concourse far behind the main terminal's taxi line where temporary taxi signs had been mounted on the pavement, each cab driven by a member of the Bahrainian secret police. None had been given any information, only a single order: Report the destination of each passenger.
Khalehla and the pilot said their brief goodbyes and both went their separate ways, he to the Flight Control Centre for his return-to-Masqat instructions, she to the designated area of the concourse where she would pick up the American and follow him. It would call for all the skill she had to stay out of sight while she followed Kendrick and MacDonald. Tony would spot her in an instant, and the obviously alert American might look twice and remember a dark, filthy street in the el Shari el Mish kwayis and a woman who held a gun in her hand. The fact that it had not been pointed at him but, instead, at four people in that street of garbage who had tried to rob her or worse, would not be readily believed by a man living on the edge of very real peril. Purpose and paranoia converged in the infinite reaches of a mind under severe stress. He was armed, and one exploding image could trigger a violent response. Khalehla did not fear for her life; eight years of training, including four years in the violent Middle East, had taught her to anticipate, to kill before she was killed. What saddened her was not only that this decent man should have to die for what he was doing but it was entirely possible that she could be his executioner. It was growing more possible by the minute.
She reached the area before the passengers from the Oman jet. The traffic on the Arrivals level was horrendous: cars with tinted windows; taxis; ordinary, nondescript vehicles; pickup trucks of all descriptions. The noise and the fumes were overpowering, the cacophony deafening under the low concrete ceiling. Khalehla found a shadowed enclave between two cargo bins and waited.
The first to emerge was the terrorist called Azra, accompanied by a uniformed official. The latter flagged a taxi, which sped up to the coarsely-dressed young man at the curb. He stepped inside and read from a piece of paper in his hand, giving the driver instructions.
Several minutes later the strange American and the unbelievable Anthony MacDonald walked out on the pavement.
Something was wrong! thought Khalehla instantly, without really thinking, merely observing. Tony was behaving like his once and former Cairo self! There was agitation in every movement of his huge body, wasted energy craving attention, his eyes bulging, his constantly changing facial expressions those of a drunk pleading for respect—all in counterpoint to the superb control necessary to a deep cover operator with a network of informers in a world-class volatile situation. It was all wrong!
And then it happened! As the taxi sped up to the curb, MacDonald suddenly rammed his enormous torso against the American, sending him out into the covered street in front of the rushing cab. Kendrick bounced off the bonnet, his body flung in mid-air into the racing traffic of the tunnel-like concourse. Brakes screeched, whistles blew, and the congressman from the ninth district of Colorado was impaled, curved around the shattered windscreen of a small Japanese car. Good God, he's dead! thought Khalehla, running out on the pavement. And then he moved—both arms moved as the American tried to push himself up, collapsing as he did so.
Khalehla raced to the car, surging through a knot of police and Bahrain's secret police who had converged on the scene, rupturing one immovable man's spleen with a vicious, accurate fist. She threw her body over the spastically moving Kendrick while removing the gun from her flight jacket. She spoke to the nearest uniformed man, the weapon angled at his head.
'My name is Khalehla and that's all you have to know. This man is my property and he goes with me. Pass the word and get us out of here or I'll kill you.'
The figure raced into the sterile room so agitated that he slammed the door behind him, nearly tripping in the darkness on his way to his equipment. Hands trembling, he brought his appliance to life.
Ultra Maximum Secure
No Existing Intercepts
Proceed
Something's happened! Breakthrough or breakdown, the hunter or the hunted. The last report speaks of Bahrain but without specifics, only that the subject was in a state of extreme anxiety demanding to be flown there immediately. Of course that assumes he either escaped from the embassy, was taken out by subterfuge or never went inside at all. But why Bahrain? Everything is too incomplete, as if the subject's shadow was obscuring events for his own reasons—a not unlikely possibility considering everything that's happened during the past few years and the subpoena powers of Congress and various special prosecutors.
