The Icarus Agenda - Softcover

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Robert Ludlum was the author of twenty-one novels, each a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. In addition to the Jason Bourne series—The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum—he was the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript,and The Apocalypse Watch, among many others. Mr. Ludlum passed away in March 2001.

Aus dem Klappentext

gressman Evan Kendrick is trying to live out his term of office quietly--when a political mole reveals to the world Kendrick's deepest secret...that Kendrick was the anonymous man in Masqar, the man who courageously freed the hostage held in the American embassy by Arab terrorists;
the unknown hero who performed an act of outrageous daring then silently disappeared. Now, suddenly, Kendrick is a living target pursued by the terrorists he outwitted. Together with the beautiful woman who once saved his life, Kendrick enters a deadly arena where the only currency is blood, where frightened whispers speak of violence yet to come and where Kendrick's life--and the fate of the free world--may ultimately rest in the powerful hands of a mysterious and deadly figure known only as the Mahdi.

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1

Masqat, Oman. Southwest Asia

Tuesday, August 10, 6:30 p.m.

The angry waters of the Oman Gulf were a prelude to the storm racing down through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea. It was sundown, marked by the strident prayers nasally intoned by bearded muezzins in the minarets of the port city’s mosques. The sky was darkening under the black thunderheads that swirled ominously across the lesser darkness of evening like roving behemoths. Blankets of heat lightning sporadically fired the eastern horizon over the Makran Mountains of Turbat, two hundred miles across the sea in Pakistan. To the north, beyond the borders of Afghanistan, a senseless, brutal war continued. To the west an even more senseless war raged, fought by children led to their deaths by the diseased madman in Iran intent on spreading his malignancy. And to the south there was Lebanon, where men killed without compunction, each faction with religious fervor calling the others terrorists when all—without exception—indulged in barbaric terrorism.

The Middle East, especially Southwest Asia, was on fire, and where the fires had previously been repelled, it was no longer. As the waters of the Gulf of Oman furiously churned this early evening and the skies promised a sweep of ravage, the streets of Masqat, the capital of the Sultanate of Oman, matched the approaching storm. The prayers over, the crowds again converged with flaming torches, streaming out of side streets and alleyways, a column of hysterical protest, the target the floodlit iron gates of the American embassy. The façade of pink stucco beyond was patrolled by scruffy long- haired children awkwardly gripping automatic weapons. The trigger meant death, but in their wild-eyed zealotry they could not make the connection with that finality, for they were told there was no such thing as death, no matter what their eyes might tell them. The rewards of martyrdom were everything, the more painful the sacrifice, the more glorious the martyr—the pain of their enemies meant nothing. Blindness! Madness!

It was the twenty-second day of this insanity, twenty-one days since the civilized world had been forced once again to accept the dreary fact of incoherent fury. Masqat’s fanatical ground swell had burst from nowhere and now was suddenly everywhere, and no one knew why. No one, except the analysts of the darker arts of brushfire insurrections, those men and women who spent their days and nights probing, dissecting, finally perceiving the roots of orchestrated revolt. For the key was “orchestrated.” Who? Why? What do they really want and how do we stop them?

Facts: Two hundred forty-seven Americans had been rounded up under guns and taken hostage. Eleven had been killed, their corpses thrown out of the embassy windows, each body accompanied by shattering glass, each death via a different window. Someone had told these children how to emphasize each execution with a jolting surprise. Wagers were excitedly made beyond the iron gates by shrieking maniacal bettors mesmerized by blood. Which window was next? Would the corpse be a man or a woman? How much is your judgment worth? How much? Bet!

Above on the open roof was the luxurious embassy pool behind an Arabic latticework not meant for protection against bullets. It was around that pool that the hostages knelt in rows as wandering groups of killers aimed machine pistols at their heads. Two hundred thirty-six frightened, exhausted Americans awaiting execution.

Madness!

Decisions: Despite well-intentioned Israeli offers, keep them out! This was not Entebbe, and all their expertise notwithstanding, the blood Israel had shed in Lebanon would, in Arab eyes, label any attempt an abomination: the United States had financed terrorists to fight terrorists. Unacceptable. A rapid deployment strike force? Who could scale four stories or drop down from helicopters to the roof and stop the executions when the executioners were only too willing to die as martyrs? A naval blockade with a battalion of marines prepared for an invasion of Oman? Beyond a show of overpowering might, to what purpose? The sultan and his ruling ministers were the last people on earth who wanted this violence at the embassy. The peacefully oriented Royal Police tried to contain the hysteria, but they were no match for the roving wild bands of agitators. Years of quiescence in the city had not prepared them for such chaos; and to recall the Royal Military from the Yemenite borders could lead to unthinkable problems. The armed forces patrolling that festering sanctuary for international killers were as savage as their enemies. Beyond the inevitable fact that with their return to the capital the borders would collapse in carnage, blood would surely flow through the streets of Masqat and the gutters choke with the innocent and the guilty.

Checkmate.

Solutions: Give in to the stated demands? Impossible, and well understood by those responsible though not by their puppets, the children who believed what they chanted, what they screamed. There was no way governments throughout Europe and the Middle East would release over eight thousand terrorists from such organizations as the Brigate Rosse and the PLO, the Baader-Meinhof and the IRA, and scores of their squabbling, sordid offspring. Continue to tolerate the endless coverage, the probing cameras and reams of copy that riveted the world’s attention on the publicity-hungry fanatics? Why not? The constant exposure, no doubt, kept additional hostages from being killed, since the executions had been “temporarily suspended” so that the “oppressor nations” could ponder their choices. To end the news coverage would only inflame the wild-eyed seekers of martyrdom. Silence would create the need for shock. Shock was newsworthy and killing was the ultimate shock.

Who?

What?

How?

Who . . . ? That was the essential question whose answer would lead to a solution—a solution that had to be found within five days. The executions had been suspended for a week, and two days had passed, frantically chewed up as the most knowledgeable leaders of the intelligence services from six nations gathered in London. All had arrived on supersonic aircraft within hours of the decision to pool resources, for each knew its own embassy might be next. Somewhere. They had worked without rest for forty-eight hours. Results: Oman remained an enigma. It had been considered a rock of stability in Southwest Asia, a sultanate with educated, enlightened leadership as close to representative government as a divine family of Islam could permit. The rulers were from a privileged household that apparently respected what Allah had given them—not merely as a birthright, but as a responsibility in the last half of the twentieth century.

Conclusions: The insurrection had been externally programmed. No more than twenty of the two-hundred-odd unkempt, shrieking youngsters had been specifically identified as Omanis. Therefore, covert-operations officers with sources in every extremist faction in the Mediterranean-Arabian axis went instantly to work, pulling in contacts, bribing, threatening.

“Who are they, Aziz? There’s only a spitful from Oman, and most of those are considered retarded. Come on, Aziz. Live like a sultan. Name an outrageous price. Try me!”

“Six seconds, Mahmet! Six seconds and your right...