transport and the construction trades over here, or shutting down the piers in New York and New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Nothing's legitimized by strikes or collective bargaining—there's just terror and the threats of more terror provided by whipped-up fanatics. And everything stops. The people at the drafting boards and those in the field on surveying teams and in equipment compounds just want to get out as fast as they can.'
'And once they're out,' added Swann quickly, ‘those behind the terrorists move in and the terror stops. It just goes away. Christ, it sounds like a waterfront Mafia operation!'
'Arabic style,' said Kendrick. 'To use your words, it wouldn't be the first time.'
'You know that for a fact?'
'Yes. Our company was threatened a number of times, but to quote you again, we had a secret weapon. Emmanuel Weingrass.'
'Weingrass? What the hell could he do?'
'Lie with extraordinary conviction. One moment he was a reserve general in the Israeli Army who could call an air strike on any Arab group who harassed or replaced us, and the next, he was a high-ranking member of the Mossad who would send out death squads eliminating even those who warned us. Like many ageing men of genius, Manny was frequently eccentric and almost always theatrical. He enjoyed himself. Unfortunately, his various wives rarely enjoyed him for very long. At any rate, no one wanted to tangle with a crazy Israeli. The tactics were too familiar.'
'Are you suggesting we recruit him?' asked the deputy director.
'No. Apart from his age, he's winding up his life in Paris with the most beautiful women he can hire and certainly with the most expensive brandy he can find. He couldn't help… But there's something you can do.'
'What's that?'
'Listen to me.' Kendrick leaned forward. 'I've been thinking about this for the past eight hours and with every hour I'm more convinced it's a possible explanation. The problem is that there are so few facts—almost none, really—but a pattern's there, and it's consistent with things we heard five years ago.'
'What things? What pattern?'
'Only rumours to begin with, then came the threats and they were threats. No one was kidding.'
'Go on. I'm listening.'
'While defusing those threats in his own way, usually with prohibited whisky, Weingrass heard something that made too much sense to be dismissed as drunken babbling. He was told that a consortium was silently being formed—an industrial cartel, if you like. It was quietly gaining control of dozens of different companies with growing resources in personnel, technology and equipment. The objective was obvious then, and if the information's accurate, even more obvious now. They intend to take over the industrial development of Southwest Asia. As far as Weingrass could learn, this underground federation was based in Bahrain—nothing surprising there—but what came as a shocker and amused the hell out of Manny was the fact that among the unknown board of directors was a man who called himself the “Mahdi”—like the Muslim fanatic who threw the British out of Khartoum a hundred years ago.'
'The Mahdi? Khartoum?'
'Exactly. The symbol's obvious. Except this new Mahdi doesn't give a damn about religious Islam, much less its screaming fanatics. He's using them to drive the competition out and keep it out. He wants the contracts and the profits in Arab hands—specifically his hands.'
'Wait a minute.' Swann interrupted thoughtfully as he picked up his phone and touched a button on the console. 'This ties in with something that came from MI-6 in Masqat last night,' he continued quickly, looking at Kendrick. 'We couldn't follow it up because there wasn't anything to follow, no trail, but it sure as hell made wild reading… Get me Gerald Bryce, please… Hello, Gerry? Last night—actually around two o'clock this morning—we got a nothing-zero from the Brits in OHIO. I want you to find it and read it to me slowly because I'll be writing down every word.' The deputy covered the mouthpiece and spoke to his suddenly alert visitor. 'If anything you've said makes any sense at all, it may be the first concrete breakthrough we've had.'
'That's why I'm here, Mr. Swann, probably reeking of smoked
