Authors: Robert Ludlum
“I can see that you’re convinced,” replied the young sultan skeptically.
“So are others here in Masqat. They just don’t understand. They can’t find a pattern, or an explanation, but they’re so frightened they refused to meet with me.
Me
, an old friend going back years, a man they worked with and trusted.”
“Terror breeds anxiety. What would you expect? Also, there’s something else. You’re an American disguised as an Arab. That in itself has to frighten them.”
“They didn’t know what I was wearing or what I looked like. I was a voice over the telephone.”
“An
American
voice. Even more frightening.”
“A Western boy?”
“There are many Westerners here. But the United States government, understandably, has ordered all Americans out, and prohibited all incoming American commercial flights. Your friends ask themselves how you got here. And why. With lunatics roaming the streets, perhaps they, also understandably, don’t care to involve themselves in the embassy crisis.”
“They don’t. Because children have been killed—the children of men who
did
want to involve themselves.”
Ahmat stood rigidly in place, his dark eyes bewildered, angry again. “There’s been crime, yes, and the police do what they can, but I’ve heard nothing about this—about children being killed.”
“It’s true. A daughter was raped, her face disfigured; a son was murdered, his throat slit.”
“God
damn
you, if you’re lying! I may be helpless where the embassy is concerned but not
outside
! Who were they? Give me
names
!”
“None were given to me, not the real ones. I wasn’t to be told.”
“But Mustapha had to do the telling. There was no one else.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll tell
me
, you can bet your ass on that!”
“Then you see now,
don’t
you?” Kendrick was close to pleading. “The pattern, I mean. It’s there, Ahmat. An underground network
is
being formed. This Mahdi and his people are using terrorists to drive out all current and potential competition. They want total control; they want all the money funneled to
them
.”
The young sultan delayed his reply, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Evan, I can’t accept that because they wouldn’t dare try it.”
“Why not?”
“Because the computers would pick up a pattern of payments
to a central hub of the network, that’s why. How do you think Cornfeld and Vesco got caught? Somewhere there has to be linkage, a convergence.”
“You’re way ahead of me.”
“Because you’re way behind in computer analyses,” retorted Ahmat. “You can have a hundred thousand dispersals for twenty thousand separate projects, and where before it would take months, even years, to find the hidden linkages between, say, five hundred corporations, dummy and otherwise, those disks can do it in a couple of hours.”
“Very enlightening,” said Kendrick, “but you’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“Finding those linkages would take place after the fact, after all those ‘dispersals’ were made. By then the network’s in place, and the fox has got one hell of a lot of chickens. If you’ll excuse a couple of mixed metaphors, not too many people will be interested in setting traps or sending out hounds under the circumstances. Who could care? The trains are running on time and no one’s blowing them up. Of course, there’s also a new kind of government around now that has its own set of rules, and if you and your ministers don’t happen to like them, you might just be replaced. But again, who cares? The sun comes up every morning and people have jobs to go to.”
“You make it sound almost attractive.”
“Oh, it always is in the beginning. Mussolini did get those damned trains on schedule, and the Third Reich certainly revitalized industry.”
“I see your point, except you’re saying that it’s the reverse here. An industrial monopoly could move into a void and take over my government because it represents stability and growth.”
“Two points for the sultan,” agreed Evan. “He gets another jewel for his harem.”
“Tell my wife about it. She’s a Presbyterian from New Bedford, Massachusetts.”
“How did you get away with that?”
“My father died and she’s got a hell of a sense of humor.”
“Again, I can’t follow you.”
“Some other time. Let’s suppose you’re right, and this is a shakedown cruise to see if their tactics can take the weather. Washington wants us to keep talking while you people come up with a plan that obviously combines some kind of penetration followed by a Delta Force. But let’s face it, America and its allies
are hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough because any strategy that depends on force could be disastrous. They’ve called in every nut leader in the Middle East and short of making Arafat mayor of New York City they’ll deal with anyone, holier-than-thou statements notwithstanding. What’s
your
idea?”
“The same as what you say those computers of yours could do in a couple of years from now when it’d be too late. Trace the source of what’s being sent into the embassy. Not food or medical supplies, but ammunition and weapons … and somewhere among those items the instructions that someone’s sending inside. In other words, find this manipulator who calls himself the Mahdi and rip him out.”
The T-shirted sultan looked at Evan in the flickering light. “You’re aware that much of the Western press have speculated that I, myself, might be behind this. That I somehow resent the Western influence spreading throughout the country. ‘Otherwise,’ they say, ‘why doesn’t he do something?’ ”
“I’m aware of it, but like the State Department, I think it’s nonsense. No one with half a brain gives any credence to those speculations.”
“Your State Department,” said Ahmat reflectively, his eyes still on Kendrick. “You know, they came to me in 1979, when Teheran blew up. I was a student then, and I don’t know what those two guys expected to find, but whatever it was, it wasn’t me. Probably some Bedouin in a long flowing aba, sitting cross-legged and smoking a hashish water pipe. Maybe if I’d dressed the part, they would have taken me seriously.”
“You’ve lost me again.”
“Oh, sorry. You see, once they realized that neither my father nor the family could do anything, that we had no real connections with the fundamentalist movements, they were exasperated. One of them almost begged me, saying that I appeared to be a reasonable
Arab
—meaning that my English was fluent, if tainted by early British schooling—and what would
I
do if I were running things in Washington. What they meant here was what advice would I offer, if my advice was sought.…
God-damnit
, I was
right
!”
“What did you tell them?”
“I remember exactly. I said … ‘What you should have done in the beginning. It could be too late now, but you might still pull it off.’ I told them to put together the most efficient insurgency force they could mount and send it
not
to Teheran but to
Qum
, Khomeini’s backwoods headquarters in the north. Send
ex-SAVAK agents in first; those bastards would figure out a way to do it if the firepower and compensation were guaranteed. ‘Take Khomeini in Qum,’ I told them. ‘Take the illiterate mullahs around him and get them all out alive, then parade them on world television.’ He’d be the ultimate bargaining chip, and those hairy fanatics that are his court would serve to point up how ridiculous they
all
are. A deal could have been made.”
Evan studied the angry young man. “It might have worked,” he said softly, “but what if Khomeini had decided to stand fast as a martyr?”
“He wouldn’t have, believe me. He would have settled; there would have been a compromise, offered by others, of course, but designed by him. He has no desire to go so quickly to that heaven he extols, or to opt for that martyrdom he uses to send twelve-year-old kids into minefields.”
“Why are you so sure?” asked Kendrick, himself unsure.
“I met that half-wit in Paris—that’s not to justify Pahlevi or his SAVAK or his plundering relatives, I couldn’t do that—but Khomeini’s a senile zealot who wants to believe in his own immortality and will do anything to further it. I heard him tell a group of fawning imbeciles that instead of two or three, he had twenty, perhaps thirty, even forty sons. ‘I have spread my seed and I will continue to spread it,’ he claimed. ‘It is Allah’s will that my seed reach far and wide.’
Bullshit!
He’s a dribbling, dirty old man and a classic case for a funny farm. Can you imagine? Populating this sick world with little Ayatollahs? I told your people that once they had him, to catch him on videotape with his guard down, sermonizing to his hick high priests—oneway mirror stuff, that kind of thing. His holy persona would have collapsed in a global wave of laughter.”
“You’re drawing some kind of parallel between Khomeini and this Mahdi I’ve described, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, I guess so, if your Mahdi exists, which I doubt. But if you’re right and he does exist, he’s coming from the opposite pole, a very practical, nonreligious pole. Still, anybody who feels he has to spread the specter of the Mahdi in these times has a few dangerous screws loose.… I’m still not convinced, Evan, but you’re persuasive, and I’ll do everything I can to help you, help all of us. But it’s got to be from a distance, an untraceable distance. I’ll give you a telephone number to call; it’s buried—nonexistent, in fact—and only two other people have it. You’ll be able to reach me, but
only
me. You see,
Shaikh
Kendrick, I can’t afford to know you.”
“I’m very popular. Washington doesn’t want to know me, either.”
“Of course not. Neither of us wants the blood of American hostages on our hands.”
“I’ll need papers for myself and probably lists of air and sea shippers from areas I’ll pinpoint.”
“Spoken, nothing written down, except for the papers. A name and an address will be delivered to you; pick up the papers from that man.”
“Thank you. Incidentally, the State Department said the same thing. Nothing they gave me could be written down.”
“For the same reasons.”
“Don’t worry about it. Everything coincides with what I’ve got in mind. You see, Ahmat, I don’t want to know you either.”
“Really?”
“That’s the deal I’ve cut with State. I’m a nonperson in their books and I want to be the same in yours.”
The young sultan frowned pensively, his eyes locked with Evan’s. “I accept what you say but I can’t pretend to understand. You lose your life, that’s one thing, but if you have any measure of success, that’s another. Why? I’m told you’re a politician now. A congressman.”
“Because I’m getting out of politics and coming back here, Ahmat. I’m picking up the pieces and going back to work where I worked best, but I don’t want any excess baggage with me that might make me a target. Or anyone with me a target.”
“All right, I’ll accept that, gratefully on both counts. My father claimed that you and your people were the best. I remember, he once said to me, ‘Those retarded camels never have a cost overrun.’ He meant it kindly, of course.”
“And, of course, we usually got the next project, so we weren’t so retarded, were we? Our idea was to work on reasonable margins, and we were pretty good at controlling costs.…
Ahmat
, we have only four days left before the executions start again. I had to know that if I needed help I could go to you, and now I do know it. I accept your conditions and you accept mine. Now, please, I haven’t an hour to waste. What’s the number where I can reach you?”
“It can’t be written down.”
“Understood.”
The sultan gave Kendrick the number. Instead of the usual Masqat prefix of 745, it was 555, followed by three zeros and a fourth five. “Can you remember that?”
“It’s not difficult,” answered Kendrick. “Is it routed through a palace switchboard?”
“No. It’s a direct line to two telephones, both locked in steel drawers, one in my office, the other in the bedroom. Instead of ringing, small red lights flash on; in the office the light is built into the right rear leg of my desk, and in the bedroom it’s recessed in the bedside table. Both phones become answering machines after the tenth ring.”
“The tenth?”
“To give me the time to get rid of people and talk privately. When I travel outside the palace, I carry a beeper that tells me when that phone has been called. At an appropriate time I use the remote and hear the message—over a scrambler, of course.”
“You mentioned that only two other people had the number. Should I know who they are or isn’t it any of my business?”
“It doesn’t matter,” replied Ahmat, his dark brown eyes riveted on the American. “One is my minister of security, and the other is my wife.”
“Thanks for that kind of trust.”
His gaze still rigid on Kendrick, the young sultan continued. “A terrible thing happened to you here in our part of the world, Evan. So many dead, so many close friends, a horrible senseless tragedy, far more so for the greed that was behind it. I must ask you. Has this madness in Masqat dredged up such painful memories that you delude yourself, reaching for implausible theories if only to strike out at phantoms?”
“No phantoms, Ahmat. I hope to prove that to you.”
“Perhaps you will—if you live.”
“I’ll tell you what I told the State Department. I have no intention of mounting a one-man assault on the embassy.”
“If you did something like that, you could be considered enough of a lunatic to be spared. Lunacy recognizes its own.”
“Now you’re the one being implausible.”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed the sultan of Oman, his eyes still leveled at the congressman from Colorado. “Have you considered what might happen
not
if you’re discovered and taken by the terrorists—you wouldn’t live long enough to speculate—but if the very people you say you wanted to meet with actually confronted you and demanded to know your purpose here? What would you tell them?”
“Essentially the truth—as close to it as possible. I’m acting on my own, as a private citizen, with no connection to my government, which can be substantiated. I made a great deal of money
over here and I’m coming back. If I can help in any way, it’s in my own best interests.”