Retribution

TWENTY-SEVEN

Pam Schlueter’s Alitalia flight from Rome landed at Tehran’s IKA — Imam Khomeini International Airport — at four thirty in the afternoon local and she was among the first out of the first-class exit, thoroughly discouraged and angry, mostly with herself.

She carried only one overnight bag, which passed through customs as did her Danish passport in the name of Inga Paulson without bother. Fifteen minutes after landing she was waiting with a few others at the taxi queue, though she’d half expected Naisir to pick her up or at least send someone.

He hadn’t sounded happy when she’d telephoned him with the news, but he agreed that it would be best if they met.

“I’m coming to Islamabad,” she told him.

“That would not be a very good idea. The situation here is becoming unstable. Your presence would not help.”

“Unstable?”

“There are some in the government who believe that it might have been a mistake hiring you. There’ve been some back-burner feelers from Washington about certain recent events.”

“I’d imagined there would be,” Pam told him. “It’s why we need to talk face-to-face. No bullshit now, because the mission has changed.”

“Perhaps the mission has become untenable for the time being.”

“It’s worse than that.”

“Come to Tehran, if you must. I have friends there. Book a room at the Esteghlal Hotel.”

“Tomorrow,” Pam had told him. “Under the name Inga Paulson, Danish passport.”

“We’ll have an early dinner, and you can leave first thing in the morning. Come alone.”

“You too.”

“And, Ms. Schlueter, I’ll want the truth about everything.”

“So will I, Major.”

The hotel was located in the northern section of the city, facing the foothills of the Alborz Mountains, which formed a natural barrier between the capital and the Caspian Sea. She wore a head covering to hide her short-cropped graying hair, but unlike in some Muslim countries she did not have to cover her face.

She paid the indifferent cabbie well, and inside at the desk she paid for her suite with an Amex platinum card, which she loved doing. Most of her life, including when she was married, she’d lived on a budget. Especially in Germany, in the first few years of her organization, she lived frugally. Now that she finally had serious money, she was enjoying herself. And she meant to continue to do so.

She refused the services of a bellman and went up to her suite on her own. The sitting room on the tenth floor looked out over the hills, which were dotted with the homes of the more affluent Tehranians, all of them sporting more than one satellite dish, not only for television signals but for connections with Wi-Fi networks. The hotel was first class even by international standards. Surprisingly, the minibar, which needed the room key to access, was stocked with beer, wine, and several liquors in addition to mixers, bottled water, and soft drinks.

She opened a Heineken and turned on the flat-screen television; the channels included the BBC and CNN in English and Deutsche Welle in German. She turned to CNN and watched for a half hour to see if there was any mention of the assassinations, but there was nothing. She got the feeling that the CNN broadcast was censored.

The phone rang. It was Naisir and he sounded rushed.

“I’m here,” he said. “Let’s talk before dinner.”

“As you wish.”

Pam actually knew very little about Naisir, except that he was a major in a directorate of the ISI that dealt with special projects outside of Pakistan, mostly in the West, especially Europe and the United States. When she had first approached the ISI about her project, she’d been immediately sent to meet with him, and his had been a sympathetic ear. He’d understood exactly what she wanted to do, why she wanted to do it, and the benefit it would have for his country. But he had his doubts.

“You’re new at this,” he had said. “You’ve not done much.”

“But what we’ve done, we’ve done well. You would not have been directed to meet with me otherwise. And now we’ve come to the next step.”

“Yes, assassination on a much larger scale. Twenty-four of them, to be exact. But why, Ms. Schlueter? Not simply for money. What is your motivation?”

“Why not money?”

“You have greater zeal than that,” Naisir had said. “A passion for revenge, I think. Your ex-husband? Is he that much of a thorn in your side?”

Pam remembered the spike in her anger. She’d wanted to lash out at the bastard, but she’d controlled her temper. She’d shrugged. “The money is sufficient for our purposes, wouldn’t you agree? I will provide you a service, for which I will get paid well and for which your government will be able to claim no knowledge. In fact I suspect it will be to your benefit to denounce the acts.”

Naisir had actually smiled. “But not too loudly, because no one would believe it wasn’t something we wanted. Retribution.”

Pam had let it hang there for several beats. Naisir wore a gold wedding band, and she had the urge to ask him if his was a more successful marriage than hers had been, but she refrained. “Yes,” she said. “Retribution. Do we have an agreement?”

“Of course. But let me caution you that if unseen circumstances should arise, you will deal with them on your own.”

“I might ask for intelligence.”

“That would be possible, but we could not provide any overt assistance. You must understand that would be a condition.”

“Of course,” she assured him.

The doorbell rang and Pam got up to answer it. Naisir, dressed in a Western business suit, the collar of his white shirt open, no tie, a four- or five-day shadow on his face, walked in.

“You came in clean?” he asked.

“As far as I know.”

“Do you have another one of those?” he asked, indicating the beer.

“Of course,” he said. She got him the beer and they sat across from each other at the coffee table.

He took a drink. “What do you want?”

“McGarvey has become priority one,” she said.

“I warned you.”

“Yes, you did. In the meantime your retribution has to go on hold until we can deal with him.”

“What happened?” he asked.

She explained about the Norfolk operation and McGarvey’s call from Steffen Engel’s cell phone. “I immediately recalled my other operators and told them to get the hell out of there.”

“Where are they now?”

“Back in Berlin, where they will stand by until I give them their next assignment.”

Naisir thought about it for a long moment. “He knows who you are.”

“It’s possible, but there was nothing on Steffen’s cell phone that could have led directly to me. It was a prepaid phone — they all were.”

“What about your Herr Engel? If he’s not dead, can he be made to talk?”

“Not likely.”

“Actually, what I’m asking is, how much of our arrangement is he aware of?”

“If you mean does he know your name? No, he does not.”

“Would you be willing to stake your life on it?”

“Yes,” Pam said without hesitation, even though she knew that she wasn’t sure. Steffen, like the others, was a professional who had his own contacts. Anything was possible.

“What is it that you want of me?” Naisir asked.

“That you understand the delay for the primary objective, that your offer of two million for McGarvey still stands, and that if you learn anything that might be useful to me you will let me know.”

“Yes, to all of it.”

“Then we will kill Mr. McGarvey before we proceed any further.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Coming home, Rawalpindi Airport was always a crush, though this time Naisir had not checked a bag, and his ISI-issued diplomatic passport parted the waters as usual. He hadn’t logged his trip, so he hadn’t signed out with his office nor would he have to sign back in. In fact he’d taken yesterday and today off, his first in several months, to try to figure out what might be coming up behind him and what his options were.

The cab ride back up to Islamabad was choked with traffic as usual, but although the two cities just ten kilometers apart were called twins, they were nothing like each other. Rawalpindi was filthy; by comparison, Islamabad was showroom-clean. Rawalpindi was where the ordinary people lived and worked, while Islamabad was were the government functionaries did their thing. The embassies were here, along with the diplomats and their families. All the government buildings were also grouped in the restricted sections of the city; the Parliament, the Secretariat, the Interior Ministry, the Supreme Court, the state bank, and the ISI.

Naisir maintained two homes — a small one behind tall walls near the airport in Rawalpindi, which he used as a safe house where he met in secret with field officers who were never allowed to come anywhere near ISI headquarters. And the other, the home he shared with Ayesha, his wife of nine years, behind spotless white walls in F-10, just west of the expansive Fatima Jinnah Park in F-9.

Islamabad was considered a green city because of its tree-lined avenues and many parks, and it was always a great pleasure for Naisir to come back to it, to his modern open-plan home, and to Ayesha, who was not only his wife but his best friend, major confidante, and chief adviser.

It was she who agreed that he should take the assignment to kill the SEALs who had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty when they’d taken out bin Laden. All of Pakistan would rejoice, especially those in the president’s inner circles. “But with care, Ali,” she said.

They were in each other’s arms in bed, the house staff retired for the evening, no children to disturb them. “It’s a great deal of money,” he’d said.

“That little sum of is of no consequence; it is the response of the American government that’s vital. The money they give us in military aid is about all that stands between us and the Indians.”

“Plus our nuclear arsenal.”

“Which we would never have achieved without the inadvertent help of Washington.”

“What are you saying?”

“If the CIA can prove that Pakistan is behind the deaths of the SEALs, it will go very badly for us. Our diplomatic response — whatever it might be, no matter how mild it might be — would anger our people.”

“Which is why we hired an outside team for the operation. They will be blamed.”

“You’re not listening to me. If it goes bad you will throw the Schlueter woman and her operatives under the bus, but do you honestly believe that if they are arrested and interrogated, they wouldn’t point their fingers at you.”

Naisir had considered the possibility from the beginning, which was why he’d taken such care to hide the money trail, and his physical meetings with Schlueter. “She and her people might point fingers, but without proof it would be meaningless,” he told his wife.

“Just a hint, a suspicion on the CIA’s part would be enough,” she’d pressed.

“Enough for what?”

“For General Bhutani to feed you to the wolves.” Lieutenant General Tariq Bhutani was the director of the ISI and maintained a warm relationship with Walter Page, the CIA’s director.

“It’s possible,” he’d conceded.

“In that case, my husband, we need to think about our survival. Inside of Pakistan if possible; outside if need be.”

“It’s a little early for such dark thoughts,” he’d said, stroking her thigh.

“It’s never too early, because when the sword falls there won’t be time,” she’d replied. “Think on it. I will.”

It was early afternoon when he got home. Ayesha met him at the door, and after they embraced she looked critically at him and nodded. “Let’s talk.”

“Yes,” Naisir said.

Ayesha’s family was well-to-do; her father, two brothers, and an uncle owned three rug factories and eleven outlets in Pakistan and in six major European cities, in addition to New York, Washington, and Miami. Because of the family fortune Ali and his wife were able to afford to buy the house when he’d still been a first lieutenant, and to afford a cook, a housekeeper, and a gardener, even on a major’s pay.

The inner sanctum was the only wing of the house that didn’t face in the large central courtyard and garden, but instead faced toward the park. Here was his study and hers, plus a pleasantly furnished sitting room separating the two, a modern Western bathroom, and a wet bar. It was the only area of the house that none of the staff were ever allowed to enter. And it was the only place that was protected from electronic eavesdropping, where they could speak freely.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked when the door was closed and they were safe.

“A brandy, I think.”

“Tell me everything,” she said as she poured him a nice Rémy in a crystal snifter. She opened a Coke for herself, which she always drank straight from the bottle.

“Something’s come up involving the CIA, as you expected might happen.”

“Are they working with the Germans?”

“Not from what I can gather. But I once mentioned to you a man who used to be the director of the CIA, Kirk McGarvey.”

“There was something about his family being involved in an attempt on his life that went wrong. Has he become involved?”

“It looks like it,” Naisir said. He briefly outlined the Norfolk operation that had gone bad even before it had fully developed. “McGarvey’s gotten himself involved for some reason. He personally either killed or took down one of the operatives and used the stupid man’s cell phone to call Schlueter and warn her to back off. Which she did.”

“So now what? Has the mission been canceled?”

“Postponed.”

“Until when?”

“I’ve promised a two million euro bonus to Schlueter to eliminate the man.”

Ayesha’s face dropped and she put her Coke on the table. “You cannot be serious. McGarvey was the CIA’s director, and that’s a presidential appointment. Men who have reached that status are untouchable. The kind Prophet’s wrath would come down upon you like a storm from the desert beyond anyone’s imaginings.”

“If it were ever to be traced back to me.”

“If the Schlueter woman is successful, and somehow manages to kill McGarvey, the CIA will move heaven and earth to find her and then you. There would be nowhere for us to go. We would be as good as dead. Surely you must see this.”

“But he has to be eliminated,” Naisir said. “Somehow he knew about what was going to happen in Norfolk, and he was there — at exactly the right place at exactly the right time.”

“Which is exactly my point, my dear husband. The man has an intelligence resource — almost certainly he still has friends inside the CIA. If he’s somehow tapped into Schlueter’s communications with her team, he may already know your name.”

“Not likely,” Naisir said, but the doubts he’d already had were being reinforced by his wife’s.

“If he’s followed her movements — say, to Tehran — then he knows that you’re involved.”

“He’d need proof.”

Ayesha looked away for a longish moment. “The SEAL Team Six were not one hundred percent sure of Usama’s location at the compound. They have publicly admitted it themselves. It did not stop them from flying across our border and against impossibly long odds accomplish the mission and get out with his body.”

Naisir said nothing, because he knew what was coming.

She looked back. “You are only one man, Ali. Nowhere as well protected as Usama was, and certainly much easier to find. Think on it. If McGarvey is assassinated someone could very well come here for you — in retribution.”

TWENTY-NINE

It was very early in the morning and Otto Rencke was in his element back at his suite of offices at CIA headquarters; he had been given a task to find out things, and the task had been given to him by the only friend other than his wife he’d ever had in his life — Kirk McGarvey.

Mac and Pete, with Wolf in tow, got back up to Washington last night and had gone directly to Otto’s safe house, where they’d hashed out the Schlueter operation. It would probably have gone off spectacularly if it hadn’t have been for them, and the two names they’d learned — Steffen and Naisir — along with the cell phone.

Martinez had personally taken the German down to the lockup at Quantanamo Bay, where he would be held in an isolation cell until this mess was straightened out, after which it would be up to the AG what to do with the man.

Which was of no concern to Otto at the moment. When Kirk got involved with something, the eventual outcome, though not always neat and tidy, was an outcome. Things got resolved. Shit happened, as the kids used to say.

Otto had set several of his search programs to work on the issue when Kirk had first brought the problem to him. He added the name “Steffen” as most likely a German citizen, possibly ex-military, and the name “Naisir” as a Pakastani ISI officer.

While he waited for something to pop up on one of the screens, he took a look at the phone. It was a basic Samsung with a SIM card that would work either in Europe or the United States but not in Japan or Korea. It, along with five others, had been purchased at an airport kiosk in Paris four months ago with a Barclays credit card under the name Monica Lawson. The phones were on one-year prepaid plans that included four hundred units of voice and text time.

As he suspected, someone had tested them during the last month; five of the phones had called the sixth. There was no record of any conversation or text sent, just the numbers. The last call made from the one Kirk had taken from Steffen had been to the same sixth number. Presumably the one Pam Schlueter carried.

He tried calling that number, but it did not ring, nor did the other four. When he tried to call the phone in his hand nothing happened, not even a busy signal.

As he’d also suspected once the operation in Norfolk had fallen apart, the service to all of the phones had been canceled.

He used an evidence kit to swab the microphone and then bagged the swab and the phone. Later he would send the bag to a lab to see if any DNA other than Mac’s could be found.

Within less than a minute one of his programs came up with a dozen Steffens that more or less matched his broad search parameters, two of them starred. One was for Steffen Engel, who’d been a tactical instructor in the German KSK, and the other for Steffen Voss, who was an analyst for the BND special signal intelligence directorate, which was still outside Munich.

He phoned Martinez, who answered on the first ring.

“Si.” There was a roaring noise in the background.

“Where are you?”

“About ten minutes from Gitmo.”

“I want you to take a picture of your guy and send it to me ASAP.

“Are you at work?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on. It’ll just take a minute,” Martinez said.

While he waited, Otto pulled up the files, including the government ID card photos of both Steffens. Both men had the same general Teutonic square-jawed look, an intensity in their eyes, almost of hatred. Otto’s bet was on the ex-KSK sergeant.

“Here it comes,” Martinez said. “Keep me posted, would you?”

“You got it, Raul. Thanks.”

Even before he transferred the image from his cell phone to a computer screen he knew the man Mac had picked up in Norfolk was Steffen Engel, and he immediately queried his program to find out everything about the man in just about every computer in the world. Beyond the man’s basic military records he set his machines to look specifically for incidents that would give them a more rounded idea of who he was, how he operated, and where he’d been in the past year or so.

Naisir was a very common Pakistani name: eighteen of them in the ISI alone, and one hundred more in the military and other governmental agencies. Otto concentrated on the ISI because he did not think that the Schlueter woman was acting alone. Someone was directing and financing her, and the only logical choice was the ISI.

He’d brought a carton of half-and-half from his private stash at the house and had stopped at a 7-Eleven to pick up a couple of sleeves of Twinkies, something that he’d had a lot of trouble finding until last year. Louise didn’t know that he had fallen back on old habits; if she had, he figured that she would skin him alive. But when times got tough, a guy needed something to fall back on. And in his case it wasn’t alcohol.

He sat back, his sneakered feet on the edge of the desk as he ate his Twinkies and drank his cream, the screen racing through hundreds of databases with backgrounds of the eighteen ISI officers his program had picked out.

Ten minutes later he sat forward all of a sudden. Several photographs of a major in the service’s Directorate of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous by the name of Ali Naisir popped up and something resonated in the back of Otto’s head, though he didn’t really know why.

Naisir’s background was pretty normal. He’d joined the military out of high school. After a short stint of active duty, he was accepted into the Pakistan Military Academy’s two-year program, after which he’d studied for four years at the National Defense University.

He’d been set for a general court-martial for insubordination, but in the fall of 2008 the charges were dropped and he was allowed to return to the university, after which he was promoted to captain and assigned to the Joint Intel directorate.

The timing struck Otto. In the late fall of 2008 Musharraf had resigned his presidency, and it was almost certain that some faction of the Taliban would assassinate him. But he’d managed to escape, it was rumored, with the help of the ISI, where he turned up in Jalalabad, and from there to Mecca for his pilgrimage.

The timing of Naisir’s dropped court-martial was most intriguing to Otto, because the date of Musharraf’s escape matched perfectly.

He was a major now, which meant he had more autonomy than as a captain, and he was still with the Joint Intel directorate, which was notorious for causing new officers to crash and burn — many of them within the first year or two.

But Naisir had legs; he had a history.

Otto studied the man’s official photograph and looked into his eyes. Something was there. Not innocence, exactly, but more like honesty. No guile. He was a man who was saying: I am what I am, give me a job to do and get out of my way so that I can do it.

Sorta like Mac.

And despite himself Otto found that he admired the man.

THIRTY

CIA director Walt Page and deputy director of operations Marty Bambridge, who was an officious, self-important bastard in just about everyone’s opinion, sat across the coffee table from McGarvey and the agency’s general counsel, Carleton Patterson, in the DCI’s office. The late afternoon sun streaming through the windows did nothing to dispel the somber mood.

“I imagine something new has come up, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked for this meeting,” Page said. He’d been the CEO of IBM before the president had tapped him to run the company, and by all accounts he was the best in a lot of years. But he was a strictly by-the-book DCI. He and McGarvey had formed a truce of sorts over the past year.

“Yes, and before I head to Islamabad I wanted to bring you up to speed,” Mac said.

“I’m not going to listen to this,” Page said sharply. He was suddenly angry. “If you make an attempt to reach Pakistan you will be subject to immediate arrest. I think I made that perfectly clear just a few days ago.”

“The situation has changed, Mr. Director.”

“This meeting is over,” Page said. He started to rise, but Patterson motioned him back.

“Perhaps we should hear him out. He’s almost always over the top, but he’s never been wrong.”

“Outside the law, in a word,” Bambridge said. He and McGarvey had never gotten along.

“There was another attempt on the SEAL Team Six guys in Norfolk. We think that there were four assassins, at least one of whom we know for a fact was an ex-KSK German commando by the name of Steffen Engel. Had they been successful, they might have wiped out at least ten of the guys plus their families.”

“You were there,” Patterson said.

“Yes.”

“Extraordinary.”

“How many people did you kill this time?” Bambridge demanded.

“None,” McGarvey said. He hoped that Bambridge would be included in the meeting; he wanted to get a few things out in the open with the deputy director. “We wanted to stop the attack and I wanted at least one of them alive.”

The DDO smirked. “We?”

“Doesn’t matter for the moment—”

“It goddamned well does, mister.”

“The German commando?” Patterson said mildly. He was an old man, and he’d been around the company through a half-dozen directors. His was one of the most respected voices in the OHB.

“I managed to take him down before he could make the hit. He had a cell phone, which I thought he and his teammates would have been given in order to communicate with their boss, the Schlueter woman.”

“The one you say was married to a SEAL officer. A still-serving SEAL officer,” Patterson said.

“That’s right,” McGarvey said. “I used the phone to call her, and told her that it was over and to go home.”

“What about your prisoner?” Patterson asked.

“He’s in an isolation cell at Gitmo.”

“Martinez is involved again?” Bambridge asked, fuming. “The son of a bitch needs to be fired.” But then something else dawned on him. “You were in Norfolk, so you flew with your prisoner not directly to Guantanamo Bay, but to Miami to see your old pal. And to do what?”

McGarvey wanted the DDO to figure it out on his own.

“You got his name, but you apparently got a connection to Pakistan. Christ.” Bambridge looked at the DCI. “They took him to Little Torch Key,” he said. He turned back to McGarvey. “Didn’t you?”

“Not only that, Marty, we waterboarded the bastard. And we got a name.”

“Torture has never been a reliable source of information. Everyone knows it except you.”

“Save it for CNBC. We didn’t give him a name and ask for confirmation; he came up with it on his own.”

“Who else was there besides you and Martinez?”

“That doesn’t matter. What does is the name.”

“It matters to me,” Bambridge practically shouted.

It was exactly the reaction McGarvey had expected.

“The name?” Patterson prompted.

“Ali Naisir. He’s a major in the ISI’s directorate of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous.”

“Rencke,” Bambridge said. He was beside himself.

“I would tread with care, Marty,” McGarvey said.

“No one is above the law. Not you, not Martinez, and certainly not Otto Rencke.”

Everyone was silent for what seemed like a long time. McGarvey bided his own, letting all of them, especially Page, work out the ramifications.

It was finally the DCI who spoke. “You believe this information is reliable?” he asked.

“It all fits. Pam Schlueter, who had an unsuccessful marriage to one of our naval officers, apparently hatched a plan to strike back at him. But she wanted to do it in a very big way, and for that she needed some serious muscle, which these days costs serious money. I think she approached the ISI with her scheme to kill the SEAL Team Six guys who violated Pakistan’s airspace to take out bin Laden. Nothing the government in Islamabad could do about it, except swallow its pride. Which had to hurt like hell. Schlueter gave them salvation. She would organize a team to take out the SEALs — all of them — but as an operation totally independent of Pakistan. And they bought it because she had the motive and they had the money.”

“Has Otto found any traces of the money trail — any link no matter how small back to the ISI?” Page asked.

“Not yet. But he’s working on it.”

“The man needs to be reined in, Mr. Director,” Bambridge said.

Page ignored him. “You want to go to Islamabad to talk to him, nothing more?”

“If the connection exists — and I’ll ask him in such a way that he’ll tell the truth — it means that Pakistan is killing our people. Not just the SEAL operators who took out bin Laden but their families as well.”

“The proof?”

“I’ll find it.”

“Pakistan is the Wild West,” Patterson said. “Have you ever considered that you’ll get yourself killed one of these days?”

“All the time,” McGarvey said.

“Marty, Carleton, leave us, would you please?” Page said.

Bambridge was startled, but he and Patterson got up and left.

Page went to his desk and dialed a number. “It’s me,” he said when someone answered. “It’s the McGarvey situation. It’s come to a head as we thought it might. I’m bringing him over to brief you.”

THIRTY-ONE

McGarvey had never met John Fay, the president’s new adviser for national security affairs. When he and Page were shown into the NSA’s West Wing office, the man got to his feet and shook hands.

“I’ve heard a great deal about you, Mr. McGarvey, and I’ve wanted to meet you for some time.”

He was a very lanky man, over six eight, but unlike many tall men he did not slouch. On the way over in the DCI’s limousine Page had explained that Fay had been a center for the Rutgers basketball team — long before the coaching scandal, of course, but he still took the mess personally. He was a proud man.

“The man is a fixer,” Page said. “It’s why the president picked him. He knows the international situation like the back of his hand, and for three years he acted as a special adviser to Congress on all the major intelligence-gathering agencies in the world, including ours. He told me not so long ago that he loved to read spy novels.”

“I hope he doesn’t believe what he reads,” McGarvey had said. “Anyone who gets their intel from novels gets the intel they deserve.”

“He’s anything but that sort of a fool,” Page said. “In fact he’s one of the smartest men to ever hold that position, and he’s liable to ask you some penetrating questions. I suggest that you give him your honest assessments.”

“I always do,” McGarvey had said.

“Would either of you like some coffee, or perhaps a soft drink?” Fay asked, motioning them to take a seat.

“Not for me,” McGarvey said.

Page waved it off. “The situation with the SEAL Team Six continues to develop, and in fact Mac came to me with a couple of disturbing events and a recommendation that, frankly, I find problematic.”

Fay was instantly troubled. “My God, don’t tell me there was another shooting?”

“A near miss,” McGarvey said. And he explained in detail the events in Norfolk, only leaving out Pete’s and Wolf’s names.

“You actually spoke with this woman on the phone?”

“I told her it was over.”

“How’d she sound?” Fay asked. “Mad, surprised, confused?”

“Determined. She said that it was only over for now.”

“You’re suggesting that despite what happened in Norfolk, and the fact that you and the agency know what she’s trying to accomplish, she won’t give up?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “Because there’s most likely a great deal of money at stake and she’s carrying out her own personal vendetta.”

“She was briefly married to a still-serving SEAL officer,” Page explained. “It was about as bad as it can get, and apparently she’s been nursing her hatred ever since the divorce.”

“Is this officer aware of what she’s trying to do?”

“I told him, but he didn’t believe she was capable of something like that,” McGarvey said.

“Did he tell you why he was skeptical?”

“No.”

“There is still some passion there, you think?”

McGarvey had thought about it. “He might think that he’s somehow responsible.”

“What does he suggest?”

“He’s buried his head in the sand. It’s easier for him.”

Fay nodded thoughtfully. “What do you suggest? How do we stop her?”

“Cut off her source of money,” McGarvey said.

“Who is her paymaster?”

“The ISI.”

“Oh,” Fay said. “I see. In retaliation for Neptune Spear.” But then he had another thought. “Do you have proof that the Pakistanis are financing her? Do you have a direct link, a name, anything?”

“Major Ali Naisir.”

“And you got this name how, exactly?”

Page had warned that the NSA would ask penetrating questions. “We took the man I captured down to a facility in the Florida Keys, where we waterboarded him until he gave up the name. We’ve done some research since and came up with Naisir’s position within the ISI, which is consistent with this sort of an operation.”

“Where is he at the moment?”

“Gitmo.”

“I meant Major Naisir.”

“Islamabad.”

McGarvey’s reply hung on the air.

President Langdon, in shirtsleeves, his tie loose, appeared at the door. “Gentlemen,” he said mildly. “Is this something I need to be in on?”

Fay looked up. “No, sir. Not at this moment. We’re still in the preliminary stages of a what-if exercise.”

“We’re not committing any assets or considering committing any?”

“Nothing important, Mr. President.”

The between-the-lines was huge. The president glanced at McGarvey, whom he’d never really gotten along with, then back to his NSA. “Keep me in the loop if and when the time comes.”

“Of course,” Fay said, and the president left.

“How deeply has he been briefed?” McGarvey asked after a long beat.

Fay almost laughed. “Are you kidding me? This isn’t another Neptune Spear. If you go over there looking for this major, you’re strictly on your own. Deniability, Mr. McGarvey. Especially if something goes wrong. Do you understand?”

“No,” McGarvey said. He’d faced this kind of crap nearly his entire career. We lamented the Pearl Harbors and the 9/11s, but beforehand, when we could have done something to stop the attacks, we sat on our hands. We looked the other way. It was the fair thing to do. It just wasn’t right. Not the American way.

“Bullshit,” Fay said. “You occupied Walt’s office, you know how delicate and necessary our relationship with Pakistan is. Without its cooperation we have absolutely no chance of defeating the Taliban over there.”

“So we allow them to finance the assassination of all the guys and their families?”

“Of course not, nor will the navy sequester them on some base somewhere, even if they’d go for it. There’d be no telling how long they’d have to stay cooped up.”

And McGarvey did understand. He stood up. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Fay. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Do.”

THIRTY-TWO

They sat drinking beer at the kitchen counter in the Renckes’ McClean safe house. Mac and Pete seated, Otto and Louise standing across from them, and Wolf, bag in hand, at the door. He had been ordered back to Germany.

“I don’t know how much help we can give you,” Mac said.

“I’ll get a letter of reprimand in my personnel file, but it won’t be the first or last. Anyway I think it’s for the best that I keep an eye on Schlueter. It’s a sure bet she’s not done.”

“It’s too bad you can’t take her into custody,” Louise said.

“She’s done nothing wrong on German soil. But if the CIA or FBI were to make an official request, we could do something.”

“Won’t happen,” McGarvey said. “Fay made it perfectly clear that I was on my own, and if something went wrong I would be cut loose. And Walt told me the same thing.”

“Wouldn’t be the only time politics got in the way,” Otto said.

“No. So that issue isn’t on the table. But I’m going to need some help from you guys. Wolf will keep an eye on Schlueter, and if she makes a move back here, or if she simply disappears, I’ll want to know immediately.”

“I don’t know how much manpower I’ll have at my disposal, but I’ll do my best.”

“In the meantime I want to make Naisir sit up and look over his shoulder.”

“Is that such a good idea?” Pete asked. “If he knows that you’re coming he’ll just order your arrest and they’ll stick you in a jail cell somewhere and you’ll disappear. That is, if you’re not shot trying to escape.”

“I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. “He’ll probably have someplace to go to ground. But he’ll be just as constrained as we are. His government will deny that there ever was a deal between one of its ISI officers and a German terrorist group.”

“That won’t matter. They’ll treat you as nothing more than a rogue spy — maybe an independent contractor on your own vendetta but with absolutely no connection to Schlueter.”

“I hope that’ll be the case,” McGarvey said. “I’ve been thinking about it. Besides giving notice to Naisir that I’m coming after him, Otto’s going to build a legend for an American wheeler-dealer living in Karachi. Some guy selling arms to the Taliban, maybe bomb-making equipment that they use to attack not only American targets but Pakistani ones as well.”

Otto saw it immediately. “We’ll call him Poorvaj Chopra, born in Calcutta but emigrated to the States with his parents when he was five. Served in the Army Rangers but got kicked out for some shit I’ll figure out. Maybe smuggling, gambling, whores — whatever. Anyway, his father went back to Calcutta a few years ago and got mixed up in a Hindu-Muslim riot in the slums and got himself killed. Ever since then Poorvaj has had a hard-on for Pakistanis. Figures he can stick it to them by selling arms to the Taliban while at the same time making some money. Now we want to put a stop to him.”

“Not for any love of Pakistan but because the Taliban have been attacking our people as well,” Louise said. “But Naisir’s not likely to believe it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mac said. “If the legend is strong enough and my assignment is to come to Pakistan to take the guy out, he won’t be able to pass me off as an enemy of the state. Someone who needs to be picked up or shot. If he wants me dead he’ll have to do it himself.”

“He might have friends,” Wolf said.

“We’ll deal with those issues as they come up. In the meantime, I have all the credentials I’ll need. But it’s become next to impossible to carry a weapon aboard an international flight, especially one going into a country under siege like Pakistan.”

“Weapons,” Pete said, but McGarvey didn’t catch it.

“Best if I fly commercial, probably from someplace neutral like Poland or the Czech Republic. Soon as I get back to my apartment I’ll call you with my passport number.”

“Give me a name, I have all your documents in a database,” Otto said, and McGarvey nodded.

“Leonard Sampson.”

“Got it.”

Louise was staring at Pete. “Did you mean what I thought you meant when you said ‘weapons’?”

“I’m going to Islamabad too,” Pete said. “I’ll need a weapon, and papers under the name Doris Sampson.”

“Not a chance in hell,” McGarvey said.

“She has a point,” Louise said.

“No.”

“You’re just the sort of figure Naisir and whoever he’ll have helping him will expect to show up,” Pete said, her tone of voice reasonable. “But if you show up with wifey in arm — wifey with a scarf to cover her hair like a dutiful Muslim woman — you might fit in. At any rate, if Naisir is likely to have friends, you might as well have a second gun hand.”

“He’s already seen my face in Berlin.”

Pete turned to Otto. “I need the passport and a flight over. Doesn’t have to be the same flight as Mac’s. Might even be better if you can get me there first so I can be waiting for him. It’ll be harder for him to ditch me.”

“Goddamnit,” McGarvey said. All of his professional life he had lived in mortal fear that what he did would boil over into his personal life, affect the people he loved. And it had. Two women he’d been involved with after his divorce from Kathy had been killed because of him. And then once he got back together with his ex she had been assassinated along with his daughter and son-in-law.

The same bullshit fear came roaring in at him again. He didn’t want to be responsible. And he said as much.

“Bullshit, as you’re fond of saying,” Pete said. “I’m a grown woman, capable of taking care of herself. I think I proved that a couple of years ago right here in D.C., you macho bastard.”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?” Pete demanded. “Tell me.”

McGarvey turned to Otto and Louise for support.

“Your creds will be waiting for you at Dulles first thing in the morning,” Otto said. “I’ll have the flight number before you leave here tonight. I think Atlanta first, then Warsaw and finally Rawalpindi. I’ll have the name of a guy who’ll meet you with weapons and anything else you might need.”

“We’ll need to know where Naisir lives, and his family situation. I really don’t want to barge into this guy’s house while he’s having dinner with his wife and kids.”

“I’ll have that for you as well.”

It was a nightmare to McGarvey. “Don’t I have anything to say about this?”

“No,” Louise and Pete said simultaneously.

He took a pull of his beer, looking at both of them. Otto’s expression was neutral.

“I won’t cut you any breaks,” Mac said.

“When did you ever?” Pete shot back.

“Shit,” he said. “Naisir works for Joint Intel Miscellaneous.”

“Yes,” Otto said.

“Means he meets with field officers from time to time. Like our NOCs who never show up at headquarters.”

“Right, right, right,” Otto said. “He’s got a safe house somewhere. Could be when you show up he’ll run to ground.”

“If for nothing more than to insulate his family.” McGarvey said.

Pete gave him an odd look, but she nodded. “If we know where it is, we might get there first and wait for him. It would keep the whole op clean. Keep the collateral damage to a minimum.”

“Eliminate it completely if possible,” Louise said. She’d always been the conscience of the group. She kept Otto centered, and sometimes reminded McGarvey that what he was doing — what he’d always done — was the right thing.

“You guys are right, of course,” McGarvey said. “But I can’t help thinking about the families of the two SEALs they killed.

THIRTY-THREE

Naisir was made to wait for nearly an hour in the ISI director’s outer office before the secretary motioned him to the door.

“You may see General Bhutani now, Major,” he said.

Naisir had taken the call in his office fifteen minutes ago, thankful that he had worn a decent uniform this morning. Ayesha had insisted, telling him she had a hunch, and once again she was right. Over the years he had learned to trust her feminine intuition, and at this moment he was especially glad of it.

General Butani was seated behind his mammoth desk in front of the broad windows that looked down on a pretty courtyard and fountain. A short, slender man dressed in civilian clothes, one leg crossed over the other, was seated in an easy chair in a corner across the room.

Naisir stopped directly in front of the general, clicked his heels, and saluted. “Major Ali Naisir reporting, as ordered, sir.”

The general, who was reminiscent of Musharraf, with a round smiling face, neatly trimmed mustache, and graying sideburns, returned the salute but did not offer a chair.

“I am a busy man, so allow me to come straight to the point. Trouble is heading your way, which is exactly what Pakistan cannot afford to have happen.”

Naisir’s gut tied in a knot. “Sir?”

“You are currently involved with a delicate project in the United States, if I’ve been informed correctly.”

“It was thought to keep the project at arm’s length from the service.”

Bhutani let it hang for a moment. “Are we speaking of the same project?”

“SEAL Team Six, sir? A proposal was made to us some months ago that it could be possible to eliminate the Americans who took part in the operation they called Neptune Spear.”

“Why?”

“Retribution.”

“Who gave you this assignment?”

“My section chief, Colonel Sarbans.”

The general glanced at the civilian, who merely shrugged but said nothing.

“The assignment was completely on my shoulders,” Naisir said. “In case something went wrong I was to take full responsibility. Personally.”

“There have been two attacks recently, both of which included the murders of the men’s families. Was that your doing?”

“I did not order the killing of innocent civilians, but sir, it was my doing.”

“Who is — or are — the assassins? Certainly not ours?”

“No, sir. I hired an outside contractor, who put together a team.”

The general was relieved. “Was it expensive?”

“We’ve made partial payments of around one million in U.S. dollars. More has been committed.”

“Where has this money come from?” The civilian asked.

“I have a draw on the Special Projects fund.”

“You live in a fine house near the Jinnah Park,” the civilian said. His voice was very soft, his accent southern — perhaps Karachi.

Naisir knew instantly what was going on, what he was being accused of. “My wife’s family is wealthy and generous. The transactions for the house and the two cars and our staff, are quite transparent.”

“Perhaps too transparent.”

Naisir turned back to the general. “Sir, am I being accused of stealing state money?”

“Not exactly,” Bhutani said. He took a photograph from a folder and handed it across. “Do you know this man?”

The eight-by-ten black-and-white photo date-stamped yesterday showed a slightly built man, dressed in a Western-cut business suit, coming out of the airport at Rawalpindi. He was carrying an attaché case and what appeared to be a matching leather suitcase on rollers.

“It’s not a clear shot, but I don’t think I know him. Who is he, sir?”

“He flew up from Karachi and booked a suite for six days at the Serena Hotel. Do you know this place?”

“Yes, sir,” Naisir said. He was confused. Something not good was coming his way, but he couldn’t guess what.

“Your wife’s family is wealthy. Have either of you ever stayed there, or perhaps had a meal at one of the restaurants?” the civilian asked. “The Dawat is one of the best in town. There is even music.”

“No, sir, we’ve never been.”

“The man in the picture is an Indian-born American. Emigrated with his parents when he was very young. He served in the American Army Rangers, but he was dishonorably discharged when it was found that he was having affairs with several of the top-ranking officers’ wives on base. Apparently he has an apartment in Karachi, and we think that he may be involved in a number of illegal activities, among them supplying the Taliban with the materials to make IEDs.”

“That would come under the SS directorate.”

“Normally yes,” the general said.

“If the proof is there, why hasn’t he been arrested?” Naisir asked.

“His name is Poorvaj Chopra,” the civilian said. “The thing is, no one has ever seen him coming or going from his apartment in Karachi, nor has his bed here at the Serena been slept in. It would appear that he is a mysterious man who is able to come and go without being spotted.”

“We have his photograph.”

“Supplied to us by the CIA, who’ve had him under surveillance in the United States.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I have no idea who this man is or what you think his connection to me might be.”

“He’s made three calls to your home and one to your office,” the civilian said.

Naisir was rocked. “I took no calls from this man.”

“Yes, we know. Each time he let the telephone ring once and then hung up. We think that all four calls were made from a cell phone. Four different cell phones.”

“Can you explain why this man called you?” Bhutani asked. “Why he has come to Islamabad?”

“No,” Naisir said. “Sir, am I being charged with a crime?”

“Not at this time, Major,” the civilian said. “But if Mr. Chopra does make contact with you, for whatever reason, we want to know about it.”

“Then why are you monitoring my phone?”

“We’re not,” General Bhutani said. “The CIA is, perhaps in connection with your operation against the SEAL team we were informed.”

“If that were the case they would not have shared that intelligence with you, sir,” Naisir said.

“No. But obviously something is going on. I suggest that you deal with it, Major. Perhaps if Mr. Chopra were to suddenly disappear permanently, it might be best for you. For all of us.”

THIRTY-FOUR

At this point time was not really of the essence as far as McGarvey was concerned. For the moment they figured that Schlueter’s primary target was no longer the SEALs but Mac himself. And they wanted to let Naisir stew in his own juices. Keep looking over his shoulder until he got lazy.

Otto had booked them one of the longest routes from Dulles to Atlanta and from there overnight to Warsaw via Amsterdam. They took a Polish Airways LOT flight to Frankfurt, where they picked up an Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi and from there at last to Islamabad, where they were scheduled to touch down at two thirty in the morning local, three days after leaving Washington.

They’d flown first-class on Mac’s nickel, and on most of the legs they’d had seats that folded flat, allowing them to get plenty of rest. The food had been reasonably good, and Mac had cut back his drinking so that by eight in the morning according to his watch they were less than a half hour out of Islamabad and he felt good.

A flight attendant had brought them warm moist washcloths and hand towels, along with their customs declaration forms, which Pete had filled out for both of them.

“This is a first for me,” she said.

“Filling out a customs form?”

“No, going into badland.”

“I warned you.”

She gave him a look. “I’m not frightened. I’m excited.”

“You might want to rethink that, Pete. A little fear goes a long way. Makes you aware of what’s going on around you. Makes you a little sharper.”

“Naisir will be waiting for us?”

“He knows my face, but it’s been three days since Otto planted the Chopra legend, and he may not have made any connection yet. No reason for him to be watching for me to show up. In any event he won’t be expecting you.”

“I’m part of the disguise, but what about you? You could have done something with your hair, maybe worn glasses, aged your complexion. You’ve done it before.”

“I want him to know that I’ve come, and why,” McGarvey said.

Pete turned away and looked out the window. In the distance the lights of a large city were visible. “Silly me,” she said. “I thought you’d say something like that.”

“I’m not going to dance around with this guy. We already know that he’s involved with Schlueter, and that he’s an ISI officer, which makes him the center of my target. I want him to come to me, and the sooner the better.”

“You’re going to kill him,” Pete said.

“If need be.”

She nodded. “Once he knows you’re here he’ll try to do the same.”

“I hope so; it’d prove his involvement.”

“And afterward? What about Schlueter?”

Once through the complicated customs, which included a thorough credentials and baggage check and a pat-down, they went out to the cab stand, where a late-model Mercedes C-class sedan with a light on the roof pulled to the head of the queue. A tall, lanky driver jumped out, opened the rear door, and took their bags.

“Welcome, lady and gentleman, to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” he said in English marked by a thick Punjabi accent. “Please to get in my most excellent taxi, and I will take you wherever you wish to go.”

Pete hesitated, but Mac handed her into the backseat and got in behind her.

The driver, who was dressed in faded jeans and a stained sweatshirt with the Manchester United soccer team logo, closed the door, put their bags in the trunk, and got behind the wheel.

A few of the other cab drivers had begun to honk their horns because he had cut the line, and a cop started in their direction, but their cabbie pulled out and headed at breakneck speed to the highway to Islamabad, which was busy despite the hour.

Their driver kept looking in the rearview mirror until they were clear of the airport. “Did you have any trouble getting in?” he asked, in very clear English with a slight Texas drawl.

Pete was startled.

“San Antonio?” McGarvey asked.

“Corpus, actually, Mr. Director,” the driver said. He glanced in the rearview mirror again. “Looks like we haven’t picked up a tail. Name’s Milt Thomas. I work for Don Simmons, he’s the Islamabad station chief.”

“Aren’t you exposing yourself picking us up?” Pete asked.

“I’m too low in the pecking order for anyone to take much notice. In fact I’m actually part-timing with the cops looking for bad guys coming in. They send over a list every week or so, we mine it for anything we might use, and once in a while I’ll send them a bone and everyone’s happy.”

“Our names on the list?” McGarvey asked.

“Yours; not Ms. Boylan’s.”

“Do you have a package for us?”

“Nine millimeter Walther PPKs with silencers and several extra magazines. Antiquated, if you ask me. But Don said it’d be what you wanted. Had a hell of a time digging them up. Five small bricks of Semtex and acid fuses, plus a package from Mr. Rencke. It’s all in an attaché case in the trunk. Combo lock, 7534. Get it right or the entire package will melt down in a big hurry. Lid’s wired with couple of hundred grams of thermite. Won’t cause the Semtex to blow, but it’d cook a lot of meat standing anywhere within eight or ten feet.”

“Where are you taking us now?”

“Mind if I ask you a question, Mr. Director?”

“Friends call me Mac. What’s your question?”

“Do you know anything about a guy named Poorvaj Chopra? Supposedly he’s an Indian-born American working out of Karachi brokering arms deals for the Taliban.”

“Never heard the name,” McGarvey said.

“The ISI is real interested in this guy, and so are we, because the ragheads are killing our people too with IEDs that Chopra is selling them the materials for.”

“What’s the connection with us?”

“We thought that maybe it was your operation. I’m taking you to the Serena Hotel, where you guys have a connecting suite with his, and I have to warn you that the ISI should be crawling all over the place. But…”

“But what?”

“We’ve taken a couple of passes, but there’s been no sign of the guy, nor were we able to pick up any ISI activity. Strange.”

Their passports under the name Sampson raised no eyebrows at the front desk, and they were taken up to their suite immediately. The rooms were very well furnished, the walls and especially the ceilings were replica works of ancient Islamic art. The huge bathroom was world-class, as was the sitting room. But there was only one bedroom, equipped with a walk-in closet, a flat-screen television, ornate chests, a seating area next to the tall windows, and a single king-size bed.

“Cozy,” Pete said at the door.

“Right,” McGarvey said.

He opened the attaché case on the bed, took out the pistols, the magazines — three each — and the suppressors. He and Pete field-stripped the weapons, checked the actions, and loaded them.

He set aside the blocks of Semtex and fuses and took the manila envelope into the sitting room, where he got a beer from the minibar and sat down on the couch to see what Otto had sent.

Several photographs, including an official portrait used for internal records, showed the man that McGarvey had briefly met in the parking garage in Berlin. He was handsome, with large dark eyes, and a fine-featured face. In one he was coming out of a restaurant with a very good-looking woman of slender build on his arm. They were laughing about something and they seemed very happy.

She was Ayesha, his wife. Her family was wealthy, while his relatives were comparatively poor. But he had been well-educated at several state schools, including the military academy, and from what Otto had managed to gather, he had a fine service record.

He and his wife — there were no children — lived in a house in an upscale neighborhood near the Fatima Jinnah Park. The place, their two cars — a Fiat and a BMW — plus a small staff were way over the top for a major’s pay, but they had been subsidized from the start by his wife’s family.

Just as McGarvey had suspected, Naisir maintained a safe house in Rawalpindi where he met from time to time with his deep-cover field officers. The only reason Otto had been able to find out anything about it was because the place was financed by the ISI as a line item in the directorate’s black budget.

Otto had included Google Maps images of and driving directions to both places.

“What do we do now?” Pete asked.

McGarvey handed her the package. “We stay here till eight to see if ISI has taken any notice of us, then we rent a car and drive down to Rawalpindi.”

“To do what?”

“Apply a little pressure.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Pam Schlueter sat by the window in her one-room apartment in the immigrant neighborhood of Kreuzberg drinking schnapps and worrying about her next move. She wanted the money for taking McGarvey down, but more importantly she didn’t want him or some ISI goon to come up behind her one night and put a bullet in her brain.

Once you started these kinds of operations, you could never back out, not until they were finished. Only this time she’d managed to grab a tiger by the tail, and she still wasn’t quite sure exactly how she was going to eliminate him.

Certainly not by any frontal assault, with her four remaining operatives coming at him in force, all at once, guns blazing. From what she’d managed to learn about the man, he’d survived plenty of fights where the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against him.

Nor did she think she could trust any of them to do the job one-on-one. Steffen was one of the best, and he’d had a lot of respect from the others, but he was gone, evidently taken out by McGarvey — the fifty-year-old they all thought would be easy.

Yet as she turned that notion over she decided that one-on-one would be the only way of getting to him. With a woman’s touch.

Someone knocked softly at her door. She snatched her Glock 26 from the table and went barefoot across the room. She was dressed only in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, no bra.

“Wer ist es?” Who is it, she said, just above a whisper.

Someone downstairs was playing American country-and-western music, and the couple on the right were having their usual nightly row, but other than that the building was quiet.

“Felix,” a man said.

Felix Volker, one of her shooters — the crazy one. She recognized his voice.

She opened the door and let him in, locking it behind him. He had been drinking, his face a little flushed.

“Did you know that someone has been sitting in a VW across the street since twenty-one hundred hours?”

She turned and started for the front window.

“He just left,” Volker said. “But I think it was that BND officer who’s been sniffing around for the past few months.”

“The bastard who killed Dieter in Florida?”

“Maybe.”

Steffen’s name came into her head. It was possible that he wasn’t dead. It was possible that the CIA had made him talk. But if that had been the case, and the CIA had passed the information to the BND, the agency wouldn’t have simply sent one man down here merely to watch her. More likely he’d come to check out one of the Turkish or Greek immigrant families who lived in the neighborhood. They’d been causing a lot of problems over the past year and a half; that, along with the Muslim issue, was driving the government crazy.

“Did he spot you?” Pam asked.

“I don’t think so. But I think you better get the hell out of here tonight before he comes back. You can stay with me.”

Pam laughed. “You talk as fucking nuts as you look,” she said. “Get the hell out of here.” She turned away, but Volker grabbed her by the arm.

“When are we going to finish the job,” he demanded.

She tried to smash the butt of the small pistol into the side of his head, but he deflected the blow and grabbed her by the neck, squeezing hard.

Bringing the pistol around again, she jammed the muzzle into his temple and started to squeeze the trigger.

He released his grip and laughed. “Here we are, then, an impasse, when all I wanted was the green light to finish the operation, and maybe to fuck you.”

“I don’t like men.”

“I don’t like you,” he said. This time his laugh was low, but wild, crazy, and completely out of control. “But a piece of ass is a piece of ass. Even you.”

She lowered the pistol and laid it on the small table beside the door.

Volker tried to kiss her; his breath smelled of garlic and beer. She turned away and went to the small bed across from the window, took off her T-shirt, her back to him, then pulled off her jeans and panties and lay down.

“You want it, let’s get it over with, pig.”

“Fucking whore,” Volker said. He took off his trousers and shorts, but didn’t bother with his shoes or shirt.

She spread her legs for him, and they had sex, just about as rough as it had been with her ex, and just about as pleasurable. When he was done he got up and looked down at her.

“I’m sorry that I called you a whore,” he said. “At least they fake liking it.” He got dressed and at the door he looked back at her. “When do we go operational?”

“Soon,” Pam said, and he left.

She lay there for five minutes, a little sore, but not at all unhappy because she didn’t think Volker would give her any further trouble. Men were almost always so easy that way. It had been a hard lesson for her to learn when she was young.

Her encrypted cell phone rang. It was Gloria, her U.S. eyes and ears, and the only woman in the world with whom she had a real and lasting connection. They were sisters in a very large way, and depended on each other: Pam for information, and Gloria for what Pam promised she would do when the time was right.

“McGarvey has shown up in Islamabad.”

“How do you know?”

“We have someone on the ground — you know that. But there’s something else going on that no one can get a handle on. Someone else is already there, and the CIA and ONI and just about everyone else wants to know what the hell he’s doing there.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“He’s an arms dealer by the name of Poorvaj Chopra, works out of Karachi. But he flew to Islamabad a few days ago and booked a suite at the Serena Hotel. Thing is, no one has actually seen the guy. Driving everybody nuts.”

“What’s your point?”

“McGarvey showed up a little while ago with a woman who we think is a CIA operative. They checked into the Serena under the name Sampson and took a suite adjoining Chopra’s.”

As amazing as the extent of Gloria’s connections and her knowledge was, Pam found the gaps frustrating. It was like looking through a window partially covered by venetian blinds. She’d once explained that she was just one small part of a girls club mostly of frustrated wives: “We know lots of stuff, but not everything.”

“What else?”

“Another thing that doesn’t make any sense to me. McGarvey and the woman — I still haven’t found out her real name — took about the longest way possible to get to Islamabad. Three days from Washington. Not only that: they flew first-class all the way and the CIA didn’t pay for it; McGarvey did. It’s almost as if he wanted just about anyone who was interested to know he was on his way, and give them plenty of time to think about it.”

That’s exactly what he was up to. Pam saw it in a flash. “I have to go, luv, but keep me posted. Especially about this Chopra character. My guess is, he’s another CIA NOC in place over there to help McGarvey.”

“Have you done any more thinking about what I’m going through over here?”

“All the time, believe me. And as soon as I get this project straightened out you’re next on the list — and you know the reason.”

“I’m really counting on you,” Gloria said, and Pam could hear the desperation in her voice.

“I know,” she said.

She called Naisir and left a message on his voice mail, but it wasn’t until twenty minutes later after she’d booked her flight to Islamabad and had begun packing that he called back.

“Do you have news?” he asked.

“Yes. McGarvey showed up there with a woman — most likely a CIA operative. I think he’s there to meet a guy by the name of Chopra who’s probably a CIA NOC.”

“Where the hell did you get this?”

“Never mind that part. But I think that they must have taken Steffen alive and made him talk. It’s possible he knew your name and gave it up.”

“Bitch,” Naisir said softly. “Which would mean McGarvey, the woman, and the other bastard are here to take me down.”

“Are you aware that McGarvey and his broad are staying at the Serena in a suite adjoining Chopra’s?”

“We think Chopra is an arms dealer working out of Karachi.”

“Do you have him under surveillance?”

“No one has actually seen him. All we have to go on is one photograph.”

“Let me guess — it came from the CIA,” Pam said.

“Yes.”

“It’s a setup. Killing you on Pakistani soil could have a lot of unintended consequences for your people as well as for me and the operation. But if you were somehow to be discredited, maybe link your name with Chopra’s and maybe the CIA, you could be taken down by your own directorate.”

Naisir was silent for a long beat. When he came back he sounded unsure. “It may already be happening. Chopra made four calls — three to my home and one to my office.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No.”

“Are your people monitoring your telephones?”

“We got it from the CIA, who say they’re after Chopra as well, because the stuff he’s selling to the Taliban is being used to kill American ground troops as well as Pakistanis.”

“I’m on my way,” Pam said. “I can be there sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Naisir practically shouted.

“We’re going to set a trap for the three of them. Who knows, maybe the CIA will give you a medal. Crazier things have happened.”

THIRTY-SIX

Wolf was on suspended duty with pay pending an investigation into his actions in the United States and here in Germany. He’d been required to turn in his credentials and his weapon, but he’d not been restricted to his apartment in the quiet neighborhood of Dahlem, which was known as the university district — nor, so far as he’d been able to determine, had a tail been placed on him.

He sat in his VW Jetta parked a block from the Schlueter woman’s apartment where he’d been forced to move when one of the woman’s goons had shown up and went inside. The man, who Wolf was pretty sure was a guy named Volker, had stayed less than twenty minutes.

He’d probably come for orders, not trusting the phone, which could mean that the operation against the SEAL team was still in play.

Wolf lit a cigarette, a habit he’d taken up when his wife Renate had left him six months ago — for the second time — because she couldn’t live with his constant nights out and mysterious trips abroad for which he could give her no explanation. She’d discovered his pistol and several diplomatic passports in different names when he’d stupidly forgotten to close and lock his floor safe for just a few minutes when he went to take a shower after a trip.

“Are you some kind of a spy, then?” she shrieked, holding up the weapon and documents.

He’d taken them from her without a word and locked them in the safe.

“You bastard, answer me or I’ll take the boys, walk out the door and never come back.”

“I can’t,” he told her. “And you’re never to mention anything about this ever again.”

“Or what?” she shot back.

“My life could depend on it.”

She’d packed a bag that night, and moved in with her sister down in Potsdam. Three days later she’d called to apologize for her outburst and promised that she would never breathe a word about what she’d found.

“Then come back,” he said. “I miss you and the kids.”

“I can’t. I’d be forever listening for the phone to ring, someone calling to tell me that my husband had been shot to death by some unknown gunman in some unknown city in some unknown fucking country. Can’t you see, Wolfhardt, that I’m frightened?”

“Yes,” he’d said. “Can’t stop me from loving you.”

“Or I you,” she said. “We can still be friends. Maybe.”

“Of course. Dinner once in a while?” he’d asked, and she’d agreed.

This evening was to have been one of the dinners, but he’d canceled. He’d heard the disappointment and resignation in her voice, which had actually given him some hope that they might still get together again.

“Give me a call when you get back from wherever,” she said. “And take care of yourself.”

A taxi passed Wolf’s car and pulled up in front of Schlueter’s apartment. A moment later she came out carrying a small green overnight bag and got in the backseat. The cab immediately took off and Wolf followed it, not at all surprised twenty minutes later when it took the Stadtautobahn highway exit to the Tegel Airport, where it pulled up at the Terminal A departures entrance.

Wolf had kept his police placard, which he placed on the dash and parked across from where Schlueter got out.

When the cab left he hurried across the street and into the terminal, in time to see Schlueter queue up at the Air Berlin counter. He held back, but the line was short at this hour of the night. It took less than five minutes for her to reach one of the ticket machines and only two minutes to get her boarding pass. She headed down the broad hall to the gates.

He followed her at a discreet distance, pulling up when she showed her boarding pass and passport to the security agent and went through the screening process. As soon as she had disappeared down the corridor, Wolf pulled an envelope from his pocket and, cutting ahead of everyone else, rushed to the security agent.

“The woman with the green bag who just came through here forgot this,” he said.

The agent, an older man, shook his head. “May I see your boarding pass and identification, sir?”

“You don’t understand. I’m not flying tonight. But she needs this information.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot let you pass.”

“Damnit, you don’t understand.”

“I’ll have to call security.”

“How do I get this to her?”

“Go to the airline ticket counter; perhaps they can help.”

“But I don’t know which gate she’s boarding from,” Wolf said. He half turned away. “I’ll be skinned alive,” he muttered.

“Green suitcase?” the security officer asked.

Wolf turned back. “Yes.”

“Twenty-six. Have them send it there.”

“You just saved my life,” Wolf said, and he turned and headed back the way he had come, stopping at the first overhead monitor he came to that was out of sight of the security entry. Twenty-six was an Air Berlin nonstop flight to Abu Dhabi; it left in thirty-five minutes.

Outside he called McGarvey’s cell. It was answered on the third ring.

“Yes?”

“It’s Wolfhardt. I have some information for you.”

“Are you in Berlin?” McGarvey said.

“Yes, at Tegel. Schlueter is taking a flight to Abu Dhabi that leaves in a half hour. I think she’s on her way to Islamabad. Maybe you should contact someone there to watch out for her.”

“Pete and I are already here.”

“Could be that she and Naisir talked. And it could mean they’ve bought into the Chopra legend.”

“We’ve not seen any sign of it yet. But we’re going down to his safe house in Rawalpindi in a few hours, to see if anyone sits up and takes notice.”

“Don’t underestimate her and her people. One of them showed up tonight, and within a half hour she was out the door and on her way to the airport. Whatever he told her had to be significant. And I think she’s probably on her way to help Naisir.”

“With what?”

“I think she might know that you’re there, and why you’re there, and I think it’s possible that she’s been hired to deal with you, if for no other reason than retaliation for what you messed up in Norfolk.”

“If she knows that we’re here, she has to have an intel source in the CIA. No one else knows we left.”

“It could be anyone. Your rep is your worst enemy at this point.”

“We’ll look out for her,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime, you’re still a part of this operation as well. You took out one of her operatives in Florida, and if they have your name, they’re likely to come after you before they go ahead.”

“I hope someone tries. I want my creds back.”

“Watch your back,” McGarvey said.

“You too,” he said, and then pocketed his phone. As he stood waiting for the traffic to clear so he could cross the road to his car, he thought about laying everything out for Colonel Mueller. But he knew damned well that there’d be no chance of getting orders to go to Islamabad to help Mac. All that was left at this point was to do what Mac had advised, and watch his own back.

He took the Stadtautobahn back into the city and drove directly to Schueleter’s apartment building. As he pulled up at the curb a figure loomed up from the back floor and the muzzle of a pistol was placed almost gently on the back of his head.

“I thought you might come back here,” Volker said.

Wolf looked at the man’s face in the rearview mirror. “It’s a pretty big deal killing a federal cop. There’d be no hole deep enough for you to hide in. Except maybe a grave.”

“You used your cell phone at the airport. Who did you call?”

“My mother. It’s her birthday.”

“As you wish,” Volker said. “Let’s go then.”

“Where?”

“The parking garage at the airport where I left my car.”

Wolf slammed the gas pedal to the floor and took off with squealing tires. He figured his speed and erratic driving would make Volker hesitate to shoot and sooner or later attract the attention of some cop.

Squealing around a corner he narrowly missed a parked car when a thunderclap burst inside of his head.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Naisir stood on the balcony of his inner sanctum looking toward the park; there was very little traffic at this hour of the morning. He was nursing a Rémy and deep in thought, so when Ayesha came up behind him and brushed a finger across the nape of his neck, he practically jumped out of his skin.

“You scared me half to death,” he said, turning to her.

“I heard the phone. Who was it?”

“Schlueter. She knows that McGarvey’s here.”

“What’s her source?”

“She wouldn’t tell me, but she knows about Chopra. Thinks he’s a CIA NOC.”

Ayesha thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “If that’s to make any sense it would have to mean that the CIA is running some sort of an operation. Possibly against you because of the SEAL operation.”

“I thought the same thing. Problem is, I don’t have the proper resources to monitor McGarvey’s movements.”

Ayesha looked at him. From the beginning she’d had the ability to read his thoughts: from the expression in his eyes, she’d explained. “What else?”

“Schlueter is on her way here. She wants to help me set a trap for them.”

Again his wife hesitated a moment, lost in thought. “That also could make some sense, if it’s handled correctly. Afterward you could get rid of her.”

“The SEAL operation is still on. I’m not going to drop it now.”

“Kill her and hire someone else. Her people have only managed to take out two of the twenty-four, and you said yourself that they bungled the operation in Norfolk. There’re others out there willing to do the job.”

“But none with her motivation.”

“Allah save us from motivated people. They’re the ones who strap on suicide vests, which doesn’t make them exactly sane. Given the right push they could turn around and bite the hand that feeds them.”

“My orders are to eliminate Chopra even if he does work for the CIA.”

“Then do it.”

“He and McGarvey know each other. They’re in adjoining suites at the Serena.”

Ayesha turned and looked at the hideous German grandfather clock one of her sisters-in-law had given them. It was four. “Most of the hotel’s guests are asleep at this time of the morning. Go over there now, get a universal key from the night manager, and take care of the Indian. No one on the hotel’s staff will complain about letting on ISI officer in, nor will the death of a guest receive any publicity. And you won’t be in any trouble at work because it was exactly what you were ordered to do.”

“McGarvey’s right next door. And he brought another officer with him — a woman.”

“He’s an entirely different issue. But I have an idea that we can use the Schlueter woman to do the dirty work for you.”

“Killing two CIA officers in the hotel would be something entirely different.”

“I agree. Which is why you’ll lure him to the safe house. Use your contacts on the street. Someone who could help. And if by some chance he does manage to escape it will be because he and his woman have murdered two agents of the government of Pakistan in their pursuit of a woman who was responsible for the deaths of two American SEALs.”

“You’re devious,” he said, with admiration.

“It’s the years of business training from my father and uncles. Know your goal and do whatever it takes to achieve it. All other considerations are without merit.”

They went back to their bedroom where she laid out his jeans, a white shirt and black blazer. He loaded his 9mm Steyr GB, holstered it beneath his jacket, and pocketed the silencer tube, all in under fifteen minutes.

Putting on a robe she went down to the door to the rear courtyard where both their cars were parked — his a BMW 5-Series, hers a new Fiat 500 convertible in bright green.

“As soon as I dress I’ll drive down to the safe house and get it ready,” she told him.

“Come back here immediately, in case this develops sooner than I think it will.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Ayesha said. “Go with Allah.”

“And you,” he said and they embraced.

It was nearly five by the time he got to the hotel. He showed his credentials to the clerk at the desk and was immediately brought into the night manager’s office. The officious little man in a cutaway morning suit glanced at the ISI identification book.

“How may I be of service to the state?” the man, whose name tag read Suri, asked.

“I need a universal key card.”

“I can show you any unoccupied room that you wish to see.”

“I want a universal card that opens any door in the hotel.”

The night manager stood his ground. “That would be quite impossible.”

“A citizen of India is a guest here. If you are harboring a spy against the state and don’t want to cooperate, I will place you under arrest this minute. I have people who will find out from your own lips your involvement before breakfast.”

The manager paled visibly. “His passport was American.”

“Forged.”

Suri got an ordinary-looking plastic key card with the hotel’s name printed in English and Punjabi and handed it over. “I want no violence in my hotel.”

“Then I suggest that in the future you mind who you admit as a guest.”

“I must warn you, sir—”

Naisir stopped and gave the man a hard look.

“I mean to say that although Mr. Chopra — the gentleman I believe you are referring to — is a guest in this hotel he has not actually been seen by either me or any of the staff since he arrived on Monday.”

“How is that possible? He had to have checked in. Got his key, had his bags taken up.”

“His key was sent to the VIP lounge at the airport, and his bags were delivered that afternoon.”

“Has he slept in his bed, eaten in any of the restaurants?”

“He may have lain down on the couch, but the housekeeping staff isn’t sure.”

“He must be a spy,” Naisir said.

“If you say so, sir.”

The soaring ornately decorated lobby lounge beneath massive crystal chandeliers was open, but only one person was seated reading a newspaper and drinking a coffee at a small table. The man didn’t look up as Naisir crossed to the elevators. Nor did the desk clerk pay any attention.

On the fifth floor Naisir turned left. At Chopra’s suite he listened at the door for a moment or two. Hearing nothing, he withdrew his pistol and screwed the silencer on the threaded barrel; then unlocked the door and stepped inside.

The sitting room was in darkness, except for some light coming through the tall windows covered only in gauze drapes, and utterly silent.

The king-sized bed had not been slept in, nor did it seem to Naisir’s eye that the bathroom had been used. Naisir began to realize that Chopra was nothing more than a legend created by the CIA to distract him. Divide his attention, lead him to believe that his only enemy wasn’t McGarvey. Even General Bhutani had bought in to the story.

Unscrewing the silencer, pocketing it and holstering the pistol, he put his ear to the adjoining door but no sounds came from McGarvey’s room. It was even possible that he too was a phantom guest.

He called the hotel operator and had him call the Sampsons’ suite. After a moment the phone in the adjoining room began to ring. McGarvey answered on the third.

“Yes.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby lounge at seven,” Naisir said, and he hung up.

THIRTY-EIGHT

McGarvey went to the door and looked through the peephole just as a blurry figure passed by in the corridor. He waited a second and opened the door a crack in time to see Naisir round the corner into the elevator alcove.

Pete came to the bedroom door, a pistol in her hand. She was wearing nothing but a nightshirt down to just above her knees, her hair tousled. “Trouble?” she asked.

“Major Naisir tossed Chopra’s suite, just like we thought he would.”

“Was that him on the phone?”

“Yes. He wants to meet me in the lobby lounge at seven. Seems like he’s taken the bait.”

“Why didn’t you just kill him? We could have stashed his body in Chopra’s suite and bugged out on the first flight to anywhere. It’s why we came here, isn’t it?”

“I want to talk to him first. And then I want to talk to Schlueter.”

“You’re not going to get anything out of them.”

“We won’t know that until we talk to them,” McGarvey said.

“Okay, how do you want to play it?”

“Get dressed; then set up your laptop.”

Pete went back into the bedroom, and McGarvey called Otto on his cell phone. “Naisir’s taken the bait. He just left Chopra’s suite. He phoned and said he wants to meet me in the lobby lounge at seven. Gives us a couple of hours.”

“Was he alone?”

“He was when he passed my door.”

“He’ll have some muscle standing by, maybe even cops. They could arrest you guys for entering the country on fake passports, even though they’re diplomatic. But he doesn’t want that. He wants you dead.”

“That’s exactly what I want him to try, but it won’t happen this morning in the hotel. First, he wants to know what I know about the ISI’s involvement with Schuleter and the operation. He made a mistake coming after me in Berlin, and he knows it.”

“The guy’s motivated,” Otto said. “His boss is probably putting pressure on him to get the mess he created straightened out.”

Pete came out and set the laptop on the desk. She had put on a pair of jeans. Last night McGarvey had slept on the couch, on his insistence, and she promised not to flounce around half-naked. A sexual tension between them had begun to build the moment their plane had pushed away from the gate at Dulles.

McGarvey switched to speaker phone. “We have the laptop set up. Can you task a bird to take a look at Naisir’s safe house?”

“Already on it. In fact Louise set it up two days ago, one of our Jupiters. But she only uses it for three-second bursts out of every three minutes. She wants to minimize the chance that someone will notice that the bird isn’t doing what it’s supposed to be doing. For those three seconds the digital file will only show what happened beforehand. So far there’s been no activity down there. I’ll bring it up and check the last six hours or so, and then pull up the real-time images.”

“We’ll log on to your site,” Pete said.

“I’ll take care of it,” Otto told her.

A few seconds later the laptop came alive, and a house and courtyard behind tall walls appeared on the screen in a series of images that included the road that passed in front. It was like watching an extremely slow stop-action film, in which cars and a few people seemed to stream by at very rapid speeds. Six hours went by in about six minutes.

“Nothing,” Otto said. “I’m bringing it up in real time.”

The image on screen was the same, only enhanced by infrared. Two cars and a truck flicked past, and the sampling mode went to sleep for the next three minutes, only a static view of the safe house being transmitted.

Suddenly headlights flashed on the front gate and a car appeared.

Three minutes later the car was parked in the courtyard and a figure in dark clothes was at the door.

In the next three-second burst, one of the windows in the house was lit up.

They watched for another fifteen minutes, but nothing changed.

“Go back to the image of the person at the door and freeze it,” Pete said.

Otto brought it back and began enhancing it, first by centering on the person, then by enlarging it, and finally by adjusting the light scales, though it was difficult in the satellite’s infrared mode.

“It’s a person,” Pete said. “But I can’t tell much more than that.”

“Let’s see what one of my darlings can tell us,” Otto said. His darlings were his special analytical programs that he had developed over the past ten years or so. No one in the company really understood their algorithms; nevertheless many of its programs were at the heart of the agency’s computer system.

A series of markers on the figure showed up, followed by a series of alphanumeric strings along the right side of the screen.

“We’re pretty sure that it’s a slightly built woman. Height about one hundred seventy centimeters — makes her about five feet six.”

“Or a very small man,” Pete suggested.

“We can model the heat distribution,” Otto said. The figure of a person showed up on the screen. Its hips were somewhat prominent as well as its chest area.

“A butt and boobs,” Pete said. “Not much smaller than me and definitely a female. But who, and what the hell is she doing there?”

“Naisir’s wife. I got a grab of the rear license plate. Car’s registered in her name. She drove down to open up the place for her husband and possibly set some sort of a trap for you.”

“It had to have taken her a half hour to get there, which means he sent her down even before he came to the hotel,” McGarvey said. “He must have known that the Chopra legend was a ruse.”

“It also means that he’s expecting you to show up down there at some point,” Otto said.

“Not until sometime after our meeting at seven,” McGarvey said.

“I’ll get dressed,” Pete said and she went back into the bedroom.

“Keep an eye on the place. The moment anything changes let Pete know first, then me.”

“Take it easy, kemo sabe.”

“If this fully develops by the time Schlueter gets here, we may have to make a run for it.”

“I’ll work on it. But goddamnit, watch your ass.”

They took one of the service elevators down to the basement laundry room, and McGarvey went with Pete out the back way. She was going to walk past the loading dock, and once she was a block or so away from the hotel she would get a cab back to the airport, where she would rent another car.

“No fooling around,” McGarvey warned her. “If something doesn’t look right, get the hell out of there.

Pete nodded. “I’m a big girl.”

“Yes, you are. But this is badland, so watch your ass.”

THIRTY-NINE

Naisir went to the hotel’s business center on the mezzanine floor, empty at this hour of the morning, and telephoned a man he only knew by the Punjabi name of Gakhar, who was a dacoit, one of the more lucrative part-time jobs in Pakistan. By day most of them held ordinary positions as shopkeepers or taxi drivers or construction workers. During their off-hours, however, they moonlighted as professional bandits or enforcers.

He’d never actually met the man, or any of the dacoits, but Gakhar ran a string of part-timers, and Naisir called on him from time to time for jobs that the ISI or local cops didn’t want to handle.

The call was answered on the first ring. “Yes.”

“Do you know who this is?”

“Of course.”

“I need four bullyboys who have some brains.”

“When and for how long?”

“They would have to be in place within the next hour and remain possibly overnight. Will this be a problem?”

“None whatsoever, except for the price. I have four specialists in mind. Very strong, very good. They have no limits. What is the nature of the assignment?”

“It concerns one man and one woman, both of them professionals.”

“Professional what?”

“Let’s just say they are contractors who work for the CIA. Armed and very dangerous.”

“Is this to be a public execution, or can a place of privacy be arranged? The price will vary with the conditions, you understand this.”

“Of course,” Naisir said. As much as he would have liked to gun down McGarvey and the woman right here inside the hotel, or just outside on the street, in full view of dozens of witnesses to make a statement to the arrogant American government, he did not want to endanger his own position, nor did he want to jeopardize Retribution. “It will be at a place of complete privacy.”

“Tell me,” Gakhar said.

Naisir explained about the safe house in Rawalpindi. “I think that I can guarantee at least one of them will be there sometime within the next few hours. Probably the man, who in any case is our prime target.”

“And if it’s the woman instead? Shall we kill her?”

“I’d leave that to your discretion. She could be useful as a lure for the man.”

The phone was silent for several beats. “One hundred thousand U.S.”

“The bodies will have to be disposed of.”

“One hundred twenty-five thousand.”

“There will be no payment if it is just the woman alone.”

“One last thing, I must know who these people are, exactly.”

“I don’t know who the woman is, except that she works for the CIA.”

“But you know the man.”

“His name is Kirk McGarvey.”

“The former director of the CIA?” Gakhar demanded. He sounded impressed.

“Can you handle the job?”

“Yes, of course. The bodies will have to be taken to friends in the northwest, where their beheading will be taped for television. But there will be repercussions; you must also understand as much. The Americans will stop at nothing to find their murderers. There will be drone strikes up there, many of my friends will lose their lives. And if your involvement were to come out, even your life would be forfeit. So you will have to pay not only for the deed but for the collateral damage, as well as my discretion.”

“I don’t care how it’s done, but do understand me, Mr. Gakhar. My reach is longer than yours.”

“One million dollars.”

The amount took Naisir’s breath away. He had access to such amounts from the same black ops fund — ironically money from the Pentagon — that he was using to pay Schlueter. But questions would be asked, especially when the United States began its retaliatory raids, which were inevitable unless McGarvey and the woman were simply to disappear and Chopra was the one to have his head chopped off. The man was nothing more than a CIA legend, after all. His death would be the supreme irony.

“Agreed,” Naisir said. “But I have another idea.”

“I’m listening.”

And Naisir told him.

It was only a few minutes after six when Naisir, watching from the mezzanine balcony, spotted McGarvey getting off the elevator, crossing the now-busy lobby, and heading out the front doors. The woman wasn’t with him, but Naisir waited to see if she was covering his back. After a full minute when she didn’t show up, McGarvey appeared in the door and looked up to the mezzanine balcony.

Even at this distance, Naisir got the same shock of recognition he’d had in Germany. The man standing just inside the doors was a dangerous animal, far more deadly than anyone Naisir had ever met, or even knew of. And he instantly had the thought that no matter how many bullyboys Gakhar sent, they would be not enough.

McGarvey headed across to the lobby lounge, and Naisir took the stairs down, reaching the table just as McGarvey was ordering a coffee.

“You’re early,” Naisir said, sitting across from the American. He ordered a coffee, sweet.

“So are you, but then it pays to be cautious in our line of work.”

Naisir almost asked, what line of work, but he didn’t. “What are you doing in Pakistan?”

“I came to try to talk some sense into you. We know that you work for the ISI, of course, and that the twenty-four SEAL Team Six operators and their families have been targeted for assassination because of the raid in Abbottabad. And I want you to call it off before your involvement goes public and the White House is forced to react.”

“None of that is true, of course,” Naisir said evenly. He had the almost overpowering urge to pull out his pistol and shoot the smug bastard in the head here and now.

“You didn’t pull the trigger, of course, though you tried to have me taken out in Berlin. But your subcontractor, Pam Schlueter, has hired a team of specialists to do the job for you. We know this for a fact because we have one of them in custody, and he provided us with her name. And yours. So here I am.”

“Speculation.”

“I don’t work on speculation, Major,” McGarvey said. “So what’s next for us?”

“I reiterate that I am in no way involved in any attack against your military personnel in any theater, and demand that you and the woman you came here with leave Pakistan at once or I will have you both arrested.”

“I don’t think so. You were in Mr. Chopra’s suite a little while ago, so you know by now that he is a phantom. But your superiors still want you to bring him in, or more likely have him killed. Arresting or killing a former director of the CIA would be another thing. Something your government could not allow to happen.”

Naisir continued to hold himself in check. He hated this man more than he had hated any other man or thing, and he promised himself that he would make every effort to piss on the corpse after Gakhar’s men were finished and before they took it up north. “Leave within the next twenty-four hours or you’ll never get out of here alive.”

“That’ll give us plenty of time to meet Ms. Schlueter when she arrives. I’d like to have a little chat with her as well.”

Naisir jumped up, his heart pumping hard. “I can promise you one thing, you son of a bitch.”

McGarvey looked up at him. “Yes?”

“You will rot in hell,” was all Naisir could think to say, and he turned on his heel and stalked away, certain that the bastard American was laughing at his back.

FORTY

Naisir’s safe house was a plain two-story cinder block building that had once been painted white. It was protected by a tall wall, also of cinder block access through which was an iron gate off the street. This was a middle-class neighborhood of cab drivers, people who worked in shops or factories, people who made rugs, hammered silver, or worked construction. At this hour of the morning the narrow street was devoid of all but the occasional delivery van or bus.

Pete took one pass in the blue Chevy Aveo she’d rented at the airport and parked just around the corner in a spot where she could watch the front gate with the passenger side — door mirror.

She phoned Otto. “I’m in place.”

“Is that you in the Aveo at the corner?”

“Yes. Is the wife still inside?”

“She hasn’t moved, but she’s made three phone calls in the past hour. A pretty fair encryption system, Chinese I think, but I’ll have it shortly.”

“Any idea who she called?”

“No, but I’ll have that too.”

Pete checked the load on her pistol. She would have preferred something a little heavier, perhaps a Glock or a SIG, but the Walther in the 9mm version had some decent stopping power, even if fired with the suppressor attached. “Anything I should know about before I go calling?”

“It looks clear from my vantage point, but we don’t know much about the wife, except that she comes from a wealthy family.”

“Besides her husband’s connections she’ll have some of her own. But I want to know what she’s doing here.”

“Naisir just left the hotel, so he might be on his way down. But I think he sent her ahead to get the place ready.”

“For what?” Pete asked, even though she thought she knew the answer.

“For you and Mac to get there. For Schlueter to arrive. They figure that you guys will probably show up in the middle of the night, so they think they’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Do you think the cops will be here too, or maybe some muscle from the ISI?”

“No one official for now. They’ll want to keep this thing as quiet as possible while they decide what to do about the SEAL contract.”

“Now that we’re here, they can’t seriously be thinking about going ahead.”

“People have done crazier shit,” Otto said. “So watch yourself, and she’s just the guy’s wife, nothing more sinister, as far as we know.”

“As soon as you decrypt her phone calls let me know if trouble might be coming my way. Otherwise I’m just going to hold down the fort till Mac gets here.”

“Lots of stuff could go wrong, so maybe it’d be better if you waited for Mac no matter what happens.”

“I’m not going in to shoot it out with her, if that’s what you mean,” Pete said.

“That’s exactly what I meant, plus all the shit that we haven’t thought of yet,” Otto said. “One good thing on our side is that as far as I can tell there is no surveillance operation on the place. So you’re going in clean, although there might be someone else in the house with her. But I don’t think so.”

“I’ll find out,” Pete said.

She sat behind the wheel for a full minute watching the house and the neighborhood. Somewhere a dog was barking. A jet took off from the airport, which was only a couple of miles away. Nothing moved on the street, nor were there any people out and about, though she had the distinct feeling that she was being watched.

The iron gate swung open on its electric motor, which came as a surprise to Pete. She started the car, expecting to see Naisir’s wife drive out in her green Fiat convertible. When the woman didn’t come, Pete switched off the engine and walked across the street, where she stopped just at the gate.

Ayesha’s car was parked to one side in the narrow courtyard. Nothing moved, and after a couple of seconds Pete slipped inside and started across to the door.

The top of the wall was embedded with sharp spikes about eighteen inches tall set at three- or four-inch intervals, so climbing out of here would be just about impossible. For just a moment Pete thought about phoning Mac, but only the wife was inside, and as far as Otto had been able to determine the woman was not on the ISI’s payroll. Nor was she any sort of a agent for any other intelligence or law enforcement agency. She was nothing more than a housewife whose family happened to be wealthy.

Pulling her gun, Pete went the rest of the way to the door, which was unlocked. She pushed it open with the toe of her sneaker and paused for a moment to listen for any sounds from inside. But the house was quiet.

Stairs went up from a narrow vestibule. A corridor ran back to the rear of the house. She went to the second floor. Three doors led from the hallway, all of them closed.

Downstairs she paused again to listen for anything, the slightest noise that Ayesha was somewhere close. But the place remained silent, and Pete began to get a little spooked. Pointing the pistol down and away from her leg, she started along the corridor, careful to make absolutely no sound, trying to keep her breathing even, though her heart was racing.

The smart move would have been to turn around and find another way out of here till Mac arrived, but she kept telling herself that she was armed, and she’d faced worse situations working with him.

The end of the corridor opened to the right into a broad living area furnished in the Western fashion, with couches, wingback chairs, and a flat-screen LED television. Tall sliding glass doors faced a small garden backed by the rear wall that, like the one in the front, was topped with sharp metal spikes. Several small lime trees were in full bloom, but the rest of the garden looked as if it had been neglected for a long time.

Ayesha Naisir rose up from one of the wingback chairs that faced away from where Pete was standing. She was a short, slender woman with long black hair and wide dark eyes. Beautiful in an exotic way, even in jeans and a snow-white peasant blouse that revealed her bare shoulders, she smiled and stepped away from the chair, her tiny feet bare, her nails painted bright pink.

“I wondered who would show up first, you or Mr. McGarvey, though I really didn’t expect either of you until sometime tonight, or perhaps in the early morning,” she said. Her English was flawless with a hint of British accent.

“Who else is here with you?” Pete asked.

“No one, though my husband should be here soon. He called and said that he and Mr. McGarvey had a pleasant chat at the hotel, though the outcome was anything but.”

“Then I guess we’ll just sit down and have a little chat of our own while we wait for them to show up,” Pete said. She motioned toward the couch.

“It might be a little more complicated than that, I’m afraid,” Ayesha said. She came around to the coffee table in front of one of the couches and picked up what looked to Pete to be a television remote control, pushed a button, and then set it down.

Too late Pete realized it wasn’t a TV remote, but the control to close the gate.

Ayesha came forward and Pete raised the pistol.

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“If need be.”

“Then you would be in very grave trouble,” the woman said, stopping an arm’s length away.

Pete pointed the pistol at the woman’s head. “Your husband has hired a team of assassins to kill twenty-four American servicemen in the United States, along with their wives and children. They’ve already murdered two of them, so it isn’t I who am in trouble. It’s your husband and the government he represents.”

“Twenty-four soldiers who violated my country’s borders to conduct an illegal raid and murder several people.”

“Terrorists.”

“Like you, in my home with a pistol pointed at me,” Ayesha said, a little color coming to her cheeks. “Why are you here?”

“To find out the truth,” Pete shot back. “To stop the murders.”

“You’ve told me that you and Mr. McGarvey already know the truth. Go home before it is too late.”

“It’s already too late,” Pete said. She stepped forward and jammed the muzzle of the silencer into Ayesha’s forehead, just as her phone rang and someone came down the corridor.

FORTY-ONE

McGarvey ordered a car with a GPS from the concierge, who apologized, saying that it would take thirty minutes to arrive. Naisir had obviously flashed his ISI credentials to the manager, so the entire staff was on edge, though if he’d said anything negative about the two Americans, it wasn’t apparent in their attitude except that everyone was ultracareful.

He went back to their suite, where he tried to call Pete, but the phone switched to a recording that his call was being forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

Otto called at that moment. “Pete’s in trouble.”

“I just tried to call her. But her phone switched to voice mail.”

“An old Lexus showed up down the street from the safe house, and in the next pass it was in the compound and four guys were getting out.”

“Goddammit,” McGarvey said. He was afraid of something like this. “Was Naisir with them?”

“I don’t think so. These guys were a lot larger than him. But I got the car’s tag. I’m running the registration now.”

Switching the phone to speaker, he laid it on the bed and got his pistol, the silencer, the spare magazines, and the small bricks of Semtex and fuses. “I want to know when Naisir arrives.”

“The Lexus is registered to Zeeshan Manzoor Sial Import/Exports. Hang on.”

Mac holstered the pistol, put on his lightweight black blazer, and pocketed everything else. All that was left in the suite was their overnight bags, a few bits of spare clothing, and their toiletries kits. He didn’t think they’d be back for any of it.

“I’m not coming up with any actual import or export license applications, but they maintain an account under that name at the Habib Bank AG Zurich in Rawalpindi. I’ve not cracked it yet, but their business credit cards are platinum. I think I’ll go to Zurich and see if it’ll be easier to get in.”

“Any connection with the ISI?”

“None that I’ve found so far. My gut feeling is these guys are the city version of the dacoits — bandits, enforcers, tough guys who originally started out in India and Myanmar. They’ll work for anyone with money — and they’ll do anything from robbing trains, to raping your neighbor’s daughter if you get into a feud.”

“Kidnapping and murder?”

“Yeah. And they have a reputation of being good at what they do.”

“What’s your confidence level?”

“That they’re dacoits? Ninety percent. I’ll have it nailed in a couple of minutes. But listen, Mac, if you go barging in there right now with the four of them on site, plus Naisir’s wife, and very likely Naisir himself within the next twenty minutes or so, there’ll be a bloodbath, and there’s no guarantee you or Pete will come out of it in one piece.”

“You’re right, but I am going to take a quick pass.”

“And then what?”

“I’m going to do exactly what they’re expecting me to do. Wait until the middle of the night and then hit them.”

The line was silent for a longish moment or two. “By then Schlueter will most likely be there. Seven-to-one odds.”

“Actually seven-to-two with Pete. And they’ll be overconfident.”

“Shit,” Otto said. “One of these days you’re going to make a mistake.”

“Not today,” McGarvey said. “Soon as Naisir shows up let me know.”

Again Otto was silent for a second or two. “No way I can talk you out of this?”

“I’m not leaving Pete there.”

“They won’t do anything to her; it’s you they want.”

“That’s right. And I’m not going to disappoint them.”

“Shit.”

The car turned out to be a chocolate-brown Mini Cooper, with the bigger engine and twin pipes, plus a portable GPS unit suction-cupped to the windshield. McGarvey plugged the address of Naisir’s house in the city into the unit. When he arrived, he parked across the street.

Traffic was thick downtown, but orderly, and the impression that he got was of a carefully managed, almost squeaky-clean city, reminiscent in some ways of a Swiss town but with an Islamic flair.

He walked across the street and rang the bell at the front gate. An older man in jeans and a white shirt buttoned at the collar answered the door.

“I’d like to speak to Major Naisir,” McGarvey said in English.

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Mr. McGarvey.”

“Yes, sir. I will tell the major that you called. Most unfortunately he is not presently at home.”

“When do you expect him or Mrs. Naisir?”

“I couldn’t say.”

He drove over to the government section, where he slowly passed the Pakistan Secretariat buildings on Constitution Avenue. Then he turned around at the bus station and passed the parliament building, the National Library, the Supreme Court, turning on Bank Road. He followed it into the diplomatic section, where he parked in front of the German embassy.

If he had picked up a tail he hadn’t spotted it, but he was pretty sure that Naisir had instructed the hotel staff to keep an eye on his activities. They would have reported the car to whatever number they had been given. In addition he’d spotted surveillance cameras on the roofs of all the government buildings, including the German embassy’s. If they were watching, they knew where he was. It was even likely that the delay in delivering the car had given the ISI time to plant a GPS tracker. Which was exactly what he wanted.

He got out of the car and sat down at a bench twenty yards away, well out of the range of any listening device that also may have been planted. He telephoned the U.S. embassy and was immediately connected with Don Simmons, the CIA’s chief of station.

“Mr. Director, I was hoping that you wouldn’t be calling me, but I’m not surprised that you have.”

When McGarvey had briefly served as the DCI, Simmons had worked as assistant COS in Cairo. They had met once at headquarters, and again in London at a joint intelligence services conference, where the topic of discussion was the Middle East, which everyone had agreed even then was on the verge of a meltdown. He’d seemed to be a no-nonsense career officer with a limited sense of humor. The work of the CIA was serious business.

“I need to get in touch with Milt Thomas.”

“I’ll not involve my staff in any clandestine operation you’ve come here for.”

“Nor am I asking for it. I’d simply like him to watch for someone coming in on an Air Berlin flight this afternoon. Routine. As far as I’m concerned he can even report it to his police contact.”

“And then what?”

“Give me a call and let me know.”

“And then what?”

“Nothing.”

Simmons hesitated, but then gave McGarvey a phone number. “If you get yourself into any trouble with the police or the ISI, you’re on your own.”

McGarvey broke the connection and phoned Thomas, who answered immediately in Punjabi.

“I need a favor,” McGarvey said.

“You’ll have to clear it with Don,” Thomas said in English.

“Already have. I want you to meet an Air Berlin flight this afternoon. See if a woman gets off, and see what she’s carrying and who, if anyone, meets her.”

“How will I know who she is?”

“I’ll send you a couple of photos from my cell phone.”

“Do I need to tail her?”

“Depends on who she meets or doesn’t meet. But listen up: be careful. This woman is very good, and if Major Naisir is the one to meet her, back off immediately.”

“I hear you,” Thomas said. “Give me the details.”

FORTY-TWO

The neighborhood around the safe house was quiet. It normally was at this hour on a weekday because there were no food or craft stalls here, no restaurants or coffee shops. Nevertheless, Naisir approached with a great deal of caution. His technical department had called with the information from the hotel about the Mini Cooper, and already the calls were filtering in from surveillance cameras in the political section of the city about the American’s presence.

“He just finished speaking with someone on his cell phone,” Sergeant Salarzai reported. He worked in Naisir’s section, and in the few months he’d been at that position he had proved to be a very capable aide. He was one of the few men in the directorate whom Naisir trusted.

“Who did he phone?”

“We don’t know. He parked in front of the German embassy and sat on a bench. It’s all we have, except that he made two calls, both of them brief.”

“Where is he now?”

“Sitting in his car in Jinnah Park not far from your house. He entered a specific address in his GPS, in Rawalpindi, but he drove to the park instead.”

Naisir had parked down the block from the safe house, and he instinctively looked in the rearview mirror. “Let me know when he moves.”

“Yes, sir. Can you tell me the operational code so that I can log my activities?”

“Later,” Naisir said. “Just keep me informed.” He phoned Ayesha.

“We have company,” she told him.

“The woman?”

“Yes. She had a gun pointed at me, but your four contractors arrived just in time. Everything here is under control. Where are you?”

“Just outside. But McGarvey will show up just as I thought he would.”

“Early?”

“I don’t think he’ll try anything until tonight.”

“I’ll open the gate for you,” Ayesha said.

By the time he got to the end of the block the gate had swung open; he drove inside and parked next to his wife’s Fiat and the Lexus. There wasn’t a third car, which meant the woman who’d traveled with McGarvey had come in on foot. He’d passed an Aveo parked around the corner — or at least what was left of the American compact car — it had been stripped of its wheels and just about everything else easily removable. Pakistanis were an enterprising people.

Ayesha met him at the door and they embraced. “I think the woman would have shot me,” she said.

A chill hand gripped his heart, thinking about what might have happened. “You should not have come here.”

“Nonsense. A wife’s place is in support of her husband.” She came outside and closed the door, out of earshot of the others in the house. “Whatever you think of women in general, do not underestimate the one who came with McGarvey. Even the four dacoits you hired have been unable to intimidate her, and they are very hard men.”

“What has happened?”

“She had a cell phone, so obviously she and McGarvey have talked. He knows that she’s here.”

“That’s the whole point,” Naisir said. “I want to use her as a bargaining chip; she’s of no other use to me.”

“And she knows it. She refuses to call McGarvey.”

“There are methods.”

Ayesha shook her head. “If you mean torture, I don’t think they’ll work.”

“Anyone can be made to talk.”

“Not this one, Ali.”

“What makes her so special?”

“I’d bet anything that she is in love with McGarvey. And a woman in love will endure anything for her man.”

“Including dying?”

“Yes, including dying.”

“We’ll see,” Naisir. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs in the inside bedroom.”

One of the dacoits was leaning against the wall at the foot of the stairs. He was very large for a Pakistani, towering six inches above Naisir and easily weighing two hundred pounds. His face was broad, his eyes very dark, with five days’ growth of whiskers on his face. He wore jeans and a faded dungaree shirt, a scarf around his neck, very Western. And he looked angry.

“What do I call you?” Naisir asked.

“Sipra will do.”

“Where are the others?”

“Jat and Mashud Khel are upstairs watching the front and rear approaches, and Swati is in the living room waiting to begin.”

“Probably nothing will happen until sometime tonight. In the meantime I may have another job of work for you. Something perhaps a bit more pleasant.”

The dacoit shrugged indifferently.

“Give me just a minute with her, then bring up her cell phone and two glasses of brandy,” Naisir told his wife.

“Don’t forget what I told you.”

“Not to worry. We’re just going to have a nice chat,” Naisir said, and he went upstairs to the bedroom whose door was closed. It was the one room on the second floor without a window, used occasionally for interrogations. Knocking once, he went in.

Pete was sitting on the floor, her back propped against a wall. She looked up but said nothing.

“The bed would be more comfortable,” Naisir told her.

“I hate bedbugs. Filthy creatures. Just like this shit hole of a country.”

Naisir didn’t bother reacting. “What do I call you?”

“Doris Sampson; it’s the name on my passport. Or ma’am.”

“You came in with Kirk McGarvey, both of you under false passports. For that you could be arrested and put on trial.”

“Please do.”

“First I would like you to phone Mr. McGarvey and tell him your situation. I’d like to sit down and have a serious conversation with him.”

“No.”

“Just one brief phone call.”

“No.”

Ayesha came in with the phone and two snifters of brandy.

Naisir held out the phone to Pete, but she refused to take it. He handed her a brandy, which she took. She then poured it on the floor and handed the glass back.

“Have Sipra come up here,” he told his wife.

She went out in the corridor and called for the dacoit to come upstairs.

“A simple telephone call, and we will leave you alone. You have my word.”

Pete looked up at him, a small smile on her lips.

Sipra showed up, very large in the doorway. Naisir handed him the cell phone. “I want her to call Mr. McGarvey. If she refuses, rape her. Maybe she’ll change her mind after all.”

Pete jumped up. “Wait,” she said.

Naisir looked at her indifferently. “No,” he said, and he walked out.

FORTY-THREE

McGarvey parked at the bus station a couple of blocks from Naisir’s safe house. He picked up the portable GPS unit and tossed it in the back of a pickup truck as it passed by, then went over to the taxi queue and climbed in the backseat of a cab.

“Where may I take you, sir,” the driver asked politely in English.

“I’m not sure of the address but I think it’s close,” McGarvey said, and he gave him the directions he’d taken from the GPS.

It was after lunch already, and although McGarvey hadn’t eaten since last night, he wasn’t hungry, thinking about Pete. She was a well-trained capable officer, but her specialty was interrogation, not field work. He found that he was beginning to admire her, even though he was worried about her safety.

Just as they passed the safe house the gate opened. A Mercedes shot out of the compound and drove off in the opposite direction, Naisir at the wheel.

Around the corner, they came to a narrow garbage-strewn alley that snaked its way between a dozen buildings to the rear of the safe house. The lane was far too narrow for the cab, and they passed it.

“I think I got the wrong directions. Take me back to the bus station, please,” McGarvey said.

“Can you say the house number?” the driver asked.

“No. I was just given directions.”

Back at the bus station, McGarvey paid the driver and walked around the corner to a bustling tea shop, where he got a table on the sidewalk and ordered sweet tea. Ten minutes later his phone vibrated. It was Milt Thomas.

“The woman came in early,” he said. “I was waiting to pick up another fare when I spotted her coming out of the terminal. For just a second I thought that I might be able to pick her up, but she just got into a Mercedes that was waiting for her.”

“Did you recognize the driver?”

“Major Naisir,” Thomas said. “But he didn’t seem happy to see her. If you want me to follow them I might be able to catch up.”

“No, but I might have another problem this evening that I’ll need help with. It’s something I want to keep local.”

“Outside of Langley’s purview?”

“Especially Langley’s, and Don’s.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Naisir’s got a safe house here, just around the corner from the bus station. His wife and four men we think are dacoits are already there. It’s where Naisir is bringing the woman he met at the airport.”

“They’re expecting a war.”

“Which I’m going to give them,” McGarvey said. “But I’m facing two problems. The first is that Pete is already there and I haven’t heard from her since this morning.”

“They know that you’re coming and she’s the bait. I don’t know if I can round up some muscle in time, or quietly, but I can come down there and help out.”

“We have to keep the CIA out of it, at least officially. But that’s going to be my second problem. Once I’m done Pete and I will need to get out of the country in a big hurry, and the airport won’t be an option, unless you can arrange a private charter for us.”

“There are six contractors working for Executive Solutions scheduled to fly out at midnight. I think I can hold the plane if you’re later than that, and there won’t be any questions. These guys have been kicked out of the country. Nobody wants them here, not us or the Pakis. So no one will be around to check papers, especially with a couple of extra people.”

“That’ll work.”

“I’ll pick you up, but I’ll need to know where.”

“At the safe house or very nearby.” He gave the GPS directions.

“Will there be any cops or ISI muscle?”

“He’s using dacoits, so I don’t think he wants to involve anyone official. He’s on his own here, just like Pete and I are. And I’m counting on his being overconfident in numbers.”

“One thing, Mr. Director, you’re not bulletproof.”

“Never have been,” McGarvey said.

“How will I know when to come in?”

“I’ll let you know, or Otto will. He has a sky bird watching the place, and he’ll know when something goes down. But stay loose and no more than five minutes out.”

“There’s a tea shop just around the corner from the bus station.”

“I’m there now.”

“Last question, then. How are you planning on getting inside?”

“I’m going to ring the doorbell.”

“Are you sure that you don’t want some extra muscle?.”

“Other than a ride out to the airport, I want you to stay out of this. If you get involved, the CIA is involved, and the White House would come down on the entire Islamabad station like a ton of horseshit. We don’t need that right now.”

“I hear you,” Thomas said.

Mac called Otto and brought him up to speed. “Schlueter’s plane got in early and Naisir went to pick her up.”

“I wondered where he got himself to in such a hurry. Were you in the cab when he came out?”

“That was me. Anything going on at the house?”

“Everything’s quiet. Too quiet. I tried to turn on Pete’s phone to listen in, but they took the battery out of it. If you could get Don Simmons to send a technical team down I could have them set up some surveillance equipment in the house next door — it’s empty.”

That was going to be Mac’s next question, but he hadn’t hoped for that kind of luck. “Which house? Which side?”

“The east side. The one with a common wall. You could get in from the roof. There’s only a low barrier separating the two.”

McGarvey had spotted the house, but he’d had no way of knowing whether anyone was living there. “They’ll be expecting something like that. But I’ll use it as a backup route on the way out.”

“Okay, Mac, exactly how are you planning on getting in?” Otto asked.

“As soon as Naisir shows up with Schlueter, I’m going to walk over and ring the doorbell.”

“They’ll kill you on sight.”

“They want to know what I know. It’s why Schlueter showed up. They want me there, but they want to talk to me first.”

“Shit,” Otto said.

“If you see something going down and I haven’t called, send Milt Thomas in. He’s standing by to pick us up and take us out to the airport. But only if there are no cops or anyone else nosing around.”

“Shit.”

“You already said that.”

FORTY-FOUR

Naisir’s wife had sent the big man away and then had left herself. That was fifteen minutes ago, and Pete had explored the small room, especially the ceiling tiles, looking for a way out. But the place was tight. And probably soundproof if Naisir used it for extrajudicial interrogations.

Someone came to the door and Pete sat down on the floor in the same spot as before, in time for Ayesha to come in.

“Last chance,” Naisir’s wife said.

“Why did you stop him from raping me?”

“I thought that I would give you a little time to think about your situation, and then we could talk together, simply as two women.”

“Kirk knows that I’m here and he understands the situation.”

“You trust him,” Ayesha said it as a statement, not a question.

“Yes. And just so you know, he has never once in his career failed at anything.”

Ayesha smiled faintly. “Except at his marriage.”

Pete resisted the urge to get up and take the woman apart. “Someone killed his family. All of them. He’ll do the same here.”

“Be that as it may,” Ayesha said. “I put the battery back in your cell phone.” She tossed it across. “Call him. Tell him that all we want to do is talk.”

“Which is why you hired at least the one dacoit.”

Ayesha shrugged. “If you know about them, then you understand the seriousness with which my husband takes the mess you created.”

“Of your husband’s doing. He’s paymaster for an operation to kill some of our military personnel.”

“Who violated our national borders and murdered innocent civilians.”

“Terrorists who ordered the violation of our borders and killed almost three thousand civilians — some of them Muslims,” Pete shot back. “We won’t forget.”

“Neither will we.”

Pete switched the phone on but then set in on the floor. Unless the room was shielded from electronic eavesdropping, it was possible that Otto would pick up the signal.

“You will not telephone Mr. McGarvey?”

“No.”

Ayesha stared at her for a long time before she turned and left. But she did not close the door.

A moment later Sipra came in and stood watching her, a smile on his thick lips.

Pete got to her feet and circled around to the right, away from the narrow cot, toward the wooden table with two chairs.

“You had your chance,” Sipra said in heavily accented English.

“So do you. Just turn around and walk away.”

The big man laughed, the sound rumbling deep inside his chest.

She figured that she had one chance, and it was a long shot considering the difference in their sizes. She stopped and spread her hands. “Let’s get it over with, pig. That is, if you think you’re man enough. But then you’ve been kissing so much ass all your life to make a few rupees by beating up people that no woman would look twice at you.”

His complexion deepened, and he started toward her. He was surprisingly light on his feet, which was worrisome.

Pete feinted left, then right again on the balls of her feet, gliding like a boxer in a ring.

He didn’t try to cut her off, instead he stopped in the middle of the room so that whichever way she moved he would only have to step forward to reduce her radius of free space.

She suddenly leaped directly at him, ducking to the left just inside his reach. Her intention was to get on his right side, beneath his hands, and slam a fist into his kidney, maybe slow him down until the opportunity to do what she wanted opened up.

It was like hitting a concrete block, and she saw his left hook coming overhand at the side of her face at the last moment. She could only rear back, throwing her head to the side as his fist landed just above her temple.

She was thrown to the floor, dazed, her stomach roiling, on the verge of vomiting, her head spinning, flashes of light in her eyes.

He ripped the waistband of her jeans open, and, grabbing her legs, he flipped her over on her stomach and pulled her pants and panties down around her ankles.

This wasn’t happening! She felt completely helpless, a roaring sound filling her ears.

She looked over her shoulder, as he pulled one leg of her jeans off her ankle, and pulled his trousers down around his knees.

“No,” she cried.

As he fumbled with his underwear, she managed to scoot away from him. He grabbed for her, but she heaved herself up on his broad back, grabbed the scarf tied around his neck with both hands, and with her knees in the small of his back pulled with all of her might, twisting her right hand over her left.

He bucked, trying to dislodge her, but her fingers were locked into the scarf, like the reins of a bronco.

He tried to reach up behind his back to grab her and pull her away, but each time she managed to get out of his reach, while still holding tight to the scarf, restricting his carotid artery, stopping the blood flow to his brain.

It seemed like forever before his movements became less violent. Finally he slumped forward on his purple face.

She kept the pressure on with every ounce of her strength until he gave a last shudder. She released her grip, her fingers cramped, every muscle in her body screaming for relief.

Slowly she climbed off him, got to her feet, and pulled up her panties and jeans.

After what seemed like another eternity, her senses came back into focus like a great whooshing coming down around her head.

She checked the corridor, but no one was coming. She went back to the body and searched it, but out of some sense of caution he wasn’t carrying a weapon.

Picking up her phone she called Otto, who answered even before she entered the last number.

“Are you okay?” he demanded. He sounded breathless.

“Did you hear it?”

“Yes. What happened?”

“The son of a bitch tried to rape me, so I killed him.”

“Mac’s on his way. Can you get somewhere safe?”

Pete looked up as one of the other dacoits appeared in the doorway.

FORTY-FIVE

In his Mercedes leaving the airport Naisir was angry with Schlueter for coming back to Pakistan like this, and even more angry with himself for allowing the situation to get so out of hand.

“Why the hell did you come here?” he demanded. He glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure they hadn’t picked up a tail.

“To deal with McGarvey,” Pam said. “He’s still here, isn’t he, or have you already taken care of the problem?”

“I met with him this morning at the hotel. He knows about my safe house, and I’m sure that he’ll show up sometime tonight or early in the morning.”

“The bastard screwed up everything in Norfolk,” Pam said. She was angry too. But all of a sudden she looked at him. “How can you be so sure?”

“He brought a woman with him, and we have her now.”

“She’s a CIA officer. He might cut her loose.”

“They came in as husband and wife, and my wife is sure that she’s in love with him.”

Pam shook her head. “You involved your wife? What the hell were you thinking, Major? Don’t you have any conception how dangerous this guy is? If and when he shows up he means to kill you. And if your wife gets in his way he’ll kill her too.”

Naisir glanced in his rearview mirror again.

“Damn, you’re expecting him to come up on your six. You better hope he doesn’t, because I can tell you something else. He’ll not only come after you; he’s already put a plan in place to get out of the country afterward.”

“He won’t live that long. I can guarantee that. I’ve hired four guys who know what they’re doing.”

“Dacoits,” Pam said disparagingly. “Shopkeepers.”

“These ones are special. There’s no way he’s going to get around them.”

“Unless he gets to us before we reach your safe house,” Pam said. “Are you armed?”

“Of course.”

“Did you bring something for me?”

“In the glove box.”

She took out a bulky Austrian-made 9mm Steyr GB, checked that there was a round in the chamber, and checked the eighteen-round magazine to make sure it was fully loaded. The gun had been decocked so it was in its safe mode. “It’d be poetic justice to kill the bastard with this,” she said. “The American Army Special Forces used to carry it.”

“You’re not going to kill him, and neither am I. We’ll leave that to the dacoits, who’ll also dispose of his body up north.”

“Unnecessary.”

“He was the director of the CIA, for the sake of Allah. The government of Pakistan does not kill such men. The ISI simply cannot do it, which is why I hired the dacoits. They’re outlaws who don’t care about the law — religious or secular.”

“You hired me to do a job because I’m not a Pakistani. Let me do this now so I can get on with the mission.”

Naisir maneuvered through traffic, his thoughts spinning in a dozen different directions, among them his future with the ISI; he’d once entertained the notion that someday he would rise far enough in rank that, along with his wife’s connections, he would become the head of the agency. It was still possible, especially if such a spectacular mission as eliminating the SEAL Team Six operators who’d taken out bin Laden were to come to complete fruition. Yet that operation, if it went wrong, could doom him and Ayesha to a prison somewhere, or even an assassin’s bullet, despite her family.

“You should not have come,” he said at length. “I have the situation under complete control.”

“I’m here, and I want to meet him.”

“As you wish.”

One block out Naisir called his wife to let her know he was close, but she didn’t answer until the third ring, and his gorge rose.

“We’ve had some trouble,” she said, and she sounded out of breath.

“Is it McGarvey? I’m just around the corner.”

“No. It’s the woman. She murdered Sipra. The others want to take her apart, but I convinced them to wait until you arrived. But the situation won’t remain stable for much longer.”

“Open the gate.”

The gate opened as Naisir came down the street, and he drove into the courtyard, the gate immediately closing behind him. Ayesha met him at the door.

“It was your foolish order to have her raped,” she said. She was agitated. And she eyed Pam. “What are you doing here? We don’t need you.”

“I think you do.”

Jat, the smallest of the four dacoits was waiting in the hall. The look on his face was neutral.

“Where is the woman?” Naisir demanded.

“This is not what we contracted for.”

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs. Swati is guarding her. We demand that she be eliminated immediately.”

“You demand nothing,” Naisir said.

The dacoit looked at Pam and Ayesha, and his expression darkened. “This is not right.”

Naisir turned to start up the stairs, but his wife put a hand on his arm. “There is a further complication,” she said. “I put the battery back in her phone and gave it to her. I wanted to try one last time to make her see reason and call off McGarvey.”

Naisir held his temper in check. He and Ayesha had had their differences, but he could not honestly remember the last time they’d argued or been cross with each other. She’d grown up with five older brothers, and that pressure, added to her privileged upbringing, had made her a fighter. She was an intelligent, tough, opinionated woman — not without loving kindness and gentleness — but a backbone of pure steel when the need arose.

“She is a trained CIA agent. You should not have done that.”

“Nor should you have ordered her rape.”

“Stay here,” he told his wife. “And you too,” he told Pam.

Upstairs Swati was standing in the open doorway to the front bedroom.

Naisir dismissed him, but it took the man forever to finally turn around and leave, an expression of insolence and even hate on his face. He and the others wanted blood.

Pete was seated on the floor, talking to someone on the phone.

Naisir pulled out his pistol as he strode across the room to her and placed the muzzle against her forehead. “Give me the telephone.”

Sipra’s body had been removed, but the table and one of the chairs were overturned, and there was a light brown stain on the wood floor.

“Got to go,” Pete said. She ended the call and handed up the phone. “The last guy who tried to kill me didn’t end up so good.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“You wouldn’t know him.”

“McGarvey?”

“Actually, no. So how about either pulling the trigger or taking the fucking pistol out of my face?”

FORTY-SIX

Milt Thomas parked his taxi across the street from the tea shop and walked over to where McGarvey was seated. Just at that moment, Otto phoned.

“I just finished talking to Pete,” Otto said. “The body of the dacoit she killed was removed, and a second one was guarding her when Naisir showed up.”

“Exactly where is she?”

“I got a good fix before Naisir took the phone and yanked the battery. She’s in an upstairs room in the middle of the building, with no outside wall. But before she disconnected she told me that she was sure she heard at least two other voices downstairs, which confirms what we already knew. In addition to Naisir and his wife, there were four dacoits — three of them now — plus the Schlueter woman. All of them are most likely armed, but they’re going to want to know what we know before they do anything.”

“If they get the chance,” McGarvey said. “Milt’s here with his cab. Soon as I get Pete out, we’ll make our way back here and then out to the airport.”

“You’re not going to wait until tonight?”

“They’ll be expecting me to wait until then. I’m going now. Call if you see trouble coming our way.”

“If he was going to call the cops or some of his own people he wouldn’t have hired the dacoits, nor would Schlueter have shown up. They want you and Pete dead, after which they’ll get rid of your bodies somewhere up in the mountains. It’d be hard to convince anyone that you hadn’t just vanished into thin air. Maybe a kidnapping by rebels that went bad,”

A waiter came and Thomas ordered a sweet tea.

McGarvey got to his feet. “Unless something goes wrong, Pete and I should be back here before you finish your tea.”

“What if something does go wrong?”

“Walk away from it. Otto will know what to do.”

Thomas nodded. “Good luck, Mr. Director.”

It took about six minutes for Mac to make it around the corner and to the end of the short block halfway down which was Naisir’s safe house. A small pickup truck trundled by, but the neighborhood remained deserted, even though he got the distinct feeling that someone was watching him.

Crossing the street, he took one of the bricks of Semtex out of his pocket, and when he reached the safe house he used the adhesive strip to attach it to the gate just below the top hinge. He inserted an electric fuse into the explosive, setting the timer for ten minutes, then rang the doorbell.

FORTY-SEVEN

A large black bird flew overhead at the same time the sun was covered by a small cloud, and the gate swung open with a slight squeal of metal on metal. For just an instant McGarvey was half-convinced the three things were a sort of omen. Pakistan was an evil place.

But he didn’t believe in such things. He had come here initially to kill Naisir or at the very least talk him into pulling the financing from Schlueter. But now he was here simply to rescue Pete. Nothing else was on his immediate agenda. Everything else — stopping the attacks against SEAL Team Six and exacting revenge for the two and their families who had already been murdered — would have to come later.

He’d had nightmares about these kinds of scenarios for most of his adult life. Every woman he’d come to care for, including his wife and daughter, had been killed because of him. Because of what he did. Because of who he was. Who he worked for. The operations he’d carried out.

He started across the courtyard where the BMW, the Fiat, and the Lexus were parked in a row and thought about the people inside: what they wanted, and what they were willing to do to get it. That and their arrogance would be their downfall.

The battered metal front door, its paint chipped, swung inward and Naisir was there, an Italian-made 12-bore Franchi SPAS 12 antiriot shotgun in his right hand, the muzzle pointed at McGarvey.

“You’re sooner than we expected.”

“Ordering one of the dacoits you hired to rape the woman I came with changed everything, Major. Hand her over to me and we’ll walk away.”

“This morning you told me that you wanted to have a talk with Ms. Schlueter.”

“That’ll have to wait. All I want now is an exchange.”

Naisir smiled faintly. “Exchange for what? I have both of the women here.”

“Exchange for your life.”

“You arrogant bastard,” Naisir said, and he racked a round in the short-stock shotgun and pointed it at McGarvey’s chest. “I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

“Do it and you’ll end up in front of a firing squad or at the end of a rope, and you know it. Your government would have no trouble sacrificing one of its low-ranking officers to make sure its relations with Washington were not damaged.”

“Your bodies will end up at the bottom of some mountain gorge up north.”

“You might want to ask yourself what I was doing cruising around the Secretariat and parliament buildings. And why I parked in front of the German embassy, where I sat on a bench and made a couple of calls.”

“Doesn’t make any difference.”

“There are security cameras all over the place up there, so a lot of people know that the former director of the CIA was nosing around. And right about now, they’re asking themselves why.”

“There is no connection to me.”

“I also stopped by your house and left a message that I wanted to speak to you. And the people at the hotel would certainly not hide the fact that you and I met. The real fact of the matter is, the only reason you’ve made it this far in the ISI is because of your wife’s family. Their patronage connections have pulled you along, and the sad part is that you probably are too dumb to understand it.”

“For god’s sake, if the man wants to talk to me let him in,” Schlueter said from inside the front hall.

“Are you armed?” Naisir asked McGarvey.

“Of course I am.”

“Give it to me.”

“I’ll tell you what. My pistol is in a holster under my jacket at the small of my back. If I try to reach for it you can go ahead and shoot me. You can always claim that it was self-defense.”

“Kill him now,” another woman said. It was Naisir’s wife.

“No,” Schlueter said sharply. “First we need to know what proof he has. If he wants to trade, it’ll be his woman for information.”

Naisir came out of the house and stepped aside, the shotgun steady in his hands.

McGarvey moved up to the open door and hesitated just a moment at the threshold. The Schlueter woman, halfway down the short corridor that led to the rest of the house, was flanked by two large men, all of them holding pistols. A third man stood partway up the stairs, a pistol in one hand, while he held tightly to Pete’s arm with his other. Ayesha was halfway up the stairs, the only one not armed.

Bringing Pete out of the room where she had been kept was a mistake.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“Just dandy. Did you bring the cavalry?”

“No. But they know where we are.”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

McGarvey stepped inside. “I wanted to talk to Frau Schlueter. Her husband said to say hello.”

“Well, here we are,” Pam said. “And unless you’ve brought some proof that I’m in any way involved with the two unfortunate incidents in the States, I’ll kill you and the woman.”

“Major Naisir and I bumped into each other in Berlin, and after we waterboarded Steffen Engel he mentioned Major Naisir’s name. And here you are, the two of you, waiting for me. I wonder why that is?”

“You’re a loose cannon, Mr. Director,” Schlueter said. “You have nothing; otherwise you would have brought the cavalry. Kill him.”

McGarvey reached back with his right hand, grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, and swiveled left out of the doorway. The shotgun went off, spraying the side of the house.

Schlueter or one or more of the dacoits opened fire, at least three rounds striking Naisir in the side of his torso and one in his head just above his cheekbone.

Grabbing the shotgun McGarvey poked it around the corner and fired two quick blasts down the hallway, keeping his aim low and to the left, well away from the stairway.

The returning fire was intense, chips from the concrete block walls flying everywhere, one of them taking a nick out of the side of McGarvey’s neck.

The shotgun wasn’t silenced, nor were the weapons the dacoits were using; someone in the neighborhood or in a passing car or truck was bound to sit up and take notice and call the police.

“Mac, one out the back door,” Pete shouted.

McGarvey stepped back a pace and turned his head to the side. “On my way,” he said. He laid the shotgun down and pulled out his pistol, the silencer already attached.

One of the dacoits poked his head out of the door, and McGarvey shot him. The man fell forward on his face, his body twitching.

“Mac—” Pete screamed, but she was cut off.

He rolled around the corner into the house in time to see Pam Schlueter and Naisir’s wife turn the corner at the head of the stairs, the one dacoit, his big paw around Pete’s head, over her mouth and nose, right behind them.

“Down,” McGarvey shouted.

Pete pulled back, her feet over the next step back. The dacoit turned, off balance because of her sudden move, and fired one shot that went wild.

McGarvey fired three rounds, at least two of which hit the Pakistani in the side of the head, driving him further off balance, his knees buckling.

Pete pulled out of his grip and shoved him away, sending his body tumbling down the stairs with a terrific racket.

Turning on his heel Mac went to the door, the last dacoit suddenly there, and they nearly collided. Before the other man could disentangle himself, Mac had the gun out of his hand and pushed him back.

“Leave now and you’ll live,” McGarvey said.

But the bigger man danced to the left as he charged forward and batted Mac’s gun away, sending it skidding across the courtyard. He grabbed Mac in a bear hug, his arms locked as he squeezed.

Mac head-butted him, and the dacoit staggered back, losing his grip. Mac was on him in an instant, driving the knuckles of his closed fist into the man’s Adam’s apple, crushing it, and blocking air to the lungs.

Still the dacoit tried to reach for Mac, who stepped into him and drove his fist into the man’s nose, then the side of his face just below his left eye, and then once, twice, into his chest just over his heart.

But the bastard refused to go down.

The Semtex charge on the gate went off with an impressive bang, and just for an instant the dacoit turned toward it.

Mac hooked a foot around the man’s left ankle and pulled his leg out from under him.

The dacoit went down hard, and again Mac was on him with a rage he’d not felt in a very long time, slamming his fist into the bastard’s face, which was starting to turn purple, and then his chest again, and a second and third time, putting every ounce of his strength in his blows. Wanting to destroy him, for all the crap that he and the sons of bitches like him were doing. Killing soldiers was one thing, but harming innocent women, and in the case of the SEAL families, even children — that was another thing entirely.

Then Pete was behind him. “Stand down, Mac,” she shouted. “He’s finished.”

In the distance McGarvey was suddenly aware of the sounds of sirens. Lots of them. He looked up.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She stood swaying, hipshot, favoring her left side. “I think I dislocated my right knee. But we have to get out of here right now.”

“What about Naisir’s wife and Schlueter?”

“Gone,” Pete said. “Over the roof, probably.”

McGarvey got to his feet, picked her up, and started for the blown-out gate. “My car is just down the street.”

The sirens were much closer now, and as he carried her out of the compound he was in time to see a crowd of at least three or four dozen men and women, some of them carrying clubs, coming at them from the direction his car was parked.

FORTY-EIGHT

Pam Schlueter and Ayesha watched the street from the roof of the house next door, as McGarvey and the woman he’d come to Pakistan with emerged from the gate and pulled up short when they spotted the crowd.

“That’ll solve at least one problem for us,” Ayesha said bitterly. Her heart pounded painfully in her thin chest. It was too early for her to feel grief about her husband’s death at the hands of the American. That would come, but first she needed revenge.

Crouched just below the parapet of the roof she could feel the heat and raw vibrations coming from the German assassin her husband had hired several months ago. Pam kept clutching and unclutching the pistol in her hand.

“We can do nothing for the moment,” Ayesha said, putting a hand on the much larger woman’s arm.

Pam turned to her, a vibrant hate screwing up the features of her face. “It has ended here. I didn’t want that.”

“Maybe not.”

“You don’t understand. I needed to know what the Americans know. I need to know if they have any proof of the payments your husband has made. It would link me to the ISI.”

“It’s obvious they already have the link, or at least suspect it enough for McGarvey and his woman to come here, to challenge my husband. To kill him.”

“Don’t be foolish. It was one of your husband’s dacoits who fired the shots.”

“Had he not come here the dacoits would not have been necessary! The shots would not have been fired!”

McGarvey, the woman in his arms, backing away from the advancing crowd, made a very romantic picture in Ayesha’s mind, even though her husband was dead. But Pam was right, of course. Ali had been a fool in so many ways. And he had badly mishandled the entire situation. Especially the operation in the States against the SEALs. Unbusinessmanlike.

“Be that as it may,” Pam said. “As soon as it calms down I’m returning to Germany.”

“I thought that you wanted retribution?” Ayesha asked, even though she didn’t fully understand why yet.

“Your husband is dead; the money will stop.”

“Die Vergeltung, isn’t that what you called it? Payback for the aggression against my country? We would get our revenge, and you would get your payment for services rendered?”

“The money has stopped, you fucking idiot.”

“It has not, unless you want to turn away from continuing.”

“The ISI will not get itself involved now that your husband is dead, and apparently the Americans know who the paymaster is.”

“Was.”

Pam, still watching the unfolding situation on the street, started to say something but then looked up, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Was?”

“You have a new paymaster.”

“I’ve already told you that the ISI will no longer let itself be involved.”

“I’ll pay,” Ayesha said. “That is, if you still want your retribution. Because I certainly do.”

Pam was interested. “It’ll take a great deal of money. Perhaps as much as several million.”

“Euros or dollars?” Ayesha asked, though it really didn’t matter. She had access to as much as she needed. Her father, especially, would understand, as would her brothers. This now was a family affair.

“I’ll need a down payment of five hundred thousand euros. Immediately.”

“You’ll have it within twenty-four hours.”

“I’ll give you the banking numbers.”

“I already have them,” Ayesha said. She looked again at McGarvey and the woman. “Before you proceed, your first job will be to kill Mr. McGarvey if he manages to escape today. But not on Pakistani soil.”

“He won’t get out of this,” Pam replied.

“Don’t be so sure.”

FORTY-NINE

The first of the police were just around the corner when Milt Thomas’s cab parted the crowd less than ten feet from where McGarvey stood his ground, still holding Pete in his arms. As soon as the cab was clear Milt started throwing out ten-rupee notes, which immediately distracted the mob long enough for him to draw up and reach back and pop open the rear door.

McGarvey shoved Pete inside first, and as he climbed in, Milt accelerating away, he caught a glimpse of the Schlueter woman and Naisir’s wife coming out of the house next door and merging with the mob.

“Otto called, said you guys were in trouble.”

“Is that the cops or the ISI behind us?” McGarvey asked.

“The cops,” Milt said. “Someone reported an explosion and gunfire and they came running. If you still have your pistol, and especially the Semtex and fuses, toss them out the window as soon as we’re clear. For some reason security at the airport has been tightened up in the past hour or so. They’re checking everyone’s papers real close.”

“My things are back at the safe house,” Pete said.

“Doesn’t matter, I brought both of you new passports, under the names Tom and Maureen Chesson.” He handed back an envelope. “We figured that you might be on the run getting out, your old legends burned.”

The passports were diplomatic, like the ones they had come in under. To McGarvey’s eye they looked perfect, neither his nor Pete’s photos exactly matching what they looked like now, which was often a dead giveaway for forgeries. The only problem would come if they were searched. None of their others papers — driving licenses, credit cards, bank cards — matched.

Three blocks away Thomas turned down a narrow street that was bordered on the left by a refuse-littered field. Mac tossed out the Semtex, the pencil fuses, and the two extra magazines of ammunition.

“What about your gun?”

“Back at the safe house.”

“Doesn’t matter, no serial number, unless they match your DNA with whatever they might come up with from the handle. But I don’t think the cops are going to be that sophisticated or quick. And the ISI is going to want to sweep everything under the rug.”

“Major Naisir is dead,” McGarvey said.

Thomas looked at him in the rearview mirror. “That might become an issue, but not right now. It’s going to take them time to straighten out the mess, especially if the ham-handed cops go inside and look around. They’ll screw up everything.”

“But it’s over now, isn’t it, Mac?” Pete asked.

“I don’t think so. Schlueter managed to get out. I saw her with the major’s wife back there in the crowd.”

“Will the ISI still be interested in funding her?”

“No, but it’s possible she’ll find another source.”

“The major’s wife’s family is rich,” Thomas said. “And with her husband dead she has the motivation.”

“Milt’s right,” Pete said. “From what little I saw at the safe house she rules the roost. If she’s got money, she’ll step up to the plate.”

Milt looked at them in the rearview mirror. “You’re her first target,” he said to McGarvey.

“I hope so, because if we get out of here, she’ll be mine.”

“Ours,” Pete corrected.

“You have blood on your neck,” Milt told McGarvey. “You’d better clean it off before we get to the airport.”

The new airport, called Benazir Bhutto International, the same as the old one, had just opened a year ago, and security at the easiest of times was tight, especially for departing passengers.

This afternoon the lines for cars, taxis, and buses at the passenger dropoff points were not terribly heavy, but there were a lot of police and airport security personnel everywhere. Milt headed across to the separate cargo airlines terminal, where only three trucks were in the queue.

“Let me do the talking,” he said.

“Do you have a gun?” McGarvey asked.

“No, and the cab is clean.”

“How about your papers?”

“I’m a Pakistani-born American, who came home because he couldn’t stand the way of the infidel. It’s why I help the local cops whenever I can.”

A lot of CIA spies fit the same, unglamorous mold. They were foreign-born American immigrants who were fluent in their native language and who were recruited to return to their homes to spy: China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, even North Korea, which was the most dangerous assignment of them all because the leadership was so incredibly paranoid and the people brainwashed.

When it was their turn at the security checkpoint, they all handed their papers to an armed guard, while another with a long-handled mirror checked the undercarriage of the cab, and a third with a bomb-sniffing dog checked the trunk.

“What is your business here?” the guard with their papers demanded in Punjabi first and then English.

“I am taking my passengers to the TCS Courier hanger. They are leaving on the London-Heathrow flight.”

“They’re too late. That plane is leaving sooner than scheduled. Any minute now.”

“It’s being held for them,” Thomas said.

“It’s not possible,” the guard said. “Anyway you’re just a simple taxi driver. What would you know of these things?”

“I’m sorry. I only do as I am instructed.”

The guard returned McGarvey’s and Pete’s passports. “You will have to arrange for another flight,” he said.

McGarvey put a hundred-dollar bill in his passport and held it out the window for the guard, who was closely examining Thomas’s papers, including a national identity card and his taxi license.

“Perhaps you would care to examine my passport again,” McGarvey said.

The guard opened it, looked up at McGarvey and Pete, pocketed the money, and handed the passport back.

“I’ll hold your papers,” he told Thomas. “Take your passengers to the terminal, and when you return I will have a number of questions for you.”

“As you wish,” Thomas said.

The TCS Boeing 737 configured as a cargo aircraft was waiting on the tarmac, its engines already spooling. Stairs to the open hatch just aft of the cockpit were in place, a ground crew waiting to remove them.

Thomas pulled up next to the ground crew’s pickup truck. “Good luck to both of you,” he said.

“What was all that at the checkpoint?” Pete asked.

“Happens from time to time. No big deal.”

“If you’re connected with what happened at the safe house, you could be in trouble,” she persisted. “Mac, tell him.”

“If I don’t go back, they’ll never let this plane get out of Pakistan’s airspace. Now get the hell out of here and let me do my job.”

“Good luck,” McGarvey said, and they shook hands.

“Piece of cake.”

McGarvey had to help Pete up the stairs and inside, where they took the last two seats. The others were occupied by a half-dozen contractors, one of them a medic who even before they had taken off put Pete’s knee to rights by popping the kneecap back in place.

“That helps,” she said gratefully.

“What happened?” he asked. He was a man in his late thirties or early forties, mild-mannered with a southern accent.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” she said.

McGarvey phoned Otto, who answered on the first ring. He’d been standing by for the call. “We’re on the way out.”

“How’d it go?”

“Could have been better. But Milt might be in some sort of trouble.”

“The embassy is working on it. They’re getting him out of Islamabad tonight. We’re just waiting till your flight clears Pakistani airspace. A company plane will be standing by for you at Heathrow.”

“I’ll tell you all about it once we’re over the Atlantic.”

“But it’s not over?”

“I don’t think so,” McGarvey said.

Pam Schlueter got back to Berlin a day and a half later, bone-tired and a little bit discouraged because of her abject failure in Pakistan and the death of her paymaster. She didn’t think for one minute that Ayesha Naisir would ever make good on her promise to pick up the tab for the rest of the project. And all that was left in her mind was her own revenge, first against McGarvey and second against her ex-husband — a job of work she should have accomplished long ago.

It was early evening under a cloudless sky when she emerged from the Air Berlin arrivals gate at Tegel Airport, and went through customs carrying only her passport and a single carry-on bag containing a couple of items of clothing, all of which she had purchased in Islamabad.

She had half-expected to be questioned by the airport immigration people, but she was passed through without comment. Outside, she held back for a few moments to watch the area around the taxi stand, again expecting to spot a cop or BND officer waiting for her. Those guys almost always stood out.

But again no one had come for her. It was as if Rawalpindi never happened; not the kidnapping of a CIA officer and not the shootout with the former DCI. It was surreal, and all the way to her apartment in the city she had a hard time controlling her jitters.

She had the cabbie pull up a block away. After he was gone she walked the rest of the way, passing her building and suddenly turning around at the end of the block to see if she was being followed. But no one was there, and no car or truck out of the ordinary. Only normal traffic for this time of the night, mostly Turks, Greeks, and a few Muslims, mostly from Africa.

She took the stairs to the third floor and listened with her ear to the door for several long beats, but all was quiet, except for some sort of wailing music from the apartment below, sounded Oriental to her, and voices from the apartment just above hers.

The entire building smelled of leaking sewer pipes, boiled lentils and chickpeas, and the ever-present garlic. The irony of it all for her was that she was a millionaire now. Even if she cut and ran, dropping everything, she could retire comfortably somewhere, and if she lived carefully the money she’d already accumulated would last a lifetime.

But she couldn’t. What was coming next would be her retribution.

Inside her tiny one-room apartment, she tossed her bag on the narrow bed, turned on the small table lamp, and found her loaded Glock 26 pistol and silencer in the small Schrank that held her few clothes. For the first time since leaving Pakistan she felt reasonably safe. If someone came here wanting to arrest her, they would pay dearly with their lives.

She took off her light khaki jacket and hung it up at the same moment someone tapped lightly on her door.

Pistol in hand she stood to one side. “Yes?” she said.

“It’s me,” a woman responded.

For just an instant Pam wasn’t sure whether her hearing was playing tricks on her. She knew the voice. Holding the pistol out of sight behind her back, she opened the door.

Gloria, her U.S. contact, stood there, an awkward smile on her plain oval face. The woman was shorter than Pam, and a little on the dumpy side, but like the only other time they’d met, she seemed happy and relieved all at once.

“I found out about the trouble in Paki land, but then nothing else,” the woman gushed. “Christ, I didn’t know if you were dead or what. I had to come personally and wait for you.”

Pam stepped aside to let the woman in. “It wasn’t necessary for you to come all this way. To take the risk.”

“No risk, believe me,” Gloria said. Her voice was nasal and a little high-pitched, and her eyes darted all over the place as if she was afraid that something was going to jump out of the shadows and bite her. “You can’t image how much we depend on you.”

Pam laid her pistol on the small table, and then took Gloria’s coat and large shoulder bag and set them aside.

The woman’s eyes were round, looking at the pistol. “Were you expecting more trouble?”

“Trouble, yes. But not you. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I had to make sure that you weren’t dead.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“The others suggested that I come. My sources. But they don’t know the reality. To them it’s just a game we play.”

Pam had suspected from the start that Gloria had her sources. In her position it had always been impossible for her to know everything she knew without help. But she’d always thought that “the others” were just friends, acquaintances, someone in Gloria’s social network, even though she’d known intellectually that such a simple explanation wasn’t likely. But “sources” implied a network with structure. And yet she was here, and she was suggesting that the others — almost certainly bored housewives of important government officials — were in it as a game. To them it wasn’t real.

“The others?”

“They’re all over Washington, inside the Pentagon, you wouldn’t believe.” Gloria stopped. “I can’t give you their names. You have to understand.”

“I do,” Pam said. “You, I understand; we have a bond. But what about your friends in high places?”

Gloria shook her head. “Just next to men in high places.”

“All women?”

Gloria nodded.

“Battered women?”

Again Gloria nodded, a real sadness coming into her eyes. “And jilted women, and trivialized women, and ignored women. And after I tell them about you, how you’re fighting back, they don’t have one bit of trouble helping with little bits of information now and then. They figure — just like I do — that if you can make it on your own, so could they.”

Pam had understood Gloria almost from the beginning when they had accidentally met in Washington. But she’d never been able to figure out how the woman got her information, some of it startlingly secret, until now. And she understood the risk involved, the least of which would be prison.

She reached out and Gloria came into her arms; They held each other close for a long time.

“It’s all right,” Pam said softly. She brushed a kiss on Gloria’s cheek. “It’ll be okay now, I promise.”

Gloria looked up. She was crying.

Pam kissed her on the lips, and Gloria responded, shuddering and passionately kissing back.

They undressed each other and went to bed, where they made love very slowly but with a huge, pumped-up passion that seemed as if it had been building forever. At one point Gloria cried out, but softly, all the way from the back of her throat.

When they were done, Pam covered them up and they held each other closely, finally going to sleep, both of them exhausted.

Sometime just after three in the morning, Pam woke up, her heart pounding. She disentangled herself from Gloria and got out of bed. At the window she looked down at the street, which was completely devoid of traffic at this hour. No suspicious cars or vans were parked half up on the sidewalks. No one was lurking in the shadows as far as she could tell.

After a while she got a bottle of schnapps and a small glass from the cupboard, and then powered up her laptop. While it was booting up she poured a drink, tossed it back, and poured another.

She checked her in-box but there were no messages from any of her operators; they were laying low for the time being. Next she checked the half-dozen banks she maintained as close as Luxembourg and as far as the Cayman Islands. When she came to her account with Haddad Commercial Bank Offshore on Jersey in the Channel Islands, she sat back. Five hundred thousand euros had been deposited last night, shortly after she had left Pakistan.

She stared at the screen for a very long time. Then she shut off the machine, finished her second glass of schnapps and went back to bed. In the morning she would tell Gloria exactly what she needed.