The Fourth Horseman (23 page)

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

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

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

“I thought Walt talked to him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks.”

*   *   *

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

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

“I talked to Otto.”

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

“About Dave Haaris?”

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

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

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

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

When he was finished he handed it back without comment.

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

“What makes you so certain he is?”

Pete didn’t answer.

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

“I’ll work something out.”

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

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

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

“Have you tried to contact him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like what?”

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

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

“Don’t try to look down my trail.”

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

Pete wished that she could believe him.

FORTY-TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is she already en route?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is Haaris?” Judith asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

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

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

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

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

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

“But not your cup of tea.”

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

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

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

“Then what?”

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

“The ISI tried to kill me.”

“Because they thought that you were a troublemaker.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

She racked the slide, but the gun was empty.

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

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

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

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

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

“Who the hell are you?” Mac asked.

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

“Good disguise.”

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

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

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

“Gnarly,” he said.

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

“Take the body with you,” he said.

“Will she be missed?”

“She was ISI.”

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

FORTY-THREE

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

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

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