Joshuas Hammer

CHAPTER THIRTY

Two canvas-covered tracks with Iranian Army markings pulled up in front of the compound just off the Sharia al-Barlaman a few blocks from the People’s Palace. The back flaps were pushed aside and two dozen armed soldiers emerged.

Lieutenant Ahmed Ghavam jumped out of the front of the lead truck and began issuing orders. This was going to be done with dignity. Papa bin Laden was a friend of the state. A friend of all Islam, and neither his name nor his person would be besmirched.

When the troops were properly lined up at the front gate, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up across the street. A huge man, with tremendous mustaches and a thick beard got out of the car and shambled across the street. He had a smile on his broad face that looked as if it had been chiseled into place.

“He’s not here,” the huge man said amiably. He wore civilian clothes that looked very comfortable, but three sizes too large even for his impressive bulk. He was Captain Bakat Zamir, chief of Khartoum Regional Operations for the ISI, the powerful Pakistani Interservice Intelligence Agency.

Like Iran, Pakistan was a friend of bin Laden’s. But the way the international climate was shaping up these days it was wise to at least pay lip service to the Great Satan in Washington, D.C.” when it suited. This time bin Laden had gone too far. Even Dr. al-Turabi had tried to warn him, as had others in the National Islamic Front. But he was a headstrong man on a fat wa His own daughter had been killed by the infidels’ rockets. Who could blame a father for striking back?

“I suspected as much,” Lieutenant Ghavam said. “But I have my orders.”

“They are sensible orders.”

A CNN television van came around the corner at the end of the block. Both men had been expecting its arrival.

“Do you have any idea where he went?” Lieutenant Ghavam asked.

“Switzerland, perhaps. It’s a matter of his health, I believe.” The Pakistani intelligence officer shrugged. “But who knows? If he lives he will certainly strike again.”

“If he dies?”

“No one in the West will ever know for sure. Insha’Allah.”

Lieutenant Ghavam nodded. “Yes. Insha “Allah.”

It was night. McGarvey stood at the window of his fifth floor room morosely waiting for the dawn as he stared at the sodium vapor lights in the parking lot, his hands in the pockets of his hospital robe. He was being discharged tomorrow, his bullet wounds mended, the last bleeder in his head fixed and his life back to normal. For the time being no one was gunning for him and his family.

But the job wasn’t over.

He turned and glanced at Kathleen curled up asleep in the easy chair next to the bed. She’d had the hardest time of all, waiting at home for the telephone call that her husband or her daughter or both of them were dead, all the while knowing that somebody could be coming after her again too.

He wanted a cigarette. But it had been nearly a week since he’d been pulled off the pilot boat and hospitalized without a smoke, and he had survived so far. Maybe it was time to give it up, if for no other reason than to get Kathleen to quit. But he felt like hell mentally and physically right now. Just maybe he needed a crutch after all, because nothing was going to be the same.

He turned back to the window and focused on his own reflection in the glass. There was only a small bandage on the side of his head, but he looked haggard. For the first time in his life he felt old. It was stupid, Kathleen would tell him. He was barely fifty and in this day and age that was definitely not old. But his career with the CIA, especially the last five or six years of it, had been tough on the body. He had the scars to prove it.

Elizabeth and Todd had come up last night to announce that they were getting married and’ that she was three months pregnant. Kathleen was over the moon, but the news had the opposite effect on McGarvey. He was being terribly selfish, but he didn’t know if he could handle the responsibility of another life in his life. Part of his reaction was the painkillers he was on and everything he’d gone through over the past couple of months, but he’d seen the hurt in his daughter’s eyes when she realized that he wasn’t happy. He was going to have to make it up to her, though it seemed to him right now that he’d been making up things to the people he loved for most of his life.

A street cop had once given him the only explanation that seemed to make any sense of his sometimes perverse moods. Cops see bad guys every day so that when they’re off duty it’s nearly impossible to see people as good. Everybody is a suspect. It can get so bad that you even begin to wonder about your own family. Selfish or not he had trouble seeing how adding another new life into the world could do anything except complicate things.

Otto had shown up with Louise Horn from the NRO, whom he introduced as a friend. They were going to find an apartment together to sorta share expenses. The way she had kept looking at him though made it clear that they would be sharing more than just the rent and utilities. Again McGarvey should have been happy for his friend. Kathleen was. She’d given them hugs. But what was the value of another relationship between two people in a world that seemed bent on its own destruction? Intellectually he knew that there was something terribly wrong with his way of thinking, but he couldn’t shake it. Otto hadn’t noticed, but Louise had and she’d given him a “screw you anyway” look that spoke volumes about how she really felt about her man.

The President and First Lady had come up yesterday too. The President had been in for his annual physical so it had been fairly easy for him to see McGarvey without alerting the media or creating a security problem. McGarvey was a dangerous man to be around. And when a President met in private with the CIA’s deputy director of Operations it meant something big was up.

The half-marathon had been stopped because a gasoline tanker anchored in the holding basin posed a hazard. It had nothing to do with a terrorist threat, and thank goodness only a few of the runners had suffered anything other than some skinned knees and twisted ankles. “I’m not going to give the bastard, wherever he’s hiding now, the satisfaction of knowing how close he came,” the President told McGarvey in private.

“Or the other thing,” McGarvey said.

The President’s lips compressed. His was a good face; honest, straightforward, without guilt. “That came as a nasty surprise.”

“One that won’t go away.”

“No.”

“I want Dennis Berndt kept out of the loop this time.”

The President flinched. “You can’t think that he had anything to do with this,” “No, I don’t. But I want the need-to-know list kept to an absolute minimum. At least for now.”

“Okay,” the President agreed. At the door he turned back. “I can think of a lot easier jobs.”

McGarvey smiled. “Me too, Mr. President.”

“A penny for your thoughts,” Kathleen said behind him.

He didn’t turn. “I was thinking about Liz and the baby. I was a real shit to her.”

“Yes, you were. But she doesn’t think that you love her any less.”

“I don’t.”

“She desperately wants to make you proud of her,” Kathleen said. “I think she’d even throw Todd out a window if that’s what you wanted.”

“I want her to be happy—”

“Then tell her that, my darling. And tell Otto and Louise. They’re a part of this family now too.”

He heard her get up and come across the room. She put her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder.

“Like it or not your family is back in your life and it’s growing. Not only that, there isn’t a thing you can do about it. Too bad for you that we all love you.”

McGarvey finally turned around and took her in his arms and held her close. He was battered, but he wasn’t old, and even having a grandchild would not change that. He hoped in a way it would be a girl so that he would not only have Katy and Liz, but he’d have a miniature version of them running around too.

It was good about Otto and Louise because he had spent way too much time worrying about his friend’s well being. Let someone else take over that duty.

And they had beat bin Laden. This time.

For the rest, he had work to do figuring out what had happened to the Russian bomb from Tajikistan, and how the bomb he’d disarmed aboard the pilot boat had gotten there. The legend on the matte black aluminum tag attached to the bomb’s outer panel had been perfectly legible, even with his failing eyesight.