McGarvey went down the stairs first. Pete, whose knee still bothered her, hobbled after him. She’d refused his arm.
“I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction,” she’d said.
Marty came over to them. “I’m not going to start anything with you two this morning, except to tell you that you’re staying on campus in one of the safe houses. You’ll be debriefed after breakfast, after which it will be decided what the hell to do with you.”
“By you?” Pete asked.
“That will be way above my pay grade, but the White House has been made aware of your little escapade, and no one over there or on the seventh floor is particularly pleased.”
“Has the media gotten hold of it yet?” McGarvey asked. In this case he couldn’t blame the deputy director of operations for being angry. The man was caught between a rock and a hard place.
“Thank God, no. But no one expects that to last much longer.”
“No one’s linked the two dead SEALs with the bin Laden operation?”
“The navy has, of course, but apparently there are some other complications.”
“I expect there have been,” McGarvey said. Captain Cole was one of them, and the SEAL Team Six guys were the other. They were cutting off their noses to spite their faces. It was crazy, and yet Mac could see it from their perspective. They were proud, they were tough, they were DEVGRU operators, the meanest sons of bitches on the planet.
“I hope you’re not going to be difficult tonight. It’s too late and I’m too tired to put up with your shit.”
“We’ll go along for now,” McGarvey said.
“Good,” Bambridge said. “You’ll ride with me. Ms. Boylan will ride in the second car.”
“No. And we won’t be separated at the safe house.”
Bambridge’s anger immediately deepened. “I don’t want to force the issue, goddamnit.”
“No, you don’t, Marty. And neither do we. We’ll sit still for the debriefing, and then we’ll get out of the company’s way. But you have to know that the problem hasn’t gone away, even though I was personally responsible for the deaths of an ISI officer and three of the four dacoits he’d hired to kill Pete and me. That was after they’d kidnapped her and tried to rape her.”
“I killed the bastard,” Pete said.
Bambridge shook his head. “God save us all,” he said. “Backseat in my car for the both of you.”
One of the security officers opened the door for them. “Welcome back, Mr. Director. Rough op?”
“It had its moments. Davis?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How are your wife and son?”
“Just fine, sir. Thanks for asking. But we’ve added a girl.”
“Congratulations.”
“Jesus,” Bambridge muttered.
* * *
The safe house, one of several on campus, had once been someone’s home out in the Virginia woods just up the hill from the Potomac. Three bedrooms upstairs under low-hanging eaves, and downstairs a kitchen, living room, and the dining room, which had been converted into a soft interrogation or debriefing conference space, with a table for six. A flip of the light switch turned on an electronic suite of equipment: everything said or done in the room was recorded by six cameras and several sensitive microphones mounted in full view on the walls and ceiling. In addition, body temperatures of everyone in the room were continuously monitored, as were facial expressions, which were measured against a series of parameters that Otto had designed to detect stress. The equipment was more reliable than a lie detector apparatus.
The entire house was in a Faraday cage—wire mesh inside the walls and ceiling that made cell phones or any sort of Wi-Fi equipment useless.
They had been left alone, on their word that they wouldn’t run off. Shortly after dawn a company chef came over and fixed them coffee and a full breakfast of eggs Benedict, hash browns, and orange juice.
Toiletries and fresh clothes in their sizes had been brought over—jeans, polo shirts, and underwear.
At eight sharp, Bambridge, along with Pete’s former partner, Dan Green, showed up. As a team they had been the CIA’s most effective interrogators, until she had been bounced over to the National Clandestine Service. She hadn’t been given a field assignment after she had joined forces with McGarvey a couple of years ago on an operation here in the Washington area. For that reason, among others, she’d been out of favor with the DDO.
Green who was a short little man, under five feet, with a head too large for his slight body, and wide, soft brown eyes that seemed to understand and completely sympathize with everyone, came into the front hall with a big smile. He and Pete embraced.
“I heard that you and Mr. McGarvey were back in town and I had to come over to at least say hi,” he said.
“I’m glad it’s you,” Pete said. “We can get this over with in an hour.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Bambridge said.
“Ms. Boylan doesn’t know how to lie, sir,” Green said.
The four of them went into the dining room, and Bambridge made a show of flipping the switch. When they were settled around the table, Green began.
“Mr. McGarvey, let’s start, shall we, with a simple narrative outline of the facts, the times and places, the casualties, the circumstances. The to-and-fro details. We’ll fill in the blanks later, if you don’t mind.”
“It didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to,” McGarvey said.
“These sorts of things never do, do they?”
McGarvey ran through everything, including the business in Norfolk and the interrogation of Steffen Engel, which led them to Pakistan and the business at Naisir’s safe house. It took less than ten minutes.
Bambridge was obviously uncomfortable, but he kept his agitation to himself and said nothing.
“Anything to add or subtract?” Green asked Pete.
“Only that the bastard major ordered one of his goons to rape me. But I killed him instead.” She looked pointedly at Bambridge. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in the ISI’s playbook.”
“And the major’s wife and the German terrorist, Pamela Schlueter?”
“They’re at large,” McGarvey said.
Green turned to Bambridge. “I’m finished, sir.”
“I have a few more questions,” the DDO said.
“They are telling the truth.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Yes, sir, I can,” Green said. They all got up and Green and Pete embraced again. “You were limping. Are you okay?”
“I banged up my knee a little, nothing serious,” Pete said. “May and the kids are fine?”
Green smiled. “Do you have any idea what an orthodontist charges for braces?”
“Not a clue.”
“Don’t ask,” Green said. He shook hands with McGarvey. “Good to see you again, sir. And good hunting.”
FIFTY-ONE
Bambridge drove McGarvey and Pete over to the Old Headquarters Building, busy with the morning shift arriving, and upstairs they went to the director’s seventh-floor office. Walt Page and Carleton Patterson were waiting for them and Otto breezed in a moment later.
“Am I late?” he asked.
“No,” Page said and he directed them to have a seat. His expression was even sterner this morning than normal. His was a banker’s face in the middle of a financial meltdown.
McGarvey and Otto had talked at length over the Atlantic last night about the situation here, the only puzzle being the assassination of Wolf at the hands of some unknown gunman. The biggest question of all was the BND’s reluctance to find out why he’d been killed. Apparently he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was robbed and his car stolen. The stripped VW Jetta was found the same day in an industrial section of Berlin. Case closed.
It was their relationship with Pakistan—similar to that of Washington’s. The ongoing fight against the Taliban was primary: all other considerations were off the table.
“
We’re in a difficult situation, for which I’m expected to give some advice to the president as quickly as possible,” Page said. “The fact of the matter is I have nothing of value to tell him.”
“The situation with the attacks on SEAL Team Six team is not over,” McGarvey said, but Page raised a hand.
“If you’re right about that, which you very well may be, it’s not the situation I’m talking about. Pakistan and India have been rattling sabers over the past twenty-four hours. As of early this morning our surveillance satellites detected the activation of missile installations along the border with Kashmir. Pakistan’s Ra’ad ALCMs and India’s new Nirbhays, both of which are nuclear-tipped, are at the ready or will be very soon.”
“It’s happened before,” McGarvey said. “And you can’t tell me that we had anything to do with the escalation.”
“It can’t have helped,” Bambridge told Page. “I assume that you’ve had the time to read the transcript of their debriefing this morning.”
“Yes,” Page said.
“And so have I,” Patterson said. “Nothing in it would indicate some flash point being crossed, though their actions at this time, as Marty suggested, could not have helped. A gun battle between an ISI major and his wife, plus another woman, and the former director of this agency and one of our current employees was a political slap against President Mamnoon Hussain. The fact that you entered Pakistan under false passports—diplomatic passports—was another serious slap against this agency and the White House.”
“The president’s national security adviser knew the score,” McGarvey said, though he didn’t know why he was defending himself.
“Yes, and he told you that you would be on your own,” Page said. He was angry. “But not that you would drag along Ms. Boylan, not that you would use our assets on the ground, or borrow one of our Gulfstreams and crew to pick you up in London.”
“That was my doing, Mr. Director,” Otto said.
“That’s beside the point. Our Islamabad station is in shambles and Don Simmons has threatened to resign just when we need him the most.”
“Did Milt Thomas get out?”
Page was vexed. “Yes. He managed to make it overland just outside Peshawar, where an army helicopter picked him up and flew him across the border to Jalalabad. Also a consequence of the mess you created. As it was they made it across the border minutes before a pair of Pakistani fighter jets showed up.”
“He’s a good man. None of it was his fault.”
“No,” Page said sharply. “Yours.”
“Yes,” McGarvey said, suddenly sick to death with all the bullshit. Page was a good man, but he was too caught up in the political consequences of dealing with a crisis—not of his making, or of anyone else’s in his office—that he had lost sight of the reality of the situation.
“That’s a refreshing change,” Bambridge said.
“The saber rattling between Pakistan and India is just that. Showmanship for their electorates. Pakistan’s president is under a lot of pressure because the country is falling apart. Their financial structure is crumbling, electricity is a major problem even in the bigger cities—Islamabad included—and although we’re winning the war against the Taliban, a sufficient percentage of his electorate support the terrorists to the extent that they resent our drone strikes. So what’s a beleaguered head of state supposed to do? Fix the problems? Impossible in the short run. So he does the next best—shift the focus elsewhere.”
No one said anything.
“I sat in your chair, Walt, and I didn’t much like it,” McGarvey continued. “Tell the president what you know and leave the speculation to someone else. This is the Central Intelligence Agency—not the Central Second-Guessing Agency. Leave that to the national intelligence director; she seems to be good at it.”
“So where does that leave you at this point?” Page asked.
“Has there been any direct response from anyone in Pakistan about what went down?”
“None. Pat Garrick assured me that there’ve been no phone calls or e-mails in the past thirty-six hours concerning the—incident.” Air Force Lieutenant General Patrick Garrick was director of the National Security Agency, which monitored just about everything electronic just about everywhere.
“About what I expected.”
“John wants to have a chat with you.” John Fay was the president’s national security adviser.
“I’m not going to have the time,” McGarvey said, and he got to his feet. “If there’s nothing else, Mr. Director?”
Bambridge was pissed off, but Page held him off. “Tell me that you’re not going back to Pakistan.”
“I’m staying here. They’re coming to me.”
“You’re convinced that the attacks against the SEAL Team Six will continue?” Patterson said. “Even though they know that you have become personally involved?”
“I think so. Partly because they believe that neither the CIA, the FBI, nor the ONI are willing to get involved.”
“Could be the two murders are isolated incidents?”
“No,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to need Ms. Boylan and Otto.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Bambridge said.
“Try to stop me, sir, and I’ll resign,” Pete said, getting up.
Otto was grinning ear to ear as he got to his feet. “You wouldn’t want me to resign. Be your worst nightmare.”
“You’re convinced the threat is real?” Page asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“What next, then?” Patterson asked.
“We’re going to try to save these guys from themselves.”
FIFTY-TWO
Page’s advice to Bambridge was to stay out of McGarvey’s way. And after his DDO was gone, he asked Patterson to remain. “I’d like an extra set of ears.”
“Do you think he’ll take your call?”
“Won’t hurt to try,” Page said, not at all surprised that the company’s general counsel had suspected what was coming next. “We’ve talked before. Unofficially.”
Patterson nodded.
Page phoned the ISI’s director general on an unofficial private line. It was a little past four in the afternoon in Islamabad, and the call was answered on the second ring.
“Good afternoon, Tariq. I hope that your day was not as difficult as mine has started out to be.”
“Good morning, Walter. My day has been interesting, but then it is an expected part of positions men like us manage to get ourselves into.”
“How are Maryam, and your children and grandchildren? In good health, I hope?”
“Yes, of course, thank you for asking. But I don’t spend as much time with my wife these days as I would like; she is almost always with our daughter and the two babies.”
“She must be in her glory.”
“And Betty is well?”
“Yes, I’ll send her your regards.”
“Please do,” Bhutani said. “What is on your mind, my friend?”
“The developing situation in Kashmir. It has us concerned.”
“It has been a running debate for some years now; you know this as well as anyone. But I can assure you that there will not be a war any time soon.”
“I thought not.”
The line was silent for several beats, until Bhutani came back. “Kashmir is not the reason you telephoned. What is on your mind, Walter?”
“The recent trouble in Rawalpindi. I’ve been told that one of your officers had been shot to death in some altercation.”
Bhutani chuckled. “I must congratulate your Mr. Simmons and his agents for their fast work. Our Federal Investigation Agency is conducting an independent inquiry. The first reports I’ve seen indicate that Major Naisir was gunned down by bandits. We call them dacoits. Very probably hired by enemies of the major’s wife. Her family is wealthy, and wealth always attracts its adversaries. I’m told that there have been incidents of the same nature in the past, and unfortunately there may be others in the future.”
“What concern is the death of one of my junior officers to the CIA?”
“We were trying to track the whereabouts of one of our citizens—Indian-born—who we think might be dealing in arms smuggling to the Taliban fighters on the border. We traced him as far as a hotel there in Islamabad, and perhaps he was in Rawalpindi on the day of the shooting. I was hoping that if he was involved, you would let us know.”
“Yes, we too are investigating this man. Poorvaj Chopra. He has disappeared, and it may be possible that he was involved, but there have been no witnesses.”
“If an American citizen was involved, then you have my apologies, and a promise that I’ll do everything within my power to see that it does not happen again.”
“But then it is an internal problem, one that we will handle. Once he is arrested, he will be placed under the jurisdiction of our legal system.”
“If he were to reach our embassy, however, he would be placed under arrest, and I would hope that he could be brought back to the United States to stand trial.”
“That would be a matter for our governments to decide,” Bhutani said.
“Of course.”
“Is there anything else that we need to discuss?”
“No, but thank you for your assurance on the situation in Kashmir. May I pass it along to the White House?”
Bhutani hesitated for just a beat. “Merely as my opinion, Walter. My job, like yours, is merely to gather information and offer advice. Whether our governments actually take such advice is another matter.”
“I understand, Tariq. A pleasure talking with you.”
“Likewise,” Bhutani said, and he rang off.
“He knows that Chopra does not exist,” Patterson said. “I could hear it in his voice. It’s very difficult to lie in a language other than your own.”
“But he didn’t name McGarvey.”
“It would not have accomplished a thing, except to admit that there might be something to the story that Pakistan is financing an operation against SEAL Team Six.”
“Even the White House and the navy can’t accept it, because of Pakistan’s tacit acceptance of our drone strikes, and now because of Kashmir. The situation is too incredibly delicate.”
Retribution (9781429922593) Page 23