'No, not true. I was protecting myself from four thugs, three men and a girl.'
Kendrick briefly closed his eyes. 'I remember that. A kid in cut-off khakis holding his arm.'
'He wasn't a kid,' objected Khalehla. 'He was a drug addict as stretched out as his girlfriend and they both would have killed me to pay their Arab suppliers for what they needed. I was following you, nothing more, nothing less. Information, that's my job.'
'For whom?'
'The people I work for.'
'How did you know about me?'
'That I won't answer.'
'Whom do you work for?'
'In the broad sense, an organization that seeks to find solutions for the multiple horrors of the Middle East.'
'Israeli?'
'No,' replied Khalehla calmly. 'My roots are Arab.'
'That doesn't tell me a damn thing but it sure scares me.'
'Why? Is it so impossible for an American to think we Arabs might want to find equitable solutions?'
'I've just come from the embassy in Masqat. What I saw there wasn't pretty—Arab pretty.'
'Nor to us. However, may I quote an American congressman who said on the floor of the House of Representatives that “a terrorist isn't born, he's made.”'
Astonished, Evan looked hard at the woman. 'That was the only comment I ever made for the Congressional Record. The only one.'
'You did so after a particularly vicious speech by a congressman from California who practically called for the wholesale slaughter of all Palestinians living in what he termed Eretz Israel.'
'He didn't know Eretz from Biarritz! He was a WASP grubber who thought he was losing the Jewish vote in Los Angeles. He told me that himself the day before. He mistook me for an ally thinking that I'd approve—goddamn it, he winked at me!'
'Do you still believe what you said?'
'Yes,' replied Kendrick hesitantly, as if questioning his own response. 'No one who's walked through the squalor of the refugee camps can think anything remotely normal can come out of them. But what I saw in Masqat went too far. Forget about the screaming and the wild chants, there was something ice cold, a methodical brutality that thrived on itself. Those animals were enjoying themselves.'
'The majority of those young animals never had a home. Their earliest memories are of wandering through the filth of the camps trying to find enough to eat, or clothes for their younger brothers and sisters. Only a pitiful few have any skills, even basic schooling. These things were not available to them. They were outcasts in their own land.'
'Tell that to the children of Auschwitz and Dacha!' said Evan in quiet, cold fury. 'These people are alive. They're part of the human race.'
'Checkmate, Mr. Kendrick. I have no answer, only shame.'
'I don't want your shame. I want to get out of here.'
'You're in no condition to continue what you were doing. Look at you. You're exhausted, and on top of that you've been severely damaged.'
The sheet across his waist, Kendrick supported himself on the edge of the bed. He spoke slowly. 'I had a gun, a knife and a watch among several other valuable items. I'd like them back, please.'
'I think we should discuss the situation—’
'There's nothing to discuss,' said the congressman. 'Absolutely nothing.'
'Suppose I were to tell you we've found Tony MacDonald?'
'Tony?'
'I work from Cairo. I wish I could say we were on to him months
