“There’s no other choice.”
“Very well, Mr. President. But before we get started I would like that in writing.”
Berndt started to object, but once again the President held him off. This was one administration that did not leave its people hanging in the wind. “It’ll be on your desk first thing in the morning, Roland.” The President gave him a penetrating look. “But I want you to keep in mind what we were faced with here before you think about making any public or historical announcement.”
“Of course.” Murphy closed his briefcase and got to his feet. “Bad business, all of this,” he said. He thought the President had made a poor decision. But then any other decision would have been just as wrong. He knew what McGarvey was going to say about all of this, and for once he had to completely agree with his deputy director of Operations. The politicians had truly screwed up what could have been a successful operation. And now they were faced with a much worse problem; an angry, highly motivated madman with the capability and the willingness to explode a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil.
“We didn’t create the situation, Roland,” the President said. “He did.”
“Yes, sir. But we might be looking at an even bigger problem.”
“What’s that?”
“If he should somehow pull this off — get the bomb here and detonate it — it won’t be the end. It’ll just be the beginning.”
CIA Headquarters
Murphy had served four Presidents, his tenure as DCI by far the longest in the history of the CIA, and during that time he had been a part of every crisis to hit the United States in nearly twenty years. He’d seen it all; from the fallout precipitated by the breakup of the Soviet Union, to the embassy crisis in Iran, the wars in Kuwait, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia and Kosovo, the terrorist attacks against Americans in Africa, Italy, Germany, the Middle East and even here at home against our airline industry; spies from the Walker family to the Bureau’s Robert Hanssen and the CIA’s own Aldrich Ames and a dozen others whose cases never hit the media; downswings and budget restrictions and congressional witch hunts. But there was one thing that never changed, and that was the need for the CIA or some intelligence-gathering organization like it. President Truman’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s famous quote that gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail didn’t apply then, and it certainly didn’t apply now.
Riding in his limousine across the river he thought again about his retirement, something he’d been doing a lot of lately. It wasn’t enough to know how many missiles and tanks and submarines the other country had, you needed to know if they intended to use them, and when and where. That was a job for a much younger, much less cynical man than himself. He’d seen it all, he had the experience, but he was burning. He was finding that there were times when he simply didn’t give a damn.
He didn’t believe that, of course. In twenty years every problem the CIA had solved was immediately followed by ten new ones. For every ten successful operations that never hit the media, there was one failure that was splashed all over the front pages of every newspaper in the country. The CIA screws up again! And they howled for blood, oh, how they howled for blood up on the Hill. Their cries were driven by their constituents and the next election. He was starting to ask himself what kind of howls of protest their constituents would be making if there wasn’t a CIA, and if we were constantly being blindsided because we were too shortsighted to open other gentlemen’s mail?
One segment of the media was sharply critical of the administration for talking to bin Laden. No negotiations with terrorists, they said. Another segment of the media criticized the missile attack on his camp. The U.S. was being a bully again, moving carriers into an intimidating position and attacking a sovereign nation. The administration would weather these storms, previous administrations had, but the real problem was that no one suggested any solutions. Okay, don’t negotiate with terrorists. What then, Murphy asked himself. The critics didn’t say.
Okay, don’t attack the terrorist’s base camp, don’t destroy his weapons, or his will to continue to slaughter innocent civilians. What then? No one was making any real suggestions other than to stop doing whatever it was that pissed off the terrorists in the first place. Dismantle all of our godless institutions, like IBM and General Motors and Microsoft. Take all the money from the billionaires and give it to the poor people. Make it a law that families could not live in big houses and drive fancy cars unless everyone else on the planet could live in a big house and drive a fancy car. Let’s take away all incentives. Don’t use pesticides, or cut trees, or use animal antibiotics, or irradiate food, but make sure that everyone on the planet is fed as well as everyone else on the planet. Get out of Saudi Arabia, get out of Bosnia and Kosovo, give the American Indians back all of their land including Manhattan, spend the entire GNP on welfare programs for the rest of the world. If we have too much because we’re clever enough to have earned it, give it away. Dismantle our army and air force and especially our navy. Give in to every special interest group here and in every other country in the world, because they have rights too. Take the flag down and toss it in the trash.
Murphy’s limousine took the CIA exit off the George Washington Parkway and followed the road up to the main gates. They were passed through without stopping and parked in the back at the DCI’s private entrance. His bodyguard, John Chapin, opened the door for him and escorted him up to the seventh floor.
“You can stand down, John. It’s going to be another late night,” Murphy said at the door to his office.
“Yes, sir,” Chapin said, not surprised. He’d seen the look on the general’s face when he came out of the Oval Office.
Murphy went through the outer office into his own office, his secretary jumping up and trailing behind him. “You’ve had a dozen calls, nothing urgent, the memos are on your desk. Mr. Adkins wanted to speak to you when you returned. And Mrs. Murphy would like to know when to expect you home.”
“Late,” Murphy said, putting his briefcase down and loosening his tie as he went around his desk. He lifted the phone and hit Adkins’s number. “Come on over, Dick, we need to talk.”
His secretary brought him a mug of coffee, black, no sugar, and the briefing book with the afternoon summaries of the news stories from the top fourteen foreign newspapers. “Would you like me to stay for a while?” she asked.
Murphy shook his head. “It’s going to be one of those nights. You might as well go home.”
“I’ll call Mrs. Murphy first.”
“Thanks.”
When she was gone, Murphy turned and looked out the windows at the rolling Virginia countryside. Everything was green and new and fresh. His forty-two-foot Westsail ketch was docked at Annapolis, and he wished that he and Peggy were aboard her now. Cocktails this early evening with a few friends. Maybe find a reasonably quiet spot to anchor a few miles down river. Something on the grill, then to bed with the setting sun and up with the rising sun in the morning. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he could almost smell the sea smells, feel the gentle rocking of the boat.
Dick Adkins, McGarvey’s chief of staff and acting DDO, knocked once and came in. “How’d it go, General?” he asked.
Murphy turned around. “They want us to kill him.” Adkins stopped in midstride. “Just like that?” “With bin Laden dead they feel that his organization will fall apart, and they’ll no longer be a threat.”
“That’s assuming we could get to him in time — if at all.” “Well, we’re going to try to find him as well as the bomb, and hope to God we’re not too late.”
Adkins smiled wryly. “Hell, General, I don’t know what’s going to be worse — tracking down bin Laden again, or telling McGarvey what they want us to do.” “He’ll have plenty to say about it,” Murphy said. “Indeed he will.”
Karachi, Pakistan
The three-wheel Flat delivery truck with prandesh deliveries, ltd. stenciled on its doors raided to a stop in line at the west wharf of the Int
ernational Terminal Customs Center. When it was his turn, the driver, a small man with wide dark eyes, handed a copy of the bill of lading, repair order and temporary customs release form to the uniformed inspector.
As the inspector took the forms back into the customs shed, Kamal Azzabi lit a clove cigarette and nervously drew the sharp smoke deep into his lungs. He had picked up the package and paperwork at a repair shop near the airport. He didn’t know what was in the container, nor did he want to know. His only job was to deliver it to dock 24 west.
No problem, except that he had been paid too much cash, which made him suspicious, and he had been warned not to deviate from the route laid out for him or else someone would come for him and his family.
He’d almost turned down the job, but he needed the money and his mullah had asked him to do it as a personal favor. It was nearly time for afternoon prayers and then supper. That and the monetary windfall was all he could think about. Even the terrific heat didn’t bother him today.
A couple of minutes later the inspector came back with another uniformed officer and a large black dog on a leash. Azzabi tossed his cigarette away, and it was all he could do to keep from pissing in his pants. It was drugs back there. He was suddenly convinced of it, and he was going to jail for the rest of his life. Why else would they have brought out the dog?
He started to get out of the truck to come clean, tell them about the money, when the customs inspector came over.
“Did you pick this up for repairs yourself?” the inspector asked.
Azzabi had no idea what the man was talking about. But he bobbed his head. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, it says on the order that it was you.”
Azzabi stole a glance in the rearview mirror. The dog’s forepaws were on the back of the truck bed and he was sniffing the fiberglass container.
“Is this the same cargo that you picked up from dock 24 yesterday or isn’t it?”
Azzabi bobbed his head again. “Yes, of course it is,” he said. His bladder was very loose.
The customs inspector signed the forms and handed them back. “Okay, you’re clear.”
Azzabi just stared at him for several seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other officer heading back to the customs shed with his dog.
“Is there something wrong with your hearing?” the inspector shouted.
“No, sir,” Azzabi said, and he drove out onto the crowded docks busy with the activities of loading and unloading ships of all sizes, shapes and descriptions, his truck just another delivery van among literally hundreds.
The 694-foot container ship M/V Margo was in the final stages of loading the last of more than two hundred containers on its wide cargo deck when Azzabi went up the boarding ladder and found the load master The huge man glared at him. “What do you want?”
Azzabi handed him the papers. The load master glanced at them, then looked down at the truck. He said something into a walkie-talkie, then signed the receipt, handed it back and walked off, shouting something at two men perched atop the stack of containers towering six high.
By the time Azzabi got back to his truck the package was gone. “Good riddance,” he muttered with relief and drove off, wondering if he should tell his wife the full extent of his windfall or keep a little for himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Chevy Chase
Ahmad sat forward as Kathleen McGarvey’s gunmetal gray Mercedes 560SL convertible came off Laurel Parkway and headed south on Connecticut Avenue toward the city. He got a good look at her as she passed and he was mildly vexed that she did not seem distraught.
The dark blue windowless van with government plates came right behind her. The driver’s eyes slid casually past Bahmad behind the wheel of the Capital City Cleaning van at the stop sign on Kirke Street, and then he was gone in traffic.
“Was that her?” Misha bin Ibrahim asked from the back. He and the other one, Ahmad Aggad, who had come down from Jersey City, were idiots, but they would do as they were told and they were expendable.
“Yes, we’re going in now,” Bahmad said. He waited for a break in traffic then crossed Connecticut Avenue and headed up Laurel Parkway.
Her house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In the two days it had taken Bahmad to arrange for the help, the van and the other equipment they would need, he’d spot-checked the neighborhood and done some phone calling.
On both days Kathleen McGarvey left her house around eleven in the morning and returned between two and three. Presumably she’d gone out to lunch. It was only slightly bothersome that she’d apparently not yet learned about her husband’s death, but things like that often took time, and it might not be something the CIA wanted to make public so soon.
Both days she’d been followed by the same van. None of the databases he’d run the tag numbers through were more specific than to list them as General Accounting Office, which could be anyone. Most likely the CIA for special domestic operations, or even the FBI’s counterespionage division.
He got lucky with his phone calls. The problem was watching her house until the daughter showed up without alerting the woman or her watchdogs. But the house two doors down from Kathleen McGarvey’s would be unoccupied for another two weeks. It was a break. He’d phoned each of the houses on the block and when he’d called the one at 15 Laurel Parkway a recorded announcement was kind enough to inform him that the Wheelers would be out of the country on vacation until July third.
“I don’t understand if we’re going after the daughter, why not watch her apartment?” bin Ibrahim said.
Bahmad glanced at him in the rearview mirror, cowering in the back with the white coveralls. “Because she has moved out and we can’t be certain when she’ll return.”
“How do you know she will come to her mother?”
“She’ll show up here, leave that part to me. Your only responsibility for now is to keep watch for her yellow Volkswagen and call me the instant it shows up.”
“Then we will kill her?”
Bahmad nodded.
“We have no problem with that, brother, but what about afterwards? I do not want to spend the rest of my life rotting in some jail cell.” “Nothing will go wrong,” Bahmad said. “If you follow my orders no one in the neighborhood will even know that anything has happened until we’re long gone the same way we came in. By the time they find this van you’ll be on a plane for London, and once you get there you’ll be in the pipeline on the way home.”
“If I see a clear shot I’m taking it,” Aggad said contentiously. He’d been in the States for five years and he was used to being his own boss.
“You’ll get yourself caught and shot down.”
“No way, man. I’d be long gone before the cops even got the call.”
Bahmad looked at him in the mirror, his expression completely bland. “I’m not talking about the police, Ahmad,” he said softly. “I’m talking about me.”
The two in the back fell silent.
“You will do exactly as you are told if you want to get paid, and if you want to live to spend your money. Do you understand?”
They nodded resentfully. They knew nothing about Bahmad except that he came highly placed in bin Laden’s organization. But in the few hours they’d been with him since he’d picked them up at the Greyhound bus station in Baltimore they’d come to respect if not fear him. He exuded extreme self-confidence and competence. In this business that almost always meant extreme danger to anyone who might cross him.
The neighborhood was quiet when they backed into the driveway of the two-story Tudor. Bahmad keyed the variable frequency garage door opener, and the door came open. He backed the van inside, and while bin Ibrahim and Aggad were unloading their weapons, surveillance equipment and supplies, he defeated the house alarm system and let himself in through the kitchen.
The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. A quick check of all the rooms revealed that the family was truly gone.
“No lights, and stay well back
from all the windows,” Bahmad instructed them. “We’ve done this sort of thing before,” bin Ibrahim said.
“See that you do it well this time,” Bahmad replied. “Use the cell phone to call me as soon as the yellow Volkswagen shows up. The phone is encrypted, so it is safe.”
“How far away will you be?” Aggad asked.
It was a reasonable question. “Twenty minutes, twenty five at the most.”
“Okay, let’s hope it’s soon,” Aggad said glancing toward the living room. “I don’t want to have to deal with snoopy neighbors.”
“No one in this neighborhood has taken any notice that we’re here,” Bahmad assured them. “It’s why we waited until the woman and her bodyguard were gone. Just keep your heads down and your eyes open.”
“Consider it done,” Ibrahim said.
Aboard Gulfstream VC111 EnRoute to the U.S.
“It’ll be good to be home, even if it’s only for a little while,” Thomas Arnette said, returning from the head and dropping into his seat. “I hear you,” McGarvey forced a smile. He felt detached, as if he wasn’t connected to his body, but he had to pull himself together because they weren’t out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.
Arnette, who worked as a case officer for Alien Trumble and now Jeff Cook in Riyadh, had been assigned to stick with McGarvey. He was short, slender and dark with an easy, ingratiating smile that belied his sharp intelligence. He was one of Trumble’s handpicked Arab experts. Each time McGarvey had come awake in the hospital, Arnette had been there. And it was Arnette who had arranged McGarvey’s early release and this flight. “When do you go back?”
Arnette smiled tightly. “I’ll check with the Middle East desk tonight, and then fly back tomorrow. Jeff is going to have his hands full, because it’s going to start getting pretty dicey. There’s anti-American riots just about everywhere, and there’s no telling when they’ll escalate to some real violence.”
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