The Icarus Agenda Read Online Free

aberration that won’t happen again. There was a vacuous, overbearing incumbent who was lining his pockets in a district that wasn’t paying attention. I had time on my hands and a big mouth. I also had the money to bury him. I’m not necessarily proud of what I did or how I did it, but he’s gone and I’ll be out in two years or less. By then I’ll have found someone better qualified to take my place.”
    “
Two
years?” asked Swann. “Come November it’ll be a year since your election, correct?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And you started serving last January?”
    “So?”
    “Well, I hate to disabuse you, but your term of
office
is for two years. You’ve either got one more year or
three
, but not two or less.”
    “There’s no real opposition party in the Ninth, but to make sure the seat doesn’t go to the old political machine, I agreed to stand for reelection—then resign.”
    “That’s some agreement.”
    “It’s binding as far as I’m concerned. I want out.”
    “That’s blunt enough, but it doesn’t take into account a possible side effect.”
    “I don’t understand you.”
    “Suppose during the next twenty-odd months you decide you like it here? What happens then?”
    “It’s not possible and it couldn’t happen, Mr. Swann. Let’s get back to Masqat. It’s a goddamned mess, or do I have sufficient ‘clearance’ to make that observation?”
    “You’re cleared because I’m the one who clears.” The deputy director shook his gray head. “A goddamned mess, Congressman, and we’re convinced it’s externally programmed.”
    “I don’t think there’s any question about it,” agreed Kendrick.
    “Do you have any ideas?”
    “A few,” answered the visitor. “Wholesale destabilization’s at the top of the list. Shut the country down and don’t let anyone in.”
    “A takeover?” asked Swann. “A Khomeini-style putsch?… It wouldn’t work; the situation’s different. There’s no Peacock, no festering resentments, no SAVAK.” Swann paused, adding pensively, “No Shah with an army of thieves and no Ayatollah with an army of fanatics. It’s not the same.”
    “I didn’t mean to imply that it was. Oman’s only the beginning. Whoever it is doesn’t want to take over the country; he—or they—simply want to stop others from taking the money.”
    “
What?
What money?”
    “Billions. Long-range projects that are on drafting boards everywhere in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and all of Southwest Asia, the only areas in that part of the world that can be relatively stabilized because even hostile governments demand it. What’s happening over in Oman now isn’t much different from tying up the 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 over 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 us 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 aging men of genius, Manny was frequently