The Fourth Horseman

THIRTY-THREE

The flight to Pakistan went without incident. They were directed to the military side of the airport, where they were met by an honor guard of Pakistani army, air force and navy at strict attention as Ambassador Powers came down the stairs.

A black Mercedes limo and five white vans were parked at the end of a long red carpet, the drivers also waiting at attention.

Powers and several of his top aides were met by Prime Minister Rajput, who was dressed in his army uniform.

No civilians had gathered for the arrival, but the fact that Rajput was in uniform was not lost on one of the men who had been seated just in front of McGarvey. “The general is making his point,” the man said to his seatmate. “Whatever else is going on here between the Messiah and Taliban, the army is still in charge.”

“They’re the ones with their fingers on the nukes,” McGarvey said, getting up and taking his bag from the overhead bin.

The two field service officers glared at him as he made his way to the front of the aircraft. Two men whom he’d not noticed earlier were waiting at the main door as others on Powers’s team left the plane.

The taller of them stepped forward to block McGarvey from leaving. “A word if you please. Dr. Parks. I’m Bob Thomas.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” the other man said. They were both young and well built, with the no-nonsense attitude of ex — Special Forces.

“Sounds good to me.”

“Mr. Austin asked us to escort you to the embassy, where he’d like to have a word before you leave Pakistan,” Thomas said.

“I’m surprised he didn’t come out here himself to meet the ambassador. But I suppose he’s a bit busy trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Are you armed?” the second officer said.

“I don’t think it’d be very smart for an American to be running around Pakistan without some protection. Unless you guys were sent out to act as my bodyguards.”

“We’ll have your weapon,” Thomas said.

“No,” McGarvey said.

The man stepped forward. “We were instructed to take it, sir.”

“I don’t think you guys really want to have an incident here and now. Lots of people out there would take notice.”

A dozen foreign service officers were backed up in the aisle waiting to get off, but none of them said a word, waiting for the little drama to play out.

The limo carrying Powers and two of his top aides pulled away, escorted by two Hummers in the lead and two in the rear filled with armed Pakistani Special Forces troops.

“What say we just hitch a ride to the embassy,” McGarvey said. “I’m carrying a personal message for Ross from the director. And once he has it I’ll be out of your hair. No trouble. Promise.”

“Yes, sir,” the taller of the two said. “We’ll hold you to your word.”

The run into the diplomatic section of Islamabad went without incident. Life in the city had gone back to normal. No evidence of the disturbances over the past week were visible, nor were angry crowds lining the highway with protest signs. Traffic was heavy, but no one seemed to be in a hurry, no one seemed to be angry. No one honked their horn.

“It’s almost spooky,” one of the FSOs commented.

“Like the city is holding its breath waiting for the shoe to drop,” another one said.

“How long has it been like this?” McGarvey asked his minders.

“Ever since the Messiah took over,” Thomas said. “The place was under martial law until the parliament named General Rajput as acting PM and he lifted it.” He glanced at McGarvey. “It looks peaceful, but no one thinks it’s going to last. It’s why Mr. Austin didn’t want someone from Langley coming over here with an attitude, and carrying.”

“They invited us back.”

“The diplomats. Not us. Ever since Lundgren went missing we’ve been keeping a low profile.”

“Was he the one caught in the nuclear incident?”

“He was out there, and we haven’t heard from him since.”

“What about you guys? Is the ISI dogging you? Or are you being left alone?”

Thomas hesitated for just a moment. “If they were on us, I’d understand it; we’ve always had our rat packs. Twenty-four/seven, usually four teams rotating. In and out of the embassy, to and from our quarters, restaurants. Christ, even if we had to take a dump someone was always watching. But not in the past couple of days. Same with the British embassy staff, the French, Germans, Italians, everyone.”

“Unless they got better and no one has made them,” McGarvey suggested.

“I wish it was that simple,” Thomas said. “At least we’d know what to expect. But trust me, Parks, no one is following us. It’s one of the reasons Mr. Austin wants you to go back home. If you create an incident there’s no telling what the ISI will do. It’s like walking across a field of broken glass with bare feet: the wrong move and it’ll be a bloody mess.”

Powers was already inside the embassy, his limo and the four military escort vehicles gone when the five vans pulled up and their escorts left. Two marine guards at the main entrance stayed out of sight as much as possible, only opening the gate electrically when the drivers radioed ahead.

Thomas and the other escort brought McGarvey into the embassy past the security desk and up to the third-floor rear, where the CIA maintained a suite of offices under the guise of the American Information and Cultural Exchange Section.

Chief of Station, Pakistan, Ross Austin, alerted that they were on the way up, was waiting at the open door to his office, his jacket off, his collar open, his tie loose, sleeves rolled up: the pose of a man, who looked like a Packers’ linebacker, obviously deeply at work. He was a career intelligence officer who hoped one day to raise to at least a deputy director slot. His mentor was Marty Bambridge and at forty Austin fashioned himself after the DDO — pinch-nosed, disapproving, feigning surprise whenever something was set before him. But despite all of that the scuttlebutt was that he was a damned fine COS.

But, and it was a very large but, in McGarvey’s thinking, Ross Austin, like many chiefs of station, was the CIA in Pakistan. He was not only bright, he knew Pakistan and its government and especially its secret intelligence services better than just about anyone — other than Dave Haaris. At the very least he deserved the truth.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” he told Thomas and the other officer, and motioned for McGarvey to join him.

Austin’s office was a mess of files, maps, newspapers and the translations of dozens of Pakistani magazines and television and radio broadcasts. He went behind his desk and McGarvey sat across from him.

“I talked to Walt Page last night, and he asked me to at least hear you out before I sent you away. I have an aircraft standing by to take you to Turkey — Incirlik — right now. Talk to me, Parks.”

McGarvey had met Austin twice before, once at the Farm and once at Langley. The first time McGarvey had been deputy director of operations, and the second time he’d been the DCI. In each instance the meeting had not been one-on-one.

“I’m leaving the embassy within the hour, but I am not leaving Pakistan. I have a job to do here.”

“No.”

“There’s not much you can say about it, Ross.”

“Where the hell do you get off addressing me by my first name? Who the hell do you think you are?”

“My name is Kirk McGarvey. I’m here to assassinate the Messiah and I’ve just put my life in your hands.” He took out his pistol and laid it on the desk.

THIRTY-FOUR

McGarvey left the embassy on foot shortly before noon and walked down the driveway and out the gate past the two marine guards, who watched but said nothing. The streets here in what was known as the diplomatic enclave of the city were as safe as any streets could be right now in Pakistan, but McGarvey still felt naked without his pistol, though he understood the theater of leaving it with Austin. An unarmed McGarvey was no immediate threat. It was what he wanted the COS to believe.

Two blocks away, he got a cab in front of the Canadian embassy and directed the driver to take him to the Marriott Hotel near the Aiwan and the prime minister’s residence. A lot of foreign businessmen and journalists stayed there, and with its double walls and bomb-proof entrance gate, it was among the most secure spots in the city.

Otto had made the reservations for five nights. “It’ll be a reasonable jumping-off place for you, but you might run into a problem right from the start. They scan people’s luggage at the gate. If they find your gun, they’ll hold you until the cops get there. But the good news is they profile. And you don’t fit the image of a suicide bomber.”

“I’ll leave it at the embassy until I need it,” McGarvey had said.

“You’ll have to let Austin in on your plans.”

“He’s a good man. He won’t want me there, but if Page tells him that I’m staying, he’ll wash his hands of the op but he won’t do anything stupid to put me in harm’s way.”

“Just being in Pakistan puts you in harm’s way.”

“Keep an eye on Pete for me.”

“Louise wants her to stay with us.”

It went against McGarvey’s better judgment, but he’d agreed. “Make sure that she stays out of sight, she’s supposed to be dead.”

Passing the Aiwan on Constitution Avenue he saw no signs of the mass demonstration that had taken place only a few days before. Traffic was normal. Like the FSO in the van had said: it was spooky.

The nation was waiting for the Messiah to show up, to tell the people what to do next. Haaris had said that he was betting that the man was going to push Pakistan into war with India, which was in itself a bizarre position for him to announce so openly if he was in fact the Messiah. Something was missing. But Haaris was probably insane because his advice to the president was to make preemptive strikes on Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

“Cut the head off and the monster will die,” he’d said.

The president was certain that Pakistan wouldn’t dare start anything. With their reduced nuclear arsenal, they’d lose.

Neither Rajput nor anyone else in the government had made any mention of the U.S. strikes against their weapons. Not even the international press corps had broken the story, though there were plenty of witnesses on the ground. Nearly everyone’s attention was still focused on the nuclear incident near Quetta, for which no one in the government had offered an explanation.

Security at the Marriott’s front gate was tight. One of the uniformed security officers led a bomb-sniffing dog around the cab, while another checked McGarvey’s diplomatic passport and a third looked inside the trunk.

“If you want to check my luggage I have no objection,” McGarvey told the officer.

“It is not necessary, Dr. Parks,” the officer said.

The busy lobby was sleek and new, and the check-in went smoothly. He was given a suite on the fourth floor that looked out toward the Margalla Hills. which at night would be alive with the lights of homes.

As soon as the bellman left, McGarvey used his encrypted phone to call Otto. “I’m in. Has Powers scheduled a news conference yet?”

“One-thirty local, you’ll have just enough time to get over there. How’d it go with Austin?”

“He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t about to go head to head with me. Did he call Page?”

“No. But what’d you tell him?”

“Everything.”

“Jesus,” Otto said softly. “You just unzipped your fly. Care to tell me why?”

“Haaris has been Austin’s chief adviser.”

“I’ll check the embassy’s phone records, see if he’s called the Connaught in London. But it might not prove anything.”

“It’d prove that Haaris is still there,” McGarvey said. “But I have a hunch that whoever Doyle’s people are watching is a double, and that Haaris is already here or will be soon. Everyone is waiting for the Messiah to show up.”

“Including you.”

“Including me,” McGarvey said. “Where’s the news conference being held?”

“At the Aiwan with Rajput. And I’ve worked out your secondary cover, including a seven-month back story. You’re a geopolitical blogger on a site called PIP—‘Parks’s International Perspective.’ Right-wing, hawkish. Your basic tenant is that since the Second World War the U.S. has stepped into the role of the world’s benevolent police force. It’s something you believe anyway. I’ve posted almost one hundred articles.”

“No one at the news conference will have heard of the site.”

“They do now. Last night when I finished setting it up, I inserted nearly one million hits. An hour ago the number had gone up by two hundred thousand, and it’s still climbing because of your most recent posts on the Messiah wanting to go to war with India. The journalists in the room might never have heard of you until now, but none of them will admit it. Especially not to each other. Not for a while, anyway.”

“Anybody making any significant comments?”

“If you mean Dave Haaris, no. But I’m pretty sure that our people here on Campus are aware of the site. I have a filter on it to screen for anyone interesting. But the only posts against you are coming from unknowns or people who didn’t care to identify themselves. I’m working on tracing some of them back to their sources, but nothing much is coming up.”

“How do I get to it?”

“Google ‘PIP.’ You’d better read the last half dozen or so posts to get yourself up to speed. But like I said, I didn’t put any words in your mouth that you haven’t already spoken at one time or the other.”

McGarvey had to smile. “Have I always been that obvious?”

“Yes.”

“Keep an eye on Pete. I don’t trust her.”

Otto evaded the comment. “I can have a pistol sent in a diplomatic pouch from Jalalabad. Be there by dinnertime.”

“Don’t do it. I’d have to ditch it every time I came back to the hotel,” McGarvey said. “And if I get into a situation where I’d need a weapon, it’d probably be worthless to me.”

On the short drive over to the Presidential Palace McGarvey brought the PIP site up on his phone and scrolled backward through several days of articles before the Messiah had made his first appearance. Pakistan, according to what Otto had written, had never been a U.S. friend. Nor had the U.S. been theirs.

The United States had provided their military with billions in aid so that the U.S. would be allowed to make air strikes on al-Qaeda positions in the rugged mountains on the border with Afghanistan. All the while the ISI gave rock-solid assurances that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were perfectly safe under the protection of the Strategic Plans Division — a separate security service whose sole purpose was guarding the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

But he argued that the same high-ranking officers in the ISI who had promised nuclear security had also promised that they had no idea of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, even though the man’s compound was less than one mile from Pakistan’s main military academy.

The military had not officially reacted to the raid on bin Laden’s compound, prompting a lot of text messages to the effect that: if you honk your horn, do so lightly, because the Pakistani army is asleep. The ISI, however — even though it was military intelligence — had worked an under-the-table agreement with a German assassins-for-hire group to kill all the SEAL Team Six operators who’d participated in the raid. And it had very nearly succeeded.

Into this mix had come the Messiah.

THIRTY-FIVE

Pete took care to make as little noise as possible as she got dressed in a pair of jeans, loose untucked blue button-up shirt and boat shoes. She went to the window and looked down at the backyard that bordered on some woods.

The night sky was clear, the moon full, and so far as she could tell nothing moved below. She’d half expected Marty to send some minders from the Campus to watch over her, but last night Otto had assured her that no one had put her on any sort of a leash. He had promised Marty that she wouldn’t do anything dumb.

“Define ‘dumb,’” she’d asked, but Otto had just laughed.

The last word she’d been given was that Haaris was holed up at the Connaught in London and Mac had arrived in Pakistan and had checked in at the Marriott. Which put Haaris — if he was the Messiah — at Mac’s six o’clock. And that was totally unacceptable.

Walking was difficult for her. Her thighs were deeply bruised from the knees up, and just pulling on her jeans had been painful. In addition she had headaches that came and went; sometimes they were so intense that she had to close her eyes and sit down, lest she fall.

At the moment her head was clear, Mac’s image bright in her mind. Even with his disguise she’d recognized him immediately at the hospital. It was his eyes; everything that was inside him was there to read like an open book. A window into his soul, some poet had written. Her soul.

She turned to get her overnight bag and purse. Louise, in one of Otto’s floppy KGB T-shirts, her legs bare, one of her quirky smiles on her long, narrow face, stood at the open door.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’ve been reading,” Louise said.

“Otto asked you to keep an eye on me?”

“He talked to Mac and so far everything is going okay, and last we’ve heard Haaris is still in London, but you know that.”

“So I’m busted, now what?” Pete asked. “You know I can’t just sit on my hands here.”

“Otto figured you’d want to go to London first, to make sure it’s really Haaris and not some imposter. Boyle has been ordered to personally stay out of it. If it is Haaris, Tommy might get himself killed. Or at the very least he would change the dynamic and force Haaris to do something unexpected.”

“What’s expected?”

“We think Haaris is either already in Pakistan or on his way. It’s something Mac needs to know.”

“I think so too,” Pete said.

Louise smiled again. “He’s really going to be pissed off when you show up in Islamabad.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“Driven men are not easy to love. I could write a book on the subject. But they’re worth every pound of trouble. In Mac’s case it has to be doubly hard because of what he’s already lost. And now he’s frightened out of his head about losing you.”

Pete was at a loss for words.

“He’s in love with you, that’s obvious to the most casual observer, so he wants to keep you in a cotton-batten lined box, tucked out of harm’s way.”

“He’s wrong about keeping me locked up.”

“Of course he is,” Louise said. “But good luck trying to argue with him. Just keep your ass down and your eyes peeled. Come downstairs, Otto sent something over for you and I’ll put on the coffee.”

It was three in the morning. “I want to get to Dulles as early as possible.”

“No rush, your flight doesn’t leave till nine-thirty. Otto’s booked you a business-class seat on Lufthansa. You’ll get to Heathrow around eleven this evening.”

Pete wasn’t really surprised, but something must have shown on her face, because Louise laughed.

“You think being in love with a field operator is tough, you oughta try being in love with a genius. Sometimes it’s downright scary.”

Pete brought her overnight bag and purse down to the front hall. Louise handed her a small leather bag with a diplomatic seal.

“Your Glock, a couple of magazines of ammunition and a silencer. The seal will get you through Customs in London.” She handed Pete a manila envelope. “Your tickets, confirmation number at the Connaught for three days, a new passport and other papers, plus air marshal creds, which you’ll need to carry your weapon aboard for the flight to Islamabad. What happens once you get there could be another story, but you’ll just have to take it a step at a time. In the meantime I suggest you take a look at everything — your work name will be Doris Day, and your home address, Hollywood.”

Pete had to laugh. It was an old tradecraft trick; give them something so glaring that it would direct their attention elsewhere. A NOC, non-official cover agent, would never travel into badland with such an outrageous ID — therefore the ID had to be legitimate.

In the kitchen, Louise put on the coffee, and Pete sat at the counter.

“You haven’t asked what I’ll do if the guy is an imposter,” Pete said.

“It’d mean that Dave is almost certainly the Messiah. You’d have to prevent the stand-in from warning him.” Louise turned around. “You were an interrogator before you were a field officer. Do you think that you can do whatever is needed if the situation arises?”

Pete had thought about just that possibility. Mac had once explained to her that the thought of killing someone, anyone, was opposite of everything he was and everything he stood for. But the people he had eliminated were bad, many of them beyond any sort of redemption or even incarceration. If he hadn’t pulled the trigger, other very bad things would surely have happened.

“I have to look at it like a soldier on the battlefield,” he’d said. “For every life I take I have to figure that I’ve saved ten, maybe fifty, maybe even one hundred or more innocent lives.”

“Haven’t you been afraid of making a mistake?” Pete asked. At that time she’d been in the process of falling in love with him, and she wanted to know everything. Some of her questions had been reckless. But he’d taken them in his stride.

“All the time,” he’d answered.

Admitting something like that had to have been hard for him, but he’d explained another time that in the business, partners had to be completely honest with each other. No secrets whatsoever. By then she had been head-over-heels and the only word of his that had really registered was partners.

“I’ll see when the time comes,” she answered Louise. “But first I’ll have a couple of questions for him.”

“Like I said, keep your ass down.”

At first light Louise drove Pete out to Dulles, weekday traffic already building on the Beltway. On the way she phoned Otto, who had spent the night in his office.

“We’re on the way to the airport. Have you had any word from Mac?”

“He’s at a news conference with Powers and Rajput,” Otto said. “Are you on speakerphone?”

“I can hear you,” Pete said. “How did he sound?”

“Fine, but he doesn’t know that you’re on your way to London.”

“Anything new from Boyle’s people?”

“They’re wary of the guy, so they haven’t been crowding him.”

“Someone should have gotten close enough for a positive ID. Maybe a telephoto lens?”

“Boyle says Haaris’s tradecraft is too good for something like that. And anyway, they’re one hundred percent sure that it’s him.”

“Christ,” Pete said.

“It’s the reason for you going to have a look for yourself. Mac needs to know what’s coming his way — what might already be gaining on him. But watch yourself, Pete. The ISI is playing for very big chips.”

THIRTY-SIX

McGarvey had to show his passport before he was given his press credentials for the news conference. When he got to the main briefing room an aide to President Rajput had just come to the podium. The hall was filled to capacity with more than one hundred journalists seated and perhaps a dozen or more standing at the back.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” the aide said. His English was as crisp as his Western-cut suit.

A woman with short, unkempt blond hair standing next to McGarvey wore an ABC pass on a lanyard around her neck. She glanced at Mac’s pass, and her eyes narrowed. “Dr. Parks,” she said in a low voice. “I’m a bit surprised to see you here. I would have thought they’d turn you away at the door.”

“Freedom of the press.”

The woman chuckled. “I read a few of your overnight blog posts about the situation here. Pakistan’s new prime minister is no friend of the U.S. and neither is the Messiah — who probably is nothing more than a stooge of the ISI.”

“Well?”

“All I can say is you’ve got balls showing up in Pakistan, let alone here.” She looked at the PM’s aide. “If they spot you this’ll be interesting.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, Prime Minister Hasan Rajput and the Honorable Donald Suthland Powers, ambassador from the United States.”

The journalists applauded briefly as Rajput and Powers strode into the room and took their places at podiums placed only a few feet apart. Rajput spoke first.

“I’ll make just a brief statement, after which Mr. Powers will have a few comments, at which time we’ll open the floor for questions.”

Like Powers, Rajput’s smile and easy manner were obviously forced. The political situation in Pakistan had radically changed, but the relationship between the two countries had deteriorated. The U.S. still needed Pakistan’s cooperation in going after the terrorists along the border with Afghanistan. And Pakistan needed the billions in economic aid from Washington to prop up its military.

“Extraordinary events in recent days have propelled Pakistan into a new era — one, we hope, of peace and prosperity. My deepest wish is for the guns to go silent. All of the guns and bombs which will make drone strikes a choice of the past.” Rajput turned to Powers. “Which is why we invited you and your staff to return to your embassies — along with the ambassadors of all the other nations — so that we can get back to work. Welcome, Mr. Powers.”

“It’s good to be back, Mr. Prime Minister, and I wholeheartedly share your desire for peace — but not peace at all costs.” Powers turned to the audience. “It’s also my hope that the violence which has swept across Pakistan for the past several years may have finally come to an end. The events of the past few days, as Prime Minister Rajput said, have been nothing short of extraordinary. In Washington we looked with some alarm on the happenings, wondering if Pakistan would dissolve into chaos — into the same sort of civil war that has gripped so many other countries recently. But it has not happened. Though the circumstances were nothing short of extraordinary, the results are even more stunning.” Powers turned again to Rajput. “President Miller sends her warmest regards, and her commitment to aide Pakistan on its road back to a lasting peace.”

Rajput and Powers shook hands and held the pose for photographers to catch the shot.

“And now we will take a few questions,” Rajput said. He pointed to a journalist in the front row, but McGarvey raised his hand.

“Mr. Prime Minister, can you tell us the whereabouts of the Messiah? I would have thought that he’d be here today.”

“I’m sorry, sir. You are?”

“Dr. Travis Parks, PIP. I’d like to ask him a few questions. Perhaps even a one-on-one interview.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Parks, but the Messiah’s exact whereabouts are unknown to me, except that he is somewhere in Pakistan walking amongst his people, as he said he would do.”

“With no security?” McGarvey pressed. “Aren’t you afraid that someone might assassinate him?”

“No. It was the people who named him, and it is the people who will protect him from interlopers who wish to harm us, as has happened so many times in the past.”

“Is it your government’s intention to follow the Messiah’s call for an alliance with the Taliban?”

“Perhaps you would allow someone else to ask a question,” Rajput said. He pointed again at someone seated in the front row.

“Thomas Allen, Reuters,” the journalist said. “But I would like to hear your answer to Dr. Parks’s question.”

If Rajput was flustered, he didn’t show it, but Powers was fuming.

“Yes, we are exploring commonalities that we might be able to exploit to prevent any future violence,” Rajput said. “I hope that answers your question.”

“Why aren’t representatives from the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan here today?” McGarvey pressed. “Or from the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen? All of them terrorists organizations whose stated purpose was to bring down the government.”

“That will be all the questions for today,” Rajput said.

“The U.S. has helped Pakistan hunt these people down, will that now change, Mr. Powers?” McGarvey asked. “Has the White House issued a new policy that you have come here to present to the prime minister, and perhaps at some point the Messiah? Are you willing to sit down with the Taliban leaders and open a dialogue?”

For a moment Powers was at a loss for words, handicapped because he had been led to believe that McGarvey — as Travis Parks — was a CIA analyst who’d tagged along only to observe.

“My readers would like to know, because it would be a tidal wave change that could have a serious impact on our relationship with India.”

“I’m the ambassador to Pakistan, Dr. Parks, not India.”

“I understand, sir, I’m merely asking if that consideration was in your brief before you left Washington?”

“We have much work to do now, as you must suspect, but another news conference will be scheduled within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” Rajput said. “You will be notified.”

He and Powers walked out, and the aide, clearly distressed, announced that briefing packages were available in the press room, along with secure Wi-Fi connections for those wishing to file their stories from the Aiwan.

“Jesus, you hit them pretty hard,” the woman next to McGarvey said. She stuck out her hand. “Judith Anderson, ABC.”

“Evidently not hard enough,” McGarvey said, shaking her hand.

A mob of other journalists clamoring for attention surrounded them.

“I’m sorry, people, but I don’t give interviews. You can read about it on my blog.”

“Did you actually think that someone from the Taliban would be here today?” one of them asked.

“Why not? This Messiah said they were partners, and except for the nuclear explosion outside of Quetta, Pakistan appears to have gone back to business as usual.”

“I’d say that what’s happening on the ground, at least here in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, is anything but business as usual,” someone else said.

“What do you know about the explosion?” another journalist asked.

“What, you want me to share sources?” McGarvey said, laughing. He turned away and walked out of the room. Before he reached the broad marble stairs, Judith Anderson caught up with him.

“Care to share a late lunch?” she asked.

“I don’t think that it would be such a hot idea to stick close to me. At least not right now.”

Her eyes widened a little. “You think the ISI might send someone to whack you?”

“It’s happened out here before.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I’ll take my chances,” she said.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Judith Anderson followed McGarvey outside, where she hailed a cab. “I’m bunking at the Serena, and lunch and drinks are on me,” she said.

Most of the other journalists had stayed behind to pick up their briefing packages and some of them to file their stories. It didn’t matter much that the ISI was monitoring the Wi-Fi connections in the Aiwan. They did it all over the country. No place was secure.

“What do you want with me, Miss Anderson?” McGarvey asked her.

“My friends call me Judy. But you’ve become the story now, because you challenged the ambassador.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“But you came down even harder on Rajput and he won’t get over it. Aren’t you afraid that he’ll send someone after you? Or at the very least order you out of the country?”

“If that happens it means I wasn’t very far off the mark.”

“No one thought that you were, but everyone else had the good sense not to push it. More than one journalist has been killed in Pakistan.”

A taxi pulled up and Judy opened the door. “Just lunch and a beer, and I promise all I want is a backgrounder. Besides, you’ll stick out if you don’t mingle.”

Otto had warned that journalists, unlike CIA operatives, ran in packs. “I’ll hold you to it,” McGarvey told the ABC correspondent and got into the cab with her.

“Good,” she said.

The Serena, only one of three hotels in Islamabad that served alcohol, was just off Constitution Avenue, and the ride was short. The bar was furnished with low cocktail tables and large easy chairs. A handful of other Westerners were finishing their late lunches and cocktails.

“A civilized oasis in the middle of insanity,” Judith said.

A waiter came with menus and McGarvey ordered a Heineken. She ordered a Pinot Grigio.

“This isn’t your first time in Pakistan, is it,” the woman said as a statement of fact, not a question.

“I’ve been here before.”

“Funny, we haven’t run into each other. You’re provocative, and I tend to gravitate toward the type.”

“It’s a big place.”

“Journalists usually stick together. Same news conferences, same stories, same hotels, especially the same watering holes. I just got back from Quetta, which was a wasted trip, but I didn’t see you there.”

“They had a nuclear event, and they sure as hell weren’t going to share it with a bunch of Western news people. The real story is here.”

“The Messiah tops a nuclear explosion?”

“In my world, yes,” McGarvey said. He’d come with her in part because of Otto’s advice, but also in a large measure to find out what she knew. Whatever it was would be something everyone else in the media knew or suspected. But she hadn’t brought up the attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Incredible as it seemed to him, the raids were still a secret known presumably only by the government and the ISI in Islamabad, the White House and the CIA in Washington, plus the Seal Team Six operators and NEST team.

“Do you know what I think, Travis?”

“No, but you’re going to tell me.”

“Until yesterday I never heard of you. But I should have. Your blog posts are nothing short of brilliant. Right on the mark. And history says that you’ve been around for a couple of years now. Which either means you’ve created something out of whole cloth or I’m a lousy journalist. But I’m damned good. So what gives, Parks, if that’s your real name?”

“Why are you here?”

“You mean here in this restaurant with you or here in Pakistan? Because the answers to both questions is you. You’re not a journalist, your blog is good but it’s a scam, so who are you? My guess would be CIA.”

“How many others at the news conference do you suppose share your suspicions?”

“Just about all of them,” she said. “If we’re right you’re a marked man. Why else do you think they didn’t follow you outside?”

“But you did,” McGarvey said. “And I came with you to find out what you thought you knew. Trust me on this one, Miss Anderson, stay as far away from me as you possibly can. I’m going to lean on some important people who aren’t going to like it very much. They’ll push back.”

“You’re here to find the Messiah.”

“Yes.”

“But there’s more. You want to find out who he is, because it’s a safe bet that he didn’t show up as some sort of an Islamic savior. He’s not here to save Pakistan. He has another agenda, and you want to know what it is.”

“Something like that.”

“Fine, it’s the same thing I want. Same as just about every reporter over here wants to know.”

The waiter came with their drinks.

“We’ll order later,” Judith told him, her eyes never leaving McGarvey’s. She sat forward. “My people in New York tell me that this guy’s voice was probably altered by some electronic device. They’re trying to decrypt it now. But you already know this.”

“Stay away from me,” McGarvey said, getting to his feet. He’d learned what he needed to know, and it wasn’t going to make his job any easier. Once the Messiah came out into the open, if he ever did, he would be surrounded not only by palace guards but by the same horde of news people as were at the Aiwan.

“Look, we can collaborate. In fact I’d rather share my sources with someone from the CIA than I would with another reporter.”

“Someone will either try to kill me or have me arrested.”

“And it’s the first option that you want. I can help.”

“No,” McGarvey said. “And if you try to follow me, I’ll have you deported.”

“It’s not so easy to push around a reporter.”

McGarvey walked out of the hotel and headed down one of the side streets that eventually wound up back on Constitution Avenue in the direction of the Aiwan. The moment he had emerged, he knew that he’d picked up a tail. Two men in a yellow Fiat 500, not making much effort to hide the fact that they were following him.

Two blocks away, through heavy traffic, he sprinted across the street and entered a narrow alley, the second stories hanging over the pavement, the shops here mostly silversmiths and rug merchants, plus a CVS pharmacy, and next door an outdoor barbershop.

He waited until the Fiat turned the corner before he entered a tobacco shop so narrow that if he stretched out his arms he’d touch both walls, and walked straight back and out the rear door, which opened onto an interior courtyard filthy with garbage and the carcass of a dog that had been dead for at least a month.

The only way in or out was through the tobacconist’s shop or above through the second-story windows of what were apparently apartments. Laundry hung drying from lines that stretched from building to building. No one was in sight.

McGarvey stepped to the side as two men, both of them wearing jeans and khaki shirts, came out of the tobacco shop.

They stopped short, McGarvey leaning against the wall behind them.

“Looking for me, gentlemen?” he asked.

Both of them turned at the same time, and the taller of the two pulled a pistol from a belt holster under his shirt.

McGarvey was on him in an instant, grabbing the big Sig-Sauer, a long suppressor tube on the barrel, out of his hand, and smashing the butt of the gun into the bridge of his nose, knocking him backward.

The second man was just reaching for his pistol when McGarvey jammed the muzzle of the silencer into his forehead.

“Who sent you?”

The man had his pistol out and he was raising it, when McGarvey fired one shot. Before the man crumpled to the dirt, the first officer had recovered enough to press his attack, a crazy, failure-is-not-an-option look in his eyes.

“Who are you?” McGarvey demanded, but the guy kept coming, and McGarvey fired another shot, catching him in the bridge of his bloody nose, and he went down hard.

“Shit,” a woman said from just inside the tobacco shop.

McGarvey spun around, bringing the pistol to bear.

Judith Anderson stepped back half a pace, her empty right hand coming up.

THIRTY-EIGHT

McGarvey lowered the pistol. “I told you to stay away from me.”

“Saying something like that to a journalist hot on a story is like throwing petrol on an open fire,” Judith said. She stood flatfooted, her eyes wide, her mouth half open. She looked vulnerable.

In the not-too-far distance they heard sirens. She looked over her shoulder. “Someone must have reported this. We have to get out of here.”

McGarvey stuck the pistol in his belt under his jacket. He turned one of the bodies over and came up with a wallet in the man’s back pocket. The ISI card, with its wreath and crescent moon emblem, and the service’s motto, “Faith, Unity Discipline,” identified the officer as Kaleem Babar. The other ISI officer was Raza Davi.

“ISI?” Judith asked.

“Yes,” McGarvey said.

The sirens were a lot closer. “The stupid bastards left their keys in the Fiat. And unless you know the city better than I do, I’ll drive. But right now, the last place you want to be is in an interrogation cell in Rawalpindi.”

McGarvey followed her through the tobacconist’s shop to the narrow street where the yellow Fiat was parked, its engine idling. No one was in the immediate vicinity, though traffic one block away seemed to be flowing normally.

Within a minute Judith had driven to the corner and tucked behind a three-wheeled truck and other traffic heading in the opposite direction of the Aiwan. The day was bright and hot, the air polluted with a combination of dust, charcoal smoke and something else with a pungent smell.

The ISI had always been in firm control of the government here, and if something, anything happened that displeased the military intelligence service it reacted. In McGarvey’s estimation a few pointed remarks from an American journalist rated an expulsion order. But the two ISI officers who had followed him into the dead-end corridor had been ordered to kill him, not arrest him. And the main problem at the moment was staying alive until the Messiah showed up and then somehow getting close enough to put a bullet in his brain.

Ambassador Powers was at the U.S. embassy, and Prime Minister Rajput was at his post. Both of them primary movers and shakers. If anyone knew when the Messiah would show, and where, they would.

“You’re not just another blogger,” Judith said. She was driving them out of the diplomatic sector, the traffic even heavier here. Mopeds competed with cars and with trucks and buses of all sizes, no one obeying traffic laws or the white-gloved cops standing at busier intersections.

Again McGarvey got the strong impression that the country — or at least the capital — was at peace with itself. The riots of just a few days ago were completely forgotten, and if anyone was making any noise about the nuclear event in the northwest, it was below the background level of business as usual.

“Those guys were trained intelligence officers. Taking you out should have been easy as pie. But you disarmed one of them and killed them both without a moment’s hesitation. Says to me my first impression was right.”

“Where are you taking me?” McGarvey finally asked.

“A reporter friend of mine has an apartment here in the city. The AP’s bureau chief. He’s still up in Quetta trying to interview someone at the military base where we think the nuke must have come from. There’ve been no reports of any recent Taliban activity up there, so it could mean the government moved one of the weapons for some reason. It’s Randy’s theory that the nuclear depot has been infiltrated, but by whom is anyone’s guess.”

A police car, its lights flashing, its siren blaring, came up behind them and bulled its way through traffic, then disappeared through a red light around the corner onto the Avenue G8.

“It’d be a good idea to ditch this car as soon as possible,” McGarvey said.

“I think you’re right,” Judith agreed. “Randy’s apartment is just a few blocks from here.”

She turned down another avenue in what was known as the G7-3 section of the city, and a few blocks later came to the Al Habib Market, mostly empty of shoppers at this hour, the morning and noon crowds gone, and the afternoon trade not yet picking up.

Finally stopping at the rear of the market, Judith took a long scarf out of her purse and covered her hair, wrapping the extra length once around her neck and over her left shoulder.

“You might want to wipe the gun down and leave it behind. If you’re caught with it you’ll definitely be tied to the killings.”

“They were sent to take me out, so that’s not an issue,” McGarvey said.

The street back here was quiet, and at the moment no one seemed to have noticed them. McGarvey walked with Judith in the opposite direction of the market, turning back toward the broad Luqman Hakeem Road two blocks to an eight-story apartment building.

“No doorman here, which is one of the reasons Randy picked the place.”

The building was modern and seemed well maintained. The AP bureau chief’s small, well-furnished apartment was on the fifth floor facing a long strip of businesses: a pizza place, a FedEx office, banks and offices for several airlines, including United of Holland and Saudi Air. Beyond that was a large green space in the middle of which was a building in the general shape of an X that housed offices of the United Nations.

Judith tossed her scarf aside and laid her purse on the table near the windows. “Randy always keeps his fridge well stocked. How about another beer?”

“Sounds good.”

She went in the kitchen and McGarvey went through the woman’s purse, coming up with an old Russian-made 5.45-millimeter PSM pistol. He removed the eight-round magazine, unloaded it into the bottom of her purse and ejected the round out of the firing chamber.

He’d just closed the purse and stepped away from it as she came out of the kitchenette with the beers.

“Do you need a glass?” she asked.

“No, and I don’t need this now,” McGarvey said, taking the ISI officer’s pistol out of his belt and placing it on a shelf of one of the bookcases flanking a small flat-screen television.

She handed him a beer and perched on the end of the couch. “CIA?” she asked.

“You thought so at the news conference. What gave it away?”

“Your blog, partially. Some of the others claimed they’d been reading you from the beginning, but that’s a line of bullshit. I should know about you but I don’t. And unless I miss my guess you’re here to assassinate the Messiah.”

McGarvey just shrugged, sure now who she was and where she was going.

“That’s a pretty tall order, but beyond that I want to know why,” Judith said.

“You want to know or your viewers want to know?”

“Two speeches and he’s brought calm to this place. Something neither the government nor the ISI has been able to do. So what’s Washington worried about, the alliance with the Taliban? Because if that’s what’s put the bug up Miller’s ass then she and her advisers ought to rethink the thing. If the Taliban is willing to lay down their arms and work in a real partnership with General Rajput to bring a lasting peace, isn’t that exactly what Washington wants?”

“If that’s what this Messiah wants we have no objections.”

Judith smiled in triumph. “I knew you were CIA. But you don’t think that’s what he and the new PM want.”

“I’d like a chance to ask him.”

“Before you assassinate him.”

McGarvey took out his encrypted sat phone and called Otto, who answered immediately. “Judith Anderson. ABC correspondent.”

“Are you in a safe place?”

“For the moment.”

Judith put her beer down and went over to her purse. She pulled out the pistol and pointed it at McGarvey. “You’re under arrest, Dr. Parks, or whoever you really are.”

“Never mind,” McGarvey told Otto. “She’s holding a gun on me, she’s almost certainly ISI and I’m under arrest. But if she was sharp enough she’d have realized by now that the gun is too light. No bullets.”

Judith racked the slide back.

“What do you want to do?” Otto asked.

Judith went for the gun on the bookcase, but McGarvey grabbed her arm, pulled her away and got the pistol himself. “Sit down, please, Miss Anderson, or whoever you really are.”

She did as she was told, but she only sat on the arm of the couch as before.

McGarvey gave Otto the address. “Get someone down here to pick her up and take her across the border to Jalalabad. I want her to disappear for the time being, but I don’t want to shoot her if possible.”

“That’ll take a few hours, kemo sabe.”

“Fine. In the meantime she and I are going to get better acquainted. I’m sure she has lots of stuff she’s willing to share. After all, we’re allies.”

“I’m on it.”

THIRTY-NINE

Pete’s flight landed a half hour early at Heathrow and it was only a few minutes before eleven at night when the cabby dropped her off in front of the elegant Connaught hotel in Mayfair. She hadn’t been able to get much sleep, worrying about Kirk in Islamabad, even though Otto had assured her two hours earlier that he was still in one piece.

“Where is he right now?” she’d asked.

“In an apartment with a beautiful woman the ISI sent to find out who he is and arrest him. But it’s okay, she’ll be on her way to Jalalabad within the next hour or so.”

Pete almost laughed, except for the fact that the ISI was already on to him. “He must have made some waves.”

“The understatement of the year. He showed up at a news conference for Rajput and Powers at the Aiwan and asked some pretty pointed questions about the Messiah and the Taliban. He made international headlines.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s exactly what he wanted to do, call attention to himself right off the bat. He thinks it’ll draw the Messiah out in the open.”

“So how did he end up in some apartment with the woman?” Pete asked, her voice a little bit edgier than she wanted it to be.

“That’s the tough part,” Otto said, and he told her what McGarvey had told him.

“Two dead agents and one who’ll turn out missing, all in his first afternoon there. The ISI is going to shoot him on sight.”

“Which means you’re going to have to press on to see if the guy at the Connaught is actually Haaris.”

“Is he in the hotel for the night?”

“Last I heard he came back a half hour ago, had a late dinner and went up to his suite. You’ll have to somehow dig him out of there tonight.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I’m checked in, and then I want you to let Tommy Boyle in on what we’re doing. If the guy turns out not to be Dave, which I’m betting will be the case, I’ll need some muscle to put him on ice somewhere without making a fuss.”

“If it is Haaris, Mac might want Tommy to ask him for help.”

“You don’t think it’s him.”

“No. And when you find out, Boyle’s not going to like it very much.”

“I’ll tell him what’s going on, but Marty will have to back me up.”

“Page will handle it personally.”

“One more thing, Otto: has anyone on Campus figured out that Mac is in Pakistan in disguise? You said he made the news; will anyone in our shop recognize him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I did,” Pete said.

“But you’re special,” Otto said. “Watch yourself with this guy.”

“Will do.”

Pete secured her reservations for three nights with a platinum AMEX that Otto had got for her under the name Doris Day, to match her passport. She only had the one bag but a bellman in a black apron carried it up to her elegantly furnished third-floor room that looked out toward Hyde Park, just a few blocks away. She tipped him, and when he was gone she called Otto again.

“I’m in,” she told him.

“Haaris’s minders think that he might be in the bar.”

“Are they here in the hotel?”

“No, across the street in a van, but they have a clear view of the lobby.”

“I’m on my way down.”

“What have you got in mind?”

“If it’s Haaris he knows who I am and we’ll have our little chat. If not, I’ll strike up a conversation and seduce the bastard. Let’s just hope he isn’t gay.”

“I’ll call Tommy now and give Page the heads-up.”

Pete had brought along a revealing scoop-neck, thigh-high black Spandex dress, silver hoop earrings and four-inch spikes, for just this sort of an encounter. It gave her no place to hide her pistol, even though it was a subcompact conceal-and-carry Glock 42, but if she got into a shooting situation her part in Mac’s op would be over before it began.

She touched up her makeup, fluffed up her short hair and took the elevator downstairs. crossing the lobby to the corridor to the Coburg bar. At this late hour the room was mostly empty, a few of the low tables filled with well-dressed men and women. When she came in, a number of the patrons looked up. She’d gotten their attention.

A man with light hair and small shoulders sat alone at one of the tables, his back to her. He did not turn around to look as she crossed the room to him, but if he wasn’t Dave Haaris he was a hell of a good stand-in.

“David?” she asked.

He looked up. “Do I know you?”

It wasn’t Dave, but his facial features and voice were nearly perfect matches. Pete sat down across from him. “No, but David does. The question is, what the hell are you doing impersonating him, and when did he leave for Pakistan?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss—”

“I think you do,” Pete said. A waiter came over and she ordered a Pinot Grigio.

The man laid a fifty-pound note on the table and got up.

“The problem for you is that you’re in a room that Dave paid for, and so far as the hotel staff is concerned, you are him. Makes you guilty of fraud at the very least. And at the most it puts your life in jeopardy. Please sit down.”

“Bugger off,” the imposter said.

Pete’s phone went off and she took it from her purse. It was Tommy Boyle.

“Are you with him?”

“Yes, and he’s not Dave. You might want to have the two gentlemen from the van parked outside come in.”

“Ten seconds.”

“Sit down,” Pete said.

The imposter deflated all at once. “It was a simple job of work. Nothing more.”

“Who hired you?”

“Mr. Haaris. A gentleman.”

“To do what and for how long?”

“Act as if I were him. Move around, see the sights. For two more days and then I was to leave.”

“Did he warn you that someone like me might show up?”

“No.”

Two men in dark blue blazers walked in and came over. “Miss Day?” the larger of the two asked. “Mr. Boyle sent us. Is there a problem?”

“No, except that this guy isn’t Dave Haaris.”

“My name is Ronald Pembroke, I’m a stage actor,” the imposter said. “So far as I know I’ve broken no British laws.”

“Yes, sir,” the one CIA agent said. “We’d like to have a little chat with you.”

“You have no authority here, you’re Americans.”

“If you’d like I can have someone from New Scotland Yard handle it,” Pete said. “I’m sure that they’ll figure out something to charge you with.”

“We just want to ask you a few questions, sir, and then you’ll be free to go,” the CIA officer interjected.

The other officer smiled. “Of course, if you’ve actually threatened this lady, who is a close personal friend of mine, I’ll be forced to break one of your bones. Won’t be pleasant.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, sir.”

The imposter gave Pete a bleak look but then got up. “You’re CIA, right?” he asked.

The shorter of the two officers took his elbow. “Just outside, sir. It’ll only take a few minutes and then you can get your things and check out. We’ll even drive you home, if you’d like.”

They left as the waiter brought Pete her drink.

Boyle was still on the line.

“They’re off,” Pete told him.

“I’ll meet you at the embassy and you can tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Sorry, Mr. Boyle, I’m still in the middle of something, but I’m sure that Mr. Page will fill you in when he feels that the time is right. In the meantime, whatever you do, don’t let this guy near a phone or a computer.”

FORTY

The private jet that had been arranged for Haaris touched down at the old airport outside Rawalpindi around two in the morning. The French crew had been solicitous, but after they had taxied to an empty hangar across from what had been the main terminal, and the engines spooled down, he dismissed them for the rest of the day.

“I may have need of you late this evening or first thing in the morning,” he told the pilot, who was an older man with gray hair and a large mustache.

“We’ll need to find accommodations,” the pilot said.

Haaris smiled at him and the copilot, and the pretty flight attendant who stood just behind him in the tiny galley. “Actually, a car is waiting to take you to the Serena. A pair of suites has been booked for you. When I have need of the aircraft I’ll leave word.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

In ten minutes they secured the aircraft for the night, got their bags and left. A pair of Toyota SUVs with deeply tinted windows waited just inside the hangar. They got into one of them and left.

Two men in dark blue blazers got out of the second SUV and stood at attention near the open rear door on the passenger side. One of them held an H & K submachine gun.

Haaris had worn his American civilian clothes over on the flight. He changed into the long loose shirt, baggy pantaloons and headgear he’d worn at his first appearance on the balcony of the Aiwan. He strapped the voice apparatus onto his neck, adjusted his scarf to conceal it and retrieved his bag containing some personal items and a change of clothes, plus a nine-millimeter Steyr GB Austrian-made pistol with a pair of eighteen-round box magazines. The reliable semiauto had always been a favorite of his, in large measure because it was accurate and could be disassembled for cleaning in under six seconds.

He checked the weapon’s load then stuffed it in his belt beneath his shirt and went to the open door of the plane.

If the two men by the black Toyota had suspected who their passenger was to be they didn’t make a big deal of it. The man with the weapon involuntarily stepped back half a pace, while the driver’s mouth dropped open, but only for a moment.

Haaris went down the boarding stairs, and he held up a hand. “There will be no conversations,” he told them in Pashtun. “You will not address me by name or title, nor will you speak of my presence with anyone. You are simply to take me to the Aiwan, stopping for no one, for no reason.”

The driver nodded and stepped away from the open rear door.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I must ask if you expect trouble this morning?” the man with the H & K asked. He was young, possibly in his early twenties, but he had the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d taken incoming fire somewhere.

“No,” Haaris said.

“There have been people on Constitution Avenue off and on ever since you…” He hesitated. “For the past several days.”

“Avoid them,” Haaris said, and he got into the car.

Within minutes they drove away from the airport and took the old main highway up to Islamabad. The morning was cool, as were many mornings in this part of the country. It was a contrast to muggy Washington. Haaris neither liked nor disliked Pakistan and its people, nor had he ever thought that he would be returning until eight years earlier when he first began to conceive a plan not only for revenge against too many people for him to count — except that he knew all of their names and positions — but for his immortality.

He did not believe in Paradise with its willing virgins and endless milk and honey, but as a boy in school in England he had developed the notion of an existence after life. The history professors taught him that. Almost no one remembered most of the players in the Trojan War, but everyone knew the name Achilles. Everyone knew the names Caesar and Marc Antony, but especially that of Caesar. German generals were famous, but Hitler’s name rose to the top of every schoolboy’s list of the most recognizable. George W. Bush was known, but not as well as Osama bin Laden. And in the end no one would ever forget the name Messiah.

The Presidential Palace was in the Red Section of the city, the area where most of the government buildings and foreign embassies were located. A small crowd of several hundred people were gathered in front of the imposing building, and as before they burned trash in barrels. Armed guards on the street just outside the fence looked out at the people but did nothing to send them away. The foreign press had dubbed them “the Messiah’s people.” It was they who had named him and it was they who continued to keep watch for his return.

They drove around to the rear entrance that led into the president’s colony, where his staff and families were housed. Though the gate was guarded by two armed soldiers — who admitted them without question — the colony itself seemed to be deserted. After President Barazani’s assassination his staff had fled for their lives.

According to Rajput the Aiwan itself had been deserted as well. Not even a maintenance staff had remained. It was as if the seat of power had been deserted so that the prime minister could govern Pakistan without interference.

Ghulam Kahn was the first president to live there, in 1988, and Barazani was the last. But Pervez Musharraf had lived elsewhere during his presidency. The real seat of Pakistan’s power was gone from this place. The PM was the chief administrator of the country, but the president had been the leader.

Until now.

They pulled up at one of the service entrances. The armed guard riding shotgun jumped out and opened the rear door.

As Haaris got out the guard saluted. “Do you wish us to stay here, sir?”

“No, you are finished for the morning. Thank you. And remember, do not discuss this with anyone. My reasons will become evident soon enough.”

Haaris waited just inside what had been a security vestibule, with a heavy steel door leading into the main floor of the building. Under normal circumstances the door would be opened electronically from the inside, but only after the visitor was positively identified and searched for weapons or explosives. This morning it stood wide open to a marble-floored corridor that led straight to the ornate entry hall where visiting heads of state or other VIPs arrived.

He could see the SUV through one of the small bullet-proof windows but could not see the driver or the armed guard because of the deep tinting of the car’s windows. After a moment or two, however, the Toyota moved off and disappeared around the corner.

Haaris remained for a full three minutes longer to make sure that guards did not return on Rajput’s orders.

He walked down the long corridor to the ceremonial staircase and went up to the president’s residence on the third floor.

The building was totally deserted, but the electricity hadn’t been shut off, the security cameras were still operating and the battery-powered emergency lighting had not activated.

Enough light came from outside that he could make his way to a window that looked down on the street to the people gathered there. They were actually very stupid. He had held Barazani’s severed head for everyone to see-the severed head of the properly elected president — and one of Rajput’s shills had shouted “Messiah” a couple of times and the sheep had taken up the chant.

He’d made a brief speech that was broadcast over television, and here they were camping out on Constitution Avenue. Waiting for him to show up, to give them meaning in their meaningless lives.

That fact of the matter was, none of them realized that all life was pretty much without purpose unless you were willing to make it so for yourself.

He didn’t bother with lights as he got undressed, took a shower and went to bed. In a few hours the situation would change, because he would make it so. In a few hours he would lead the country in exactly the direction he’d planned for it to go.

When he slept it was without dreams. The sleep, he told himself when he awoke briefly just before dawn, of a man with a clear conscience and an even clearer purpose.

FORTY-ONE

Upstairs it took Pete less than ten minutes to change into jeans, a white blouse and dark blazer. When she was done she phoned Otto, who answered on the first ring as he usually did.

“Oh, wow, that went fast.”

“The guy’s a stage actor. He admitted that Haaris hired him to hang out. But the point is he told me that his contract would be up in two days. So whatever Haaris is trying to pull off, having an imposter here won’t matter because it’ll be too late for us to change anything.”

“Did he give you any hint what that might be?”

“None, but Haaris wouldn’t have told him something like that in any event,” Pete said. She went to the window. Nothing looked out of place on the street. “Get word to Mac, he’ll want the timetable. In the meantime I need to go to Islamabad as fast as possible and I don’t think a commercial flight will get me there in time.”

“You don’t want to go there.” Louise had come on the line. “Mac already has his hands full, he won’t be happy to have you jump into the mix.”

Pete wasn’t surprised that Louise had joined in. “Otto’s already filled me in, and it’s exactly what I need to do. The ISI won’t know about me, so I’ll be the loose cannon watching his back.”

“Ross Austin knows about Mac’s situation. You’re not going to be of any use out there.”

“I’m going with or without your help,” Pete said, the strident note again in her voice. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, huge waves crashing into the rocks below. If she fell she knew that she would be dashed to pieces, and yet Kirk was there. She could see his head in the crest of a wave. He was motioning for her to stay away from the edge, but at the same time she knew that she would have to try for him. Because of her love.

“I’ll arrange something,” Otto said. “But first you’ll have to get past Boyle; he’s already on his way to your hotel.”

“I thought Walt talked to him.”

“He did, but Boyle insisted that he needed the chance to meet with you. Haaris is a good friend of his, and he’s not convinced that Dave could be the Messiah.”

“I’m not going to try to convince him of anything.”

“He knows that too; I spoke to him just two minutes ago. He knows that you want to get to Islamabad as quickly as possible, and he’s willing to help. He has a Gulfstream at his disposal, and he’s already given the order for the plane to be prepped and a crew to get out to Heathrow. The RAF at Northolt is arranging it. He wants you to try to convince Mac to back off before it’s too late.”

Too late for what? she wanted to ask, but didn’t. “Does he know Mac’s cover ID?”

“I’m sure that he’s talked with Austin in Islamabad, and I can’t see any reason why the COS would hold anything back.”

“Damn,” Pete said softly. “Mac shouldn’t have told him.”

“He had to do it,” Otto said. “If everything goes south, and Mac is outed as CIA, Austin will need to cover his ass.”

“That’s why you shouldn’t go over there,” Louise said. “You’ll just complicate things.”

“Will Boyle try to contact Haaris, to warn him?”

“Page specifically ordered him not to,” Otto said.

“Not much comfort,” Pete replied. “I’ll call when I get there, and you have to let me know where Mac is.”

“I know why you’re doing this thing,” Louise said after a beat. “Can’t say I object on those grounds, except that you’ll be putting yourself in serious harm’s way, and we all know exactly how Mac will react. But good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Tommy Boyle strode into the lobby just as Pete was finishing checking out. He was tall and very slender, his face all sharp angles, his hair thinning on top. He was dressed in a tweed sporting coat, iron-gray slacks and highly shined half boots of the sort that were popular in the sixties. He looked every bit the English gentleman.

He kissed her on the cheek as if they were old friends. “I have a car just outside.”

“I talked to Otto.”

“Your aircraft crew will be aboard by the time we get out to Heathrow. I thought I’d ride along so that we could have a little chat.”

“About Dave Haaris?”

“More specifically about this fellow they’re calling the Messiah.”

“Not the Messiah of the Second Coming, but the ‘just for the moment’ Messiah,” Pete said. “A very big difference.”

The car was a light blue Jaguar XK sedan. Doormen were holding the rear doors open for Pete and Boyle to get in. Pete hung on to her overnight bag. Their driver headed away immediately, traffic still fairly heavy even at this hour.

“I’ll need to call in your passport number,” Boyle said. She took it out of her shoulder bag and gave it to him. He phoned someone and recited the name and number, and the fact that it was diplomatic.

When he was finished he handed it back without comment.

“Other than the fact that Dave is a friend of yours, what makes you so certain he couldn’t be the Messiah?”

“What makes you so certain he is?”

Pete didn’t answer.

“And what do you hope to accomplish by going out there? Whoever this guy is, you’d never get close to him.”

“I’ll work something out.”

“My God, you’re going to try to assassinate him,” Boyle said. “Of all the goddamn harebrained ideas … Let me guess, it’s McGarvey. And he’s already there or on his way. You’re just going over to confirm that the guy we picked up wasn’t Dave.”

“Why do you suppose that Dave Haaris hired someone to impersonate him?”

Boyle was troubled. “I don’t know, but I’m going to ask him just that.”

“Have you tried to contact him?”

“I left a message at his desk the moment I learned that the man we were ordered to watch wasn’t him. All of this is bad business. The director is holding something back, I’m sure of it.”

“What about Ross Austin, have you spoken with him?”

Boyle gave her an oddly pensive look. “No reason for me to have, is there?”

“I meant about you having arranged transportation for me.”

“I was going to give him a call once you were off, in case I couldn’t talk you out of whatever nonsense you were up to.”

“Don’t call him,” Pete said. “Especially if he’s another one of your friends.”

“We’ve bumped into each other, but he and Haaris are fairly close,” Boyle said. “Ross will have to be told about the incoming flight.”

“Have Marty do it,” Pete said. “I’m asking you for my safety’s sake, and for Mac’s, just stay out of it. In the meantime lean on Pembroke to see if he knows anything else — though I doubt he does.”

“Whatever Dave was up to he would not have divulged anything.”

“No, but the transition went smoothly enough so that your people didn’t catch it. Maybe Pembroke heard or saw something.”

“Like what?”

“A phone call. Perhaps Dave met someone in the lobby. Maybe a car came for him, maybe he took a cab and Pembroke remembered the time. Anything we could use.”

“You were a good interrogator, from what I’ve been told. How about staying behind and questioning him yourself?”

“Don’t try to look down my trail.”

“Other than the flight, I’m washing my hands of the entire business.”

Pete wished that she could believe him.

FORTY-TWO

McGarvey sat at the window watching for someone from Jalalabad to show up and take the woman off his hands. The sky to the east was beginning to lighten, and he was anxious to get on with it. Every hour that went by was to the ISI’s advantage. They’d tried to kill him once — because of his questions at the reception, not because they suspected who he really was — and he was certain they would try again.

If the woman didn’t report soon to her superiors, someone would come here looking for her.

He glanced at her. She was asleep on the narrow couch, but when his sat phone chirped she stiffened slightly. She was awake.

It was Otto. “The guy was an imposter.”

“It means that Haaris is almost certainly here. He’ll probably show himself sometime today.”

“He’ll have to, because according to the guy he hired as his stand-in, the job was going to last only two more days.”

“What about the people who were supposed to pick up the woman? I can’t sit around here much longer, especially not now, knowing Haaris has a timetable.”

“They must have run into trouble; I’ll check on it. But the air force is paying a lot better attention than they did before the bin Laden raid, and even more since the ISI’s botched attack on the SEAL Team Six operators.”

Judith opened her eyes, pushed the covers back and sat up, obviously measuring the distance to McGarvey.

“But you have another problem,” Otto said. “Pete is heading your way, and there was nothing that anybody could say to talk her out of it.”

“Is she already en route?”

“In the air. Boyle arranged an RAF Gulfstream for her.”

“He knows that the guy they’ve been watching is an imposter?”

“Yes, and he was willing to help Pete because he wants the issue with Dave to be settled one way or the other. He’s betting that Haaris is working on something but not as the Messiah.”

“I’m going to ask him. In the meantime have Page call someone at the State Department to meet the plane and take her to the embassy. Put her in handcuffs, if it’s the only way.”

“Won’t be easy. And Austin knows who you are. He’s bound to come to the conclusion who she actually is and why she showed up in Islamabad.”

McGarvey was afraid of something like this happening. Every woman he’d ever been involved with had been strong-willed, and sooner or later had lost her life because of it.

“Have Walt call one of his friends in London; maybe they can get their Home Office to convince someone from their embassy here to meet the plane and pick her up. It’d be more convincing that way since it’s a RAF flight.”

“She’s carrying a U.S diplomatic passport.”

“They’ll have to work around it,” McGarvey said. “Make Walt understand how important this is to me.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Otto promised. “But getting around Pakistan’s passport control will be a lot easier than getting around Pete.”

“Tell them they can do anything they want, short of shooting her.”

“Okay. In the meantime I’ll see what’s holding up our people from fetching your prisoner.”

“I need her gone as soon as possible,” McGarvey said and hung up.

“Who is Haaris?” Judith asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“CIA like you and whoever the woman is who’s coming apparently to help you? Maybe Haaris is a rogue CIA agent. Out of control. Someone you need to stop, for whatever dark reason.”

In the early morning light her complexion and features were fair, her blond hair tousled from sleep she looked anything but Middle Eastern. “You don’t look like an ISI operator.”

She smiled. “What’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?”

“You don’t look Pakistani. More like someone from Ohio.”

“Close, actually. Indiana. Michigan City. My dad, brothers and uncles worked in the steel mills and were union all the way. And Catholics. The workers and the priests versus the bosses. Made for interesting dinner table discussions.”

“But not your cup of tea.”

“No. The men were getting screwed in the mills, and their sons were getting raped by the priests.”

“There were other places you could have gone to. Other churches,” McGarvey said. “Why here where a girl who marries the wrong man can be stoned to death by her own father? Almost every day some sort of violence. Bombings, assassinations, coups — your own president had his head cut off.”

“It’s a long story, which I promise to tell you if you’ll hand over your pistol.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll be debriefed and probably be declared persona non grata,” Judith said. “We are allies, after all.” She smiled faintly. “So, I’ll take my chances. Who is Haaris and what is he doing in Pakistan?”

“The ISI tried to kill me.”

“Because they thought that you were a troublemaker.”

“Is that how your father and his friends treated troublemaking journalists in Michigan City?”

“We have a great deal of respect for the CIA.”

Someone was on the stairs below. McGarvey glanced out the window. A newer red Mercedes E350 was parked in front.

At that moment Judith leaped up and was on him in two strides, shoving him aside and grabbing the pistol on the window ledge beside him, then stepping back out of the way.

She nodded toward the door. “If you warn them, I’ll kill you.”

McGarvey got up and took a bullet from his pocket. “You might need a few of these,” he said.

She racked the slide, but the gun was empty.

“That’s the second time you didn’t notice the weight; makes me wonder what kind of training they gave you.”

“You bastard,” she screamed and she charged, swinging the butt of the pistol toward his face.

He easily grabbed the gun, twisted it out of her grip and shoved her away. “You’ll be okay. We don’t kill prisoners.”

“The fuck you don’t. How about renditions? How about Guantanamo? Waterboarding? Secret firing squads?”

McGarvey opened the door for two clean-shaven men in Western suits and ties. They could have been American businessmen.

“Who the hell are you?” Mac asked.

“SEAL Team Six; we were told you needed an extraction,” the shorter of the two said. His hair was above his ears and neatly combed, as was the other’s.

“Good disguise.”

“Makes us conspicuous, for all the wrong reasons,” the operator said. “Where’s the woman?”

McGarvey turned as Judith came full speed out of the kitchen, a butcher knife raised.

One of the operators pulled out a silenced Beretta nine-millimeter and fired one shot, catching her in the middle of the forehead. She fell back, dead.

“Gnarly,” he said.

McGarvey truly hadn’t wanted it to end this way. Katy had told him more than once that he had more respect for women then a lot of them deserved. But she loved him all the more for it.

“Take the body with you,” he said.

“Will she be missed?”

“She was ISI.”

Both SEALS fired several more shots into the woman’s body.

FORTY-THREE

With the dawn Haaris got out of bed, dressed in his Messiah costume and donned the voice-altering device before he crossed the hall and went into the president’s office. He wasn’t hungry, which surprised him a little, because he hadn’t eaten anything substantial since London, only a light snack on the flight over. But he was thirsty.

He found the small pantry hidden behind the rear wall. It was equipped with a wet bar and several top-shelf whiskeys, cognacs, gins and vodkas. A rack beneath the sink held a dozen or more red wines, and the cooler beside it was filled with whites.

A small fridge contained fruit juices, bottled tea and bottled water. He got a water and crossed to the windows. He stood to one side so it would be difficult for anyone to spot him but he’d have a decent sight line down Constitution Avenue. The crowd of a few hundred when he’d arrived had grown to a thousand or more people, many of them children. He had to wonder why, unless word had gotten out that the Messiah had possibly returned. With the rising sun some of them were eating flatbread for breakfast, while men sat smoking in the beds of pickup trucks. It did not seem like an angry mob to Haaris, rather a gathering of people patiently waiting for something to happen — or for someone to show up.

As a young student he’d learned from his teachers that the people of any nation deserved the government they had. If they were dissatisfied a revolution would occur. Sometimes the uprising took years, like in the case of the aftermath of Stalin and others in Russia, but unless it happened the people would be stuck with the likes of a Hitler, who had been replaced only by all-out war.

Haaris turned around as he raised the bottle of water to his lips but stopped short, not immediately recognizing the bearded man in white robes standing in the doorway. But then it came to him, and he smiled.

“The Tehreek-e-Taliban has sent you.”

“Yes. I am Mufti Fahad. We were told that you returned to the Aiwan.”

“Where is Shahidullah Shahid?”

“I am his representative.”

“Are you a scholar?” It was what the title mufti translated to.

“Yes.”

“Then am I to govern as a triumvirate with a prime minister and a man of learning?”

“And us with a man of mystery the people call Messiah? But your face is clean-shaven; you do well to cover it in public, lest a false impression be made.”

The mufti was dark-skinned with deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows. He stood with a bamboo cane in his left hand, favoring that leg as he took a step closer. He had a white lace cloth covering the top of his head.

“We will rule in peace,” Haaris said, the words sounding pompous to him.

“The jihad against the West will not be abandoned until sharia law is universal.”

“Peace within our borders.”

“The war here against our brothers is at an end for now,” the mufti said. “But we will send our fidayees back to New York and Washington to continue their work.”

“And to London.”

The mufti raised an eyebrow.

“Great Britain is infidel America’s staunchest ally,” Haaris said. “When we strike it will be swift as lightning and just.”

The mufti took a step closer. “Urge the people to join the jihad, but first study Islam, quote the Quran and then come to us; whatever your skills we shall put them to use against the infidels.”

It was the same diatribe the Taliban had repeated over and over again, of which only since 9/11 did people in the West take notice.

“We will train you to stand with us.”

Haaris turned again to look out the windows. People from the side streets were joining the increasing crowd, and it seemed almost as if they were in a celebratory mood. Some of the men were dancing in the streets. And unlike previous demonstrations no one was shooting Kalashnikovs into the air.

In came to him that the situation was unfolding just as he had planned for it to do. Despite all the variables, for which he had to deal with by hiring an imposter in London, this was working. Two days.

He turned back. “We will go to the prime minister now to complete our government and plan for jihad against the West.”

“The whore will not give up military aid from the U.S. It is too precious.”

“Money that was used to equip the war against you,” Haaris said. “It ends now.”

“You understand.”

“I’ve always understood my people.”

“Our people,” the mufti said.

Downstairs in the main reception hall, where flowers wilted in vases around the central statue of Islamic figures, and a huge chandelier hung from the high ceiling in front of massive double doors of polished oak, Haaris stopped.

He’d been here before. A pair of ornate sofas in a corner, so large that the room did nothing to dwarf them, was where he’d sat sipping sweet tea talking with General Rajput for the first time shortly after he had conceived his plan for revenge. He remembered his first impression: the man was not particularly bright, but he was a good administrator, a decent leader, he had connections throughout the government and especially the military, but above all he was devious.

Haaris had decided on the spot that he would make good use of the man and had begun sharing intelligence that had allowed the government to anticipate every objection the U.S. raised to its policies, especially concerning Pakistan’s movement of nuclear weapons around the country, and developing responses that if not believed were at least placating.

Pakistan was helping the U.S. continue the war against the terrorist groups within its borders, and with staging rights for the war in Afghanistan.

No one in Langley or especially in Washington liked the alliance, but no one was bright enough to see the liars for what they were and do something about it.

“Thou dost not trust General Rajput,” Haaris said. The Punjabi words and grammar that had always seemed so formal, even ancient, to him had begun to sound normal. Even right.

“We have been enemies too long for that,” the mufti replied.

“But you must trust me.”

“Why?”

“Give me two days, and you will see.”

The mufti laughed.

“I am the Messiah,” Haaris said dramatically. “Pakistan’s savior.”

He adjusted the scarf over his features then threw open the doors and strode outside, down the broad stairs and across the complicated green spaces, past outer buildings, prayer halls and across the circular driveway up which VIP guests of state would be driven, and past the long, narrow reflecting pool.

The two soldiers manning the ceremonial iron gates that opened to the sidewalk and broad Constitution Avenue turned around in surprise as the first shouts of “Messiah!” came from the crowds.

“Be careful what you aspire to,” the mufti said to his left.

Haaris looked at him.

“Consequences that are unintended often arise.”

Haaris almost laughed out loud. Unintended consequences indeed. It was a CIA term, which meant, in essence, be careful what you plan for because you just might get something else — something that could jump up and bite you in the ass. And it was especially funny to him at this moment, because the comment had come from a hated enemy of the CIA to a CIA operative.

The soldiers opened the gates and stood back to let Haaris and the mufti walk out onto the broad avenue. The crowd immediately surged forward, men touching Haaris’s shoulders, women holding their babies for him to bless with a fingertip to their foreheads.

“Allah’s blessing be upon you, my children,” he said.

The mob went wild, chanting, “Messiah,” over and over again, the volume rising.

“A lasting justice is at hand for all of us.”

FORTY-FOUR

McGarvey wiped down the pistol he’d taken from one of the ISI officers who’d tried to kill him and put it in the woman’s hand in such a way that at least a couple of partial prints could be lifted.

He laid it on the floor next to her blood, and as soon as the SEALs left with her body, he walked the couple of blocks up to Luqman Hakeem Road, where he got a table at a small café and ordered a coffee with milk.

The waiter was distant, but he came back immediately with the coffee.

It should have been the start of the morning rush hour, but the street was all but deserted of traffic, and he was the only customer.

“Where is everybody?”

The waiter shook his head and started to leave.

“Do you speak English?” McGarvey asked.

“Yes, sir,” the waiter said.

“Where is everybody?“

“I do not know,” the waiter said and again walked away.

McGarvey phoned Otto. “Something is going on, the streets where I am are all but empty.”

“Oh, wow, Mac, the shit has started big-time now. Louise is with me. She’s brought up real-time satellite images of the Red Section, right in front of the Presidential Palace. There’s another mob there, and two figures are right in the middle of it.”

“Haaris?”

“We can’t tell. Austin is sending someone over to find out what’s going on, but I think that it’s a safe bet that it is Haaris as the Messsiah and he and whoever is with him are on the move.”

“To where?”

“Straight up Constitution Avenue toward the Secretariat.”

“Rajput’s office,” McGarvey said. “How long will it take them to get there?”

“It’s not far. A hundred meters or so, but the crowd is slow, they’re barely crawling. I’d say an hour, maybe longer.”

An army jeep, a green flag on its radio antenna, its blue lights flashing, turned the corner and headed at a high rate of speed toward the apartment building where McGarvey had been staying. Two men in civilian clothes, one of them talking on a radio, who could have been the twins of the two ISI officers McGarvey had taken out.

“A couple of ISI officers just went past me, and in a few minutes they’re going to find Judith Anderson’s blood all over the apartment, and the gun I took from one of the ISI officers I killed. Her fingerprints are on it.”

“The SEAL operators finally showed up?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said, and he explained everything that had happened, including her death. “They probably know that she was with me.”

“You have to get out of there right now, Mac. I’ll arrange a military flight out for you as soon as you can get out to the airport.”

“I want you to get me an interview with Rajput in his office.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I don’t care how you do it, but I want him to want to see me immediately, before Haaris and whoever’s with him — and I’m betting that it’s someone from the Taliban — get there.”

“They’ll shoot you on sight.”

“I don’t think so. Tell him that I know about the missing nuclear weapons at Quetta and the explosion, plus the disabling of most of their arsenal by our people. I’ll make a deal with him for an exclusive interview with the Messiah and his Taliban friend. I think that Rajput will want to know what Travis Parks knows and how he came by his information.”

“I can’t go through the normal media channels; you’re the competition, they wouldn’t agree to help even if you offered to become a pool reporter. In that case you’d have to take along one of their cameramen. It wouldn’t work.”

“Goddamnit, Otto, I need this. Haaris is here and on the move; this is my chance, maybe my only chance.”

“To do what, kemo sabe, kill him with your bare hands in the prime minister of Pakistan’s office?”

“The bastard has a plan, and if I can push him hard enough maybe he’ll give me a clue.”

“He’s smarter than that.”

“He’s vain. Whatever he came to do will be big, and he needs an audience.”

Otto was silent for several beats.

“We’re running out of time,” McGarvey said. He could feel Otto’s anguish and fear, almost like the roar of a distant waterfall. “This isn’t a suicide mission, there’ll be too many witnesses.”

“Even if you get inside and interview them, once you leave you’d be a walking dead man.”

“They’d want me to file my story first. Haaris would. And then they’d have to find me.”

Again Otto was silent for a moment or two, but when he came back he sounded resigned. “Getting the media involved would open a can of worms nobody wants opened, especially not Page or Bill Myers.” Air Force General C. William Myers was director of the National Security Agency. “Not to mention the White House. The blowback would be immense. We need to find another way.”

McGarvey had considered another possibility, if the situation were to come to this point. It was the main reason he’d confided his real identity to Ross Austin. But it was last-ditch. “Austin knows who I am.”

“He’s pressed Walt to pull you out immediately.”

“Have Page call Ross, right now, and tell him that I may have gone rogue. Have Austin convince Powers to tell Rajput that I could be another Snowden with information potentially damaging not only to the U.S. but to Pakistan’s security.”

“Rajput will have you arrested on the spot.”

“He’ll want to find out what I know. Putin gave Snowden asylum, maybe Rajput’ll do the same for me.”

“That’s crazy, Mac.”

“You’re right. But just now crazy is my only option.”

“It was your only option from the get-go.”

“You have about twenty minutes to make it happen,” McGarvey said, and he ended the call.

He sat nursing his coffee for a while, before he laid down a few coins and walked down the block until a taxi came and pulled over for him. The driver, an old man, seemed excited.

“I do not think I can take you to Constitution Avenue, sir,” the driver said. “There are too many people. The Messiah has finally come to us, praise Allah.”

“The Secretariat.”

The driver stopped and looked in the rearview mirror. “You’re American. I knew it. But you must know that this is a wondrous time for all of Pakistan.”

“The Secretariat,” McGarvey said. “They are expecting me.”

The Secretariat was housed in a large stuccoed white five-story building just off Constitution Avenue near the northwest end of the Red Section. The foothills of the Himalayas rose to the east, and clouds were beginning to roll in, like an ominous gray blanket. A storm was on its way, and Mac could feel it coming in more ways than one.

He counted more than a dozen white domes at various corners of the L-shaped building as they approached, and they reminded him of the domes and spires atop minarets across the Muslim world.

He got the distinct feeling that peace would never come to Pakistan or places like this. He was not anti-Islam; in fact, he didn’t care one way or another for any organized religion. But the extremists in any system were always the exception to the norm — Islam, Judaism or Christianity — yet they always accounted for the highest body counts. The primary purpose of terrorism was to terrorize.

The driver pulled up at the main gate. McGarvey rolled down his window and presented his passport to a guard, who checked the photo against his face.

“Yes, Dr. Parks, you are expected.”

FORTY-FIVE

A pair of motorcycle cops escorted McGarvey’s taxi up the long driveway to a side entrance of the Secretariat. Close up the massive pile looked more like a fortress or a prison than a governmental office. It felt ancient — and menacing: Abandon hope all ye who enter these gates.

He paid off the cabby, who was escorted back to the main gate. As he stood waiting next to an armed guard who was to take him inside, he could hear the chanting of a large crowd. He was around the side of the building, so he had no sight line down the broad avenue, but notably absent were the sounds of gunfire, which seemed always to be present at times like these.

“Dr. Parks,” his guard prompted.

“It sounds peaceful.”

The guard smiled faintly. “It is the Messiah, his message is one of peace.”

“Someone is with him.”

“The people.”

“I meant that someone from the Aiwan is walking with him. Someone from the Taliban.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the guard said.

“Sure, you do,” McGarvey told him, but he followed the man inside, where he was searched with an electronic security wand before they went down a long, marble hall and took an elevator to the top floor.

The place was bustling with clerks and other governmental employees scurrying from office to office as if they were on missions of urgent importance, which considering who was heading this way, they were.

The anteroom to the prime minister’s office was nearly half the size of a decent ballroom, with very high ceilings from which hung ornate chandeliers, gilded mirrors on the walls and vast Persian carpets on the wood parquet floor. An older man dressed in the morning clothes of a state functionary was seated behind the desk in the middle of the room.

He looked up, a pleasant expression on his round face. “Good morning, Dr. Parks,” he said. “The prime minister will see you momentarily.” He motioned for the guard to leave them.

“I imagine that he’s very busy this morning.”

“Indeed.”

A pair of couches flanked by large tables topped with vases of flowers were set along one wall, but there was no place else to sit other than behind the secretary’s desk. The length of time that someone wishing to see the prime minister was required to stand was related to his importance.

The secretary picked up his buzzing telephone. “Yes, sir,” he said. “You may go in now, Dr. Parks.”

A pair of massive ornately carved oak doors at least sixteen feet tall opened into the PM’s office, which was nothing like what McGarvey had expected; very little of anything was ornate or pretentious about it. As he walked in, a service door to the left was just closing. Rajput was standing behind his desk strewn with papers, files, a telephone console and two computer monitors. Large windows faced toward Constitution Avenue, and on the wall between them was a wide flat-screen television that showed a view down the avenue from a camera mounted on the roof. Two library tables were piled with file folders and other documents. No paintings adorned the walls and the only real concession to decoration other than the ornately carved desk was a massive Persian carpet, the twin, or at least the cousin, of the one in the anteroom. This was a place of work, not ceremony.

Rajput motioned for McGarvey to have a seat in front of the desk. “Coming here just now, what struck you most about the demonstration out there?”

“So far as I know, this time your Messiah hasn’t cut off anyone’s head yet.”

“It was a brutal act, but one that may have been necessary. Pakistan was going nowhere under its former leadership. And I believe you call such actions a ‘clean sweep.’”

“Some would call it a purge.”

“The guns have been silent. The suicide bombers have taken off their vests. Business goes on in peace. The ambassadors are returning to their embassies — most notably your Mr. Powers — and next month we will be receiving a delegation from the Pentagon to open a new era of cooperation between us and your military.”

Rajput wasn’t rising to the bait — yet.

“What went wrong in Quetta?”

“A nuclear accident, regrettable, but the location was isolated enough, there were only a very few casualties.”

“The driver and escort were moving the weapons somewhere. But it was my understanding that in cases such as that one the weapons would have been unmated — their nuclear cores and trigger mechanisms separated.”

“In this instance that was not in fact the case. An investigation is in progress, the results of which will be classified.”

“But there has been very little about it in your press or on television.”

“We do not restrict our citizens from access to foreign newspapers, television or the Internet. If truth be told, the unescorted shipment was probably attacked by a Taliban group that got more than it bargained for. Because of the Messiah we have begun steps for rapprochement with them.”

“Instead of supplying them with weapons.”

Rajput sat back. “What are you doing here, Dr. Parks? What do you want from Pakistan?”

“Extraordinary things have been happening over the past days; I just want clarity for my readers on a number of issues that seem to have eluded the foreign press to this point.”

“The nuclear incident in Quetta has been discussed with your government.”

“It’s my understanding that you stonewalled President Miller, which was why she ordered teams to disable as many weapons in your nuclear arsenal as they could reach. There’ve been no reports that I’ve seen on the effectiveness of those raids or of the casualties on both sides.”

Rajput said nothing.

“How has that affected Pakistan’s relationship with the U.S?”

“There has been no effect.”

“How many weapons remain in your arsenal?”

Rajput smiled.

“What I meant to ask, does your military still present a credible enough threat to India that it will not make a preemptive strike?”

“It would be a mistake on their part.”

McGarvey made a point to look up at the big monitor on the wall between the windows. The crowds had grown. Haaris and the Taliban representative were not visible, but there was a center to the mass that moved steadily up the broad avenue.

“What do you want here, Dr. Parks? I’m still not clear.”

“An in-depth one-on-one interview with the Messiah. My readers want to know who he is and what his agenda might be.”

“Even I do not know that yet.”

“Then we’ll ask him together when he gets here.”

“But what is your agenda?”

McGarvey suppressed a grin. It was like fishing: hook, line and sinker. “To get a story.”

“Do you know Ross Austin?” Rajput asked out of the blue.

“No.”

“You’re lying. He knows you and he knows why you’re here.”

McGarvey maintained his composure.

“Mr. Austin is in fact the chief of station for the CIA’s activities here in Pakistan. And he is concerned about you. In fact he wants me to have you arrested and turned over to Ambassador Powers immediately.”

“We have a little thing called the First Amendment.”

“He says that until recently you were an analyst with the CIA. He says that you fancy yourself as the next Edward Snowden, and that you have come to Pakistan seeking asylum in exchange for information.”

FORTY-SIX

It was well after eleven in the evening when Otto Rencke left his office and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. The DCI had called fifteen minutes earlier to say that he was coming to Campus and wanted a meeting, not at all surprised to find Otto still at work.

Louise had gone home a couple of hours before, totally wasted after working nearly nonstop for the past thirty-six hours. She was just as worried as her husband was over the chances of Mac getting out of Pakistan alive, let alone finishing what he’d gone there to do, yet Otto expected the situation was harder on her in part because she didn’t have the same history with Mac’s abilities, and she wasn’t at the center of CIA activities.

Page had just arrived by helicopter when Otto reached his office. Already there were Marty Bambridge and Carlton Patterson, whom Otto had come to think of as the DCI’s unlikely war council.

“Don’t you ever get tired, dear boy?” Patterson asked, though he looked just as beat as everyone else. He was an old man, in his late seventies, and yet he had energy because, he’d once explained, his job was at least interesting if not exciting.

“No time for it,” Otto said, taking a seat next to him on one of the couches in the middle of the room.

The DCI’s office was laid out much like the Oval Office because Page often found it more comfortable to have discussions with his people not across his desk, and not around a long table in a conference room, but up close and personal.

Bambridge, who’d been down the hall in the Watch since late afternoon, looked sullen as usual, but Otto detected a hint of fear in his eyes. It was unusual even for the DDO.

“There’ve been some developments in the past hour or so that all of you might not be aware of,” Page told them. “First off, the TTP’s representative Shahidullah Shahid has disappeared.”

“The Messiah and a Taliban mouthpiece, apparently the mufti Fahad, had a brief meeting this morning at the Presidential Palace before they set out on foot toward the Secretariat, presumably to meet with Prime Minister Rajput,” Bambridge added.

“Yes, we know that much,” Otto said.

“Then you also know that the blogger who identifies himself as Travis Parks is none other than Kirk McGarvey.”

Otto looked to Page. “That was supposed to be kept secret, for his own safety.”

Bambridge was puffed up. “Be that as it may, for whatever reason he revealed himself to my chief of station out there, who, duty-bound, reported it to me.”

“And what did you do about it?” Otto asked.

“I told Ross not to get himself or his station personnel involved except to monitor the situation as closely as practicable and report anything of interest directly to me.”

“Has he?”

“McGarvey’s apparently already gotten into trouble. Ross thinks that he killed two ISI officers and was responsible for the death of a third — a woman — whose body is being transported from Pakistan by a team of SEAL Team Six operators out of Jalalabad.”

“Did you know about this?” Page asked Otto.

“I arranged it.”

“The White House didn’t and the president’s national security adviser wants the mission scrubbed. She wants McGarvey recalled.”

“I tried to make him get out,” Otto said. “But he’s not going to back off. We have confirmation that the man who we thought was Dave Haaris in London was in fact an imposter, which makes it even more likely that the Messiah is Dave.”

“Not likely at all,” Patterson said, surprising them all. “Before he took his wife’s ashes to London he confided in me that he was tired, that he needed a vacation. Said he was going to disappear for five days, and that if something should come up about his whereabouts to inform everyone that there was nothing to worry about.”

The timing struck Otto. “That was two days ago,” he said.

“So he’ll be gone another three days,” Patterson said. “There’s no reason to suspect that he was lying, especially dealing with the grief of losing his wife so tragically. And learning that he has an inoperable cancer.”

“Pete Boylan confronted his imposter in London, who told her that his contract was for two more days only.”

“Tommy Boyle told me that he arranged an RAF flight to Islamabad for her,” Bambridge said. “I ordered him to have it recalled but he couldn’t without burning a favor, something neither of us wanted to do. She’ll be on the ground in the next few hours.”

“That’s not the point,” Otto said. “Whatever Dave’s planned will presumably happen in two days.”

“It’s actually a moot point, because McGarvey will be under arrest and on his way home before then,” Bambridge said.

Otto’s temper spiked, but he held himself from lunging across the coffee table between them and breaking the stupid bastard’s neck. “What have you done?”

“I authorized it with Sue Kalley’s blessing, who thought it was a brilliant way out of the situation,” Page said. “The fallout from any more killings over there will be far too costly for us, but outing Mac as a whistle-blower who we wanted returned immediately was something that could be handled politically.”

Otto didn’t want to believe what he was hearing. “Mac is either on his way to meet with Rajput or he’s already there in the Secretariat.”

“Yes, we know,” Bambridge said.

“Don’t tell me that you actually identified Mac?” Otto asked, surprised by his control.

“Of course not. What do you take me for?” Bambridge said. “Austin told Rajput that Travis Parks worked for us, but that he fancied himself to be another Snowden, seeking asylum in exchange for information on this agency’s top operations. Ambassador Powers has an appointment with Rajput later today to demand that Parks be turned over to us. On the line will be a significant portion of our continued military aid.”

Otto got to his feet.

“Sit down, please,” Page said. “We’re not done here yet.”

“Not by a long shot.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, mister?” Bambridge shouted, jumping up.

“To try to undo the damage you’ve done before it’s too late.”

“I’ll have Security up here before you get halfway down the hall.”

Otto shrugged. “Marty, you little prick, you cannot in your wildest nightmares imagine the rain of shit that is a hair’s breadth away from falling on you — on this entire agency.”

“Mr. Director!” Bambridge shouted.

“Before you go any further, ask yourself how much Kirk McGarvey has given this country and how much he’s lost for it. He’s in badland at the president’s behest to try to stop something terrible from happening. With no interference from you his chances for survival were next to nothing. He knew it going in, and yet he thought the risk was worth taking. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do catching up.”

Otto headed for the door.

“Goddamnit, come back here,” Bambridge said.

“Be careful that your political ambitions don’t rise up and bite you in the arse one of these days, Marty,” Otto said, and he left.

Page’s phone call came as Otto got to his office. “Can you repair the damage?”

“I don’t know, but first I’ll try to save his life.”

“This came from the White House.”

“From the president herself?” Otto asked.

“Not directly,” Page admitted.

“Just understand, Mr. Director, that Bambridge and Susan Kalley are best buds. Talk to the president.”

FORTY-SEVEN

In the last hundred meters before the ceremonial front gate to the Secretariat, Haaris felt like Jesus Christ himself — or more like Lawrence of Arabia strutting in his costume. Arms outstretched to either side, he picked up the pace, so that he and the mufti were practically running. The crowd fell mostly silent and those in front respectfully parted for them.

Two armed guards swung open the iron gates at the foot of a shallow rise up which a paved driveway made its way through a stand of trees to the Secretariat’s main entrance.

Haaris suddenly stopped and turned to face the crowd that stretched down Constitution Avenue for as far as the eye could see. Now there were absolutely no sounds.

“My dear people,” he shouted theatrically, though only the people at the head of the mob could possibly hear him. He felt strong, even invincible.

All of America’s nuclear might had not stopped the 9/11 attacks from happening. Nor would her awesome power be able to stop him in time.

“The TTP’s mufti has come with me to this place to form Pakistan’s new government. A government of peace. A government to serve the people. A government to feed the poor, to heal the sick.”

Haaris was aware that the mood of the mufti beside him and the crowd stretched in front had immediately begun to change. Some of the people seemed confused. He looked at the mufti and smiled, then he turned back to the crowd.

“We will be a government of Islami qanun,” he shouted — sharia law, which meant actual legislation that dealt with everything from crime, to economics, to politics, as well as hygiene, diet, prayer, etiquette, even fasting and sex. All of it based on a strict interpretation of God’s infallible laws versus the laws of men.

Sharia was the real reason many Muslims gave for the jihad against the West. Until sharia was universal there could be no peace with the infidels.

Haaris meant to give it to them — or at least the promise of it — for the next two days. In his estimation the righteous attacks of 9/11, in which fewer than three thousand people had died, had not gone far enough. If they had, the backlash would have been even more severe than it had been. More terrible than the killing of bin Laden.

Had the plan been bolder the West would have shoved Islam back to the dark ages.

It’s what they wanted and Haaris would give it to him, insha’ Allah—God willing.

“Read the Quranic verses and follow the examples of our dear Muhammad set down in the Sunnah,” Haaris cried. “Be one with Allah, be one with us!”

The mob roared, and Haaris felt not only all-knowing, all-powerful; he also could feel his sanity slipping away bit by bit.

He started up the driveway, the mufti at his side.

“Did you mean all of that?” the Taliban spokesman asked.

“Of course, didn’t you believe me?” Haaris asked. “And I will require your help as well as the help of the military, the same as in Quetta.”

The mufti did not answer.

McGarvey heard the roar of the crowd as did Rajput, and the prime minister got up from behind his desk and went to the window. “He’s here and he’s brought someone with him.”

“Who is it?” McGarvey asked.

“I don’t know,” Rajput said. His phone rang and he answered it. “Yes,” he said. “Bring them up.”

“If you had to guess who’s with him,” McGarvey pressed, though he was just about sure who it was.

“Guessing is not needed. The Messiah has brought a representative from the Taliban, almost certainly the TTP, as I suspected he might whenever he turned up here.”

“To form a government with you?”

Rajput smiled, though it was clear he was concerned: something else was in his eyes, at the corners of his lips. “I imagine they’ll propose forming a triumvirate.”

“Will you go along with it? Will the parliament and the military?”

“Do you still insist on your interview, Dr. Parks, even though it has been revealed that you are nothing more than an analyst for the CIA?”

“I’m not an analyst for the CIA,” McGarvey said. “I’m a journalist.”

“With First Amendment rights.”

“Exactly.”

“Mr. Austin was lying.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Rajput asked.

“I’ll ask him if he’ll sit for an interview,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime, will the ISI be willing now to work with the Taliban? Could be an interesting partnership.”

“Indeed,” Rajput said. “Do you still wish to interview the Messiah?”

“It’s why I came to Pakistan,” McGarvey said.

“Then it will be so,” Rajput said. “But we have an old saying here that is the same as in the U.S.: Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.”

Haaris and the TTP mufti were escorted up to the top floor of the Secretariat, where the armed guards left them in the broad corridor that led down to the PM’s office. Rajput’s secretary stood at the open door to the anteroom. A fair number of clerks and other functionaries had gathered at their office doors and in the far end of the corridor, but none of them said anything.

“Peace be upon thee,” Haaris said, raising his right hand as he and the mufti moved down the corridor.

Someone responded, “And peace be upon thee, Messiah.”

The secretary nodded. “Messiah, Mufti Fahad.”

“We’re here to meet with the prime minister,” Haaris said.

“He’s expecting you, sir,” the secretary replied, and he stepped aside.

Haaris was the first into the anteroom, the mufti just at his elbow. He stopped short. Rajput, in an ISI uniform shirt, the collar open, sleeves rolled up, stood at the tall doors to his office. Beside him was a man Haaris had never seen, but it was obvious that he was an American. His presence was unexpected, but there was nothing in Rajput’s expression to indicate who the man might be or if he was a possible problem.

Rajput met Haaris in the middle of the room and they embraced.

“Who is he?” Haaris whispered close in Rajput’s ear.

“You’ll see,” Rajput said, and they parted. He held out his hand for the mufti, who took it after brief hesitation. “Old enemies meet in peace at last.”

“It has been a long time coming,” the mufti said.

“Too long for Pakistan’s sake. But now we will put everything right.”

“Should I know this gentleman?” Haaris asked, indicating McGarvey.

“He is Travis Parks and among other things he claims to be an American journalist here for an exclusive interview with you,” Rajput said. “Probably with the three of us.”

“Among other things?” Haaris asked. His artificial voice no longer sounded strange in his ears. Nor did his Pashto.

“The CIA’s chief of station at the embassy claims that he is a CIA analyst who wants to trade information for asylum here. But his credentials as a writer pan out.”

The mufti was visibly affected. “The CIA is here?” he demanded.

“And why not,” Haaris replied. “Assuming he’s not armed.” He switched to English. “Mr. Parks, it was very inventive of you to find me.”

“I merely had to follow the crowds, sir,” McGarvey said.

“And now that you’re here, what do you want?”

“I’m a journalist, but the mufti believes otherwise. He believes that I work for the CIA. I do not.”

“Very well, you will have your interview,” Haaris said. “But, Mr. Parks, it will be a two-way interview. An exchange, shall we say, of ideas and ideals. Do you agree?”

“Of course.”

FORTY-EIGHT

McGarvey was made to wait in the anteroom for nearly a half hour while Haaris and the TTP spokesman met with Rajput. There’d been no hint of recognition in Haaris’s eyes when he’d come face-to-face with McGarvey, exactly what Mac wanted. If Haaris had seen through the disguise it would have been impossible to get anywhere near him. But if he was pushed by a journalist, or even someone else from the CIA, he might start making mistakes, especially if there was validity to the two-day timetable suggested by the imposter in London.

It was a double-edged sword for all of them. In the first place, McGarvey knew that Haaris wanted publicity. He needed his identity as the Messiah, and not as a high-ranking CIA operative, to be rock solid around the world — especially in London and Washington. The man could not afford to create a panic. For now he was all about peace and cooperation between the government and the Taliban.

On the other hand, if he suspected that McGarvey was a CIA spy here to gather information, Haaris would be caught between a rock and a hard place; he’d want Mac to report back to Washington that the Messiah was really a voice of stability in the region, and yet the presence of a CIA spy meant someone at Langley might suspect Haaris’s real identity.

For McGarvey’s purposes, he wanted Haaris to have some serious concerns, not necessarily that the CIA had sent an operative here, but that its purpose was to out him and then either reel him back home or assassinate him.

The prime minister’s secretary answered a string of telephone calls with the same reply: “I’m sorry, but the prime minister is in conference at the moment and cannot be disturbed.”

But it was in English, for McGarvey’s benefit: the government of Pakistan was going on as normal, there was nothing to worry about.

The telephone rang again and the secretary answered it. “Yes, sir,” he said. “They are ready for you now, Dr. Parks.”

McGarvey went into the office, the secretary closing the door softly behind him.

Three ornate armchairs had been set up in a semicircle across a low table facing a plain office chair. Rajput and the mufti sat on either side of Haaris. This was to be more of an inquisition than an interview.

He took his seat, facing them. “Thank you, gentlemen, for agreeing to this interview on such short notice, but the events of the past few days have been nothing short of stunning. My readers would like to know more.”

“I’m sure they would,” Haaris said. “Your telephone was taken from you downstairs, a curious device, from what I’ve been told, protected by a very serious password. I’m assuming that you record your interviews on it. Would you like to use one that the prime minister is willing to provide you?”

“Thank you, sir, but it’s not necessary. I have a very good memory.”

“As you must in a profession such as yours. How may we be of assistance?”

“May I see your face, sir?”

“There is no need for it at this time,” Haaris said.

“Can you tell me something of your background? Experts I have spoken with tell me that yours is a Pashtun accent but with a strong hint of a proper British education.”

“It is true I am Pashtun and it is also true that I was taken to England as a young man, where I received a first-class education.”

“Do you still hold a British passport?”

“Yes, as well as a Pakistani one.”

“May we know under what name?”

Haaris laughed softly, and for just an instant McGarvey thought he recognized it. “‘The Messiah’ will suffice for now; it is the people’s choice.”

“One definition of the word is a zealous leader of a cause,” McGarvey pressed.

“I think that the people had in mind the deliverer they’d hoped for.”

“A deliverer of what?”

“Not of what but from what,” Haaris said. “From the strife that has torn this country apart for most of its history. Before we can expect to be at peace with the world we must first be at peace with ourselves.”

“Does that include India?”

Rajput bridled, but Haaris held him off with a gesture. “Especially India.”

“And the U.S.?”

“I wasn’t aware that we were at war with your country,” Haaris said. “I rather thought that we were partners in the war against terrorists.” He looked at the mufti. “A war that has gone on entirely too long, at a cost so dear it hurts us all.”

“Peace, you say,” McGarvey said. “That was begun with the beheading of Pakistan’s properly elected president, and the suicide or possible assassination of the prime minister?”

“Both of them were corrupt,” Rajput answered. “We have proof that both of them were siphoning aid money, for their own purposes, that we were receiving from the U.S.”

“Wouldn’t it have better suited your purpose to arrest them and place them on trial?”

“No,” Haaris said. “Pakistan was in dramatic trouble; a dramatic solution was needed to get the people’s attention.”

“By ‘dramatic trouble,’ are you referring to the nuclear event near Quetta? It’s thought that perhaps the Taliban hijacked a nuclear weapon that was being moved and somehow set it off.”

“We’re investigating that possibility. But there have been other attacks, as you well know. Attacks on the military headquarters, the killing of innocent citizens. Suicide bombers. Tribal warfare along the border with Afghanistan. The list is long.”

“Why do you think that the U.S. ordered the strikes against Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal? And why has it been kept out of the press? There must have been many casualties on both sides.”

None of the three men seemed to be affected by the question. But Haaris took a long time to answer.

“I’m told that you may be a journalist, but that the CIA’s chief of station here claims that you are a rogue CIA analyst who’s come to trade information for asylum.”

“He’s wrong,” McGarvey said.

Again Haaris took his time in responding. “I expect he might be, but I don’t know his reasons, except that you are probably an NOC, perhaps even freelance. But here to do what, exactly? Something beyond your orders, making you a rogue operator but of a different sort than he suggests?”

“Have you heard of a man by the name of David Haaris?”

If any of them reacted, it could have been Rajput, but the changes in his expression and demeanor were so slight as to be scarcely noticeable.

“No, is it significant?” Haaris asked.

“General Rajput certainly knows him. They’ve worked together for several years, from what I was told.”

“Told by whom?” Rajput asked, the look on his face deadpan.

“A CIA insider whose name I can’t mention, for his own protection. Haaris worked in a section called the Pakistan Desk and came here often.”

“You do work for the CIA,” Rajput said.

“I’m not on the CIA’s payroll,” McGarvey replied calmly.

Haaris again held Rajput off. “I believe that Mr. Parks is telling the truth, so far as it goes. But why,” he turned to McGarvey, “are you here at this moment? What does Mr. Haaris have to do with me?”

“Perhaps nothing, but he went to London several days ago and has disappeared.”

“And you were sent to find him?”

“No, that would be up to the CIA. I was merely told he’d disappeared and it was presumed that he would naturally come here to find out what was going on. I’d like to interview him, and I’d hoped that General Rajput might lead me to him.”

“What do you think I can do to help you find him?” Haaris asked.

“Nothing, sir. But you’re news, so I figured that I could kill two birds with one stone — find a clue to Haaris’s whereabouts and interview you.”

“I think that you are a liar,” Haaris said. “This interview is at an end. It’s time that you leave Pakistan while you still can.”

McGarvey got to his feet. “Thank you, gentlemen, I believe that I got most of what I came for.”

The side door opened and two armed men dressed in the uniforms of the Secretariat Security Service, their pistols drawn, came in.

“You’re under arrest, Dr. Parks,” Rajput said.

“On what charge?”

“Espionage.”

FORTY-NINE

The gruff flight sergeant gently touched Pete’s shoulder and she came awake instantly. His name was Bert Cauley and he’d been the attendant for her and the other two passengers who were last-minute additions to the staff at the British embassy. On the flight over they’d mostly stayed to themselves. They’d been told that she was CIA.

“We’re forty minutes out, ma’am,” Cauley said. “You have a call, but you might want to come forward to take it. You’ll have a little more privacy.”

Pete went forward to the Citation’s tiny galley just aft of the cockpit, where Cauley took the phone from its hook on the bulkhead, pressed one of the buttons and handed it to her.

“It’s a secure circuit,” Cauley said, and he went aft.

The copilot reached back and closed the cockpit door.

“Yes?” Pete said. She was afraid that it was trouble. She looked at her watch which she had set to Pakistan time just after they’d lifted off. It was a few minutes before midnight.

“Mac is missing,” Otto said.

Something clutched at her heart, and she closed her eyes. “Are you sure?”

“The battery was removed from his phone six hours ago, but he’s done it before to avoid detection if he got into a bad spot. But it’s worse than that. I didn’t want bother you before, but now it looks like you could be walking into a tornado.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s Ross Austin. He told Rajput that Mac — as Travis Parks — is a CIA analyst sent out to find the Messiah’s identity and the man’s agenda.”

“Goddamnit to hell, Otto. Why? What the bleeding Christ is wrong with the bastard?”

“He’s friends with Susan Kalley, the president’s national security adviser. Apparently she sidestepped Page and contacted Austin directly. Told him that the president had called off the deal with McGarvey and they wanted him out of there immediately.”

“Page could have talked to him.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good, and you know it,” Otto said. “Austin told Rajput that military aid was on the line and that the CIA wanted Mac arrested and turned over to him personally for immediate deportation back to the States.”

Pete felt a glimmer of hope. “Maybe that’d be for the best after all.”

“There’s more,” Otto said, and he sounded worried. “Mac went to the Secretariat and bullied his way into Rajput’s office as Haaris and a TTP rep were marching up Constitution Avenue. He wanted to interview not only the PM but the Messiah as well.”

“If Haaris was told that Mac was a CIA analyst it’s more than possible he’d know that was a lie. The son of a bitch knows just about everyone on Campus. And he’d have to think that Mac was there to spy on him and maybe even assassinate him.”

“Louise and I came to the same conclusion. Page knows everything and he has a three o’clock with the president; that’s about an hour from how. He has a fair idea that calling off Mac was Kalley’s idea and not Miller’s.”

“Maybe. But I’ll be on the ground before then. A couple of British embassy staff are on board with me, and they’ve agreed to drop me off at our embassy on the way over to theirs.”

“Mac wanted me to give Austin the heads up that you were on the way,” Otto said.

“Not until I’m practically at the front gate. I don’t want him to call his pal Rajput and out me too.”

“Walk with care, Pete. He’s just doing his job the best way he knows how, and among other things that’s protecting U.S. interests over there. He has a big staff, a lot of them in the field at any given time, and he owes them his muscle. By all accounts he’s doing a good job.”

“He’s one of Marty’s fair-haired boys, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and rightly so, but they are not, I repeat, they are not cut of the same cloth. Not by a long shot.”

“We’ll see,” Pete said, sick at heart. “Call Powers as well. I’ll want to talk to him. One way or another I’m going to do my damnedest to save Mac’s life.”

“Good hunting,” Otto said.

After landing they taxied over to the VIP arrivals area of the airport, where a driver and a security officer from the British embassy were waiting with a Range Rover. A Pakistani customs official met Pete and the two Brits and stamped their diplomatic passports, not raising an eyebrow that an American woman was included.

Pete had put on a scarf to cover her hair, but the custom’s officer was indifferent; he didn’t even bother to check her face against the photo in her passport.

At this time of night the airport was all but closed down and the highway into Islamabad was nearly deserted. She’d watched the replays of the satellite images from last week when this same stretch of road was a battleground: Taliban fighters seemed to be everywhere, and dozens of cars and small trucks were on fire along both sides of the highway, a few blocking the road. There had even been bodies lying in a two-hundred-meter stretch.

Now it was quiet, the city to the west, and the Himalayan foothills beyond, sprinkled with streetlights. This was a nation finally at peace, and she almost felt like a night stalker come to do evil, something to do to break the peace, yet she knew two things: Dave Haaris did not want the peace to last and he was here to change everything, and that Mac was here, and that she loved him and that she would do everything within her power to help him even if it meant giving her own life.

Pete turned to the Brit seated next to her. “So what’s your take on this Messiah?” she asked. She wanted some feedback, but mostly she wanted to be distracted for just a little while before she met with Austin or she didn’t know what she might do.

He was young, probably not in his thirties, and he seemed a little flustered. “I don’t really know, ma’am.”

“I won’t bite, and anyway, we’re allies.”

“On the outside looking in, he seems legitimate,” the other, much older Brit sitting behind her said. “But nobody in my shop trusts him.”

“Why’s that?” Pete asked.

“It’s all too pat. He shows up out of the blue, lops off the head of Barazani and then supposedly goes on a walkabout with his people. Rubbish, if you ask me. The bastard is up to something, and I don’t think it’ll be good for any of us in the West.”

“Neither do I,” Pete said, turning inward again. Getting Mac out of the Pakistanis’ custody would take the help of Austin as well as Powers, but it was afterward that worried her most. Mac wasn’t going to give up. It was one of his traits she loved most and yet feared the most.

They came into the city’s diplomatic enclave and to the American embassy, where their credentials were checked by a pair of marine sentries before they were allowed to drive up to the portico at the main entrance. They were met by another security officer, this one in civilian clothes, who opened the rear door for Pete.

“Thanks for the lift, gentlemen,” she said, getting out.

The officer closed the door for her and the Range Rover headed back to Post One.

“Miss Day, if you’ll follow me, ma’am, Mr. Austin is expecting you.”

Pete stopped just at the entrance to the two-story building and looked back the way she had come. “It’s quiet here,” she said. Now that she was close she tried to reach out to Mac, but she couldn’t feel him, and it disturbed her more than she wanted to admit.

“Yes, ma’am, now. But it was busy this afternoon.”

“Did you guys have any trouble here?”

“Not here, but just about everywhere else. And I guess that was the spooky part, no crowds on our doorstep. We’re not used to it.”

“I hear you,” Pete said. “But I don’t think it’ll last.”

FIFTY

Walt Page’s Cadillac limousine glided to a stop at the White House East Gate, where the guard, recognizing him, waved it through. Driving into the city from Langley he’d had a lot of time for thought, and nothing he had learned in the past twenty-four hours was of any comfort.

The president had sent Mac to Pakistan but with deniability. If he got into trouble he would be cut loose. The White House simply could not afford to take a hit over the issues in Pakistan. Miller had already gone out on a limb sending her NEST people in to neutralize a fair portion of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and so far there’d been absolutely no reaction.

But anything else, even the smallest of incidents, could push Islamabad into some reaction, if for nothing else than to appease its people.

And with the Messiah in the mix, actually bringing at least a temporary peace, it was as if the sword of Damocles hung over all of them. Without a doubt it was why the president’s national security adviser had ordered Ross Austin to out McGarvey. Ross understood the president’s thinking, but she’d been wrong, and he meant to convince her of just that.

A marine was at the door, and just inside a Secret Service agent was waiting for him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Page. The president will be delayed for just a few minutes, and Miss Kalley asked if she might have a few words with you first.”

The woman wanted a chance to explain herself, and Page was more than willing to hear her out. “I know the way,” he said.

Kalley’s first-floor office was in the corner of the West Wing directly opposite the Oval Office. Josh Banks, her deputy NSA, whose office was next door to hers, looked up as Page passed. He had a long, hound dog face and he couldn’t conceal the fact that he was guilty of something, but he didn’t rise nor did he say anything.

The president’s NSA looked up and smiled pleasantly when Page came around the corner. “Good afternoon, Mr. Director, it should only be a minute or so,” she said. “Anyway, I wanted to have a word with you first.”

He closed the door and sat down. “Did the president authorize you to call Ross Austin?”

“Directly to the point, as usual. No, she did not. But if a president had to make decisions on every single issue, our government would grind to a halt. It was my choice, considering the situation.”

“Outing an intelligence agent in the field is a capital crime,” Page said, holding his temper in check. He’d not had many dealings with Kalley, but in the ones he’d had she seemed a bright, decisive woman, though somewhat egocentric.

“Mr. McGarvey is not on the CIA’s payroll.”

“You’re right, he refuses to take a paycheck. Nevertheless, he works for me, and in this instance under the president’s orders, something I mean to bring up.”

“There’d be no profit in crossing me, Page. It’d be much easier if we could find a common ground so that we could work together for the good of the country.”

“Nor would there be any profit in crossing Kirk McGarvey.”

Kalley nearly came across her desk at him. “Don’t threaten me, you son of a bitch.”

“Don’t interfere in an ongoing operation,” Page said, keeping his tone completely neutral, which was driving the NSA up the wall.

“The situation out there is critical. The ISI has had absolutely no reaction to our incursion, nor has it allowed any news to leak to their media. Were you aware that they pulled Geo off the air again just two hours ago?” Geo was Pakistan’s leading news channel.

“Yes, because they were getting too critical of the Messiah. They want to know who he is and where he came from.”

“He’s brought peace for the moment. Something no one else has been able to do.”

“Don’t be so goddamned ivory-tower naive. He has a schedule, and it’s set for less than two days from now.”

“No reason to think it’s not benign.”

“The man chopped off President Barazani’s head.”

Kalley was silent for a long beat as she composed herself. “Is that what you’ve come here to tell the president?”

“There’s more,” Page said.

“Tell me.”

“And the president,” Page said. “She’s expecting me.”

President Miller was working at her desk, her suit jacket off. She looked up when her secretary brought them in, but she wasn’t smiling.

“I thought you would have come sooner,” she said.

“There’ve been a number of developments,” Page said.

Miller glanced at Kalley. “You two have spoken,” she said. “Under the circumstances I had no other choice but to withdraw Mr. McGarvey from the assignment.”

“Having the ISI arrest him was the wrong choice for several reasons, Madam President.”

“The only choice,” Miller shot back, her anger rising.

“Something’s going to happen in less than two days’ time. We don’t know what it is, but it will possibly be a strike against the U.S. or our interests. Revenge for not only our incursion into Pakistan to assassinate bin Laden but for our strikes against their nuclear arsenal.”

“They already tried the first, and it didn’t work,” Kalley said.

“Because McGarvey stopped them. But there’s more. We think we know who the Messiah is, and it’s even more critical that we stop him now.”

“Who is he?” the president asked.

“David Haaris,” Page said, catching them completely by surprise.

“Impossible,” Kalley said.

“What’s your confidence level, Mr. Director?” the president asked.

“Ninety percent, conservatively,” Page said. He told them what had happened to date, including the discovery of Haaris’s imposter in London. “McGarvey was at the Secretariat, presumably to interview Rajput, at the same time the Messiah and Mufti Fahad, the new TTP spokesman, showed up. It’s more than conceivable that Mac and the Messiah came face-to-face.”

“If it was Haaris he would have recognized McGarvey from the start,” Kalley said.

“Mac is traveling under false papers and a very good disguise,” Page said. “Fortunately, Ross had sense enough to out Mac’s work name and not his real ID.”

“You’re ninety percent sure that Haaris is the Messiah, and you think he has something planned in two days, for which you don’t have a clue,” the president said. “What’s next?”

“McGarvey’s operating as a blogger under the name of Travis Parks. Call the prime minister and remind him that we have freedom of speech and of the press, no matter how onerous it might seem to him. And assure him that Dr. Parks is not an employee of the CIA.”

Miller swiveled her chair and looked out the bullet-proof windows at the Rose Garden for a long time. “Who else have you discussed this with?”

“Some of my staff, but the number is small,” Page said.

“Otto Rencke?” Kalley asked.

“Yes.”

“Saul?” the president asked.

Saul Santarelli, the director of National Intelligence, was a bright man, but in Page’s estimation little more than a functionary for nothing more than another layer of bureaucracy.

“No,” Page said.

“Then don’t. The need-to-know list will go no further. I’ll telephone Rajput first thing in their morning and ask him to release McGarvey — Dr. Parks.”

Page said nothing.

“The Messiah is probably Haaris, but we don’t know if he has an agenda, so we can’t react until something happens. The next twenty-four hours will tell. But Mr. McGarvey’s orders remain the same. Kill the Messiah, whoever he is. Am I clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Madam President,” Page said, surprised.

FIFTY-ONE

With the ambassador back in residence the embassy was busy. On the way upstairs Pete’s escort reminded her that they, like most of the other embassies whose staffs were returning, were on what amounted to a wartime footing.

“A lot of it has to do with the nuclear incident near Quetta,” the young woman said. She looked as if she was just out of college. “We still don’t have many answers.”

“Is it possible that the Taliban got their hands on one of the weapons and set it off by accident?” Pete asked.

“God help us all, because only one went off and three are still missing.”

“No sign of them?”

“Not yet, but everyone’s looking.”

Ross Austin, dressed in a light pullover sweater, jeans and deck shoes, was in the corridor just outside his office talking to a pair of marines in desert camos and bloused boots. They only carried pistols, but they wore Kevlar vests, pockets bulging with combat equipment.

“I’ll just leave you here, ma’am,” Pete’s escort said, and she hurried down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Austin looked up as Pete approached, then said something to the marines, who headed to the stairs.

“Thanks for at least agreeing to talk to me instead of turning me around at the airport,” Pete told him.

He was the perfect chief of station: of medium build, with a pleasantly plain face, an empty smile and a slightly vacant look in his soft brown eyes, completely without guile or aggression. He was a man who would never stand out in a crowded room or on a street corner in just about any city in the world. He could have been easily taken for an American businessman, a British tourist or an employee of a small Swiss bank.

They went into his office. “Wasn’t my choice,” he told her. “Though with any luck I’ll have you on a plane out of here first thing in the morning.”

Pete was jet-lagged and her temper rose. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“I was briefed by the director himself less than ten minutes ago. I know about Haaris and the imposter you burned in London, and I know what McGarvey’s real mission was.”

“Haaris has an agenda and whatever he has planned will happen in less than two days.”

“I’m sorry but I can’t envision Dave as the Messiah. It doesn’t fit, and from what I’m told the Company isn’t one hundred percent sure. Even Rencke can’t nail it.”

“Then why the imposter in London?“

“Dave has got something in mind, all right, but I suspect he simply wanted to step off the merry-go-round for a breather. He’s been going at it hammer-and-tong forever; time to take a vacation somewhere. An anonymous vacation. And I can’t say as I blame him.”

“Tommy Boyle said just about the same thing,” Pete practically shouted.

The office door was open and Austin went to shut it.

“Are you guys out of your minds? Or has Haaris got something on both of you? Is it blackmail?”

“This conversation will not continue,” Austin said angrily. “You’re on my turf now, and I don’t give a shit who says what, you’re out of here on the first flight I can arrange.”

“Might not be your station for long. Outing a fellow agent is a capital offense. It’ll be a wonder if you don’t end up in a federal penitentiary somewhere, a lot sooner than you think.”

“Believe what you will, Boylan, I did it for his own good, as well as for the good of this station and for American interests here.”

Pete wanted to smash her fist into his face.

“Hear me out,” Austin said. “McGarvey came here to assassinate the Messiah — whether he’s Dave Haaris or not — because the president was convinced that the guy is a major threat to Pakistan’s stability.”

“What stability?”

“Whatever your politics are, we need Pakistan, just as they need us.”

“To help us fight the war on terrorists.”

“Yes.”

“Like the Taliban, whose mouthpiece, I’m told, marched up Constitution Avenue practically hand in hand with the Messiah, right into the office of the prime minister,” Pete said. “A man, I might remind you, who probably hired the German assassination squad to take out our SEAL Team Six operators last year. McGarvey stopped them, but you know this. Yet you outed Mac to this son of a bitch.”

“I outed Travis Parks, who Rajput promised he would release to my custody this morning.”

“Mac almost certainly killed two ISI officers who were sent to take him down after what he did at the reception yesterday. And he caused the death and disappearance of another of them. Do you honestly think that Rajput doesn’t know this? Do you honestly think that he’s going to order Mac’s release?”

Austin just looked at her.

“You stupid, silly bastard,” Pete said, because she couldn’t think of anything else. She was sick at heart and frantically trying to figure out a way to get Mac out of wherever he was being held or at least get word to him that she was here.

Austin looked over her shoulder. “Mr. Ambassador,” he said.

Don Powers, in gray slacks and an open-collar shirt under a dark blue blazer, was at the open door. He didn’t look happy. He came the rest of the way in and closed it.

“I have no real need to know the day-to-day operational details of your station except when it has an effect on what I’m trying to do here. Pakistan is in turmoil and I’m here to guide U.S. interests in the long-term. That cannot — must not — include divisiveness at any level in this embassy. Am I clear on this point, Mr. Austin?”

“Perfectly clear, sir.”

“And you are?”

“I’m traveling on a diplomatic passport under the name Doris Day. In reality I work for Mr. Page and I’ve just arrived from London.”

“Your being here, I presume, has something to do with the actual identity of this man who the people are calling the Messiah.”

“Yes, sir. I was sent to help Travis Parks.”

“The other CIA officer that Walt presumably sent over. I can tell you, Miss Day, or whoever you really are, that Dr. Parks has made a royal mess of things and I too want him gone as soon as we can secure his release from the authorities. It’s a wonder the ISI didn’t send assassins after him.”

“They did. But all three of them failed.”

“How do you mean, ‘failed’?” Powers demanded, but it was clear he knew exactly what Pete was saying.

“He was forced to defend himself. They’re dead.”

Powers was taken aback. “Murdered? He murdered three ISI officers?”

“It was that or lose his own life, sir,” Pete said. “Did Mr. Page explain to you who we believe the Messiah to be?”

“My God,” Powers said. “How am I to explain this? The man actually came from Washington with me.”

“Explain what to whom?”

“To the legitimate government of Pakistan. To General Rajput.”

“Are you suggesting that one of our people face criminal proceedings? You know how it will turn out.”

“My hands are tied.”

“What about the Messiah?”

“The country is at peace, I don’t know if we can ask for more at the moment.”

“I want you to demand that Parks be immediately released before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” Austin asked, but it was clear to Pete he’d merely said it for Powers’s benefit, because he knew exactly what she meant.

“He’s an embarrassment to Pakistan,” Pete said. “They’ll kill him if they haven’t already.”

“As I said, my hands are tied,” Powers told her. “And I think it would be best for everyone concerned that you leave Pakistan as soon as possible.”

“Travis Parks’s real name is Kirk McGarvey, Mr. Ambassador. I thought you should know that. Mr. Austin does.”

FIFTY-TWO

McGarvey, dressed in only a pair of filthy khaki shorts, sat alone at a small metal table bolted to the concrete floor. His left leg was shackled to a leg of the table. He had nothing on his feet, the soles of which were battered and bleeding, nor anything on his chest, which, like his back, was crisscrossed with welt marks from the repeated canings he’d suffered through the night and early morning hours.

Oddly enough they’d left his face alone, and his eyes were clear, as was his head. Even odder was the fact they hadn’t used drugs on him. But they would, sooner or later, and he would break. His only real option at this point was to escape.

A Pakistani man easily as large as McGarvey, dressed in an ISI uniform, walked in and said something indistinct to the guards in the corridor before the steel door was closed.

“Good morning,” he said in good English. He took off his baseball cap and laid it on the table before he sat down across from McGarvey. “I’m a lieutenant in the security service, my name is not important for you to know at this time. What is important is that I am considered to be a proficient interrogator. Seems as if you wore out the others. They tell me that you are a man of some stamina — more than they thought possible for even an American spy.”

“I’m a journalist,” McGarvey said.

The officer had a large square face pitted with what had probably been childhood acne. He smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, and the fingernails on his left hand were dirty with what might have been blood.

“As it turns out one of your own countrymen has admitted to us that you are a spy for the CIA here to gather information. We were to arrest you and then turn you over to your embassy so that you could be sent home. Unfortunately, Dr. Parks, you were shot trying to escape.”

“You might consider setting me free after all, before I kill you.”

“The thing is, we need a confession from you so that the repercussions of your death won’t be so difficult. We’ll turn over your body, of course, and you’ll receive a posthumous star in the lobby of your headquarters building, and memories will fade. In the meantime the situation between our countries will not change because of your being here. And do you know why?”

“Do you have a wife and children who’ll mourn your passing, Lieutenant? Do families get pensions for soldiers who die in service of their country, or will they be left wanting?”

“We’ll get your confession,” the lieutenant said. “I’m pretty good at what I do. I have a perfect track record.”

“Okay, I confess that I’m a spy,” McGarvey said. “You win.”

“Oh, but I think that you are more than just a spy. In fact, do you know what I think?”

“I’m all ears.”

The lieutenant’s jaw tightened but just slightly. “I think that you are an assassin. And I think you came here to kill the Messiah.”

McGarvey didn’t think that Austin could be so stupid as to tell the ISI something like that. “I was not armed when I was arrested.”

“Nor were you armed when you killed two of our officers yesterday, but you took one of their pistols and one of their identification wallets, which apparently you discarded somewhere along the way. We’ll find them.”

“Then let’s get it over with, or do you mean to keep me chained to this desk while you talk me to death?”

The lieutenant got up, his hand on the butt of the pistol holstered at his side, and looked at McGarvey for several long moments. “Interrogating you should be interesting. I sincerely hope you don’t tell me everything for a very long time.”

He went out and told the guards to bring the prisoner to him in five minutes.

The interrogation chamber was at the end of a short corridor. They were in the basement of ISI headquarters, and when McGarvey had been taken into custody they had made the mistake of not blindfolding him. He knew the way out.

One unarmed guard had removed the shackle from his leg, while the other stood aside, a Kalashnikov at the ready. The armed guard was careful not to get too close as they marched down the otherwise-deserted hall.

The lieutenant had taken off his cap and blouse and laid them on a chair in one corner. He was filling a two-quart metal pitcher with water from a tap in the wall.

He looked up and motioned for McGarvey to be strapped to a wooden table in the middle of the small, dungeon-like room. A car battery and a battery charger were on a metal roll-about. A long set of jumper cables fitted with ten-inch wands ending in large sponges was attached to the battery. No other equipment or furnishings besides the metal chair were in the chamber, which was harshly lit by a single electric bulb recessed behind a mesh in the ceiling.

Blood and what looked to McGarvey like feces stained the top of the table and had dribbled down to the concrete floor.

“This room is my favorite,” the lieutenant said. “It reminds me of a coffin.”

McGarvey made a show of reluctantly lying down on the filthy table, forcing the armed guard to muscle him down.

“You’re going to die here this morning,” McGarvey whispered in his ear.

The guard was young, probably in his early twenties, and he was extremely nervous, so that when McGarvey strained at the leather straps around his arms and legs he didn’t bear down. He wanted to be anywhere but here.

“Remember what I told you,” McGarvey whispered.

The guard straightened and backed off.

“Leave us now,” the lieutenant said.

The two guards left the chamber and closed the door.

“What did you say to the boy?”

“That I didn’t blame him,” McGarvey said, feigning fear. “Maybe you and I can come to some kind of a deal that doesn’t involve killing me.”

“Let’s just see how it all begins, shall we?” the lieutenant said. He got the filthy remnants of an old bath towel that had once been white from a shelf at the base of the table. “You know all about waterboarding, I’m sure. Your Congress is certainly aware of the method. They don’t think that it works. But we know better, don’t we, Dr. Parks.”

He draped the towel over McGarvey’s face but then took it off.

“I’ve not strapped your head down. I would like to see your control. Some of my subjects have died by thrashing around so violently they broke their necks. One poor fellow just two months ago damaged himself in such a way that he suffocated. I looked into his eyes as his face turned purple and he realized that nothing on earth or in Paradise was going to save him. He knew that he was dying, and he understood at the end that I knew it too. And that it gave me pleasure. No more talk?”

“I don’t want to die,” McGarvey said, again feigning the first glimmerings of fear.

“Of course not,” the lieutenant said, and he draped the towel over McGarvey’s face again.

A CIA operative working the Calle Ocho Cuban-ex-pat neighborhood in Miami had agreed to waterboard McGarvey, who had insisted that he needed to know what it was like.

“It’s not good, comp, not at all,” Raul Martinez had argued.

“Do it,” Mac had insisted.

Pete had been there as a backup in case something went wrong. And her voice had been in his ear through the entire ordeal, which had lasted less than ninety seconds but had seemed like an eternity.

“Just relax with it, Kirk,” she had whispered as the water soaked the towel, and went into his mouth and throat, gagging him, drowning him, making it nearly impossible to think about anything except for the incredible pain, the instinct for survival kicking him against his will. He had to fight back. He had to live.

“Go with it, Kirk. Let it happen, I’m here, you’ll be okay, I promise you, my darling. Focus on my voice. Nothing else.”

The water flowed in and around him. He could hear his accelerating heartbeat even over the sounds of Pete’s words close in his ears. She was holding his forehead, her touch gentle, comforting, even though he could feel the muscles of his neck and chest convulsing because of his need for oxygen. One clean breath of air.

Her voice began to fade, as did his need to breathe, and for a moment he and Katy were on their sailboat in the Bahamas at night under a billion stars, pinpricks of light that seemed to descend from above and surround him.

FIFTY-THREE

Pete stood at the corner window looking out across the little piece of the Red Zone she could see. The diplomatic enclave was all but deserted at this hour of the morning. Only a lone unmarked van came up Ispana Road and disappeared around the corner toward the German embassy.

Austin had suggested that she get a few hours’ sleep, and he’d assigned her a room in the BOQ section of the building.

“Mentioning McGarvey’s name did absolutely no good with Powers, and I think you probably knew it wouldn’t,” the chief of station had told her earlier. “He’s had history with Mac, and none of it very satisfactory. He doesn’t like mavericks.”

“Not many people do, until they need them,” Pete said bitterly.

“Whatever you must think, Miss Boylan, I was merely trying to protect his life.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“You didn’t believe me.”

“No,” Pete said. “So now what? Are we just writing Mac off? You’re sending me home hoping the situation will all blow over? Well, it won’t, you know. I won’t let it.”

“A military transport will take you to Ramstein, where you’ll be able to hitch a ride stateside.”

They had been in Austin’s office, and she’d taken a step closer. Powers had left and for the moment she and Austin were alone together. “If something happens to him, I swear to God that I’ll move heaven and earth to get to you.”

“I might take a hit, but I made the decision I thought was best for Mac and for the country.”

“I won’t file a formal complaint, if that’s what worries you. I’ll come back here, or wherever you are, and kill you.”

Austin seemed to slump. “Get some sleep, Miss Boylan. I’ll call Rajput first thing in the morning.”

There was nothing left to say.

“It’s all I can promise.”

Pete laid her head against the relatively cool windowpane and closed her eyes. Almost instantly her throat constricted and she felt as if she were drowning. She straightened up and reared back, her eyes wide.

It was Kirk, she could feel his breath against her cheek. She raised her right hand. She was touching his head. She felt his pain, but she also felt his strength. She knew that he wanted her.

She grabbed her sat phone from her bag on the bed and called Otto at Langley, where it was five in the afternoon. He was still in his office.

“Where would they have taken him?” she demanded as soon as he came on.

“If the ISI has him, which they probably do, he’d be in a holding cell at their headquarters building. Page has been talking with Miller to see what diplomatic pressure can be brought to bear. But they already know that he works for the CIA, so there’s a real possibility he’ll go on trial and we might have to wait for that to happen before a deal can be made.”

“No, listen to me, Otto,” she screeched. “They’re waterboarding him right now. We can’t wait.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just know it. Where would he be if they were torturing him?”

“The interrogation area is in the basement of the main building. Heavily guarded, of course. Constant electronic surveillance.”

“Can you hack into their computer mainframe?”

“I have. But there’s nothing on him, though that’s not unusual. They handle their most sensitive cases totally offline. Just paper memos and orders directly man to man.”

“The surveillance systems. Can you shut the cameras down, maybe release any electronic door locks?”

“I can do that easily enough.”

“Good. I’ll let you know when, but it’ll be within the hour, hopefully sooner. In the meantime have Page go back to the president; we have to get him out of there right now. We’ll use it as a diversion.”

“A diversion for what? You’re not going to storm the gates.”

“Not immediately. But Mac will try to get out of there; you and I both know that’s a fact. I want to make it a little easier for him.”

“Okay, but what can I tell the director? That you’ve had an out-of-body experience? ESP or something? You know how far that will go?”

“They’re going to kill him. Tell us it was an accident.”

Otto was silent.

“Christ,” Pete said in despair.

“I’ll scramble the mainframe in the Secretariat,” Otto said.

“What good will that do?”

“I’ll crash their system for sixty seconds and before I bring it back up I’ll let them know that it was brought to them courtesy of the U.S.A. Ought to get their attention.”

“How will that help Mac?”

“I’ll put my signature on it. They’ve got some pretty bright people over there who’ll figure out who did it, and when Haaris hears about it, it won’t take him a millisecond to figure out what we want. And as long as he doesn’t suspect that the ISI has got Mac and not some CIA contractor, he’ll order his release and expulsion from the country just to make this headache go away.”

“Do it,” Pete said.

“It’s going to take the better part of a half hour, so hang in there, Pete. We’ll get him out.”

Pete used the house phone in the room to call Austin in his quarters. He finally answered after a half-dozen rings.

“What?”

“Meet me in your office in five minutes; we’re springing Mac.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The ISI is waterboarding him right now, and we’re going to stick it to them in such a way they’ll not only know what’s happening, but who is doing it and why.”

She splashed some water on her face, stuck her conceal-and-carry Glock in the waistband of her jeans beneath her shirt and pocketed an extra magazine of ammunition and her sat phone. She grabbed her scarf on the way out.

Because of the nuclear incident outside Quetta and the transition of the government and the other extraordinary events of the past days — not the least of which were the Messiah’s appearance and the Taliban’s supposed willingness to cooperate — many of the offices at the embassy were staffed even at this hour.

Austin was on the phone in his office when she showed up.

“She’s here now, Mr. Ambassador. But she hasn’t explained what she means or how she came by her information.”

“I need your help,” Pete said when he put the phone down.

“My hands are tied, I’m sorry, but you’re leaving in a few hours.”

“They have him in the basement of the ISI’s main building, where they’re torturing him right now.”

“How in hell do you know this?”

“Never mind, I just do. We’re going to shut down all the electronic surveillance systems in the building as soon as I’m in place with a car and a driver who knows his way around the city and isn’t afraid to stick his neck out.”

“If it gets that far, which it won’t, where the hell do you think you’ll go? They’ll have the airport closed up tighter than a gnat’s ass.”

“They’ll be too busy trying to take care of another, much bigger issue.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re going to shut down the mainframe in the Secretariat for sixty seconds and let them know who did it, why we did it, and warn them that it could be permanent.”

“Rencke,” Austin said angrily. He reached for the phone.

“I would think about it for just a minute, Ross,” Pete said. “We all know what Otto can do if he’s pressed, and we also know what Kirk McGarvey is capable of.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Think what they’ve both done for our country. Are you really willing to throw all of that away?”

FIFTY-FOUR

The single point of light began to blossom into something much larger, almost overwhelming in McGarvey’s eyes as he slowly regained consciousness. The filthy towel was gone and he was no longer drowning. He made a great effort to control his breathing.

“Relax,” Pete had told him what seemed like a long time ago, and yet he was sure it had been just minutes. He could almost feel her touch on his forehead.

He turned his head to one side as the ISI lieutenant came toward him.

“I admire your control, Dr. Parks. I didn’t do nearly as well in training. And it’s certainly nothing I’d like to go through again.”

“May I have a drink of water,” McGarvey croaked.

The lieutenant laughed. “That’s the paradox. You have nearly drowned, and yet your throat is terribly dry. I feel your pain, believe me. We could be brothers, Travis. Comrades in arms. Perhaps in different camps, but certainly fellow soldiers.”

McGarvey said nothing. His awareness and strength were coming back to him, slowly, and he closed his eyes against the glare of the overhead lightbulb.

“Sometimes the subject even becomes sleepy immediately following a session,” the lieutenant said amiably. He pinched McGarvey’s cheek.

McGarvey took a long time opening his eyes, as if he were having trouble. “Water.”

The lieutenant laughed. “In due time. And I even promise you’ll have a reasonably soft bed and something to eat when you wake up. But for now I need your cooperation. The truth, if you please.”

The straps, especially the one at his left wrist, were loose. He blinked several times. “I’m a journalist.”

“Yes, I’ve read some of your blogs. And you were quite right about many things. The problem we’re having is that no one ever heard of you until a few days ago. It’s as if you were invented out of whole cloth, I believe is the correct expression. Something the CIA is certainly capable of doing. So let’s start there, shall we? Of course your name isn’t Travis Parks. What is it, please?”

“Parks,” McGarvey whispered.

“We can do better than that.”

McGarvey let his eyes flutter. “Davis,” he said softly.

“What’s your social security number, Mr. Davis?” the lieutenant asked.

McGarvey shook his head.

The lieutenant slapped his face. “The truth.”

McGarvey opened his eyes. “Fuck you.”

The lieutenant rolled the battery cart back. He dipped the sponges in the pitcher of water, flipped the power switch and jammed them against McGarvey’s bare chest.

A massive pain roared through Mac’s body, rebounding from the top of his skull; every muscle, even those controlling the movements of his eyes, went into spasms so tightly he thought for a split instant that his bones would break.

Suddenly it was over and he slumped back, any lingering effects of waterboarding completely gone.

“Your real name, please,” the lieutenant said.

“Fuck you!”

The lieutenant pushed the sponges onto McGarvey’s chest.

Mac heaved against the restraining straps and roared in pain. He kept screaming even after the lieutenant pulled the sponges away.

“Do I have your attention now?”

McGarvey let his head loll to the left so that he could see the door. The guards had not come despite the noise he’d made. He felt the strap around his right wrist and willed that arm to completely relax.

“Your real name. Let’s start there, or I’ll be forced to let the current run through your body much longer than one or two seconds.”

McGarvey shook his head. “Four-seven-nine,” he croaked, barely above a whisper.

The lieutenant flipped the power switch off and laid the wands on the cart. He bent down closer to McGarvey. “Four-seven-nine,” he said. “What comes next?”

The man’s breath smelled of onions and curry and something else unpleasant.

“What comes next?”

McGarvey slipped his right hand free. “Six,” he whispered.

The lieutenant bent even closer.

McGarvey suddenly reached up and clamped his hand around the lieutenant’s throat, compressing the carotid artery on one side.

The lieutenant tried to pull away, but McGarvey was strapped to the table and his grip was too powerful to break. Blood started to gush from where one of Mac’s fingertips broke through the man’s skin.

He got his other hand free and rolled halfway onto his side, grabbing the lieutenant’s neck with both hands, crushing the man’s larynx and compressing the other carotid artery. He looked into the man’s eyes.

“I told you that I would kill you.”

The light slowly faded from the lieutenant’s eyes, his faced turned a deep purple and finally his legs collapsed and McGarvey let him slump to the floor.

Torture was a useful tool if it was handled properly. The point was to hurt the prisoner but not damage him permanently, and certainly keep him well enough restrained that he couldn’t hurt his interrogator.

McGarvey undid the straps around his legs, got off the table and checked the lieutenant’s pulse, but there was none; the man was dead.

He listened at the door but there was nothing to be heard, so he went back to the lieutenant’s body, undressed it and got into the man’s clothes. The boots were a little tight, but not impossibly so, and the uniform blouse stank of sweat.

Strapping on the holster, he checked the pistol, which was an old American-issued nine-millimeter Beretta, with a full nine-round magazine and one in the chamber.

He listened again at the door for a moment, then eased it open. The corridor was empty, and for all intents and purposes the building could have been deserted or asleep. The red lights on the camera at both ends of the short corridor winked off. The system had just shut down, and the only reason why that he could think of, other than a system power failure, was Otto.

Slipping out he raced to the stairs at the end of the corridor and took them up two at a time, taking great care to make no noise.

At the top a steel door was closed but when he tested the handle it was not locked. He opened it a crack and looked out. A broad corridor led to the right, blocked by a gate about twenty feet away. A lone guard sat at a table, his back to the gate; beyond him was another steel door.

To the left about fifteen feet away was yet another door but no guard. No one was expecting trouble.

Moving on the balls of his feet McGarvey hurried to the left. He glanced over his shoulder, but the guard had not moved. The door was unlocked and Mac opened it and slipped through into an anteroom about ten feet on a side. Stairs led up to the left and another door, this one with a thick glass window, was straight ahead.

Outside was a covered driveway, a closed garage door to the left and a guard positioned behind glass directly across from it. Two uniformed men sat behind a slightly raised platform inside.

This was a sally port designed to admit prisoners into the building, where they would be taken directly below to the interrogation center.

The garage door rumbled open and a truck came in and stopped. Two armed soldiers got out of the back and stood aside as a half-dozen prisoners in ragged clothing, their wrists in manacles, their ankles shackled on short chains, emerged.

The man from the glass booth met the driver and had him sign something on a clipboard. He said something to the armed guards with the prisoners and the driver came across directly to the steel door.

McGarvey sprinted for the stairs and stopped halfway up.

The driver and the two armed guards and the prisoners came into the anteroom and started up the stairs.

FIFTY-FIVE

Pete walked out of the embassy and hurried down the long drive to Post One, where the two marines on duty had been advised she was on her way. They opened the small service gate, but neither of them said a word to her. She just nodded and headed down the street.

A military jeep turned the corner a half block away, but nothing else moved anywhere in the Red Zone so far as she could see.

It was possible that Austin was playing games with her, agreeing just to get her out of his hair, at least temporarily. And if she was to be picked up by the Pakistani police, so be it. Because of her diplomatic passport she would be sent home immediately.

But when she’d mentioned retaliation from Otto and from Kirk he’d got the message loud and clear. She’d seen it in his eyes. The man had a job to do here, but he was no fool, he had respect.

A block and a half farther she came to Khayaban-e-Suhrawardy Road, the bridge across the Jinnah Stream, which flowed south into the lake to her left, when a red Mercedes C-class sedan with a taxi light on its roof came out of nowhere and pulled up at the curb.

The passenger-side front window was open and a familiar figure dressed in a Manchester United sweatshirt and jeans leaned over. “He’s already made his break, get in,” the driver said in a Texas accent.

“Milt, am I ever glad to see you,” Pete said and climbed into the backseat.

Milt Thomas was a deep-cover operative working for the CIA and the Islamabad police. His job for the local cops was to report on any passengers of interest he picked up either at the airport or the three hotels that catered mostly to foreigners. His job for the CIA over the past three years he’d been in country was the same. She and McGarvey had met him last year when they’d been on an op here.

“I talked to Otto three minutes ago. Mac’s on the move.”

“Where is he exactly?”

“Right at this moment we don’t know. But he was in an interrogation cell in the basement with Lieutenant Nabeel Khosa, who’s the ISI’s chief interrogator — read torturer—and just a few minutes ago he appeared at the doorway in Khosa’s uniform. Otto thinks he got the surveillance system shut down before Mac was spotted. Anyway, there’s been no alarm so far. Otto will warn us if it happens. He also wanted me to call him when I picked you up.”

“I hope you have a plan,” Pete said.

Thomas laughed. “Are you kidding? The place is a fortress.” He phoned Otto. “I have her. Anything new yet?”

“Let me talk to him,” Pete said.

Thomas handed the phone back, then made a U-turn and headed for the bridge.

“How are we going to get him out of there?” she asked.

“I’m working on it,” Otto said. He sounded busy. “I turned the surveillance system back on as soon as he cleared the hallway in the basement. Right now he’s in the service stairwell on his way up to the second floor. He got to the sally port exit, when half a dozen prisoners were brought in and started up the stairs right behind him. He had nowhere else to go.”

“With the surveillance system on they’ll spot him.”

“With it off they would lock down the entire compound. And as long as he keeps his face away from the cameras — which he’s done so far — he’s just another ISI officer in a very busy building. The ISI is on emergency footing because of the Messiah thing — the media has started calling it a velvet revolution — but the entire compound is crawling with people.”

“Someone is bound to spot him as an imposter. He has to get out of there right now.”

“I have no way of contacting him, but he knows the layout of the place; he’s seen live satellite images and has to figure that the only way out is the rear of the building. To the east, north and south are major roads, already starting to get busy, so his only real option is west.”

“On foot,” Pete said. “Even in an ISI uniform he’d attract attention and he wouldn’t get very far. He’ll know that.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Which is the least busy of the three roads?”

“The west service road. It’s where he was brought in. It’s the gate used mostly for incoming prisoners and outgoing bodies.”

“That’s how he’s getting out. He’s going to steal a car or truck and if he isn’t waved through he’ll crash the gate, and we’re going to be there to pick him up.”

“Then what?” Otto demanded. He didn’t seem the least bit alarmed. They’d all get worried later.

“I don’t know, but Milt and I will figure something out,” Pete said. “Anything changes, keep us posted. In the meantime, where’s Haaris?”

“He’s disappeared again.”

“Great, great, great.” Pete switched off. “Are you armed?” she asked Thomas.

“Of course. What’s the story?”

“The west service road gate,” she said, and she explained what she and Otto had discussed.

“Are you sure about it?”

“It’s the only option. Once he’s out, we have to pick him up before they respond in force. But I don’t know what after that. We’ll have to get under cover ASAP.”

“My house,” Thomas said without hesitation. “It’s down in Rawalpindi, maybe ten klicks from here.”

“Won’t your place be under surveillance?”

“I’m a fair-haired boy.”

“Not after this morning,” Pete said.

“I’ve been thinking lately that it’s getting time to pull the pin. You guys will have to get out, and I’ll just tag along.”

“Right,” Pete said. But she had to wonder if Mac would give up so easily. Haaris was still out there.

Thomas made another U-turn on the deserted road and headed back toward the Red Zone. “In another hour, maybe sooner, traffic is going to pick up and it won’t be long before we’re in a full-blown rush hour. Happens every A.M. and goes on all day.”

“We need to wait where we can watch the service road and yet not attract any attention,” Pete said.

“The Rose and Jasmine Garden, it’s just across the Kashmir Highway. But he’s going to have to turn south, toward us.”

Pete called Otto again and told him their plan. “Any word yet?”

“He’s in the west stairwell on the third floor. A couple of close calls, but everyone is too busy or too stressed out to see him for anything other than an ISI lieutenant.”

“It won’t hold.”

“No. And there’s still no way I can get word to him.”

“But you can tell us when he gets out and which direction he’s taken,” Pete said.

“His chances are slim.”

Pete laughed, and it sounded like false bravado in her ears. “We’re talking about Mac.”

Thomas got off the highway and worked his way through the park, finding a narrow road that looped back to the southwest and then north, finally connecting with a tree-lined lane that became the west service road across the Kashmir and Kayaban highways, which ran parallel to each other. He doused the lights and parked.

Pete got out of the car and Milt handed her a pair of Chinese-made binoculars, which she used to scope the walls of the ISI compound and its main building, which rose up into the early morning sky like some squat ziggurat from an ancient time.

She reached out to feel him, but he wasn’t there, and she was suddenly very cold and very frightened.

FIFTY-SIX

McGarvey, the Beretta in hand, opened the door to the fourth floor and peered out. This part of the building seemed to be empty; all the lights in the corridor were on and many of the office doors were open, but no one was here. This was the executive floor, and McGarvey had half expected to see Rajput busy at his desk. But the prime minister’s office was locked, and listening at the door Mac couldn’t hear a thing.

The lights on the security cameras were back on, indicating they were active, so he kept his face averted as he hurried down the corridor and ducked into an office twenty feet down from Rajput’s, and closed the door.

A pair of file cabinets stood along one wall, and in the middle of the fairly small room was a plain desk with a computer and a telephone, but nothing else. The drawers were locked and there were no files or anything else that might have indicated who worked here or what their job might have been.

Two windows looked down at the roof one floor below, and beyond that a driveway that passed an open field and through a thick stand of trees to the rear gate that opened onto a service road, if his memory served. Before he’d headed over on the ambassador’s aircraft, he’d taken the time to study the layout of the Secretariat compound as well as the Aiwan. He’d considered it a possibility that he might have to take the fight either here or to the Presidential Palace and he needed to know his way around. Especially if he was in a hurry.

Laying the pistol on the desk he ignored the computer, which would almost certainly be password protected, and picked up the phone. Getting a dial tone he entered the international code for France, and then Otto’s personal relay number, which was only ever used if an agent was in trouble and on the run and needed to call home without alerting his pursuers that he was calling the States, and certainly not the CIA.

If there was a central switchboard or a monitoring system of some sort, it wouldn’t take long for someone to notice that a call was being placed from an office that was supposed to be empty, and either listen in or send a security officer to investigate.

Otto answered on the first ring. “Yes.”

“Me,” McGarvey said.

“West service road gate,” Otto said. “Head south, you’ll be met.”

The line went dead.

There was no lock on the door, so McGarvey wedged a chair against the handle, and holstering the pistol went to the windows, which like those at the CIA were double-paned and likely flooded with white noise. But unlike at the CIA the windows were not sealed; unlatched, they swung open.

The building was constructed like a ziggurat, each lower floor jutting out from the one above. McGarvey climbed out and hung full length for just a moment before he dropped the fifteen feet or so to the roof below. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, he tried to spot someone watching him from a window, or perhaps from the roof above, which bristled with antennas and satellite dishes. And he half expected to come under fire.

But he reached the edge of the roof. The drop here was about the same as from the fourth floor. Many of the offices were lit, the glow reaching through the windows.

Picking a spot between windows, he hung over the edge again and dropped. He landed off balance and fell hard on his side. A stab of pain in his right hip when he got up nearly caused that leg to buckle, but he reached the wall and flattened himself against it.

He waited there for just a couple of seconds before he took a quick look through the window beside him into a large space broken up into cubicles, most of which were manned. As far as he could tell from the brief snapshot, no one was coming to investigate.

Favoring his right leg he dropped to the roof of the first floor, and despite the intense pain rolled to the wall, again between windows. He had a much harder time getting to his feet. Some of the windows were lit on the second floor, but the office he looked into was dark, the only light coming from the open door to the corridor.

Half hobbling, half running, he got to the edge of the roof and without hesitation dropped the last fifteen feet into a line of bushes just as a jeep came up the driveway and suddenly came to a stop.

McGarvey got to his feet as a slightly built man in uniform, three sergeant stripes on his sleeves, came through the bushes, a Kalashnikov rifle at the ready.

But he was totally surprised. He said something in Punjabi, but then caught the two pips of a lieutenant on Mac’s shoulder boards and started to stiffen.

McGarvey lurched forward, grabbed the sergeant in a headlock and before the man could cry out, broke his neck. It took nearly thirty seconds before the sergeant finally lost consciousness.

Taking the rifle Mac pushed his way through the bushes and got into the jeep. No alarm had been sounded yet because of the phone call or because someone had spotted him making his way across the roofs, but the silence wouldn’t last much longer. And once it did happen, the entire ISI compound would go into immediate lockdown. At that point getting out would become unlikely.

He propped the rifle on the passenger seat so that he could get to it instantly. Someone came on the radio and barked an order. Almost instantly a one-word reply came back.

The main access road swung around the north and south sides of the main building to the front gate, but a much narrower lane headed west off the south road down a long row of tall, slender cedars. The parade field stretched off to the right, and a row of smaller buildings that could have been barracks for the enlisted men lay to the south. Nothing moved anywhere, and only the brilliantly lit headquarters gave any indication that something out of the ordinary was going on. Pakistan was in what some of the local media were calling a “welcome crisis,” to counter the Western media’s tagline of a “velvet revolution.”

Passing a broad paved driveway that led from the barracks to the parade ground, where troops could march up for review, he had to turn left at the end of the driveway to the back gates, less than fifty feet away.

He pulled up at the double-chain-link fence topped with razor wire. An inner gate opened onto a no-man’s section a little longer than a troop transport truck, which was blocked by the outer gate. Vehicles coming in or out would be trapped between the two gates until a positive ID could be made.

A uniformed sergeant came out of the guardhouse, a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder. Behind him another enlisted man stood at the open door. He had a sidearm but no rifle in hand.

The sergeant said something as he approached, but five feet away he suddenly stopped short and reached for his rifle.

McGarvey pulled the Beretta and shot the man center-mass twice.

The guard in the gatehouse reacted, but McGarvey was out of the jeep and to the doorway as the man was grabbing his sidearm from its holster.

Mac pointed the pistol directly at the guard’s head. “Open both gates.”

The guard didn’t respond, though McGarvey was sure that he understood English by the look in his eyes.

“Now, or I will shoot you,” Mac said.

The guard turned to the left to reach the two green levers for the gates, but instead he slammed the palm of his hand into a large red button and immediately a klaxon broke the early morning air.

Mac fired one shot into the side of the man’s head, and as the guard went down, McGarvey shoved his body aside and swung both green levers.

The two gates began to open as Mac jumped into the jeep and drove forward.

Just inside the no-man’s-land the second gate, less than half open, began to close.

Mac accelerated, the front right fender of the jeep catching the leading edge of the gate, knocking it just far enough so that he could get through.

Even more lights came on all over the ISI compound as McGarvey hauled the jeep around the tight corner to the left and onto the service road, and fewer than a hundred yards later turned right on what he thought was an empty Khayaban Highway.

A car, lights on its roof, suddenly passed and then turned directly into his path, leaving him no choice but to run off the road.

FIFTY-SEVEN

McGarvey drew the pistol as Pete jumped out of the red Mercedes and ran back to him, a look of intense relief on her face. Searchlights stabbed the air behind them and more sirens started up.

“Are you wounded?” Pete demanded as McGarvey grabbed the Kalashnikov and struggled to get out of the jeep.

“I banged up my leg getting out,” he said, almost collapsing.

Pete took his arm, put it over her shoulder and helped him to the cab as Thomas jumped out. Between the two of them they got him in the backseat and Pete climbed in beside him.

Thomas made another U-turn on the still-deserted highway and two blocks away turned onto a side road that led into the Rose and Jasmine Garden. Following even narrower roads he wound his way into the deeper woods to the east. From here they could just make out the highway.

“We can’t stay here long,” Thomas said. “But as soon as the search widens we’ll take a chance on Club Road. I know a couple of shortcuts to get us to my place in Rawalpindi.”

“Otto’s going to crash the ISI’s mainframe,” McGarvey said. “Soon as he does it they’re going to know for sure that I’m CIA and all hell is going to break loose.”

“He’s already done it once, and he’s going to shut them down even longer just as the morning shift shows up,” Pete said. “It’ll play hell with their security routines.”

“Thanks for picking me up, guys, but what the hell are you doing here, Pete? I told you to stay home.”

“Like I would.”

Mac was vexed, but without her he wouldn’t have gotten more than a few blocks before he’d have had to ditch the jeep and make his way on foot. “Thanks, to both you and Milt.”

“Otto’s going to set up a SEAL Team Six extraction for us up to Jalalabad, but not until tonight. In the meantime we’re going to go to ground at Milt’s place.”

“They’re not going to come to me until they’re sure that you managed to escape,” Thomas said. “But then they’re going to call up all of their assets.”

“Time for you to come home,” McGarvey said.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing lately. And despite what the local media is reporting, most people are nervous about suddenly being pals with the Taliban. Everyone is sure they were responsible for the nuclear explosion outside of Quetta, and that maybe more of the bombs are still missing.”

A jeep, its siren blaring, passed by on the highway, followed immediately by a pair of open troop-transport trucks filled with helmeted soldiers.

“That took longer than I thought it would,” Thomas said. “No one wants to accept responsibility.”

“Soon as they find the jeep they’ll figure I’m on foot and they’ll send helicopters to look for me,” McGarvey said.

“And this’ll be one of the first places they’ll look,” Thomas said, slamming the car in gear.

Headlights off, he followed a footpath that snaked through the woods, the lower branches of the trees scraping against the sides of the car. They came out behind a group of buildings, among them a maintenance shed. A campground was off to the left. A driveway around front led up to Club Road just above a cloverleaf that connected it with Murree Road. Both were major highways during rush hour, which would begin in less than an hour.

Back to the west two helicopters were rising from the ISI compound as Thomas turned south onto the broad road, passing around the cloverleaf, and then speeding up.

“Did anyone spot you this morning?” McGarvey asked.

“A couple of truck drivers, but no one saw us when we picked you up, I made sure of it,” Thomas said.

McGarvey looked out the rear window as one of the helicopters dipped low over the campground and set up what looked like a search pattern. For now they had a little breathing room. But it wouldn’t be long before the search expanded.

“How far to your place?” he asked.

“About ten K from here,” Thomas said. A blinding light from above swept over them. “Down,” he shouted.

McGarvey grabbed Pete’s arm and dragged her with him to the floor, the pain in his hip like a lightning bolt to his system.

Thomas slowed down, stuck his head out the window and waved.

The Aérospatiale Alouette III helicopter swung to the driver’s side of the car, and flying sideways about twenty feet up, kept pace. Someone said something in Punjabi over a loud hailer.

“They want to know who I am,” Thomas said. “Gohir,” he shouted in Punjabi. “But police call me the Fox.”

The crewman said something else.

“They’ve ordered me to pull over and stop,” Thomas said. “They mean to search us.”

“Do it,” Mac said. “But be ready to get us out of here.”

“Right.”

McGarvey switched the Kalashnikov’s fire-selecter lever to full automatic. “Stay down,” he told Pete as he rose and began firing directly at the cockpit canopy.

The pilot swung hard to the left, exposing the tail section and fuel tanks.

Mac let the rounds walk aft, hitting the crewman perched in the open doorway, who’d managed to get off a few rounds of returning fire, and punching holes in the fuselage, finally hitting the fuel tank and turbine.

The chopper spun farther left, its nose dipping when a fireball rose out of the engine and a split instant later a bang shattered the early morning air and the machine disintegrated as it hit the ground.

Thomas accelerated away.

“Is everybody okay?” McGarvey asked.

“Jesus,” Pete said. “I’m fine.”

“Milt?” McGarvey asked, checking the magazine. It was empty.

“As long as they didn’t get a chance to use their radio, we should be okay. But take off the uniform shirt or at least get rid of the epaulets, and Pete, cover your hair. We’re coming up on a residential and business section and there’s bound to be people up and about.”

Mac pulled off the sweat-stained shirt, noticing some blood on his chest, and removed the epaulets, name tag and unit patches from the sleeves.

Without a word Pete wiped the blood away with her scarf before she covered her hair.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” McGarvey said, putting the shirt back on.

The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten as they drove through a rat warren of narrow streets, many of the vendors in the small shops and sidewalk kiosks opening up already. Pedestrian traffic here in the northern section of Rawalpindi was heavy, as was vehicular traffic on the main roads, all of it picking up with a vengeance that wouldn’t let up until well after dark.

Down one lane paved with cobblestones they stopped at a tall metal gate. Thomas passed back his keys to Pete. “Open it for me, please,” he said softly. “This is home.”

Pete jumped out, went around to the gate and undid the heavy padlock. She swung the gate in, and Thomas drove through, parking in the narrow space in front of a three-story hovel. Laundry hung drying outside the open windows on the second and third floors. Several bags of garbage were piled in a corner.

Pete closed and locked the door.

“Be it ever so humble,” Thomas said, and he slumped forward.

McGarvey managed to grab his shoulder and pull him back before he hit the horn. Blood had poured down his side and covered the seat.

Pete immediately returned, and between them, they managed to get the barely conscious Thomas out of the cab and to the front door of the house.

“Wafa,” Thomas said softly.

The door was unlocked, and half carrying, half dragging Thomas into what had been a spotlessly clean front room, they stopped short. This room and what they could see of the living room through a beaded archway had been ransacked. A woman, her dress hiked up to her waist, her underwear torn away, lay dead. Her throat had been slit, blood pooling like a halo around her head.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Haaris could not remember the last time he had slept, and though he was weary, at this moment he wasn’t sleepy. In fact, his mind felt as sharp as it ever had; the feeling was surreal, almost as if he were on a crack high.

Today was the day it would begin. All of his planning over the past five years was coming to fruition. His name and his high position within the CIA, and even more deliciously, his close relationship with the president of the United States, would strike a blow against the West that would be worse than a thousand 9/11’s. The very foundations of American prestige around the world would be diminished, as would those of her closest allies, the British — all the bastards at Eton who had used him so hard and who now were in positions of power in Whitehall.

On top of that Pakistan, the country that had turned its back on him when he was a child, and had so foolishly misspent its energy and resources on a stupid religious war with India, would pay dearly.

Standing at the windows in the president’s office — the same spot from which he had watched the crowds gather in what seemed like an age ago — watching the start of the dawn, he felt for just that moment like Gandhi. The man had started out as the great pacifier, giving up nearly everything to ensure that India’s Muslims and Hindus could learn to live in peace.

He’d been wrong, of course; and as a result Pakistan was born. And now it was the Messiah’s turn. He would reunite the two countries in fire. And when it was finished the world order would have taken a paradigm shift.

Not bad, he thought, for a peasant without parents. He threw his head back and began to laugh, all the way from his gut. It wasn’t a good feeling, just relief that the end was at hand.

His encrypted cell phone buzzed. It was an out-of-breath Rajput.

“We have trouble coming our way.”

“It’s too late for that,” Haaris said. He felt as if he were in a dreamlike state. Nothing could touch him. His will was supreme.

“Listen to me. Parks managed to kill his interrogator and three others and escape.”

“He won’t get far. When you find him, kill him.”

“You don’t understand. He had help. Someone shut down the building’s surveillance system long enough for him to get out of the interview cell, before they turned it back on.”

“The system isn’t hardened, I warned you about it before. Doesn’t change anything; he won’t get far.”

“Our entire system crashed for precisely sixty seconds. My people tell me such a thing is impossible. Yet it happened. Worse than that they believe that a virus has been implanted in the mainframe so that such a thing can happen again. It has made us vulnerable.”

“Go back to the factory default settings. Start all over again.”

“You still don’t understand. It gives them access to operational details. Your operation.”

“Nothing vital could have been included.”

“No, but enough for the right program to unravel it with time.”

“With time,” Haaris said, but something suddenly struck him, completely dashing his euphoria. “How exactly was the system crashed? Was it simply a power failure? And are you sure about a virus?”

“It wasn’t a power failure. Embedded in the virus is a warning that the system will go down again later this morning, and this time it could be permanent.”

“Backup systems?”

“All have been infected.”

“You have experts.”

“To this point they have no idea where to turn,” Rajput said. “And that in itself is an extraordinary admission. This isn’t the work of some ordinary hacker. Whoever is doing this to us is a genius.”

Traffic was building on Constitution Avenue, both vehicular as well as pedestrian. A normal workday was beginning. Functionaries out and about the business of governing 180 million — plus people through a difficult transition. Glad souls, many of them, sad souls, others.

“Rencke,” Haaris said, almost as a half whisper.

“Who?”

“Otto Rencke. One of the only men in the world — maybe the only man — who could pull off something like this. He’s the CIA’s resident computer genius, and he’s a close personal friend of Kirk McGarvey’s.”

“If that’s true, how do we stop him?” Rajput demanded.

“You don’t, but that’s not the most important thing.”

It was the look in the journalist’s eyes that had been bothersome. There’d been too much confidence in them, or at least a different kind of confidence. Real journalists asked questions; Parks had made challenges. Journalists were gatherers of information, storytellers. Parks had the feral posture of a killer.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s my fault. I missed it. Travis Parks is not the man’s real name.”

“We know that.”

“He’s Kirk McGarvey and he came here to kill me.”

The line was dead silent for a long time. When Rajput came back he sounded determined. “At least we know who we’re really dealing with. We found the jeep he stole and almost certainly the person or persons helping him. One of our helicopters was shot down on Murree Road just south of here.”

“What’d they report?”

“Nothing.”

“Call out all of your resources, priority one. Kill them on sight.”

“We’re already on it.”

“But, General, listen to me very carefully. Send your best people, and a lot of them, because McGarvey isn’t a man who’ll be so easy to kill.”

“We’ll need to hold off.”

“Absolutely not,” Haaris said, his anger rising. “We have a timetable and we will stick with it. All three packages will be delivered across the border as we planned.”

“Too much can go wrong.”

“We have come too far to stop now. After Quetta it was too late to quit, because sooner or later it’s bound to leak what actually happened up there.”

“Yes, and someone like Rencke will put two and two together.”

“But not the how or the where or the when,” Haaris said.

“I’m not sure,” Rajput replied.

“I am,” Haaris said. “The next step happens now.”

“What next step happens now?” the mufti asked from the doorway.

Haaris pocketed the phone as he turned. The Taliban spokesman, who was sharing the Aiwan with Haaris, stood in his full dress, including his head covering. He’d just come from morning prayers and his eyes were at peace.

Haaris smiled pleasantly. “Prayers this morning were comforting.”

The mufti chuckled. “Save me,” he said. “What next step?”

“The transfers begin this evening.”

“Everything has been arranged?”

“Yes. I want you to get word to your people in Quetta.”

“You do me an injustice, Messiah,” the mufti said. “All three packages have been waiting at the American and British trucking depots in Peshawar from the beginning.”

Haaris couldn’t hide his surprise. “I wasn’t told.”

“No reason. You and Rajput own this part of Pakistan, we own the north. Even you cannot imagine our reach.”

“There have been no suspicions?”

“The packages are radiologically sealed and hidden in boxes marked hazardous. No one will touch them until they reach their destinations in a few days.”

Haaris nodded. Even McGarvey was helpless to stop them.

“And now it’s time for me to talk to my people again. Tell them who is really to blame for their woes.”

“You mean our people,” the mufti said.

“My people,” Haaris said. He took out a silenced Glock and shot the mufti in the middle of the forehead.

FIFTY-NINE

Thomas sunk to his knees next to his wife’s body and arranged her clothing to cover her nakedness. Tears streamed down his face. The bullet wound in his back was merely oozing now. He had lost a lot of blood; his complexion was milky white.

“Is there someplace else for you to go?” McGarvey asked. “They know about you.”

“It’s not what you think. The ISI didn’t do this. It is our neighbors, the men from the teahouse at the corner. They resent my marriage to Wafa. I’m not a Pakistani. They’ve taught me a lesson.”

“Do you want us to go after them?” Pete asked.

“It wouldn’t bring her back.”

“You won’t be safe here,” Pete said.

“I won’t be safe from myself anywhere,” Thomas said. He pulled out his pistol. He looked up. “Both of you need to get out of here. If you can get to the Marriott, call Austin, he’ll arrange for the the airlift across the border.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Pete said. She looked to McGarvey. “Tell him, Mac.”

“Don’t be stupid. There’s not a fucking thing you can do here for either of us. You’re on a mission,” said Thomas.

“Goddamnit,” Pete cursed.

“He’s right,” McGarvey said. “The two days are nearly up; whatever’s supposed to happen will go down today.”

“We can’t just leave him.”

“Yes,” McGarvey said.

He took Pete’s sat phone, called Otto and explained the situation.

“Sit tight, I’ll have Austin send somebody for you,” Rencke said. “You’ll be safe waiting at the embassy. The chopper can pick you guys up there after midnight.”

“Pete and Thomas are going to hole up at the embassy; I have something else to finish,” McGarvey said. He had a fair idea what was going to happen sometime this morning, sometime soon, but something else nagged at him. Something he was missing, something they were all missing, had been from the beginning, and it was driving him nuts.

“What are you talking about, kemo sabe? Every gun in town is looking for you. And by now Haaris has probably figured out who’s screwing with the ISI’s mainframe, and once he figures out that it’s me, he’ll have to know who you are.”

“They’ll expect me to take refuge in the embassy,” McGarvey said. “They won’t bother about Pete as long as she’s not with me. But they’ll keep watch until I show up. Every car, truck, delivery van, anyone showing up on foot, will be searched.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” Pete said.

“Haaris is going to make another announcement, first on radio and TV, and then he’s going to make an appearance on the front balcony of the Aiwan.”

“The announcement was made five minutes ago,” Otto said. “He’s going to speak to the people in person and reveal Pakistan’s true enemies.”

“Enemies, plural?”

“Yeah.”

“The crazy bastard’s engineered another nine-eleven.”

“There’s more. One of my darlings picked up a brief mention in the ISI’s mainframe about weapons inventories. We took out eighty-seven of their nukes and we know where most of the rest are depoted, but four are missing from Quetta’s list. The Taliban detonated one, so that leaves three unaccounted for. If the inventory is accurate.”

“London’s on the list. He’s got an ax to grind because of how they treated him as a kid.”

“That’d make him insane as well as brilliant,” Otto said. “A bad combination.”

“Tell Page what we think might be coming our way and have him inform Sir John.” Sir John Notesworthy was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

“What about the president?”

“That’s her call,” McGarvey said. “But I don’t think this’ll wait for a diplomatic solution.”

“You’re going ahead with the op,” Otto said. “You’re going to show up at the Aiwan and try to take him out. With what? You don’t have a sniper rifle, so it’ll have to be a pistol shot, which means short range.”

“It has to be that way.”

“Goddamnit, why, Mac? You might get close enough to him to pull it off, but afterwards you’ll never get out of there. The mob will tear you apart.”

“He’s almost certainly compartmentalized the entire thing, which means he’s the only one who knows all the details.”

“He won’t talk to you,” Otto said.

“I think he will,” McGarvey said. “Now get on it, but, listen, Otto, keep everything low-key. I suspect that he still has a go-to on Campus.”

“Your name or the op haven’t been mentioned. The list is very tight.”

“I know, but if word gets out that we’re taking a special interest in incoming flights and ships, especially to DC, New York and London — and if I can’t get to him in time — his plans will change. He could postpone everything for a week or a month, even a year. We couldn’t keep up the tightened security posture forever.”

Otto was silent for a long time, and Pete looked stricken.

“I’m getting word to Austin,” Otto finally said. “I don’t like this, Mac.”

“Do you think I do?” McGarvey asked.

McGarvey borrowed a pair of loose trousers and a knee-length shirt from Thomas, and armed with Pete’s Glock and a spare magazine of ammunition he came back downstairs to where she was finishing bandaging Thomas’s wound.

“Good luck, pal,” Thomas said, his voice strong. He was holding up well. Hate was a powerful motivator.

“Nothing I can do for you unless you go to the embassy with Pete.”

“They’d think I was you, and we wouldn’t get within a block of the place. Then both of us would be in the shit.”

“I’ll have somebody come back for you after it’s settled,” Pete said.

Thomas actually smiled. “Sounds good.”

Pete came outside with McGarvey. “I understand what you’re doing, though I can’t approve. Your chances are slim to none, and you know it.”

McGarvey shrugged. “I’ve faced worse odds.”

“I want you to know something first.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Nothing you can do to stop me, Kirk. But the fact of the matter is that I love you.”

McGarvey didn’t want to hear it, not from Pete, not from any woman. At night when he dreamed it was always of Katy. On the sailboat at anchor; at home in her gazebo on the Intracoastal Waterway on Casey Key; in Washington, Paris, Berlin, Toyko, once even Moscow and another time, Beijing. She’d wanted to see some of the places he’d been.

“So long as no one is shooting at us,” she’d said.

But it hadn’t lasted, of course. There’d been the of course almost from the beginning. All the women he had loved, including his daughter, had been taken from him because of what he did, because of who he was, who he had always been.

“I know that you feel something for me,” Pete said.

McGarvey looked away.

“I want to hear you say it. Just once.”

“No.”

“Even if you don’t mean it, Kirk.”

He looked at her. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s the best I can do for now.”

She smiled. “It’ll do,” she said.

SIXTY

Haaris, in his full regalia, including the voice-altering collar, sat behind the president’s desk watching a replay on a laptop of his canned announcement, which was being broadcast through just about every media outlet in the world.

The building’s staff was at a bare minimum, most of them security officers forbidden to come above the ground floor. No real work of government was being done from here; Rajput handled the day-to-day business of the country, and he was doing a reasonable job, considering the difficult circumstances.

Except for the business with Kirk McGarvey.

“We have come to a new juncture in Pakistan’s future, you and I,” his image on the monitor was saying. “One that I must apologize for not seeing. The signs were there for me to see even in my blindness.”

Haaris smiled. Politics was theater. Even, certainly, American presidents had always known it, especially Reagan, who’d been the consummate White House actor. But his had been an excellent presidency because of it. First, he had known how to hire bright people. Second, he had listened to them. And third, he played well on television.

“I have a way forward for us. Not with guns but with hope. With understanding.”

The mufti’s body lay where it had fallen, on its back, very little blood from the head shot, its arms splayed, one leg over the other.

“For us there will be no Shiite-Sunni war. We will not become another Iraq, dominated by the U.S. Our future is what we will make of it. And I promise that our future will be a bright one, beginning today.”

He got up and went to the double doors to the balcony. Already people were streaming onto Constitution Avenue. Many were coming from the direction of the parliament building, the National Library and the Supreme Court to the south, as well as the Secretariat to the north. But many came from the west, starting to choke rush hour traffic on Jinnah Avenue,

This time the crowd would be bigger than for his first public appearance. They wanted answers, and he would give them what they wanted.

He phoned Rajput. “Have you found him?”

“We think that he’s gone to ground in Rawalpindi at the house of one of our police informers, who works for the CIA but for us as well. We’ve tolerated the man because he’s given us good intel from time to time and we handed him bits of disinformation that we know got back to Austin’s people.”

“Do not try to take him into custody; this is very important, General. Kill him on sight. Am I clear?”

“Now that we know who he really is, he could be invaluable.”

“Am I clear?”

“Despite your clever speech this morning, you are not running this country. You are nothing more than a traitor — three times removed. First against Pakistan, the country of your birth. Second, against Great Britain, the country that educated you. And third, the U.S., the country that gave you employment and listened to your advice. Now where does your loyalty lie?”

“Look out the window,” Haaris said.

“I am at this moment. But what if you were to be exposed as an American spy?”

“Are you getting cold feet?”

“I don’t know what you’re up to, exactly what sort of a deal you’ve made with the TTP, but I think that it has gone too far. The Taliban have never been our friends. We have used them on the Kashmir border to keep the Indian army occupied, but nothing else.”

“Just as the Americans used bin Laden and al Qaeda to keep the Russians distracted in Afghanistan. Need I remind you of that outcome?”

“You need not,” Rajput flared. “Perhaps we will take care of Mr. McGarvey, as you suggest, and then perhaps we will come for you before it’s too late.”

“You would fall with me,” Haaris said. “But if you stay the course the outcome will be more than even you could imagine.”

“That’s what worries me.”

“Your name is written all over this operation.”

“What operation?” Rajput shouted.

“To strike a blow against Pakistan’s real enemies.”

“Save me,” Rajput said after a beat. It was the same thing the mufti had said just before his death.

Haaris sat sipping tea at the desk for a full half hour, before he went back to the windows. The crowd had swelled enormously, completely filling the broad avenue for as far as he could see. At least eight or ten television vans had set up at the edges of the crowd not far from the Aiwan’s security fence. He picked out ABC, CBS, the BBC and Al-Jazeera, along with others.

The international media were here for one of the biggest shows on the planet, which to this point had not involved wholesale bloodshed. It was something unique.

Before dawn he had set up the sound system on the balcony but had not called up the technicians to drag out the Jumbotron screen. It would be enough for his people to see him in person, even if at a distance, and to hear his voice.

He went to the controls and switched on the power, then took the still-bloody machete he’d used to decapitate Barazani from the closet.

As early as six years ago, he’d advised the Pakistani government to strengthen its alliance with the Taliban but to watch them very carefully should the same thing happen as happened with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The CIA had gone along with him, as had the White House. It was to the Americans’ advantage to nurture Pakistan’s reliance on their military aid so that the U.S. could fight the war against the Afghani insurgents who took refuge across the border. Pakistan needed the money to fight the Taliban, which had turned on them, as Haaris had predicted they would.

“And here we are,” he said to the mufti’s corpse. “Come round full circle to the final act, which none of you in your wildest dreams could have predicted.”

He heaved the body over onto its stomach, and raising the machete nearly severed the head from the neck, the sharp blade crunching through the spinal column at the base of the skull. He had to strike two more times before he managed to cut through the cartilage and other tissue until the mufti’s head came completely free from the body.

Tossing the machete aside, he picked up the head by the hair above the base of the skull. The mufti’s black cap fell off, and Haaris awkwardly managed to put it back in place before he walked to the doors, opened them and stepped out onto the balcony.

Immediately a roar rose from the crowd.

“Messiah! Messiah! Messiah!”

Haaris raised the mufti’s head high.

A sigh swept across the mob.

“This is the face of our enemy,” he shouted. “It is they who exploded the nuclear weapon near Quetta. Their intention was to kill as many of our people as possible. But our soldiers gave their lives to make sure the death toll was small.”

An uneasy silence came over the broad avenue.

“This is just the first blow. There must be more. We need to eliminate the terrorists from our midst. We can no longer abide the murders of innocent civilians. Ordinary people like you. The killings must stop now!”

“Messiah!” a lone voice near the front cried.

“We must make a jihad against the killers of our babies.”

Several other voices joined the chorus. “Messiah!”

“But the Taliban is just a tool used by our real enemies!”

“Messiah!” The chant rose.

“The Taliban are the messengers sent to us from New Delhi!”

The cries were louder.

“Allies of America! Do not forget! Never forget!”

SIXTY-ONE

McGarvey watched from the partially open gate as the Cadillac Escalade that Austin had sent for Pete turned the corner at the end of the block. The neighborhood was strangely quiet for this time of the morning, but Otto had told him that Haaris was making another major announcement at the Aiwan. The crowds were enormous, people drawn from all around Islamabad and even down here from Rawalpindi.

“I’m not leaving Pakistan without you,” she’d told him before she got into the SUV. Austin had sent two stern-looking men to retrieve her.

“Are you coming with us, sir?” one of them asked.

“No. But whatever happens, don’t stop for anyone.”

“Good luck.”

“You too,” Mac had said.

He went back into the house to check on Thomas, who lay slumped over his wife’s body. He was dead, his hand holding hers.

A lot of sirens began to close in from the north, as Mac went outside to Thomas’s Mercedes. Two bullet holes had punctured the driver’s-side door, and a lot of blood stained the MB-Tex upholstery.

He found a prayer rug in the trunk to cover the blood, pushed the gate all the way open and drove out, just as the first of two jeeps, followed by two troop-transport trucks, rounded the corner. One of the jeeps was fitted with a rear-mounted sixty-caliber machine gun.

Mac just made it to the end of the block before the gunner opened fire, the shots going wide as he turned down a narrow side street of vendors and tiny shops. Only a few people were out and about and they scattered as he raced past, laying on the horn.

Thomas’s house was in a section called Gullistan Colony, dense with homes and small businesses, all serviced by a rat warren of streets. One neighborhood consisted of hovels, while two blocks later the houses were mostly upscale, compared to most others in the city.

He easily outran the jeeps and troop transports, but other sirens were beginning to converge from the north and east. And now they knew the car he was driving.

Suddenly he came to the end of a block, the street opening onto a broad thoroughfare across from which was what looked like parkland, trees and grassy hills but little or no traffic. It was as if the entire city had been drained of people.

A troop truck appeared around a sweeping curve a quarter mile to the north, and the jeeps and trucks that had followed him from Thomas’s house were behind him.

He accelerated directly across the highway, crashing across a drainage ditch and sliding sideways down a grassy slope, where at the bottom he just missed several trees, finally clipping one with his right front fender, taking out everything from the headlights back to the door post, and shattering that half of the windshield.

A machine gun opened fire from the highway behind him, several rounds slamming into the trunk of the Mercedes, before he came to a winding drive through the park and turned north.

The busted fender was rubbing against the tire, which within fifty yards shredded, sending him into a sharp skid to the left, off the road, through more trees and finally crashing through some thick brush and deep grass onto a golf course fairway.

Suddenly he knew exactly where he was. The first main highway was the National Park Road, and he’d managed to make his way through Ayub National Park and onto the Rawalpindi Golf Club course. Otto had given him satellite views of the entire twin-cities area of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. He’d not had the time to learn much more than the layout of the main roads and their features, but this place stuck out in his mind because it seemed out of place. An upscale park and golf course in what was mostly a slum city didn’t fit.

The course was empty, and slipping and sliding, tearing up the turf, the Mercedes barely under control, he made his way to the maintenance sheds, where he drove directly into one of the garages, slamming into the back wall before he could stop.

A uniformed cop, drawing his pistol, a radio in his free hand, came around the corner in a dead run as McGarvey jumped out of the car.

The cop shouted something in Punjabi that almost certainly meant stop.

McGarvey jogged to the left, his leg nearly collapsing under him as the frightened cop fired three shots as fast as he could pull the trigger, all of the rounds slamming into the side of the car.

The sirens remained off to the east and north now, but they were getting closer, and back in the woods someone was firing a machine gun. His pursuers were all on hair triggers. They knew about him, and their orders were simple: shoot to kill.

Drawing the Glock, McGarvey fired two snap shots, both of them hitting the cop center mass, dropping the man.

The shed was filled with lawn mowers and other equipment to maintain the course, but just outside around the corner, a ratty blue Toyota pickup was parked, a key in the ignition. A pair of tools for taking plugs out of greens for hole placements were in the bed, along with a couple of bags of what were probably weed killer, and a large tub of green sand.

More firing came from the woods to the south now.

McGarvey closed the shed’s door, then laying the pistol on the seat next to him, started the pickup and headed up an access road that eventually led past the clubhouse and onto another broad thoroughfare, this one the GT Road.

There was some traffic here, most of it commercial, and he stayed with the flow, constantly checking his rearview mirrors.

Another jeep, followed by a troop truck, came from the north at a high rate of speed, and traffic parted to let them pass.

For now the search was concentrated on the golf course. But in the confusion, with all the shooting at shadows, it would take them some time before they calmed down enough to find the Mercedes and the dead cop in the shed, and perhaps even longer to realize that the Toyota was missing and start looking for it.

The massive crowds were already beginning to disperse by the time McGarvey made it up to Islamabad’s Red Section, but they were still heavy enough on Constitution Avenue that he had to take Bank Road across to Ispana, behind the Supreme Court, before he could get anywhere near the Aiwan.

He pulled over across from the National Library and called Otto. The battery on Pete’s phone was low and he had trouble getting through.

“It’s over, Mac,” Otto said. “He made his speech and he left.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Wait,” Otto said, and a moment later the connection cleared. “Your battery is about flat, I gave you a temporary fix. Haaris is gone. He told the people that the Taliban was the tool and India was the real enemy. He held up the mufti’s head, just like he did with Barazani’s.”

“Goddamnit, where is he?” McGarvey demanded, his frustration nearly overwhelming.

“I don’t know. He left the balcony, and within ten minutes a convoy of nine cars and four panel vans took off from the Aiwan’s rear gate and headed in different directions. My darlings are tracking most of them, but he has the ephemeris of our spy bird, so he knows where to hide. He could be anywhere.”

“Still at the Aiwan?”

“I don’t think so,” Otto said. “But you’re going to have to get out of Dodge ASAP. The cops, the ISI, the army, everybody’s gunning for you.”

“What about Pete?”

“She’s safe at the embassy. A SEAL Team Six squad is coming by chopper around midnight to pick her up. The thing is, you’re not going to get anywhere near the embassy. They have the place completely surrounded. What’s your situation now? Pete said you screwed up your leg or something.”

“I’ll live,” McGarvey said, and he told him what had happened from the time he’d left Thomas’s place. “I’ll try to make it up to Peshawar.”

“You won’t get that far. They’ll figure out that’s where you’ll run. You need to ditch the truck and go to ground someplace safe until the ST Six guys can get to you.”

McGarvey looked up toward the rear of the parliament building, just beyond which was the Aiwan. He had failed. Haaris had been one step ahead of him — of them all — from the beginning. Now the deadline was here. It was bitter. But Pete was safe.

“Mac?”

“I’m going to the ISI apartment Judith Anderson took me to. It has to be clear by now. They’ll never expect me to go back.”

“Don’t leave the truck anywhere within a mile of the place,” Otto said. “And keep the phone with you; especially if you have to move, the guys can home in on it. But switch it off. I gave you a boost but the battery is still low.”

McGarvey didn’t bother asking how the phone could be located even when it was off; if Otto said it could be done, it was a fact.

“The important thing is, we’re getting you out,” Otto said.

Not important at all, McGarvey thought.