brains it would change daily. I was to pass a note through the gates directed to your operations council to let me through—through the pipeline wherever it was at the moment.'
'Many such notes could be passed as a trap. Why would yours be accepted?'
Kendrick paused; when he answered his voice was low and calm and laced with meaning. 'Because it was signed by the Mahdi.'
Azra's eyes widened. He nodded, slowly and held up his hand. 'Who?' he asked.
'The envelope was sealed with wax and not to be broken. It was an insult I found hard to accept, but even I follow orders from those who pay the freight, if you know what I mean.'
'Those who give us the money to do what we do—’
'If there was a code signifying authenticity, it was for one or all of you on the council to know, not I.'
'Give me the note,' said Azra.
'Idiot!' yelled the congressman from Colorado's ninth district, exasperated. 'When I saw the police closing in on me, I tore it to shreds and scattered it through the Al Kabir! Would you have done otherwise?'
The Palestinian remained motionless. 'No, obviously not,' he replied. 'At any rate we won't need it. I'll get us into the embassy. The pipeline, as you call it, is well regulated both inside and out.'
'It's so well regulated that films are slipped out under the noses of your well-regulated guards. Send word in to your sister. Change them, every one of them, and start a search immediately for the camera. When it's found, kill the owner and anyone who seems to be a friend. Kill them all.'
'On such surface observation?' protested Azra. 'We risk wasting innocent lives, valuable fighters.'
'Let's not be hypocritical,' laughed Amal Bahrudi. 'We have no such hesitations with the enemy. We're not killing “valuable fighters”, we're killing innocent people quite properly to make the world listen, a world that's blind and deaf to our struggles, our very survival.'
'By your almighty Allah, now you're the one who's blind and deaf!' spat out Azra. 'You believe the Western press; it's not to be questioned! Of the eleven corpses, four were already dead including two of the women—one by her own hand for she was paranoid about rape, Arab rape; the other, a much stronger woman not unlike the marine who attacked Nassir, threw herself on a young imbecile whose only reaction was to fire his weapon. The two men were old and infirm and died of heart failure. It does not absolve us from causing innocent death, but no guns were raised against them. All this was explained by Zaya and no one believed us. They never will!'
'Not that it matters, but what about the others? Seven, I believe.'
'Condemned by our council and rightly so. Intelligence officers building networks against us throughout the Gulf and the Mediterranean; members of the infamous Consular Operations—even two Arabs—who sold their souls to sell us into oblivion, paid by the Zionists and their American puppets. They deserved death, for they would have seen us all die, but not before we were dishonoured, made caricatures of evil when there is no evil in us—only the desire to live in our own lands—’
'That's enough, poet,' broke in Kendrick, looking over at Yosef and the boy terrorist who longed for the arms of Allah. 'There's no time for your sermons; we have to get out of here.'
'To the embassy,' agreed Azra. 'Through the pipeline.'
