“I hear a but in there.”
“Yes, sir. Having that much military hardware in such close proximity is inherently dangerous. Sooner or later someone will make a mistake, which could touch off a conflict. In this case an exchange of nuclear weapons, even if only theater size, could touch off a much larger regional war. The casualties would be massive.”
“Surely that’s not their intent?” the president asked.
“No, sir,” Koratich said. “But as Bruce said, mistakes will happen sooner or later.”
“The Chinese have sent a delegation to Islamabad. Maybe we should send someone to New Delhi. Or if the situation is already dangerously close to the brink, you might want to telephone Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
“I’ll do both,” Langdon said. He turned again to Ringers. “What’s our military response?”
“If you mean go to a DEFCON 4, I’d advise against it. Not unless you would want a measured response if hostilities actually start.”
“Christ, no,” the president said. After a beat he got to his feet. “Keep me advised,” he said, and he left the room.
* * *
Page was the last to head down the corridor when Fay pulled him aside. “The president would like to have a brief word. We’ll meet him in the Oval Office.”
“I’ve had no update on McGarvey,” Langdon said. “I assume he went to Pakistan. Is he back safely?”
“Yes, sir,” Page said. He went through everything that had happened in Islamabad and at the safe house in Rawalpindi, including McGarvey’s opinion as a former DCI that the current issue over Kashmir was merely saber rattling by President Mamnoon Hussain to appease a population sick of power outages and an economy that was in meltdown.
“Nothing was settled by his going to Pakistan?” the president asked.
“No, sir, except that an ISI major who apparently was the paymaster for the group that has already killed two of the SEAL Team Six operators and their families was himself killed in a shootout.”
“Then it’s over?”
“McGarvey doesn’t think so.”
“What’s next?”
I think he’s going to offer himself up as a lightning rod.”
FIFTY-SIX
KLM Flight 1824 from Berlin landed at Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport a few minutes before five in the afternoon after a ten-and-a-half-hour flight. All but the first class passengers looked shell-shocked.
Ayesha was traveling under a very good British passport that identified her as Suzanne Reynolds from London. She went through customs and immigration with no trouble and headed down to the rental car counters as planned.
Pam was four passengers behind her, traveling under a U.S. passport identifying her as Janice Whittaker from Milwaukee.
“Do you have anything to declare?” the agent asked her, looking at her customs form.
“No,” Pam said, keeping her face straight. It was possible McGarvey had come up with a photo of her, but it wasn’t likely that it would have been distributed to airports here in Canada. Before they had left Berlin she had dyed her hair dark brown and had her passport photo taken wearing glasses.
The immigration officer stared her for several long beats, but then handed back her passport. “Welcome to Canada, ma’am.”
Downstairs Ayesha was waiting near the Hertz counter on the ground floor of the parking garage. She looked nervous. “Was there a problem?”
“No.”
“You were delayed.”
“You should have stayed in Islamabad, if you’re going to act that way. This is the easy part.”
“I’m sticking with my investment. I won’t get in the way.”
“You’re already in the way,” Pam said, and she got in line for a car.
Ayesha’s husband had been made of the same stuff as his wife. He had been the paymaster and he had stuck his nose where it hadn’t belonged because he wanted to be the one in charge. He had made a mistake by coming face-to-face with McGarvey, and it had ended with his death. It had been so stupid. But without his connection to the money there would not have been an operation, a fact he had pointed out to her from the beginning. Now she was stuck with the woman.
Pam looked back at her and smiled. Perhaps the woman would be shot to death in the end after she had made the final payment. Like husband, like wife.
* * *
The car was a Ford Fusion with a full tank of gas. Forty-five minutes after they’d touched down, they were merging with heavy work traffic on Highway 20, heading north toward the Highway 10 Pont Champlain Bridge across the St. Lawrence River that would lead to Highway 15 south, and shortly thereafter the U.S. border and Interstate 87.
“We need to get something perfectly clear before we hit the border,” Pam said. She’d been checking her rearview mirror since they’d left the airport. So far as she could tell they were clean.
“Don’t lecture me,” Ayesha shot back.
“I will and you’ll listen, because our lives depend on it. The guys you met in Berlin are professionals. All of them ex-special forces with the German army. Some of the best badasses in the world, and they won’t stand for any of your rich-girl shit.”
“But I’m the one with the money.”
“Money is important, but they value their lives more. If for one instant they think that you’re leading us down a back alley with no way out, they’ll kill both of us with no compunction and run.”
“I said that I’d stay out of the way.”
“More than that, keep your mouth shut.”
Ayesha turned away for a moment. “Why are you constantly looking in the rearview mirror?”
“Because McGarvey is a sharp bastard, and by now he’s probably guessed that I’m coming after him. In fact he may be counting on it. And I wouldn’t put it past him to have someone looking for me.”
“For us,” Ayesha said quietly. “I’m doing it for my husband; you’re doing it for money.”
“For more than that. Much more.”
* * *
Traffic had thinned out just before the border, which was about fifty-five miles south of Montreal, but then bunched up at the checkpoint. On the Canadian side they had to show their driving licenses and the car rental contract when it was their turn. They were ten cars back.
“Busy today,” Pam said, handing their papers out the window.
“They’re looking for someone,” the border patrol agent said.
“Anyone specific?” Pam asked, hoping that Ayesha wouldn’t panic.
“They’ve been paranoid since 9/11.”
“Can’t blame us.”
The agent looked up and smiled. “I guess not,” he said. He looked at Ayesha. “You okay, ma’am? You look a little green.”
Pam didn’t have a pistol, and they were pretty well stuck here, with no way back and no way forward.
Ayesha smiled weakly. “We just came crossed the Atlantic. Calm flight. But I get airsick no matter what.”
The officer nodded. “My wife’s the same way, and nothing helps.” He handed back their papers, stepped aside, and waved the next car forward.
Pam drove the several yards to the line on the American side. “You did good,” she said. “But you don’t have much to worry about. If they catch you they’ll merely send you back to Pakistan. I’m a different story.”
The wait was nearly a half hour, and the line behind them was long enough that cars were backed up on the Canadian side. When it was their turn at one of the lanes Pam handed their papers out the window to the border agent, while another used a mirror on a long handle to check the undercarriage.
“Open the trunk, please,” the officer said as he looked over their passports and the car rental contract.
Pam opened the trunk and a third officer went around to the back.
“Where were you born?” the officer asked Pam.
“Milwaukee.”
“Still have relatives there?”
“My mom and dad are dead, and I have no b
rothers or sisters. Friends.”
“Where do you work?”
“In the bottling plant at Schafer’s Brewery. It’s on Wisconsin Avenue.”
“What was the purpose of your visit to Canada?”
“Honeymoon. We got married last week.”
The customs officer looked at her, and then at Ayesha, who was embarrassed. After a beat, he handed back their papers. The officer at the rear closed the trunk lid and the one with the mirror stepped aside.
“If your partner is going to live here, she’ll need a green card.”
“Yes, sir,” Pam said and the officer waved them on.
Ayesha started to say something, but Pam held her off until they were well out of sight of the border crossing and on the open interstate.
“We’re partners, so don’t forget it.”
“But why? It’s disgusting, and illegal.”
“Not here, but I wanted to give the asshole something to focus on other than our papers. And it worked.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
They were temporarily bunking at the Renckes’ off-the-grid house on a pleasant street in McClean across the river from Falls Church. The company knew that Otto had his bunker, but no one on campus thought it was such a good idea to go looking for it.
McGarvey had taken Pete over to All Saints Hospital in Georgetown to get her knee looked at. The small facility tucked away on a side street was used to treat wounded intelligence service officers—mostly from the CIA—in secret. Luckily, it was nothing more than a dislocated kneecap that would heal itself in time.
They stopped afterward at their apartments and got fresh clothes, and in McGarvey’s case, his go-to-hell kit of spare Walther and magazines, several sets of IDs, and cash—in case he needed to get out of the country in a hurry.
“You think it could come to that?” Pete had asked.
“If we miss Schlueter I might have to follow her. And there might not be enough time to get my things.”
It was early evening by the time they got back. Louise was doing steaks on the grill in the backyard.
“She does the cooking. I open the beer and wine,” Otto said, grinning.
The weather was pleasant and they sat at a picnic table out on the patio. Otto had taken to smoking cigarettes—three each day—but although Louise was on his case she really didn’t push it. Smoking was bad, but it had replaced his old habits of drinking heavy cream by the quart and eating Twinkies by the dozen. He’d actually slimmed down and looked pretty good.
Mac and Pete slept in separate rooms, Louise’s doing, and no one mentioned anything about it, though everyone, including Mac, felt the tension and the way Pete looked at him.
“There’s been nothing from the Pakistanis about the incident, which isn’t all that surprising considering what they’re facing right now,” Otto said. “So what’s next?”
“The White House and the company are staying out of our way for the moment, and the navy is ignoring the whole problem,” McGarvey said. “All but three of the guys are out of the service, none of them retired, and so far none of them has asked for help.”
“Proud,” Louise said.
“Yeah.”
“Remind you of anyone we know?”
McGarvey was at a loss.
“She means you, Kirk,” Pete said.
He guessed that they were right, but it was neither here nor there. “Schlueter and her team are coming back to finish the job, and I think that the ISI will continue to finance them. And the timing is probably good considering the fact that our focus is on the situation between them and India, especially now with the Chinese involved.”
“Their first target has to be you,” Otto said. “You stopped them once in Norfolk, and you threw a monkey wrench in the works in Islamabad.”
“Right. And I’m going to make it easy for them. I’m going to be right out in the open, so as far as they’re concerned they’ll be getting two for one.”
“We’re going to make it easy for them,” Pete said.
“No.”
“Have Marty fire me and I’ll tag along as a civilian.”
McGarvey started to press his protest, but Louise interrupted.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked. “Something here in Washington where we can control the situation?”
“Norfolk. Greg Rautanen—the Ratman—one of the SEAL Team Six guys. He’s married but they don’t have any children, and right now his wife is living with her sister in Seattle. He’s screwed up, and maybe an alcoholic, and probably on the verge of having his house foreclosed.”
No one had to ask how he’d come by the information, because it was obviously Otto’s doing.
“Why him?” Louise asked, not liking what she was hearing.
“No family close at hand, no friends, no social or neighborhood ties. He’s a lone wolf. If it’s just the two of us, the collateral damage will be minimal—zero if I can help it. And the guy was a SEAL Team Six operator.”
“Okay, so you want them to come after you,” Louise said. “I see that. But first you’d have to advertise where you are. How?”
“Dick Cole.”
“DEVGRU’s chief of staff?” Pete asked.
“Acting chief of staff,” Otto clarified. “There’re some unspecified issues in his file, which means it’s just a temporary assignment until he screws up again, at which time he’ll be dumped. He’s already been passed over twice for his first star, and the third time is the deal breaker.”
Louise was shaking her head. “What good will it do telling him what you’re up to?” she said. But then she suddenly got it. “You think he’s a leak?”
“Schlueter knew too much about my movements,” McGarvey said. “Cole did a stint in the Pentagon, and I’m betting that he still has some contacts over there willing to do him a favor from time to time.”
“Only the CIA knew what was going on. He’d have to have a friend in Operations.”
“Which he doesn’t, as far as I can determine,” Otto said. “I’ve doubled-checked everyone on Marty’s staff who could have had access to that kind of stuff.”
“Another Snowden—maybe a contractor?” Pete asked.
“I don’t know,” McGarvey admitted. “But my first impression in his office was that the guy had some agenda of his own, and he was seriously pissed off at me for coming to him with questions about his ex-wife.”
“I’m sorry, but if that’s a hunch, it’s one of your worst,” Louise said.
“I’ll find out when I talk to him again and tell him what I’m going to do, and why.”
“Which is?” Otto asked.
McGarvey hadn’t told anyone what his plan was, though he suspected that Otto had probably figured it out when he’d been asked to find one of the SEAL Team Six guys who was alone for the moment. And maybe someone who was screwed up and had been written off because of it. None of the guys were homeless yet, but Rautanen was close to becoming so—one of the 25 percent of homeless men who were combat veterans. No one gave a damn about them, not the military in which they had served or a nation for which they had laid their lives on the line.
“I’m going to tell Cole that Schlueter is coming after me, as well as the SEAL Team Six operators, and I’m going to use him as bait.”
Louise took a deep draft of her beer. “Now, why didn’t I think of that,” she said.
Pete was nodding. “I’ll cover your back.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Coming through customs at Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport Felix Volker was in a rare good mood. Today was his thirty-ninth birthday. He was fit, he was going into an op that wasn’t going to be easy—therefore it would be satisfying—and when it was done, he would be a rich man, relatively speaking.
He’d been born to a factory worker father outside of Leipzig in what had been the war-shattered east zone, and a mother who spent her days reading smuggled American movie magazines rather than cook or clean. His two older sisters—dead now for all he cared�
�had taken after their mother and were nasty-tongued slobs who had taught him all about sex, starting when he was about five.
Felix had made his way across the border into the west in the woods south of Lubeck with his uncle Bruno a year before the fall of the wall when he was thirteen. For the next four years he bounced between construction jobs and some state-sponsored welfare programs until he was eighteen and could join the Bundeswehr, where he had been taught to kill with a variety of weapons, including his bare hands, and where he had learned to love the smell of blood and the other bodily fluids that leaked out of a man at the time of his death.
At times, waking in the middle of the night with an erection, he remembered his dreams; they were never about sex, but always about killing. And when he was in the middle of the act of assassination, he always became sexually aroused. Fucking Pam at her tiny apartment had meant nothing more to him than a stylized act of murder.
At the time of his other-than-honorable discharge from the KSK the shrink had recommended that he seek psychiatric help. “You end up killing your family—your father and mother and especially your sisters—over and over again, with nothing to show for it. In the end you will certainly destroy yourself.”
In the end Volker had waited until the army psychiatrist had gone on a skiing holiday with his mistress outside of Munich and had killed them both in their chalet bed in the middle of the night.
The military investigators had questioned him, but in the end they left him alone, figuring that the doctor had probably been murdered by the husband of his mistress, himself a psychiatrist. Nothing ever came of it.
He took a cab to the Royal Hotel in the Zona Rosa, where he had a quick lunch, and then took a cab back out to the airport, where he was dropped off at the Air Canada entrance. When the cab was gone he walked down to the American Airlines counter, where he checked in electronically.
Fifteen minutes later he showed his boarding pass and passport to the security agent and was passed through the electronic scanning devices back into the international terminal.
Walking down to his gate for the flight to Atlanta, his heart rate never rose above fifty—about the same as when he killed someone. It was another aspect of his physiology that had baffled the KSK shrink. Whenever he was in a high-stress situation—on the battlefield or in bed having sex—it was always the same. His heart never worked hard. It was as if he didn’t care. Which he didn’t.
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