Joshuas Hammer

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

McGarvey searched Mohammed’s body, finding three full magazines for the Kalashnikov. He had to decide if he should take them and the rifle or continue without the extra weight.

It would take the rest of the day for Farid to make it back to the camp, and depending on what he found there, possibly another half-day to bring reinforcements back with him. It wasn’t likely that everyone had been killed in the missile raid, and if bin Laden had survived he would go all out to stop McGarvey from leaving Afghanistan alive.

If there were other more direct routes to the Rover they would take those in an effort to intercept him. If that failed they might alert the military in Kabul to be on the lookout for him. It meant in reality that he only had a few hours’ head start, time enough for Farid to reach the camp, so he had to travel light.

He set the magazines aside and found his satellite phone in another pocket. The low-battery indicator light was on. Mohammed had evidently been playing with it. But it didn’t matter as much now, because the damage had already been done.

He entered the security code and then hit the speed dial button. After a minute the phone acquired a satellite and the call went through. He looked at his watch. It was after midnight in Washington, but if Otto wasn’t in his office the call would automatically be rolled over to his cell phone or his apartment. It was answered before the first ring was completed.

“Oh, wow, Mac,” Rencke shouted excitedly. “I knew you were alive! I just knew it!”

“Okay, settle down, Otto. I’m in one piece, but I’m going to need some help getting out of the country, and I want to know what the hell is going on there.”

“Are you someplace we can come get you?” Rencke asked, all business.

“I’m still in the mountains, maybe ten or twelve miles from bin Laden’s camp. If everything goes okay I should be in Kabul sometime tonight, my time.”

“That might not be the best place right now. They’re already rioting down there. The Taliban is behind it, of course, it wouldn’t have started so fast otherwise. You’ll never make it back to the hotel.”

McGarvey glanced up the path, and stopped to listen for a moment. Had he heard something? “I don’t have any other option,” he said, deciding he hadn’t heard anything after all. It was just his nerves. “How about our old embassy? If I can get to it is there a place I can hide out?”

“That’s where the rioting is starting to concentrate. But the ambassador’s old residence is a possibility. It’s in your laptop.”

“I don’t have that anymore,” McGarvey said. “But I think I can find the place, and if there’s only the two caretakers I should be able to get in easily enough.”

“The Taliban have given all foreigners forty-eight hours to get out of Afghanistan. I’ll try to arrange something with one of the embassies. You might be able to get out with one of their staffs.”

“How about our own people? There has to be some Americans here.”

“A few UN observers, a handful of Red Crescent people and maybe a couple dozen businessmen. But they’re leaving on commercial airlines to Dubai, the same way you came in.”

“With the rioting that’s going to be dangerous for them,” McGarvey suggested. “The Taliban would have to provide an escort, something I don’t think they’ll do.” Rencke picked up on it immediately. “We can send a C-130 with a few marines to provide security. The President said he would do whatever it takes to protect our people. But the Taliban know your face, so unless you can come up with a disguise and new papers they’ll never allow you to get on that plane, marines or no marines.”

“I’ll work something out at this end,” McGarvey said. “Just get the transport aircraft here and I’ll get aboard somehow. Try Riyadh, it’ll be quicker.”

“I’m on it.”

“I’m not even going to ask why the attack was launched so fast. But what about damage assessments? How badly did we hurt them?”

“We flattened the camp, Mac. But there’re survivors, and nobody thinks any differently. When your chip went off the air they wouldn’t listen to me. Even Murphy tried to delay the attack.”

“It was Berndt.”

“Bingo,” Rencke said. “I did some checking. He worked for the Sec Def a few years ago, and guess what one of his primary responsibilities was? Final target approval for our raids into Kosovo and Serbia. He took the heat for a lot of the mistakes we made over there, and he blamed it on the Agency for giving him bad intelligence. Especially in the Chinese embassy thing.”

McGarvey knew there had been something like that in the national security adviser’s past, but he’d never had the time to look into it. In all other respects Dennis Berndt was doing a good job for a President whom the country loved and respected. It was the one issue that blinded him from doing an otherwise almost perfect job. “You’d better have Murphy get over there and brief them on what’s coming our way. Unless we killed bin Laden he’ll come after us.”

“We’re still working on that part. But we might not be able to come up with anything conclusive. If he’s alive he’ll have to show himself before we can know for sure. Either that or use his cell phone. If we get lucky and pick up one of his calls we’ll have him.”

“He has the bomb, Otto, and unless we can give him another way out he’s going to use it against us.”

“The big questions are where and when.”

“In the States and damned soon.”

“Oh, boy,” Rencke said after a moment. “Was he willing to go along with the deal?”

“I think so,” McGarvey said tiredly. “But now he’ll blame his actions on us. He’s going to claim that he tried to work with us in good faith, but that we tried to assassinate him.”

“We did,” Rencke said softly.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think that he’ll go after the President?”

“I think that’s too specific a target even for bin Laden. But he’s going to bring the bomb to the States.”

“Maybe it’s already here.”

McGarvey had given that possibility some thought. “I don’t think so. It’s just a gut feeling, but if the bomb was already there he would have been more aggressive because his position would have been stronger. Do what I want right now, or suffer the consequences right now. He never acted that way.”

“If that’s true then it gives us a little time,” Rencke said. “That’s something. What about his staff? Did you see the guy Alien told us about?”

“Yeah, his name is Ali, but I never got a look at his face, only his eyes. He knew about the chip and about our satellite schedules, so he’s well connected.”

“I’ll have something for you to look at and listen to when you get back. Maybe he’s a key.”

“Let’s hope so,” McGarvey said. “Because we need one.” The phone cut out momentarily, but then reacquired the satellite.

“Mac …?”

“I’m back. My batteries are almost flat. I want you to talk to Dick Yemm and have him keep an eye on Katy and Liz until I get back.”

“Do you think they’ll be a target?”

“I can almost guarantee it,” McGarvey replied bitterly. “Call Fred Rudolph and have the Bureau’s antiterrorism people keep their heads up. Adkins can work with him. I want all of our assets worldwide on this right now. Nothing else takes priority. And I mean nothing.”

“Gotcha.”

“I want a new SNIE developed and on the President’s desk within twelve hours. As soon as I get out of here I’ll send you more information. The INS will have to be in the mix, because there’s no way of knowing how the bomb is going to be delivered. But every airport, seaport and border crossing will have to be watched much closer than normal, twenty-four hours a day.

“That still leaves a lot of holes, ya know,” Rencke said bleakly. “We can’t put a fence around the country, it’s too late, and it wouldn’t work anyway.”

“I know it, but we might get lucky, especially if bin Laden is alive and he makes a move.”

“That would be the wrong thing for him to do, and he’s gotta know it,” Rencke said. “If I were him I’d go to ground somewhere and keep my head down until it was over. Maybe for a long time afterward.”

“I think he’s dying, Otto. Maybe cancer.”

“We could offer him medical help.”

“He’d never take it.”

“Desperate men make desperate decisions,” Rencke said softly. “Shit, Mac, what a mess.”

“It’s going to get a lot worse,” McGarvey said. “I’ll call you from Kabul.”

McGarvey pocketed the phone then hurried over to where Hash lay in the rocks in a large pool of blood from the gaping wound in his side, and quickly searched his body. Besides a couple of magazines of ammunition there was nothing much except for a rusty knife, a waterproof tin of matches and a filthy scrap of rag he’d used for a handkerchief. No car keys.

It seemed like a long time since he had eaten anything decent and he was very tired. The wound in his side throbbed painfully. He scrambled down to the path and took it back to the rock overhang, stopping just long enough at the stream to splash some cold water on his face. The packs were lying next to the campfire, but neither of them contained the car keys. He took one of the full canteens, slung it over his shoulder then grabbed a couple of pieces of nan from one of the bundles, stuffed them in his pocket and headed around the dammed-up pool to the waterfall.

The cliff dropped about three hundred feet to the head of the steep arroyo that wound its way with the stream down to the floor of the valley. McGarvey stopped at the edge to catch his breath. The morning chill had given way to a gloriously sunny day. Down in Kabul it would be very hot, but here the mountain air was cool and sweet. But there was death all around. Rivers of blood had been shed in Afghanistan over the past thousand years or more. And there was no end in sight.

Chevy Chase Elizabeth McGarvey awoke in a cold sweat, disoriented and not exactly sure where she was for the first few moments. She’d been having the familiar dream again in which she was at a mall carrying around a bottle of perfume she wanted to buy for her mother’s birthday. But she couldn’t find a cashier. She was a teenager still in junior high school, and she had just enough money to the penny to pay for the perfume. Her mother had been on her case about spending her allowance as fast as she got it. It was something that her father would never approve of. He’d been gone long enough from their lives that she had begun to fantasize about him. Whenever she found herself in a situation she would try to think what her father would say or do. This time she had saved her money, which would make him proud, and she was buying a good bottle of perfume, which would make her mother happy. She couldn’t lose except that she couldn’t find a cashier.

She found herself at the main exit from the mall, the bottle of perfume still in her hand. For some reason she thought she might be able to find a cashier outside in the parking lot; maybe one of them coming to work. The moment she stepped outside, however, sirens began to blare, and two policemen, guns drawn, came running after her, shouting for her to stop or they would shoot. That’s when she spotted her parents. Her father had come back and he was standing in her mother’s driveway. They were having a terrific argument, and no matter what she did to get their attention they were ignoring her. She figured if she could get across the street her father would know what to do; he would straighten out the mess, give the policemen the money for the perfume and send them back to the mall. But her mother was saying something to him in that maddeningly calm voice of hers, and her father was just standing there taking it, and she knew she would never be able to reach them until it was too late, though she wanted nothing more than their love and for them to be proud of her.

The house was quiet. Elizabeth looked at the clock radio on the nightstand as it switched to 12:21 a.m.” and her heart began to slow down. She was in one of the spare bedrooms down the hall from her mother. She was safe. Nothing could hurt her here. And yet she was frightened.

She got up, used the bathroom without turning on the light, then put on a robe and went to her mother’s door. Her mouth was gummy from too much wine. She hesitated a moment, then knocked softly.

“Elizabeth?” her mother’s voice came softly from within.

“May I come in?”

“Of course, dear.”

Her mother, dressed in a bathrobe sat in one of the chairs by the window that looked out over the country club’s fifteenth fairway. The window was open. Elizabeth could smell the night grass smells from the golf course and hear the sprinkler systems at work.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Elizabeth said. She came to the window and looked outside. The sky was partly cloudy, but it was a moonless night and despite the glow of Washington’s lights she could see a lot of stars. The same stars, she thought, that her father might be seeing. But then she realized that in Afghanistan it was already morning. No stars. The thought made him seem even more distant to her.

She looked back. Her mother, her face still unlined and beautiful even without makeup, was watching her. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could I,” Kathleen said. “Are you okay?”

Elizabeth sat down beside her mother. “I was having a bad dream.”

“About your father?”

“And you,” Elizabeth said shyly. She’d never told her mother about that dream.

“The shoplifting one?” her mother asked, and Elizabeth’s mouth opened. Her mother smiled gently. “Close your mouth, dear. You sometimes talk in your sleep.”

Elizabeth looked at her mother closely for the first time in a long time. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and full lips, but her eyes were clear and startlingly bright even in the starlight. There was a calmness in her expression, a peacefulness that overrode even a hint of fear. She’d been in this position before; waiting, wondering when the phone would ring with the news. Her husband was in harm’s way, and although he’d always managed to somehow survive, there was always that possibility that even his skill and luck would finally run out. She was steeling herself for it, as she had before, only this time it was different. This time she wanted him to come back. She wanted to know that he was safe and that she would have him back in her life at least for a little while until he went off again on another assignment.

Elizabeth saw all of that in her mother’s face, and understood now how much hell her mother had somehow endured over the past twenty-five years. A very large wave of love washed over her and she reached out for her mother’s hand.

Kathleen smiled gently. “A penny,” she said.

“I was just thinking that I love you and Daddy. But I never knew just how much until right now.”

Kathleen’s eyes glistened and she looked away. “Dammit.”

“It’s what he does, Mother. It’s who he is.”

Kathleen turned back, her delicate nostrils flared in a flash of anger. “He’s very, very good at it. But he’s a stupid man because he won’t admit to himself how many people are dependent on him. They’re going to suck him dry until there’s nothing left.”

The outburst left Elizabeth speechless, but her mother always had the ability to surprise her. On the surface she was nothing more than another well put together post Junior League society woman. In reality she was one of the major behind-the-scenes fund raisers for a dozen charities and major organizations, among them the American Red Cross. She had the ability to mingle with the wealthy and talk them out of significant amounts of money before they realized what had hit them. She was as intelligent, well bred and knowledgeable as she was beautiful.

“It’s true,” Kathleen said. “You work in the Directorate of Operations now, so you’ve seen your father’s file, and I suppose there are stories you could tell me. But I have my own stories too. I’ve seen what the job has done to him over the past twenty-five years. I don’t think anybody knows where it will end, least of all your father.”

“He’ll never go back to teaching,” Elizabeth said with a little anger. She was afraid she was hearing her old mother now, the one who had driven her husband away.

“Don’t give me that look, Elizabeth. I’m not asking your father to quit for my sake. But he’ll destroy himself unless he can finally learn how to depend on someone other than himself.”

“He has Otto and Dick Adkins and the rest of his staff.”

Kathleen shook her head. “I mean emotionally. The difference between your father and me, is that when I get hurt I want to be surrounded by people I love. But when he’s hurt he’s like a dog who runs under the nearest porch to be alone so that he can lick his wounds.”

Elizabeth understood exactly what her mother was saying, because she’d always been torn both ways herself; wanting to run home to her mother for sympathy, while at the same time wanting to be left alone to nurse her own wounds. It was one of the messages from her dream, she supposed. She wanted to get to her father so that he could take care of the policemen chasing her, yet she could never reach him. Her subconscious was telling her to work out her own problems. How else could her father be proud of her?

They sat for a while in silence, looking out the window at the golf course. The windows on this side of the house were Lexan plastic because of the occasional stray ball. Her mother didn’t seem to mind; she’d lived here for a long time and she was a member of the club.

“Where did your father go this time?”

“Afghanistan,” Elizabeth answered without hesitation.

“Is he going after bin Laden?”

“Just to talk.”

“Is he still there? Have you heard anything yet?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Nothing yet, but he’s carrying something that allows us to know where he is at all times.”

“I thought the chip was only for field officers,” Kathleen said, but then she smiled wanly. “That was a dumb comment, I suppose.”

Elizabeth said nothing.

“How is Todd Van Buren these days? I haven’t heard anything about him lately.”

“We’re going to dinner on Friday,” Elizabeth said, feeling a sudden warm glow. Van Buren was an instructor at the CIA’s training facility in Williamsburg. He’d saved her life on a mission that had gone sour last year. Since then they’d had a slowly developing relationship. Van Buren was a little too macho and Elizabeth was a little too independent. It was something that they recognized in each other, and in themselves, and they were working on it. He was the first man Elizabeth had known who could compare to her father. They were big shoes to fill, in her estimation.

“When your father gets back to Washington invite Todd out here for dinner.” Kathleen smiled. “Unless you’re not ready for that yet.”

Elizabeth had to laugh. “It would scare him half to death, but it would be cool to see how he handled it.”

Kathleen laughed too. “I think it will frighten your father just as badly.” She studied her daughter’s face for a long moment or two. “I’m afraid for you in the business.”

“There’s hardly any kind of a job without a risk, Mother. And I’m not going to live in a cotton-lined box.”

“I don’t mean physically, though that frightens me. I’m talking about what it’s eventually going to do to you. Your father is a wonderful, kind, caring, giving man. I love him. But there’s a hard, cynical side to him because of what the CIA has made him do. Sometimes being around him is like biting on tinfoil.” Kathleen smiled sadly, and reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her daughter’s forehead. “I don’t want that for you. There’s nothing wrong with being soft and feminine. You can even accomplish it without being weak and stupid.”

“You’ve proven that, Mother,” Elizabeth said, warmly.

The telephone rang. Kathleen flinched, but then took the portable phone out of her bathrobe pocket and answered it. She’d been expecting the call. “Hello.”

Elizabeth watched her mother’s face for some sign of what kind of a call it was.

“Yes, I understand, Otto. Thank you for calling.” Kathleen’s face was perfectly neutral. “I know that you can’t go into the details, but how soon before you know when he’s out of there and safe?”

Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat.

“Thank you,” Kathleen said. “As a matter of fact she’s here with me now. I’ll put her on.” She gave the phone to Elizabeth. “Otto’s heard from your father. He’s safe for now.”

Elizabeth took the phone. “Thanks for calling, Otto,” she said. “Is he still in-country?”

“About ten miles from bin Laden’s camp. He’s going to try to make it down to Kabul sometime tonight, and we’re sending a C-130 and some marines to pull him and some other Americans out. The White House will have to put some pressure on the Taliban government, but that can be done.”

“What’s going on? Why can’t he fly out of there commercially the same way he came in?”

“Oh, wow, Liz, I don’t know if you want to tell Mrs. M. this, but the President’s holding a news conference around eleven. Your father’s chip went off the air yesterday and the President ordered a cruise missile strike on bin Laden’s camp.”

“Goddamnit—”

“Wait, Liz. We tried to delay the strike until we were sure what was going on up there, but the White House was convinced that your father was dead, and their only option was to hit bin Laden as hard as they could.”

“But my father’s okay?”

“For now. But the Taliban are probably waiting for him to show up in Kabul, and there’s rioting all over the city. The Taliban have given all foreigners forty-eight hours to get out of there, so it’s a little confusing.”

“What about our assets on the ground?”

“We have a couple of people at the old embassy, but that’s where a lot of the rioting is concentrated. Dave Whit taker will try to reach them to see if they can do anything to help, but for now it’s up to your dad.”

Kathleen got up and went into the bathroom, leaving Elizabeth alone for the moment.

“Did we get bin Laden?”

“Nobody knows yet. There was a lot of damage, but there were survivors. The NRO is working on the updates, so we’ll just have to wait.”

“My father will be okay,” Elizabeth said, more for her own benefit than Rencke’s.

“He’s made it this far, he’ll make it the rest of the way, Liz. He’s tough.”

“That he is,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll get dressed and come in.”

“Maybe you want to stay with your mom.”

“I’ll be there in a half-hour.”

“Okay, but Dick Yemm is on his way out there, so tell Mrs. M. to sit tight for now.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Your dad’s.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said. She broke the connection as her mother came back. They exchanged looks and that was enough.

“I’ll put on the coffee while you get dressed,” Kathleen said. “But I want you to keep me informed.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There wasn’t a day went by that Major Louise Horn didn’t miss her old mentor Hubert Wight. But six months ago he’d been promoted to lieutenant colonel and reassigned to Air Force Intelligence Operations in the Pentagon. She was moved up to his old slot as chief of photographic interpretation at the NRO’s Operations Center attached to the CIA’s headquarters (renamed the George Bush Center for Intelligence). She wished he was here right now. A lot of the down loaded satellite images she was looking at were indistinct because of a pall of smoke that still covered bin Laden’s camp. What looked like the remains of a burned-out truck in one photograph turned out to more likely be the corner of a building in the next, and perhaps a storage depot of fifty-gallon oil drums in another. His eye was always sharper than hers, and he had the uncanny ability to pick out some little detail that cleared up whatever mystery they were trying to unravel. It was unrealistic, but several times this morning she had seriously contemplated picking up the phone and asking him to drive out.

He used to have a miniature gallows and noose on his desk. Everybody knew that it signified what would happen to anyone who made a serious mistake and bounced it upstairs without double checking. Their customers, besides the air force, CIA and National Security Agency, were the President and his National Security Council. They were the big dogs, the ones who set national policy. It was a heavy responsibility that Louise was feeling this morning because she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. When he left, Wight had given her the gallows for her desk.

She was hunched over one of the big light tables in the dimly lit Interp Center above the Pit where a dozen computer terminals were arranged in semicircular tiers facing the main display. The screen, ninety feet wide and thirty feet tall, showed the real-time positions and tracks of every U.S. intelligence-gathering satellite in orbit. What those satellites looked at was controlled from the consoles.

The first series of shots they had down linked during the missile strike were clear enough to make a snap judgment. The camp had been almost totally obliterated. Based on the first look, Louise had sent out the preliminary damage assessment over her signature, complete with a dozen of the best photographs and her interpretation of them.

She stubbed out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and immediately lit another. Chain-smoking was a bad habit she’d been trying to break for the past year. And she had done pretty good until last night. She had graduated third in her class at the Air Force Academy. She had wanted to fly jets, but at six-five with an IQ of 160 she was too tall and too smart to be a fighter pilot. She belonged here, and she loved her job, eavesdropping on the entire world. It was a voyeur’s playground, and Louise was nothing if not curious. But what she was looking at now wasn’t squaring with her first assessment. The camp had been heavily damaged, there was no doubt about that, but there were more survivors than she had first suspected. In fact her count was already up to eighteen, and still rising, while her earlier prediction had been for only a handful.

The Far Eastern Division morning supervisor Lieutenant Mark Hagedorn came over from the processing lab with a fresh batch of 100em X 100em transparencies. A third of them were marked with red tabs, indicating that they were infrared-enhanced. “Hot off the press, Maj,” he said. Hagedorn had graduated last in his class at the Academy, but he had the same gift as Colonel Wight. He was able to “see” things. Although his smartass attitude was almost unbearable at times, every supervisor he worked for, including Louise, wished they had a dozen of him.

Louise looked up. “What did you bring me?” Hagedorn was only a couple of hours into his shift, but already his uniform looked as if it had been slept in.

“The navy’s gonna be pissed off.” Hagedorn laid a couple of the transparencies on an empty spot on the light table. “Unless I’ve been playing with myself too much and I’m going blind, I think that’s bin Laden in the lower right quadrant.”

Louise moved a large magnifying lens over the first photograph and studied the image in the lower right corner. It was definitely a man, and definitely dressed like bin Laden. His face was turned to the left, showing his profile. He was looking at a light bloom toward the center of the camp. Louise moved the magnifying lens, but she didn’t need it to see that what she was looking at wasn’t a fire or a secondary explosion; it was a missile strike.

She looked up.

“That was the second-to-the-last hit,” Hagedorn said. “But I wasn’t satisfied with the first shots, so I ran these through again, and played with some light values. The flashes from the HE warheads tend to fuzz out a lot of the details.”

Louise turned back to the transparency. “How sure are you that this is bin Laden?”

“The computer was about seventy-five percent with the first, but we hit near a hundred percent with the second.”

Louise switched to the second image, and this time the figure had thrown back his head and seemed to be shouting something up into the sky. There was no doubt in her mind that she was looking at a very-much-alive Osama bin Laden.

“That one’s after the last strike, so there’s no doubt that the navy missed him,” Hagedorn said.

Louise cleared the other transparencies off the light table, and Hagedorn spread the rest of the pictures he had brought in sequence. “You’ve enhanced all of these?” she asked.

“Had to, because we weren’t seeing diddly squat through the smoke, most of which incidentally came from burning diesel. Probably hit their fuel storage area. And the chopper was putting out a lot of smoke too.”

Louise took her time studying each of the photographs that had been taken at two minute intervals after the attack had ended. The camp was flattened, nothing she was seeing changed her earlier assessment about that. But there were a lot of survivors. She counted at least two dozen, maybe more. But most disturbing was the fact that bin Laden had survived.

“He’s carrying something,” Louise said.

“Somebody,” Hagedorn corrected. He laid out three infrared-enhanced transparencies, and it became immediately apparent that bin Laden was carrying a human form.

In each succeeding image the heat emanating from the body was fading.

Louise looked up. “Whoever it is was killed in the raid.”

“That’s what it looks like. The million dollar question is who. I mean bin Laden loves his men and all that, but he had a gimpy leg and he’s not about to dive into the middle of a missile raid and pick up just anybody.”

Louise went back to the photograph in which bin Laden had gotten to his feet. She could see that he was carrying somebody. She switched the magnifying lens to the next image showing him heading toward the middle of the camp, and then the next three, a cold knot beginning to form at the pit of her stomach. She looked up again and Hagedorn was staring at her.

“I think I’m going to show these to somebody who might know what they mean.”

“Your old friend the colonel?” Hagedorn asked.

Louise shook her head. “You wouldn’t know him. He’s next door in the DO. Name is Otto Rencke. But first I want you to enhance everything we’ve down loaded so far. I don’t want to make a mistake.”

Rencke went over to Murphy’s office. Dick Adkins and Dave Whittaker were already there with the general who’d just returned from his home in Chevy Chase. “He’s alive and on his way to Kabul,” Rencke told them triumphantly.

Murphy was rocked to the core. “Was he hurt?”

“His phone was going bad so we didn’t have much time. He was ten or twelve miles outside of bin Laden’s camp, and he figured that he could make it down to Kabul sometime tonight, his time. Another ten or twelve hours.”

“Then what?” Adkins asked. “And what the hell happened to his chip?”

“He didn’t say about the chip, but he’s going to try to make it to the ambassador’s old residence,” Rencke said.”

“I’ll see about getting our people over to him,” Whittaker said, but he didn’t sound so sure. “They’re under siege at the old embassy so it’s going to be a problem for them.” “Okay, assuming that he gets that far without running into a Taliban military patrol or the crowds, getting him out of the country isn’t going to be a piece of cake,” Adkins said.

“We’re not going to leave him there,” Murphy said firmly. “What do you have in mind, Otto?”

“There’s maybe fifty Americans in Kabul right now, and they have to get out too. It’d make sense if we sent a C-130 from Riyadh to pick them up.” “It’s likely that the Taliban are looking for him,” Adkins said. “If he’s spotted they’ll never let him get close to the airport, let alone get aboard — even if the Taliban do let us fly in.”

“Mac said that if we could get a C-130 in there he’d get aboard,” Rencke countered, keeping his temper in check.

“I don’t know how,” Whittaker said.

“If Mac says he can do something, then we’d better believe him,” Adkins flared. He turned to Murphy. “I can get the plane, that’s no problem, but we’ll have to put pressure on the Taliban government to give us flight clearance.”

“I’ll call the President right now,” Murphy said. “He promised that if we found out that Mac was still alive he’d give us whatever we needed to get him out in one piece.”

“I’ll get Jeff Cook started. He can pull some strings, and with any luck by the time the C-130 approaches Afghani airspace we’ll have the clearance,” Adkins said, and he picked up the phone.

Murphy glanced at the clock. It was coming up on two. “The rest is going to be up to Mac, although I don’t know what the hell the President is going to say to them.”

“We only hit bin Laden’s camp,” Whittaker pointed out. “It’s not as if we hit an Afghani civilian target. There’s nothing else up there.”

“There’s more,” Rencke said as Murphy reached for the direct line phone to the White House.

The general stopped.

“Mac told me that there’s no doubt now that bin Laden has the bomb.”

They all looked at him, the office suddenly very quiet. It was their worst fear. The reason they had sent McGarvey into what they all thought was a suicide mission.

“If he wasn’t killed in the raid he’ll use it against us.”

“Do we have anything new from the NRO?” Murphy asked, subdued.

“Not yet, but they’re working on it. The NSA is monitoring the usual lines of communications he’s used in the past, but unless we get lucky we might not know for sure until it’s too late.”

“Until it’s too late,” Murphy repeated softly.

Rencke nodded glumly. “Mac wants a SNIE developed for the National Security Council by first thing in the morning. I’ve already called Fred Rudolph and told him what might be coming our way, and INS will have to be notified asap. Mac wants all of our assets worldwide put on alert, because the only way we’re going to stop this shit is if somebody spots him.” Rencke shook his head. “Oh, boy, this is the big one. If bin Laden is alive, and he wants to get a nuclear weapon to the U.S. and set it off, he’ll do it.”

“We’re pretty good too, Otto,” Murphy said.

“Yeah, but if he’s alive he’s gotta be seriously pissed off, ya know? He’s gonna be one motivated dude.”

Adkins put the phone down. “Jeff will arrange the C-130, but they’ll need formal orders. They’ll have to fly down the Gulf to avoid Iranian airspace, but the real problem is going to be Pakistan. The President will have to talk to them for over-flight permission. As it is Jeff figures that the one-way air distance is around sixteen hundred miles. But if they have to fly another route, over India let’s say, it’ll take twice as long.”

“Can we make contact with Mac?” Murphy asked Rencke. “No, his phone is still on simplex. But he said that he would call again once he got to Kabul. We have until then to come up with something for him. He’ll need an ETA.”

“We will, Otto,” Murphy said seriously. “You have my word on it.”

Adkins and Whittaker got up. “We’d best get to it then,” Adkins said and they left.

Rencke got to his feet. “We can’t leave him stuck there, General.”

“We won’t,” Murphy said. “What did Kathleen say when you told her.”

Rencke looked like a startled deer caught in headlights.

“I know you called her,” Murphy prompted gently.

“She’s a tough lady, but I thought she should know what’s coming down,” Rencke said defensively.

“Maybe we should send someone out to be with her.”

“Already done, General,” Rencke said. “And Liz is on her way in right now. I’m putting her in the loop.”

“Good idea,” Murphy agreed. “If you hear anything else let me know. But we will get him out of there. And we will stop bin Laden.”

“Yes, sir,” Rencke said, but he didn’t seem to be very convinced about the second part.

“We will talk now,” bin Laden said. The morning was surreal, almost like a nightmare of hell. The sky over the camp was still filled with smoke. The distant mountains, usually crisp in the clear air, were obscured. Below there was a lot of frantic activity as their remaining mujahedeen cleaned up the missile damage, buried their dead and sifted through the rubble for anything usable. Although the order to pack up and leave had not come yet, everybody knew that they could no longer stay here. If the Americans suspected that anyone had survived, which they surely did by now, they might mount another attack. Even if they didn’t, however, there was little or nothing left here except for the facility inside the cave. There were other camps, other caves that had not yet been pinpointed.

Bin Laden was numb with fatigue and grief. He wanted to run away and hide somewhere until it was time to die. His body was on fire, his left leg ached from the bone cancer eating at his hip and pelvis. Strange thoughts and visions kept popping into his head like lightning flashes, there for one brilliant split second, and then gone. He’d actually managed to do his midmorning prayers, lingering over each word, savoring each as if it were a sip of blessed ice water in the middle of the hot desert. But when he was finished he did not feel the same refreshment of spirit that he usually felt. Sarah, the light of his soul, was gone, and the only thought that allowed him to hold onto even a small portion of his sanity was that he would soon be joining her in Paradise, if indeed she was there. The Qoran said nothing about women in heaven. But Allah was just. He would not abandon her. He could not.

Bin Laden closed his eyes for just a moment, seeing the missiles raining down on them, feeling Sarah’s lifeless body in his arms.

“As you wish,” Bahmad said softly. He had read most of that from bin Laden’s body language. He watched the struggle the man was going through with some sympathy because he had been there himself.

Sarah’s body, completely wrapped in linen, lay on a prayer rug in the middle of the main chamber. When it got dark they would burn it. Bahmad was brought back to the funeral for his parents. He’d felt an impotent rage that he’d tried to quench all of his life. But now, though he wanted to feel some sadness for the girl, that part of him was already burned out. Sarah had been a wonderful girl; a daughter that he’d never had, never would have. They had talked often about life in the West, and she’d hung on everything he told her. And yet he still could not feel the loss. He could feel now was a little sympathy for the stirrings of anticipation for what might be.

Leaning heavily on his cane, bin Laden walked back from the entrance and settled wearily on the cushions in front of the brazier. A young mujahed brought him tea, and then bin Laden dismissed him and the other guard standing by. They looked nervously to Bahmad who nodded, and they went out.

“We must leave here, Osama,” Bahmad said, joining him on the cushions. Bin Laden poured him a glass of tea with shaking hands.

“Soon,” bin Laden said. “But for us there will be different paths.”

Bin Laden“‘s manner and speech were formal, which was worrisome to Bahmad. The man was coming unglued. There was a holy zeal in his eyes. He’d seen the same look in the eyes of mujahedeen about to go off on suicide missions with ten kilos of plastique strapped to their chests. “I have always followed your orders faithfully.”

“Yes, you have. And now I am sending you out on one last mission.”

“Are you asking me to throw away my life?”

Bin Laden shook his head. “No, my old friend. But you will have to be very clever to walk away from this one. And where you will go afterwards will be up to you. Once your assignment is completed, you will be on your own.” Bin Laden managed a small, coy smile despite his obvious physical and mental pain. “I think that you miss London.”

“There are some aspects of life in the West that I have enjoyed,” Bahmad admitted. “But no place might be safe for me if you want me to do what I think you want.”

“Are you a mind reader?”

“No, a loyal servant.”

“Of me, or of the cause?” bin Laden asked sharply. He glanced at Sarah’s body.

“I’ve never known the difference.”

Bin Laden might not have heard him. “It will be another burden for her mother to bear. So many burdens, so much pain. But she understands the jihad.” He looked back in anguish. “She must!”

“The most difficult pain for a mother to bear,” Bahmad offered gently. He thought about his own mother who had been mercifully spared that pain, though she had endured others. Because of the West.

A silence fell between them. The hiss of the gas lanterns was the only sound to be heard. After the missile strike the quiet was almost shocking.

“Kirk McGarvey must not be allowed to leave Afghanistan alive,” bin Laden said after a minute. “Have you received word from Hamed?”

“I gave him orders to kill McGarvey, but he is out of radio range now, so there is no way of knowing if he succeeded until he returns.”

“What if he reaches Kabul?”

“I have made arrangements.”

“There must be no mistakes.”

“Not this time.”

Bin Laden nodded his satisfaction. “Sarah told me that she and McGarvey spoke about his daughter. She works for the CIA.”

“She also mentioned it to me. But we knew about his background.”

“Her name is Elizabeth.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to kill her,” bin Laden said in a gentle voice. “After Mr. McGarvey, she will be your first priority.”

Bahmad hid his surprise. “There is no reason for that, Osama,” he said carefully. “Her father came here on a dangerous mission to find you and lead the missile attack. Killing him can be viewed as an act of war. Killing his daughter will be taken as nothing more than a senseless act of vengeance.”

“You had Trumble and his family killed.”

“That was to send the CIA the message that we were serious. It guaranteed that someone such as McGarvey would come.”

“Will you do it?” bin Laden asked simply.

“Killing her would be a criminal waste of resources. Every American law enforcement agency would go on a worldwide alert of such intensity that no place would be safe. She is an innocent—”

“There are no innocents,” bin Laden raised his voice. “You will show them that. You will teach the entire world.”

Bahmad lowered his eyes. Not out of deference, but because he knew what else was coming. He’d known for several months, the realization coming to him on the day he learned about the bomb, about bin Laden’s illness and about the final deal bin Laden had wanted to make with the West, with the nuclear weapon as the ultimate bargaining chip. He’d known that negotiating could not succeed. And he’d begun to work out a plan that he’d sincerely hoped he would never have to implement. Nevertheless he had started putting things in place in the U.S.” renewing old contacts there and in London, Paris and Berlin. Phone calls, promises, threats. The only surprise now was going after McGarvey’s daughter. It would present certain problems.

“Will you do it?” bin Laden asked again.

“Yes.”

A new, even more intense light came into bin Laden’s eyes. “Then there will be the final act of retribution,” he said softly. “Joshua’s hammer.”

When the realization had come to him that they would use the nuclear weapon in some way to strike against America, Bahmad had gone searching for the right target at the right time. An air burst over Washington during a joint session of Congress would certainly never be forgotten so long as there was a civilized world. Nor would it be forgotten if the bomb were to be detonated in front of the White House, killing the President and his staff. An air burst over the financial center in New York would disrupt the Americans’ capitalist hold on the world, as an airburst over a small Midwestern town would disrupt the average American’s feelings of safety and invulnerability; the bomb at the Murrah Federal Building had done just that to the nation, though on a much smaller scale. But he came finally to the notion that what would strike the most fear in Amer icons’ hearts would be an attack on what was most precious and sacred to them: their children. He had not foreseen Sarah’s death, nor had he envisioned going after McGarvey’s daughter. But he had come up with a plan to do the one thing that would not be forgotten in a thousand years. Thinking about the plan he had devised, he could see that there was a certain symmetry between it and what bin Laden had ordered him to do. Sarah had been murdered by the Americans. In retaliation bin Laden wanted McGarvey’s daughter assassinated, and he was now ready to use the nuclear weapon.

“This will be very expensive,” Bahmad said. “Not only in terms of money, but in terms of men.”

“This will be my last blow. Time is running out for me.” Bin Laden gave him a sad, knowing smile. “But I think you already guessed.”

“Cancer?”

Bin Laden nodded. “Unless there is a miracle I have one year.” He looked at Sarah’s shrouded body. “I want America to feel the same pain I am feeling at this moment.”

“If we do this thing your name will not be respected,” Bahmad warned. “You will be vilified not only in the West, but among Muslims as well.”

Bin Laden’s gaze hardened. “But I will be remembered.”

“Indeed you will.”

Bin Laden thought about it for a long time, and when he looked up once more his resolve was as clear on his face as his pain. “How do we proceed?”

“Give me a minute and I will show you.” Bahmad got up and went to his sleeping quarters off the operations center near the back of the cave. He lit one of the gas lamps and went to a four-drawer file cabinet, which he unlocked. The room was austere, only the bare rock floor, a small cot, a writing table and the file cabinet. There was nothing on the walls, no photographs or pictures; no rugs or vases, nothing to mark that anyone had lived here on and off for more than a year. But since Beirut, Bahmad had been a man who carried all of his decorations and mementoes in his brain.

He took a thick manila envelope out of the top drawer and relocked the file cabinet. He’d been an avid reader for a long time, a habit he had developed in England working for the SIS. Part of his job had been to read all the newspapers, journals and magazines coming out of the Middle East, and read transcripts from television and radio broadcasts, as well as from intercepted military and diplomatic traffic. He’d developed an insatiable appetite for news of what was going on in the world. Here in the mountains it had been fantastically difficult to keep abreast of what was happening in the outside world, but he had managed to have a weekly package of newspapers and magazines from around the world brought up here. And he consumed all the international news as it was presented, with different spins in the major newspapers of a dozen different countries. He had time to think, to plan, to let his mind soar wherever it would; to make connections where seemingly there were none; to make associations where none were apparent; and to draw out scenarios based on what he had learned.

Holding the envelope containing his planning details, he wondered why he had taken this notion as far as he had. Most of his ideas were just that, nothing but ideas. Way too fantastically difficult or even horrible to consider. But this idea had stuck with him, for some reason, and the operation would be his very last. With bin Laden dead, however, Bahmad would be set financially for the rest of his life. If he could pull this last thing off and get away, he had the numbers for a dozen of bin Laden’s secret offshore bank accounts worth somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred million dollars. Enough to last any man a lifetime in luxury. And with bin Laden gone there would be no one to come after him.

Returning to the main chamber where bin Laden was waiting, Bahmad stopped a moment in the corridor. One last time he asked himself if he should go through with this. The idea was so monstrous that it had taken even his breath away when it had come to him. But years of hate had burned out whatever conscience he’d ever had. Yasir Arafat had fed into it, used it, just as bin Laden had, so that now even the bizarre seemed ordinary to him. Human life did not mean to him now what it had when he was a child.

The problem, he thought, walking into the main chamber, would be fitting the plan with Elizabeth McGarvey’s assassination. For that he would need a diversion, and even before he sat down beside bin Laden it came to him; the entire thing in perfect detail, and he smiled. It would only take a few more phone calls and a transfer of some funds to the proper accounts.

“I see that you have already given this some thought,” bin Laden said.

“Yes, I have.” Bahmad opened the envelope and took out several articles that he had clipped from the New York Times, Washington Post and San Francisco Examiner three months ago. He handed them to bin Laden.

“I will read these later—”.bin Laden said, but then a photograph of a pretty young woman in the lead article caught his attention. He drew a sudden, sharp breath and looked up, a sense of wonder on his face.

“She would be the target,” Bahmad said.

Bin Laden’s mind was racing a thousand miles per hour. “But not the President?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Not the President,” bin Laden said forcefully. He studied the photograph. “I want him to feel the same grief I am feeling. A father’s grief when his daughter is killed in front of his eyes. It must be done that way.”

“The target will be Deborah Haynes, the President’s daughter.”

Bin Laden sat back and closed his eyes. “You would use a nuclear weapon to kill one person?”

“No, there would be many others. Perhaps two thousand, probably even more than that.”

“Tell me.”

“The President’s daughter is mildly retarded, which makes the fact of her innocence without argument. America loves her as they love their President. Every father can have sympathy for the family. For what they will go through. But America is also very proud of her. Besides being beautiful, she is talented. She is a gymnast and a longdistance runner.”

Bin Laden opened his eyes. “I didn’t know that.”

“Three months from now, in September, Deborah Haynes is going to take part in the International Special Olympics in San Francisco. After the opening ceremonies in Candlestick Park, she, and perhaps as many as fifteen hundred other handicapped runners, is going to compete in a half-marathon. From the park she’ll cross the Golden Gate Bridge and head to Sausalito, but she’ll never get that far. Joshua’s Hammer will be aboard a ship passing beneath the bridge. At the moment Deborah Haynes is in the middle of the bridge the bomb will explode.”

For just a moment a touch of sanity crossed bin Laden’s face and he looked away, his eyes coming to rest on his daughter’s shrouded body.

“There’ll be no going back to the old ways for any of us,” Bahmad warned.

“It will be no mere footnote in the history books,” bin Laden said softly. “Unlike Sarah’s murder.” He turned back. “Where will you go afterwards?”

“I have a place in mind,” Bahmad said. The money he already had would be sufficient to gain him the safe haven. And once he had raided bin Laden’s accounts, he would buy a large ranch inland. He’d thought about raising horses, perhaps even sugarcane. Legitimate pursuits. He would never be able to travel again, but then with what he had in mind there would be no need. He would trade his career as a terrorist for one of a gentleman farmer.

“When we leave here we will never see or hear from each other again.”

“Where will you go, Osama?”

Bin Laden said nothing, and after a few moments of silence, Bahmad nodded.

“It’s just as well that I don’t know. But we need to be gone from here’ within the next twenty-four hours, no longer.”

“Do you have a plan for transporting the bomb to California?”

“Yes, but for that I will need your help. Four of your most trusted mujahedeen need to move it out of here, and your international connections to get me a cargo ship.”

A sudden understanding dawned in bin Laden’s eyes. “It’s why you insisted on camouflaging it in that package. It will be—”

Bahmad held up a hand. “No one must know about this except for us, Osama. Not your mujahedeen who will transport the device, and certainly not the ship captain or his crew.” He took the newspaper articles from bin Laden’s hand, and dropped them onto the live coals in the brazier. The paper flared up, and Bahmad took the rest of the planning documents, maps, photographs, notes and timetables out of the manila envelope and fed them to the fire too. Lastly he dropped the envelope into the flames. He knew everything by heart.

They watched in silence until there was nothing left but ashes, which Bahmad stirred with a small wooden-handle rake.

“Insha “Allah,” bin Laden said.

Bahmad held his piece. But no, he thought. In this instance he didn’t believe that Allah or God would play any part, because this act would be too bloody even for them.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.” The President’s press secretary Sterling Mott stepped aside and the Washington press corps got to its feet as President Haynes strode purposefully into the map room and took his place at the podium. He’d brought no notes, and when he looked into the television cameras his manner was stern but forthright.

“Here’s a man with a clear conscience,” the AP political analyst said to the ABC newswoman seated beside him, which elicited a chuckle.

“For several years the United States has offered a five million dollar reward for the capture of the Saudi Arabian terrorist, Osama bin Laden,” the President began. “Since the bombing of a Saudi National Guard Post in Riyadh in 1996 in which five Americans were killed, bin Laden has been directly or indirectly tied to numerous other terrorist acts in which hundreds of Americans and thousands of other innocent civilians were brutally killed or injured.”

The President paused. “Dahran, Kenya, Tanzania and even New York City bin Laden has waged his war of terror against the West — against specifically the United States and all Americans — for a very long and bloody time.

“In 1998 he made it perfectly clear to the world that it was every Muslim’s duty to kill Americans and our allies, both civilian and military, wherever and whenever possible.

“Under the banner that he calls Al Qaeda, or the Base,

he has systematically recruited three kinds of people-those who were failures and had nothing else in their lives, no jobs, no families, no prospects for the future; those who love Islam but have no real idea what the Koran teaches; and finally those who know nothing but fighting and killing-professional terrorists.

“In August of 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes at bin Laden’s camps near the town of Khost in northeastern Afghanistan, and at a bin Laden-financed chemical weapons factory in Khartoum. All the targets were heavily damaged or completely destroyed, seriously affecting bin Laden’s ability to wage his war of terrorism against us.”

The President paused again to gauge the effect that his words were having.

“Although bin Laden escaped personal injury, we thought that such an attack would make him think twice about continuing what he calls his jihad — or, holy war. But we were mistaken.

“Over the past months our intelligence agencies have been engaged in what we thought was a meaningful dialogue with bin Laden. We acted in good faith, agreeing to lift the bounty on him, to negotiate with the government of Saudi Arabia for the repatriation of his family, and certain other considerations that we felt would put an end to the killings.

“Bin Laden responded in a very clear, very concise and very deadly manner. Two weeks ago, gunmen, under the direct orders of bin Laden, shot to death a State Department employee, Alien Trumble, his wife and two children along with two bystanders in the parking lot of EPCOT Center in Orlando, Florida.”

That got everybody’s attention and two dozen hands shot up, but the President held them off.

“I ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to withhold the essential facts of the attack until we were certain who was behind it. When we had concrete evidence laying the crime on bin Laden’s doorstep, we continued to with hold the announcement while we considered an appropriate response.”

A heavy silence fell over the room. All eyes and cameras were on the President.

“Yesterday, after a week-long series of meetings with my National Security Council, I ordered our armed forces to strike at bin Laden’s primary camp in the mountains of Afghanistan, eighty miles north of the capital city Kabul.”

The announcement answered the questions about anti American rioting in Kabul that had begun this morning. Until now the White House had stonewalled the issue.

“In addition to the incident in Orlando, our intelligence services confirmed the strong likelihood that bin Laden was planning another, even more deadly attack against Americans on U.S. soil. I cannot share all the details with you at this time because of national security concerns, but we believe that if such an attack were brought against us the loss of lives would be staggering. It would be a far worse tragedy than anything bin Laden has engineered to date.” _

The President was grim-faced. It was clear to everybody watching and listening that he had been forced into ordering the attack. It was something abhorrent to him. And yet he was being firm. During his campaign he’d promised the American people that he would take back the fear. And this was the first necessary though painful step in that direction.

“The mission was a success,” he continued. “Preliminary reconnaissance aircraft and satellite photos indicate that the terrorist camp was obliterated. Wiped from the face of the earth. There was no loss of American lives, nor were any civilian targets damaged or destroyed. This was a surgical strike.”

The President looked directly into the television cameras. “I made it perfectly clear when I was hired for this job, and I will make it perfectly clear again: The United States has a zero-tolerance policy toward all acts of terrorism against Americans, wherever they may be, and against the monsters who perpetrate them. There is, and will continue to be, no safe haven for terrorists anywhere on earth. Strike at us, and we will find and destroy you. And that is a promise.”

In the Afghan Mountains Sunset was in another twenty minutes at 8:27. McGarvey had gone without proper rest for more than forty-eight hours, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up.

The worst part had been climbing down the steep cliff beside the waterfall. He’d almost lost his footing several times, and when he finally reached the lower camp his legs had shaken so badly he had to stop for ten minutes before he could go on.

Twice making his way down the arroyo to the valley he’d stumbled on rocks and nearly broke an ankle. Afterward, however, the going was much easier and he had allowed himself the luxury of a cigarette and a drink of water.

The day had been very warm, but now with the sun behind the mountains to the west the temperature was dropping fast. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but a strong wind blew down the valley and he could smell the snow on the upper peaks. Just thinking about what this valley would be like in the dead of winter made him shiver, and he picked up the pace.

Already he was behind schedule. The climb down the cliff and through the arroyo had taken much longer than he thought it would. He tried jogging, but after a hundred yards or so he was winded because of the altitude, and he felt a very sharp, painful stitch at his side, so that he had to slow down. The feeling he’d had at the top of the cliff that someone was behind him — perhaps Farid had turned around and come back after all — had finally faded. He stopped several times to look back, but each time he saw nothing. No movement of any kind. He could have been on a deserted planet.

As he walked he thought about Sarah. If she had taken her time getting back to the camp she would have missed the attack. But if she had hurried she would have been caught in the middle of it. Then her only hope would have been to get inside the cave. Either way if she had survived it would have been a terrible blow for her. Everything her father had taught her about Americans would have been proven true. They were not to be trusted, their word was as godless as their society.

However badly we hurt them up there, the surviving mujahedeen would be tending to their wounded. McGarvey knew from the last time bin Laden had been hit that his people would be gone from that location within twenty four hours.

But they would be sending someone for him. Of that he had little doubt. And if they came he would have to kill them. The time for negotiating had passed.

He spotted the outlying stubble of the abandoned cornfields, and the outlines of the bombed-out buildings in the village, and he picked up the pace again. It was possible that there was another, faster path down from bin Laden’s camp; the route they had taken might have been only for his benefit. Even now he thought that he would have a hard time retracing his steps. Every arroyo looked almost exactly the same from the valley floor as every other one.

With darkness coming he angled to the west up into the hills above the valley. He reached a spot from where he could look down into the village, and held up. Nothing moved below. From where he crouched in the scrub brush he could make out the barn where they had parked the Rover, and even a bit of the camo netting. On the other side of the village he could see the wide stream meandering down the valley. And above him, at the crest of the hills, there was nothing.

He settled down to wait until it was completely dark, his back against the trunk of a short, gnarled tree. If someone was down there now, the advantage would be theirs until nightfall. He wanted a cigarette, but the breeze was at his back and would carry the smoke down into the village.

Instead, he ate a piece of nan and drank some water. The little bit of food helped, but every bone in his body ached, and one of the stitches from his operation had opened and the wound was seeping blood.

This mission could have succeeded if the missile attack hadn’t been carried out. Yet from the President’s point of view there wasn’t any other choice, especially with Berndt constantly in his ear. When the chip went off the air they had to assume the worse, that McGarvey was dead. Now, if bin Laden had survived, the battle was going to be on his terms, and it would very likely end in disaster.

He toyed with doing the totally unexpected. If he turned around now and headed back up to bin Laden’s camp he might possibly make it before daybreak. But even if the camp hadn’t been dismantled and abandoned by then, actually finding bin Laden and putting a bullet in his brain would be next to impossible. McGarvey had turned the problem over in his head, trying to come up with a scenario that made sense in which he could get back there, find bin Laden, kill him and then get free again. But each time he came up against several brick walls, not the least of which was his exhaustion. Spending the night and the entire day hidden in the mountains before he went in wouldn’t do much good either. Without supplies his condition would worsen.

He drifted off, thinking about Katy and Liz waiting for him back in Washington. They would be worried, because Otto couldn’t keep a secret from Liz, and she in turn would have told her mother what was going on. But it was no good thinking about them for now. One step at a time. It was all he could do.

He woke twenty minutes later, the night almost pitch black except for the starlight. He was deeply chilled and it took several seconds before he could loosen his muscles enough to simply stand up.

The village was nothing but indistinct shadows and angles. As he picked his way down the hill he took out his gun, and by feel made sure the action still worked smoothly and the safety catch was off.

He reached the cornfields ten minutes later, still stiff and cold despite the exertion. When he got to the first building to the north of the barn where the Rover was parked, he stopped in the deeper shadows to watch and listen. The only sounds were the gurgling of the nearby stream and the wind in the hills above him. It would only take a minute or so to pop the car’s ignition switch and hot-wire it. If he didn’t run into any trouble on the way out of the mountains he figured he could reach the Taliban checkpoint near the airport before dawn. From there it would be anyone’s guess what he might encounter. But if he got that far he would have at least a chance of getting out of the country.

He slipped around the side of the building and worked his way through the nibble, holding up every ten yards or so to watch and listen. It was quiet. It did not look as if the camouflage netting covering the car had been disturbed. It was going to be good to sit on a soft seat with back support and the car’s heater for a change. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this cold or strung out.

Farid came out of the barn, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, and nervously lit a cigarette.

McGarvey held perfectly still in the darkness, his stiff, aching muscles totally forgotten for the moment. There was another route back after all and Farid had taken it. But had he returned alone? McGarvey didn’t think that Farid would have had time to return to the camp and then get back here, even if there was a shortcut. The only other possibility was that someone else had started out after him.

If that were the case then this was a trap. But McGarvey wondered if he was simply being paranoid. Rather than face bin Laden’s wrath for failing, Farid may have decided to come back on his own hoping to get a jump on McGarvey when he showed up at the car. But he had to assume the worst.

After a few minutes Farid tossed the cigarette away and went back into the barn.

McGarvey stepped out of the deeper shadows and hurried to the rear of the building, taking care not to stumble on the loose rocks, bricks and pieces of wood lying everywhere. Most of the back wall of the barn was gone. Farid had climbed up on a pile of rubble and was looking toward the north, the same direction McGarvey had come from. Had he been standing there earlier there was a good possibility he’d seen McGarvey coming in.

It was very dark back here. An entire army of mujahedeen could be hidden in the village and they would be invisible.

McGarvey stepped inside the barn and ducked down behind the Rover. Flattening himself on the dirt floor he looked under the car. He could see the rubble pile that Farid was standing on, but so far as he could tell no one was crouched waiting on the other side.

He got up and crept to the back of the car, and checked outside. There was nothing there. But he knew that it was distinctly possible that this was a setup. The problem was that he could not stay here all night waiting for something to develop.

He moved to the other side of the Rover, then keeping his eye on Farid, he took several steps closer and raised his pistol. “You should not have come back,” he said softly.

Farid spun around, a guilty look on his face. But he did not look frightened, nor did he try to reach for his rifle. His eyes flicked to something behind McGarvey.

All that took only a split second. It was a trap.

McGarvey jumped up on the hood of the Rover and rolled to the other side of the car as a burst from a Kalashnikov rifle raked the floor where he’d been standing.

He hit the dirt floor on his right shoulder, brought his gun around and fired two quick shots at Farid’s retreating figure as the mujahed disappeared around the corner outside.

Whoever had fired from the door had come from the other side of the barn. He was moving cautiously around the back of the Rover. McGarvey looked under the car, saw a pair of boots and fired, hitting the man in the ankle.

McGarvey jumped up as the mujahed cried out in pain. The man was staggering backward, trying to keep his balance while he tried to bring his rifle to bear. McGarvey rushed around the back of the car, batted the rifle aside with his free hand, and crashed into the mujahed, sending them both sprawling to the ground outside the barn.

McGarvey jammed the muzzle of his pistol in the mujahed’s throat just below his chin. If he pulled the trigger the bullet would crash into the man’s brain, and he knew it. His struggles stopped immediately.

“How many others did you bring with you?” McGarvey looked up to make sure that Farid hadn’t come around from behind the barn.

“Six,” the mujahed grunted.

“Including Farid?”

The mujahed hesitated a fraction of a second. It was enough to tell McGarvey that he was lying. “Who sent you? Was it bin Laden or Ali?”

“Screw you.”

“I didn’t come here to lead the missile attack. I came to make a deal.” McGarvey took the rifle from the mujahed and tossed it aside. “I won’t kill you if you give me your word that you and Farid will return to the camp.”

The mujahed shouted something in Persian as Farid came around the corner of the barn. McGarvey rolled left and fired three shots as Farid brought his rifle up, all three of them hitting the young man in the chest and driving him backward.

McGarvey turned around. The mujahed he had wounded in the leg had reached his rifle and he was snatching it out of the dirt as McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the temple, killing him instantly.

Farid was still alive. He was struggling to pull a pistol out of his vest, but he was too weak to do it.

McGarvey got up, walked over and crouched down beside him. Blood covered his chest, and bubbles were forming over the lung shot. His face was deathly pale, flecks of foamy blood on his lips. He was a dead man and he knew it.

“I didn’t want to kill any of you.”

Farid whispered something in Persian.

“This should never have happened to you. To any of you, but the killing and terrorism has to stop. No more jihad.”

Farid was very young, and as McGarvey watched the life drain out of his face, a great sadness came over him. Along with it he thought about Sarah, sincerely hoping that she had come out of the missile attack okay, and about his own daughter who, because of her father, had almost been killed three times. A waste, all of it was a terrible waste. The sins of the fathers were to be suffered by the sons. Only now McGarvey was afraid that the daughters would somehow bear the brunt.

Farid whispered something else in Persian, and then was still.

“Goddamnit,” McGarvey said, and he sat back. “Goddamnit to hell.”

The CIA was on emergency status. The most effective deputy director of Operations that the Company had ever known was stuck in bad land and all the stops had been pulled to get him out of there.

Adkins had temporarily assigned Elizabeth as acting assistant to Otto Rencke, who had set her up at a computer terminal in his offices. She was working on flight plans from Riyadh don the Gulf and across Pakistan to Kabul, the most direct route, and the one that made the most sense, considering what her father was facing. But she was also working out several alternative routes, including one that passed through Indian airspace, and the much longer way, northwest through Syria and Turkey, then straight east over the former Russian republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea and then Turkmenistan.

The Russian route, as she thought of it, would be tough. Flight clearances might take days, if they were ever given, and there would have to be a refueling stop somewhere. In addition, that route put the flight path over northern Afghanistan where the rebels fighting the Taliban had Stinger missiles. They were shooting down anything that came within range.

Elizabeth sat back and pushed a wisp of blond hair off her forehead. She hadn’t had much time to worry about her father all day, but relaxing for a moment she tried to envision what he was going through, and it sent a shiver up her spine. Waiting was infinitely more difficult than doing, she decided. In the field, on the run, you were too busy to spend much time worrying about what might happen. The adrenalin was pumping, inner reserves were kicking in and everything you’d learned in training and from previous missions-the good ones as well as the bad — became foremost in your mind. When your survival was at stake, your focus tended to be sharp. But sitting here waiting, wondering, fretting, was the pits.

Rencke came in from a staff meeting at 5:30 p.m. Elizabeth jumped up. “We’ve got Pakistan,” he said, dumping an armload of file folders and computer printouts on his already-overflowing conference table.

“Thank God,” she said. “When do they get airborne?”

“They left fifteen minutes ago.”

Elizabeth’s eyes went automatically to the halfdozen world clocks on the wall. The one for Kabul read 0500. Rencke knew exactly what she was thinking.

“It’ll be broad daylight when they touch down,” he said. “Around ten in the morning, his time. But there wasn’t much else we could do, Liz. The airport closes down after dark. Besides, they have to think he’d want to make a try under cover of darkness. This might throw them a curve.”

“It might also make it impossible for my father to even get close to the airport, let alone make it to the airplane.”

“The longer he stays there, the greater the risk he faces,” Rencke started to hop from one foot to the other, but stopped. “Oh, wow, Liz, I’m really scared. But your dad’s pretty smart, he’ll figure it out. And he’s tough too.”

Her heart softened. “Okay, Otto, take it easy. How do we get the ETA to my father?”

“When he gets to the ambassador’s old compound in Kabul he’s going to call me.”

“You said that his phone battery was low. What if he can’t call?”

Rencke looked even more forlorn. “There’s no phone in the compound, I checked. But even if there was he’d have to go through their international exchange, and the Taliban control every call out of the country.”

“Could he get to one of the other embassies?”

“He might.” Rencke shook his head in frustration.

Elizabeth tried to put herself in her father’s place, think what he might do. “Maybe he could rig up a battery charger.”

“There’s no electricity to the house. No water, no sewer, nothing.”

“I thought there was someone living there, like caretakers.”

“So did I. But right now there’re only a couple of Taliban guards stationed outside.” He brightened a little. “One good thing, all the rioting is concentrated downtown at our old embassy for now.”

“For now,” Elizabeth repeated glumly. “He’s got to get out of there, Liz, and he knows it. There’s too much at stake now. We need him back here or we’re going to be in some very big shit.”

This was something new. She looked at him. “What do you mean? What else is going on?”

Rencke was getting agitated again. “This is eyes-only shit. The big enchilada. It’s why your dad took the chance going over there in the first place.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, shit, Liz. Oh, goddam shit.” Rencke suddenly stopped moving. “It’s lavender again. It’s bin Laden, he’s got a nuclear weapon and he wanted to give it to us, but the missiles ruined that deal. Your dad was going to talk him out of it. That’s the real reason he went over there.”

Elizabeth was stunned. “I thought it was about Alien Trumble.”

“That too. But unless we nailed bin Laden in the raid, he’ll be coming after us big time, and your dad is the only one who knows him well enough now to figure out what he’s going to do and how to stop him.”

“Where’d he get it?”

“The Russians. It’s just a demolitions device, around a kiloton, but it’s real little. Eighty pounds, fits in a suitcase. It could do a lot of bad stuff to us.”

The telephone on Rencke’s desk rang. He whipped around and snatched it up. “What?” he demanded.

Elizabeth was numb. She hadn’t any inkling of the real reason her father was going over to meet with bin Laden. She’d known that something big was in the wind, but not what. This news was simply staggering.

“Five minutes,” Rencke said, subdued. He broke the connection and called the security desk downstairs. “This is Rencke in the DO. Major Horn is coming across from the NRO’s Photo Interp Section. Give her a pass and have an escort bring her up here as soon as she arrives.”

“Who’s Major Horn?” Elizabeth asked.

Rencke went to his conference table and started taking everything off it, stacking the files and printouts in untidy piles against the wall. “She’s a friend,” he said distractedly. “A very bright friend.” He stopped and gave Elizabeth an owlish look. “She says we have some serious trouble coming our way. And Louise does not exaggerate. Never.”

Elizabeth helped him clear the table. “What kind of trouble?”

“She’s bringing over some satellite shots.” He stopped again. “But she sounded scared, Liz. I’ve never heard her like that.”

“I don’t know what else can go wrong,” Elizabeth said.

“Plenty,” Rencke told her.

Louise Horn got to Rencke’s office a few minutes later, a big leather photograph portfolio under her arm. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a month. “Hi,” she said, almost shyly.

Rencke introduced her to Elizabeth, and they shook hands.

“You’re Kirk McGarvey’s daughter, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m working with Otto for now.”

Louise and Rencke exchanged a worried but warm glance. “Well, wherever your dad is right now, he’s going to want to know about this,” she said. She took a dozen 100em X 100em photographs that had been made from the transparencies, and spread them out in sequence on the conference table. “These are mostly enhanced KH-13 images of bin Laden’s camp before, during and after the missile raid.” She handed a large magnifying glass to Rencke.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asked.

“Upper right quadrant, first three shots. There’s someone coming down the hill into the camp from the south. That’s a few minutes before the missiles hit.”

Rencke studied the photographs for a minute. “Could be Mac’s escort coming back.”

“We figured that was one possibility,” Louise said. “We don’t have any establishing shot showing him leaving, but assuming he wasn’t there during the raid…” She trailed off and looked at Elizabeth. “Sorry, but this isn’t going to get any easier, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all right,” Elizabeth said. “I’m here to do a job just like everybody else.”

“He wasn’t there,” Rencke said. “I talked to him via satellite phone.”

“Okay, maybe his escort then, or one of them.” Louise directed his attention to the next series of shots. “Lower center this time. There, below the helicopter, you can see the figure. The next is the heat bloom from a missile strike.”

Rencke studied the photo. “Right on top of him.”

“Not quite, but close,” Louise said. “You can see in the next two shots that she’s down, but primarily intact.”

Rencke and Elizabeth looked up. “She?” Rencke asked.

Louise nodded tiredly. “We weren’t sure at first, so I had my people go back and re-enhance every image we down loaded from the get-go. Then I pulled up bin Laden’s package.”

Rencke moved ahead to the next photographs, which he studied for a long time. When he looked up he handed the glass to Elizabeth. “Bin Laden is alive.”

Louise nodded. “I hope they don’t shoot the messenger, but somebody’s got to tell the navy that they missed.”

Elizabeth bent over the table and studied the images, especially the last few, which showed bin Laden carrying the body of a woman, her long black hair streaming nearly to the ground. “Who is she?” Elizabeth asked, looking up.

Louise took two more photographs out of the portfolio. One was a blown-up and enhanced section of one of the satellite photos, showing the face and neck of the body in bin Laden’s arms. The second was a file photograph of a young, beautiful woman dressed in traditional garb, except that her face and hair were uncovered. They were the same woman.

“Sarah bin Laden. His daughter.”

It hit Elizabeth all at once. “My God, I know her.”

“How? Where?” Rencke demanded.

“I don’t know, but her face, it’s so familiar to me.”

“The Bern Polytechnic,” Louise said. “I checked the records, she was there one year the same time you were. I wondered if you would remember her.”

“She was younger than me, I think, but we might have had a couple of the same classes.” Elizabeth looked up in amazement. “I remember her because she always had bodyguards around her. Some of the other girls thought it was cool, but I thought it was a pain in the neck.” She looked at the photograph again. “She was sorta quiet, and very smart. But she was never allowed to go into town, or on trips with us. I remember that, because we all thought it was sad, you know. The poor little Arab rich kid.”

“Well, our missiles killed her and not bin Laden,” Louise said.

“Adkins has to see this,” Elizabeth said, a cold fist closing around her heart. Bin Laden would be insane with rage now.

Rencke’s brain was going a mile a minute. “The President has to be informed,” he said distractedly. He focused on Louise. “Good job, kiddo,” he said softly. “But you’d better stick around, there’s gonna be some questions.”

“I figured as much,” she said. “I’ll be next door in the Pit if you need me. Maybe we can come up with something else. The weather over there is still on our side.” She glanced at Elizabeth. “Too bad about his daughter.”

“He’s going to come after my father,” Elizabeth said.

“I think you’re right,” Louise replied. “But from what I understand, your dad is a pretty tough dude himself.” She smiled. “It’s not over so don’t count him out yet.” She turned back to Rencke. “When you’re ready for a break give me a call. We can go over to my apartment and I’ll fix us some supper.”

“I’ll call you,” Rencke promised, but he’d already lifted the phone to Dick Adkins.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

McGarvey pulled off the side of the highway and got out to check under the hood. An armored scout car was parked a couple of hundred yards away at the road to the airport.

They might be looking for a Rover, but they were expecting an American. McGarvey had taken the time to pull Panel’s clothes over his khakis and sweater. He wore a cap, and although he was clean shaven he’d wrapped a cotton scarf around his neck and chin. It might be unclear to someone passing, or to someone standing beside the road exactly who or what he was.

The trip down the valley from the bombed-out village, and the path along the river cliffs in the dark had taken him much longer than he expected. It had already been light when he’d passed Charikar. Stopped now beside the road he was seeing a lot of traffic, most of it big trucks bringing food into the city from the countryside.

By now Farid and the other mujahed would be missed. Someone else might have been sent to find out what had happened, and each hour that passed the likelihood that the Taliban in Kabul had been notified increased exponentially. It was important that he get to a place of relative safety very soon so that he could get a few hours’ rest, and hopefully something to eat and drink. He was at his extreme physical limit. He was having trouble concentrating on what he was doing, trouble keeping in focus.

He closed the Rover’s hood and got back behind the wheel. A couple of cars and a broken-down old bus passed him, none of the drivers slowing for the checkpoint. In the rearview mirror a minute later McGarvey saw what he had been looking for. A convoy of what appeared to be at least six large trucks lumbered down the highway, a cloud of blue-gray exhaust trailing behind them.

He put the car in gear and waited until the lead truck was almost upon him, then suddenly gunned the engine and pulled out in front of it. McGarvey glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see the driver shake a fist at him as the distance between them closed alarmingly fast. He stomped the gas pedal to the floor and the Rover shot out ahead, at the same moment the scout car’s turret hatch opened, and a man popped up.

He was a soldier, McGarvey could see that much as he got closer, and he was speaking into a microphone. Seventy-five yards away, the turret started to move as a plume of diesel smoke blossomed out of the exhaust stack, and the scout car lurched toward the highway.

McGarvey checked the rearview mirror again, and then slowed down so that the lead truck was once more right on his bumper. The scout car crew had spotted him and they were going to try to intercept him. But they had to know that if they fired there was a good chance they’d hit the truck right behind him too. At the very least they would cause a tremendous accident that would probably end up with a lot of casualties, ruined food supplies and a traffic jam that would be snarled for most of the morning.

Thirty yards out the muzzle of the main 14.5 mm heavy machinegun came around to point directly at him, and the scout car stopped just off the highway’s paved surface. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. There wasn’t the slightest chance that the gunner would miss. McGarvey could see that the soldier in the turret was an officer, and he was frantically speaking into his microphone while gesticulating for McGarvey to pull over.

A string of several cars and a couple of trucks was coming out of the city. The officer turned and spotted them as they were nearly on top of his position. He bent down and shouted something through the open turret. At the last possible instant the cars flashed past the scout car as McGarvey, the six trucks directly on his tail, also passed, and the moment to open fire was gone.

McGarvey breathed a sigh of relief, and allowed himself to relax for just a minute. The first problem, getting past the airport checkpoint, was solved, but now he was faced with the even larger problems of getting into the city, ditching the car and making it on foot to the ambassador’s old residence compound. Then he would have to get inside past any guards that the Taliban might have posted because of the riots, and somehow deal with the two caretakers. They were there to protect American property so he could not harm them. Yet they were in fact employees of the Taliban government so they wouldn’t hesitate to try to arrest him, which might end up becoming his biggest problem this morning. But he needed food and drink and rest, and he needed it very soon.

He gradually sped up, putting more distance between himself and the convoy of trucks. He kept a sharp eye for military vehicles, and he kept checking the sky to make sure they hadn’t sent a helicopter gunship after him. If they did that he wouldn’t stand a chance out here in the open.

He couldn’t help but think about Sarah bin Laden. In another time and place she could have gone to London for her education, and could have eventually taken over the family’s business interests. He had no doubt that she would have been good at it, because she was bright and she had proved how adaptable she was by existing in Afghanistan disguised as a mujahed. He could see her in a private jet flitting from one world capital to another, attending high level business meetings; informing her business opponents, with an arched eyebrow, that they had no conception of what truly difficult negotiations could be like. She’d been there, seen that, done that.

The city gradually enfolded him like a dirty pair of trousers. Low, mud-brick buildings on either side of the highway gave way to larger and thicker concentrations of walled compounds, and rat warrens of hovels rising up from the floor of the river valley into the arid, treeless hills overlooking the city.

Unlike the day he came in from the airport when the streets were all but devoid of life, traffic this morning was fairly heavy, and the marketplaces, as he approached the city center, were filled with shoppers. Out this early, he suspected, to beat the summer heat.

As best he could remember from studying the maps and files he’d brought with him in his laptop, the ambassador’s residence was not too far from the old embassy, which was on Ansari Wat in the northeastern part of the city called Wzir Akbar Khan Mena. He’d seen the embassy on the way in from the airport and he had a fuzzy idea how to get from it to the residence. But Otto warned him that the anti American rioting was concentrating around the old embassy. No one would expect him to walk into the middle of a demonstration, but it might be his safest bet for now.

In the distance ahead he spotted a roadblock. Several army trucks and jeeps, and at least one armored car blocked the main road. He slowed down. The officer at the airport checkpoint would have radioed that the Rover had passed him and was on the way into the city. They were waiting for him, and he looked for someplace to ditch the car.

The main street was filled with people, and as McGarvey got even closer he realized that the roadblock had been set up not to catch him, but to allow the crowd to get across. Off to the right, in the direction the people were moving, was the old American embassy. What he was seeing was more people being directed toward the demonstration. Like most of these riots it was being choreographed by the government, and they had their hands full. It gave him the advantage for the moment.

A block away he pulled into a narrow side street that wound its way past a series of shops, a lot of them closed, and some three-and four-story European-style structures that looked like apartment buildings.

He came to a large park ringed by apartment buildings. At one end of the park was a mosque, its minaret rising into the cloudless, pale blue sky. The traffic was very light now, and what few people were on foot seemed to be heading up toward the embassy.

McGarvey drove slowly down an alley between buildings and found a parking spot beside an old Mercedes and a small Flat delivery van. He got out and walked back down the alley to the street, then crossed the park, pulling the scarf over his mouth so that only his nose and eyes were left uncovered.

When they found the Rover they would have no idea where he had gotten himself to. It was unlikely that they would believe he had headed into the crowd around the old embassy. They might think that he was trying to make it to another embassy, or even out to the airport, anywhere but toward the heart of the anti-American disturbance.

A block beyond the park, down a pleasant, treelined street of upscale private homes, all of them protected behind tall brick walls, he heard the noise of a crowd and he guessed that he was getting close to the embassy. There were no street signs back here, and the only people he saw was a band of young men a couple of blocks away down an intersecting avenue.

He stopped to get his bearings.

He figured that he had to be within a half-mile of the embassy, which put him somewhere in the vicinity of the ambassador’s residence. If he had his laptop finding the place would be easy. But he remembered that it was at the end of a short dead-end street, behind which was a two-block square neighborhood of weavers’ workshops and retail stores. Before the Taliban had taken over, and even before the Russians had started their war here, the area had been a busy one, catering mostly to foreigners with money. Afghan rugs and carpets had been one of the major cottage industries in the city. Dealers from all over the world had come here to pick up bargains for resale in their stores in all the major Western cities. All that was a thing of the past, but the workshops were still in business, or at least some of them were according to the State Department report he’d read. And some carpets still found their way out of the country. He headed to the right, away from the noise of the crowd.

Two blocks later he came to the dead-end street. There was a Russian jeep parked in front of the compound’s main gate. Two men in uniform were lounging back, their feet propped up on the open doors. Nothing was happening here and they were obviously bored and inattentive. McGarvey stepped back out of sight around the corner. Behind the walls a Georgian mansion rose four stories, its windows shuttered. The house could have been directly transplanted from a fashionable London neighborhood. It looked out of place, which was typical of a lot of American installations around the world. Most U.S. ambassadors did not speak the language of their assigned country, and many of their embassies and residences stuck out like sore thumbs. It was a holdover from a more arrogant colonial period.

He turned around and walked to the last intersecting street he had passed and followed it, coming to the rug weavers’ district. The streets were quite narrow, as they were in the other traditional working class areas of the city. Not a single person was about, and all the shops and houses were closed, some of them boarded up. The neighborhood had the feel of abandonment, fallen on hard times.

McGarvey made his way to a small, boarded-up shop that he figured was directly behind the ambassador’s compound. Nothing, not even a dog or a scrap of paper, moved on the street, nor did he spot anyone looking out a window or a doorway at him.

The scraps of wood nailed over the door were mostly rotten, and came away easily. McGarvey stacked them on a nearby pile of trash, then, checking one last time to make sure that he wasn’t being observed, kicked the door in, the old, soft metal lock disintegrating with the first blow.

He slipped inside and closed the door. The light filtering in from outside was enough for him to see that he was in an empty shop. Piles of trash and scraps of lumber were scattered about. Beyond the front room, he could see directly to the back of the shop where sunlight streamed in through the cracks in a boarded-up window.

McGarvey jammed a piece of scrap wood against the door, which would hold it shut unless someone else put their back into it, then went to the rear of the shop and looked out through the cracks in the window boards. A narrow, garbage-strewn alley separated the rear of the buildings from the brick wall of the ambassador’s compound. There were no guards in sight.

The back door was beneath a set of narrow stairs, and was secured only by a flimsy bolt. He slipped it off and stepped out into the alley, the stench from the open sewage ditch instantly assailing his nostrils. Human waste lay in piles, and the almost completely decomposed body of a dog or some other small animal lay half-buried under a slimy mass of rotting garbage. It was all he could do in his present condition to keep from throwing up what little he had in his stomach.

The wall ran at least thirty or forty yards in either direction, and was ten feet tall. But some of the bricks were missing and a lot of the mortar had fallen out of the joints so that scaling it would present no problem. He picked his way carefully across the filthy alley, and climbed to the top of the wall so that he could see inside the compound. The house was toward the front of the property, and back here was a five-car garage, a lot of trees, an overgrown tennis court, the net gone and big holes in the wire fence, and what probably had once been a large vegetable garden. There was no sign that anyone had been in residence for a long time. Everything was run-down and gone to weed. All the rear windows of the house were shuttered, and there were no tire marks in the driveway leading from the front. Nor was there any trash. If there were caretakers here now, he decided, they were uncommonly tidy for Afghanis.

With the last of his strength he levered himself up over the top of the wall, and dropped down into the garden on the other side.

It was silent. He could not even hear the noise from the demonstration. For the moment he felt that he was as safe here as he could be anywhere in Kabul, and he let a little of the tension drain away as he crossed behind the tennis court and made his way to the back of the mansion.

There were several doors, one of them obviously leading down into a basement, another for deliveries into what was most likely the kitchen and pantry area and another from a broad porch. McGarvey tried the delivery door. It was locked as he expected it would be. He put an ear to the door and held his breath to listen. There were no sounds from within. Not even the sounds of running machinery such as a refrigerator or freezer motor. The house was dead.

He took his jacket off, wrapped it around his pistol, then averted his face and fired one round into the lock. It jammed when he tried it, but then came free in his hand, and he let himself inside.

He found himself in what had been the laundry room. There were hookups for two washers and dryers, but the appliances were gone, and the cabinets on the walls were empty. All the cupboards and shelves in the large pantry beyond it were also empty, as were the walk-in cooler and freezer in the adjoining kitchen. Nor did the kitchen sinks work. Everything, including water had been shut off.

There was nothing here. The Taliban caretakers had stripped the place bare of just about everything useful. The chairs and table were gone, and even the spot where a large industrial range had stood was bare.

Very little light came through the shutters, so that the interior was mostly in shadows. It was somehow eerie. The dining room was empty, and standing in the spacious stair hall he could see that the living room and library had been stripped too. He leaned against the stair rail and lowered his head for a moment to catch his breath. There was nothing here for him other than a relatively safe haven for as long as he could last.

There was a mouthful of tepid water left in the canteen. He drank it and then went upstairs. All the rooms were bare. Even the pictures on the walls and the rugs on the floors had been taken. In a rear bedroom on the top floor, he sat down with his back to the wall, laid his gun on the floor beside him and took off the filthy scarf and cap.

McGarvey felt drained. What anger he had toward bin Laden had faded into the background for the moment. He wanted to lay his head back and sleep. He touched his side where the chip had been cut and his fingers came away bloody. He had to get back to Washington. Too many people were depending on him. He wasn’t going to simply give up here and wait to pass out from weakness, or for some bright Taliban officer to send soldiers here to find him. He wasn’t built that way.

McGarvey got out his satellite phone. The low-battery indicator glowed steadily red, and when he hit the speed dial button, the numbers came up on the tiny screen, but after a few seconds the display flashed a string of six Es, indicating that no satellite had been acquired.

He cleared the screen and tried it again with the same results. The battery was simply too low. He laid his head back and closed his eyes for a second. Without the phone he had no way of finding out if the Taliban government had been convinced to allow the American military to send in transportation for its citizens, or when it was due to arrive at the airport. He would somehow have to find another phone. Short of that he would have to try to get to the airport and wait until the plane arrived. But the chances of pulling that off without getting caught were even more impossible. His eyes opened. Temperature. Batteries were affected by it. In the winter when it was freezing, car batteries went flat. Maybe the opposite was true.

He removed the small battery pack from the phone, lit his cigarette lighter and held it a couple of inches below the plastic case. Within a couple of seconds the plastic began to melt. He pulled it away from the flame until it cooled down a little, and then waved it slowly back and forth over the lighter, pulling it back whenever the plastic began to melt again. After a couple of minutes the battery pack was getting too hot to handle, so he put it back in the phone. This time the low-battery indicator did not come on.

He hit the speed dial button, the numbers came up and a couple of seconds later the phone acquired a satellite and the call went through. Rencke answered it on the first ring. “Oh, boy, Mac, am I ever glad to hear from you. All hell is breaking loose—”

“There’s no time for that, my phone battery is almost dead. Is a plane coming for me?”

“We got the clearances …”

The low-battery light began to flash and the phone lost the satellite for just a moment, but then got it back.

“… C-130, but you don’t have much time,” Rencke was saying.

“What time will it be here?” McGarvey demanded.

“Ten o’clock your time. This morning, Mac—”

The phone lost the satellite again, chirped once and then went completely dead. Not even the numbers remained on the display, and the keypad no longer worked.

McGarvey looked at his watch. It was already well after seven, which left him less than three hours.

In the Afghan Mountains Bin Laden came out of the cave a few minutes after 7:30. He was disguised as an ordinary mujahed; no fatigue jacket, no white robes, not even his cane, so that if a satellite was watching there’d be no positive identification. He’d often traveled this way, only this time he would not be coming back. Two mujahedeen came up the hill as he started down, but he refused their help.

“Did Ali leave?” he asked, taking care not to stumble. The pain in his hip and legs was excruciating. There was nothing left of the camp. Even the last of the fires had finally burned down.

“Last night with the others,” one of them replied respectfully. Bin Laden couldn’t seem to remember his name. But it didn’t matter.

At the bottom they climbed onto horses that had survived the attack and headed down the valley, along the stream. The Taliban military unit at Bagram was sending a helicopter to a rendezvous point about ten miles away for him. The same way Ali got out. And from there bin Laden would be flying by private jet to Khartoum. It was the last act of cooperation from them. It had been made clear that he would never be welcome back. Regretful but necessary, the mullah had told him by phone last night.

The pain from riding on a horse was much worse than it was walking, but he had taken an injection of morphine just before he’d left the cave, so it was bearable, though the drug somewhat muddled his thinking and his ability to speak or keep in focus.

As he rode, his thoughts drifted back and forth between Sarah and the bomb. At times the two were mingled together. Sarah’s body had been consumed by fire, as the President’s daughter would be consumed in an awful fire. It was just. The retribution would be terrible, but necessary. His only fear was that something would go wrong. Bahmad might be blocked from entering the U.S.” some of his carefully laid plans and preparations might go awry, or worse he might get himself arrested and under questioning reveal everything. But Bahmad was better than that, he would never allow himself to be captured alive. Even if he was he didn’t know all the details. He knew that the bomb was coming to California aboard a ship, but he didn’t know which ship. Not yet. Not until everything else was in place.

Bin Laden realized that he had drifted off. He opened his eyes as they came down into the broader valley that ran along the base of the mountain range. Far to the east four of his mujahedeen who had left last night were heading as fast as they could travel for Pakistan, the bomb wrapped in burlap, strapped to the back of a horse. They had no idea what they were really carrying, they only knew that it was of supreme importance, and that their lives depended on getting safely to Peshwar where they would hand it over to two of bin Laden’s most trusted agents.

“Are you all right, Osama?” one of his mujahed asked respectfully. “Should we stop here for a rest?”

Bin Laden looked at him with love. He was just a young boy, as most of them were. He shook his head. “There will be time for rest later.”

The two mujahedeen exchanged a worried glance. Since Sarah’s death in the missile raid he had not been himself. He had changed in some not-so-subtle way that none of them could define. It was troublesome.

Bin Laden let his thoughts soar like an eagle down the valley to the four men heading east with the bomb. He could actually see them on horseback. They were boys, and they could go on like that day and night. Good boys. Dedicated. Religious. They understood the jihad at a deeper, more visceral level than anyone in the West could comprehend. They felt God not only in their hearts, but in every fiber of their beings.

Last night they had brought the nervous pack animal up into the cave where the package was waiting for them, and listened as bin Laden explained the importance of their mission. “You will take this to men who will transport it to Mecca where it will be buried in a place of honor,” bin Laden told them.

He rubbed his hand along the horse’s muzzle, then touched the hem of the burlap covering the bomb. He could almost feel the warmth emanating from it.

The four mujahedeen watched him, their eyes wide. They were impressed because they thought that they were being ordered to carry the remains of bin Laden’s daughter home for burial. They were suddenly filled with a religious zeal and an overwhelming love for bin Laden. “We will not fail you,” Mohammed’s brother Achmed promised. His grip tightened on the strap of the Kalashnikov rifle.

“Of course you won’t,” bin Laden said. “Insha’Allah.” He embraced each of the four men, and then watched as they led the horse out of the cave and down the hill where they mounted their horses and headed off into the darkness.

His thoughts came back to the present, and tears filled his eyes. He was seeing these mountains for the very last time. Leaving the mortal remains of his beloved Sarah forever bound with the Afghan soil. It was a pain more unbearable than that of his cancer. He began to recite to himself the opening chapter of the Qoran, peace coming very slowly to his soul.

Kabul The morning was in full bloom, the sky crystalline clear. From an opening between the slats of the shutters covering a window in a front bedroom, McGarvey looked down at the quiet street. The two soldiers were still parked in front, so no one suspected he was here yet.

He felt detached, somewhat distant because of his fatigue, but he had to keep his head. He had to think his way out of this. Coming here he’d formed a vague plan of overpowering the caretakers and stealing their clothing and identification papers. He figured that with such a disguise he might be able to get out to the airport. From there he would have to improvise. But with the C-130 on the tarmac, and a line of anxious Americans pushing to get aboard, he thought he’d have a better than even chance.

That was no longer possible, there were no caretakers here. He had to come up with another plan no matter how improbable. Out there he had a chance, and he had faced worse odds before. He went to the back bedroom where he retrieved his phone, the cap and the scarf and headed downstairs to the back door.

When the American military transport came in for a landing, the airport would be cleared of all other traffic. The Taliban would not want to create an incident that might cause a military retaliation. This was bin Laden’s fight now, and they would want to stay as distant from it as possible. The C-130 would land, taxi to the terminal, pick up its passengers, then taxi back to the end of the runway for takeoff. If the Taliban were waiting for him they would have to logically assume that he would try to make it to the terminal and somehow bluff his way aboard. Their attention would be concentrated there, wanting to get the plane loaded and away as quickly as possible.

Peering out the laundry room door at the backyard, the first glimmerings of a plan came to him. It would be all or nothing, and would depend on timing and luck. But he decided that it was his only real chance for getting out.

He pulled on the cap, wrapped the scarf around his neck and slipped out the door and hurried past the tennis court to the wall.

The bricks were in much better condition on this side, so it took him three running attempts to reach the top and pull himself over. He dropped down into the sewage clogged alley, crossed the ditch and let himself back into the empty rug merchant’s shop.

He had to stop for a couple of minutes to catch his breath. The slightest exertion was difficult, and scaling the wall had used almost all of his reserves.

The narrow street in front was still deserted. Nothing seemed to have changed in the half-hour he’d been inside the ambassador’s compound, which he found was odd. But he couldn’t dwell on it now. Stealing another car was a possibility he was going to have to consider. But if no one had discovered the Rover yet using it one last time might pose less of a risk.

His luck ran out when he left the shop and started down the narrow street.

Dozens of men suddenly materialized out of the shops and homes up and down the street. Some of them were armed with clubs, but none of them were in uniform, nor did he see any guns.

McGarvey stopped, and held his empty hands out. An older man with a long white beard, wearing a leather apron, shouted something at him in Persian. Some of the others murmured angrily. McGarvey put his hands over his ears, showing them that he was deaf.

The old man pointed to the shop that McGarvey had just come out of and shouted something else. They thought he was a thief. He shook his head and again held out his empty hands to show them that he had taken nothing. He took a step forward and the old man backed up warily. They were just ordinary people trying to protect their neighborhood in troubled times. Had they been interested in politics they would be demonstrating at the old American embassy.

More people were coming out of their homes and shops into the street behind him, ringing him in. Soon it would be impossible to move two feet let alone break free. It had to be now.

He shook his head and walked directly toward the old man. He didn’t think he had much to fear from these people once he got away from here. They might report a religious crime to the Taliban, but they probably wouldn’t go to the government to report a suspected thief. They would deal with it in their own way by running him off.

The old man and those around him backed up, and when it looked as if McGarvey wasn’t going to stop, they parted for him.

He shook his ‘head as if he was disgusted as he passed through them, and without breaking stride or looking back he headed down the street the way he had come in. Once he reached the corner and got out of the neighborhood he figured he would be okay. But the crowd was becoming agitated, the men shouting something, arguing with each other.

Ten feet from the corner rocks and bricks began to rain down around him, one of them hitting him in the shoulder. Covering his head, he bolted, and a huge cry rose up behind him.

He almost made it to safety, but as he turned down the side street a brick smashed into the side of his head, driving him to his knees and temporarily blacking out his vision. A wave of nausea rose up from his gut causing him to retch as he got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled away as fast as he could move. He was dizzy, moving mostly on instinct, and the day was suddenly very dark, his vision reduced to a narrow tunnel directly in front of him. But there were no more rocks, and at the next corner he looked back. In the distance, what seemed to him to be a mile away, the crowd had stopped just at the edge of their district as he hoped they would. The last he saw of them they were shaking their fists and clubs.

There was a huge knot on the side of his head just above his right ear. When he explored it with his fingers it was extremely tender to the touch, but there was no blood. As he walked, he wrapped the scarf around his mouth and nose, and gradually his vision began to clear.

Down several intersecting streets he could see road blocks and more people heading in the direction of the embassy, but no one noticed him heading in the opposite direction, or if they did, nobody seemed to care.

The Rover was where he had left it, parked between the battered Mercedes and the Flat van. But he approached carefully to make sure that it had not been staked out. As far as he could tell, however, there wasn’t a single soul around.

He got behind the wheel, touched the starter wires together and the car’s engine came immediately to life. He backed out of the parking slot, drove out the alley and headed down the street to the main boulevard that led to the airport.

To the south on Bebe-Maihro Street, toward the city center, there seemed to be roadblocks, military vehicles and soldiers everywhere, directing the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people heading toward the embassy. Traffic was being diverted away from the barricades, and was already backing up.

To the north, in the direction of the airport, the road was clear, but that was the direction they’d be expecting him to come. There was only one main road to the airport, and it would be heavily guarded until the American transport aircraft came in, picked up its passengers and departed. Airports were very large places, however. They sprawled across hundreds of acres of flat countryside. There might be only one road to take passengers to the terminal, but there would have to be several access roads for cargo deliveries, fuel and aircraft repair supplies, and for maintenance vehicles to have access to the ILS lights and electronic aids.

McGarvey headed straight across the broad boulevard, and found himself in another section of narrow, winding streets that sometimes opened to broad avenues lined with apartment buildings, or parks, or other districts of craftsmen-wool merchants, tin-and copper smiths and even goldsmiths. Like the other areas of the city he’d seen this morning, most of these shops were closed, some of them boarded up, others with steel mesh security shutters lowered over their windows and doors. The anti-American demonstrations had turned into a national holiday of sorts.

He worked his way generally north and east, sometimes finding himself stopped by dead-end streets and having to backtrack several blocks before he could find another way. It was like being a rat in a maze. At one point he came around a corner into the middle of another large crowd of people and official vehicles, their blue lights flashing. He jammed on his brakes. But it wasn’t a roadblock as he had feared. A large building that might have been a warehouse was on fire. Flames and smoke shot several hundred feet into the sky. Firemen using antiquated equipment poured water into the building, while on the other side of the street dozens of men had formed a bucket brigade and were dousing down their own shops and houses in a frantic effort to stop the flames from spreading. No one noticed him as he backed up and hurried off in the opposite direction. The houses and shops and other buildings began to thin out about the same time the pavement ended. The streets continued in some places only as narrow dirt tracks. He came around another corner, and the track abruptly stopped at a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. For several long seconds he gripped the steering wheel and simply stared at the fence as he tried to catch his breath. His vision had gone blurry again, but when it began to clear he realized that he had reached the airport. Directly across from him, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away, was what looked like the main east-west runway. He could make out the white lights along the paved surface. In the distance to the right he could see the markers at the end of the runway. Straight across was a line of maintenance and storage hangers, and in the far distance to the left were the control tower and terminal.

His heart skipped a beat. Pulling away from the terminal was the distinctive, squat shape of a C-130 Hercules transport. McGarvey checked his watch. It was already past nine o’clock. It had taken him two hours to come this far, but the airplane was almost an hour early.

In minutes his last chance to get out of Afghanistan would be at the end of the runway and lined up for takeoff. He needed to find a way to get out there, or at the very least signal to them.

As the C-130 majestically started up the long taxiway, McGarvey threw the Rover in reverse, backed around and spit gravel as he raced through the labyrinth of narrow, bumpy tracks. This far from the city center the dwellings were little more than crude adobe brick hovels. But there were people around, most of them farmers tending small fields or herds of goats. Some of them looked up in astonishment at the speeding car, others didn’t bother.

He got lost several times and had to backtrack so that he could keep the airport perimeter fence in sight. The C-130 was nearly to the end of the runway by the time he reached a gate. There were no guards, but the gate was secured with a heavy chain and thick businesslike padlock.

He jumped out of the Rover, drew his pistol and fired three shots into the lock. The bullets fragmented on the hardened steel and ricochetted dangerously around him, but the lock held.

The Hercules had reached the end of the taxiway and was turning onto the runway as McGarvey popped the Rover’s rear lid, pulled the spare tire out of its compartment and found the tire iron. At the gate he jammed the tool into one of the links of the chain and tried to pry it open. The tire iron bent, but the chain held.

A pair of Russian jeeps, their lights flashing, were racing directly up the runway from the terminal, directly for the nose of the C-130 as the pilot gunned the four Allison turboprop engines.

McGarvey tossed the tire iron aside, jumped back into the Rover and backed up twenty yards. He slammed the transmission in drive and floored the accelerator. The heavy car shot forward, slamming into the gate, shoving it backwards nearly off its hinges.

The C-130 was lined up now and starting to roll, as McGarvey backed up again, dropped the transmission into four-wheel-drive and jammed the pedal to the floor. He hit the fence with a bone-jarring crash. The big Rover climbed up an dover the mangled gate, finally breaking free with a horrible screeching of metal. Immediately the oil pressure indicator began to drop and hot oil started to spray out from under the hood.

He shifted to drive, never taking his foot off the accelerator, bumped over the last few yards of grass up onto the runway and headed after the accelerating C-130 while flashing his headlights.

He tore the scarf and hat off and tossed them aside. The Rover’s engine started to bog down as the temperature needle climbed into the red and pegged. The C-130 began to pull away from him.

“Goddamnit,” he shouted.

He started to look for a way out of the airport, when incredibly the rear loading deck of the Hercules started to open and the big airplane slowed down.

A loud clattering noise started under the hood and the car lost even more power. The transport’s ramp was fully down now just inches off the runway, and several crewmen were frantically waving him on.

The front tires bumped up on the ramp and he nearly lost control of the car as it swerved sharply to the right. But then he inched the rest of the way up onto the ramp. The crewmen leaped to the side as the Rover’s rear wheels hit the ramp and suddenly the car accelerated like it had been shot from a cannon into the belly of the airplane.

McGarvey slammed on the brakes and the car slewed to the left, finally coming to a halt against cargo restraining straps that had just been raised.

McGarvey slammed the transmission into park, and as the rear cargo deck closed, and the big airplane gathered speed, he laid his head back, his hands still gripping the steering wheel as his heart began to decelerate.

He closed his eyes, and thinking about the Russian jeeps heading toward them, willed the airplane off its front landing gear, and then into the sky.

One of the crewmen came to the driver’s side. The window had been smashed out. “Mr. McGarvey?” he shouted over the roar of the engines.

McGarvey opened his eyes and grinned with such intense relief that his mood bordered on the manic. “Actually I’m Evel Kneivel. McGarvey’s a better driver than that.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

What is the purpose of your visit to the United States, Mr. Guthrie?” the Dulles International Airport passport official asked.

“Business,” Ali Bahmad replied. “And maybe a day of sailing on the Chesapeake.” He smiled pleasantly. “I’m told that it’s quite nice this time of year.”

“Fishing isn’t what it used to be,” the officer said, stamping the British passport. He looked up. “But you’re right, it’s real nice down there. Have a pleasant stay.”

Bahmad pocketed his passport and, carrying the slim attache case that had been handed to him in London, sauntered down the dingy corridor and out into the customs arrivals hall, a small man without a care in the world. He wore a loose-fitting natural linen suit by Gucci, a collarless white cotton shirt, and a soft yellow ascot tied loosely around his neck. His two bags were Louis Vuitton. He was a dapper, seasoned international traveler.

“Do you have anything to declare, sir?” the uniformed customs officer asked. The man looked like a bulldog, and Bahmad had to wonder if he came from Queens or Brooklyn in a questionable neighborhood. It would be difficult, he decided, to be pleasant day after day under such circumstances.

“Nothing,” Bahmad said, handing the man the declaration form he’d filled out on the 747 coming in from London.

Another customs agent came over with a drug-sniffing German shepard that circled Bahmad’s two bags on the low counter, and then sniffed the attache case. The dog looked up at his handler as if to say, no.

“Would you like me to open my suitcases?” Bahmad asked. “Just dirty laundry, I’m afraid.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” the officer said. He made chalk marks on all three pieces, then turned away indifferently as the other agent with his dog went off to another passenger’s luggage.

Bahmad summoned a porter for his things, and heading out into the terminal, and across to the taxi stands outside, it amused him to think what he could do to the customs officer with little or no effort. When he finished it would be enough to give the man’s family nightmares for the rest of their lives.

He’d changed some pounds into dollars at Heathrow and he gave the redcap a nice tip, and ordered the cabbie to take him to the Corinthian Yacht Club in southwest Washington on the Anacostia River, then sat back to enjoy the ride.

“We can take the Beltway. It’s longer, but much faster,” the driver, an east Indian, suggested.

“Go through town, I haven’t been here in a long time and I’d like to see some of the sights.” “Yes, sir,” the driver said. He noticed in the rearview mirror that his passenger was looking out the window obviously not wanting to talk. Which was fine with him. Brits gave him a headache.

Bahmad smiled his secret smile, his face a bland mask of indifference. It was 4:30 in the afternoon local time, and he was amazed, as he was every time he traveled in the west, at the number of big, shiny cars on the road. After living for so long in the mountains of Afghanistan and in desert training camps in Libya and Iran, you tended to forget the quotidian face of the enemy. Rapers of the soil, despoilers of the earth’s resources and peoples, conspicuous consumers indifferent to the plight of the other eighty or ninety percent of the world, Americans should have been miserable. But the sky over the Virginia countryside was clear of all but a few puffy clouds, there were no burned out cars or trucks along the side of the highway, no tanks on the overpasses, no helicopter gunships swooping low. Despite his mission, Bahmad was able to relax and thoroughly enjoy himself as he hadn’t for entirely too long a time.

Two days out of Afghanistan and already he was beginning to realize how much he despised the life of a terrorist in hiding in the Middle East. The lack of simple amenities got to him. The dirt, the abysmal ignorance and the fanatic adherence to Islam — to any religion for that matter — was depressing. His mother and father, before they had been killed by the Israelis, had lived an often times very good and even elegant life in Beirut. And he had enjoyed his time spent in London and here in Washington, even though he hated the Americans who in their blindness supported the Israelis against every other people. That was what his fight was all about. Not religion, not any ideology or idealistic notions about the destiny of the Arab peoples. His motivation was simple revenge.

That, and the fact he enjoyed what he did for a living.

Coming back like this though brought another memory to mind, and he was somewhat disturbed by it. During the six months he had worked at the CIA’s Langley headquarters he had met a woman. She worked as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence, and had little or no intelligence value for him, but she was nice. Her name was Anne Larson, she was divorced and was raising two children on her own. Weekends they were off with their father, and Bahmad spent time with her. She was a kind and patient lover, and although she was a little odd because of the work she did, she was always pleasant to be with. For months after he had left Washington he thought about her everyday. But then he dropped out, and ran back to Lebanon. Since then he seldom gave her a thought, though when he did it was with regret. He wondered what a life with her would have been like. Certainly it would not have been as lonely as the life he had led in the Afghan mountains. He wondered where she was now.

“Men like you are Imams of your profession,” bin Laden told him. “Religious leaders. Dedicated and lonely by necessity.”

The early rush hour was in full force by the time they crossed the Roosevelt Bridge onto Constitution Avenue, and the cabbie was content to let the meter run as they crawled past the Ellipse and the White House on the left, the Washington Monument on the right. He dropped down to Independence Avenue past the Smithsonian and then took South Capitol Street, turning off before it crossed the Douglass Bridge over the Anacostia River. Finally the taxi passed through the yacht club gates and Bahmad ordered the driver to the slips where they pulled up at a very large motor yacht, all her flags flying in the pleasant breeze, the boarding ramp down.

Bahmad paid off the driver and, when the cab was gone, stood looking at the boat. She was the Papa’s Fancy, a 175-foot Feadship out of Newport, owned by a wealthy New Jersey banker with considerable though secret financial ties to the bin Laden worldwide empire. He’d agreed to lend the yacht to Bahmad for as long as he needed her, no questions asked. As it turned out, the boat had been docked at a shipyard farther down the Potomac where her annual inspection and refit had just been completed, and had been moved up here yesterday on a moment’s notice. She was the biggest boat in the club and had garnered a lot of attention already.

A slightly built man in his early forties with a ponytail and earring, but dressed impeccably in crisp white trousers and a yacht club polo shirt, trotted up from the dockmaster’s office.

“Mr. Guthrie, welcome to CYC, sir. I’m Terry the dockmaster. If there’s anything I can do to make your stay more pleasant just ask me, sir.”

“Thanks,” Bahmad said with a pleasant smile. “We’re all hooked up and provisioned?”

“Yes, sir. Your crew took care of that first thing when they got here yesterday,” Terry assured him. “May I help you with your bags?”

“That won’t be necessary,” a pretty, athletically built young woman with a deep tan called out coming down the ramp. She was dressed in white shorts and a dark blue shirt, cheryl — papa’s fancy stitched above the left pocket. Terry gave her an appreciative look, then nodded pleasantly and walked off.

“Welcome to Washington, Mr. Guthrie,” Cheryl said, picking up the bags. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to your quarters and afterwards Captain Walker would like to have a word with you.”

“Where is he at the moment?”

“I believe he’s checking something in the engine room.”

“Ask him and the rest of the crew — all the crew — to join me in the main saloon immediately.”

Cheryl gave him a worried glance. “Yes, sir.”

At the top of the ramp they stepped onto a broad, gently sloping deck, the gleaming superstructure rising above them, the bridge forward and the main saloon aft. She showed him the way, then disappeared with his bags.

The yacht was in immaculate condition. The furnishings and appointments were out of Yachting magazine or Architectural Digest. Thick carpeting covered the floors, rich, thickly cushioned furniture was arranged tastefully and the large windows admitted the late-afternoon sun through thin Venetian blinds. Some very good artwork hung on the richly paneled walls, and the second movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played softly from built-in speakers.

Bahmad set his attache case down, and was pouring a glass of white wine from the extensive bar, when a tall, distinguished man with white hair came in with a much shorter, heavier, younger man. Both were dressed in whites. The older man’s epaulets were adorned with four gold stripes, the young man’s with three.

“Mr. Guthrie,” the older man said, extending his hand. “Welcome aboard, sir. I’m Captain Web Walker.”

Bahmad shook his hand. “I’m happy to be aboard, Captain.”

“May I introduce my first officer Stuart Russell.”

Bahmad shook hands, and moments later the rest of the crew showed up; the engineer, Blake Walsh, two aides, two chefs and four young deckhands, including the young woman who had helped with his bags. They were shorthanded because Bahmad was the only guest, and he’d wanted to keep the numbers low.

“A package was to be delivered for me,” he said.

“Yes, sir. It arrived this morning, and I had it put in your quarters.”

“Very well,” Bahmad said. The crew was looking at him somewhat apprehensively. They didn’t know what to expect. He put down his wine. “I don’t know what you were instructed about the nature of this cruise.”

“Just that the ship was to be put completely at your disposal for as long as you required her, sir,” the captain said.

“I’m here on business,” Bahmad said. “Somewhat stressful business, I’m afraid.”

The captain’s lips compressed.

“Which means that when I am not conducting my business, there will be no long faces around here. I want smiles, music, good food and drink, and that’s an order. Do I make myself clear?”

The captain grinned. “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”

Bahmad laughed. It was so ridiculously easy, he thought. “I’m going to freshen up now. When I get back I want something very good to eat, and I’ll want some champagne. Cristal, I should think. Can we manage that?”

“With pleasure,” the head chef said.

“Afterwards I’ll want a tour of the ship, and then I’ll be going into the city for a few hours, so I’ll need a car.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Captain Walker said. “In the meantime should we be preparing to sail?”

“Not for a while. It’s time for a little R and R.” He gave Cheryl a smile. “Pass the word to Terry that we’re having a party tomorrow evening. He should know who to invite.”

“I’ll talk to him right away.”

“Lighten up, okay?” Bahmad told them, getting his attache case. “You’d think that this was a bloody funeral.” He gave them another warm, reassuring look. “Now, if someone could show me where I’m bunking I’ll take a shower.”

Cheryl took him up to the owner’s suite, which was just aft of the bridge. Like the rest of the yacht, the three rooms were spacious and extremely well appointed. Large windows looked out across the yacht basin toward the National War College with its pretty grounds on Greenleaf Point.

“This is just lovely,” Bahmad said.

“Yes, sir. She’s a nice ship,” Cheryl said earnestly. “Would you like some help unpacking?”

“Thanks, but I can manage.”

“Yes, sir. And welcome aboard. If there’s anything you need just ask.”

When she was gone Bahmad took off his jacket and hung it in one of the closets, then splashed some cold water on his face in the bathroom.

He’d had a lot of time to contemplate exactly how he was going to accomplish the two tasks bin Laden had sent him here for. Killing Elizabeth McGarvey would have to be done in such a way that it would have the minimum affect on the second phase — that of providing a diversion so that the nuclear weapon could be moved into position beneath the Golden Gate Bridge at the moment the Special Olympics runners were there, and then exploding it. If the authorities suspected that McGarvey’s daughter had been killed as an act of revenge by bin Laden then the mission would be made all the more difficult as he had tried to explain to Osama. Her death would have to look like a random act of violence.

A drive-by shooting, a botched robbery while she was stopped at a 7-Eleven, a burglar caught in the act in her apartment. But that would take surveillance. Being at the right place at the right time, with a plan to get away when it was done. He had to know her movements, her habits. McGarvey’s daughter was not much older than Sarah had been, but she was a trained CIA field officer who already had experienced some difficult situations. The worst thing he could do would be to underestimate her.

He dried his hands and face, checked to make sure that the door was locked, then opened his attache” case and went through the material he’d been given in London. There were a dozen photographs of McGarvey’s daughter, some of them straight head shots, others in settings ranging from the CIA’s main gate, to her in spandex running shorts and a sweatshirt in some park. Also contained in the intelligence briefing files were the locations of her usual hangouts, starting with her apartment in Georgetown, to her mother’s house in Chevy Chase, and several restaurants she frequented in and around Washington. She was an active young woman, with a circle of friends from the Company. From time to time she made the drive down to the CIA’s training facility in Williamsburg, and until very recently she had been posted to Paris. All that had come from bin Laden’s contacts.

Bahmad looked out the window for a moment. She’d obviously been recalled because of the murders of Trumble and his family, and because her father was going to Afghanistan. It meant that McGarvey already had some concern for his daughter’s safety. And presumably the safety of his ex-wife as well.

The file also contained photographs of her, some with her daughter, and some on the country club golf course where she belonged. She was a striking woman, selfassured, even haughty looking. Nothing at all like Bin Laden’s wives, or most other Muslim women for that matter. She epitomized, in Bahmad’s mind, the arrogant American woman. Too bad, he thought, that she wasn’t a target as well.

The equipment he had requested had been sent down from New Jersey packed in a large aluminum case of the sort often used by professional photographers. Included in his package from London were the keys.

He hefted the case onto the bed and opened it. It was heavy, about sixty pounds, and contained what appeared to be a camera, lenses, light meters and canisters of film all fitted into shapes cut into the foam rubber tray. Lifting the tray out and setting it aside revealed a lower compartment that held the things he had requested, secured in bubble wrap. One by one he unwrapped each item and inspected it. Included were a Glock 17 pistol, two spare magazines of 10mm ammunition and a silencer. The weapon was in perfect working order. Next he took the other items out of the case. A thin, nine-inch stiletto, a case-hardened steel lock pick set, a small but powerful penlight, an electronic hotel lock card decoder, a thick envelope containing ten thousand dollars in cash, a halfdozen valid but untraceable credit cards, three complete sets of identification and a satellite phone complete with an extra battery pack. Finally he withdrew a small leather case that contained what looked like the remote control for a television set.

Bahmad handled the controller with great care. At the proper time and place, a dozen keystrokes would arm and fire the nuclear weapon. So much power, he thought with a sensuous pleasure.

Killing McGarvey’s daughter had never been a part of his preliminary planning. But the rest was, and it had taken all of three months to have the equipment gathered and waiting for him should bin Laden give the order.

He put everything back in the aluminum case, locked it and set it down. Then he got undressed and went to take a shower. A bullet in the head during an interrupted burglary, he thought. It would be the simplest and easiest method. But first dinner and drinks. He began to sing a song that he’d learned in London about a young woman who sold shellfish in Dublin’s fair city.

It had been a very stressful few days for Kathleen McGarvey Kirk’s leaving so suddenly on what even Rencke thought could turn out to be a dangerous fool’s mission had obliged her to think long and hard about their upcoming marriage, and how she was going to hold up under what could never be a normal relationship. Having a daughter in the business didn’t help much either. There were times when she wasn’t sure of anything, especially her own resolve. Looking objectively at herself she knew that there were other times when she was incredibly self-centered, even selfish to the point she didn’t want to hear what anyone else had to say. But she loved Kirk, she had never stopped loving him, and that was one constant embedded so deeply in her heart that nothing could ever tear it loose. The problem was within herself. In the old days, when she was threatened, she became a bitch. It was a defense mechanism that she used to shield herself from getting hurt. But that was just as stupid, she had come to feel, as Kirk’s penchant for running off to be alone when he was hurt. She insulated herself emotionally; he did so with distance. They both would have to change if they were going to make their marriage work this time. And that was something, Kathleen decided, that she wanted more than anything.

She looked out the window of the front bedroom. A dark blue van was parked down the block. One of Dick Yemm’s people. The Company was keeping a watch on her twenty four hours a day. Instead of comforting her, however, she felt a dull, gnawing fear in her stomach. People who needed bodyguards were people in harm’s way, and she didn’t know if that was the part of Kirk’s job that she hated the most, or if it was his frequent absences. But already it was beginning to get to her; everything about the CIA and what it stood for, what its mission was, and the people who worked over there and around the world, gave her the willys whenever she thought about it.

No place was safe for any of them. Alien Trumble and his family had learned that terrible lesson at Disney World, for God’s sake.

The telephone rang. She crossed the hall to her bedroom and picked it up. “Yes,” she said sharply.

“He’s out,” Rencke said.

Kathleen closed her eyes, and released the pent up breath. “Thank God,” she said. “Is he all right, Otto?”

“He was pretty banged up, Mrs. M. Dehydrated, fatigued, some cuts and bruises, but nothing life-threatening. He’ll be okay.”

“When does he get home?”

“He’s at the military hospital in Riyadh for now, but they’re planning on moving him to Ramstein sometime in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”

Kathleen gripped the phone tightly. “You said he was okay. Just cuts and bruises. What’s going on, Otto? I want the truth, goddammit.”

“Bin Laden’s people found out that he was carrying the GPS chip, and they operated on him to remove it. The stitches came out somehow and he lost a lot of blood.”

Kathleen closed her eyes again and mentally counted to ten. “The dirty bastards,” she said softly. She opened her eyes. “What else is wrong with him?”

“Nothing serious, Mrs. M, I swear to you. He’s been sedated and they’re pumping fluids into him. He wanted to get on the first plane for home, but they wouldn’t let him. Right now he’s getting exactly what he needs — sleep.”

“I’ll fly to Frankfurt tonight. I can drive down to Ramstein and be there by noon.”

“Bzzz. Wrong answer, Mrs. M.”

“Then the Company can arrange to fly me over there direct.”

“You wouldn’t do him any good by being there,” Rencke said miserably. “You’d only be compounding the security problems.” Rencke sounded frightened. “I’d do anything for you. Lie down in front of a train, fight a pack of alligators, but not this. Please just stay there. As soon as we can get Mac out of there we will. I promise you. Please Mrs. M. Please,” “I’m frightened,” she said-softly.

“So am I,” Rencke replied. “But you gotta stick it out here and let us do our jobs.”

She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Just keep me informed, will you?”

“Count on it.”

When Kathleen put down the phone it struck her as ominous that Otto had admitted that he was frightened too. According to him Kirk was going to be all right. So what else was coming their way?

It was after 11:00 p.m. by the time the pleasant neighborhood of three-story brownstone apartment buildings finally began to settle down. Bahmad had a slight headache from the wine, and from the effects of jet lag. He turned the block at Dumbarton and Thirtieth Street, and passed Elizabeth McGarvey’s building for the fourth time in as many hours. The windows of her third-floor apartment were still dark, and her car, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle, was still nowhere to be seen. He drove a dark blue Mercedes that the boat crew had arranged for his use. This quality of car was nearly invisible in this neighborhood. It blended with the other Mercedes and Jaguars. His entry into the United States had been without incident, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone was looking for him, let alone knew his face. Here and now he was completely anonymous, exactly as he wanted it, and exactly as he meant to keep it. If anyone took notice of him he would kill them.

At the end of the block he turned the corner and found a parking spot. Switching off the headlights and engine, he checked the rearview mirror. No one was following him. Just ordinary traffic.

He waited for a bus to lumber by then got out, locked the car and headed back to the corner and then down Thirtieth Street to Elizabeth’s building. He let himself in, finding himself in a tiny alcove, stairs to the right, apartment 1 to the left. Three mailboxes were set in the wall straight ahead. Elizabeth McGarvey’s was apartment 3 on the top floor. Unlike similar buildings in New York City there was no security here except for the apartment doors themselves. He had a feeling that after tonight that would change.

There was no elevator, so he took the stairs two at a time, moving quickly and silently on the balls of his feet. He wore light brown slacks, a striped button-down shirt and a light jacket against the evening damp. Like everything else about him, the clothes were unremarkable.

The door to the second-floor apartment opened and he heard a woman say something, her words indistinct. A man answered angrily. Bahmad held up on the stairs, contemplating turning around and leaving the building, or remaining here and killing the couple should they discover him. The voices were cut off when the door was slammed. He slipped out his knife and listened for footsteps in the corridor, but the building was silent. Whoever it was had gone back into their apartment.

He moved cautiously up the last few stairs and peered around the corner. The landing was empty, the apartment door closed. He sheathed his knife and went the rest of the way to the top floor. At the door to Elizabeth’s apartment he knocked softly, and waited. But after a minute when no one came, he took out his lock pick set and had the door open in under thirty seconds. He took out his pistol, screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel, then after checking the stairs behind him, slipped inside, sweeping the gun left to right, looking for a target. But Elizabeth was not at home.

He closed and locked the door, and silently went back to the bedroom to make sure that the woman wasn’t here, asleep in her bed after all. But the apartment was empty. It was pleasant if inexpensively furnished, with a lot of books, a stereo system and a lot of CDs. But something was wrong.

Stuffing the gun in his belt he went into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. It was reasonably clean, but something nagged at the back of his head. Something was out of place. Or, rather, something was not in its place. Something was missing.

There were towels on the racks, but no pantyhose or bras hanging over the shower rod. On the sink counter were several bottles of perfume and lotions, but there were water marks where two bottles were missing. There was no toothbrush or toothpaste in the medicine cabinet, and a quick search of the shelves and other cabinets revealed no birth control pills or diaphragm, no douches or feminine deodorant sprays. He knew enough about Western women to understand that these were all common items in most bathrooms. But they were missing.

Elizabeth McGarvey had moved out. The questions were how long would she be gone, and where had she gotten herself to.

He switched off the bathroom light, waited for a minute for his eyes to adjust, then went back into the bedroom. The bed had been hastily made, which meant she wasn’t a neat housekeeper or she’d been in a hurry to get out of here. But most of the clothes were still in her closet, only a few empty spaces indicated that she had taken something, but not everything. It was the same in the chest of drawers. Some undergarments and tee shirts were obviously missing, but most had been left behind.

Bahmad retraced his steps through the apartment, wiping down the few spots where he might have left fingerprints despite his care not to do so. He checked the street from the living room window. There were several empty parking spots out front, as before, but no yellow VW.

He let himself out of the apartment, relocked the door, crept silently downstairs and left the building. Now he needed to find out where she had gone. If it was back to Paris, this mission would become complicated. But the Special Olympics weren’t for another two and a half months, so he had time to spare, though each time he crossed an international border there was the risk of discovery.

But then another thought struck him all at once. When he got back to the car he took out his satellite phone and placed a call to a special number in the Taliban Military Intelligence Headquarters in Kabul.

Colonel Hisham bin Idris answered on the second ring. “Hello.”

“Is the situation resolved?” Bahmad asked.

“I had sincerely hoped so,” the colonel replied cautiously. “You are not telephoning from nearby, are you?”

“No, but I wanted to thank you on behalf of… everybody.”

“You cannot return here.”

“I understand that,” Bahmad said, reassuringly. “We have every intention of respecting your wishes. You have done so much for us—”

“Yes, yes, but what do you want?” Colonel bin Idris demanded impatiently.

“There is that other matter I asked you to help me with.”

The colonel hesitated for just a second, as if he’d been distracted. “He’s dead.”

“Are you certain? Did you see the body?”

“What was left of it. He got caught in the mob and they tore him apart. There wasn’t much left.”

“How sure are you that it was him?”

“Very sure,” Colonel bin Idris said. “Then thank you again. It is a debt we shall never be able to repay—” Bahmad said, but he was talking to an open line. The colonel had broken the connection.

Bahmad switched off the phone. When a young woman’s father was brutally murdered in a faraway land there was only one logical place for her to go. Sooner or later Elizabeth McGarvey would show up at her mother’s home, if she wasn’t already there, to grieve. He smiled. He would get to kill McGarvey’s wife after all.

At that moment Elizabeth McGarvey was taking her overnight case and hanging bag from her car parked beside Todd Van Buren’s old Porsche. His apartment had once been the carriage house for the family estate. His parents lived in the mansion a quarter-mile up the curving driveway through some woods. They didn’t approve of the fact that he worked for the CIA, but he had been raised to be independent, and they tried not to interfere too much in his life. His independence was one of the things she most admired about him. In some ways he reminded her of her father.

The night was still, the air sweet this far out of the city. Elizabeth hesitated, frightened, at his door. She had thought long and hard about making this move. They’d been lovers for three months. But she valued her own independence, and she didn’t know how she would tell her father, let alone face her mother. But she wanted Todd on more than an occasional basis. She wanted to wake up in the morning beside him, she wanted to show him what kind of a cook she was — her father had taught her a number of French bistro recipes — and she wanted to find out what kind of a cook Todd was. She wanted to be with him when he was sad as well as happy; angry as well as content; confused as well as assured. She thought that she was falling in love with him, but before she made a commitment she wanted to be sure. Tonight, especially, she wanted to be held, to be comforted.

The light over the stoop came on before she could ring the bell and Van Buren opened the door. His eyes lit up, and he started to say something, but then did a double take when he noticed her bags. The expression on his face was comical, and Elizabeth laughed, even though she was in a brittle mood.

“Am I going to have to stand here all night?” she asked. “Or should I drive around the block a couple of times while you get rid of your girlfriend?”

“Your dad’s going to kill me.” He took her hanging bag, and stepped aside so that she could come in. She gave him a peck on the cheek.

Only the light over the leather easy chair was on, a beer on the table beside it, and a book opened on the ottoman. The Sade CD she’d bought him was playing softly. Like her, Van Buren was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt.

She followed him into the bedroom where he hung her bag on the closet door. “I’m glad you’re here, Liz.” He was bigger than her, but he had the compact build and fluid movements of a soccer player. He was an exotic weapons and hand-to-hand combat instructor at the CIA’s training facility, and he sometimes worked special assignments for the Directorate of Operations. She loved his butt, the angles and planes of his masculine face, and especially his hands on her body. He was strong yet very gentle.

When he turned back to her, she was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sadness, and her eyes began to fill. She felt like a complete fool, anything but a McGarvey. “Is it okay that I’m here? Are you mad at me?”

“What’s the matter, Liz.” Van Buren was alarmed.

“Can I stay here at least tonight?” She hated this weakness in herself. Her father despised weaknesses in people.

“You can stay forever, if you want,” he said seriously He took the overnight case from her and set in on a chair, then took her in his arms.

“Don’t say that yet,” she warned. But then she couldn’t talk. She clung to him, her body wracked with sobs. She felt worse than a fool, like a sniveling idiot, but she’d been frightened about her father’s safety for so long that she couldn’t help herself. It was enough for now that she had someone to hold her. Someone other than her mother who had taken the news that her husband had gotten out with more panache than even Elizabeth thought she was capable of. This time her mother had been too strong.

“I love you,” Van Buren said.

She parted and looked into his face, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t making fun of her. She didn’t think she could take that right now. She felt so vulnerable, and yet she knew that she could take him apart. But he was sincere. He honestly cared, and she could see it in his eyes.

“You called me a spoiled brat,” she said stupidly, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yeah, and you’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” he said. “But you can be my spoiled brat if you’ll ease up a little and let me take the lead every once in a while.”

She couldn’t help herself from laughing. She nodded. “Just don’t get any macho attitudes like ownership.”

“Works both ways, Liz,” he said. He got out a handkerchief and wiped her cheek. She took it from him and did it herself.

“Now, will you tell me what the hell is going on? Is it your dad? Is he okay?”

“They’re taking him to Ramstein. He’s pretty banged up, but the docs say he’ll be fine.”

“Christ. How’s your mother holding up?”

“She’s dealing with it,” Elizabeth said. “I just came from there. Dick Yemm is with her, so I told her that I had to get back to work. I couldn’t stay there tonight.”

Van Buren gave her a sympathetic look. “Are you sure about this?” he asked sincerely. “I mean if you just want to stay the night so you won’t have to be alone right now, I’d understand. I can take the couch.”

She touched his handsome face. “It was going to happen sooner or later. The reasons are all wrong right now, at least they are for me, but I’m glad it’s sooner.”

“So am I,” he said. He took her in his arms again, and now she was done crying. His body felt warm and strong and familiar. Comforting. Like coming home to a place you never knew how much you missed until you were there, she thought warmly.

They kissed deeply, their hands all over each other; exploring, feeling. He picked her up and brought her to the bed. They undressed each other, and then made love, softly and passionately, even though she wanted to rush. She let him take the lead, and when they were finished she was glad she had.

The dark blue van obviously didn’t belong parked on the street across from Kathleen McGarvey’s country club home.

Driving past, careful to keep his speed normal, his eyes straight ahead, Bahmad spotted a dark figure waiting behind the wheel. He had to consider the possibility that the CIA had placed a guard on the woman, which meant that they might be expecting an act of retaliation by bin Laden. It complicated his plans, but not impossibly so. Not yet. He still had time.

At the end of the block he turned right and headed back to Constitution Avenue. The logical thing to do was return to the yacht for a few days, then sail out to Bermuda, or up to Maine and Canada, waste time conspicuously, as planned. Be seen and yet not be seen for what he really was. Get his name in the society columns, make friends, spend money. Become the wealthy international playboy, not bin Laden’s paid assassin.

But he had promised that McGarvey’s daughter would die. The thought of killing her had a certain symmetry to it, considering Sarah’s death, and he had to admit that it excited him too. McGarvey had been an arrogant bastard. Killing his daughter and his wife would be interesting to say the least.

Bahmad smiled his secret smile, and for a moment or two he wondered in one part of his brain if, like bin Laden, he too wasn’t losing his mind. There was a time as a child playing in the park near his house in Beirut when he’d led a life that could be considered normal. Although his memories of that time were hazy and imperfect now, he did remember that he had been a happy child.

Elizabeth’s VW was not parked in the driveway of her mother’s house. Of course it could have been locked away out of sight in the garage, but that didn’t matter tonight. She would come to her mother to grieve and they would both die, as would the CIA officer on guard duty.

But the timing would have to be right. For that he would need some additional help and equipment. Turning over a number of scenarios in his mind he drove by the entrance to the Chevy Chase Country Club, and as usual a plan came to him all in one piece; the moves and counter moves arranged in precise battle order like the pieces on a chessboard.

Be seen, and yet not be seen. That was the technique that had allowed him to survive so long in this business. Driving back to the yacht he was actually looking forward to the party aboard tomorrow night. In a few days he would have the people he needed in place, and Captain Walker would have arranged a summer membership for him in the Chevy Chase Country Club, the fifteenth fairway of which abutted Kathleen McGarvey’s backyard.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The four men and five horses carrying the bomb had drifted through the mountains seemingly on the wind. Traveling day and night, their leader, Mustafa Binzagar, had allowed them to stop only briefly to eat and rest. They had worked their way a hundred sixty miles down the Panjshir Valley in less than four days, and Mustafa knew that when they delivered the package their journey would be ended in more than one sense of the word. The task that bin Laden had set them to do would be over, but so would their lives in Al Qaeda be finished. There were other training camps scattered around Afghanistan, but with bin Laden gone, and no new leader to replace him, their very existence would be meaningless. During the trek they had not seen another living soul, which gave Mustafa plenty of time to think about his predicament. But he had not come up with a solution. He was nothing but a mujahed, a lowly foot soldier with nowhere to go. No family who would accept him, no friends, and now no base or purpose.

He stood at the edge of the last glacier before the border and looked down the sweeping valley into Pakistan. There was nothing to be seen in the pitch-black of the night except for an airport beacon, which because of the clear, thin mountain air reflected green and white off the glacial ice even at a distance of thirty kilometers. They had been instructed not to cross the border because they did not know the schedule of the Pakistani patrols. But he’d been given no orders beyond this point, except that they were to be met by two men who would use the words, Sarah lives in Allah’s mansion. He felt a sense of bitterness and even betrayal that in the excitement he’d forgotten to ask what came next.

Hussein al-Rajhi came up the hill from where they’d tethered the horses and made a rough camp. “There’s enough wood for a small fire if you want some tea. Or should we save it until morning? It would help if we knew when they were coming.”

“I don’t know,” Mustafa said dreamily. He had become mesmerized by the airport beacon on the horizon, and what the light represented.

“Are you sure that we have come to the correct place?”

Mustafa turned to him. “This is the tongue of the glacier, and that’s the airport at Chitral.” He took out one of his last cigarettes and lit it, cupping it in his hand so that the glowing tip would be invisible to anyone who might be watching from the valley. “Start the fire. I’m cold and I could use some tea.” He passed the cigarette to Hussein. “It won’t be long now, and we’ll be starting back.”

“Where will we go—”

“I don’t know, maybe Khost!” Mustafa said angrily. Hussein took a couple of drags and handed the cigarette back. He shot a glance toward the horses. “She was a woman beyond understanding.”

Mustafa had to smile despite his morose mood. “That she was. Even her father had no control over her.”

“But she was strong.”

Mustafa shook his head thinking about her. “She might have eventually changed except for the American. He poisoned her. Mohammed told me everything.”

Hussein nodded. He’d heard the stories too, about how the American had tried to rape her, and how Mohammed had gotten shot in the hand saving her. Infidels were beyond understanding. And in the end nothing any of them did could have saved her from the missiles. “Maybe we should stay with her. The rest of the way to Mecca.”

Mustafa looked at him shrewdly. The idea was brilliant,

and although it had never occurred to him, he felt now that it was a thought, like a word on the tip of the tongue, that would have come to him at any moment. “There might not be room for all of us on the airplane.”

“The package is very heavy. It would take two men to handle it.”

“Us?”

Hussein nodded.

Mustafa took out his pistol, checked the action and switched the safety off. Hussein did the same, and without another word they went down the hill where Is mail and Suleiman were tending to the horses. They looked up.

“Are they coming?” Is mail asked.

Mustafa raised his pistol and shot him in the face from a distance of less than two meters. Hussein, who had come up behind Suleiman, shot him in the back of the head at pointblank range. Both shots were muffled by the hillside.

Suleiman was just eighteen and very strong. His legs were still twitching when Mustafa walked over. “Finish him.”

Hussein bent over the mujahed and fired a shot directly into his temple. At that moment Mustafa fired one shot into the back of Hussein’s head, driving him forward, his body flopping down on Suleiman’s.

Such a waste, he thought. But when there was only enough food on the table for one, it naturally belonged to the strongest man. There might not be room aboard the airplane for two men, but there certainly would be for one. And the package wasn’t that heavy after all.

They were right on time for the rendezvous, but he’d not seen anyone coming up the hill from the east, so he figured he had at least a couple of hours to get his story straight about how the other three had turned around and gone, and do what was needed here.

He loaded the bodies on three horses, and led them a couple of hundred meters back the way they had come, then dumped the bodies on the ground near a large pile of rocks. He tied the horses’ reins loosely over their necks, and slapped each on the rump, sending them racing into the night. They might go for several miles before circling back, but Mustafa figured by then he’d be long gone from here.

He laid the three bodies on top of each other and then started piling rocks on them. It was a difficult job and after a few minutes he was sweating heavily, but he worked without stopping until the bodies were completely covered and the arrangement of rocks looked reasonably natural. Unless someone looked close they would miss the grave.

He headed back to the camp, lighting a cigarette, his next to the last, and let himself come down. The tough part was over. Now, no matter what happened, he had no one to worry about except himself. There was still time, he decided to make a small fire and brew some tea.

He came over the last rise above the camp and stopped short. A man dressed in a Pakistani army uniform was reloading the package on one of the horses.

Mustafa stepped back, his hand going to the pistol inside his vest, when someone came up from behind.

“We wondered where you had gotten yourself to,” a man said in Dari.

Mustafa swung around. This one wore a Pakistani army uniform with captain’s pips on his shoulder boards. He carried a pistol in a holster but made no move to draw it.

“What are you doing on this side of the border?” Mustafa foolishly asked. “This is Afghanistan.”

“We’re here on a mission of mercy.”

Mustafa pulled out his gun. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re here for Sarah,” the Pakistani captain said gently. “She lives in Allah’s mansion, and we’ve come to take her the rest of the way home.”

Mustafa let the relief wash the tension from his body. He put his pistol away. “Good,” he said. “I sent the others back, I’m coming with you.”

“There’s no room,” the captain said. “Besides, you have no papers.” He took out his pistol and shot Mustafa in the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. “Foolish man,” he muttered half under his breath. By sending his three companions away the stupid mujahed had made a difficult task easy. Allah be praised. In three hours they would have the holy package aboard an airplane on its way to Karachi, their part of the mission completed in time for a couple hours of sleep before morning prayers. “Insha’Allah.”

It wasn’t until after four in the afternoon before Roland Murphy finally got over to the White House to brief the President. He had held off to give the NRO time to recheck their analysis, and to get some new photos from the next series of satellite passes, and for Rencke to make sure that they all understood exactly what they meant.

The President was waiting for him in the Oval Office with his national security adviser Dennis Berndt, but no one else.

“Bin Laden has survived,” Murphy told them without beating around the bush. He took a dozen enhanced photos out of his briefcase and spread them on the coffee table in front of them. Attached to the images were the computer generated identification probabilities which were nearly at one hundred percent.

The news did not come as a complete surprise to them. Murphy had called two days ago to alert the President to the possibility. But now that it was confirmed Berndt was his usual disdainful self.

“What the hell took so long, General?” he demanded.

“I wanted to make absolutely sure first. I didn’t want to go off half-cocked. We have enough problems as it is.”

“Are you finally sure now?” Berndt smirked. “No possibility that the CIA could be wrong … again?”

“There’s always that possibility, Dennis,” Murphy said. “But being an ass won’t help the situation.”

Berndt started to say something, but the President held him off. “So we missed again, and now he’s going to strike back, and I think we all know what that means.” The President gave Murphy a bleak look. “At least we got McGarvey out of there. Is he going to be okay?”

“They’re releasing him from Ramstein sometime tonight. He should be back here in the morning,” Murphy said. “But he might not have the answers either.”

“Is he fit to return to work?”

“I haven’t talked to him yet, Mr. President, but I can’t imagine how I could stop him from coming back. He’s going to have plenty to say.”

“It was just plain bad luck this time,” Berndt said.

“No, Dennis, it was poor planning,” Murphy shot back. “If we had given Mac a little more time he would have come back with the deal we sent him over there to make. As it is now there’ll be no more talking. Bin Laden has got the bomb and he’s going to use it against us.”

“You don’t know that for sure, General,” Berndt said, still trying to slip out of any responsibility. “Could be we did the right thing. Maybe this time we put the fear of God into bin Laden and he’s going to back off. Have your people taken the time to at least give that possibility a consideration. Let’s not close any doors here.”

“That was discussed,” Murphy said. “But we discarded the idea as wishful thinking.”

“I don’t see why,” Berndt said, turning to the President. “Maybe we should put out feelers through the Taliban government. Offer some sort of a reparation payment in exchange for getting word to bin Laden.”

Murphy took several more photos out of his briefcase and spread them on top of those already on the coffee table. “That won’t work, Dennis, and this is why.” He was still having trouble accepting the young woman’s death. It was the worst thing that could have happened.

“What’s this now?” Berndt asked. He’d lost a lot of his usual bluster. When he calmed down he was quite bright. The trouble was he was easily excited.

“These are shots of bin Laden carrying a body across his camp minutes after the missile raid was over.”

The President picked up one of the photographs and studied it for a long time. His shoulders seemed to sag. “Who is it?”

“His daughter,” Murphy said softly. “Her name was Sarah. She was just nineteen years old.”

The President closed his eyes for a moment. “You wouldn’t have brought these over if you weren’t sure about this too.” He looked up. “How did it happen?”

“It looks as if she helped escort McGarvey out of the camp. She was coming back when the attack began, and she was caught out in the open.”

The President’s eyes were drawn to the photograph of his daughter on the desk. “I never meant for that to happen,” he said softly.

Murphy nodded. “It was a tragic accident, Mr. President, that none of us anticipated. But bin Laden will almost certainly strike back. Maybe even against you.”

“He has the motivation now, if he never had it before,” the President agreed.

“She was a terrorist who—” Berndt said, but the President cut him off with a withering glance.

“She was just a baby girl, Dennis. Nineteen.” “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but accident or not, we cannot back down now. We’re going to have to go after the bastard with everything we have. The bounty hasn’t worked, and we’ll never know if McGarvey’s attempt to negotiate a solution would have worked — all that is too late now. We have to kill him. I don’t think there can be any argument about that now, can there be?”

“How difficult would it be for us to arrest him?” the President asked. He was grasping at straws and Murphy could sympathize with him.

“First we’d have to find him, and that in itself might present a big problem. The Taliban may have finally kicked him out of Afghanistan, and if that’s the case he could be almost anywhere.”

“Khartoum,” Berndt suggested.

“That would be my first guess,” Murphy conceded. “But even if we did find him, arresting him would be problematic. There would be casualties, possibly heavy casualties.”

“Kill him,” Berndt said.

Murphy eyed the national security adviser with all the more distaste because this time he had to go along with him, even though he didn’t agree. “That might be the only viable option.”

The President got up and went to the bowed windows where he stretched his back. This was the first real test of his administration, and he was learning, as every other President had, that there were never any easy answers, and that even the power of the United States was very limited.

“Maybe the bomb is already here,” he said.

“Mac didn’t think so.”

“Would killing bin Laden stop someone else from using it against us? Does he have an heir apparent?”

“We don’t think he is training anyone to take over, but of course we can’t be sure about that. What we do know is that he’s the one holding the organization together. Personal loyalty. He’s a hero to the Islamic peoples. They respect and trust him. When he’s gone the money will certainly dry up, and so will the contacts.”

The President turned back. “Can we do it?”

On the way over here Murphy had known that his briefing would probably come to this. But he no more had the answer now than he did an hour ago. “I don’t know, Mr. President.”

“McGarvey got to him once, maybe he can figure out how to get to him again,” Berndt suggested.

“It’s not that easy. Bin Laden wanted to be found. He wanted the meeting. This time it’ll be different. He’ll be expecting someone to come after him, so if we do something like this — assuming that we can find him in the first place — we’ll have to hit him very hard, but not with missiles-with ground troops. And most likely without the knowledge or consent of the local authorities.” Murphy shook his leonine head. “There’s a lot of room for disaster there, Mr. President.”

“We’re not going to be held hostage by that sonofabitch like Carter was with the Iranians,” the President said forcefully. “I’m deeply sorry about his daughter, but he chose to keep her with him on the battlefield. And he chose to acquire a goddamn nuclear weapon and threaten us with it. His choices, General, every one of them. What does the CIA suggest we do about it?”

“I’d very much like to see bin Laden dead, and the CIA will use all of its resources to that end even though it’s against the law and against national policy, if that’s what you want.”

“There’s no other choice.”

“Very well, Mr. President. But before we get started I would like that in writing.”

Berndt started to object, but once again the President held him off. This was one administration that did not leave its people hanging in the wind. “It’ll be on your desk first thing in the morning, Roland.” The President gave him a penetrating look. “But I want you to keep in mind what we were faced with here before you think about making any public or historical announcement.”

“Of course.” Murphy closed his briefcase and got to his feet. “Bad business, all of this,” he said. He thought the President had made a poor decision. But then any other decision would have been just as wrong. He knew what McGarvey was going to say about all of this, and for once he had to completely agree with his deputy director of Operations. The politicians had truly screwed up what could have been a successful operation. And now they were faced with a much worse problem; an angry, highly motivated madman with the capability and the willingness to explode a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil.

“We didn’t create the situation, Roland,” the President said. “He did.”

“Yes, sir. But we might be looking at an even bigger problem.”

“What’s that?”

“If he should somehow pull this off — get the bomb here and detonate it — it won’t be the end. It’ll just be the beginning.”

Murphy had served four Presidents, his tenure as DCI by far the longest in the history of the CIA, and during that time he had been a part of every crisis to hit the United States in nearly twenty years. He’d seen it all; from the fallout precipitated by the breakup of the Soviet Union, to the embassy crisis in Iran, the wars in Kuwait, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia and Kosovo, the terrorist attacks against Americans in Africa, Italy, Germany, the Middle East and even here at home against our airline industry; spies from the Walker family to the Bureau’s Robert Hanssen and the CIA’s own Aldrich Ames and a dozen others whose cases never hit the media; downswings and budget restrictions and congressional witch hunts. But there was one thing that never changed, and that was the need for the CIA or some intelligence-gathering organization like it. President Truman’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s famous quote that gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail didn’t apply then, and it certainly didn’t apply now.

Riding in his limousine across the river he thought again about his retirement, something he’d been doing a lot of lately. It wasn’t enough to know how many missiles and tanks and submarines the other country had, you needed to know if they intended to use them, and when and where. That was a job for a much younger, much less cynical man than himself. He’d seen it all, he had the experience, but he was burning. He was finding that there were times when he simply didn’t give a damn.

He didn’t believe that, of course. In twenty years every problem the CIA had solved was immediately followed by ten new ones. For every ten successful operations that never hit the media, there was one failure that was splashed all over the front pages of every newspaper in the country. The CIA screws up again! And they howled for blood, oh, how they howled for blood up on the Hill. Their cries were driven by their constituents and the next election. He was starting to ask himself what kind of howls of protest their constituents would be making if there wasn’t a CIA, and if we were constantly being blindsided because we were too shortsighted to open other gentlemen’s mail?

One segment of the media was sharply critical of the administration for talking to bin Laden. No negotiations with terrorists, they said. Another segment of the media criticized the missile attack on his camp. The U.S. was being a bully again, moving carriers into an intimidating position and attacking a sovereign nation. The administration would weather these storms, previous administrations had, but the real problem was that no one suggested any solutions. Okay, don’t negotiate with terrorists. What then, Murphy asked himself. The critics didn’t say.

Okay, don’t attack the terrorist’s base camp, don’t destroy his weapons, or his will to continue to slaughter innocent civilians. What then? No one was making any real suggestions other than to stop doing whatever it was that pissed off the terrorists in the first place. Dismantle all of our godless institutions, like IBM and General Motors and Microsoft. Take all the money from the billionaires and give it to the poor people. Make it a law that families could not live in big houses and drive fancy cars unless everyone else on the planet could live in a big house and drive a fancy car. Let’s take away all incentives. Don’t use pesticides, or cut trees, or use animal antibiotics, or irradiate food, but make sure that everyone on the planet is fed as well as everyone else on the planet. Get out of Saudi Arabia, get out of Bosnia and Kosovo, give the American Indians back all of their land including Manhattan, spend the entire GNP on welfare programs for the rest of the world. If we have too much because we’re clever enough to have earned it, give it away. Dismantle our army and air force and especially our navy. Give in to every special interest group here and in every other country in the world, because they have rights too. Take the flag down and toss it in the trash.

Murphy’s limousine took the CIA exit off the George Washington Parkway and followed the road up to the main gates. They were passed through without stopping and parked in the back at the DCI’s private entrance. His bodyguard, John Chapin, opened the door for him and escorted him up to the seventh floor.

“You can stand down, John. It’s going to be another late night,” Murphy said at the door to his office.

“Yes, sir,” Chapin said, not surprised. He’d seen the look on the general’s face when he came out of the Oval Office.

Murphy went through the outer office into his own office, his secretary jumping up and trailing behind him. “You’ve had a dozen calls, nothing urgent, the memos are on your desk. Mr. Adkins wanted to speak to you when you returned. And Mrs. Murphy would like to know when to expect you home.”

“Late,” Murphy said, putting his briefcase down and loosening his tie as he went around his desk. He lifted the phone and hit Adkins’s number. “Come on over, Dick, we need to talk.”

His secretary brought him a mug of coffee, black, no sugar, and the briefing book with the afternoon summaries of the news stories from the top fourteen foreign newspapers. “Would you like me to stay for a while?” she asked.

Murphy shook his head. “It’s going to be one of those nights. You might as well go home.”

“I’ll call Mrs. Murphy first.”

“Thanks.”

When she was gone, Murphy turned and looked out the windows at the rolling Virginia countryside. Everything was green and new and fresh. His forty-two-foot Westsail ketch was docked at Annapolis, and he wished that he and Peggy were aboard her now. Cocktails this early evening with a few friends. Maybe find a reasonably quiet spot to anchor a few miles down river. Something on the grill, then to bed with the setting sun and up with the rising sun in the morning. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he could almost smell the sea smells, feel the gentle rocking of the boat.

Dick Adkins, McGarvey’s chief of staff and acting DDO, knocked once and came in. “How’d it go, General?” he asked.

Murphy turned around. “They want us to kill him.” Adkins stopped in midstride. “Just like that?” “With bin Laden dead they feel that his organization will fall apart, and they’ll no longer be a threat.”

“That’s assuming we could get to him in time — if at all.” “Well, we’re going to try to find him as well as the bomb, and hope to God we’re not too late.”

Adkins smiled wryly. “Hell, General, I don’t know what’s going to be worse — tracking down bin Laden again, or telling McGarvey what they want us to do.” “He’ll have plenty to say about it,” Murphy said. “Indeed he will.”

The three-wheel Flat delivery truck with prandesh deliveries, ltd. stenciled on its doors raided to a stop in line at the west wharf of the International Terminal Customs Center. When it was his turn, the driver, a small man with wide dark eyes, handed a copy of the bill of lading, repair order and temporary customs release form to the uniformed inspector.

As the inspector took the forms back into the customs shed, Kamal Azzabi lit a clove cigarette and nervously drew the sharp smoke deep into his lungs. He had picked up the package and paperwork at a repair shop near the airport. He didn’t know what was in the container, nor did he want to know. His only job was to deliver it to dock 24 west.

No problem, except that he had been paid too much cash, which made him suspicious, and he had been warned not to deviate from the route laid out for him or else someone would come for him and his family.

He’d almost turned down the job, but he needed the money and his mullah had asked him to do it as a personal favor. It was nearly time for afternoon prayers and then supper. That and the monetary windfall was all he could think about. Even the terrific heat didn’t bother him today.

A couple of minutes later the inspector came back with another uniformed officer and a large black dog on a leash. Azzabi tossed his cigarette away, and it was all he could do to keep from pissing in his pants. It was drugs back there. He was suddenly convinced of it, and he was going to jail for the rest of his life. Why else would they have brought out the dog?

He started to get out of the truck to come clean, tell them about the money, when the customs inspector came over.

“Did you pick this up for repairs yourself?” the inspector asked.

Azzabi had no idea what the man was talking about. But he bobbed his head. “I don’t remember.”

“Well, it says on the order that it was you.”

Azzabi stole a glance in the rearview mirror. The dog’s forepaws were on the back of the truck bed and he was sniffing the fiberglass container.

“Is this the same cargo that you picked up from dock 24 yesterday or isn’t it?”

Azzabi bobbed his head again. “Yes, of course it is,” he said. His bladder was very loose.

The customs inspector signed the forms and handed them back. “Okay, you’re clear.”

Azzabi just stared at him for several seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other officer heading back to the customs shed with his dog.

“Is there something wrong with your hearing?” the inspector shouted.

“No, sir,” Azzabi said, and he drove out onto the crowded docks busy with the activities of loading and unloading ships of all sizes, shapes and descriptions, his truck just another delivery van among literally hundreds.

The 694-foot container ship M/V Margo was in the final stages of loading the last of more than two hundred containers on its wide cargo deck when Azzabi went up the boarding ladder and found the load master The huge man glared at him. “What do you want?”

Azzabi handed him the papers. The load master glanced at them, then looked down at the truck. He said something into a walkie-talkie, then signed the receipt, handed it back and walked off, shouting something at two men perched atop the stack of containers towering six high.

By the time Azzabi got back to his truck the package was gone. “Good riddance,” he muttered with relief and drove off, wondering if he should tell his wife the full extent of his windfall or keep a little for himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ahmad sat forward as Kathleen McGarvey’s gunmetal gray Mercedes 560SL convertible came off Laurel Parkway and headed south on Connecticut Avenue toward the city. He got a good look at her as she passed and he was mildly vexed that she did not seem distraught.

The dark blue windowless van with government plates came right behind her. The driver’s eyes slid casually past Bahmad behind the wheel of the Capital City Cleaning van at the stop sign on Kirke Street, and then he was gone in traffic.

“Was that her?” Misha bin Ibrahim asked from the back. He and the other one, Ahmad Aggad, who had come down from Jersey City, were idiots, but they would do as they were told and they were expendable.

“Yes, we’re going in now,” Bahmad said. He waited for a break in traffic then crossed Connecticut Avenue and headed up Laurel Parkway.

Her house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In the two days it had taken Bahmad to arrange for the help, the van and the other equipment they would need, he’d spot-checked the neighborhood and done some phone calling.

On both days Kathleen McGarvey left her house around eleven in the morning and returned between two and three. Presumably she’d gone out to lunch. It was only slightly bothersome that she’d apparently not yet learned about her husband’s death, but things like that often took time, and it might not be something the CIA wanted to make public so soon.

Both days she’d been followed by the same van. None of the databases he’d run the tag numbers through were more specific than to list them as General Accounting Office, which could be anyone. Most likely the CIA for special domestic operations, or even the FBI’s counterespionage division.

He got lucky with his phone calls. The problem was watching her house until the daughter showed up without alerting the woman or her watchdogs. But the house two doors down from Kathleen McGarvey’s would be unoccupied for another two weeks. It was a break. He’d phoned each of the houses on the block and when he’d called the one at 15 Laurel Parkway a recorded announcement was kind enough to inform him that the Wheelers would be out of the country on vacation until July third.

“I don’t understand if we’re going after the daughter, why not watch her apartment?” bin Ibrahim said.

Bahmad glanced at him in the rearview mirror, cowering in the back with the white coveralls. “Because she has moved out and we can’t be certain when she’ll return.”

“How do you know she will come to her mother?”

“She’ll show up here, leave that part to me. Your only responsibility for now is to keep watch for her yellow Volkswagen and call me the instant it shows up.”

“Then we will kill her?”

Bahmad nodded.

“We have no problem with that, brother, but what about afterwards? I do not want to spend the rest of my life rotting in some jail cell.” “Nothing will go wrong,” Bahmad said. “If you follow my orders no one in the neighborhood will even know that anything has happened until we’re long gone the same way we came in. By the time they find this van you’ll be on a plane for London, and once you get there you’ll be in the pipeline on the way home.”

“If I see a clear shot I’m taking it,” Aggad said contentiously. He’d been in the States for five years and he was used to being his own boss.

“You’ll get yourself caught and shot down.”

“No way, man. I’d be long gone before the cops even got the call.”

Bahmad looked at him in the mirror, his expression completely bland. “I’m not talking about the police, Ahmad,” he said softly. “I’m talking about me.”

The two in the back fell silent.

“You will do exactly as you are told if you want to get paid, and if you want to live to spend your money. Do you understand?”

They nodded resentfully. They knew nothing about Bahmad except that he came highly placed in bin Laden’s organization. But in the few hours they’d been with him since he’d picked them up at the Greyhound bus station in Baltimore they’d come to respect if not fear him. He exuded extreme self-confidence and competence. In this business that almost always meant extreme danger to anyone who might cross him.

The neighborhood was quiet when they backed into the driveway of the two-story Tudor. Bahmad keyed the variable frequency garage door opener, and the door came open. He backed the van inside, and while bin Ibrahim and Aggad were unloading their weapons, surveillance equipment and supplies, he defeated the house alarm system and let himself in through the kitchen.

The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. A quick check of all the rooms revealed that the family was truly gone.

“No lights, and stay well back from all the windows,” Bahmad instructed them. “We’ve done this sort of thing before,” bin Ibrahim said.

“See that you do it well this time,” Bahmad replied. “Use the cell phone to call me as soon as the yellow Volkswagen shows up. The phone is encrypted, so it is safe.”

“How far away will you be?” Aggad asked.

It was a reasonable question. “Twenty minutes, twenty five at the most.”

“Okay, let’s hope it’s soon,” Aggad said glancing toward the living room. “I don’t want to have to deal with snoopy neighbors.”

“No one in this neighborhood has taken any notice that we’re here,” Bahmad assured them. “It’s why we waited until the woman and her bodyguard were gone. Just keep your heads down and your eyes open.”

“Consider it done,” Ibrahim said.

“It’ll be good to be home, even if it’s only for a little while,” Thomas Arnette said, returning from the head and dropping into his seat. “I hear you,” McGarvey forced a smile. He felt detached, as if he wasn’t connected to his body, but he had to pull himself together because they weren’t out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.

Arnette, who worked as a case officer for Alien Trumble and now Jeff Cook in Riyadh, had been assigned to stick with McGarvey. He was short, slender and dark with an easy, ingratiating smile that belied his sharp intelligence. He was one of Trumble’s handpicked Arab experts. Each time McGarvey had come awake in the hospital, Arnette had been there. And it was Arnette who had arranged McGarvey’s early release and this flight. “When do you go back?”

Arnette smiled tightly. “I’ll check with the Middle East desk tonight, and then fly back tomorrow. Jeff is going to have his hands full, because it’s going to start getting pretty dicey. There’s anti-American riots just about everywhere, and there’s no telling when they’ll escalate to some real violence.”

“It’s spreading from Kabul?”

“Like wildfire,” Arnette said, giving McGarvey a critical look. “Mr. Adkins ordered us to keep you out of the loop until you got back to Langley. It was the doctors’ suggestion, actually. They wanted to give you a little time to mend.” “I don’t know what’s worse, imagination or the truth.”

They were the only passengers aboard the air force VIP jet. The attendant was doing something in the galley, and the door to the flight deck was closed. “It’s a bitch, Mr. McGarvey, but whoever ordered the missile attack ought to be hung. It flat-out didn’t work.” Arnette was Georgia country, and very pragmatic. His type was rare in the CIA, or anywhere else in the government for that matter.

“It didn’t work last time either.”

“But we keep trying. Just like the Energizer Bunny.”

McGarvey laughed, and a sharp stitch of pain grabbed his side. It felt as if his ribs were going to pop out of his body right through his skin. And his head was ready to explode. He winced.

“Are you okay?” Arnette asked, concerned.

Sweat popped out on McGarvey’s brow, but he nodded. “I’ll live, but I have to go to the head.”

“You gonna make it on your own?”

“Unless we hit an air pocket.” McGarvey hauled himself to his feet, spots jumping in front of his eyes. “Trouble is that I’ve spent the last few days flat on my back and I’ve stiffened up a little.”

“That’s not what the docs said.”

McGarvey glanced out the windows. They were finally over the Atlantic, and there was nothing to see. But they’d be in Washington in a few more hours. “Get me another brandy would you, Tom?”

“How about something to eat?”

“Sure. But another drink first.” McGarvey made it back to the head, and when he was inside and had the door locked, his legs began to buckle and he sat down on the toilet lid. He could see the reflection of his face in the mirror above the tiny sink, but the edges were blurry as if something was wrong with the glass. The compartment was getting dark too, but when he looked up at the light fixture he could tell that it was on.

He tried to stand but couldn’t, and he slumped back, his head against the bulkhead. The plane was spinning around and around making him sick to his stomach. The wound in his side ached with a dull throb, and his entire body was drenched in sweat. But the worst was his head, which pounded as if someone had stuck a high-pressure air hose in his ear and was filling up his skull.

The compartment was almost completely dark now, he couldn’t even see his own reflection, but there were flashes of lights behind his eyeballs; lightning streaks across his brain in time with sharp, piercing stabs of deep pain inside his head.

For several seconds it was all he could do just to sit there and hold on, his arm draped over the edge of the sink. But then the episode passed almost as quickly as it had begun. The lights came back on, the plane stopped spinning and the shooting pains inside his head faded. He released the deep breath he’d been holding and let his body sag.

After a minute or so he got up, splashed some cold water on his face, dried off with some paper towels and went out to the main cabin and back to his seat.

“Are you really okay, Mr. McGarvey?” Arnette asked, looking up.

“I’ve felt better, but I don’t have much of a choice here. I’ll have a ton of shit to deal with when I get back.”

“That you will.”

The attendant came back with their drinks. “Dinner will be ready in about a half-hour. Steak and lobster, and I have a nice Nouveau Beaujolais that oughta go down pretty smooth.”

“Sounds good,” Arnette said,

When the attendant was gone, McGarvey started to raise his drink, but something Arnette had said suddenly struck him, and he put the glass down.

“You said that Dick wanted me kept out of the loop while I was in the hospital. What’d you mean? Exactly.”

“They didn’t want you getting upset. Besides, you were mostly out of it on pain killers.”

“You said that our missile strike didn’t work?”

Arnette nodded uncertainly.

“Did bin Laden survive?”

“Yeah,” Arnette said morosely. “There’s not a doubt in anyone’s mind that he’s going to hit back. But when, where and with what is anybody’s guess.”

“Shit,” McGarvey said under his breath. It couldn’t have been worse news. He thought about calling Adkins, but they’d have their hands full over there, and there was nothing he could say or do now that would make any difference. He needed more information, and he needed to be there.

He closed his eyes and willed the airplane to fly faster.

Andrews Air Force Base

McGarvey awoke around 6:30 a.m. with the morning sun blasting in the windows as they turned on final approach to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. For the first few moments he was disoriented, wondering where the hell he was, but then he remembered and his hand went to the tender spot on the side of his head.

Dinner had been fine, but the drinks, especially the wine, had left him with a dull headache and a gummy mouth on top of his other ills.

He sat up and peered out the window. The countryside looked neat and clean, organized and modern compared to Afghanistan. For a little while he allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the moment, something he was rarely able to do. He was always working out scenarios for himself and everyone around him. Very often they were of the worst possible kind. At the fringes of his thoughts now was the question about bin Laden and men of his ilk — the terrorists of the world. Why did they hate us so badly that they wanted to tear all this down while at the same time beating at the gates to get in? It made no sense. But he was being naive, which was especially odd for a man of his experience, and even dangerous for a man in his position. He’d never found an answer to what he considered was a very basic question. Jealousy, he’d always thought, was too easy an answer. It was possibly something that he would never know.

“Good morning,” Arnette said, and McGarvey turned to him.

“Hi.”

“Are you feeling any better?”

McGarvey managed to smile. “I’ll live, but I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. How about you?”

Arnette shook his head. “Oh, I never sleep on airplanes,” he said. “But I usually get a lot of reading done.” He held up a paperback novel.

The flight attendant came back with a glass of orange juice and a couple of pills. “Tylenol Extra Strength,” he said, handing them to McGarvey. “You had a rough night, I figured these might help.”

“Thanks,” McGarvey said. He took the pills and drank the juice. He’d spent a lot of bad nights, but just lately they had piled up.

“Check your belt please, sir, we’ll be on the ground in a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah.” McGarvey thought about the work he was facing, and the probability that they would fail. “Tell the pilot good flight.”

“Yes, sir,” the attendant said, and he went forward to his jump seat.

McGarvey turned back to Arnette. “You might as well ride out to Langley with me.”

“Thanks, but Dave Whittaker said he’d be sending somebody for me, and they’re taking you out to Bethesda, the docs want to check you out.”

“I’ve had enough hospital for this week,” McGarvey grumbled and he looked outside as they came in for a landing. There would be plenty of time for hospitals later. For the moment he had a war to fight, a war that he wasn’t at all sure they could win given the rules they had to fight by.

The Gulfstream taxied past the terminal and parked in an empty hangar. McGarvey got up as the door was opened and the stairs lowered. Several armed air force cops surrounded the airplane even before the engines had spooled completely down. Dick Yemm was waiting with McGarvey’s limousine. It was a beautiful warm morning but muggy after the Afghani desert and mountains. McGarvey shook hands with Arnette while Yemm opened the limo’s rear passenger door.

“Are you sure I can’t give you a lift?” McGarvey asked.

“No, sir, my ride’ll be along shortly,” Arnette said. “You know, maybe you should consider leaving the field work to the kids next time.”

“That’s a thought,” McGarvey said. “Thanks for your help.”

“Hey, no sweat. It’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

McGarvey walked over to the limo and shook hands with his driver bodyguard “Welcome home, boss,” Yemm said.

“It’s good to be back, Dick. Let’s see how fast you can get me over to Langley.”

Yemm hesitated for a moment. “We’re supposed to take you over to Bethesda ASAP.”

“Later,” McGarvey said tersely. He ducked down to climb in the back seat and saw Elizabeth sitting in the corner, a big smile on her face.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said in a small voice, her excitement and concern for him barely suppressed.

He was stopped for just a moment. “Hi, Liz,” he said. He got the rest of the way in and grunted with pain. Elizabeth reached out a hand to help him.

“Daddy, what’s the matter?”

“I’m still a little stiff from climbing mountains,” McGarvey said, masking his pain and sudden dizziness. “Thanks for coming out to pick me up. How’s your mother?”

“Happy that you were coming back in one piece,” Elizabeth said looking at him critically to make sure that he was really all right. “I told her to stay home this morning because you’d have to be debriefed. She understood, but she’d like you to call her as soon as you get a chance.”

Yemm got behind the wheel. “How about it, boss, Bethesda or Langley?”

“My office, Dick.”

“They wanted to check you out first,” Elizabeth said.

“The office,” McGarvey repeated to his driver, and as they headed out, he turned his attention back to his daughter. “Okay, sweetheart, what’s the story? We have a problem, it’s written all over your face.”

“Bin Laden survived,” Elizabeth said, girding herself. She’d always hated being the bearer of bad news. Her father’s major fault, in her estimation, was wanting to protect everybody around him no matter what the cost was to his relationship with them, even leaving them. Her biggest problem, by contrast, was wanting to make everybody around her happy while still trying to somehow juggle her fierce independence into the mix. It couldn’t always work that way, and as a child she lied a lot; varnished the truth, as her father would say. But now in the real world in which people could and did get hurt without the absolute truth, that was no longer possible.

“Tom Arnette told me on the way over. He must have left the camp by now. Do we have any idea where he went?”

“He’s probably gone to ground in Khartoum, but we’re not sure yet. Otto’s working with Louise Horn over at NRO.” She smiled a little. “They’re quite a team.”

“Bin Laden’s going to come after us and we’re going to have to be ready for him.”

They passed through the main gate, the air force policeman snapping them a crisp salute, and then got on the Capital Beltway, the morning rush hour traffic horrendous.

“Was it bad over there?” Elizabeth asked.

“We could have had a deal,” McGarvey said heavily. “I think that he’s dying of cancer, and he wanted to make sure that his family would be taken care of.” He shrugged. “But he does know how to run a war, and his people are behind him one hundred percent.”

“I went to school in Switzerland with his daughter, Sarah. What did you think of her?”

“She’s a bright girl—” McGarvey stopped suddenly, realizing that she was trying to tell him something. “What?”

“The NRO got some really good high-angle frames of the camp during the raid and a few minutes on either side of it. We figured that Sarah left the camp about the same time as you did, and maybe she helped escort you part of the way back.”

“Did she get caught in the attack?”

Elizabeth’s lips compressed, and she nodded. “She was killed.” She reached for her father’s hand and squeezed it. “I saw the file photo we have of her and remembered her from that school outside of Bern. She’s younger than me,

and she was only there for a year, but I still remember her because of the bodyguards.” Liz looked away. “Now she’s dead.”

“What’s our confidence level on this?”

“Very high,” Elizabeth said. “We got some very good enhanced images of bin Laden with his daughter’s body in his arms.”

“Christ,” McGarvey said shaking his head. “There’ll be no reasoning with him now.” “It wasn’t your fault,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe he’d still listen to you if you could reach him.”

McGarvey looked at his daughter with a sudden overwhelming love and fear. He’d gotten inside bin Laden’s skin for a few minutes up there in his mountain cave. Or at least he thought he had. But just now, just at this moment, looking at his daughter, he was sure that he really understood bin Laden. Understood a father’s anguish.

“If his people had killed you I wouldn’t listen to him,” McGarvey said softly. “He’s coming after us now with everything he has. And it’s going to hurt.”

Fanaticism is a monster that could tear a society apart, Voltaire wrote two hundred fifty years ago, and it was just as true now as it had been then. “The fanatic is under the influence of a madness which is constantly goading him on.”

A daughter’s death at the hands of the infidels was the ultimate goad.

CIA Headquarters

McGarvey walked into his office a few minutes before eight. His daughter accompanied him. Now that he was back and he had found out about Sarah’s death, he had an unreasoning fear for Elizabeth’s safety even here in the building. His secretary wasn’t here yet, and he had a full plate so he could justify keeping her by his side, even though her job was in Rencke’s section.

He took off the blue jacket the air force had loaned him, tossed it on the couch and went to his desk, which was loaded with memos, telephone messages and mail.

“Get your mother on the phone, would you?” McGarvey asked his daughter. “And then have Otto come up.”

“Do you want some coffee, Dad?” Elizabeth asked, a secret smile on her lips.

“When you get a chance.” McGarvey turned on his computer, and as it was coming on-line he called Adkins’s office next door. “I’m back.”

“You’re supposed to be in the hospital.”

“Thanks, I’m glad to be back too,” McGarvey said with a chuckle. An outside line on his phone console began to blink, and Elizabeth motioned to him that it was her mother. “I want a meeting at eleven in the main auditorium with all our DO and DI department heads, the FBI’s counterterrorism people, INS, State, the DoD, Defense Intelligence, the bomb people over at the aTF.” Doug Brand-the new chief of Interpol — and anyone else you can think of.”

“He’s coming after us.”

“No doubt about it, Dick,” McGarvey said. “As soon as you set that up come on over, we have some work to do.”

“Will do,” Adkins said. “It is good to have you here, Mac, as long as you don’t push yourself.”

“Yeah, right,” McGarvey said. He broke the connection, and before he picked up the outside line he asked Elizabeth to call Dave Whittaker up. Whittaker was the DO’s Area Divisions chief in charge of all the foreign desks at Langley as well as all the Agency’s bases and stations worldwide. He punched the button for the outside line. “Hi, Katy.”

“Welcome home, darling,” Kathleen said. “How are you?” Her voice was soft and wonderful. McGarvey couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m a little battered and bruised, but it’s nothing life threatening, so you can stop worrying about me.” “I worry about you even when you’re in my arms,” Kathleen said. “Are you going to be able to get out of there sometime in the near future?”

“Tonight. And that’s a promise.”

“Shall I wait supper?”

“I might be late.”

Now Kathleen laughed. “What’s new,” she said. “I’ll start something around eight.”

Rencke walked in, his red hair flying all over the place, his eyes red and puffy. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, but he was excited.

“Gotta go, Katy,” McGarvey said. “Love ya.”

“I know,” Kathleen said, and McGarvey broke the connection. He’d never understood that response before, but now he did, and it felt great.

“Oh, wow, Mac, am I ever glad to see you,” Rencke gushed. “Big time.” He hopped from one foot to the other, as he did whenever he was happy.

“I’m glad to see you too, pal,” McGarvey said. “But you look worse than I do. When’s the last time you got any sleep?”

Rencke completely ignored the question. “We’ve wiped out bin Laden’s daughter, and guess what? That makes nun one motivated dude.”

“He’s also very well informed,” McGarvey said. He told Rencke about the meeting with bin Laden in the cave, including the fact they knew all about the GPS chip. “He could have an informer somewhere inside the NRO.”

“Hackers,” Rencke said dreamily. He was making connections. His eyes went to the computer on McGarvey’s side desk. “The Taliban phoned Riyadh Ops and told them to send the C-130 an hour early or not at all,” he said softly. “And when it was taxiing away from the terminal they came after it.” Rencke focused on McGarvey. “Don’t you see, Mac, they were expecting you, and they’d been asked to stop you. By bin Laden. He’s into everything. He has connections everywhere because he’s rich, ya know?”

“We have to stop them from getting into our system,” McGarvey said.

“I’ll work on it,” Rencke replied absently. He came around behind McGarvey’s desk and studied the menu displayed on the computer. “Have you logged in yet?”

“No.”

“Well, if they’re in the system there’s no use letting them know that you’ve survived and that you’re back to work.” Rencke shut off the computer and went back to the front of desk where he stood like a schoolboy who has just done a tough problem on the blackboard. “It might give us a small advantage,” he said.

“Good point,” McGarvey agreed. “Has there been any word from bin Laden or his people about the raid?”

“Not so much as a peep,” Elizabeth said. “I have a halfdozen search engines going on the Net, but we’ve come up empty-handed so far.” Elizabeth looked perplexed. “But I don’t get it, Dad. You’d think he would want to get the maximum mileage from his daughter’s death. I mean guys like that usually take advantage of anything that comes their way. Something like the evil empire killing innocent women and children. Something. Anything.”

“Would bin Laden know for certain that we knew his daughter had been killed?” McGarvey asked.

“He could know our satellite schedule,” Rencke said. “But if we don’t issue an apology, something he might expect us to do, there’s no way for him to know for sure.”

McGarvey turned back to his daughter. “Do you mention her death in your search engines?”

Elizabeth shook her head uncertainly. “No.”

“Okay, that’s one piece of information we won’t put out,” McGarvey said.

Understanding dawned on Elizabeth’s face. “He figures that if we know that we killed his daughter, we’ll also know that he’s going to come after us.”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said tiredly.

“But, Dad, that makes us the same as him,” Elizabeth protested. “He’s going to use his daughter’s death to give himself an advantage over us. And now we’re going to do the same thing.”

“That’s right, Liz,” McGarvey said, liking it even less than she did. But he had traveled with Sarah, eaten with her, talked to her, had even saved her from rape. “Have we come up with anything new on the Russian weapon?”

“No, and we probably won’t,” Rencke said. “The Bolshies are running scared and they’re covering up now, ‘cause they know the score.”

“Did you get into the old Lubyanka mainframe?”

“It was easy green,” Rencke said. “But there wasn’t much. They’re not even talking about it amongst themselves.” He got a wistful look on his face that was almost comical in its intensity. Someone who didn’t know him would believe that he had lost his mind or had zoned out. But then he smiled shyly. “I figured there had to be something, ya know. So I snooped around their out-station files, and you’ll never guess what I came up with.” Rencke looked around for someone to guess, but then shrugged. “There was a military trial yesterday. A captain and a colonel were found guilty of theft and dereliction of duty. Pretty common these days. But they were executed. Lined up in front of a wall and shot dead, big time. And guess where all this took place.”

“Tajikistan,” McGarvey said.

“Yeah,” Rencke replied. “Yavan Depot, right where the weapon came from. Which means we’re not going to get diddly from the Russkies. They’re going to deny everything. We are definitely on our own, kimo sabe.” “The bomb is on its way,” McGarvey said.

“You can bet the farm on it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I told you that we should have waited a few days,” First Officer Joseph Green said. Captain George Panagiotopolous glanced over at the pissant little man standing in front of the radar. The storm” was going to be a good one, he could not deny that, but it wasn’t a typhoon. He’d sailed through those by whatever name they were called — hurricane, anti cyclone extratropical storm — in four different oceans. Rough, dangerous, uncomfortable, but not impossible for a ship like the Margo.

He walked over to the bank of ship’s phones and called his deck officer/loadmaster Lazlo Schumatz in his quarters. “This is Panagiotopolous, it looks like we’re going to get that weather sooner than expected. Are you ready?”

“The deck cargo is secure, and Heiddi’s section should be finished in the holds in about an hour. Do you want me to go down there?”

“It might not hurt,” the captain said.

“What are we in for?”

Panagiotopolous glanced again at Green, who was staring intently out the windows across the cluttered cargo deck toward the bows, which were already beginning to rise and fall with the action of the increasing waves. “We’re in for a force eight, maybe a nine.”

Schumatz laughed. “Thirty-five to forty-five knot winds, and you call me? What, is Green quaking in his boots again?”

The captain was a great respecter of rank. He didn’t hold with disrespect. “Maybe you should double check the deck cargo as well, especially before it gets any rougher,” he said.

“As you wish.”

“Thank you.” The captain hung up the phone and followed Green’s gaze out the bridge windows. The Margo was a tight ship. With an overall length of 654 feet and a beam of ninety-six, she could transport nearly one thousand containers in her seven holds and lashed to her cargo deck. A pair of Sulzer diesels could push her through the seas at sixteen knots, and since her 1978 launch from the Cockerill Yards in Hoboken, New Jersey, she had never been in a collision or any serious accident at sea. She’d been retrofitted with new hatches and bow thrusters at Tampa Marine Yards in Florida in 1985, and had undergone a complete rebuild in 1996. But now they wanted her back for a second overhaul even though it was too soon, and there was not enough wrong with her to pull her out of service for the two months it would take. But it was the owners’ decision and there was no arguing with them.

They would sail up the Red Sea, transit the Suez Canal, cross the Med, and then head out across the Atlantic to the Port of New York where they would unload their cargo. From there it would be Tampa, and after that it was up to the owners. Everything was up to the owners, always. Panagiotopolous had been at sea for most of his life, and he understood the score. His job was to sail the boats, and leave the business and the politics to others. Not his responsibility. Green turned and gave the captain a bleak look. He was just a kid and he was frightened. But he was also the principal stock holder’s son, so he had to be treated with respect. And he did have his first officer’s papers.

“These kinds of storms are confidence-builders,” the captain said, not unkindly. “Once you’ve gone through forty-five knots, and you see that you and your ship have done just fine, why then forty-five knots will never present a problem again.”

“But fifty knots will,” Green said, relaxing a little. “What’s the biggest storm you’ve been in?”

“I’ll tell you about it sometime over a beer,” Panagiotopolous said. He had his own upper limit like all men did.

“How big?”

The helmsman was studying the binnacle compass even though they were on autopilot. But he was listening.

“A hundred sixty knots,” the captain said quietly. He grinned. “And I was pissing in my pants.”

Green looked nervously out the window. “In other words this is no problem.”

“Something like that.”

General Roland Murphy appeared as if he hadn’t slept in a week, but unlike Rencke who looked like a wild man, Murphy looked ill. The skin hung on his jowls and neck, and his complexion was pasty. McGarvey was shocked by his appearance. He’d never seen him this way. The rumor was that Murphy was going to retire in six months, but McGarvey had to genuinely wonder if the man was going to make it that long. The general had worked for the CIA almost as long as McGarvey had been involved with the Company. During that time they had never been friends, but they’d maintained a mutual respect. They each were the best at what they did, which was one of the reasons why Murphy had gotten behind McGarvey’s appointment as last year, a move that stunned some people and angered others, and why it had gone through without a hitch. But he seemed to have greatly diminished in the week or so that McGarvey had been gone. Both of them had been beaten up by the mission.

He got up from behind his desk and extended his hand. “Welcome home, Kirk. I’m glad to see you in one piece.”

McGarvey took his hand and was happy that the general’s grip had not weakened. “Thanks, but I would rather have come home to a better set of circumstances.”

“Partly my fault, I’m afraid,” Murphy’s face fell. “When you went off the air we thought you were dead and bin Laden was playing games with us.”

“Dennis Berndt’s idea?”

Murphy nodded. “Everyone’s except Otto’s.” He motioned for McGarvey to take a seat, and then he slumped back down in his chair. “I assume that you’ve already been briefed about bin Laden’s daughter.”

“I got the high points on the way in from Andrews.” “A terrible business.” McGarvey nodded, there was nothing else to say about it. “I’ve called a National Threat Assessment meeting for eleven.”

“That’s cutting everyone a little short, isn’t it?” Murphy said, glancing at the desk clock. It was a little before 10: 00 a.m. “The President wants to see you.”

“He’ll have to wait until this afternoon,” McGarvey said, and before Murphy could object he went on. “The bomb is on its way here, General. We don’t know how it’s coming, where it’s coming or even when it’s coming, but we have to deal with the problem. The sooner we get to it the greater our chances for success are going to be.”

“Which are?”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey said tiredly. “But the advantage is definitely his.”

Murphy took a memo out of a file folder and passed it across the desk. It was on White House stationery and was signed by Haynes. “You’re going to be asked to assassinate bin Laden.”

McGarvey read the note and passed it back. “At least this is one President who’s not afraid to take responsibility,” he said. “But he’s too late by at least six months, which is about how long it would take to pull off something like that — if it could be done at all.” McGarvey’s headache was coming back, and he passed a hand over his eyes. “Those days are gone, thank God.” He shook his head. “But even if we could push a little red button right this instant, and bin Laden would suddenly cease to exist, the bomb would still come here.”

“Not without his orders.”

“He’s gone to ground now. He set the machinery in motion, and even he might not be able to stop it even if he wanted to.”

Some of Murphy’s spark came back. He’d personally seen just about everything that could happen in the shadow world, and he still controlled the largest and most powerful intelligence agency in the world. “Okay, how do we proceed?”

“We’re going to tighten our border controls to start with. We’re putting tracers on all of bin Laden’s known associates and business connections here in the States and everywhere else. We’ve got the word out to be on the lookout for a special package. Something that’ll be getting more attention than whatever it’s disguised to look like should be getting. And we’re watching the possible routes. It started out in Tajikistan and had to have been transported overland through the mountains into Afghanistan. Assuming it’s on the move again it either has to be taken east to Pakistan or west to Iran. We have people on the ground who will be moved into positions to watch the roads, the trains, the planes and the ships.”

“What’s your best guess?”

“Best guess or worst fear?” McGarvey asked. “Because the worst case scenario would be the simplest They load the bomb on a commercial airliner, and as it approaches either New York City or Washington it goes off.”

“Security at every international airport around the world will have to be tightened. Just like after Lockerbie.”

“Maybe it’ll go by ship to Hamburg, then by truck to Frankfurt and from there by air to Washington,” McGarvey said. “Or any other combination you’d like to dream up.”

“I see your point.”

“Maybe it’ll stay in Tehran for a month, or maybe in Paris or London or Marseilles or Tripoli, and then when our security measures start to loosen up, which they will, it’ll be moved again. Leapfrogged here.”

“Does he have a timetable?”

“That’s a possibility we’re going to have to consider. Could be he’s going to hit us on the Fourth of July, or maybe Labor Day; maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas.” McGarvey shook his head again. “Do you want to try for Lincoln’s birthday?”

Murphy sighed deeply. “If we had held back on the missile attack we could have avoided all of this.”

“Maybe,” McGarvey said. “He might have been stalling for time after all. Kept us talking while he moved the bomb into place.”

Murphy gave McGarvey a sharp look. “But you don’t believe that.” “Doesn’t matter. We have a situation in front of us now, and we have to deal with it. Nothing else is important.” The recriminations and finger-pointing would come later, McGarvey thought. Right now it was a question of motivation, dedication. “How are you feeling, Roland?”

Murphy smiled wanly. “That’s supposed to be my question to you.”

“I’ve felt worse. But when this is over I’m going to take a long vacation. Someplace without a mountain view.”

“Next time send someone else out into the field, okay? I want my DDO running the show, not becoming the star attraction.”

“No one likes the thought of getting old,” McGarvey said.

“No,” Murphy agreed. When McGarvey was gone a snatch of something started running around in the back of his head. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but the line had something to do with dancing on a grave. It was disturbing, all the more so because his memory was imperfect, and because he wondered if it was a portent.

McGarvey entered the CIA’s main auditorium at 11:00 a.m. sharp and went directly to the podium on the small stage. A table was set next to it. He felt like hell, but he did not let it show. There were nearly a hundred people hastily assembled, all of them law enforcement or intelligence gathering officials, and most of them experts in counterterrorism. Adkins and his own staff took up the back rows, along with Tommy Doyle and some of his people from the Directorate of Intelligence. Rencke was held up downstairs with Jared Kraus in Technical Services, and Elizabeth was with him.

“Thank you for coming out on such short notice this morning. My name is Kirk McGarvey and for those of you who don’t know me, I’m the deputy director of Operations. I’ve called this meeting because the CIA believes that the United States is facing the worst threat of terrorism in its history. And we’re going to have to work together to try to stop it.” He dimmed the lights and clicked on the projection unit.

The slide showed the engineering diagram of the Russian nuclear bomb. “This information comes to us from Department of Defense and Department of Energy files,” McGarvey said. “The device on the screen is a Russian nuclear demolitions weapon which they call atvartka, or screwdriver. It has a nominal yield of one kiloton, it fits into a package about the size of a large suitcase, and detonation-ready it weighs between eighty and ninety pounds.

“It does not leak radiation, so Geiger counters cannot detect it and our conventional NEST forces will not work. Its conventional explosives are so well sealed that bomb sniffing dogs are of no use. It’s shockproof, heat proof waterproof and so extremely simple to operate that it does not require a trained technician to fire it. In short, ladies and gentlemen, the perfect terrorist’s weapon.”

McGarvey had their attention. He switched to the next slide, which showed a photograph of the actual device with a serial number next to it. “The nuclear weapon with this serial number was stored, until recently, at the Yavan Depot outside of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Because of the decaying political situation in many of the former Soviet Union’s breakaway republics, security for and accountability of such equipment is lax at the very best.”

He clicked to the next slide, showing two Russian officers. “Colonel Vladislav Drankov and Captain Vadim Perminov, who were in charge of security at the depot, were found guilty of dereliction of duty and theft by a military court. They were executed yesterday.”

The next slide came up. It showed a map of the region between Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan. Several routes through the mountains were marked in red. “We believe that these two Russian officers sold the nuclear weapon for thirty million U.S. dollars in cash to Osama bin Laden, who brought it by horseback through rebel-held territory to his base outside of Charikar as early as three months ago.”

“How the hell long has the CIA known about this?” the FBI’s Fred Rudolph demanded. He and McGarvey had worked together before. They had a great deal of respect for each other. But now Rudolph was mad. And he was clearly shook up, everyone in the audience was.

“About eight weeks, Fred,” McGarvey replied. “But we were not sitting on our hands. We had an operation in progress.”

“Evidently it wasn’t a success, or you wouldn’t have called us here,” Rudolph said. “The missile raid was an exercise in futility. Are you going to tell us that bin Laden survived?”

“It’s worse than that,” McGarvey said. He brought up the next image on the screen which showed the satellite shot of bin Laden carrying his daughter’s body. “This was taken from one of our Keyhole satellites within minutes after the missile attack on bin Laden’s mountain camp was completed. The figure at the lower left of the photograph is Osama bin Laden. As you can see, he survived. Subsequent photographs show that he was apparently not hurt.”

McGarvey looked up at the screen. “He’s carrying someone who did not survive the attack, however.”

He clicked to the next picture, this one the file photograph of Sarah. “This is Osama bin Laden’s nineteen-year old daughter, Sarah. It is her body he is carrying. It was she, along with at least eighteen of his mujahedeen, who was killed in the attack.”

“Oh, shit,” someone in the audience said.

“As you may expect, bin Laden is now well motivated” and he will attempt to bring the nuclear weapon into the United States sometime in the very near future — although we don’t know when — to hit a target that will inflict the maximum damage on us in retaliation for the death of his child. It’s up to us to stop him.”

“This is what the President meant in his speech,” Rudolph said softly, but McGarvey heard him. “It would have been helpful to our investigation if we had known all the facts.”

“National security concerns—” McGarvey said.

“Come on, Mac, we can’t do this in the dark,” Rudolph pressed. He was stunned, he was angry and he was frightened. They all were. “If we had known the score before Alien Trumble and his family were gunned down we might have been able to do something to prevent it. To prevent all of this. And then afterwards we were kept in the dark again about the raid. Why?”

“It was to protect my life,” McGarvey said. He paused a moment to let that sink in. “We thought that Alien Trumble and his family were killed by a faction who did not agree with bin Laden. Someone who wanted to use the bomb against us, even though bin Laden himself was apparently getting cold feet and wanted to talk to us.”

“Are you saying that you went over there and met with him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then why the missile attack?” Rudolph asked.

“It was a mistake.”

The auditorium was suddenly very quiet. McGarvey could see that they were evaluating the situation through the various perspectives of their own positions and experience. It was exactly what he wanted them to do. They were all coming more or less to the same conclusions: Either someone had made a colossal blunder bordering on the criminal, or McGarvey was lying to them to protect his own job. There wasn’t a person in the group who believed the latter.

“It’s on the way here,” Rudolph said.

“We’re going to have to assume that it is,” McGarvey said. “All of you have extensive files on bin Laden so I’m not going over his background except that before you leave you’ll each be given a diskette containing the CIA’s entire file. Nothing will be held back. We can’t afford the luxury. But I will tell you something that you most likely don’t know, and that’s not yet in the files. Bin Laden is probably dying of cancer and very possibly he doesn’t have much time left. It’s one of the reasons he agreed to meet with me, and now it’s all the more reason for him to hurry this last attack.”

“Maybe he’ll make a mistake,” someone said.

“Let’s hope he does, but don’t count on it,” McGarvey said. “He spent thirty million to get the bomb, and he means to use it. Which means he has a carefully worked out plan and a timetable. Neither of which we know.”

“We’ll have to keep this from the public to avoid a panic,” the State Department representative said.

“I agree,” Rudolph said. “But if we’re going to have any chance of heading this off before it gets here we’re going to have to pool our resources. All our resources.”

“Agreed,” McGarvey said.

The door at the rear of the auditorium opened and Rencke came in. He was pushing an aluminum case loaded onto a handcart. Elizabeth came in right behind him and took a seat in the back row as he started to the front.

McGarvey turned up the lights. “Dick Adkins will coordinate the operation from our crisis center. Besides the usual computer links we’ll maintain a twenty-four per-day hotline, and I would like each of your departments to do the same.”

“This has to be a two-way street in more than name only,” Rudolph said.

“You have my word on it,” McGarvey promised. “Are there any questions?”

Rencke had reached the stage. He lifted the aluminum case off the cart with some difficulty, and brought it up on the stage where he set it down on the table to the left of the podium.

“I have a question,” Rudolph said. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes, it is,” McGarvey said.

Rencke keyed the five-digit combinations on the two locks, released the latches and opened the lid of the case, which was about the size of a large suitcase. Next he activated the keypad and entered an eleven-digit code. Immediately an LED counter across the top of the keypad began to count down by the hundredth of a second from ten minutes.

“This is one of our nuclear demolition weapons,” McGarvey said. “But it’s almost identical in design and operation with the Russian version. Before you leave this morning I’d like you to come up and take a look at what you’re going to be dealing with.”

Rudolph was the first on the stage, and he looked up nervously from the keypad. “This thing is running,” he said. “The physics package in this one is a dummy,” McGarvey said.

“What does it do when it hits zero?” Don Marsden, from the State Department’s special unit on counterterrorism asked.

“I don’t know,” McGarvey admitted. He turned to Rencke.

“I don’t have a clue either,” Rencke said. “But it might be interesting to stick around and find out.”

Marsden grinned nervously. “I’d like to, but I have to get back to my office.”

“Me too,” Rudolph said.

McGarvey stayed to answer a few more questions, but everyone went with Adkins to get their briefing diskettes by the time the counter on the dummy bomb hit zero. McGarvey was staring at it, but nothing happened. It hit zero and the keypad went blank.

Rencke relocked the case and loaded it on the handcart. “The army wasn’t happy about admitting they had this, let alone letting us use it,” he said. “But it impressed the hell out of everybody.”

“I hope so,” McGarvey said tiredly. He just couldn’t seem to get his act together. It was as if he was a couple of paces behind himself, and couldn’t catch up, and he found himself being distracted by stray, disconnected thoughts that had nothing to do with the present moment.

Elizabeth came from the back of the auditorium and gave her father a critical look. “Are you okay, Daddy?” she asked. “Maybe you should go over to Bethesda after all and let the doctors look at you. Then go home, at least until morning.”

“I’m making an early night of it, I promised your mother. But I still have work to do, and the general and I are briefing the President this afternoon.”

“My search engines are all in gear. If there’s anything out there we’ll find it,” Rencke said. “In the meantime if you’re up to it I want to run some eyes and voices past you. I might be able to come up with an IdentiKit portrait of bin Laden’s chief of staff from what Alien was able to tell me, and what you can come up with. At least it might narrow down the search.”

“Run a parallel search with my background plugged in,” McGarvey said.

“Do you think that you’ve met this guy before?” Rencke asked excitedly.

“Maybe, but I just can’t put my finger on where, or in what context. He sounded English, but I don’t think he was.”

“What makes you think that?” Elizabeth asked.

“I don’t know, sweetheart, just something in my gut.” He was feeling disconnected again, and he looked up to make sure that the room lights hadn’t gone out because his vision was starting to get dark. He followed Rencke and Elizabeth up the aisle and out of the auditorium, his left hand trailing on the seat backs for balance. Bits and pieces of Voltaire were running around in a jumble in his head, but they made no sense. For the first time since he could remember he truly felt afraid.

CHAPTER TWENTy-TWO

The M/V Margo smashed directly into the increasing waves. By the time the crew had finished checking the cargo integrity in the seven holds the storm had fully developed. The weather report from Karachi was wrong. By now the winds had passed the predicted maximum of forty-five knots and were gusting at times to more than seventy knots. Almost a category-one typhoon. Captain Panagiotopolous was confident that his ship could handle the storm, but he wasn’t so sure about some of his crew, many of whom were inexperienced, or about the two hundred-plus containers chained to the cargo deck, some of which had already started to come loose.

He stood on the bridge looking down at the floodlit deck. Rain swept horizontally, and each time the bows came crashing down, seawater inundated the ship back to the superstructure, carrying away anything that wasn’t tied down. Schumatz and three of his deck crew were down there now re rigging the chains holding a stack of forty-foot containers, six high and four wide. The captain had thought about turning the Margo downwind to give the crewmen a dry deck, but the roll would be worse and the chances for an accident sharply increased. If one of the truck-sized containers came loose it could start a chain reaction that could sweep every container off the deck and possibly even cause enough damage to the ship to disable or sink her.

The irony would be superb, he kept telling himself. One third of the deck cargo consisted of Chinese-made life rafts packed into fiberglass containers bound for San Francisco. His walkie-talkie squawked.

He keyed it. “This is the captain.”

“We got the bastard,” Schumatz shouted over the shrieking wind.

“This blow is likely to last another twenty-four hours.”

“A link in one of the chains shattered. I’m telling you that it was a one-in-a-million chance. There must have been a void or a crack in the sonofabitch bar stock.” “Check all the others.” “That’ll take half the goddamn night.”

“All the chain came from the same chandler. You know what it means if a container comes loose.”

A white-faced First Officer Green was looking at him. Panagiotopolous gave him a reassuring nod.

He keyed the walkie-talkie. “Do you copy that?” “I hear you,” Schumatz shouted. “Do you want some more help?”

“No, goddammit. Just keep this bastard as steady as you can.”

“The conditions will probably get worse so check the inner stacks first.”

“Run the bridge, Panagiotopolous, and let me do my job,” Schumatz shouted.

The captain bit back an angry retort because his deck officer was correct. He looked out the window as Schumatz appeared from behind one of the stacks. Schumatz had to brace himself against one of the containers to keep his footing as he looked up at the bridge. He stood like that for a moment to make the point that the decks were his territory, and then disappeared again.

The crew’s comfort and happiness were always second to the safety of the ship. Always. And Captain Panagiotopolous was damned if he was going to lose either in a bullshit little blow like this one.

McGarvey was sitting on a table in an examining room at Urgent Care West, a medical clinic just off the parkway in Arlington. He came here whenever he wanted to see a doctor without the CIA knowing about it. The trauma medicine specialist, Mike Mattice, who’d just finished examining him was writing something in McGarvey’s file. “Am I going to live?” McGarvey asked.

Mattice, a large man with very broad shoulders and a pleasant, almost gentle smile, looked up seriously. “If what’s going on inside your skull is what I think it is, you could be in some serious trouble.” They’d developed a friendship over the past ten years, and Mattice had treated him for everything from the flu to gunshot wounds. He told it like it was, never pulling any punches.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Hairline skull fracture, probably a subdural hematoma. It means that you have a little arterial bleeder in there under the left temple. Unequal pupils, occasional blurring of your vision.” Mattice was sitting on a stool next to a table. He was all business. “I’m sending you up to see a friend of mine at University Hospital in Georgetown. You’re going to have a CAT scan and he’s going to read it.”

McGarvey started to object, he didn’t have the time, but Mattice held him off.

“He’ll keep his mouth shut, if that’s what you still want. But this time it’s serious, nothing to fool around with. There could be a lot of bad stuff going on inside of your head, could end up making you permanently blind, maybe paralyzed, probably scramble your brains.” He gave McGarvey a critical look. “Have you had any dizziness?”

“No,” McGarvey lied.

“Darkening of your vision?”

“No, a little blurring, but that’s all.”

“Disconnected thoughts, mood swings, memory loss?”

McGarvey shook his head, and Mattice shrugged skeptically.

“Maybe we’re lucky and I’m wrong. But I want to see the CAT scan.”

“What if you’re not wrong?”

“Your condition will get worse, like I told you.”

“How soon?”

“What the hell aren’t you telling me?” Mattice demanded.

“How long, Mike?”

“From the onset of the first serious symptoms maybe a few days, a week. There’s no way of telling until we get some pictures.”

“Assuming the worse, what then?” McGarvey asked. He’d known that something was seriously wrong with him, but there was too much at stake now for him to simply walk away from his job unless his own situation was desperate.

“We go in, fix the bleeder, drain the blood and put you back together.”

“How long would I be out of commission?”

“Six weeks,” Mattice said evenly. He glanced at the wall clock. “I want you up there by three. Do you have someone who can go with you?”

McGarvey hopped off the table. “Not this afternoon, maybe later in the week.”

“Not good enough—”

“I’m briefing the President on something at three, and there’s no way in hell I can miss it. We’re facing too much shit right now.”

“I could call your boss.”

“And violate doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“Hell, I’m a good Catholic but I’d lie to the Pope to save a patient,” Mattice said with a rueful smile.

“It’s going to have to wait for a couple of days, Mike.”

“Dammit.”

“That’s the way it has to be.”

Mattice got up and helped McGarvey with his jacket. “The first sign of dizziness or darkening of vision, I want you back here. And I want your word on it.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

Mattice started to object, but McGarvey held him off again.

“If you’re right, it’s my life on the line, and I won’t screw around by taking unnecessary risks. But something bigger than you want to know about is going on right now and I can’t back away from it.”

A mask of professional indifference suddenly dropped over Mattice’s eyes. “It’s your choice,” he said, brusquely. “Do you want something for the headaches?”

“They’re not that bad.”

Mattice picked up McGarvey’s chart. “When you’re ready for the CAT scan, call the desk and they’ll set it up for you. In the meantime take care of yourself.” He shook his head and walked out.

McGarvey managed to get back to CIA headquarters in time to ride with Murphy in the DCI’s limousine to the White House. He’d driven himself over to the clinic and unless he’d been followed no one knew where he’d gone.

“It’s going to be no use pointing fingers or jumping down Dennis Berndt’s throat,” Murphy said tiredly. “The situation is what we have and it’s up to us to deal with it as best we can.”

“I agree,” McGarvey said distantly. In the morning he would sit down with Adkins and Rencke and go over the entire mission to find out how the bomb was getting here and how to stop it. Even if he did have the operation immediately, and was put out of commission for six weeks, he would at least be able to make some decisions during that time, unless his brain was permanently scrambled.

“I was informed that your briefing this morning was a good one.”

“I told them what was coming their way, and what we needed to do to stop it.”

“The President will want nothing less.”

McGarvey looked over at Murphy. “He’s going to get more than that, General, because bin Laden may be going after him specifically. Maybe his family too.”

“The man’s not that crazy,” Murphy said, clearly disturbed.

“We were,” McGarvey said.

“That was different.”

McGarvey held back a sharp reply, the words almost immediately escaping him. The day had gotten dark, and his stomach was turning over. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, a bad feeling under his tongue, and his body suddenly in a cold sweat. He was seeing the dreamy, distant expression on bin Laden’s face in the high mountain cave. The man was ill, and McGarvey could feel the sickness in his own body; the pain, the fear and the frustration that life was even more fragile and fleeting than you ever imagined it was.

“I said, what we did was different,” Murphy repeated, but then he trailed off.

McGarvey was hearing the words through the noise of a waterfall, but for thirty or forty seconds he was unable to respond. He couldn’t even think of what to say, nor could he move. Gradually the noise faded, however, and it seemed as if his thoughts came back into focus by degrees until he could open his eyes and sit up.

They had come to the west gate of the White House and the security people passed them through.

“Are you feeling up to this, Mac?” Murphy asked.

“I’m going to make it short, and then I’m going over to Katy’s house for a stiff drink, some dinner and ten or twelve hours of sleep. I just can’t seem to catch up.”

“I know the feeling,” Murphy said. “And if you want my advice, turn off the phones.”

“I will.”

By the time they pulled up to the west portico, and Murphy’s bodyguard opened the limo door for them, McGarvey had recovered sufficiently to get out of the car and follow the DCI inside. His legs felt like rubber and he was still queasy, but he figured that he would get through this okay.

They were ushered into the Oval Office at three o’clock on the dot. The President was seated at his desk. With him, besides Dennis Berndt, were the Director of the U.S. Secret Service Arthur Ridgeway and the Director of Protective Forces Henry Kolesnik. Kolesnik had been at this morning’s threat assessment briefing. His was the Secret Service division that watched over the President and his family.

“Welcome home, Mr. McGarvey,” President Haynes said, rising and extending his hand.

McGarvey shook hands. “It’s good to be back, Mr. President, but we have a bigger problem now than when we started.”

“Kill bin Laden and our problem is solved,” Berndt said. “Not this time,” McGarvey disagreed. “Why not?”

“Because bin Laden has already left Afghanistan and has gone to ground somewhere. Finding him would take too much time, the bomb is already on its way here.”

“You don’t have any proof of that,” Berndt objected angrily.

“Sit down, Dennis,” the President said, somewhat irritated, and he motioned the others to chairs.

“I’ve already briefed the President and Mr. Berndt on the substance of your briefing this morning,” Kolesnik said. He looked like a linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings, with broad shoulders, a thick neck and a very short haircut. His eyes were penetrating, and seemed to take in everything and everyone in the room all at once. He was not smiling.

“Good, it’ll save us some time,” McGarvey said.

“You’ll get whatever resources you need,” the President assured him. “The military, if you want them. Maybe Dennis is right. If the CIA can find out where bin Laden is hiding we can send the marines in after him. Whatever it takes.”

“The bomb is already on its way here, and he might not even know where it is himself.”

The President looked at McGarvey for a long moment. “I didn’t have much of a choice. As far as we knew you were dead.”

“I understand. But the point is we have a new situation now and we have to deal with it.”

“Well, it certainly would help if we knew the intended target,” Berndt interjected prissily. “Maybe if we kidnapped him we could get some useful information, whether he knows where the thing is or not.”

“We know what he’s going to try to hit,” McGarvey said. “Or at least we’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“What?” the President asked.

“You, Mr. President. And your family.”

“How do you know this?” “You ordered the cruise missiles to his camp and killed his daughter. Now he’s going to try the same thing in retaliation; to kill you and your daughter.”

Berndt started to bluster again, but this time he thought better of it. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the photograph of Deborah Haynes on the desk. She was pretty, with a Siberian cast to her features, but with long, streaming blond hair and innocent eyes. “That’s about what we figured,” Kolesnik said. “But protecting the President and his family will be next to impossible unless they go to a secret location and stay there until we can find and secure the device.”

“It’s something to be considered.”

“No,” the President stated flatly, and before Kolesnik or Ridgeway could object, he went on. “Every President since Kennedy has been faced with the same decision. And they all made the same choice; they stuck it out. If I took your suggestion and headed for the hills there’d be a brand-new cottage industry springing up overnight. If you want a President out of Dodge City, just threaten to kill him and he’ll run. How about congressmen, governors, mayors, hell your next-door neighbors?” The President looked again at his daughter’s picture. “It’s up to us to stop men like bin Laden, and every other lunatic out there who wants to pull us down to their level.” He sat forward. “I made a promise to the American people that if they hired me for this job I would do whatever was necessary to take back the fear, and I’ll be damned if I’ll run.”

“But you can minimize your risks,” Murphy said.

“I appreciate the suggestion, General. But if the device comes in by air and is detonated over the city, say somewhere fairly close to where we’re sitting at this moment, I wouldn’t have much of a chance. Isn’t that correct?”

“If we had five minutes’ warning we could get you and your family downstairs,” Kolesnik countered.

“What about the rest of Washington?” the President asked rhetorically, his voice soft. He shook his head. “This isn’t an assassin’s bullet we’re talking about. Something aimed directly at me alone. We’re talking about an act of terrorism. Something that could kill thousands.”

“That’s right, Mr. President,” Murphy agreed.

“Then it’s up to us to stop them before the bomb gets here.”

“We’ll try. In the meantime you’ll have to curtail your schedule. At least try to make it easier for your people to protect you.”

“No.”

“Goddamnit, Mr. President, we’ll do whatever we can to protect your life, but you’re going to have to help us,” Murphy said sharply. He was the only man in the office who could talk to the President of the United States like that and get away with it.

McGarvey shook his head. “Sorry, General, but the President is right. Cutting back his public appearances won’t make a bit of difference unless he goes all the way and hunkers down in a bomb shelter. It’s up to us to figure out exactly how they mean to hit him and get there first.”

“Is there anyone else in this room who thinks this is crazy except for me?” Berndt asked.

No one answered him.

“The ball is back in your court, McGarvey,” the President said. “What do you suggest?”

“Go on television tonight and tell the country what you’ve told us here.”

“That would get bin Laden’s attention,” Kolesnik said. Obviously he was the only one who understood where McGarvey was coming from.

“It’d be like thumbing our noses at them,” Berndt objected.

“That’s right. It would make bin Laden and his people look like fools. They would have to make the attack, and the sooner the better.”

“You’re looking for them to make a mistake, is that it?” the President asked, “Drive them out into the open, make them take chances that they would not have taken otherwise?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait a minute,” Berndt broke in. “What are you talking about? What chances?”

McGarvey wanted to smack some sense into the silly bastard. Yet Berndt was very good at his job of advising the President on national security concerns. At least he was unless he was backed into a corner and was in danger of being made to look like a fool. Like now. Then he became an impossible ass.

“If they want to change plans in midstream because of what the President has to say on television tonight, they’ll have to communicate with each other,” Kolesnik explained patiently. “Probably by telephone, which the National Security Agency will be looking for.”

“That’s a little thin, isn’t it?”

“It’d be a start, Mr. Berndt.”

“Like poking around in the dark hoping for a lucky break.”

“That’s right. But there’d be a bunch of very good people out there doing the poking around.”

“I’ll go on television at nine o’clock,” the President said.

“I’ll call Tom Roswell with the heads-up,” Murphy promised. Roswell was head of the NSA headquartered at Fort Meade. “We might know something as early as tomorrow.”

“Good,” the President said. “McGarvey, we’ll try to work with you this time instead of against you.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Too little too late? McGarvey wondered. He and Murphy rose and they shook hands with the President. At the door he turned back. “You might want to consider something else, sir. Explain what happened in the cruise missile attack and apologize for killing his daughter. It’ll probably cause a storm of protest, but you would have taken the high ground.”

“That was my plan. I’m truly sorry that it turned out the way it did, and I’ll say so. But it will have nothing to do with taking the high ground, as you put it.”

It was about what McGarvey hoped the President would say. He and Murphy left the Oval Office and headed back to the west portico.

“He’s a good man,” Murphy said. “Maybe we’ll come out of this in one piece after all.” “As long as Berndt stays out of the mix we might just have a chance.”

Murphy shook his head. “Not much chance of that, Mac. The man wants to be President.”

McGarvey got out to his ex-wife’s house a few minutes before seven. He drove himself in his Nissan Pathfinder despite the risk of his vision going haywire. He figured that he could pull off the side of the road if it happened again, but he wanted to be away from the CIA, if only for this one evening. It was something that was becoming more and more important to him.

A gray Chevy van was parked across the street from Katy’s house. As McGarvey turned the corner he phoned the special operations number that rolled directly over to the van. “This is McGarvey, I’m coming up the block.”

“Gotya, sir,” the security officer said.

“Any activity tonight?”

“It’s been real quiet so far, just a little local traffic is all,” the officer said. “Sir, where’s your driver?”

“I gave him the night off,” McGarvey said, pulling into Kathleen’s driveway. “And I’m putting out the Do Not Disturb sign, so the phones will be off. If you come knocking on my door it better be real important.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer said. McGarvey broke the connection, then switched the cell phone off and laid it on the passenger seat.

The day had been warm, and when Kathleen came to the door she was wearing shorts and a tee shirt, nothing on her feet. Her hair was up in a wrap. A momentary flash of irritation crossed her face, changing immediately to one of relief and concern. She never liked being caught unprepared, especially when it came to her appearance.

“Hi, Katy,” he said, coming in. He kissed her on the cheek, closed the door with his foot, and then took her in his arms and held her very close. She was shivering. “I was worried about you,” she whispered urgently.

“I know. But I’m back now.”

“Elizabeth let the cat out of the bag. She told me where you’d gone and what you were trying to do. Then we heard that something had gone wrong with your chip and I didn’t know what to think.” She studied his face. “You look pale, Kirk. Are you in pain?”

“Some bumps and bruises, but no bullet holes this time,” he said. Kathleen looked worn out. “Can I stay the night?” he asked. “No phones. I even switched off my cell phone, and I told the mounty outside to mind his own business.”

Kathleen smiled. “The boss give you the night off?”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said. “Do you have anything in mind? Or do you want to hold off for a little while to figure out if you really want to get back to being a CIA wife?”

She touched his cheek. “I love your face,” she said. “Fact of the matter is that I never stopped being a CIA wife. But this time I’ll try to be a little less demanding.” She was wearing his mother’s ring, the one he’d given her at Jake’s.

“How about if I fix myself a drink while you go up and take a shower?” McGarvey said. “I’ll shower when you’re done. The President’s going to be on TV at nine, and we want to see him.”

“Is he going to talk about bin Laden and the attack on his camp?”

“He’s going to tell everybody that we missed bin Laden and killed his daughter by mistake. The President’s going to apologize for it.”

Kathleen’s hand went to her mouth. “My God. He’s going to come after us now.”

“The President knows the danger to him and his daughter, and they’re not going to take any chances.”

“I meant us,” Kathleen said. “You and Elizabeth.”

“We’ll get to him first,” McGarvey promised her with more assurance than he felt. “We know what’s coming and we know all about his contacts and networks. Our people are on a worldwide alert, and every law enforcement agency in the country has started an all out manhunt.”

“It didn’t help Alien Trumble and his family, and those other people.”

“This time we know that it’s coming, so he can’t take us by surprise again.”

She reached past him and turned both locks on the door, and then activated the alarm system. “Where’s Elizabeth?”

“She’s still at work. She and Otto are running search programs.”

“Does she know what’s coming our way?”

“Yes.”

Kathleen thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll shut off the upstairs phones, and you can catch the ones down here.” She gave him a wistful look, as if she knew that he wasn’t being completely honest with her, yet wanting to believe that he was. “Why don’t you cut up some onions. We’re having stroganoff, so if you want mushrooms, cut those too.” She smiled. “Unless a DDO is above such mundane household chores.”

“As long as you don’t let it out,” McGarvey said. He patted her on the butt, and headed into the kitchen reasonably at peace for the first time in weeks. The mood wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now the problem of bin Laden would hold.

In the quiet darkness of the night McGarvey went downstairs, got a Coke from the refrigerator and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette by the pool. The sprinklers on the golf course were running, and combined with the clean smell of fresh-mown grass, the evening was perfect.

McGarvey was content. He and Kathleen had always been good together in bed, but tonight their lovemaking had been particularly warm, tender and satisfying. Afterward he had held her in his arms and watched her go to sleep.

The sky to the south was aglow with the lights from Washington, but in the opposite direction, over the golf course, the sky was filled with stars. The night sky was something that he’d not paid much attention to until Afghanistan. They were the same stars, yet here the sky was familiar and friendly, while over there the constellations themselves looked foreign, cold, indifferent, dangerous.

He had to wonder how they could possibly understand each other if even the same sky overhead looked different. Talking with bin Laden in his high mountain cave they had spoken English, and although he understood the meaning of the words that the Saudi terrorist was using, he did not understand what they meant to bin Laden. A common language, but without a common understanding.

There wasn’t even a common understanding about their daughters. It was the one point that McGarvey thought he and bin Laden could connect with. But they might as well have been from different planets, the incident with Mohammed and Sarah on the way up proved that. Yet McGarvey was still certain that if the missile attack had never happened he and bin Laden could have come to some sort of an agreement.

He couldn’t help but think about Sarah and Elizabeth, and compare them. They were both naive in their own way; Sarah about life in the West, and Liz about life with a man. They were both filled with energy. They were stubborn, willful, yet they had warm, giving and loving natures. Had the circumstances of their births been reversed, McGarvey had little doubt that both women would have fit well in their reversed roles.

They were daughters of driven men.

The President had said something about bin Laden’s daughter on television tonight, but for the life of him McGarvey couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Something about terrorism.

He laid his cigarette in the ashtray and glanced to the south, but the lights of Washington had been turned off, or at least lowered. He had to squint to make out the end of the pool. He was sick to his stomach, and suddenly extremely dizzy and weak. He managed to hold onto the edge of the patio table and slump down in a chair, his head spinning so fast to the left that he had to look up to the right in order to stop himself from pitching to the patio bricks.

The night was black, and had become silent except for the sound of his own rapidly beating heart in his ears. Something smelled bad, like the open sewer he’d crossed somewhere — he couldn’t remember where, though he knew that he should be able to.

He lowered his head and gripped the edge of the table so hard that the muscles corded in his right forearm. His breathing was shallow, and for a minute or two he wasn’t even aware of where he was.

Gradually, however, the dizziness and nausea began to subside, his mind began to clear, he began to smell the grass and water smells, and see the night sky again. But he was left weak and shaken, his heart still pounding.

“Kirk?” Kathleen called from the patio door.

He turned as she came outside, her body clearly outlined beneath the thin material of her nightgown. “Here,” he said, and she came across to him.

“What’s the matter, darling, can’t sleep?” she asked.

“I was thirsty.”

She sat down beside him and laid her hand on his arm. “I was dreaming about Elizabeth, but I don’t remember what it was about except that I woke up.” She looked at his eyes. “You weren’t there and I got scared all over again.”

McGarvey managed a reassuring smile, though he still wasn’t a hundred percent. “I’m here, Katy.” “Well you sound like you’re half-asleep sitting there,” she said. She took his hand. “Come on back to bed. Nobody’s going to call, and I’ve not set the alarm. In the morning I’m going to make bacon and eggs, grits and my mother’s biscuits and gravy. Damn the cholesterol, full speed ahead.”

McGarvey smiled at her. “I love you, Kathleen.” She returned his smile. “Katy,” she corrected.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nothing new had happened until the President’s speech to the nation last night. Elizabeth McGarvey had not come to her mother yet, and the only reason Bahmad could think of was that there had been a delay in releasing the news of her father’s death. The Taliban were often like that. By 8:00 a.m. the sun was already warm, and sitting on the country club’s veranda drinking a cup of coffee before his tee time, Bahmad idly gazed up the eighteenth fairway in the general direction of Kathleen McGarvey’s house, outwardly in perfect control, but inwardly seething. There could be little doubt that bin Laden had seen the President’s broadcast, nor was there any doubt in Bahmad’s mind how the man was reacting. Bin Laden would be filled with an insane rage. He would be beside himself that the President had not only mentioned Sarah by name, but that the United States had killed her. It would be viewed as an act of massive arrogance on the part of a White House that was completely indifferent to the plight of more than sixty percent of the world’s population who lived in poverty. If, as a nation, you had the money to be an active trading partner, or if you had the oil or other natural resources necessary to feed a voracious economy that placed no restrictions on the conspicuous consumption of its citizens, then you could belong to Washington’s elite club. If not, you were nothing but pond scum; interesting under a microscope, but of no consequence in the real world. Bin Laden would want to strike back and do it now rather than stick with their schedule. If he did something foolish it could jeopardize everything, especially their element of surprise.

It was midafternoon in Khartoum, the heat of the day. In bin Laden’s condition he should be resting now, but Bahmad knew better. Bin Laden would be fuming, pacing back and forth in the compound’s second-floor greeting chamber. He would stop from time to time to stride over to one of the windows, pull back the heavy drapes and look outside, half expecting to see … what? Enemy tanks coming up the street for him? Guided missiles falling out of the sky to kill the rest of his family? The guards who were constantly at his side would be nervously fingering the safety catches on their rifles wondering where the enemy that their leader was so nervous about would be striking from. Would they be strong enough to give their lives for him without hesitation? Enter the gates of Paradise with clean souls?

In another part of the house, bin Laden’s wives, especially Sarah’s mother, would be dealing with their grief in their own way. Bahmad wondered if bin Laden had talked to them, tried to console them, or if he left them on their own? It was one part of bin Laden’s life that he wasn’t sure of. They had seldom talked about family matters except that Sarah had been his pride; his light; in many respects the reason for his existence.

The President’s announcement last night meant nothing. Elizabeth McGarvey would come to her mother’s house in due course, and she would die. Then, in the early fall as planned, Deborah Haynes would die. Bahmad could see every step in perfect detail. It was like a well-crafted machine, a thing of simple beauty. But its delicate mechanisms could be easily fouled with the wrong move now.

The men he’d been talking with when he’d first arrived at the club were out on the first tee and the foursome he’d signed up with hadn’t arrived yet, leaving Bahmad temporarily alone and out of earshot of any of the other members.

He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial button for the number of their relay provider in Rome. After one ring the call was automatically rolled over to a secret number in Khartoum. This was answered after three rings by one of bin Laden’s young assistants.

“Ahlan, wa sahlan.” Hello, he said, somewhat formally, which meant he wasn’t alone.

“This is Bahmad, I wish to speak with Osama.” Bahmad spoke in Egyptian Arabic, the universal tongue.

“Aywa.”

There was a chance that this call was being monitored by the National Security Agency. But Bahmad doubted that even the NSA had the ability to screen every single call made everyday around the entire world. The job would overwhelm even the most powerful computers. U.S. technology was fantastic, but not that good.

“You would not be calling unless there was trouble,” bin Laden said, coming on the line.

“On the contrary, everything goes well. It is trouble that I wish to avoid.” The Arabic sounded formal in Bahmad’s ears after speaking English for several days. “Didst thou see the President’s broadcast last night?”

“Yes.”

Bahmad could hear the strain in bin Laden’s voice. “You can accept the apology and I can withdraw. No harm will have been done.”

“The harm has already been done. Irreparable harm to this family. Dost thou not understand?” Bin Laden switched to a slang Arabic used in a part of northern Afghanistan. “The daughters of the infidels will die like the pigs they are!”

“Then I shall proceed as planned.”

Bin Laden hesitated, and Bahmad could hear his indecision in his silence.

“Thou must accomplish every aspect of the mission.” “I understand,” Bahmad said. “According to the timetable.”

“There can be no mistakes.”

“There will be no mistakes if we act in unison.”

“There is very little time—”

“In Paradise there will be all the time of the universe.”

Again bin Laden hesitated. He had never been a rash man. He thought out his every move, as he was doing now, for which Bahmad was grateful. “Do not disappoint me,” he finally said.

“I will not,” Bahmad replied.

“There will be no changes. The package is on its way. Do you understand?”

“Aywa.” Yes.

“Allah be with you.”

Navy Lieutenant Johanna Ritter, chief of European Surveillance Services, sat at her desk at the head of a row of a dozen computer consoles in a long, narrow, dimly lit room. Along one entire wall a floor-to-ceiling status board showed the major telecommunications hot spots serving Europe; places where telephone, radio and television signals tended to be concentrated. Satellites, telephone exchanges, radio and television network headquarters, cable television hubs. Ninety-five percent of all civilian traffic was funneled through these systems. Though thirty percent of all military traffic was handled by civilian facilities, the other seventy percent was monitored in another section of the NSA.

Lieutenant Ritter’s specific assignment was monitoring European hubs. The main telephone exchange in Rome suddenly lit up in purple on the board, which designated a hit in a special search program that had been designed for them by the CIA’s Otto Rencke.

She brought up the console on her monitor that was intercepting the signal. It was Chief Petty Officer Mark Morgan. “Mark, what’s so interesting in Rome?” “The vorep is chewing on it, Lieutenant, but it sounded like bin Laden to me.” VoReP was the Cray computer Voice Recognition Program.

“Do we have a translation yet?”

“Just a partial, ma’am. But we have an area trace on the originating signal. It looks like it came from right here in the D.C. area. But it was masked, so that’s about the best we can do.”

“I want to hear this myself. I’m on my way.” Ritter unplugged her headset and went back to Morgan’s console. At thirty-two Ritter was the single mother of twin eight-year old girls. She’d joined the navy right out of college, and because she was overweight, and in her own estimation not all that pretty, she had decided to make the navy a career. It was a good choice because she was very intelligent, yet good with detail, and she was very dedicated, in part because she figured she’d never get married and she needed to support her girls and her mother, who was their nanny. The world was tough, but as she imagined her movie star hero Kathy Bates would say: A woman’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

Morgan’s console was the third from the end. He was temporarily offline, his monitor showing the signal and content processing programs at work chewing on it.

“What do we have, Mark?” Ritter plugged her headset in. Morgan looked up and gave her a smile. Although he was eight years younger than her, she thought that he was devastatingly handsome. The problem was he knew it.

“Vorep gives it a ninety-seven percent bin Laden.” Morgan hit the replay button. “What we have so far from the machine translation will come up in the box.”

There was silence at first, then a series of tones as the signal made its way through the telephone exchange in Rome. “Ahlan, wa sahlan,” a young man’s voice came over her headset. “Hello,” the single word came up in the box on the monitor.

Ritter pressed her headset a little tighter, and listened to the rest of the conversation, which lasted just one minute and three seconds. Both men sounded as if they were under extreme stress, she read that part easily.

“Okay, it looks as if we’ve bagged bin Laden, but who is Bahmad? And what happened to the translation program near the end?”

“Vorep has nothing on Bahmad, and it’d be my guess that they switched to a local dialect that we don’t have.” Besides being good looking, Morgan was brilliant. His father was a special agent with the FBI, and with less than six months to go on his enlistment a number of companies were beginning to make him offers. As his release date got closer the NSA would offer him a deal as well. Like a lot of civilians working for the agency, he would be doing the same job only making four or five times as much money as the navy paid him. Ritter was afraid, however, that if she quit the navy hoping for better pay, which she needed, no one would make the offer.

“Replay the second half,” she said.

Morgan ran the last part of the telephone conversation again, and this time Ritter could hear the change in dialects, though the translation program was still running a blank. “Try Russian,” she said.

Morgan switched languages with a couple of keystrokes. This time the computer came up with a number of words; some like water buffalo and barn animals that didn’t seem to make any sense in the context, but others, like daughter, package, enroute and timetable, that did.

“Okay, this looks like what the CIA wanted,” Ritter announced, straightening up. “I’ll take it from here and get it over to Langley. In the meantime I want you to clear your board and stick with the Rome exchange.” She gave him a warm smile. “Good job, Mark, but keep your eyes open, I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Morgan replied. He said it like Ritter had told him something so obvious it was stupid.

Ritter caught the inflection. He was a little shit, and one of these days someone was going to bring him down a notch for his own good. But that didn’t change the fact he was cute.

“Do you think that bin Laden will accept the President’s apology?” Kathleen asked after breakfast.

“He might,” McGarvey said, putting on his jacket. He came over and kissed her on the cheek. “What would you think about getting out of Washington for a while?”

“Would you come with me?” She looked up at him, knowing full well what his answer would be. He shook his head. “Do you think that he’ll send someone to harm Elizabeth because of what we did to his daughter?”

“It’s possible.”

“Fine.” Her old attitude of disgust showed on her face, but then she softened. She was working at it. “In that case she’s right where she belongs, by her father’s side. And me leaving town wouldn’t do a thing to help.”

“It won’t always be like this—”

Kathleen laughed softly. “You’ve said that before. Tell me something new.”

“I love you.”

“That’s better.” She reached up and kissed him. “Maybe we can do something this weekend.”

“Check the movies, see what’s playing,” McGarvey said. He got his car keys and left the house. It was a few minutes after eight and the morning was warm and muggy, it was going to be a hot day. He waved at the security officer in the van across the street and was about to get into his car when Elizabeth pulled up in her bright yellow VW, a big smile on her round, pretty face.

She jumped out of her car, came over and gave her father a kiss. “Morning, daddy. How’s Mother?”

“Fine. Are you just getting off work?”

She nodded. “But I got Otto to promise to get a couple of hours of rest, and I came over to pick up a few of my things.”

“Anything new?”

Her face darkened. “Nothing yet, but Otto won’t give up. I think he’d work himself to death if somebody wasn’t there to watch out for him.”

“I’ll make sure he gets some sleep this morning. Why don’t you go home and do the same yourself, you look as though you could use it. If something comes up I’ll give you a call.”

She suddenly looked embarrassed. “I won’t be there,” she said.

“Are you staying here?”

“I’ve moved in with Todd.” She girded herself for a storm, but McGarvey just gave his daughter a smile.

“He’s a good man. Don’t give him a hard time, he doesn’t deserve it.”

Elizabeth’s jaw dropped open. “Dad?”

McGarvey laughed. “Good luck breaking the news to your mother though.”

Rencke was lying on top of his conference table, which was strewn with notes, computer printouts, files and photographs. He’d managed to catch only a half-hour of rest when the call to his office number rolled over to the cell phone in his pocket. He had his computer tied to his phone as well. If one of his search engines came up with something it would automatically notify him. But this was a human call, the ring was different.

He answered it without sitting up or opening his eyes. “Yes?” He hadn’t slept in four days, and he felt gritty.

“Otto, this is Johanna at Fort Meade. I have something for you. A call from a man named Bahmad to Osama bin Laden through what looks like a relay service provider in Rome.”

Rencke sat straight up as if his tailbone had been plugged into a light socket. “When?” “Just a few minutes ago. We don’t know where bin Laden is located, but the originating call came from somewhere in the D.C. area.”

Rencke held the phone in the crook of his neck, pulled his laptop over and brought up the NSA’s mainframe. “What were they speaking, Johanna? Arabic, English, Russian? What?”

“Egyptian Arabic at first, but then they switched to another dialect, probably northern Afghani. The Russian translator program picked out a few words. But when I tried using a blend — Russian and Arabic — the program just locked up.”

“I’ve got your console, do you have a password?”

“Just a sec, I’ll download the file.”

The screen split in three. On the left the Arabic text came up. In the middle the same text came up in the Western alphabet. And on the right the incomplete translation came up.

Rencke was having trouble focusing, having a hard time accepting what he was seeing on the screen. Almost never did the thing they were looking for drop out of the sky into their laps. Most of the time it was a guessing game. But not this time. Daughter, enroute, package, timetable. The message could not have been plainer.

“What’s vorep’s confidence on bin Laden’s voice?”

“Ninety-seven percent and change.”

“Anything on the other man?”

“He’s not in our files, but he sounded a lot calmer to me than bin Laden.”

Another fact dropped into place for Rencke. He was Trumble’s quiet man in the corner; bin Laden’s chief of staff, Ali Bahmad, the one who had discovered McGarvey’s GPS chip. Now they had a complete name and a voice, they would be able to find something in the CIA’s files somewhere, he was sure of it. He blinked. “Wait,” he said. “Bahmad is here, in Washington? Did you say that?”

“Somewhere in the area. We can’t be any more precise than that.”

Rencke broke the connection and started to call McGarvey but then he shook his head and called Johanna Ritter back. “Sorry about that,” he told her when she came on.

“No problem,” she said.

“Anyway, thanks.” Rencke broke the connection again and hit the speed dial for McGarvey’s locator number. After several seconds a warbling tone indicated that he was offline. Next he tried Kathleen’s house, but evidently the phones had been switched off there too, he called the security officer in the van in front of her house.

“Yes.”

“This is Rencke in the DO. The phones are off in the house. Is Mr. McGarvey there?”

“He just left. Problem?”

“Could be. Keep your head up.”

“Yes, sir. But his daughter just got here. Do you want me to talk to her?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Rencke said. “Keep your eyes open.”

Rencke’s nerves were jumping all over the place. He didn’t want to alarm Mrs. M.” but the bomb was enroute as they figured it was, and Bahmad was already here. What was their timetable?

He tried McGarvey’s locator number again with the same result as before. He jumped off the table and started pacing and snapping his fingers. Bahmad was here. The bomb was enroute So what was going to happen in the meantime? What could happen in the meantime? Why was bin Laden’s right hand man here himself? Rencke dialed MHP, and the number was answered on the first ring.

“Maryland Highway Patrol, what is your emergency please?”

“My name is Otto Rencke. I’m calling from the Central Intelligence Agency and we need your help right now to get a message to one of our people.”

“Sir, it is a criminal act to knowingly falsify an emergency-“

“He is enroute here from an address on Laurel Parkway in Chevy Chase. He’s driving a gray, Nissan Pathfinder, D.C. tags, baker-david-mike-five-six-eight. He needs to contact his office immediately. I’ll alert our security service as well as D.C. Metro, but time is of the essence.” Rencke kept his voice calm and deliberate even though he wanted to shout. The man was just doing his job the best way he knew how. “Like I said—” “Your caller ID is coming up blank,” Rencke said patiently. “I’ll release my phone and you can verify the number I’m calling from.” He entered a four-digit code. Five seconds later the 911 dispatcher was back.

“Sorry about that, sir. I have a unit rolling. What’s his name?”

“Kirk McGarvey,” Rencke said. “And tell your people to step on it, would ya?”

The country club was starting to fill up with the morning weekday crowd. Bahmad thought of all the contingencies he had considered in his plan to kill the two women. The capture of bin Laden, the defection of one or more of the men who were carrying the bomb or who knew about it, or who were working on any of a dozen other vital elements of the mission. But he had not considered the possibility that McGarvey was alive.

He was scarcely able to believe what the fools watching Kathleen McGarvey’s house were telling him. McGarvey had been there all night, and they had not called. Their job was to wait for his daughter to show up, so that’s exactly what they had done.

They had not used their heads. They had no real idea what they were doing. They were ignorant, uneducated simpletons. Worse than that, they were stupid.

“Do you want us to make the hit now?” Aggad asked eagerly.

“Is the CIA van still parked in front of the house?”

“Yes, it’s been there all night”

McGarvey was alive and had come to his wife’s side and yet the CIA still watched her. Bahmad wondered what that could mean. Obviously they thought that his wife was still in danger. From whom?

“Was the daughter alone, or did someone come with her?”

“She was alone. What do you want us to do?”

Bob Button, one of Bahmad’s foursome came out to the patio from inside the club, spotted him and started over. With McGarvey back it changed everything. Or did it, he asked himself. Rightfully the decision to continue should be Osama’s. But making the one overseas call had been dangerous enough, making a second would be pushing the envelope.

There was no time. McGarvey could return at any moment, or the daughter could leave. Bahmad looked up as if he had just spotted Button, waved and then shook his head in disgust.

“Do nothing, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Ready your weapons. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Bahmad broke the connection, pocketed the phone and got to his feet as Button reached him. “Bad news from one of my business associates,” Bahmad apologized. “I have to make a meeting, so you’ll have to start without me.”

Button glanced uncertainly at the jam up at the starter’s hut. “I don’t think that we can get a delay.”

“I’ll only be a half-hour. I shouldn’t miss more than one or two holes, the way you gentlemen play.”

Button laughed. “Low blow. You’ll have to take a penalty.”

“A stroke a hole, and I’ll still spot you five.”

“Loaded for bear this morning, are we?”

Bahmad clapped him on the shoulder, though he wanted to rip the bastard’s heart out, and smiled. “I’ll meet you out on the course. Take my clubs with you, would you please?”

The solid night’s sleep, only interrupted once, had done him some good, McGarvey had to admit. But seeing Elizabeth this morning all bright and happy, her entire future ahead of her, made him think about Sarah bin Laden, her life cut short before it had even begun, and it made him a little morose. Traffic on I-495 heading south toward the river was heavy as usual at this time of the morning and it would get even worse once he reached the GW Parkway to Langley.

It was the United States government going to work, and that’s what got him about bin Laden. The man had taught his daughter that the United States was evil. That they were all a bunch of monsters bent on destroying the world. They were murderers, rapists, despoilers of the earth. They were out to defile Dar-Islam, the only true religion. Except that the “they” were out here on the Washington ring road with McGarvey this morning; some of them drinking coffee from McDonald’s Styrofoam cups, most of them still half asleep, a lot of them thinking about their own children, their mortgages, the upcoming weekend — soccer, swimming, Little League. Monsters, every one of them.

McGarvey picked his cell phone off the passenger seat, switched it on and pocketed it.

Now that the President had gone public with the accidental killing of Sarah bin Laden there would be an almost intolerable pressure on bin Laden not only by Iran, Iraq and the Sudan, but by himself to do something right now. The State Department had issued warnings to all embassies, especially in Islamic countries. Every CIA base, station and special interest section had been alerted to what was probably coming their way. Later today the State Department would also make an announcement to the media warning the American traveling public, and especially those Americans living and working overseas, to take special precautions.

The U.S. had been blindsided at the Khobar Barracks in Saudi Arabia, at the Trade Towers in New York City, and by the tribal problems in Somalia, but this time everyone was about as ready as could be. Every law enforcement organization and intelligence agency in the country was on full alert.

McGarvey’s cell phone chirped. He got it on the second ring. “This is McGarvey.”

“Oh, wow, Mac, where are you?” Rencke said in a rush. “On 495 outside Cabin John coming up on the river. Has there been a response already?”

“It looks like it. This morning, about forty minutes ago, NSA picked up a telephone conversation between bin Laden and Ali Bahmad. He’s the guy from bin Laden’s cave who knew about your GPS chip, and the same one Trumble said sat in a corner without saying a word during the meeting in Khartoum.” Rencke was all out of breath, even more so than he usually was when he was excited and had the bit in his teeth. “We couldn’t get a fix on bin Laden, the call went through a service provider in Rome, but Bahmad is here in the area somewhere. We didn’t get a fix, but he’s here.”

“Who initiated the call?”

“Bahmad.”

“Do we have a translation?”

“Just a partial. They were probably using a northern Afghani dialect, and we’re trying to find someone to help out, but we got enough to know that you were right all along. The bomb is already on its way here.”

“Did they say where or how?”

“If they did, we haven’t gotten to that part yet. But NSA’s translator program got another word out of it. Daughter.”

McGarvey’s stomach did a flop. He checked the rearview mirror, then shot over to the far left lane and jammed on his brakes. He eased onto the grassy median, the Pathfinder’s rear end fishtailing in the grass and soft ground.

“Hold on a second, Otto, I’m turning around,” he shouted. He dropped the cell phone in his lap, and stomped on the gas as he careened across the broad median, judged the oncoming traffic and bumped up onto the interstate heading back to Chevy Chase.

“We know why Bahmad is here, you were right about that too,” Rencke was saying when McGarvey picked up the phone. “I shot this over to the Secret Service so they know what might be coming their way, but I can’t get ahold of Mrs. M. or Liz. The phones at the house are shut off and Liz turned off her cell phone just like you did.”

“I’m on my way back there now. Who’s pulling surveillance duty this morning?”

“Mike Larsen. I’ve already given him the heads-up.”

“Tell him that I’m on my way, and if Liz tries to leave, keep her there. Call Dick Yemm and tell him what’s happening. And then have the Chevy Chase cops head over there.”

“I’ve already done that. And I called the Maryland Highway Patrol to be on the lookout for you, and to give you the message to call here.”

A highway patrol cruiser suddenly swerved off the opposite side of the interstate and shot across the median, its lights flashing.

“They found me,” McGarvey said. “Call them now, tell them that I got the message, give them Katy’s address and tell them to go straight out there. I’ll try to keep up.”

“Standby,” Rencke said.

McGarvey was doing one hundred miles per hour, trying to be careful not to cause an accident, but his nerves were jumping all over the place, and he was afraid that his vision would go haywire at any moment. He wanted to fly. He kept seeing bin Laden’s face when they were talking about their daughters. By his own words no one was an innocent, and he would want revenge now.

Rencke came back. “They’re getting word to every unit in the vicinity, but the daughter that bin Laden talked about was probably the President’s.”

“I think you’re right, but I’m not going to take the chance.”

“Oh, shit, I didn’t mean it that way, you gotta believe me. I’m doing everything I can to protect Liz.”

“Take it easy, Otto, I know that you’re doing your best. Call State and the Bureau right away and give them whatever you can dig up on Bahmad. I think that he’s bin Laden’s chief of staff.”

“He is, and not only that — he worked for British Intelligence about eight years ago. And he even came over here on a six-month study exchange program.” The voice suddenly clicked into place for McGarvey. He’d been back to headquarters for a couple of weeks about that time. “Christ, I think I met him once, just for a minute. Where’d you get this information?”

“Out of our own records. He was in the system all the time.”

“How about deep background, or anything else that might be useful?”

“It’s in archives. I have a runner on the way down there now to dig up what she can for us.”

The highway patrol cruiser, its lights still flashing, pulled up beside McGarvey, and the officer motioned that he was going on ahead. The Crown Victoria was a lot faster than the Nissan and it pulled away.

“As soon as you come up with something, anything at all, Otto, get it to me,” McGarvey instructed.

“If he makes another telephone call through Rome we’ll nail the bastard, guaranteed.”

Chevy Chase Bahmad drove his Mercedes directly to a parking ramp off Connecticut Avenue where he switched with the Capital City Cleaning van. He put on a pair of white coveralls over his golfing clothes, buttoning the top button. As he pulled out of the ramp and headed back to Laurel Parkway he took out his Glock 17, switched the safety off and laid it on the seat beside him.

He took care to keep a couple of miles over the speed limit to minimize attention. Traffic was heavy streaming into the city, but light in the opposite direction. When he rounded the corner onto Laurel Parkway he called the house.

“Are you ready?” he asked, when Aggad answered.

“We’re in the garage now.”

“Is the girl still there?”

“Her car is still in the driveway,” Aggad said.

Bahmad turned left toward the end of the cul-de-sac and he saw the yellow VW in Kathleen McGarvey’s driveway, the same dark blue van as before parked across the street. “Keep out of sight now, I’m going to open the garage door.”

“Okay.”

Bahmad put the phone down, hit the garage door opener then stopped across from the driveway and backed up to the garage, keeping an eye peeled for anyone getting out of the blue van. He pulled halfway into the garage, then climbed into the back and opened the rear door.

“You took your time,” Aggad grumbled. He and Ibrahim were wearing white coveralls too. They quickly loaded their weapons into the back of the van and climbed in.

“Did you leave anything behind?” Bahmad demanded.

“Nothing,” Aggad replied sullenly. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Fingerprints?”

“I said nothing.”

“Very well,” Bahmad shrugged. He climbed back into the driver’s seat as they shut the rear door, and headed down the driveway, pressing the garage door opener switch.

He rolled down his window, then picked up his pistol as he pulled up beside the CIA surveillance van. A young man inside leaned over the back of the passenger seat and then powered down the window.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Bahmad smiled, raised his pistol and fired one shot at point blank range into the man’s forehead, shoving him backward, then pulled across the street into Kathleen McGarvey’s driveway.

“Stay with the van,” he told Ibrahim. “If anyone shows up, kill them.”

Elizabeth came racing down the stairs. She’d been in the front bedroom packing her things and had happened to look out the window when Mike Larsen went down. For a split instant she was frozen, unable to believe what she was witnessing. But then her training and instincts kicked in, she dropped the overnight bag and headed out.

Her mother was just coming from the back with some socks and underwear. “These were in the dryer—”

Elizabeth waved her back, and crossed the stair hall to the door. She turned the lock and deadbolt and checked out the side window as two armed men climbed out of a van and started up the driveway.

“What is it?” Kathleen asked calmly.

“Trouble,” Elizabeth said, cursing herself for leaving her pistol and cell phone with her purse in the car.

Kathleen dropped the laundry. “Is there time to go upstairs to get my phone?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll go out the back door and across the golf course. If we can reach the clubhouse we should be safe.”

She turned on her heel and went back into the kitchen, Elizabeth right behind her as the doorbell rang.

Bahmad looked through the tall narrow window beside the front door in time to see Elizabeth disappear down a corridor to the back of the house.

He stepped back and shot the lock out of the door. It would not open. It took him a second to realize that there was a second lock, which took three shots to destroy before he could get inside.

He rolled left, keeping his pistol up. Elizabeth McGarvey was a trained CIA agent, and she was probably armed. It would be stupid of him to get shot to death now by a girl.

Aggad slipped into the hallway and rolled right, keeping his AK-47 high on his shoulder, just like the American marines were taught to do with their M-16s. Bin Laden’s soldiers were selected not necessarily because of their intelligence, but because they were professionals. Aggad was acting like one now. Not like a hothead, Bahmad thought gratefully.

They leapfrogged down the corridor, and through the kitchen into the enclosed patio room that looked out onto the pool and across the golf course.

Elizabeth McGarvey and her mother were running as fast as they could go up the fifteenth fairway toward the clubhouse: A foursome on the green was so intent on their game that they hadn’t noticed them yet.

“We’ll never catch them on foot,” Aggad observed.

Bahmad calculated the distances, but he knew that Aggad was correct. The realistic thing for them now was to get the hell out of here, ditch the van and get back to the boat. Survive to strike another day. It had been one of the techniques that had allowed him, and in fact the entire Islamic movement, to survive this long: Hit and run. Swift like the wind, and just as invisible. A method, he’d told bin Laden, that had been used by the American revolutionaries to kick the British out of the Colonies.

But not this time.

“What do you want to do, man?” Aggad demanded.

“They’re heading to the clubhouse. We’ll take the van. I know a short cut.”

Bahmad raced back through the house, and pulled up short in the driveway for just an instant. In the not-so-far distance he could hear a police siren, and then perhaps others farther away. Many others.

Run away to fight another day, the thought crossed his mind. But he shook it off because he knew exactly what he was doing. He could see the entire operation unfolding as he wanted it to, despite the unforseen variations this morning. He had never failed before. He wasn’t going to fail this time.

Elizabeth wished she had her gun. She could hear sirens in the distance, but she knew that it wouldn’t take long for whoever it was after them to figure out where they’d gone and come after them. One of them in the driveway had been carrying an AK-47. A one-wood out of someone’s golf bag was going to be no defense. She thought about heading directly into the woods across the fifteenth and sixteenth fairways where they could hide while her mother caught her breath. But her mother seemed to be having no trouble keeping up. It was her tennis playing, Elizabeth supposed. And she thought that her mother was right; if they could reach the club there would be people and they might be safe. At least long enough for the cops to catch up with them.

Maryland Highway Patrol Trooper Tom Leitner was a good quarter-mile ahead of McGarvey as he turned onto Laurel Parkway. His siren was going and traffic had parted for him, but this street was deserted except for a light-colored commercial van coming toward him.

“All units, all units in the vicinity of fifteen Laurel Park way, Chevy Chase, shots have been reported,” the dispatcher said over the radio.

Leitner grabbed the microphone. “Bethesda, unit 27, I’m there now. But there’s no activity. What do you have?”

“Unit 27, Bethesda, neighbors reported several shots fired at the front of the house. Two men, possibly Caucasian, both slightly built, driving a white Capital City Cleaning van, tag number unknown, possibly involved. Use extreme caution.”

Leitner passed the van and his gut tightened. It was the van. He jammed on his brakes and did a U-turn, his tires smoking as he spun around. The van suddenly accelerated, swerved off the road and careened across the lawn between two houses. He knew what the driver was trying to do, and he followed the van.

“Bethesda, unit 27, I’m in pursuit of the white van, D.C. tag number tango-niner-seven-eight-eight. He’s heading north off Laurel Parkway onto the golf course. Officer requests immediate assistance.” He shot out between the two houses, raced through an opening in the trees at the back and spotted the white van heading directly up the broad, undulating fairway, golfers scattering in every direction.

McGarvey’s phone chirped as he rounded the corner onto Laurel Parkway from Connecticut Avenue in time to see the highway patrol cruiser take off between the houses.

“They’re heading across the golf course,” Rencke said breathlessly.

“Who is?” McGarvey shouted.

“Mrs. M. and Liz. The neighbors saw them. There’s a white van after them, two men. The highway patrol is right behind them.”

“I’m right there,” McGarvey said. He hauled the Nissan over the curb and raced between the houses. “There’s a lot of trees and thick brush on the course, a million places for them to hide. I want you to get some helicopters in the air.”

“MHP is already on it.”

McGarvey tossed the phone aside. Everything that could be done was being done. But it was his wife and daughter out there running for their lives. He shot out through a gap in the trees and found himself on the fifteenth fairway. The van had almost reached the woods near the women’s tee about two hundred yards away, and the Maryland Highway Patrol cruiser was closing with it fast.

Katy and Liz would be trying to make it to the clubhouse where there would be people this morning, and possibly safety. It was the only logical choice for them. He could see that the driver of the van had figured out the same thing and was heading directly toward the first fairway. But he was making a mistake. The way he was going led to a small cart path bridge over a creek that the van could not cross. They would have to double back and cross the seventeenth fairway before they could head to the clubhouse. He would be able to cut them off by heading directly across the fifteenth and sixteenth fairways right now.

A long streak of flame shot out from the side door of the van, and a second later the police car exploded in a ball of flame, its roof flying fifty feet into the sky.

Elizabeth emerged from the line of trees separating the fifteenth and sixteenth fairways, her mother right behind her, when there was an explosion behind them. RPG or LAWs rocket, something came to her from her training. She turned as a fireball rose into the pale blue sky.

“My God,” Kathleen said.

“That wasn’t meant for us,” Elizabeth told her mother. “Maybe the bastards had an accident.” They ran for the broad, sloping green. About seventy-five yards ahead the fairway narrowed to a cart path that crossed a small wooden bridge over a narrow creek. On the other side they could angle over to the seventeenth fairway, which folded back on the eighteenth and first, and directly to the clubhouse. Once they crossed the creek they would be home free because she didn’t think that the van could make it across on the bridge.

She didn’t like running away though. If she had her gun she could send her mother on ahead, and wait here to ambush them. They were screwing with the McGarveys now. Of course if her father and Todd were also here nothing would get past them. At the moment, however, running was their only option.

They were nearly at the bridge when the van crashed out of the woods, skidded sideways out of control, almost tipping over on the fairway, then straightened out and headed directly toward them.

Elizabeth could see that there was no time now to make the bridge. Their only hope was the creek itself, whose banks were five feet high. If they could make it that far they might be able to reach the safety of the woods on the opposite side of the fairway.

“Mother, the creek,” she shouted.

“Right behind you, dear,” Kathleen said.

Bahmad saw what they were trying to do, and he knew with satisfaction that they would not make it that far by the time he ran them down. A super calmness came over him. He could see everything that had to be done, and the order in which it had to be accomplished. Once the daughter and her mother were taken care of, he would drive the van to a service road on the far side of the eighteenth fairway. Aggad and Ibrahim would take it back to their rendezvous point and he would meet them tonight when he would kill them. There would be no loose ends.

A gray SUV of some kind burst out of the woods on his right, and headed directly toward them. Bahmad could do nothing except swerve to the left, directly across the fairway and into the dense trees and underbrush.

It was McGarvey. He got just a brief glimpse, but it was enough to recognize the man behind the wheel, and suddenly Bahmad wasn’t so sure about anything. The tide might have turned. Now it was he who was running for his life.

McGarvey saw Katy and Liz off to his right by the edge of the creek. He had only an instant to see that they were okay, and no time to be relieved, before he had to turn his attention back to the van. He was right on top of it. As it plunged into the woods he crashed into its rear left quarter, sending it skidding out of control to the right through some thick underbrush, finally slamming to a halt against a large tree.

He hauled the Nissan left, as he jammed on the brakes sliding to a halt finally twenty yards behind the van. He whipped off his seat belt and pulled out his pistol. But there was something wrong with his fingers, he couldn’t quite seem to switch the safety catch lever to the off position.

A man climbed out of the van, and although the day had somehow gotten very dark, McGarvey could see that he was raising what looked like a LAWs rocket tube to his shoulder.

It was hard to keep on track, hard to think straight. It was all he could do to relate what the man beside the van was trying to accomplish with the simple concept of danger.

McGarvey fumbled with the door latch, his fingers like sausages at the end of his impossibly long arm. When the door swung open suddenly, he half-slipped, half-fell out of the Nissan, banging his head on the door frame as he went down.

He was on all fours, the world spinning around him, but he still had his pistol. He had to get away. He didn’t know why, just that he had to get away from here right now! He started to crawl on all fours directly away from the Nissan and into some deeper underbrush.

The day lit up with a tremendous flash and bang, followed by a searing hot blast of wind that picked McGarvey up and sent him crashing into the brush.

There were shots, he could understand that, but his world was reduced to a series of brightly colored lights and images from a kaleidoscope, sliding and moving all over the place.

“Daddy!

Someone was holding him up, brushing dirt and debris from his face. He thought it was Elizabeth, but then Kathleen was there too, holding him in her arms, her eyes wide and frightened.

He heard shooting, and he understood that Liz had picked up his gun, but it didn’t matter so much this time because he was with Katy. He managed to smile up at her, before he slipped away into a dark, swirling haze.

Bahmad walked into the clubhouse, went directly to the bar and ordered a Bombay martini, up, very dry and very cold. Most of the other members were out by the first tee trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. Explosions, gunfire, sirens; it sounded as if someone was making a movie.

“What’s happening out there, sir?” the bartender asked as he fixed the drink.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Bahmad said. His nerves were jumping all over the place, but by dint of an iron will he gave the appearance of bored indifference. “I was late for my tee time, I was supposed to catch up with my foursome on the second hole, and now this.” He shook his head. “But then we’re too close to D.C.” what can you expect?”

His martini came, full to the rim, and even though he was boiling over with an almost out-of-control blinding anger, he lifted his glass, took a delicate sip and replaced the glass on the bar napkin without spilling a drop.

The first phase of the operation, attempting for absolutely no valid reason to assassinate McGarvey’s daughter, was bin Laden’s idea. Because of unforseen circumstances and because the Taliban had provided him with misinformation about McGarvey, the mission had failed. Bahmad considered himself lucky to have been able to shed his coveralls and simply walk away in the confusion, just another man dressed for golf out on the course. Aggad and Ibrahim shot dead by the young woman.

The second phase of the operation, however, was his and his alone. He would not fail. He smiled, the first glimmers of contentment and anticipation for a project coming to him.

“Is the drink to your liking, Mr. Guthrie?” the barman asked.

Yes, indeed,” Bahmad replied. “It couldn’t be better.”