Soldier of God (32 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Soldier of God
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Away from the sidewalk café, McGarvey led Liese across the street into the Place in the opposite direction from the hotel. She did not offer any objections or question the direction they were going. She was openly happy and content to be with him, even with the danger they both faced. They passed shops selling Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint-Laurent, Gucci, and Givenchy. Traffic was increasing, and every second car, it seemed, was a Rolls-Royce, Bentley, or Ferrari. Yet most of the people on foot wore casual clothes, some even shorts and sandals.
He wanted to put some time and distance away from the café before they headed back to the hotel in order to spot anyone tailing them. Now he was watching not only for someone on Salman’s payroll, but also perhaps someone working for the Swiss.
Nothing had changed in the past ten years as far as Liese’s infatuation with McGarvey went. If anything, he thought, her love had deepened, even though they had not seen or even spoken with each other until just a couple of days ago. It wasn’t rational. “Look, nothing is going to happen tonight,” he said.
Liese made it a point not to turn and look at him. But she looped her arm in his, as if they were lovers out for a stroll. “I know. Just let me indulge my fantasy for a little while.”
It wasn’t what McGarvey meant. “I’m not talking about what’s not going to happen in my room tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re not going to make love, if that’s what you’re expecting. But I’m talking about Salman. He’s not going to invite me to go to Corsica with him, and so far, unless his people are damned good, he’s sent no one to follow me.”
She shook her head and looked up at him. “I wouldn’t count on it, Kirk. After all, he did have you aboard his yacht this morning.”
“Only because I beat him at cards last night and then insulted him. According to him, he wanted to find out what the hell I was up to.”
“He was the same guy you faced in Alaska, wasn’t he?” Liese asked. “You did establish that?”
McGarvey had been asking himself the same question ever since he’d walked away from the yacht. He’d been sure then, but now he was having second thoughts. “What makes the Swiss Federal Police think that Salman is Khalil?”
“I’m not sure how it started, but it was one of Gertner’s pet projects. He wants to become the director general someday and he’s trying to make a name for himself. It started right after 9/11. The prince had apparently been traveling all over the place, but then he disappeared, the attacks occurred, and he suddenly showed up at his house in Lucerne and went into seclusion for the next few months.”
It was one of the bits of circumstantial evidence that Otto had come up with. “A lot of Saudis ducked for cover. Osama bin Laden himself had cousins in Florida and Maryland. They went back to Riyadh, where they figured they’d be safe until things cooled down.”
She shook her head. “That’s the same argument I used when he first came to me. But Salman has disappeared just before almost every single act of al-Quaida terrorism. Everything from the first attack on the World Trade Center, to the
Cole
, to the embassies in Africa, and even the Khobar barracks right there in Riyadh. Gertner has the entire file.”
“How’d he get onto you?”
“He had friends on the team that was keeping track of you.” She looked down, obviously in pain. “It was pretty much an open secret that I was in love with you. Which was fine with Gertner. He figured that if I could seduce you away from Marta, he’d get her.” She shook her head again. “Of course, it didn’t work out that way.”
“He sounds like a charmer,” McGarvey said. They had reached the entrance to the casino just as a stretch Mercedes limo pulled up. A dozen paparazzi were there, roughly jostling into position, their cameras flashing as the driver came around and opened the rear door for a young, very thin, very beautiful blond woman. She waved to the photographers as a man dressed in a tuxedo got out behind her, and the two of them went inside.
It was nothing more than a moment of Riviera glitter, which McGarvey forgot as he and Liese headed back around to the hotel.
“You have to believe me, Kirk. I think he’s convinced a lot of people that you and Salman have a long history. And if he can prove that Salman is Khalil, that would tie you to 9/11. Even the suspicion would be enough to bring you down.”
McGarvey felt sorry for her. She had fallen for a man she could never have, and she was being manipulated because of it. The world was full of bastards. Not just the Osama bin Ladens and the Khalils, but ordinary bastards like Liese’s boss who was willing to ruin her life to further his own ambitions. “All the more reason for you to go home tomorrow before you totally screw up your career.”
She stopped, her eyes narrow, her lips puckered into a stubborn pout. “I’m not going back.”
“If you want to help me, you can go home and keep Gertner busy. And you can keep Otto up to date.” She was digging in her heels, and McGarvey was getting irritated. “Look, Liese, we don’t have a lot of time here. I’m going after Salman in the morning, and it would be a good thing if someone was helping watch my back in case I don’t make it. If he is Khalil, he’ll be expecting me to come down there.”
A look of incredulity came over her face. “If?” she said. “Are you saying that you’re still not sure?”
“Not sure enough to put a bullet in his brain.”
“
Merde
. What the hell did you talk about aboard his yacht? The weather?”
“I told him I had come to kill him. And he tossed me off his yacht. If he really was Khalil, I figured he would come after me. But so far that hasn’t happened.” McGarvey shrugged. “So I’m left with the same question as before, and less time in which to get it answered.” He took Liese’s arm and they started walking again. “That’s why I’m following him to Corsica and you’re going home.”
They walked the rest of the way across the Place back to the hotel in silence, McGarvey trying to figure out how to insure that Liese actually went back to Switzerland in the morning. He wouldn’t put it past her to follow him down to Corsica, which would all but tie his hands. He’d always tried to work alone, responsible for no one’s safety but his own.
With Liese in Corsica he would be looking over his shoulder. Distractions like that could get them both killed.
He didn’t think that Salman would try anything tonight. He’d know by now that McGarvey was aware of his plans, and he would wait in Corsica for the former DCI to show up. Like a spider spinning a web and waiting for its prey to get entangled.
They crossed the street to the front entrance of the hotel and were about to go inside when a small Peugeot pulled up to a screeching halt in the driveway behind them. They turned as a tall, lanky man with several cameras around his neck leaped out of the car and came running toward them.
McGarvey, working on pure instinct, disentangled his arm from Liese’s, shoved her aside, and turned sideways to offer less of a target as he reached for his pistol.
The photographer pulled up short and began furiously snapping pictures, first of McGarvey and then of Liese.
McGarvey stayed his gun hand. He recognized the photographer as one of the paparazzi who had been at the casino entrance just a couple of minutes ago. Any assassin that Khalil might send would not act in such an open, brash manner. Heads were turning because of the commotion, something neither a gunman nor a French cop here to check up on McGarvey would want to happen.
Liese had opened her purse and was reaching for her pistol, but McGarvey turned back and took her arm, and together they started into the hotel.
“Mr. McGarvey,” the cameraman shouted after them. His accent was French. “For the Agence France. What is the director of the CIA doing away from his desk in Washington? Why are you here?”
“Are you sure he’s legitimate?” Liese whispered, urgently, as they entered the hotel.
“He was in the pack in front of the casino,” McGarvey told her.
The photographer was right behind them, snapping pictures. The lobby was fairly busy at this hour of the evening, and everyone was looking at them trying to figure out who they were and what was going on.
“Mr. McGarvey,” the cameraman shouted.
McGarvey and Liese angled directly across the lobby to the elevators. A car had just arrived, and they stepped aboard, the cameraman right on their heels.
McGarvey turned and gave the photographer a stern look. “Stay away from me.”
The man started to say something, but then evidently thought better of it. As the elevator door closed, he raised his camera and snapped several shots.
Khalil, his heart rate up, moved away from the French doors, where he had been watching the Place off and on for the past half hour, and took his position in the dark corner.
He had moved an easy chair one meter to the left and had unplugged the floor lamp. It gave him a perfectly dark spot with an excellent sight line to the door from which to make the kill.
His attention had been drawn to the casino entrance directly across from the hotel, where a commotion had erupted with the arrival of someone in a limousine. Cameras flashed, and for thirty seconds or so a mob of paparazzi flitted like flies around carrion. He’d almost turned away, but there was something about a couple walking away from the casino that piqued his curiosity.
They walked arm in arm like lovers out for an evening stroll, but even at a distance of more than one hundred meters in the imperfect light, Khalil was convinced there was something familiar about the man. The certainty that he knew who it was continued to grow, until just across the street the man glanced up.
Khalil’s heart bumped, and a slow smile spread across his face.
It was McGarvey returning to the hotel, with a young, beautiful woman. He was typically Western after all, a man who professed love and
devotion for his wife, while in a foreign city having no compunction against picking up a whore for the evening.
It is righteous to slay the infidel, the sinner, the unbeliever of Muhammad’s teachings, and all those who have sinned with him.
Khalil picked up his pistol from the reading table next to the chair, cocked the hammer, and concentrated on settling his nerves. He was somewhat irritated with himself that he was having an attack of the jitters, like an anxious schoolboy. But since Alaska, he’d come to have a much better understanding of—and respect for—McGarvey. Osama’s warnings were not overstated, as Khalil had first believed.
If it had not been for the tip from an informant that McGarvey had come to Monaco the day before, he would not have this chance.
The kill tonight would be beautiful.
The situation was beginning to feel wrong to McGarvey.
Too many people knew that he was here. Liese knew, Salman knew, and now even the photographer knew. Not only that, but there’d been no activity aboard Salman’s yacht. No parties. No people on the sundeck other than the one young woman. Yet Salman had the reputation as an international bon vivant. A party boy. According to the press, he never went anywhere without a crowd. Yet here in Monaco he’d been alone.
As the elevator stopped at the second floor and the door started to open, McGarvey drew his pistol, concealing it behind his right leg.
Liese was alarmed. “What is it?” she asked, softly.
No one was in the corridor. Directly across from the elevator was a gilt-framed mirror, beneath which was a Louis XIV table flanked by two chairs. The house phone, plain white without a keypad, was on the table.
“Something’s not right,” McGarvey said. He held the elevator door open with his left hand and stuck his head out, all of his senses alert for
something, anything that might be out of place. He stood in rapt concentration for several seconds. So far as he could see, none of the room doors were ajar, nor was the emergency stairwell door at the end partially open as if someone were standing there ready to take a shot at anyone getting off the elevator.
“Do you think he’s here?” Liese asked. She’d taken her pistol out of her purse. She thumbed the safety catch to the off position.
“Maybe,” McGarvey said. There’d been no one out on the streets tailing him, and yet according to Liese somebody was feeding information back to her boss. Somebody had to be looking over his shoulder. The photographer downstairs could have been a distraction. And the girl at the casino last night with Salman and this morning aboard the yacht could have been a distraction too.
“What do you want to do?”
“Hold the elevator, but keep an eye on the stairwell door,” McGarvey said. “I’ll be just a minute.” He stepped off the elevator and went to the house phone, where he called the concierge.
Liese stood half in and half out of the elevator, holding the door from closing with her hip, her head on a swivel watching the corridor in both directions. Her pistol pointed down and to her right, her trigger finger flat against the trigger guard. Very professional.
The same woman who’d helped McGarvey earlier with the flowers answered the phone. “Concierge.”
“Good evening. I’m Robert Brewster. I received a telephone message this afternoon from Lucerne. Have there been any other messages or telephone calls since that one?”
“I’ll be happy to check for you, Monsieur.”
“Kirk,” Liese called softly to him. “Someone is calling for the elevator.”
“Ignore it,” McGarvey said. A moment later the concierge was back.
“There was one further telephone call, from outside the hotel, at 20:05 but no message was left.”
“Do you know where the call originated from?”
“No, sir. But apparently it was from outside Monaco.”
“Was a name or number given?”
“Malheureusement, non.”
“Merci,”
McGarvey said, and he hung up. Someone had tried to reach
him from a blind number, to talk, or merely to confirm that he was a registered guest of the hotel. But the call had come from outside Monaco less than an hour ago. If it was Khalil and he meant to come here to get revenge for Alaska, he could have been calling from almost anywhere. It was a reasonable assumption, however, that he would not have reached Monaco in such a sort time. If he were planning on a hit, it would probably come in the middle of the night.
Anyone else, such as Katy back home, would have left a message. That it was a blind number that did not show up on the hotel’s telephone system pointed toward Otto or perhaps Adkins at Langley.
It did not point toward Salman, unless the yacht was equipped with the electronics to make blind calls. It was a trick that U.S. intelligence had not seen any evidence of in al-Quaida intercepts.
“Who tried to call you?” Liese asked.
“The hotel doesn’t know, but it came from outside Monaco,” McGarvey said. He dragged one of the armchairs from beside the table across the corridor and placed it in the path of the elevator door. “I don’t want anyone coming up behind us for the moment.”
“Don’t you trust the concierge?” Liese asked.
“I don’t trust anyone,” McGarvey replied, tightly. He’d seen Khalil’s handiwork up close and personal. He knew what the man was capable of doing, because whatever else the man might be, he was very smart and very ruthless.
He nodded toward the end of the corridor. “Check the stairwell,” he said. “I’ll cover you from here. But be careful.”
Liese hurried to the end of the corridor as McGarvey walked three doors to his suite. They had been lucky so far that a housekeeping maid or room-service waiter hadn’t shown up to find two people scurrying around the corridor with guns drawn. But he didn’t expect their luck to hold much longer.
He listened at his door for a sound from within the suite as he watched Liese cautiously approach the stairwell door. He heard nothing. Liese turned the door handle, and keeping to the side, eased the door open a few inches with her foot. She took a quick look, glanced back at McGarvey, then pushed the door the rest of the way open and rolled into the stairwell, leading with her pistol in both hands.
A couple of seconds later she was back, shaking her head as she hurried up the corridor to him. “Someone is below, maybe on the ground floor,” she reported, careful to keep her voice low. “Talking. A man and a woman.”
McGarvey nodded. He was probably being paranoid, but over the years he’d learned to trust his instincts. Larry Danielle, who’d risen to deputy director of the CIA starting out as a young man with the OSS in World War II, had been McGarvey’s mentor in the early days. “A dead field man is an operator who doesn’t listen to his inner voice,” he’d advised. “Develop your instincts, and then, for heaven’s sake, trust them.”
Danielle was long dead, but his words of wisdom were etched in the brain of every field officer he’d ever trained. The live ones.
The door opened inward to the left. McGarvey positioned Liese on the right, ran his key card through the slot, and when the light blinked green, eased the door open just a crack, keeping out of the way to the left.
He waited for a couple of seconds, then shoved the door the rest of the way open.
There was no sound or movement from inside the suite, but alarms were jangling all through McGarvey’s nerves.
Something. He was missing something.
Cloves
. Katy said the one odd thing she clearly remembered about Salman was the odor of the Indian clove cigarettes he smoked. It had been an offhand comment two days before, and now McGarvey thought he was smelling something from within the suite.
Something out of place. Something that hadn’t been there earlier.
Liese gave him a questioning look.
He motioned to her that he was going in and she was to back him up, when he caught a movement outside the French doors. Out on the balcony. A momentary shadow blocking the light from the Place.
The bastard had come after all. He meant to wait in ambush outside, make the kill after McGarvey was in bed or had his back turned to the windows, and then leave before the body was found. After what had happened on the cruise ship and then this morning aboard his yacht, he had lost his stomach for a stand-up fight.
His only mistake was not keeping out of sight. He’d seen the corridor door opened, and when no one came through the door he apparently got spooked.
Liese had her pistol up at the ready, waiting for him to charge into the room.
“He’s out on the balcony,” McGarvey told her in a whisper.
“Did you see him?”
“I saw something. I want you to stay out here in the corridor. If anyone comes through the window, shoot him. But don’t take any chances.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going outside so I can get behind him. I don’t think he’ll want to risk a shootout in plain sight of half of Monte Carlo. I’m betting he’ll try to get past you.”
Liese nodded, a grim, expectant look in her eyes.
“Watch yourself,” McGarvey warned her. “He won’t give you a second chance.”
She nodded again, and McGarvey turned on his heel, sprinted down the corridor to the stairwell door, and took the stairs two at a time to the ground. He had no intention of giving Khalil the chance to escape. The public be damned for the moment. The instant he had a clear ID on the man and a good sight line, he would take his shot.
He safetied his pistol and stuffed it in the waistband of his trousers before he burst out of the stairwell and raced across the busy lobby. Several heads turned his way, and the concierge got to her feet. She started to call out something to him, but he was out the door before she got it out.
Traffic was definitely beginning to pick up. In addition to several taxis and a limousine parked in front of the hotel, a Principality Police cruiser had just pulled up, and four uniformed cops were getting out.
McGarvey slowed his pace to a walk until he was away from the bright lights beneath the entryway. Making sure that he hadn’t been noticed yet, he sprinted the rest of the way down the street until he was just below the balcony outside his room.
The fronds of the palm tree blocked much of his view, but after a moment he spotted a figure crouched in the relative darkness just to the left of the French doors.
McGarvey checked over his shoulder to make sure the cops hadn’t spotted him. But they had gone into the hotel, and for the moment he hadn’t attracted any notice.
He pulled out his pistol, thumbed the safety catch to the off position, and moved closer.
The man on the balcony was motionless. He back was turned to the street. But even with the bad angle and uncertain light, McGarvey began to get the feeling that the man was not Khalil. He was too slightly built. Khalil was much larger.
McGarvey raised his pistol. “You,” he shouted up.
The figure jerked as if he had been startled, and he turned around. All at once, McGarvey could see the cameras hanging by straps around his neck. He was the photographer who’d accosted them in front of the hotel just a few minutes earlier.
It struck him suddenly that the odd smell upstairs was cloves after all. Khalil was in the suite, and the advantage was his because Liese thought he was outside on the balcony.
“Don’t move,” McGarvey shouted to the cameraman, but it was too late.
The man straightened up and stepped directly in front of the French doors. Almost immediately he was thrown forward, as if punched from behind. His chest erupted in a spray of blood, and he was pitched over the rail, shot from behind. But there’d not been the sound of a gunshot. Whoever had fired was using a silencer. It wasn’t Liese.
McGarvey headed back up the street in a dead run even before the cameraman’s body had reached the ground.
Apparently no one in the Place had seen or heard a thing. No one stopped or looked over to where the cameraman had fallen from the second-floor balcony.
McGarvey had made a bad decision leaving Liese alone outside the suite. The smart move would have been to call the police, and make sure that Khalil did not get out of there before the cops came.
But it had become personal aboard the cruise liner. Khalil had murdered innocent people, including the mother and her infant child. And he had laid his hands on Katy.
McGarvey reached the front entrance as two police cruisers, their blue lights flashing, sirens blaring, screeched to a halt.
They were in a big hurry, and McGarvey was getting the feeling that he’d been set up to take a fall. It was probably Gertner’s friends here in Monaco reacting to Liese’s chasing after him.
He pulled up short, stuffed the pistol back into his waistband, and as
calmly as possible walked into the hotel lobby. He couldn’t afford to be stopped now with Liese upstairs on her own. In no way was she a match for Khalil. She might hesitate to take the shot, but Khalil wouldn’t.
The lobby was a scene of confusion. The cops who’d shown up as McGarvey had left the hotel were talking with the concierge and a large man dressed in a dark suit, probably hotel security.
McGarvey tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, angling across to the stairway before someone looked over and recognized him.
There was a sudden commotion at the entry behind him.
“Arrêtez!”
a man shouted.
McGarvey took two more steps as the cops standing with the concierge and security man turned his way.
“Arrêtez”
one of the cops behind him shouted even more urgently.
McGarvey turned and raised his hands in plain sight. Several of the cops had drawn their pistols. Some of the hotel guests and staff, realizing that something dangerous was happening, were scrambling for cover. The situation was on the verge of exploding into an uncontrolled shootout in which innocent people would get hurt.

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