The Fourth Horseman

SIXTY-TWO

Walt Page’s limo showed up at the White House East Gate a few minutes after six in the morning and was waved directly through. The DCI was met at the door by one of Miller’s aides, who without a word took him directly across to the Situation Room in the West Wing.

The president was sitting at one end of the long conference table, some of the Security Council members gathered around her. They were watching images of Islamabad’s Red Section on a large flat-panel screen on the opposite wall.

It was just after three in the afternoon there, and crowds were rioting. Cars and trucks had been set on fire, tall iron fences around the Interior Ministry and adjacent Secretariat had been torn down in some places, and army troops were dispersed in defensive rings.

The crowd had been fired on, many bodies were strewn about the streets, and as Page walked in, a pair of Chinese-made Al-Khalid main battle tanks rolled up Constitution Avenue.

The president looked over. “Is this what McGarvey warned us would happen?” Her tone was brittle.

“I don’t know,” Page said, taking his place across the table from her. “The Messiah’s turnabout came as a complete surprise to all of us.”

“Are you up to date on the present situation?”

“As of twenty minutes ago, about the same time the army opened fire.”

“I meant with India,” the president said. “Their military has gone on full alert. Air force bases at Ayni, Farkhor and Charbatia are on total lockdown, all leaves and passes have been cancelled and all personnel ordered to return to duty.”

Admiral Altman, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been on the phone. He hung up. “I’ve just received confirmation that the Vikramaditya is moving from its base at Karwar at a high rate of speed up the Arabian Sea directly toward Karachi.” The ship was the Indian navy’s newest aircraft carrier. She was capable of launching a full-scale nuclear attack on her own. “A pair of their Kolkata destroyers are accompanying her and we have to assume at least three of her Kilo-class subs are acting as screening vessels.”

“It’s a goddamned act of war,” Susan Kalley said.

“It’s a move toward self-defense, according to Gauas Kar,” the president said. Mammohn Singh was Indian’s prime minister. “And I can’t say that if I were in his shoes I wouldn’t do the same thing.”

“How about Rajput?” Page asked.

“He won’t return my calls.”

“Don Powers is still over there, and he can’t get through either,” Secretary of State John Fay said.

“We don’t know what it means, but since the Messiah’s beheading of the TTP’s mufti and declaring India as Pakistan’s primary enemy, the Pakistan military has only raised its threat level to DEFCON Three,” the admiral said.

“It could mean they’re sending India — and us — a message,” Page said. He actually wished that Dave Haaris was here to help them sort through the situation.

“What’s that?” Miller asked.

“The Messiah does not speak for Pakistan.”

“You’re talking about a break in their relationship?” Kalley asked.

“My people think it could be a partial explanation for the rioting. Our embassy has been surrounded, but Austin said it looked to him like the military wasn’t trying to keep them bottled up. Instead it looked as if they had thrown up a protective barrier,” Page replied.

“Two nuclear powers on the brink and your people have zeroed in on the Pakistani army’s effort to protect our embassy?” Kalley exclaimed.

Her question didn’t deserve an answer. Page said nothing.

“Have you been in touch with Mr. McGarvey since the Messiah’s speech?” the president asked.

“Not directly, but he’s evidently in a safe place somewhere in the city, until we can get a SEAL Team Six squad to pick him up, along with another of our agents who managed to get to the embassy.”

One of the tanks on the flat screen pulled up in front of the Aiwan, its main gun pointed toward the rioters on Jinnah Avenue.

“If they don’t calm down soon this could turn out worse than Cairo,” Fay said.

“You said they arrested McGarvey, and yet he’s someplace safe in Islamabad?” Kalley asked. “It means that somehow he managed to escape.”

“That’s what I understand.”

“I’ve read his file, Walt. I know what this guy has done in the past. It’s why the president hired him to do the job over there.”

“Which he warned against.”

“Yes, unintended consequences,” Kalley said. “How many people has he killed this time?”

“I don’t have that number,” Page said. “He’ll be debriefed when he gets back.”

“More than one?” the president’s national security adviser pressed.

“I don’t know,” Page repeated. “The point is, we’re not going to leave him there. We sent him to do a job and he took it on to the best of his abilities, no matter how disagreeable he thought it was. Well, it didn’t work.”

“The man was facing the entire ISI,” the admiral said. “The fact that he managed to sidestep the bastards has to count for something.”

“Get him out of there, priority one,” Miller said.

“Thank you,” Page replied.

“But he stays out of politics,” Miller said with a slight smile. “It’s not his game.”

Saul Santarelli’s tall, lean frame appeared in the doorway. “Sorry I’m late, Madam President.” He was chief of National Intelligence. The agency had been created after 9/11 to do what the CIA had been designed to do — and had been doing — since after World War II. He was dark-skinned, with short-cropped steel-gray hair and the nearly constant look on his face as if he had the weight of America’s security on his shoulders, and his shoulders alone. He was a politician, not an intelligence officer.

Page and he did not get along.

“Are you up to date?” Miller asked.

Santarelli took his place and handed a leather-bound briefing book across the table. “My people put it together and I looked through it on the way over.” He glanced at Page. “Good stuff from your Watch, but I was surprised to see that McGarvey was in the game over there. I’d not been briefed on his mission.”

“No,” Page said. “Unless I’m needed here, Madam President, I’ll see to retrieving my people.”

“I want to talk to him the moment he gets back,” Miller said. “I want to personally thank him for what he tried to do for me, despite the overwhelming odds.”

Page glanced at the flat-screen monitor. The second tank had taken up position a half a block south of the first, its main gun pointed straight down Constitution Avenue. No one except McGarvey had seen anything like this coming their way.

“Be careful of what you wish for, you might just get it,” he sometimes warned. Unintended consequences. Blowback.

Page got to his feet. “Thank you, Madam President.”

SIXTY-THREE

Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Fishbine was at the end of an unannounced visit to the U.S. training base at Jalalabad, and the moment he was appraised of the situation with McGarvey and Pete he ordered his Gulfstream held until they showed up. He and his two assistants had been ordered back to DC. That was shortly before midnight.

“What time can we expect the team to get them up here?” he asked the navy lieutenant commander in charge of the SEAL Team Six presence, which had been reduced to almost nothing after the nuclear-neutralizing incursion into Pakistan.

“They’re making the pickups now. Should be an hour out, unless they run into trouble, sir.”

“We’ll wait.”

“We were told that your orders said now, sir. Your aircraft and crew are standing by.”

“We’ve developed an unexplained problem with one of the engines,” Fishbine said. He’d worked as a military liaison to the CIA during the brief period when McGarvey was the DCI. He didn’t know the man well, but what he did know was all positive.

“Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant Commander said, grinning.

The assistant sec def had served in the marines as an enlisted man, until he’d retired and completed his law degree at Northwestern. The president had appointed him to the Department of Defense two years earlier, and it was broadly accepted that he would take over the top spot soon because he was a decisive man who wasn’t afraid of making decisions.

“Have they been hurt?”

“Unknown at this point, but there is a medic aboard the chopper.”

The battery on McGarvey’s cell phone was almost completely dead. For the last couple of hours he’d stood at the fifth-floor window of Judith Anderson’s apartment looking down Luqman Hakeem Road toward the Al Habib Market.

Here the neighborhood was quiet, but elsewhere across the city, especially to the northwest toward the Red Section, there had been a lot of gunfire, several explosions and a couple of what sounded like tank rounds.

Television service across all the channels had been shut down. And since around eight traffic had dried up, and even the building had quieted down.

The cell phone switched on and rang once. It was Otto.

“They have Pete, and the chopper is less than five minutes from you. But the ISI apparently got a tip where you were. At least three troop trucks are about the same distance away. It’ll be close. They’re going to have to fast-rope down and pick you up on the roof. Go!”

McGarvey pocketed the phone, left the apartment and hurried to the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

An older man came out of one of the other apartments and immediately started to shout something.

McGarvey pulled out his pistol and turned around. The man, dressed in baggy pants and shirtsleeves, held a cell phone to one ear and a Kalashnikov in his right hand, the barrel pointed toward the floor.

McGarvey gestured with the Glock for the guy to go back inside.

For a longish moment the Pakistani stopped talking. But then he shouted something into the phone and the barrel of the rifle started to come up.

McGarvey fired one shot, and the man’s legs collapsed under him, the assault rifle spraying a quick burst into the wall about knee height before it clattered to the floor.

Immediately a woman inside the apartment began screeching, and what sounded like two young children started to wail.

“Goddamnit,” Mac said, half under his breath. He slammed open the stairwell door and raced up to the roof level in time to hear the incoming chopper.

Its lights were out, so it was invisible until it flared directly overhead, about fifteen feet off the roof. Two ropes dropped from the open hatch and two SEALS in full combat gear descended in a rush.

“We’re about to get company, sir,” one of them said. He tied a loop around McGarvey’s waist, and a winch pulled him up.

The other operator went to the edge of the roof. “We’ve got about five mikes.”

“Let’s go,” the first SEAL shouted.

McGarvey came aboard at the same moment the chopper dropped down its wheels just inches from the roof.

Both SEALS clambered aboard.

“Go! Go! Go!” one of them shouted, and the stealthy UH-60 Blackhawk leaped into the air, peeling sharply to the north.

Both operators had their weapons at the ready position but the pilot shouted back to hold fire.

Within a minute they were already northwest of the city, heading low and fast directly for the foothills, no sign that the Pakistani air force had put anything up yet to knock them out of the sky.

“Are you all right, sir?” the medic asked, undoing the rope from McGarvey’s waist and sitting him down in an aft corner seat just across the cabin from where Pete was strapped in.

“No holes so far,” McGarvey told the kid.

“That’s a good sign.” The medic quickly took his pulse and blood pressure, then shined a small penlight into one eye at a time. “You’ll live, sir.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But strap in, could be a rough ride.”

McGarvey did as he was told. One of the operators looked back, and Mac gave him the thumbs-up. The SEAL nodded.

Pete came out of the shadows, took a headset from a hook on the bulkhead behind her and motioned for McGarvey to do the same.

“They have a Gulfstream standing by for us,” she said. “Are you okay?” She was shivering.

“Medic says I’ll live, how about you?”

“Austin’s not happy.”

“Can’t blame him.”

“Haaris has disappeared. So whatever was supposed to happen never did, unless it’s the Taliban riots across the city or the situation with India. Could be war. Powers left earlier this evening, along with some key embassy staffers.”

“Any word from Rajput or anyone else in the government or military?”

“Not that I was told, but everyone at the embassy was keeping a lid on things.”

It couldn’t be over like this; McGarvey could feel something lurking around the corner. Haaris had not gone through all the trouble of setting himself up as the Messiah, and beheading the president and the head of the TTP, simply to foment a possible nuclear exchange with India. It wouldn’t do him any good.

Pete stared at him. “I’m glad you’re back.”

So what would Haaris do? What did Haaris want? Another 9/11 against the U.S.? Maybe England too? The man had terminal cancer with not many months to live, so whatever he had in mind wasn’t about his personal safety.

What can you possibly do to a man who had absolutely nothing left to lose?

“Hang on,” the copilot shouted back to them. “We have company.”

They were well northwest of the city, up in the foothills, and the copilot was on the radio while the pilot dove for the deck, setting down hard in a steep-walled valley lined with big boulders and scrub brush.

Even before the chopper was settled one of the SEAL operators jumped out, ran about ten meters past the nose and shouldered what looked to McGarvey like an American-made Stinger missile. Over the past fifteen or twenty years it had been the most common weapon in Afghanistan other than the Russian AK-47.

There were estimated to be five hundred Stingers still operational in the field, carried by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Mujahideen.

An F-16 jet fighter passed low overhead and the operator fired the missile.

The moment it was airborne the SEAL dropped the launch system and raced back to the helicopter.

The fighter jogged left then right and seconds later the missile struck its tailpipe and the jet exploded.

As soon as the operator was aboard they took off again, flying low and fast.

Pete was smiling. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said to McGarvey.

SIXTY-FOUR

The taxi dropped Dave Haaris off in front of the Connaught’s entrance at four-thirty in the afternoon. He’d flown directly to Paris from Istanbul and from there had taken the Chunnel Eurostar to London. He was tired — in part because of the strenuous happenings of the past several days, but also in large measure due to his illness — and he wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath, order up room service and turn in early.

But not yet. There would time enough later to rest. All the time in the world.

He tipped the cabby well and allowed the bellman to carry his single light bag inside, where he handed his passport and Platinum Amex card to the startled clerk.

“Mr. Haaris, we didn’t expect you back so soon, sir. Not after the bit of difficulty.”

“What difficulty would that be?”

The day manager came out, smiling. “No difficulty at all, Mr. Haaris. Your suite is still available.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be expecting a friend for an early dinner this evening, Say at seven. In the meantime have a bottle of Krug sent to my room. Very cold, if you please.”

“Of course, sir.”

Upstairs he also tipped the bellman well, and when the man was gone, he stripped and got into the shower, letting the water beat on the back of his neck for a long time. He was bruised on his legs, his right side and on both arms. Dr. Franklin had warned it would happen because of his low blood count, but Haaris had refused treatment to bring it up.

The champagne had already been delivered. He opened it, drank down a glass, then poured another.

In a hotel bathrobe, he checked the street out the window, but if the CIA had picked him up at St. Pancras International, the Eurostar’s terminus, they had apparently not followed him here to the hotel. Anyone who thought he was the Messiah was expecting him to be in Islamabad. In the thick of things. Wandering among his people, as he had supposedly done before. Preparing the nation for war with India, while containing the Taliban.

He turned on the television to CNN, which was in the middle of rebroadcasting his latest speech as he held up the severed head of the mufti. The riots and bombings across Pakistan and especially in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, plus the rapidly rising tensions with India, were also the lead stories on the BCC, Al Jazeera and many of the other channels.

Turning the sound down, he poured a third glass of champagne then got an outside line and dialed Tommy Boyle’s private number at the embassy.

The chief of station’s secretary answered on the first ring. “Who is calling, please?”

Boyle’s number was classified, and only a few people in London knew it; almost all of them were government officials who were aware of exactly what he was and would rather talk freely with him than be spied upon.

“David Haaris.”

To her credit the secretary hesitated only for a beat. “One moment, Mr. Haaris.”

Boyle came on almost instantaneously. “David, I’m surprised to hear from you. You’re here in London again?”

“At the Connaught. Wonder if we could have dinner tonight? We have a lot to catch up on.”

“We certainly do.”

“First off, I need to apologize for the little fiction with Ron Pembroke. I hope you weren’t too difficult on him. He’s an out-of-work actor.”

“I can come over there now.”

“I’ll meet you in the bar at six,” Haaris said. “Dinner at seven. And, Tom, hold off calling Langley. I expect by now that Marty is beside himself.”

“Can’t promise that. But I’ll meet you at six.”

“Good enough,” Haaris said.

He hung up and went into the bathroom, where he threw up in the toilet, the champagne still cool at the back of his throat. For a long time he sat on the floor, his cheek against the porcelain of the bowl, his head spinning, pain raging through his body from the base of his skull all the way to his backbone and his legs.

“Holding it together is going to become a matter of pain management,” Franklin had told him at All Saints. “If you take something for it, you’ll not be in agony.”

Haaris had smiled faintly. “Nor will my head work properly.”

“Only you can decide the balance.”

Haaris got up, splashed some cold water on his face and got dressed in highly starched jeans and a white shirt with a button-down collar, plus the British-tailored black blazer. They were the last of his decent Western clothes until he could get back home.

He got his gold watch, cell phone, wallet and other belongings and poured another glass of Krug.

“Alcohol won’t do it either,” Franklin had warned. “In fact, in a month or so it’ll actually make things worse.”

Haaris had managed to smile. “There’s always pot.”

Franklin had returned the smile. “That’ll work, for a while.”

But for now good wine was the more civilized of his limited options.

Tommy Boyle, tall, thin, lots of angles to his features, walked into the bar at precisely six o’clock. He had been assistant deputy director of operations at Langley when Haaris had first started working for the Company. It was he who’d helped start up the Pakistan Desk. And it was he who’d been best man at Haaris’s wedding.

Haaris half rose to greet him and they shook hands.

“How’d Marty take it?”

“Not well,” Boyle said. The waiter came and he ordered a martini. “You?”

Haaris held up his champagne glass. He was on his second bottle of Krug, but it was having no effect on him yet.

“Have you been paying attention to the situation in Pakistan?” Boyle asked.

“I’ve taken a look at CNN and Al Jazeera.”

“Where the hell were you? What were you up to?”

“Paris for a day or two, and then Istanbul,” Haaris said. “Interesting city.”

“Doing what?”

“Getting past Deborah.”

Boyle looked away for a moment. “I’m truly sorry about her. Last I heard the police were still looking for her murderer.” He shook his head. “Why the imposter?”

“I wanted a few days on my own. If I had stayed here, you know and I know that I would have been recalled to Langley to help straighten out the mess the White House, State Department and Pentagon created. But it was too late. Nothing I could have done, then or now.”

Boyle’s drink came and he knocked back half of it before the waiter left.

“Another, sir?”

“No,” Boyle said, and when the man was gone he shook his head again. “What’s your take on the Messiah?”

“I told them that it would be absolutely necessary for someone like him to show up, religious plus secular; but I also warned them that at the very least he would be unpredictable and probably impossible to control.”

“Any idea who he is?”

“He was born in Pakistan — the Punjabi accent comes out even though he’s done something with his voice. It’s not natural. But I suspect that he was probably educated right here in England. You might have your people do a search at least for body types matching his.”

“We’re already on it. What else?”

“Have Rencke gear up one of his programs for a voice analysis. Might come up with a clue that could help.”

“I’m told he started that right after the Messiah’s first speech.”

“Barazani was a good man but totally ineffective, and from what I saw Rajput isn’t doing such a hot job as PM. I assume that he and Miller are talking.”

“He’s disappeared.”

“Who’s running the bloody country? The military?”

“For now. But everyone is waiting for the Messiah to show up again and tell them what to do.”

Haaris lowered his eyes for a second. This meeting was going almost exactly as he thought it would. All that was left was for Boyle to drop the other shoe. He looked up. “What aren’t you telling me, Tom?”

“I’ve been ordered to have a couple of my guys escort you back to Langley. Technically, you’re under arrest.”

“On what charge? Desertion of duty because my wife was murdered, and I’m told that I have terminal cancer?”

“Shit. They think that you are the Messiah.”

Haaris hid the smile of triumph by throwing his head back and laughing out loud, the effort combined with the champagne making his stomach roil all over again. “It’ll be good to get back to work.”

SIXTY-FIVE

The Gulfstream heading west was chasing the sun, and the assistant sec def’s aircraft landed in Germany at Ramstein for refueling well before dawn. On Pete’s insistence McGarvey had managed to catch a few hours’ rest, not waking until they took off.

Pete was sound asleep in the seat across the aisle from his, a blanket covering her. Fishbine and one of his assistants were deep in discussion in seats facing each other near the front of the cabin.

McGarvey got up, adjusted Pete’s blanket and went forward to the two men.

Fishbine looked up. He seemed pleased. “Good morning, Mr. Director, how are you feeling?”

“Fine. Thanks for the lift.”

Fishbine motioned for him to have a seat. The attendant, a young navy chief, came back with a coffee. “This might help,” he said. The coffee was laced with brandy.

“Outstanding,” McGarvey said. “Maybe you could rustle up a sandwich or something. I haven’t had much to eat in the past couple of days.”

“Eggs Benedict and hash browns in ten minutes, sir.”

“There’re some perks to the job,” Fishbine said. He motioned for his assistant, a navy lieutenant in ODUs, to leave them.

“I didn’t know that you were in Afghanistan,” McGarvey said.

“Wasn’t made public. I came over to take a closer look after our raids last week and to check if there’d been anything new on the nuclear incident outside Quetta. But I didn’t learn a damned thing. Wasted trip. Means just like you I’m heading home to a shit storm.”

“You were military liaison to the Company when I was DCI,” McGarvey said, suddenly remembering the name. “We’ve survived shit storms before.”

“Indeed,” the assistant sec def said. “Miss Boylan briefed me on something you went through. What’s your take on the situation?”

“I actually got to meet with the Messiah for just a few minutes. I was undercover as a journalist.”

“Good disguise, I would never have recognized you. Did you get anything from him?”

“Nothing worthwhile, except he and the PM knew that I was CIA and considered me enough of a threat to have the ISI arrest and interrogate me.”

Fishbine glanced back at Pete, who was still asleep. “She said that you escaped.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice; they were going to kill me.”

“The Messiah beheaded the TTP’s mouthpiece and disappeared. And last I heard General Rajput was assassinated and the military took over. But the entire country is falling into civil war and India is doing some serious saber rattling. So what happens next? A nuclear exchange, maybe even all-out war?”

“That’ll probably depend on the Messiah.”

“What if the son of a bitch wanted this all along? What if he’s got a hard-on for all Pakis and just came over to stir the pot? He’s sitting somewhere safe now, sipping a mai tai, surrounded by beautiful naked women. His idea of Paradise. Fiddling while Rome burns.”

The thought was startling and it caught McGarvey somewhat off guard. “It might be just as simple as that, Mr. Secretary.”

“Well, we sure as hell aren’t going to put boots on the ground. I just hope that Miller has enough moxie to hold the Indians at bay, and that the Pakistani army can keep the remainder of their nukes out of the hands of the Taliban.”

“Four were taken from Quetta.”

“What?”

“Four tactical weapons, all of them mated, went missing from Quetta. One of them was detonated, leaves three at large, and almost certainly in the hands of the Taliban or one of their factions.”

“Yeah, ain’t it a bitch?” Fishbine said softly.

Fishbine went aft to the compact communications center in its own compartment.

Five minutes later McGarvey’s breakfast arrived, along with a bottle of water and a refill on his coffee and brandy. When he was finished the assistant sec def still had not returned, and Pete had not awakened.

It was just possible that Fishbine’s explanation was correct. Perhaps Haaris had merely shown up in Pakistan to stir the pot; maybe his mission had simply been to lead his country of birth first into a civil war and then into an all-out nuclear war with India.

But why? Where was his personal gain? Simply revenge for being mistreated? But that hadn’t been the case in Pakistan, and in any event, he’d been taken to England by an uncle and had led a privileged life there that had continued when he moved to the States and become a U.S. citizen. His position at the CIA was top level, and he was even a regular at the White House.

A man of his education, intelligence and charm could well have eventually become the CIA’s director or even the director of National Intelligence. Except for his illness.

What was so important to him that he was willing to spend his last few months doing it?

McGarvey went back to his seat, strapped in and went to sleep again.

Pete woke him. “We’re about forty minutes out of Andrews; how are you feeling?”

“Glad to be getting home,” McGarvey said, gathering himself. “But still no answers.”

“I talked to Otto. He and Louise are coming out to pick us up; they’re bringing fresh clothes and a razor for you. Nothing much I can do about my hair, though.”

“You look good to me.”

Pete grinned. “Thanks.”

“Actually, when it comes to your hair—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Pete said.

McGarvey went to the head and splashed some water on his face. His eyes were a little bloodshot and it was obvious he’d been under some sort of duress recently. But except for his uncertainty about Haaris’s plans he felt in good shape.

Pete had a cup of the chief’s coffee for him.

Fishbine came back to them. “I talked to Bill, and he’s taking what you said over to the White House.” William Spencer was the secretary of defense. “I don’t mind admitting that he was just as concerned as I am that the Taliban might have the nukes. We thought it was a possibility, but you seem to think it’s a fact.”

Otto and Louise came aboard as soon as the pilot taxied over to a hangar, shut down the engines and the chief opened the hatch and lowered the stairs. They brought clothes, even underwear, and something for Pete to use in her hair that didn’t require a shower.

Mac let Pete use the head first.

“Haaris showed up in London,” Otto said. He was perched on the armrest of the seat across from McGarvey. “Denied he was the Messiah, claimed he was in Paris and Istanbul recovering from his wife’s murder, and told Boyle that he was ready to get back to work.”

Nothing surprised McGarvey any longer. “Where is he now?”

“About one hour out. Boyle put him under arrest, at Marty’s insistence, and sent a couple of embassy types with him. Page and just about everyone else is on Campus, not only because of the situation in Pakistan but because both you and Haaris are back. The president wants to meet with both of you ASAP.”

“Keep Dave away from her. No telling what he’s capable of doing.”

“What about you?” Otto asked.

“I assume we’re going to Langley to answer some questions, but afterwards I’ll have a few things to tell the president. Stuff she’s not likely going to like.”

“I want to be on the team interviewing Haaris,” Pete said.

“And I want to listen in,” Mac said.

SIXTY-SIX

The two minders Boyle had sent with Haaris handed him over to a pair of Langley muscle who’d shown up at Andrews with a Cadillac Escalade. Actually, it felt good to be back, not because this was home — he’d never felt that — but because this was the end game that had been in the planning stages for more than five years.

By now the three packages had arrived at their points of entry. Two had been sent to the joint base at Dover and the third to Farnborough, outside London. They would be isolated with other hazardous materials.

Messy, full of potential troubles just waiting to happen. But the outcome was inevitable. The firing circuits had been connected to cell phones. Any incoming call would immediately start the detonation cycles. All three of the phones had the same number.

He’d given his word not to be difficult, so he’d not been handcuffed by Boyle’s people. And the pair from Langley saw no need for restraints either. Haaris was one of theirs.

“Gentleman, thanks for the ride across the pond,” he told the two from London. “Must you turn around and get back immediately?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” the one named Masters said. They were both kids, barely in their late twenties.

“Too bad, I would like to have taken you to dinner this evening,” Haaris said. They shook hands. “My compliments to Mr. Boyle.”

All very civilized, Haaris thought, getting into the backseat of the Caddy. But it was happening the way he’d expected. There’d been accusations that he was the Messiah, but there could be no proof of it yet. On top of that he was cooperating, and he had the sympathy vote on two counts — his wife’s murder and his own terminal cancer. And sympathy almost always blinded the observer.

They were passed through the gate, and once they were on the ring road, the security officer riding shotgun turned in his seat. “I was told to ask if you needed to stop first at All Saints, sir.”

“Thanks, but no. Nothing Franklin can do for me at this point. I’d like to get my debriefing over with. The situation is spinning out of control and my people need to be on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marty Bambridge, his tie correctly knotted, his suit coat buttoned, met them at the elevator in the underground VIP parking garage beneath the Original Headquarters Building.

“Glad to have you back, David,” the DDO said, shaking hands. He dismissed the two minders, who drove off.

“It’s good to be back even though I walked away from a developing mess,” Haaris said. He left ambiguous what developing mess he was talking about, the one in Pakistan or the one here on his desk because of Pakistan. He wanted to get Bambridge’s reaction. But the DDO missed it.

“Under the circumstances — we’re all terribly sorry about Deborah — no one could blame you. Though you did leave us in something of a lurch.”

They rode directly up to the seventh floor, which surprised Haaris. “I thought that the director would have waited until after my debriefing to see me.”

“He has a few questions first, we both have. Since your trip and your disappearance, you have become operational, under my purview.”

“Has my desk been taken out of the DI?” Haaris asked. The DI, or Directorate of Intelligence, was where the analysis of most incoming information was performed. The DO, or Directorate of Operations — most often called the National Clandestine Service these days — did the work in the field. It was tasked with all kinds of spying, including the administration of the NOC program — the spies in the field who worked without official cover. It was their deaths the stars on the granite wall downstairs in the lobby represented.

“At least until what we’re facing has been resolved.”

The DCI’s secretary told them to go directly in.

Walt Page was leaning against his desk, saying something to Carlton Patterson and an attractive woman in jeans, a white blouse, the sleeves rolled up above her shoulders, and a pink baseball cap.

It took just a moment for Haaris to realize who she was because he’d not expected to see her here. He managed to cover the lapse by walking directly to Page and shaking his hand. “Quite a mess, Mr. Director. But not completely unexpected.”

“Welcome back,” Page said.

“Thank you,” Haaris replied. He turned to the others. “Carleton. And Miss Boylan, I’m surprised to see you here this morning.”

“Why’s that, Dave?” Pete asked.

“Just surprised, nothing more.”

“Would you like a cup of coffee or anything before we start?” Page asked. His body attitude was of a man wanting to have a little chat and nothing more. He was saying that this was not to be an inquisition.

It was more than Haaris had expected. “No. I’d like to get this over with so I can resume work. My people have a lot to catch up with.”

“They’ve been holding the fort,” Bambridge put in, and Page shot him a look.

“Where’ve you been all this time?” Page asked. “Boyle says you told him Paris and Istanbul, but we haven’t been able to find any traces.”

“You wouldn’t have. I’m good at my job.”

“What were you doing all this time?”

“Grieving, in part, and coming to accept my condition,” Haaris said. “But before you ask, I am not the Messiah. I’ve not been anywhere near Pakistan since I got free from the Taliban. And I only hope that you put a contract on his life. He is directly responsible for the mess we’re facing. If we can take him out, we can start to repair the damage he’s caused.”

“You warned us,” Pete said.

“Yes.”

“I’m just wondering why.”

“It was relatively easy to predict a unifying voice such as his to show up.”

“I meant, why were you so adamant about warning the president that she would have to act? She ordered McGarvey to go over in disguise and kill him. You didn’t mention the unintended consequences, whether or not Mac was successful.”

“Was he? The Messiah has evidently disappeared.”

Marty started to say something but Pete held him off. “We lost touch with him.”

“He was there in Islamabad?”

“Yes,” Pete said. “And I think you were there too.”

Haaris sat back, suppressing a smile. He had them. “You still think that I played the role of the Messiah.”

“Yes.”

“Your proof? Or is it just wishful thinking? Blame this on me, perhaps because of a less than lovely childhood? British public schools do have a reputation. Well deserved, I can assure you, from direct knowledge, though the education they offer is first rate.” He looked at the others. “But why, Miss Boylan? Why would I have put everything at risk to pull off such a fantastic scheme?”

“You were dying. One last hurrah, thumb your nose at us and our cousins.”

“Something like this would have to have been planned for years. I only just found out about my cancer last week.”

Pete didn’t respond, and he thought that she looked confused, her lone argument shot down so easily.

“If you want to find out his real identity, where he’s disappeared — unless Mr. McGarvey’s mission was a success — and the way out of the mess that we ourselves made, then let me get back to work.”

No one said a thing.

Haaris got to his feet. “I’ll get my people headed in the right direction, and then I’d like to go home for a shower, something to eat and a change of clothes. At some point I’ll need to brief the president.”

“First we’ll need to debrief you, David,” Pete said, her voice soft, almost silky, somehow bothersome.

“Then let’s get it over with.”

Pete got up. “Good.”

“Mr. Haaris, a question first, if you please,” Patterson said, his voice also soft. “Of course we’re all off-base here, about your being the Messiah, but we’re just trying to do our jobs.”

“I understand.”

“When the dust has settled, so to speak, do you contemplate bringing suit against the Company? Taking us to court and all that? Perhaps a memoir you’d refuse to allow us to vet? It’s been done before.”

“Heavens, no,” Haaris said. “I’ve been an American from the beginning and always will be.” He smiled. “Truth, justice and the American way. Is that how it goes?”

No one returned his smile.

SIXTY-SEVEN

Otto went with McGarvey over to Saul Landesberg’s studio in Technical Services, at the same moment Pete was walking out of the DCI’s office with Haaris. They’d heard everything over an in-house audio feed that Otto had set up. No one else except Pete knew about it, especially not Page, and certainly not Haaris.

“He held his own,” Otto said.

“No one accused the man of being stupid,” McGarvey said.

“Gentlemen?” Landesberg asked, looking up.

“We were talking about someone else, not you,” McGarvey said. “Especially not you.” He paused. “The ISI had me for a few hours, during which I was waterboarded.”

“What’s it like?”

“Sporty. The point is, your makeup job survived.”

“Of course it did,” Landesberg said. He sat McGarvey down and took the earbud out and handed it to Otto. “Won’t work in here. We’re shielded against everything except actual human presence. What happens in this room — how it happens — stays in this room.”

“Interesting problem,” Otto said, grinning.

It had taken Landesberg a little more than two hours to complete McGarvey’s disguise but less than twenty minutes to restore his hair color, uncover his natural features and bring back his complexion.

“Nothing else I can do about your hair, but it’ll grow back in a few weeks. Nobody recognized you, not even close up?”

“Just Pete Boylan.”

“No shit?”

“I’d give you a tip if I knew what you charged,” McGarvey said.

“On the house, Mr. Director. And if you ever need me again, I’ll be here.”

Outside, the section secretary had a phone call for McGarvey from Page.

“The president wants to see you,” the DCI said.

“How’d it go with Haaris?”

“About how you expected it would. If he’s guilty of anything it’s being overly smooth. Miss Boylan just left with him to do the debriefing.”

“I want to listen in before I head over to the White House, because I already know what the president is likely to say to me.”

“I talked to her personally just now. She said you were to come immediately.”

McGarvey hesitated.

“Just get it over with, and try to be polite for a change. There’s never been a president who could do without you, but not one of them ever ended up liking you. Maybe this one will be different.”

“I doubt it. Have a car brought round for me.”

“Do you want a driver?”

“No.”

On the way down to Otto’s office, McGarvey explained where he was going. Otto gave him a cell phone.

“It should give me decent reception even from the Oval Office.”

“Good thing you’re on our side. I’m going to make it short and to the point.”

“She’ll have a witness, probably Susan Kalley.”

“Good.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“The truth,” McGarvey said.

“I don’t think this president will like it very much.”

McGarvey was expected at the East Gate and was passed through without a credentials check. He turned the plain Chevy Impala with government plates around so that it was facing down the gentle hill, just past the door into the White House.

The president’s adviser on national security affairs had been alerted to his arrival and she met him. “Thank you for being so prompt, Mr. McGarvey.” She was dressed in a feminine business suit, medium heels, a scarf around her throat. A serious outfit for a serious moment.

McGarvey, on the other hand, wore khaki slacks, a white polo shirt and black blazer, boat shoes on his feet. His attitude was that he’d stopped over for a chat after just getting back from the front.

“Are you carrying a firearm, Mr. Director?” the marine guard asked.

“No.”

He followed Kalley across to the extremely busy West Wing.

“The Messiah has vanished,” she said. “Of course I’m sure that you knew this.”

“It’s a mess over there. Any word yet from India?”

“Their new aircraft carrier is standing about fifty miles off the coast from Karachi, and General Nasiri is screaming bloody murder, threatening to launch the air force to deal with the threat.”

“I don’t know the name.”

“Wasim Nasiri; he was the Pakistani army’s chief of staff and served as a defense minister. Sharp man, from what we’ve been told. Their parliament appointed him as temporary spokesman for the government, and the supreme court confirmed it last night. But I can tell you that he’s not made any difference so far. The country is in an almost total civil war. Some of the military units, especially up north and a few in the southwest, have joined the Taliban.”

“What about their remaining nuclear weapons?”

“Nasiri assured us that they are safe.”

“Do you believe him?” McGarvey asked at the open door to the Oval Office.

“No,” Kalley said.

The president, her jacket hanging over the back of her desk chair, was just getting off the phone when they came in. “The Messiah has vanished,” she said.

Kalley closed the door.

“Did you manage to assassinate him?”

“I met him face-to-face, and in fact he has not disappeared. He is here in the States, at Langley.”

“The CIA has him in custody?”

“Not yet. He’s one of ours, and no one else but me is convinced he played the role.”

“Haaris,” Kalley said.

“Yes.”

“I want to see him here,” the president said, reaching for the phone.

“That wouldn’t be smart, Madam President,” McGarvey said.

“What did you say?”

“If I’m right he is a dangerous man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.”

“If he tried to get in with a gun he’d never get past the sentries.”

“He wouldn’t need a weapon.”

The president looked as if she was on the verge of exploding. “You’re convinced that David Haaris and the Messiah are one and the same man?”

“Yes, ma’am”

“You idiot,” Kalley said. “By your meddling you damned well might have sparked the breakdown.”

“That will be enough,” Miller said.

Kalley didn’t want to quit.

“Leave us now,” the president said.

Reluctantly Kalley got to her feet, glaring at McGarvey, and walked out of the Oval Office.

“I asked you here to thank you, not only for what you did in Pakistan, but for what you’ve done, and what you’ve given, for your country. Unfortunately, there’ll be no medals, nor ceremonies on the lawn.” The president got up and came around her desk. McGarvey rose and she extended her hand. “It’s all I can do for now.”

McGarvey smiled, and shook hands. “It’s enough for now,” he said.

Miller read something in his eyes. “It’s not over yet.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then don’t let me keep you.”

Outside, McGarvey walked down the hall the same way he’d come in. Kalley was nowhere in sight. At the east door he nodded to the marine sentry.

“Have a good day, Mr. Director.”

Outside he got in the Chevy, drove directly down to the gate that led to East Executive Drive and was passed through.

He picked up his cell phone. “I’m out,” he said.

“Where are you going?” Otto asked.

“After Haaris.”

“He’s still here on Campus, and you don’t want do anything there. He’ll fight back, and there could be a lot of collateral damage. Go to my place, out of his way. I’ll give Louise the heads-up.”

“I’ll do better on my own,” McGarvey said.

“No, you won’t. Anyway, don’t be so goddamned stubborn, for once in your life. We’ve done this bullshit together a long time; let’s not change the game in midstream. I’ll let you know when he’s on the move.”

“Depending how it goes with Pete, he might just try to see the president. But whatever happens, it has to be me who takes him down. He’ll take anyone out who gets close to him.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

Haaris left the small conference room where Pete had debriefed him for the past twenty minutes, his heart skipping a beat in every six or seven despite his outward calm, and took the elevator down to the first floor.

McGarvey had managed somehow to escape from the ISI, and later that night a SEAL Team Six helicopter had picked him up and taken him and Miss Boylan across the border to Jalalabad. The worst of it was that both of them were convinced that he was the Messiah, though apparently they had only the slightest glimmer of his motivations and absolutely none of what was coming next.

She had refused to tell him where McGarvey was at the moment, but it was a real possibility that he could be here on Campus.

“We’ve determined that the Messiah’s voice was electronically modified. We’ve had a computer program working the problem since the first speech, and we’ve come up with a number of certainties. The speaker was born in Pakistan, most likely in Lahore. He got his education in England, starting as a young boy, and his diction, grammar and manners are of the old school. He’s in his late thirties and has spent some time, perhaps years, in the States. The programs picked up a few traces of an American accent. Northeast.”

“Interesting,” Haaris had said.

“The profile fits you, Mr. Haaris. Can you explain that?”

“No, I cannot, except to ask if you are formally accusing me of being the Messiah?”

“What do you suppose the Messiah’s agenda is? Simply a nuclear war between Pakistan and India?”

“It’s what I hope to discover with my team’s input. The president will be needing a briefing from my desk sooner rather than later,” Haaris had said. “So, if you will excuse me, Miss Boylan, I will get back to work.”

Pete said nothing until he was at the door. “You’ve made a mistake, you know.”

He turned and smiled faintly. “Oh?”

“You got Kirk McGarvey involved.”

Haaris took the covered walkway past the cafeteria, the sculpture “Kryptos” outside in the courtyard, but instead of taking the second covered walkway past the library, he turned left. At the end of the corridor he scanned his pass and went outside to the parking lot and his Mercedes.

He figured it wouldn’t take long for the bitch to realize he had left the building instead of going directly to his office, which didn’t leave much room for error.

On the way down to the gate, he called his house from his cell phone and scanned the outside as well as every room in the house. No cars he didn’t recognize were parked anywhere in the neighborhood. The crime scene police tape had been removed from the front and back entrances, the sliding glass doors from the pool into the family room, and the garage door. The inside of the house had obviously been searched, but as far as he could tell nothing was missing except for his laptop.

Every closet in the house had been searched with a fine hand; nothing had been pulled out and tossed aside, no holes been punched into the walls to find a safe or a hiding place.

The bathroom where he’d killed Deborah had been cleaned by his service, and using the surveillance detection program on his phone, he could find no traces of any electronic eavesdropping devices other than his own.

A forensics team had checked for evidence relating to Deborah’s murder but not for the supposition that he was a spy.

The guard at the main gate didn’t bother to look up as he flashed past in the exit lane, the bar code scanner on a corner of the car’s windshield automatically registering his identity.

Instead of turning right on the parkway and back toward the city, he turned left, to the north, merging with I-495 a few minutes later and crossing the river into Maryland.

Following the Beltway as it merged with I-270 and heading off to the east, he kept checking his rearview mirrors for anyone keeping pace with him, and the sky for any signs of a helicopter dogging his trail. But if the alarm had been sounded no one was coming after him.

Using one hand he removed the battery cover on the phone and took out the SIM card. Until it was back in place even Otto Rencke wouldn’t be able to trace him.

Fifteen minutes later, still certain that he wasn’t being followed, he turned south on State Highway 295; a half mile later he pulled up at the gate of a self-storage company and entered his password. No one was around. Arranging for a storage space was done by appointment only, and there was no security except in the evenings. Five years ago when he’d begun to put his preliminary planning in place, he searched for a mostly unattended self-storage place just like this one.

His was a large, two-car garage space, which had been another of his requirements. The lock was an old-fashioned combination, and when he had the door up, he drove inside, parking next to a five-year-old dark blue Toyota Camry, possibly the most common car in America.

So far as he could tell nothing had been disturbed since the last time he’d checked the place the week before he’d left for London. In fact, if someone had tried to break in, the garage and most of the units for fifty feet on either side would have disappeared in a massive explosion of nearly one hundred kilos of Semtex placed in two barrels filled with roofing nails.

He changed clothes from the trunk of the Camry, dressing in khakis with cargo pockets for three fifteen-round magazines of forty-caliber ammunition, plus an advanced Vaime silencer, and a quick-draw holster for the compact Glock 27 Gen4 pistol.

Also pocketing a fold-up knife, several four-ounce bricks of Semtex with chemical fuses, and a thirty-two-caliber revolver in an ankle holster, he backed out of the garage.

Included in his kit were two different sets of identification: one for Rupert Mann, from Brooklyn, and the other, complete with an Irish passport, for Pete O’Donald, from Belfast.

When this was finally over he’d planned on disappearing. Maybe the South Seas somewhere. Maybe even Venezuela. He had enough money in various offshore accounts to buy his way into relative luxury in just about any Third World nation.

But that had been before he’d learned he was dying. Now the money and the escape didn’t mean much to him. Only the plan did, and only because doing something was infinitely better than doing nothing except waiting around to die.

He walked back into the garage and armed a switch that would set when the door was closed and fire when the door was opened.

Turning around he came face-to-face with the manager of the property, along with a man in his twenties and a pretty woman of about the same age, both of them dressed in jeans, both of them smiling.

“Mr. Dodge,” the manager said. He was a florid old Cuban in jeans and a guayabera, sandals on his feet. “I’m glad you’re here. This couple is moving and they have need of one of our largest storage units. Showing an occupied unit is better than showing them an empty one.”

It was an irritation, nothing more, except it made no sense to Haaris, and he was suspicious. But the couple were not in the business, it was obvious, and the manager was an idiot. He stepped aside and motioned them in. “Please,” he said.

They went inside.

Haaris quickly screwed the silencer on the Glock’s muzzle. No one else was around. The couples’ car had to be parked in front. He fired three shots, dropping them. And then walked back inside and fired one shot into the backs of each of their heads.

Closing the door, which armed the explosives, he shoved the padlock home and drove away. Sooner or later the young couple would be reported missing and their car discovered here, but there would be nothing to link him to the place.

Unless McGarvey put it together. But time was running out. And no matter what else happened Haaris had the number in his cell phone.

As soon as the call went through the three nuclear devices would explode wherever they happened to be.

He wanted them in New York, Washington, DC, and London.

It was the last stage of his plan.

SIXTY-NINE

In the kitchen at Rencke’s safe house McGarvey sat staring out the window at the swing set in the backyard. He and Louise had sent Audi down to the Farm, where she would be safe until the trouble blew over. And there’d been so many incidents in the past couple of years that she had started to grow up there and was the mascot of the training facility. Everyone doted on her. It wouldn’t be long before children’s toys like swing sets would be far too tame for her.

Louise came in from outside. “My Toyota is in the driveway. When you leave, take it. The staff car stays in the garage till we get past this. Haaris will know it’s someone from the Company, namely, you.”

“You shouldn’t be involved.”

“Don’t be silly. You saved my husband’s life in Cuba. What would you have me do?”

McGarvey’s cell phone rang. It was Pete. He put it on speakerphone.

“I’m on a secure phone in Otto’s office. Haaris left the Campus almost forty-five minutes ago, but we didn’t catch it until one of his staffers called Marty’s office to complain that his debriefing was taking too long.”

“He could be practically anywhere by now. Check Dulles, Reagan and Baltimore.”

“That’s the first thing we tried, but if he’s booked on any international flight there’ve been no last-minute additions.”

“Expand the search to domestic flights. But he’ll need documents, money and a clean credit card or two. We either missed his go-to-hell kit at his house, or he’s got a stash somewhere else. A storage locker.”

“How about an APB on his car?”

“He’ll have switched cars by now, and I want to keep the cops at arm’s length. Anyone approaches him is probably going to die.”

“SWAT teams?”

“We need the man alive, Pete. Three nuclear weapons are missing from Quetta, and I think we have to consider the possibility that they’re already here in the country. Only he can tell us where they are and when they’ll be detonated. The man has a timetable, and he’s going to stick with it no matter what.”

“Could be he has a team. Someone local, unless he imported three suicide bombers willing to push a button and sacrifice their lives for Allah. It’s not likely he’d be willing to die himself.”

“Don’t be so sure,” McGarvey said. “He only has a few months to live, so he has nothing to lose.”

“Something else has come up. There’s a federal warrant for your arrest. Came from the White House. The president’s national security adviser.”

“Kalley.”

“That’s right. You’re to be considered armed and dangerous. Which was stupid, actually, because a lot of people in the Bureau and the Secret Service know who you are, and know damned well that you would not open fire on any cop doing their duty.”

Otto broke in, and he sounded excited as he always did when he was on to something.

“Haaris made one call from his cell phone to his house, and pulled up the ADT alarms and monitors. We made sure that the police tapes were gone and no one was watching the place. Soon as he was finished with that call he pulled the SIM card, so I lost him. At least at first.

“I hacked into his house system and went through the recordings from the time he pulled the SIM card until ten minutes ago. But he never showed up. It’s telling me that wherever he’s stashed his walking papers, they’re not there.”

“Why did he go through the bother of doing a surveillance search?” McGarvey asked. “Unless it was to keep you busy.”

“Bingo. But it backfired.”

“Tell me.”

“He had his escape well planned, I’ll have to give him that. I figured that he would need not only papers, but he’d need new wheels. Renting a car somewhere was too obvious, so I started a search within a thirty-mile radius of Campus for self-storage facilities that had units large enough for two cars.”

“Why two?” Pete asked.

“Because he didn’t want to screw around pulling one car out and then parking his Mercedes inside. Might attract too much attention. Just one little detail he figured would help with his margin,” Otto said.

“He would have wanted a place that had no onsite security, other than fences and a surveillance system. Mounted cameras.”

“Right, but he made a mistake. For whatever reason he missed the cameras and at least three people paid for it with their lives.”

“Did someone stumble on to him?” McGarvey asked.

“The manager and two people looking at units. They parked their car up front, and I hacked into the surveillance system and saw it all. He’s driving a five-year-old Toyota Camry, dark blue, with Maryland tags.”

“Where’d he go?”

“We’ll have to put something in the air to find out,” Otto said. “But he lured the three people into the garage, shot them all, then locked up and drove off. Five minutes later it exploded, taking out twenty other units. He either set the explosion, or maybe his aim was lousy and one of them survived and tried to open the door, which was wired.”

“I can retask Flybaby Prime to find him,” Louise said.

The designator actually included a constellation of four Jupiter satellites in moderate Earth orbits, just above the International Space Station, arrayed in such a way that at any given time, twenty-four/seven, one would be above Washington, DC. The program, which had been put in place in the aftermath of 9/11, was classified Top Secret/Flybaby Prime access. It would take practically an act of Congress to retask any one of the birds. But Louise had been one of the designers and first administrators of the system.

“First of all, you can go to jail for the rest of your life, and if Washington is one of Haaris’s targets, you’d be leaving the city unprotected,” Pete said. She was clearly playing devil’s advocate.

“Ten-second snapshots every sixty,” Louise said. “I’ll send the feed to Otto, and he can insert a loop showing just before and just after the ten seconds that the bird would be off task.”

“Make them one second every fifteen, and there’ll be no need for a loop,” Otto said. “I’m working on a recognition program now. My darlings will pick out every dark blue Camry in the bird’s line of sight and read the tag number.”

Louise had already taken her laptop from the kitchen desk, opened it on the counter and turned it on.

“We’ll need to hustle, sweetheart,” Otto said. “We don’t have that wide an angle. If he gets more than a hundred miles out, there’s a good chance we’ll miss him.”

“Don’t wait for me, I’m on it,” Louise said.

Her computer finished booting, and within twenty seconds she had gotten into the NSA’s highest security programs’ mainframe, had entered all the passwords and was in the Flybaby Prime control program.

“Gotcha,” she said. She looked up. “Your call, Kirk. Which way is he heading?”

“Box the compass,” McGarvey said. “North first.”

“Ready, Bear?” Louise asked. Teddy Bear, or usually just Bear, was her pet name for Otto.

“Go,” he said.

Louise expanded the satellite’s view and changed its direction to the north for one second, then brought it back to its original parameters.

“Searching,” Otto said. “You can’t believe the number of dark blue Camrys on the highways. We should send this to Toyota for a commercial.” Two seconds later he was back. “No.”

Louise reprogrammed the satellite to look east, took the one second-snapshot and brought it back.

“Shit,” Otto said.

“What?”

“Dark blue Camry, Maryland tags; it’s our man. He’s heading east on U.S. Fifty just across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into Delaware.”

McGarvey had it all at once. “Dover Air Force Base.”

“Yes,” Pete said. “He had to get the weapons out of Pakistan. They were put aboard military transports to Dover.”

“From there at least one made it to Washington,” Otto said. “A second to New York. And the third?”

“I’m going to ask him just that,” McGarvey said. “We still don’t know how he’s going to get them out. I don’t think he’ll simply trigger them in place.”

“We can get a NEST team in the air within fifteen minutes,” Louise said.

“If he finds out he’ll push the button,” McGarvey said. “Keep looking for his cell phone. I’ll need to know the second he replaces the SIM card.”

“I’m coming with you,” Pete said.

“I need you on Campus to back me up in case this thing goes south,” McGarvey said.

“Goddamnit, Kirk.”

“If there’s going to be any future for us, you’ll have to start listening to me. At least every now and then.” He could hear her draw a breath. It was dirty pool, but she hadn’t left him any other choice.

“Okay,” she said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

SEVENTY

Haaris parked at the Dover Mall just past lunchtime and walked directly into Macy’s department store. It was a weekday and the place was almost empty. By now if McGarvey had enlisted Rencke’s help, they could know about the incident at the storage center, including the car and its Maryland tags. If Rencke’s wife had also become involved it was possible, though unlikely, in his estimation, that she could have retasked one of the Flybaby satellites to follow him.

But that led to a number of other unlikely, though disturbing, possibilities. They knew that three nuclear warheads were missing from Quetta. And if they had traced him here they might have figured out that the weapons had arrived from Pakistan.

A host of what ifs.

He had passed the entrance to Dover Air Force Base just off Delaware Route 1 a couple of miles back, but there hadn’t been any unusual activity. No helicopters circling. No police cars or military cops parked alongside the road leading to the main gate.

In any event, if he was cornered with no way out he wouldn’t hesitate to replace the SIM card in his phone and make the call. It would be a waste of five years, but once again people in the U.S., and this time in Great Britain also, would feel the same sense of vulnerability that they’d felt after 9/11. No place would ever seem safe again.

He went to the men’s department, where he bought a light-colored poplin jacket, and in another section a Nike baseball cap.

In a stall in the public restroom at the opposite end of the mall, he removed the tags and put the jacket on, zipping it all the way up.

Stuffing the hat inside the jacket he walked down the broad mall corridor to the Sears store, where he found an old-fashioned pay phone, called the number from memory of the City Cab Company and asked to be picked up outside JCPenney and taken to the Dover Downs Casino.

He walked back through the mall to JCPenney, and when the cab pulled up, he put on the cap and walked outside.

The man who had arrived in the Camry had disappeared, as had the man who’d walked through the mall wearing a jacket but no hat.

At Langley, Pete was with Otto in his suite of offices, when the satellite feed Louise had been sending them suddenly shut down. The phone rang, and it was she.

“The system’s malfunction alarm came up, so I had to pull out,” she said. “Is it Dover?”

“Yes, Mac was right,” Otto said. “He parked in front of Macy’s at a mall a couple of miles north of the base. We were waiting for him to come out.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can use the satellite any time soon. They’ll be revamping the malware system, and until I can get the bypass codes we’re out of luck.”

“Will they trace it back to Louise?” Pete asked.

Otto grinned. “No,” he said, at the same time his wife did.

He picked up the GPS signal from McGarvey’s phone, then called.

“I’m about thirty miles out,” McGarvey said. “Is he in Dover?”

“In the Dover Mall just north of the base. We’re waiting for him to come out.”

“There’s no reason for him to stop at a mall, except to ditch the Camry. He either walked away, or someone picked him up.”

“How about a cab?” Pete asked.

“That’s possible. It means he knows or suspects that we’re watching him, and he considered the likelihood probably from the beginning. He’s on his way now to pick up another car.”

“You think he’ll try to get on the base?” Pete asked.

“Guaranteed,” McGarvey said. “Call the commander and get me a pass.”

“We still have time to get a NEST team up there,” Otto said. “It’s worth a try.”

“If he so much as gets a hint that those people have shown up he’ll pull the trigger.”

“Maybe he will anyway,” Pete said.

“He’s got bigger targets in mind. Somehow he managed to get the three weapons shipped over, and they’re sitting in a warehouse or empty hangar somewhere on base waiting for him to pick them up. And from there he’ll take them probably to Washington and New York.”

“They’re sending back lots of military equipment out of Lahore now that most of the operations in Afghanistan have been shut down,” Pete said. “Rajput was helping him so it would have been fairly simple to slip three packages through. Shielded crates, maybe, even hidden in boxes of aircraft parts. Anything.”

“Medical waste,” Otto suggested. “Could be marked biohazard. I have a feeling that Dover doesn’t have the facilities to dispose of something like that, so it’d have to be shipped to a safe site somewhere.”

“Find out as much as you can,” McGarvey said. “It’s a good bet he’s going to get on base with the proper credentials and paperwork to pick up whatever they’re packaged in. And at this point I’d guess biohazardous material would be the most likely. The packages would be sealed, and no one would be tempted to open them.”

“We’re on it,” Otto said.

“I’ll be at the main gate in less than thirty minutes.”

Haaris paid off the cabby and went inside the casino, where he ditched the hat in a trash can. He had a cup of coffee in one of the snack bars, then bought an oversized dark blue sweatshirt printed with a pair of dice with a five and two showing, the casino’s name below them.

He left the jacket in the men’s room, pulled on the sweatshirt and went back outside, where he caught another cab, giving the driver a residential address on the west side of town just off Forrest Avenue.

Just before he got in the backseat, he looked to the southeast toward the base as a C-5M Super Galaxy troop transport made its approach into the pattern. NEST teams did not ride around in aircraft like that, but he was still worried that something was coming up on his six. McGarvey.

Ten minutes later the cabby pulled up in front of a ranch-style house with a two-car garage in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. It was a weekday, so husbands were at work and wives were either home doing housework or off shopping with friends, whatever housewives did during the week. He’d never wondered about Deborah’s schedule while he was away. But then, he’d never really given a damn about her.

The last time he’d been up here for a long weekend he’d taken the ten-year-old Chevy Tahoe out of the garage and washed it in the driveway. One of the neighbors came over to say hi, and they’d chatted about absolutely nothing for ten minutes until the poor bastard had wandered off.

Haaris came across as an okay neighbor who kept his place neat but was standoffish and hardly ever home. No wife, no kids or pets, probably a salesman on the road most of the time. He’d owned the house for three years and most of the time he arrived by cab, just like today. Nothing unusual. Ted Johnson is home again. Blend with the woodwork. Show them what they want to see. Just like the Messiah had.

Inside he made a quick inspection of every room, all the doors and windows, to make sure no one had been inside or had tried to get in since the last time he was here. There was dust on everything; no one had been here.

He changed into a long-sleeved white shirt and opened the garage door. The Tahoe started with no trouble, and he pulled out, closed the garage door for the last time and drove directly back to Forrest Avenue, traffic almost nonexistent compared to that in DC. Past the AAA offices, Forrest turned into State Road 8, and six miles out of town he came to what had once been a metal fabrication company behind a tall wire-mesh fence, but was now long since deserted.

He’d bought it through a shell company two years ago and had come out only once in person, at night. The one-story office building was set just off the road, behind it two fabrication buildings and a warehouse and parts inventory facility. The driveways were cracked, weeds growing everywhere.

Unlocking the gate, he drove back to the warehouse, unlocked the big steel doors and drove inside, parking next to a white Lincoln hearse fitted out to transport two full-sized coffins. He pulled the silk cover off the hearse. The tastefully small logo on the driver’s and passengers’ doors read: THOMAS FUNERAL HOME, WILMINGTON, DE.

SEVENTY-ONE

McGarvey pulled up at the Dover Air Force Base main gate a few minutes before one and presented his ID to one of the air policemen. “General Taff is expecting me.”

“Yes, sir,” the airman said. He wrote something on a clipboard. “If you’ll park in the visitors’ lot your escort will be here momentarily.”

About fifty yards back was a small parking lot and visitors’ center. McGarvey drove over and parked at the same moment Otto phoned.

“Two Bureau guys were here looking for you. Marty told them that you definitely were not on Campus and probably not in the city. I’ll have Page call the White House and cancel the warrant.”

“Don’t do it. If Haaris thinks that I may be arrested at any moment, he might let down his guard.”

“They’ll try to search your apartment, if they haven’t already tried. Are they going to run into any surprises?”

“Nothing dangerous, but they’ll need a damned good locksmith to get in. Any trace of Dave?”

“We’re blind for now, but I put three of Stuart’s people on ex-comms checking every hotel and motel in town, plus the casino and security at the Dover Mall for anything unusual.” Stuart Middler was chief of CIA internal security, and the ex-comms was an extended communications check to places that Haaris might have shown up. “They haven’t come up with anything yet.”

“Where’s the nearest decent-sized civilian airport?”

“Wilmington, about forty miles north.”

“Does he have a pilot’s license?”

“I’ll find out.”

“Extend the ex-comms to the airport; see if anyone has reserved an airplane to deliver something. Maybe automobile parts, something fairly heavy. I’m guessing a twin-engine Cessna or better.”

A plain blue Chevy Impala with air force markings came through the gate and pulled up as McGarvey got out of Louise’s car. A master sergeant whose nametag read, LARSEN, introduced himself.

“I’ll take you to General Taff, Mr. Director. He’s expecting you.”

The sergeant drove directly over to base headquarters. In the distance, on the far side of the main runway, the Super Galaxy was parked on the tarmac in front of a large building at the end of a row of several equally large hangars.

“What’s over there?” McGarvey asked.

“The Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs. Where all the bodies are brought for preparation before their release to families.”

“Civilians?”

“Some.”

Brigadier General Herman Taff was a slender man with ordinary features who could have passed for the CEO of a medium-sized business just about anywhere. When McGarvey was shown in he got up, shook hands and motioned to a chair across the desk from him. He was slightly annoyed.

“It’s been a busy day so far, Mr. Director, so I assume you’re going to explain why you came to visit us.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, General, so I’ll be brief. You have trouble coming your way, and it’ll probably be here within the next half hour or less. We think that as many as three nuclear devices may have been sent to this base from Pakistan, possibly disguised as medical waste, a biohazard of some sort in sealed containers that would likely not be opened by your personnel.”

“Nuclear weapons,” Taff said. “From Pakistan.”

“Someone will be coming here to pick them up. If it is medical waste, what would you do with it?”

“Depending on the hazard level, it would be sent out by air to Nellis in Nevada.”

“What if it were too dangerous to be put aboard an airplane?”

“If it were too risky it would go by truck or unmarked van,” Taff said. “We had an incident three months ago involving medical waste from a pair of Ebola victims in Africa. Someone from the CDC came to pick it up.”

“If someone shows up with the proper paperwork, do you release whatever it is they’ve come to pick up without checking with someone? Say, at the CDC?”

“No need if they have the proper orders, and they’re on our roster.”

“I’d like to see that roster,” McGarvey said. Haaris had made his first serious mistake.

“That’s not going to be possible. I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to need more than your word.”

“Have your secretary telephone Walt Page, he’s the director of the CIA. But do it now.”

Taff hesitated for a moment but picked up the phone and instructed his secretary to make the call.

“What about civilian bodies?”

“We get them from time to time.”

“Who picks them up?”

“A funeral home sends a hearse.”

McGarvey pulled out his cell phone and called Otto. “They might be in coffins,” he said. “Haaris will be showing up with a hearse to pick them up.”

Taff was alarmed.

“Would the bodies be processed here?” McGarvey asked the general. “Would the coffins be opened?”

“Not if the families requested closed-coffin funerals. We respect their wishes. In any event that sort of processing, identification and perhaps autopsies, would most likely be done before the bodies were shipped to us.”

Taff brought up something on his computer.

Otto was back. “Robert Brewster, Thomas Funeral Home, Wilmington, chartered a DeHavilland Beaver in the land version for a flight to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. It’s the only plane like that they had. Cargo is listed as two coffins.”

“Only two?”

“Yes. And Haaris is a commercial-rated pilot.”

“One’s missing,” McGarvey said. “Find it.”

“Where do I start?”

“England.”

Taff’s phone buzzed; he answered it and looked at McGarvey. “Get them up here; we’ll wait.”

“Hang on,” McGarvey told Otto.

“There’s a federal warrant for your arrest, Mr. McGarvey. We were told to hold you here until someone from the Bureau shows up.”

“Call Page,” McGarvey told Otto. “It’s time to call the Bureau off. If they come anywhere near this place, and Haaris spots them, he’ll pull the trigger.”

“I’m on it,” Otto said.

“Someone from the Thomas Funeral Home with the right documents will be showing up here to pick up the bodies of two civilians,” McGarvey told Taff. “Only, the coffins won’t have bodies, they’ll each have a Pakistani nuclear device. Probably something in the ten-kiloton range. Actually, warheads for tactical missiles. This guy is well motivated, he knows what he’s doing and the cell phone he’s got with him is almost certainly programmed to detonate both weapons. He doesn’t want to do that here. He means to take one of them to New York City and the other down to Washington. He’s chartered a private plane from Wilmington and he‘s filed a flight plan to fly first to New Jersey.”

The general suddenly didn’t look so sure of himself. He glanced at his computer screen. “A hearse from Wilmington, just the driver, is waiting at the main gate for his escort. We’ll delay him there until I can get some help.”

“You can’t do that,” McGarvey said, jumping up.

“We’ll take care of it,” Taff said.

Two armed air policemen showed up.

“Keep Mr. McGarvey here; the FBI has sent people to pick him up.”

SEVENTY-TWO

“An escort is being rounded up for you now, sir,” the air policeman at the main gate told Haaris. “If you’ll just go back to the parking area and wait there, shouldn’t be but a couple of minutes.”

“Okay,” Haaris said. He made a U-turn and went to the parking lot.

In the distance he could just make out the hangars, the Super Galaxy and the Carson Center, where his two coffins were waiting to be picked up. Something was wrong; he could feel it in his bones.

He glanced over at a Toyota SUV and it was vaguely familiar to him. He’d seen the boxy vehicle somewhere before, but he couldn’t place the where or the when. But there had to be hundreds of SUVs just like it between here and DC.

He stared at it for a long time, the uneasy feeling growing.

Taking out his cell phone, he slid the battery cover off, removed the battery and got the SIM card from the jacket pocket of the dark blue suit he’d dressed in at the warehouse.

McGarvey’s cell phone rang. “May I answer it?”

The general nodded.

It was Otto. McGarvey put it on speaker. “The Bureau has agreed to drag its feet for now. But they’re not giving us much time before they want you to talk to them.”

“What about the Secret Service?”

“They turned it over to the Bureau first thing.”

“Haaris is already here, they’re holding him at the main gate. In the meantime the general has placed me under arrest.”

“Hold on, I’ll have Altman call him.… Shit, shit. Mac, Haaris’s phone just went active.”

“Can you block his outgoing calls?”

“I can try to shut him down, but he’s using one of our phones — one of the phones I modified for field officers — and he’d know the moment I tried something like that. You have to get to him and right now.”

“Admiral Altman?” Taff asked. He was impressed.

“Yes. But it’s your call now, General. The hearse driver has just activated his cell phone. All he has to do is pull up a number and hit speed dial. We might have just an instant to see the flash when both nuclear devices ignite, but it’ll be over with.”

“He won’t commit suicide.”

“They’ve been doing it in the Middle East for years, and the guys who took over the planes on nine-eleven were willing to die for their cause. Are you?”

The general was deflated. “Can you stop him?”

His secretary buzzed him. “Admiral Altman is calling for you, sir.”

“I’d like to try.”

“What do you need?”

“A ride over to wherever he’s supposed to pick up the two coffins. No sirens. And in two minutes let him through the gate.”

Taff hesitated only an instant longer, but then he nodded. “Do it,” he told the two air policemen, and then picked up the telephone.

Haaris pulled up the number that would detonate the two bombs here and the one in England. For the longest time, what seemed almost like an eternity to him, he stared at the SUV. From Lahore to here had been a terribly long journey. Along the way there had been some good times, he’d never denied that to himself. Even with Deborah there had been the odd moment, when glancing at her he could see the obvious love for him in her eyes, and it gave him a little thrill of pleasure that somebody actually gave a damn. Unconditionally.

He would have liked to finish his work. Deliver one bomb to his people at the mosque in New Jersey, who would in two days take it to the new World Trade Center. The second to his people in Alexandria, who would at the same moment as the New Jersey driver take it to the fence in front of the White House. The two days would give him the time to reach the funeral home in Farnborough, where he would pick up the coffin and deliver it to Ten Downing Street.

Then he would press the button.

Revenge would finally be his. But sitting here at the wheel of the hearse, the cell phone in his right hand, his thumb over the speed dial button, he tried to visualize exactly what it was that he was taking revenge for.

At that moment a blue sedan with air force markings came through the main gate, and he shut the phone off and put it in his pocket as he powered down the window.

The two air policemen drove McGarvey directly across to the Carson Center’s incoming and processing facility, where bodies were brought in and made ready either for transportation to Arlington National Cemetery or for pickup by families.

The cops parked their pickup truck around the corner of the building, out of sight of anyone coming from the main gate, and hurried back with McGarvey to the loading bay area, where the coffins would be brought out on trolleys

A technical sergeant named Oakley came out. He looked a little green. No one else was around.

“The captain called, said we’ve got some kind of trouble coming our way?”

“Someone from a funeral home in Wilmington is coming to pick up a couple of coffins,” McGarvey said. “Where are they?”

“Just inside. Said this guy was armed; what the hell is going on?”

“The coffins might be wired with Semtex, set to blow up at any moment. So get your ass out of here now.”

“No shit,” the sergeant said. “That’d spread radioactive crap everywhere.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The bodies were from the nuclear explosion in Pakistan. They’re hot.” He gave McGarvey and the cops one last look and left.

“I want you out of here too,” McGarvey told the cops. “Right now.”

“Good luck, sir,” one of them said, and they headed back to their truck.

In the distance McGarvey spotted a blue air force sedan followed by a white hearse heading his way.

The coffins were waiting on two trolleys just inside the small processing center, which wasn’t much larger than a five- or six-car garage. Double doors at the back presumably led to the morgue itself, where coffins were in storage for pickup. The concrete floor was coated with a gray epoxy and the entire space was spotlessly clean and empty. There was no place to hide.

Pulling out his pistol, McGarvey stepped inside just to the left of the open door and flattened against the wall.

The coffins were marked with the three-bladed-propeller symbol: CAUTION RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS. McGarvey had to give Haaris credit for coming up with the way to make certain that no one would try to open the coffins, and at the same time offer a good explanation in case the bombs were leaking and someone detected the radiation.

Haaris backed the hearse to the open bay door and got out. No one was around, which he thought was strange. He could see the two coffins on trolleys just inside the pickup area.

“Will someone be out to help me load?” Haaris asked the escort driver.

“Should be, sir,” the driver said through his open window. He swung the car around and headed away.

Haaris didn’t know the entire procedure for picking up bodies, but he was reasonably certain that he would have been required to show his papers and sign something.

The hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end.

He took out his cell phone again and brought up the detonation number. He was armed, but getting into a gunfight here would guarantee that he would never get off the base. If this was a trap, he would push the button.

No one else was heading his way, and the escort car had disappeared somewhere behind one of the hangars.

Everything was wrong. Everything screamed at him to make a one-eighty and get the hell out. Survive to fight another day. Push the speed dial button once he made it to Wilmington. Or perhaps when he was in the air, flying away. The mushroom cloud would be interesting to watch.

Maybe back to Pakistan as the Messiah. It would be dangerous but exciting. Revenge came in many different guises.

Perhaps he would go to ground instead. Fight back in a different way, just as Snowden had done. Could be he would become someone else’s hero.

He’d never had any belief in fate, though he understood the concept. What happened was of your own making.

Haaris came through the doors, the cell phone in his left hand.

McGarvey stepped forward and batted the phone out of his hand, sending it skittering across the floor facedown. “It’s over now, David.”

“Fuck you,” Haaris shouted. He rolled forward, shoving McGarvey against the concrete wall.

McGarvey’s damaged hip went numb, but leaning into Haaris for balance, he slammed a knee into the man’s groin.

Falling back, Haaris managed to grab Mac’s pistol, but before he could bring it to bear, McGarvey fell forward with him, twisting the pistol away and sending it sliding across the floor.

Their bodies intertwined, they fell down hard, Haaris banging the back of his head on the floor, and McGarvey further damaging his hip, a very sharp, nearly incapacitating pain shooting up his spine.

Haaris managed to get himself free, roll away and get to his feet. He reached inside his still-buttoned suit coat as McGarvey got up and lurched forward, landing a roundhouse punch to the man’s face.

Blood suddenly gushed from Haaris’s nose. Dazed, he stumbled backward just out of McGarvey’sreach as he pulled the Glock out of its shoulder holster.

“It’s not over until I say so,” he shouted, a wild smile on his face.

He started to raise his pistol when he was suddenly flung forward, the pistol dropping to the floor the moment before he felt his face bouncing off the concrete, a small hole at the back of his skull oozing blood and brain matter.

Pete stood in the doorway, in the classic shooter’s stance, half squatting, the pistol in a two-handed grip, a crazy look in her eyes.

McGarvey turned without a word and went to Haaris’s phone. He stared at the display for a long beat, not wanting to comprehend what he was seeing. The number was ringing. Either Haaris had pushed the speed dial before he’d dropped the phone, or when it had hit the floor, facedown, the button had been pushed.

“It’s ringing,” Pete said just behind him. “But the bombs didn’t go off.”

McGarvey looked up at the coffins, with their radiological warnings. “He out-thought himself,” he said. “In case the bombs leaked. The coffins were lined with lead. The phone signal couldn’t get through.”