The Icarus Agenda

by Robert Ludlum

  “He damn well should,” exclaimed Margaret Lowell.

  “I think the European alliance would fall apart without him,” offered Winters.

  “There wouldn’t be an alliance without him,” agreed Mandel, anger on his normally passive face. “He’s a beacon of rationality in a sea of belching Neanderthals.”

  “If I may, sir? Could your use of the word ‘beacon’ be construed as a symbol?”

  “That’s logical,” answered Gideon Logan. “Our Secretary of State is by all means a symbol of intelligent moderation. The nation, too, respects him.”

  “He intends to resign,” said Varak simply.

  “What?” Sundstrom sat forward. “His loyalty to Jennings wouldn’t permit it.”

  “His sense of integrity shouldn’t permit him to stay,” said Winters with finality.

  “Out of loyalty, however,” explained Varak, “he’s agreed to attend the Middle East NATO conference at the UN mission on Cyprus in three weeks. It’s both a show of unity and a way of giving the President’s men time to find a replacement who will be acceptable to the Congress. Then he leaves for ‘pressing personal reasons,’ the main one being his frustration with the National Security Council, which continues to undercut him.”

  “Has he explained that to the President?” asked Lowell.

  “According to my source, he has not,” replied Varak. “As Mr. Mandel has pointed out, he’s a rational man. He understands that it’s easier and far better for the country to replace one person than an entire council of presidential advisers.”

  “Tragic,” said Winters, “yet inevitable, I imagine. But how does the Secretary of State relate to Evan Kendrick? I fail to see the connection.”

  “It’s in the symbol itself,” said Eric Sundstrom. “He’s got to understand its importance. Am I right, Milos?”

  “Yes, sir. If Kendrick’s convinced that it’s crucial for the country to have a strong vice president who’s perceived by our allies and enemies alike as a voice of reason within an imperial presidency—where the benign emperor frequently has no clothes—and that the world will breathe easier for it, then, in my judgment, he’ll again make the difficult choice and be available.”

  “From all we’ve learned, I suppose he would,” agreed Gideon Logan. “But who the hell is going to convince him of that?”

  “The only man he’ll listen to,” said Milos Varak, wondering if he was about to sign a death warrant. “Emmanuel Weingrass.”

  Ann Mulcahy O’Reilly was a Washington secretary not easily disturbed. Over the years since she and Paddy moved down from Boston, she had worked for the bright and the unbright, the would-be good and the would-be thieves; nothing much surprised her anymore. But then she had never worked for anyone like Congressman Evan Kendrick. He was the all-time reluctant resident of Washington, its most persistently unwilling politician, and a perversely demurring hero. He had more ways to elude the ineluctable than a cat with nine lives to the cube, and he could vanish with the agility of the Invisible Man. Yet his proclivity for disappearing notwithstanding, the Congressman always left open lines of communication; he would either call in on a fairly regular basis or leave a number where he could be reached. However, for the past two days there had been no word from Kendrick and no number at which he could be found. Those two facts by themselves would not normally have alarmed Mrs. O’Reilly, but two others did: throughout the day—since nine-twenty that morning—neither the house in Virginia nor the home in Colorado could be reached by telephone. In both cases the operators in Virginia and Colorado reported disruptions of service, and that status was still unchanged at nearly seven o’clock in the evening. That disturbed Annie O’Reilly. So quite logically she picked up the phone and dialed her husband at police headquarters.

  “O’Reilly,” said the gruff voice. “Detective squad.”

  “Paddy, it’s me.”

  “Hi, tiger. Do I get beef stew?”

  “I’m still at the office.”

  “Good. I’ve got to talk to Evan. Manny called me a couple of days ago about some cockamamie license plates—”

  “That’s the point,” interrupted Mrs. O’Reilly. “I want to talk to him, too, but it seems I can’t.” Annie told her husband about the strange coincidence of both the Congressman’s phones in Virginia and Colorado being out of order simultaneously and that he had neither checked in with her for the past two days nor left an alternate number where she could reach him. “And that’s not like him, Paddy.”

  “Call Congressional Security,” said the detective firmly.

  “In a pig’s ass I will. You whisper that lad’s name to Security all the bells go off, and you know what he thinks about those bells. He’d have my head in a basket if there’s even a halfway decent explanation.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Can you take a quiet look-see over in Fairfax, darlin’?”

  “Sure. I’ll call Kearns in Arlington and have him send a radio car out there. What’s the address again?”

  “No, Paddy,” said Mrs. O’Reilly quickly. “I can hear the bells already. That’s the police.”

  “What the hell do you think I do for a living? Ballet?”

  “I don’t want the police involved, what with reports and all. The Agency’s got guards out there and I could get my broadside in a wringer. I meant you, lover. You’re a friend in the area who just happens to be a cop doing a favor for your wife, who just happens to be Kendrick’s secretary.”

  “That’s a lot of just-happens, tiger.… What the hell? I like beef stew.”

  “With extra potatoes, Paddy.”

  “And onions. Lots more onions.”

  “The biggest I can find—”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “And, Paddy, if that shrinking violet has had both phones taken off the hook, you tell him I know about his girlfriend from Egypt and I just might leak it if he doesn’t call me.”

  “What girlfriend from—”

  “Button it,” ordered Mrs. O’Reilly. “Manny let it drop yesterday when he was a mite squiffed and couldn’t find his broth of a boy, either. Hurry along now. I’ll wait for the call here.”

  “What about my beef stew?”

  “I’ve got one frozen,” lied the lass born Ann Mary Mulcahy.

  Thirty-eight minutes later, after taking two wrong turns in the dark Virginia countryside, Detective First Grade O’Reilly found the road that led to Kendrick’s house. It was a road he had traveled over exactly four times but never at night. Each trip had been made to see old Weingrass after he got out of the hospital and to bring him a freshly re-minted bottle of Listerine, since his nurses kept the Scotch whisky beyond his reach. Paddy had righteously figured that if Manny, who was about to be eighty years of age and who should have croaked on the operating table, wanted to go out a little pickled, who was to call it a sin? Christ in all his glory turned water into wine, so why shouldn’t a miserable sinner named O’Reilly turn a little pint of mouthwash into Scotch? Both were for good Christian causes and he was only following the holy example.

  There were no streetlamps on the backcountry road, and were it not for the wash of his headlights, Paddy would have missed the brick wall and the white wrought-iron gate. Then he understood why; there were no lights on in the house beyond. For all intents and purposes it was closed up, deserted, shut down while its owners were away. Yet its owner was not away and even if he were, there was the Arab couple from a place called Dubai who kept the place open and ready for the owner’s return. Any change in that routine or the dismissal of the Agency guards would certainly be conveyed to Annie O’Reilly, the Congressman’s number one girl in the office. Paddy stopped the car on the side of the road; he snapped open the glove compartment, removed a flashlight, and got out. Instinctively he reached under his jacket and felt the handle of his revolver in his shoulder holster. He approached the gate, expecting at any moment floodlights to be tripped on or the screeching sounds of multiple sirens to suddenly fill the q
uiet night. Those were the ways of Agency controls, methods of total protection.

  Nothing.

  O’Reilly arced his arm slowly through the bars of white wrought iron.… Nothing. He then placed his hand on the center plate between the two joining gates and pushed. Both opened and still nothing.

  He walked inside, pushing the thumb of his left hand against the switch of the flashlight, his right hand reaching beneath his jacket. What he saw in seconds under the roving beam caused him to spin away, crouching into the wall, his weapon yanked out of the holster.

  “Holy Mary, mother of God, forgive me for my sins!” he whispered.

  Ten feet away lay the dead body of a young, business-suited guard from the Central Intelligence Agency, sickeningly drenched in blood from the throat above, his head nearly severed from the rest of him. O’Reilly pressed his back against the brick wall, instantly extinguishing the flashlight, trying to calm his all too experienced nerves. He was familiar with violent death, and because he was, he knew that there was more to be found. He rose slowly to his feet and began his search for death, knowing also that the killers had disappeared.

  He found three other corpses, each mutilated, each life taken in shock, each positioned at 90 degrees of the compass for protection. Jesus! How? He bent down and examined the body of the fourth man; what he found was extraordinary. Lodged in the guard’s neck was a snapped-off needle; it was the remnants of a dart. The patrol had been immobilized by a narcotic and then, without defenses, obscenely killed. They never knew what happened. None of them knew.

  Patrick O’Reilly walked slowly, cautiously to the front door of the house, once again knowing that caution was irrelevant. The god-awful terrible deeds had been done; there was nothing left but to total the casualties.

  There were six. Each throat was slit, each corpse covered with drying blood, each face in torment. Yet the most obscene of all were the naked bodies of Kendrick’s couple from Dubai. The husband was on top of his wife in the coital position, both red-soaked faces pressed against each other. And on the wall, scratched in human blood were the words:

  Death to God’s traitors! Death to the fornicators of the Great Satan!

  Where was Kendrick? Mother of God! Where was he? O’Reilly raced back through the house, going from the cellar to the attic and room to room, turning on every switch he could find until the entire estate was a blaze of light. There was no sign of the Congressman! Paddy ran out of the house through the attached garage, noting that Evan’s Mercedes was gone, the Cadillac empty. He began searching the grounds again, crisscrossing every foot of woods and foliage within the fenced compound. Nothing. There were no signs of struggle, no broken shrubbery, no breaks in the Cyclone fence or scratches on the newly constructed brick wall. Forensic! The department’s forensic division would find evidence … no! He was thinking police procedures and this was beyond the police—far, far beyond! O’Reilly ran back to the white wrought-iron gate, now awash with light, and raced to his car. He leaped inside and, disregarding the radio, yanked the police cellular phone from its recess under the dashboard. He dialed, only at that moment realizing that his face and shirt were drenched with sweat in the cold night air.

  “Congressman Kendrick’s office.”

  “Annie, let me do the talking,” broke in the detective rapidly, softly. “And don’t ask questions—”

  “I know that tone of voice, Paddy, so I have to ask one. Is he all right?”

  “There’s no sign of him. His car’s gone; he’s not here.”

  “But others are—”

  “No more questions, tiger, but I’ve got one for you, and by the saints you’d better be able to answer it.”

  “What?”

  “Who’s Evan’s contact at the Agency?”

  “He deals directly with the unit.”

  “No. Someone else. Higher up. There has to be somebody!”

  “Wait a minute!” cried Annie, her voice rising. “Of course, there is. He just doesn’t talk about him … a man named Payton. A month or so ago he told me that if this Payton ever called, I was to put him through immediately, and if Evan wasn’t here I was to find him.”

  “You’re sure he’s with the CIA?”

  “Yes, yes I am,” said Mrs. O’Reilly thoughtfully. “One morning he called me from Colorado saying he needed this Payton’s number and where I could find it in his desk—in the bottom drawer of his desk under a checkbook. It was a Langley exchange.”

  “Would it be there now?”

  “I’ll look. Hold on.” The wait of no more than twenty seconds was nearly unbearable for the detective, made worse by the sight of the large brightly lighted house beyond the open gate. It was both an invitation and a target. “Paddy?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Give it to me. Quickly!” She did so, and O’Reilly issued an order that was not to be disobeyed. “Stay in the office until I call you or pick you up. Understood?”

  “Is there a reason?”

  “Let’s say I don’t know how far up, or down, or sideways, this kind of thing reaches, and I happen to like beef stew.”

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Annie.

  O’Reilly did not hear his wife; he had disconnected the line and within seconds was dialing the number Annie had given him. After eight agonizing rings a woman’s voice came over the phone. “Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Payton’s office.”

  “Are you his secretary?”

  “No, sir, this is the reception desk. Mr. Payton has gone for the day.”

  “Listen to me, please,” said the Washington detective with absolute control. “It’s urgent that I reach Mr. Payton immediately. Whatever the regulations, they can be broken, can you understand me, girl? It’s an emergency.”

  “Please identify yourself, sir.”

  “Hell’s fire, I don’t want to, but I will. I’m Lieutenant Patrick O’Reilly, Detective First Grade, District of Columbia Police Department. You’ve got to find him for me!”

  Suddenly, startlingly, a male voice was on the line. “O’Reilly?” the man said. “Like in O’Reilly, the secretary of a certain congressman?”

  “The same, sir. You don’t answer your goddamned phone—excuse my language?”

  “This is a trunk line to my apartment, Mr. O’Reilly.… You may switch systems, Operator.”

  “Thank you, sir.” There was a snap over the phone.

  “Yes, Mr. O’Reilly? We’re alone now.”

  “I’m not. I’m in the company of six corpses thirty yards away from my car.”

  “What?”

  “Get out here, Mr. Payton. Kendrick’s house. And if you don’t want headlines, call off any relieving unit that’s heading here.”

  “Secure,” said the stunned director of Special Projects. “The relief comes on at midnight; it’s covered by the men inside.”

  “They’re dead, too. They’re all dead.”

  Mitchell Payton crouched beside the dead body of the guard nearest the gate, wincing under the beam of O’Reilly’s flashlight. “Good God, he was so young. They’re all so young!”

  “Were, sir,” said the detective flatly. “There’s no one alive, outside or inside. I’ve turned off most of the lights, but I’ll escort you through, of course.”

  “I must … of course.”

  “But I won’t unless you tell me where Congressman Kendrick is—if he is, or whether he was supposed to be here, which would mean he probably isn’t. I can and obviously should call the Fairfax police. Am I clear, sir?”

  “Gaelically clear, Lieutenant. For the time being this must remain an Agency problem—a catastrophe, if you like. Am I clear?”

  “Answer my question or rest assured I’ll do my sworn duty and call Fairfax headquarters. Where is Congressman Kendrick? His car’s not here and I want to know whether I should be relieved by that fact or not.”

  “If you can find any relief in this situation, you’re a very strange man—”

  “I mourn
these people, these strangers to me, as I’ve mourned hundreds like ’em in my time, but I know Evan Kendrick! Now, if you have the information, I want it this very moment or I go to my vehicle and radio my report to the police in Fairfax.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t you threaten me, Lieutenant. If you want to know where Kendrick is, ask your wife!”

  “My wife?”

  “The Congressman’s secretary, in case it’s slipped your mind.”

  “You fancy rumbugger!” exploded Paddy. “Why the hell do you think I’m out here? To pay a two-toilet social call on my old society chum, the millionaire from Colorado? I’m here, Chauncy-boyo, because Annie hasn’t heard from Evan in two days, and since nine o’clock this morning both his phone here and in Mesa Verde don’t ring! Now, that’s what you might call a coincidence, isn’t it!”

  “Both his telephones—” Payton snapped his head around, peering above.

  “Don’t bother,” said O’Reilly, following the director’s gaze. “One line’s been cut and expertly spliced into another; the thick cable to the roof’s intact.”

  “Good Christ!”

  “In my opinion, you need His immediate help.… Kendrick! Where the hell is he?”

  “The Bahamas. Nassau, in the Bahamas.”

  “Why did you think my wife, his secretary, knew that? And you’d better have a good goddamned reason for thinking so, Dan Fancy, because if this is some kind of spook shit to involve Annie Mulcahy in one of your fuck-ups, I’ll have more blue jackets swarming around here than you got in Eyeran!”

  “I thought so because he told me, Lieutenant O’Reilly,” said Payton, his voice cold, his eyes straying, his thoughts apparently racing.

  “He never told her!”

  “Obviously,” agreed the CIA director, now staring at the house. “However, he was explicit. The day before yesterday he said that on the way to the airport he would stop at his office and leave the information with his secretary, Ann O’Reilly. He stopped; he went up to his office; the mobile unit confirmed it.”