The Fourth Horseman

ONE

At midnight a private Gulfstream biz jet that had just arrived from Paris touched down at the newly opened Gandhara International Airport near Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad. David Haaris, the only passenger, made a telephone call.

He was a slightly built thirty-eight-year-old man wearing khaki trousers, an open-necked white shirt and a dark blue blazer. He had the long, delicate fingers of a concert pianist and a round, pleasant face, slightly dark, as if he’d been spending his weekends in the sun. His eyes were wide and jet black, and held intelligence and power that were immediately obvious to anyone meeting him for the first time. His voice was soft, cultured, with a hint of an upper-class British accent, and his vocabulary and grammar were almost always perfect. At the Pakistan Desk in the CIA his was the last word on proper usage.

His call was answered on the first ring by a man speaking Punjabi, Haaris’s first language. “Yes.”

“I’ve arrived.”

“I’ll expect you in my office the moment you’re clear. Good luck.”

“Are you looking for trouble?”

“These are difficult times, my friend, as you well know. The Aiwan-e-Sadr came under attack just three hours ago. There is no telling what will happen next. So it is good that you are here, but take care.” The Aiwan was the residence and office of Pakistan’s president. It served the same purpose as the White House in Washington.

“Have you sent a car?”

“Yes. But keep a very low profile. Short of sending a military escort — which would just make matters worse — you will be on your own until you reach me.”

“Perhaps I could order a screen of drones.”

“Anything but.”

“As you wish,” Haaris said, and he broke the connection, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth. His cell phone conversation with Lieutenant General Hasan Rajput, who was the director of the Covert Action Division for Pakistan’s intelligence agency, was primarily for the benefit of the U.S. National Security Agency and the Technical Services Section in the CIA directorate where he worked. They were listening in.

The pretty flight attendant, who’d been aboard since Andrews, came aft as he took the SIM card out of his phone and put it in his pocket. Her name was Gwen, and like Haaris she worked for the CIA.

“The captain would like to know how long you expect to be on the ground, sir,” she said.

“Probably no more than a few hours, luv. You might have him refuel in case we have to make a hasty retreat.”

The young woman didn’t smile. “Should we be expecting trouble?”

“Not out here at the airport. At least not for the short term.”

Haaris glanced out the window as they taxied to a hangar used by the government for unofficial flights. The night was quiet, and he could almost smell the place even over the faint stink of jet fuel. A host of memories passed behind his eyes at the speed of light. Good times, some of them when he was a child in Lahore, but then horrible times after his parents died and his uncle brought him first to London to study in public school, then on to Eton and finally Sandhurst. He was a “rag head,” an “Islamic whore,” and in prep school the older boys used him in just that way.

And so his hate had begun to build, centimeter by centimeter, like a slowly developing volcano rising out of the sea.

He unbuckled and got up as the aircraft came to a complete halt, and he gave the attendant a smile. “I’m here to do a little back-burner diplomacy, see if I can’t point the right way for them to extract themselves from the mess they’re in.”

Gwen nodded. She was a field officer and had been under fire in the hills of Afghanistan. “Good luck, then, sir.”

Pakistan was a powder keg ready to explode at any moment. Nearly every embassy in Islamabad had been stripped to skeleton staffs, the ambassadors recalled. Attacks by the insurgents had been happening throughout the country for the past week. Haaris’s recommendation to the president’s security council three days earlier was to have its nuclear readiness teams put on high alert. It had been accomplished within twenty-four hours.

Gwen went forward, opened the door and lowered the stairs as a black Mercedes S500 pulled up and parked ten meters away, just forward of the port wingtip. She said something to Ed Lamont, the pilot, then stepped aside as Haaris came up the aisle.

“I thought they’d send an armed escort,” Lamont said. He was a craggy ex — air force fighter pilot who’d flown missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. A steady man.

“We didn’t want to attract any attention,” Haaris said. “But I want you to refuel and stand by in case we have to get out in a hurry.”

“What if the Pakis deny our flight plan?”

“They won’t,” Haaris said, careful not to bridle at the derogatory term for a Pakistani.

He stepped down onto the apron, the summer evening warm, the sky overcast, the air close. This far out from Islamabad the country could have been at peace, but the KH-14 satellite real-time images he he’d seen yesterday in the Dome at Langley showed a starkly different picture. Pakistan was on the verge of an all-out war, and the conflict promised to be much worse than any that had ever happened here. It’s why he’d been sent: to try to make the ISI, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, come to its senses and to work with the fundamentalists so that civil war could be avoided.

But it was not the real reason he’d come.

An old man wearing the traditional Pakistani long loose shirt over baggy trousers held open the Mercedes’ rear door.

“Allah’s blessing be upon you, sir,” he said in Punjabi.

Haaris answered in kind, and as soon he got in the car, the driver closed the door and went around to the front.

They headed past several large maintenance hangars, the service doors closed. This side of the airport seemed to be deserted.

“What’s the situation?” Haaris asked.

“The highway has been closed, no one is allowed to pass.”

“Does the government hold it?”

“No, sir. It’s the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and they are murdering people trying to get out.”

The group, once funded by the ISI, was allied with the Taliban. Their main purpose was to get their hands on at least one working nuke. The CIA considered them the main threat to Pakistan’s arsenal, which was for the most part spread around the country at air force and navy bases. So far security at the nuclear sites was holding. But it had long been rumored that some of the weapons had been moved to other locations, most often in unmarked vans or panel trucks, without armed escorts. And it was these weapons that had the Pentagon most worried.

At this hour the KH-14 was twenty degrees below overhead to the east and so could not pick up images, even in the infrared from straight down. As well, no surveillance drones were scheduled for flybys out here until later the next morning, and then only if the trouble from inside the city spread to the airport.

The driver made a leisurely turn to the right, along the west side of one of the hangars, and pulled up next to a battered old Fiat, its blue paint mostly faded or rusted away. Two men stood beside it, one of them about the same general build as Haaris and similarly dressed in khakis, a white open-necked shirt and a dark blue blazer. The other man was dressed much like the Mercedes’ driver. He held a pistol.

Haaris got out, and the man with the pistol prodded the other man to get in the front seat next to the driver.

“With God’s blessing,” Haaris said.

“Fuck you,” the man in the blazer said. His voice was slurred.

As soon as the door was closed the Mercedes took off toward the main highway into the city.

“I’m Lieutenant Jura,” the man said, putting away the gun. “Welcome to the Taliban. Your clothes and beard are in the backseat.”

TWO

ISI Lieutenant Usman Hafiz Khel presented his credentials to the senior enlisted man at Quetta Air Force Base Post One — the main gate — shortly after midnight. The base was midway between Islamabad to the northeast and Karachi to the southwest. At twenty-three he was young, but he knew how to follow orders. The directorate had been his home since he’d been recruited at the age of fourteen to attend a special technical school in Islamabad, followed by university and finally his commission.

“May I ask the lieutenant the purpose of his visit at this hour?” the acne-scarred corporal technician demanded. It was the same rank as a master sergeant in the West. He’d joined the air force when Usman was nine.

“I have orders to meet with Group Captain Paracha.” The GP was the commander of the top-secret nuclear storage depot here on base.

“Not at this hour.”

Usman was driving a Toyota SUV with civilian plates and no markings that had been waiting for him at the international airport. The windows were so darkly tinted that the interior of the car was all but invisible to anyone looking in. He’d been stopped at the barrier, and the sergeant along with an armed guard who stood to one side had come out to see who’d shown up. Security across the country was tight because of the troubles.

“Call him.”

“Impossible.”

“He needs to know that I am here.”

Another of the guards came to the door of the gatehouse. “A call for you, CT,” he said.

“In a minute.”

“Sir, it’s Paracha.”

“Shoot the lieutenant if he moves,” the CT told the armed guard, and he turned on his heel and went into the guardhouse.

Usman understood the physical facts of his orders, if not the reason for them, though if he had to guess he figured this move tonight was only one of many similar operations across the country in response to the terrorist attacks. But this was desperate. Like leaping off a tall cliff into the raging ocean because a tiger was at your back. And he felt naked because he wasn’t wearing a uniform — only big-city blue jeans and a T-shirt.

The CT returned almost immediately. “You’re late. The group captain is at headquarters waiting for you. Do you know the way, or will you require an escort, sir?”

“I can find it,” Usman said.

The CT stepped back and motioned for the barrier to be raised. He looked green in the harsh lights.

Group Captain Kabir Paracha, at forty-seven, was an unlikely military officer. His desert camos were a mess, he’d forgotten his hat, and his sleeves were rolled up to just below the elbows, the straps that were meant to hold them higher poking out. But he was the correct man for the job because his primary training had been as a nuclear engineer at the Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratory. He understood the nature of the devices he was meant to guard. Especially the consequences if they ever had to be used.

He was waiting next to his Hummer, a driver behind the wheel.

“You’re late,” he said as Usman got out of his SUV. “And in civilian clothes.”

“Pardon me, sir, but there were only three lightly armed men at Post One. This place should be crawling with patrols.”

“We are told that the problems are confined to the north. I was ordered to maintain a low profile. And your trip makes no sense. It’s insanity.”

“Do you mean to disobey orders?” Usman demanded.

The GC’s face fell and he looked away for just a moment. “No. But I will send two of my people with you. For the weapons — the mated weapons. Do you completely understand the sheer folly?”

Usman could guess. Almost all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were stored in the unmated configuration: the trigger circuitry was stored in one spot, while the Pit — the physics packages that contained either highly enriched uranium or plutonium fissile cores plus the tritium accelerators that greatly increased a nuclear weapon’s explosive power — were stored elsewhere. The procedure was for safety’s sake, and it was something that the leadership assured the Americans was standard.

“I agree with you, sir. But I too must follow orders. These are difficult times.”

“Indeed,” Paracha said. “Follow me.”

Usman followed the group captain across the base to a series of low concrete bunkers inside a triple barrier of tall, razor-wire-topped electric fences. Guard towers were located at fifty-meter intervals, and from the moment they approached the main gate, they were illuminated by several strong searchlights.

All of it was wrong. Anyone watching the bunkers and the high-security perimeter had to know what was here. And now the lights and the two vehicles were nothing short of an invitation. Insanity. Paracha was right: what was happening here and across the country was sheer folly.

Once they were passed through the triple fences, a thick steel door leading inside one of the bunkers rumbled open with a loud screech of metal on metal that had to be audible for miles.

Four heavily armed soldiers, one of them a flight lieutenant, motioned for Usman to drive inside what appeared to be a loading area about thirty or forty meters on a side. At the rear was a large freight elevator, its steel mesh gates open.

A small tug towing a cart on which were strapped four small nuclear weapons shaped like missile nose cones emerged from the elevator and the driver came around to the rear of Usman’s SUV.

Paracha spoke to the four armed guards, then came over to where Usman had gotten out of his vehicle and opened the tailgate with shaking hands.

“Do you recognize what these are?” he asked.

“Nuclear weapons meant to be carried by rockets.”

“Plutonium bombs for the Haft IX missiles. And do you know the significance of that fact? The exact meaning of the thing?”

Usman only had his orders to pick up four weapons, drive them to the airport at Delbandin, a small town three hundred kilometers to the south, and deliver them to a Flight Lieutenant Gopang, who would load them aboard a small transport aircraft and fly away. Once the delivery was made he was to return to Islamabad.

“No, sir,” Usman said, his voice quiet. He was suddenly in the presence of something so overwhelmingly powerful that all of his certainty had evaporated.

“These missiles have a range of less than one hundred kilometers. Does this mean something to you?”

Usman shook his head.

“These weapons were not meant to be launched against India or against anywhere else outside of Pakistan. They have been designed to kill any force threatening us from inside. They are meant to be used against our own people.”

“The Taliban. Enemies of the state.”

“Save me the propaganda, Lieutenant. These people were once our allies.”

“And now they are our enemies,” Usman said. And the fault rested entirely with the ISI. Just as the CIA was at least partly to blame for bin Laden. The Americans had funded the fundamentalists in Afghanistan, who drove the Russians away, and when the war was over the same Stinger missiles had been turned against Americans, which in turn had finally led to the attacks on New York and Washington. The events of the last two weeks were Pakistan’s 9/11, and nothing short of a miracle would stop Islamabad from falling.

“I won’t push the button, I only helped design the things and now I’m in charge of guarding them,” Paracha said. “You won’t push the button either, you’ll merely deliver them somewhere.”

Usman had nothing to say.

Paracha stepped closer. “Are our hands clean, Lieutenant?” he asked. He shook his head. “We’ll never be clean.”

THREE

The fires in the city became visible about ten miles from the airport, the night sky glowing unevenly beneath a low cloud deck. The situation was just as bad as the CIA thought it would be, and just as good as Haaris had hoped. Revolutions were not born on sunny days.

He was dressed now in long loose trousers, over which he wore a filthy long shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped around his head, concealing his false beard and showing only the bridge of his nose and a hint of his eyes.

Virtually no traffic moved on the broad highway that had been built to service the new airport. But there had been intense fighting this evening: the shot-up, burned-out remains of several cars and pickup trucks littered the ditches in a quarter-mile stretch, and several bodies lay where they had fallen along the side of the road.

Haaris sat in the front seat next to Lieutenant Jura, a Beretta pistol holstered on his chest and a Kalashnikov propped up between his knees.

They came around a long sweeping bend to a half-dozen pickup trucks blocking both sides of the highway; at least twenty armed men dressed much the same as Haaris stood either in front of the trucks or in defensive positions behind the vehicles or in the ditches. Several of them were armed with American-made LAWs rockets, meant to take out tanks.

Although he had remained silent since leaving the airport, Jura now said, “I’ll do the talking,” and he slowed, coming to a stop a couple of meters from two men who stood ahead of the others.

One of them came forward, a Kalashnikov assault rifle hanging casually from his right shoulder. He was tall and muscular, his face mostly hidden behind his scarf, his eyes behind aviator sunglasses.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“There is to be another demonstration in front of army headquarters. We have been ordered to attend.”

“Ordered by whom?”

“That is none of your business, brother. Your job is to attend to those fools who are trying to leave the city. Not freedom fighters ready for holy work this night.”

The man shifted his weapon to a firing position, though he did not exactly point it at Jura. He leaned down and looked in at Haaris. “And who the hell are you?”

Haaris pulled out his Beretta pistol. “I have been in Paris, and I’m bringing good news to the revolution. We have our funding. Stand aside and let us pass.”

“If you shoot me, you won’t get five meters,” the second man, with an AK47, said, but he didn’t seem so certain.

“But then you would be dead, so whatever happened to us would be of no concern. Call your unit commander.”

“I am in charge here.”

Haaris pulled the hammer back, and with his left hand moved the end of the kaffiyeh from his face. “If you should make it to Paradise, remember me.” He started to pull the trigger.

The man suddenly stepped back and waved them through. “Go with God,” he said.

“And you, my brother,” Haaris said.

They had to maneuver their way slowly past several pickup trucks, the armed warriors watching, until on the other side, the road clear, Jura sped up.

“Anyone aiming anything at us?” Haaris asked, decocking his pistol and holstering it.

Jura checked the rearview mirror. “Not yet.” He glanced at Haaris. “The general said that you had balls. But you could have gotten us shot back there. Most of those guys were stoned. Opium. They chew balls of that shit all the time.”

Haaris shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” Since his parents had been killed in a rock slide — he’d been there when their mangled bodies had been dug out — and since his abuse at public school, he had been mostly indifferent to his personal comfort or well-being. He didn’t know if he actually cared whether or not he survived to live another day, and he wasn’t sure if this was a gift or a curse. But like a man who could feel no pain because of a medical condition, Haaris couldn’t feel fear.

Just as well, he thought. But this night was important, and no matter what happened he had to present himself as invincible. Which made him smile.

The entrance to the sprawling Inter-Service Intelligence compound in Islamabad was next to a hospital, the gate guarded only by a plainclothes officer armed with a pistol. No sign identified the place, which looked more like the campus of a university — a number of mostly low slung modern buildings separated by well-tended lawns and fountains were grouped around the eight-story main headquarters building, on the top floor of which was the director general’s office.

This area of the city was all but deserted now, most of the trouble centered around the Army Headquarters Building ten kilometers away in Rawalpindi.

The guard recognized Lieutenant Jura and waved him through. On the other side of the gate completely out of sight from the main road, they were stopped by a half-dozen heavily armed soldiers and four bomb-sniffing dogs. They were made to get out of the car so that they could be searched with security wands of the same type that at one time had been used at airports and then thoroughly patted down.

Haaris’s and Jura’s pistols were taken, as was the Kalashnikov from inside the car, before they were allowed to proceed.

“They knew we were coming but they’re jumpy because this place will probably get hit sometime tonight,” Jura said.

“Maybe not,” Haaris said, and the lieutenant gave him a sharp look.

“Pardon me, sir, your bravado got us past the roadblock, but the Taliban setting fire to the city might not be so easily convinced.”

They were admitted to the parking ramp beneath the headquarters building after submitting to another, even more thorough search.

“Remember what happens tonight, Lieutenant,” Haaris said, getting out of the car in front of the elevator. “Pakistan’s future is at stake.”

“Yes, sir. I know. We all know it.”

“Stay here, I’ll be back.”

The ISI’s Covert Action Division covered the entire third floor of the building. A hundred or more cubicles took up the center of the room. Offices, conference rooms and two data centers faced outward around the perimeter on three sides, and the fourth — the side facing toward the presidential palace — was taken up by General Hasan Rajput’s large suite of offices, along with the offices of his deputy director and staff.

Anyone who had gotten past security inside the main gate and again either in the parking garage or through the ground-floor entrance was considered safe. No one bothered to look up as Haaris got off the elevator and made his way to the general’s office. The secretary was gone and the door to the inner office was open. Rajput, the collar of his white shirt unbuttoned, was seated at his desk listening to reports from three of his staff. When Haaris walked in he looked up. He could have been a kindly grandfather, with gray hair and soft eyes.

“At last,” he said. “Gentlemen, please leave us.”

The staffers glanced at Haaris as they walked out but said nothing. The last one closed the door.

Rajput motioned for Haaris to take a seat. “Did you run into any trouble on the way in?”

“Not much. What’s the current situation at the Aiwan? Is Barazani there?” Farid Barazani was the openly pro-Western new president of Pakistan. His election four months earlier was one of the reasons the Taliban had staged their attacks. Almost everyone in the West believed this was the signal for the dissolution of the government, which was why American nuclear strike force teams had been moved into place.

“Yes, I spoke to him less than ten minutes ago. The fool still thinks that he can talk his way out of this.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“He thinks that you’re here from the CIA to offer him backing. He’s waiting for you.”

“Will he try to call Washington?”

“He might, but we’ve seen to it that the Taliban have cut all the landlines to the Aiwan, and we control the cell phone towers within range.”

“How about satellite communications?”

“We have a good man in their computer section. Nothing will be leaving the Aiwan tonight.”

“Except me,” Haaris said. “Has it been reported to the CIA’s chief of station here that I’m missing?”

“The metro police reported an incident on their wire, one of dozens this morning.”

“No word from Langley?”

“No.” Rajput picked up his phone and said, “Now, if you please.”

A minute later a young man in army uniform without insignia of rank came in.

Haaris got to his feet and unwrapped the kaffiyeh. He stood still as the young technician secured what looked like a dog collar with a device about the size of a book of matches just below his Adam’s apple.

“Say, ‘My name is Legion.’”

Haaris spoke the words, but the voice coming from his mouth was nothing like his own. It was deeper, more resonant, the British accent almost completely absent.

FOUR

The four nuclear weapons, covered in wool blankets, were strapped to wooden cradles in the back of the Toyota SUV, the two uniformed guards sitting on top of them. They were south of Quetta, on the narrow highway to Delbandin, and Usman kept nervously looking in his rearview mirror. He could see the empty highway behind them, but he could also see the blank expressions on the faces of the two men, and he thought it was just like watching the zombie movies that were so popular.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting radiation sickness, sitting so close?” he asked.

Neither one of them wore name tags, and they could have been brothers, with slight builds, narrow faces, dark complexions, wide, dark eyes.

“They don’t leak,” the one on the right said. “And if they did you’d be in the same trouble as us.”

“You’re not nervous?”

“Just drive, Lieutenant. I’m not nervous, as you say, just damned uncomfortable.”

“And I have to take a piss,” the other guard said.

“I’m not stopping out here,” Usman said.

Ten minutes earlier they had passed through the town of Nushki, where nothing moved and very few lights shone. At this point they were fewer than thirty kilometers from the Afghan border, and Usman could feel the brooding hulk of the wild west country, once filled with friends of Pakistan who had now turned enemies. The mix of the nearness of the border and the weapons he was transporting had caused him to have waking nightmares: all he could see were hulking monsters, wave after wave of zombies, mushroom clouds, burning flesh, women and children screaming in agony. His armpits were soaked, his forehead was dripping, even his crotch was so wet it almost felt as if he had pissed himself.

He reached over and took from the glove box the SIG-Sauer P226 German pistol his father had given him as a graduation present from the military academy and laid it on the center console.

“There’s no one out here,” the one soldier said. “So you might as well let Saad take his piss, otherwise we’ll have to listen to him forever.”

“Thirty seconds,” Usman said. “Any longer than that and I’ll drive away without you.”

He slowed down, pulled off the side of the road and stopped. Immediately both soldiers got out and walked a few meters away.

Usman had asked for a radio in case he ran into trouble, but his request had been denied by his unit commander, Captain Siyal. He’d also been made to give up his cell phone.

“They have the capability of intercepting our radio transmissions and even our cell phone calls.”

“What if I break down in the middle of nowhere?”

“See that you don’t.”

“That makes no sense, Captain,” Usman had argued.

They were in Siyal’s office, and the captain spread his pudgy hands. “Personally I agree with you, but I too have my orders. Balochistan has been fairly quiet. Pick up your cargo, drive three hundred kilometers, hand it over and you’re done.”

The captain’s use of the word cargo bore no relationship in Usman’s mind to the things in the back of the SUV. The fact that Pakistan had more than one hundred of the weapons had given him a certain pride, a nationalistic fervor — until now. These things right here were not an abstraction. They were real. They were meant for only one purpose — to kill a lot of people.

He looked over his shoulder in time to see both soldiers lighting cigarettes. He couldn’t believe it. His nerves were jumping all over the place now, and the nearly absolute darkness of the night was pressing in.

Grabbing his pistol, he started to get out of the SUV, but for whatever reason he took the key from the ignition and put it in his pocket.

“What the hell are you men doing?” he shouted, walking around to the rear of the Toyota.

“A change of plans, Lieutenant,” one of them said, and he turned around, a pistol in his hand.

Usman reared back, and at the same time the solider to his left fired one shot that went wide.

Someone else from the darkness off the side of the road opened fire with a Kalashnikov, the rattle distinctive. The rounds slammed into the side of the SUV.

Usman ducked low as he raced across the road in the opposite direction and into the desert, the soft footing making it almost impossible for him to move fast.

Another burst of fire came from the highway, but then someone shouted something, and Usman continued running, as one of the soldiers answered.

“It doesn’t matter, let the bastard go. We don’t need him now.”

Only then did Usman remember the pistol in his belt. He stopped and turned around as he drew it and fired four shots in rapid succession at the side of the SUV, about twenty meters away.

Someone cried out, and Usman took several steps back toward the highway, when another burst of Kalashnikov fire bracketed him, one round slamming into his left side, knocking him backward but not off his feet.

“Let him go!” an unfamiliar voice commanded.

“He’s got the fucking key,” one of the soldiers shouted.

“What?”

“The key to the ignition!”

Usman staggered to the left as the shooters opened fire, this time off to the right. He hunched over again, and holding the wound to his side with his left hand ran as fast as he could into the desert, the soft sand catching his feet, wanting to trip him up, make him fall. His only consolation was that the sons of bitches coming after him would have the same problem. And one of them had cried out. With any luck he had hit the bastard hard.

The sand suddenly dropped away and he pitched forward onto his face and tumbled five meters into a depression. When he ended up on his stomach he rolled over onto his back and looked up to the crest of the sand dune. He was at the bottom of a bowl, with no easy way out.

He had managed to hold on to his pistol so when they came for him he would take them out. Maybe all of them.

Someone shouted something to the left, over the top of the dune, and immediately someone else to the right shouted back, and then others picked up the cry. Maybe a half dozen or more men, some of them speaking with a variation of the Gilgit tribal accent, one Baloch, another Brahui and two Pashtuns — the soldiers from Quetta — without a doubt all of them Taliban.

This had been trap from the beginning. Which meant that Captain Siyal or whoever had given the original orders was a traitor, as were the two guards from the air base, and possibly even the group captain.

But why put things like these into the hands of terrorists? All of a sudden he had at least one part of it: if the government fell American SEALS accompanying Nuclear Energy Support Teams would swoop down and disable as many of the weapons as they could. The highly trained NEST people, most of them nuclear scientists and engineers, were ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice to anywhere in the world. So it came down to losing the weapons either to the Americans or to the Taliban

It would be a perfect opportunity for India to launch a preemptive strike, which would very possibly embroil the entire region in an unwinnable war.

Usman laid his head back for just a moment.

The weapons were too heavy simply to pick up and carry away. They would need the SUV.

He sat up, took the car key from his pocket and making sure that no one had crested the dune and was watching him, tossed it as far as he could.

They might eventually find it, though maybe not until dawn, but by then when he hadn’t shown up at Delbandin the alarm might already have been sounded. Unless, of course, he’d never been expected to get that far in the first place. It never occurred to him that they might hot-wire the ignition.

He got to his feet, just a little dizzy now but not in any serious pain, and started for the wall on the opposite side of the depression down which he had fallen.

“I’ve got the bastard,” one of the soldiers cried from the crest.

Usman turned and fired in that direction, and kept firing until his pistol went dry, the slide locked in the open position.

He felt the Kalashnikov rounds striking his body before he heard the noise of the shots, and he fell back, dead as he hit the sand.

FIVE

The attacks across the city and down in Rawalpindi, where the Army General Headquarters was located, had increased just during the time Haaris had been inside with General Rajput. Small-arms fire and the occasional explosion rattled in almost every direction around Diplomatic Row in the Green Section. But there were no sirens.

Haaris had changed back into his blazer, white shirt and khakis, and he got off the elevator in the parking garage carrying a bright blue nylon shoulder bag, sealed with a U.S. State Department diplomatic tag. Word had finally come that the CIA knew that a man matching Haaris’s description had been kidnapped by the Taliban on the way from the airport. Traffic between Langley and the ISI had suddenly become heavy.

He tossed the bag in the backseat of the Fiat and got in with it.

Lieutenant Jura turned around. “It might not be such a good idea for you to be seen dressed like that tonight.”

“I’m back to being an American CIA officer.”

“If the Taliban spot you they won’t hesitate to kill you.”

“We’ll just have to take the chance. But this is the only way I’m going to get into the Aiwan to see Barazani.”

“There’s no way that the guards will let us through the gate, even if we could get to it. Right now there’s a crowd on Constitution Avenue and it’s growing.”

It was just what Haaris was counting on. “We’re going in from the Colony.” The Aiwan-e-Sadr, located between the parliament building and cabinet block, was actually a compound of several buildings in addition to the president’s main residence and workplace that were used as the residences of his staff and families, and was called the President’s Colony, just off Fourth Street.

“The guards there are just as likely to shoot first and ask for credentials later.”

“They’ve been told that I’m coming.”

“Yes, sir,” Jura said. “But if you’re carrying a weapon, I suggest that you keep it out of sight. It wouldn’t do you any good.”

They headed out of the garage and around to the main gate, where the barrier was immediately raised and they were waved through. The streets were all but deserted; it was something else Haaris had been counting on. The growing crowd at the Aiwan was draining Taliban and ordinary citizens alike from across the city. The same thing had happened during the trouble in Beijing some years earlier, and during the problems in Cairo and a dozen other capital cities just lately. The world was starting to light up, and how big and terrible the fires would become before they died down was anyone’s guess.

Haaris sat back in the seat. By now Charlene Miller, the president of the United States, would be assembling her security team in the Situation Room, if she hadn’t already done so, trying to figure out if the situation here had gotten critical yet.

He expected that at the very least she would have ordered that the NEST teams be alerted for possible deployment. She was an intellectual who preferred the calm approach; she leaned toward thinking things out, getting the opinions of her staff, working out all of the options, before coming to a decision. But when she made one it was firm and final.

Her favorite line to her directors of National Intelligence and the CIA was that blowback, the unintended consequences that often came because an operation had gone in some direction no one had anticipated, “will never be an option on my watch.”

The blowback this time was going to be more than any of them had ever imagined. Much more. And for a purpose.

Jura had to make a long detour around Constitution Avenue because of the crowd, which already stretched at least a kilometer from the Aiwan, to get to the rear of the compound and the heavily guarded gate into the Colony. Four soldiers from the president’s Special Security Unit, armed with Heckler & Koch MP5s, surrounded the Fiat.

Haaris lowered the window and handed out his diplomatic passport. “I’m expected,” he said in English.

Jura rolled down his window and he translated into Punjabi, but the senior guard handed back Haaris’s passport. “Do you know the way?” he asked in good English.

“Yes, I’ve been here before.”

“Don’t leave the main driveway. And only you may go inside, your driver must stay with the car.”

They eased through the gate and Jura followed the broad driveway around the side of the Presidential Palace past several of the residences. BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars were parked in carports, but none of the buildings other than the palace showed any lights. The president’s staff and their families were keeping a very low profile this evening.

With the windows of the Fiat down they could hear the low rumble of the crowd around front. So far the demonstration was peaceful, though no one thought that would last. The Taliban were attacking in a dozen or more spots around Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and possibly in other key cities, though information broadcast over television and radio was spotty at best. But the people were demanding that the government do something about it. The police and especially the army were nowhere to be seen. So far as the ordinary citizen knew the cowards had barricaded themselves inside their bases. Even the air force, which should have sent jets aloft to fire on the enemy, were absent from the skies.

They had gathered on Constitution Avenue and were marching on the Aiwan to demand President Barazani take control. Or at least give them reassurances that the government was doing something.

The people wanted someone to tell them that they were in charge. That Pakistan would survive. That their day-to-day lives would return to normal.

“Excuse me, sir,” Lieutenant Jura said. “I know that you work for the CIA and are here at the orders of your president, but what is the U.S. going to do for us this time?”

“Show you the way out of this situation,” Haaris said. He didn’t mind the question, not this late in the game.

“Are you bringing the military?”

“Pakistan’s answers are here, right in front of your nose, Lieutenant. And tonight you’ll understand.”

“Even the mob out front?”

“Especially them.”

Lieutenant Jura pulled up in front of a gatehouse at one of the rear entrances. Two armed soldiers in the uniforms of the president’s security service came out as Haaris stepped out of the Fiat, his nylon bag in hand.

“Good evening, sir,” the taller of the two guards greeted him respectfully. “Your driver will have to remain here, but one of the president’s aides will escort you upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you be requiring assistance with your bag?”

“I can manage,” Haaris said.

At that moment a man in a British-cut business suit appeared at the door. “The president is waiting for you.”

SIX

President of the United States Charlene Miller entered the White House Situation Room late in the afternoon, local, after getting off the phone with Walter Page, the director of the CIA. She was not in a good frame of mind, and combined with the fact she hadn’t taken the time to freshen her makeup made her look like the Wicked Witch of the North. But she didn’t give a shit. This was the first major crisis in her first year of office, and it was a whopper.

Everyone bunched around the long table were glued to the large flat-screen monitors on the wall, showing images of the mob in front of the Presidential Palace in Islamabad. Another monitor showed fires and explosions around the city, and in Rawalpindi about ten miles away the Army General Headquarters was under attack.

Miller took her place at the head of the table.

Her chief of staff, Thomas Broderick, nodded. “Madam President,” he said.

“What about David? Any word yet?” she asked.

“No demands have been made. But we’ve confirmed that he was taken on the way in from the airport.”

“I just got that from Walt Page.”

The others around the table — Secretary of Defense William Spencer, a retired three-star army general who’d been commandant of West Point until he’d been tapped by the president; Secretary of State John Fay, a tall, lean, almost ascetic man with a thick shock of white hair, who’d been Harvard’s dean and was undoubtedly the smartest and most liberal person in the room; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Harry S. Altman, a short man whom everyone thought looked and sounded like Harry Truman, and whose stewardship of the military was unparalleled in fifty years; and the president’s adviser on national security affairs, Susan Kalley, a former professor of geopolitical affairs from UCLA who was the first “out” lesbian (although her significant other remained closeted) ever to serve at such a high level of government, who looked like a movie star and was beloved of the media — all looked up.

Notably missing was Saul Santarelli, the director of National Intelligence, who was on his way back from Paris.

“The situation in Islamabad is becoming critical,” Kalley said.

“Is it possible that Barazani will fall?” Miller asked.

“It’s likely.”

“We may have another problem developing as well, Madam President,” Sec Def Spencer said. “Units of the army and the ISI have been moving nuclear warheads out of their secure storage depots.”

“As we expected they might. They’ve done it before.”

“A risky business. But we got a series of satellite shots of a civilian vehicle showing up at Quetta Air Force Base and leaving twenty minutes later. We managed to track it south on the highway through the town of Nushki — which is practically on top of the border with Afghanistan — until it parked alongside the road. NRO analysts think they may have picked up flashes from gunfire, and then nothing. The car — actually a SUV — is still at the side of the highway.”

“Do you think it picked up a nuclear warhead?” the president asked.

“We got lucky with a decent angle shot of the SUV before it reached Quetta and then afterwards. In the second series of images it was low on its springs, as if it were carrying something heavy.”

“And?”

“There’s been traffic leaving several other suspected nuclear weapons depots — at Chagai Hills, Issa Khel, Kahuta and Karachi. But we haven’t picked up any signs of trouble, and we can’t be certain that nuclear weapons were taken off those bases.”

“I saw part of that report,” the president said. “But have we followed any of those suspected vehicles — other than the one from Quetta — to their destinations?”

“We don’t have the resources,” Kalley said. “Neither does the CIA or NRO. Congress has cut their budgets the last three years in a row.” The National Reconnaissance Office was responsible for putting spy satellites in orbit and maintaining them.

Miller had been warned by her top advisers, including Spencer and Kalley, that one day the reduced funding of such a vital component of the intelligence apparatus would rise up and bite the U.S. in the ass. Which it had now. But after the Snowden debacle, which had resulted in the sharp curtailment of the National Security Agency’s ability to monitor telephone and computer traffic, Congress had been adamant that budget cuts across the board be made to the entire U.S. intel community. And it had been an issue that Miller, whose programs on poverty were most dear to her heart, and most expensive, wasn’t willing to go to the mat with Congress on.

“What do we actually have over Islamabad and Rawalpindi?” she asked.

“An enhanced KH-14,” Sec Def Spencer said. “It’s one of our best assets.”

“But not all-seeing,” Miller said.

She picked up the phone and called Walt Page at Langley. She got him in the Watch, which was the section just down the hall from his office where a half-dozen analysts working twelve hours on and twelve off were tied into every available intelligence resource. They were the only people who knew practically everything that was going on in the world in real time.

His image came up on one of the flat-screen monitors, the connection completely secure from any outside eavesdropping. Or it was at least as secure as intel technology, and the extremely complicated quantum effects algorithms of the CIA’s computer genius, Otto Rencke, could make it.

“Good afternoon, again, Madam President,” Walt Page said.

“We’re not getting as much help from our satellite resources as I’d hoped we would. We think that the Pakistanis are moving some of their nuclear weapons around the country.”

“We’re sure of it.”

“I want to know where they’re being taken and why,” Miller said. “Especially the possibility that one of them may have been snatched from Quetta. Because if the Taliban gets their hands on even one of the things, everything changes out there.”

“Ross has someone in the area and he’s sent them to take a look at the SUV,” Page said. Ross Austin, a former SEAL, was the CIA’s chief of station in Islamabad. “We know that it was a rental from the Quetta airport. Possibly by the ISI.”

Miller sat forward. “Son of a bitch,” she said softly, but Page and everyone in the Situation Room with her caught it. “Is someone over there working with the Taliban again? Could this be a double-cross?”

“At this point I’d believe anything. Ross is running a full-court press on the issue. Every asset he has in Islamabad and Rawalpindi are working the streets. Not only that but they’re looking for Dave Haaris.”

“Are we sure that the Taliban have him?” Kalley asked.

“Yes, nothing’s changed to this point,” Page said. “But no demands have been made.”

“Thank you, Walter,” Miller said. “Keep me posted.”

“Madam President, perhaps it’s time to alert our nuclear response teams.”

“That’s the issue we’re working now.”

“Yes, Madam President,” Page said.

Miller cut the image. “Get me a Punjabi translator on the line, and telephone President Barazani.”

Chief of Staff Broderick got on it and within a few seconds a young woman who’d been born, raised and educated in Pakistan before immigrating to the U.S. to get her master’s in Middle Eastern languages from Columbia came on a split screen. She had been put on standby for just this occasion.

Moments later a man’s image appeared on the other half of the screen. “Madam President,” he said in English. “President Barazani has been expecting your call, but he begs your indulgence. He is meeting with his advisers on how best to handle the issue at hand. But he is most keen to talk to you.”

“I’ll wait for his call,” Miller said. The connection was broken, and she thanked her translator. “Don’t go far, we may still need you.”

“Yes, Madam President,” the young woman said.

Miller turned to her advisers. “Alert our nuclear response teams. I want them to be ready to go airborne the instant I give the word.”

SEVEN

President Barazani’s private secretary brought Haaris to the top floor and down the broad marble-tiled corridor to the anteroom. The palace felt almost deserted and was quiet except for the noise of the mob outside. Despite the warm early morning, fifty-five-gallon oil drums had been filled with trash and were burning down on the street. The flames sent odd flickers through the windows that played on the walls and ceilings.

“I’ll just leave you here, sir. The president waits inside for you.”

“Thank you,” Haaris said.

President Barazani stood at the bullet-proof French doors looking directly out across Constitution Avenue. His hands were clasped behind his back, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. His jacket was draped over the back of his desk chair, and the armpits of his white shirt were stained with sweat, though his office was air-conditioned.

He was a different man from the student Haaris remembered at Eton. Then Farid to his friends, F to Haaris’s D, he was a hell-raiser. They both had been heavy drinkers and gamblers. Haaris had little money in those days, so F had bankrolled him. Of course it never mattered, because they always lost and yet they always had fun, usually ending up with a couple of whores just before dawn.

When Barazani’s parents — his father was a major general in the army and his mother traced her lineage back to royalty — had enough of their son’s antics and sharply reduced his allowance, Haaris had taken up the slack. He convinced his uncle that Barazani would one day be an important man in Pakistan — and therefore a good friend to cultivate. Anyway, his uncle had no children, and had heart problems; his money would probably go to his nephew. So why not spend a little of it now?

The logic was good enough for his uncle, who opened the financial spigot; not full flow, but enough so that Haaris could bankroll Barazani. And they had become fast friends who’d never completely lost touch with each other.

The president turned and nodded, a sad smile on his lips. He had already lost his country and he knew it. His entire range of emotions was written in deep lines on his brows, in the way he stood favoring his left knee, which he’d hurt in a rugby match, and in his general physical condition. Haaris estimated that Barazani had lost at least twenty kilos since the last time they’d met, the year before, in Washington. He looked ill.

“So here you are at last, an American spy come to offer his advice,” Barazani said in English.

“An old friend come to help where he can,” Haaris replied. He dropped his bag on the floor and crossed the room and they embraced.

“Maybe too late. But I understand the necessity of the ruse of your kidnapping. Was it your idea?”

“The ISI helped, of course.”

“No doubt you and Rajput have become close over the past couple of years, but take some advice. Hasan Rajput is no friend of ours.”

“Especially not you,” Haaris replied, and Barazani smiled and nodded.

“But then he’s still a valuable asset. Let’s sit down so you can tell me exactly why you have gone to such lengths to get to me.”

They sat in a pair of easy chairs at a low table with a brandy service between them. Barazani poured them drinks. The room was large, the high ceilings hand-painted with a sunrise and clouds to the east, and a sunset and a few faint stars and a crescent moon to the west. The odor of incense hung softly on the air, none of the smoke from down on the street reaching this far yet. The large desk was littered with papers and file folders, most of them stamped with “Most Secret,” orange diagonal stripes on the covers. Barazani was a busy man. Unlike Nero when Rome burned he had not been fiddling, he was trying to save his country.

The noise of the crowd had grown since Haaris had arrived, as he’d hoped it would. He needed as large an audience as possible.

“We’re worried about your nuclear weapons. There’s a fear — justified, I think — that one or more of them might fall into the hands of the Taliban. So my first job here is to get your assurances that your security systems are firmly in place.”

“Your president telephoned me a few minutes ago, probably to ask me that very question. I didn’t take her call, I wanted to talk to you first. We may have a problem. At this point I’m told that four of them have gone missing.”

Haaris suppressed a smile. “My God,” he said. “Rajput said nothing about it. Who has them, hopefully not the Taliban?”

“As I said, General Rajput is no friend. At this point all I know is that they may be missing, but who has them is still in question. But if it is Taliban it’s not likely they have the technical knowledge to explode the things. There is that.”

“The North Koreans would be willing to help.”

“We’re watching for just that. Currently there are seventeen North Koreans in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Karachi. They are here as businessmen, but we’re keeping a very close eye on their movements.”

“Exactly who is doing this?”

“People in the SS Directorate personally loyal to me.”

The ISI’s SS Directorate’s prime function was to monitor terrorist activities throughout Pakistan. It was one of the divisions inside the spy agency that Haaris had not been able to penetrate, and one that General Rajput had assured him was of little or no interest to the Americans. Of course, the general was playing both ends against the middle.

“You’ll need to talk to President Miller and reassure her that you are in control of the nuclear arsenal.”

“It would be a lie.”

“Of course, but without that assurance she’ll almost certainly send in our Nuclear Energy Support Team to disable as many of your weapons as our people can get to.”

“That would not be so easy as the bin Laden raid.”

“No one thinks it would be. Certain of our people on her staff and in the Pentagon believe that the losses we would suffer are worth reducing the risk of your weapons falling into the wrong hands.”

“Which may already have occurred,” Barazani said. “But why are you here? What you are telling me makes you a traitor. And just what is it that you are telling me? What’s the U.S. strategy?”

“You need to look at the bigger picture, Farid. If the Taliban has gotten its hands on some nuclear weapons, Pakistan is finished. If President Miller does order our Nuclear Energy Support Team to neutralize what weapons they can reach, Pakistan will be doubly vulnerable — from the Taliban and also from India, which could very well mount a preemptive nuclear strike knowing that you could not retaliate.” Haaris waved his hand toward the French doors. “Then there are the people who demand that something be done.”

“A camera has been set up outside, and my image will be shown on the Jumbotron screen at the head of the front stairs. But what do I tell them? I was waiting for something substantive from you.”

“What they want to hear.”

“What are you telling me, David?” Barazani asked. “That I should step down? Who would take my place? Who would want to, except for the military, or maybe Rajput himself? What are you saying?”

“More to the point, what is the mob on Constitution Avenue demanding?”

“They’re a mob.”

“Pakistanis.”

“Directed by the Taliban.”

Haaris nodded.

Barazani looked like a trapped man. His eyes were wide and he breathed through his mouth. His face was wet. “Is this the message you have brought me from Washington?”

“Not exactly,” Haaris said. “I have something more specific.”

“What?”

Haaris got up and went to his bag. His back to Barazani he broke the diplomatic seal and took out a Glock 29 subcompact pistol, a suppressor attached to the muzzle. He turned around, walked directly back to Barazani, who reared back, and shot the president of Pakistan in the middle of the forehead.

EIGHT

President Barazani lay slumped to the left in his chair. Only a small amount of blood had leaked out of the wound in his forehead and dribbled into his left eye. Haaris felt the carotid artery, but there was no pulse.

The anteroom was empty, the door to the corridor closed. Getting a one-kilogram brick of Semtex and a contact exploder from his bag, he molded the plastic explosive to the outer door and set the fuse. When someone opened the door the Semtex would explode, killing anyone in the corridor within a few meters of the door.

He closed the inner door and molded a second brick of Semtex and an exploder to it.

From his bag he took the trousers, long shirt and kaffiyeh he’d worn in from the airport and put them on over his khaki slacks and white shirt.

Stuffing the pistol in his belt, he inserted the SIM card into his cell phone and called Rajput, getting him on the first ring.

“This is Haaris. I managed to get away from the bastards.”

“My God, David, are you hurt?”

“No, but I’m on foot about five miles from the airport. I need to get to my airplane.”

“The city is a mess. A big crowd has gathered in front of the Aiwan. They’re calling for Barazani to come out and speak to them. But the coward is hiding in his office.”

“He has to do it, General. There’s no other way out for Pakistan.” Haaris let some desperation into his tone. “Can’t he see that?”

“It’s our problem now, David. You’ve done all that you could. We’ll send someone to take you to your airplane and out of the country. Just hold tight.”

Haaris shut off his phone and removed the SIM card.

He took the voice-altering device out of his bag and strapped it around his neck, centering the electronic package just beneath his Adam’s apple, and readjusted the kaffiyeh to cover it and all but his eyes.

The remote control for the outside camera was lying on the small table next to Barazani’s body. Haaris pocketed it, and finally he pulled a razor-sharp machete from his bag and went back to the president of Pakistan.

“Now it is time, my old friend, for you to actually do something worthwhile for your country,” he said.

He swung the blade with all of his might, easily severing the flesh of Barazani’s neck and cutting through the top of the spinal column. The president’s head fell backward, thumping onto the floor behind the chair and rolling a meter or so before coming to rest on its right side.

Haaris wiped the machete on Barazani’s shirt and laid it aside before he switched on the outside camera, picked up the severed head by its hair and walked to the door.

The radio in Lieutenant Jura’s car came to life. “Special unit one.”

He answered it. “Unit one.”

“Get out of there right now. The situation is about to go explosive.”

The only one who could use this channel was the directorate’s dispatcher, under the personal control of General Rajput.

“What about my passenger? He’s still inside.”

“He’s no longer your concern. Leave now, Lieutenant. That is an order.”

“Roger,” Jura said. He started the car and headed back past the residences to the rear gate. He had no idea what was going on, but he was relieved to be out of it. All hell was about to break loose; it was thick in the air and at this moment, he could think only of himself, and the hell with the bloody Americans.

As he approached the gate, he could hear a helicopter coming in from the south, but then three armed guards came out of the darkness and blocked the driveway.

“Halt,” one of them shouted.

For some inexplicable reason the iron gate stood open just beyond the guards.

“Stop now!” the guard shouted.

Jura slammed the gas pedal to the floor and the Fiat surged forward, striking one of the guards before the others opened fire.

Haaris switched on the voice-altering device, opened the French doors and walked out onto the balcony. At the balustrade he raised Barazani’s head to show the crowd.

For a seeming eternity the mob fell almost silent. In the distance to the south the ISI helicopter was arriving. The time for long speeches was past.

“This man was an instrument of our enemies in the West,” Haaris shouted in Punjabi, the language that nearly 50 percent of the people spoke.

“But we have friends with us now. The Students.” He used the Pashto word for “students” which was taliban. “Our only way to liberation is with them. They will help guide us when the Americans attack, which they will very soon, possibly even before dawn. But we will not allow another Abbottabad. The shame will not be ours to bear.”

The crowd reacted with a low, ugly roar that slowly rose to cheers.

“I have come here to guide you. I am not a Student, but follow me, I will show you the way.”

His image was on the huge Jumbotron, the head in grisly color, his altered voice amplified so that it rolled over the mob, seeming to fill every molecule of air on Constitution Avenue.

“Pakistan’s leaders have been nothing more than puppets of the American regime. They in Washington are friends of New Delhi. It must not continue this way. Pakistan needs at long last to declare its independence. We are a sovereign nation, we are a sovereign people.”

The mob roared but without anger. They were hearing something they needed to hear, something they had yearned to hear for years, but especially since the SEAL team raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

The unmarked helicopter, showing no lights, passed to the west of the Presidential Palace, but few people in the crowd seemed to notice.

“I have come with a message for you. A message that I was given by Allah in a waking dream.”

The mob released a collective sigh.

“We do not have to wait for Paradise because it is here now, within all of us. We need only strength: strong arms to do what is needed, strong resolve to stay the course, strong hearts and strong love to know for certain that what we do is right and just.”

Someone close to the front of the crowd shouted, “Messiah!”

At first it seemed like no one had heard, but then someone farther back in the mob repeated it: “Messiah!”

Then a woman screamed, her voice shrill, “My Messiah!”

“Look to each other for strength.”

The chant, Messiah! grew.

“Look to your families, your friends, your neighbors for strength.”

“Messiah!”

“Look to strangers for strength.”

“Messiah!”

“Look to me, for I will be your right arm of justice,” Haaris told them.

The helicopter came from the north, very low, flared suddenly just high enough to set down on the roof behind and eight meters above the balcony.

“I will leave you now in person but not in spirit,” Haaris shouted. “Love Pakistan, love your neighbors, have strength. There will be more messages from me.”

The mob was momentarily subdued.

“Allah be with you. Allah be with us. Allah be with Pakistan!”

He threw the head over the edge of the balcony at the same moment the Semtex charge on the corridor door exploded with a sharp bang.

NINE

President Miller watched in stunned disbelief as the man the mob on Constitution Avenue was calling “Messiah” tossed the severed head off the balcony. Moments later the image they were intercepting from the Jumbotron broadcast went blank.

“My God, who was that?” she asked.

“If you mean the head, I’m pretty sure it was Barazani’s,” Secretary of State Fay said. “I met him twice last year. But if you mean the one who tossed it, I haven’t the faintest.”

Miller called Page, who was still at the Watch. His image came up on one of the big monitors. “Do we have a positive ID on whose head that was?” she demanded.

“Photo interp gives it a ninety-eight-percent match, plus or minus nothing, Madam President. It’s Barazani.”

“What about the man who tossed it?”

“Taliban, probably. We’re getting a lot of signals out of ISI and they’re just as surprised as we were. But I do have a bit of good news. We think that Dave Haaris may have escaped. The ISI is trying to reach him so they can get him out to the airport.”

“As soon as he’s airborne I want to talk to him. He was right in the middle of it, he should have picked up something. But what about the man the crowd called ‘Messiah’?”

“We don’t have an ID, but one of our technical people is sure the voice was artificial.”

“What do you mean?”

“He thinks the man’s voice was computer enhanced. He’s trying to re-create the real voice.”

“We can do that?” Kalley asked.

“Otto Rencke’s on it.”

It was the second piece of good news, and the president said so. “We’ll soon have an answer if he’s as good as everyone says he is.”

“He is,” Page said. “But the bigger issue is why would he go through the trouble of disguising his voice in the first place? I’m told that his Punjabi was perfect.”

“Excuse me, Madam President, but Mr. Page is correct,” the White House translator, still on the Situation Room screen, interjected. “The Punjabi the man was speaking was educated. He’s someone from an urban population center. I’d guess Lahore.”

“That jibes with what my people are telling me,” Page said.

“Have there been any hints about someone like that on the way up?” Miller asked. “He doesn’t sound like run-of-the-mill Taliban.”

“There are always rumors, but nothing that we’ve been able to substantiate. I spoke with Ross a few minutes ago and he’s just as mystified as the rest of us. But we are working on it.”

Kalley sat forward. “Was that an explosion we heard just before the signal was cut off?”

“We think so. Our best guess is that the president’s personal security people blew the office door to get in.”

“What about the Messiah?” Miller asked. “Do they have him?”

“Our spy bird picked up the image of an Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter landing on the roof of the Presidential Palace. It’s just twenty-five feet above the balcony.”

“Jesus, are the Russians somehow involved in this?”

“It’s not likely. The angle was for the Jumbotron. We did some enhanced imagery and couldn’t come up with any markings. But we think the speaker may have made his way to the roof and boarded the helicopter, which took off toward the south, where we lost it.”

“Goddamnit, don’t tell me what we can’t do, tell me how,” the president said in frustration.

“I’m sorry, Madam President, but current economic policy has tied our hands in some critical areas. Like the launching of new reconnaissance satellites.”

“What did we do before the age of satellites?” Miller shot back.

“We had more personnel on the ground,” Page said, not backing down. His message was clear: You get what you pay for.

“What resources do we have to send to help Ross?”

“Rencke suggests that we ask McGarvey for a hand.”

Miller personally had never liked or trusted maverick operators such as McGarvey. But when she’d gone to the White House just before Christmas, a couple of weeks before she was inaugurated, the outgoing president had briefed her on highly classified assets she could count on if nothing else was working. Kirk McGarvey, the legendary operator who for a brief period had actually been director of the CIA, was one of them.

“He won’t want to work for you, but if he does, never ask him a question for which you think you already know the answer,” the president had told her. “The man has the bad habit of telling you the truth, no matter how much you don’t want to hear it.”

She’d started to object, but the president held her off.

“He’s likely to do things his own way, not yours, and he’s just as likely to ignore the law. Hell, I even had him arrested and put in jail. Lasted less than twenty-four hours before the shit hit the fan and I had to let him get at it. And through all of it, I had the impression he let himself be arrested just to make his point.”

“Isn’t he getting too old to be running around shooting people?”

“No,” the president said flatly. “And don’t ever question his loyalty or his motivation. He’s been severely wounded several times in the line of duty. And he lost his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law to the cause.”

“What cause is that?” Miller had asked. It was the last time she tried to be sarcastic when it came to discussing McGarvey. She had gotten over it that afternoon.

“His country and for what it stands. Jingoistic, even schmaltzy, but true nevertheless. Don’t forget it, Charlene.”

Miller focused on Page’s image. “We’re not quite there yet, Walter. First I’ll decide if we’ll send our nuclear response teams before the situation gets totally out of hand. Keep in contact. And let me know as soon as Haaris shows up.”

“Will do,” Page said, and the president shut down the connection.

For the longest moment, no one said anything.

“Discussion,” the president said.

“I don’t think that there’s any question that we send in our nuclear response teams,” Admiral Altman said. “But we will suffer casualties.”

“We didn’t when we took out bin Laden.”

“They didn’t know we were coming. This time they’ll be expecting us.”

“I don’t know if I can completely agree. They’ve got their hands full trying to defend their military bases against attacks by the Taliban.”

“People listening to what the Messiah told them might have bought into it,” Kalley suggested.

“That the Taliban is suddenly the friend of Pakistan?” Miller asked sharply. The use of the word Messiah was bothersome to her.

“Yes.”

“And we can only guarantee to neutralize ninety of their nuclear weapons,” the admiral said. “And that’s the best-case scenario. It would leave them with thirty workable weapons — including the ones that went missing in the last twenty-four hours. Could turn into an all-out war.”

“Our response teams would create enough of a cause célèbre for them to declare war,” Secretary of State Fay said.

“Not against us,” Miller said.

“Against Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is no friend of Pakistan.”

“We still have people on the ground over there,” Kalley said. “It could turn into an unholy mess. But I agree with Admiral Altman. We don’t have any choice but to send in the teams. We just have to be prepared for the blowback.”

Blowback was a term that President Miller hated more than any other, and she let her displeasure be known by the look on her face and the tone in her voice. “I want to talk to Haaris first.”

TEN

The ISI’s Russian Hind attack helicopter carrying Haaris touched down in Jinnah Park two miles southeast of Rawalpindi and trundled beneath a canopy of trees before its engines shut down.

The ephemeris data of the American KH-14 spy satellite that showed the exact position of the spy bird for any given latitude and longitude twenty-four/seven had been programmed into the chopper’s navigation systems. Two years ago, within ten days after the bird had been launched and went operational, the data set had been stolen by an ISI-paid computer hacker working out of a commune in Amsterdam. The pilot merely linked the data to his GPS receiver and he was showed the route that would avoid detection.

The gunfire and explosions around the Army General Headquarters had subsided a few minutes after Haaris’s speech, and even here in this isolated spot Pakistan seemed to be holding its breath.

Haaris pulled off his kaffiyeh, shirt and trousers and stuffed them in the nylon bag, from which he pulled out his blazer and put it on. He took the computer collar off, detached the microchip processor, which he pocketed, and then put the collar in the bag. The clothes and other things would be destroyed.

The only other person in the chopper besides the pilot and copilot was ISI captain Qadir Aheer, a totally disagreeable little rat-faced man whose complexion was pocked from teenaged acne. He was constantly chuckling as if he were in on a very big joke.

A yellow Toyota pickup truck was parked about ten meters away in a copse of willows.

“It has a half tank of gas,” Qadir said. “But you will be on your own and you will have no weapon. You’ve been a Taliban prisoner tonight.”

“Of course,” Haaris said indifferently. The most difficult work had already begun. The next would be convincing the U.S. — but slowly, gently, with finesse — to take military action against Pakistan beyond the nuclear response raid that should happen sometime before dawn.

“But you will have to present the illusion.”

“I need your help.”

Qadir grinned. “Yes, you do. That part is unavoidable. You will simply be an American spy who got in the way and who luckily escaped with his life.”

Haaris felt no malice for the man, who was simply doing a job he was ordered to do, except that the little bastard would enjoy inflicting the pain on someone he knew was his better.

Qadir yanked on the breast pocket of Haaris’s blazer, tearing the material. He ripped Haaris’s white shirt down the front, the buttons popping off, and he slapped Haaris in the face as hard as he could.

The pilot and copilot did not turn around.

Qadir picked up a Kalashnikov and slammed the butt of the assault rifle into the side of Haaris’s face, nearly dislocating his jaw and breaking a couple of teeth. He then slammed the rifle butt into Haaris’s chest, cracking a couple of ribs, and then raised it like a club.

Haaris grabbed the captain’s hand and stayed the blow. “That will be enough.” It hurt to talk.

“The Taliban wouldn’t have been so easy on you,” Qadir said, grinning ear to ear. “I think we need to complete the illusion.”

“As you wish, Captain,” Haaris said. He pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the face, just above the bridge of his nose.

Qadir fell back against the rear of the copilot’s seat.

The pilot turned around. “What do you want us to do with the captain’s body?”

“On the way back dump it out the door.”

“How shall we report it?”

“He was a captain who exceeded his orders,” Haaris said.

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

Haaris shoved the pistol in his belt but left his bag behind. He climbed down from the helicopter and went directly to the pickup, not bothering to look over his shoulder as the helicopter lifted off and swung back to the north toward ISI headquarters.

Gunfire to the north toward Islamabad had all but died down, but smoke from the fires that had been set earlier still flickered in the overcast sky, and the smell was everywhere, as Haaris drove east along a narrow dirt track through Koral and then Shaheen Town.

His face was on fire, and his ribs hurt so badly that it was difficult to take even shallow breaths.

He came over a low rise and stopped. In the distance, maybe five or six kilometers, Gandhara International Airport was still lit up. Closer to his position, where the dirt track met with the main highway from the city, he could make out several cars and pickup trucks.

He put the SIM card back in his phone and called General Rajput. “I need some help.”

“Where are you, David?”

“A few klicks from the airport, but the highway is blocked. I think the Taliban still hold it.”

“My hands are tied, you must understand this. I’m told that Captain Qadir, who got you out of there, was himself shot to death less than fifteen minutes ago. I’ve sent two gunships to retrieve his body.”

“I’m more important than a dead man, goddamnit!”

“You’re an American.”

“An embarrassment to your government if I’m recaptured. Give me air cover, General, and clearance for my aircraft to take off and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Rajput was silent for several beats. When he came back he sounded resigned. “Keep your head down and get word to your crew to start the engines. We’ll clear the highway. Your window of opportunity will not last long. I suggest you take advantage of my friendship as quickly as possible.”

“Go with Allah.”

“And you too.”

Haaris shut down his phone, but this time he did not remove the SIM card. There was no need for it now.

Within three minutes a pair of Bell gunships materialized from the northwest, and swooping fast and low, opened fire with their GAU-17/A 7.62-millimeter machine guns. In a single pass the vehicles parked on and off the road had been reduced to little more than burning sheet metal, and the Taliban fighters little more than blood mist and scattered body parts.

The choppers made tight arcs and came back, the gunners looking for targets, but there were none and the pilots peeled off and headed back the way they had come.

At the bottom of the hill, Haaris had to take care to avoid the carnage until he could get up on the highway and race to the airport. Passing the signs to the arrivals and departures terminals, he drove around to the military aviation side, no one coming out to challenge him.

The Gulfstream was on the tarmac in front of one of the closed hangars, its engines running, the hatch open and stairs lowered.

Gwen stood at the open hatch and when Haaris pulled up and got out of the pickup, she came down with the copilot, Dan Francis, and together they propped him up and helped him aboard.

“Get us the hell out of here,” he croaked. The pain in his mouth was bad, but he made it sound worse.

“Get him strapped down,” Ed Lamont said.

Francis helped with that, and then he raised the stairs and closed the hatch as they started to roll.

“We thought for sure that they had killed you,” Gwen said.

“They wanted to,” Haaris said.

“I’ll get the trauma kit.”

“First I need a large brandy, and as soon as we’re out of Pakistan’s airspace get me Mr. Page on the secure phone.”

ELEVEN

Walter Page’s call came into the White House Situation Room, his image up on the flat-panel monitor. It appeared as if he was still in the Watch at CIA headquarters.

“Madam President, Dave Haaris is in the air and on the way out of Pakistan. I just talked to him on an encrypted phone. They’ve been given permission to fly over Saudi Arabia and Egypt to our air force base at Incirlik, Turkey.”

“Why there, why not Ramstein and then home?” Miller demanded, her impatience rising. There was always a certain rhythm and meter to crisis situations, a metronome that could not be altered without bad effects.

“They weren’t allowed to refuel at Gandhara, so they’ll have to make the stop. And Haaris was banged up.”

“How badly?”

“His says that his injuries are uncomfortable but not life-threatening.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“As soon as they’re safely on the ground in Incirlik a secure circuit can be arranged,” Page said.

“Now,” the president said.

“They haven’t cleared Pakistan’s airspace yet.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“He needs medical attention.”

“And I need to talk to him,” Miller insisted. “I know Haaris. He’s a good man who’s been in the middle of a situation for which I need more information. Doing nothing at this moment is not an option, but neither is doing the wrong thing.”

“As you wish,” Page said. “May I listen in?”

“Of course,” Miller said. Several moments later Haaris’s image came up on the split screen, Page to the left.

“Madam President,” he said, his voice distorted. His face was red and swollen.

“Where are you at this moment?”

“We haven’t been in the air very long. I suspect we’re about one hundred miles south of Islamabad en route to Karachi, where we’ll fly up the Gulf of Oman to Saudi Arabia.”

“How are you?”

“I’ve been better, but I’ll live. The bastards aren’t terribly civilized, you know.”

“You can save your full report until you get home, but I need to know what the situation on the ground is. Do you know about this Messiah who showed up out of nowhere?”

“Only what General Rajput told me. Is it true that he murdered President Barazani?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Incredible,” Haaris said. “And let me guess, he admitted openly that he killed the president and probably that the Taliban are in reality Pakistan’s friends.”

“Yes, did you see the broadcast?”

“No, but the group that captured me suddenly got up and left. Five minutes later a squad of ISI security showed up and got me out of there.”

“What else can you tell me?”

“There were many explosions and a great deal of gunfire, but from where they took me I couldn’t say if it was more concentrated in Islamabad or Rawalpindi. But it stopped just before my captors took off. I can tell you that they were happy. One of them wanted to shoot me, but another one — I think he was probably the leader — said something to the effect: ‘Why bother?’”

“You had no trouble taking off from the airport? No one challenged you?”

“No. I think it must have been the ISI’s doing, but frankly I don’t see how they’ll be able to hang on. They used to be friends of the Taliban, but that relationship hasn’t existed for several years.”

The president looked around the table at the others. They were grim-faced. “I’m in the Situation Room.”

“Yes, I can see that, Madam President.”

“I’m considering launching our NEST people. They’re standing by now.”

Haaris sat forward. “Have there been any reports yet of missing weapons?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“There’ll be more. Launch the teams immediately.”

“More? How can you be sure?”

“If this Messiah claims that the Taliban are friends of Pakistan, his first move will be to get as many WMDs into their hands as quickly as possible. It’s no secret that our intention is to neutralize as many as we can.”

“Yes,” Miller said. “My concern is an Indian preemptive strike. The entire region could go up in flames. The loss of life would be nothing short of catastrophic.”

“Telephone Mr. Singh,” Haaris said. Manmohan Singh was India’s prime minister, who held the actual executive power. “He’ll listen to reason. And have you spoken with Sabir?” Nasir Sabir was Pakistan’s PM.

“Not yet.”

“Then, Madam President, I strongly suggest that you send the teams in immediately. And once they have accomplished their mission, contact both PMs to let them know what you have done and that the U.S. will continue to stand by as an ally to both nations.”

“It’s possible that India will strike as soon as they find out I’ve launched the teams.”

“Not while our personnel are on the ground there. But every minute that you delay could mean the loss of more weapons to the Taliban.”

“They wouldn’t have the means to launch them.”

“If they have the cooperation of the air force they will,” Haaris said.

“Thank you, David. Have a safe trip home.”

Page remained on screen after Haaris was off.

“Let me know as soon as he clears Pakistan’s airspace,” Miller said.

“Okay.”

Miller cut the connection.

Everyone around the table stared at her, their expressions even darker than before, their mood easy to read.

“Discussion,” she said.

“There’s no question but we launch now,” Kalley said. “Haaris was right, we mustn’t delay.”

“He’s a CIA analyst.”

“Whom everyone trusts,” Secretary of State Fay said. “Haaris is the last word on the Pakistan question. The agency has built an entire desk around him.”

“No one at the Pentagon doubts his expertise,” Secretary of Defense Spencer said, and Admiral Altman agreed.

“The man has never been wrong.”

And that was one of the main sticking points for Miller. The man was never wrong. It was a condition in people — especially in her advisers — that she’d always found disturbing.

Before her election, she’d been only a one-term junior senator from Minnesota, but before that she had been the dean of the University of Minnesota. It had been an important job, heading one of the leading universities in the U.S., the job made more interesting because of the geniuses who answered to her administration.

But she had, for the most part, let them do their own thing. Before she had taken the job, a friend of hers who was the dean of a small but prestigious Northeastern college had given her a piece of advice that she’d always thought was sound.

“Venerate your geniuses — the straight-A students who will go on to do major things, win prizes, bring honor to your school. But take special care of your C and even your D students because they are the ones who will go out into the world and make millions with which they’ll endow your new library or science wing.”

It was the same for her in the White House. She was bombarded by geniuses — eggheads — but it was the workers in the trenches, the ones with real-world experiences, that she most admired. The problem was that Haaris was both an egghead and a man of the world.

“If the Taliban are truly in charge — or at least are partners — they will retaliate,” she said.

“We don’t have a choice,” Secretary of Defense Spencer replied. “We have to strike now.”

“We won’t get them all.”

“No,” Spencer said. “But we’ll get most of them.”

Politics, Miller had decided early in her campaign for president, was like chess. The opening moves for control of the center board were decisive. A master against a mere journeyman could force a checkmate in the first four or five moves. But against an out-of-control wild man who was likely to do the totally unexpected, even the superior player sometimes had serious trouble.

Like now.

The screens lit up in red, and a moment later Page was back on. “Madam President, we’ve had a nuclear incident in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. It may be a detonation of the weapon taken from Quetta Air Force Base. We have a WC-135 Constant Phoenix aircraft operating out of Kandahar that is measuring particulates in the atmosphere, and we’ve a seismic confirmation of a ten-kiloton-plus event.”

Haaris came on. “We can see it off to the north,” he said. “Definitely a nuclear explosion.”

“Have you been affected?” Miller asked. She felt numb.

“Physically we’re okay. Have you sent the teams?”

She looked at the others, and nodded. “They’re on their way.”