“It’s spreading from Kabul?”
“Like wildfire,” Arnette said, giving McGarvey a critical look. “Mr. Adkins ordered us to keep you out of the loop until you got back to Langley. It was the doctors’ suggestion, actually. They wanted to give you a little time to mend.” “I don’t know what’s worse, imagination or the truth.”
They were the only passengers aboard the air force VIP jet. The attendant was doing something in the galley, and the door to the flight deck was closed. “It’s a bitch, Mr. McGarvey, but whoever ordered the missile attack ought to be hung. It flat-out didn’t work.” Arnette was Georgia country, and very pragmatic. His type was rare in the CIA, or anywhere else in the government for that matter.
“It didn’t work last time either.”
“But we keep trying. Just like the Energizer Bunny.”
McGarvey laughed, and a sharp stitch of pain grabbed his side. It felt as if his ribs were going to pop out of his body right through his skin. And his head was ready to explode. He winced.
“Are you okay?” Arnette asked, concerned.
Sweat popped out on McGarvey’s brow, but he nodded. “I’ll live, but I have to go to the head.”
“You gonna make it on your own?”
“Unless we hit an air pocket.” McGarvey hauled himself to his feet, spots jumping in front of his eyes. “Trouble is that I’ve spent the last few days flat on my back and I’ve stiffened up a little.”
“That’s not what the docs said.”
McGarvey glanced out the windows. They were finally over the Atlantic, and there was nothing to see. But they’d be in Washington in a few more hours. “Get me another brandy would you, Tom?”
“How about something to eat?”
“Sure. But another drink first.” McGarvey made it back to the head, and when he was inside and had the door locked, his legs began to buckle and he sat down on the toilet lid. He could see the reflection of his face in the mirror above the tiny sink, but the edges were blurry as if something was wrong with the glass. The compartment was getting dark too, but when he looked up at the light fixture he could tell that it was on.
He tried to stand but couldn’t, and he slumped back, his head against the bulkhead. The plane was spinning around and around making him sick to his stomach. The wound in his side ached with a dull throb, and his entire body was drenched in sweat. But the worst was his head, which pounded as if someone had stuck a high-pressure air hose in his ear and was filling up his skull.
The compartment was almost completely dark now, he couldn’t even see his own reflection, but there were flashes of lights behind his eyeballs; lightning streaks across his brain in time with sharp, piercing stabs of deep pain inside his head.
For several seconds it was all he could do just to sit there and hold on, his arm draped over the edge of the sink. But then the episode passed almost as quickly as it had begun. The lights came back on, the plane stopped spinning and the shooting pains inside his head faded. He released the deep breath he’d been holding and let his body sag.
After a minute or so he got up, splashed some cold water on his face, dried off with some paper towels and went out to the main cabin and back to his seat.
“Are you really okay, Mr. McGarvey?” Arnette asked, looking up.
“I’ve felt better, but I don’t have much of a choice here. I’ll have a ton of shit to deal with when I get back.”
“That you will.”
The attendant came back with their drinks. “Dinner will be ready in about a half-hour. Steak and lobster, and I have a nice Nouveau Beaujolais that oughta go down pretty smooth.”
“Sounds good,” Arnette said,
When the attendant was gone, McGarvey started to raise his drink, but something Arnette had said suddenly struck him, and he put the glass down.
“You said that Dick wanted me kept out of the loop while I was in the hospital. What’d you mean? Exactly.”
“They didn’t want you getting upset. Besides, you were mostly out of it on pain killers.”
“You said that our missile strike didn’t work?”
Arnette nodded uncertainly.
“Did bin Laden survive?”
“Yeah,” Arnette said morosely. “There’s not a doubt in anyone’s mind that he’s going to hit back. But when, where and with what is anybody’s guess.”
“Shit,” McGarvey said under his breath. It couldn’t have been worse news. He thought about calling Adkins, but they’d have their hands full over there, and there was nothing he could say or do now that would make any difference. He needed more information, and he needed to be there.
He closed his eyes and willed the airplane to fly faster.
Andrews Air Force Base
McGarvey awoke around 6:30 a.m. with the morning sun blasting in the windows as they turned on final approach to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. For the first few moments he was disoriented, wondering where the hell he was, but then he remembered and his hand went to the tender spot on the side of his head.
Dinner had been fine, but the drinks, especially the wine, had left him with a dull headache and a gummy mouth on top of his other ills.
He sat up and peered out the window. The countryside looked neat and clean, organized and modern compared to Afghanistan. For a little while he allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the moment, something he was rarely able to do. He was always working out scenarios for himself and everyone around him. Very often they were of the worst possible kind. At the fringes of his thoughts now was the question about bin Laden and men of his ilk — the terrorists of the world. Why did they hate us so badly that they wanted to tear all this down while at the same time beating at the gates to get in? It made no sense. But he was being naive, which was especially odd for a man of his experience, and even dangerous for a man in his position. He’d never found an answer to what he considered was a very basic question. Jealousy, he’d always thought, was too easy an answer. It was possibly something that he would never know.
“Good morning,” Arnette said, and McGarvey turned to him.
“Hi.”
“Are you feeling any better?”
McGarvey managed to smile. “I’ll live, but I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. How about you?”
Arnette shook his head. “Oh, I never sleep on airplanes,” he said. “But I usually get a lot of reading done.” He held up a paperback novel.
The flight attendant came back with a glass of orange juice and a couple of pills. “Tylenol Extra Strength,” he said, handing them to McGarvey. “You had a rough night, I figured these might help.”
“Thanks,” McGarvey said. He took the pills and drank the juice. He’d spent a lot of bad nights, but just lately they had piled up.
“Check your belt please, sir, we’ll be on the ground in a couple of minutes.”
“Yeah.” McGarvey thought about the work he was facing, and the probability that they would fail. “Tell the pilot good flight.”
“Yes, sir,” the attendant said, and he went forward to his jump seat.
McGarvey turned back to Arnette. “You might as well ride out to Langley with me.”
“Thanks, but Dave Whittaker said he’d be sending somebody for me, and they’re taking you out to Bethesda, the docs want to check you out.”
“I’ve had enough hospital for this week,” McGarvey grumbled and he looked outside as they came in for a landing. There would be plenty of time for hospitals later. For the moment he had a war to fight, a war that he wasn’t at all sure they could win given the rules they had to fight by.
The Gulfstream taxied past the terminal and parked in an empty hangar. McGarvey got up as the door was opened and the stairs lowered. Several armed air force cops surrounded the airplane even before the engines had spooled completely down. Dick Yemm was waiting with McGarvey’s limousine. It was a beautiful warm morning but muggy after the Afghani desert and mountains. McGarvey shook hands with Arnette while Yemm opened the limo’s re
ar passenger door.
“Are you sure I can’t give you a lift?” McGarvey asked.
“No, sir, my ride’ll be along shortly,” Arnette said. “You know, maybe you should consider leaving the field work to the kids next time.”
“That’s a thought,” McGarvey said. “Thanks for your help.”
“Hey, no sweat. It’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
McGarvey walked over to the limo and shook hands with his driver bodyguard “Welcome home, boss,” Yemm said.
“It’s good to be back, Dick. Let’s see how fast you can get me over to Langley.”
Yemm hesitated for a moment. “We’re supposed to take you over to Bethesda ASAP.”
“Later,” McGarvey said tersely. He ducked down to climb in the back seat and saw Elizabeth sitting in the corner, a big smile on her face.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said in a small voice, her excitement and concern for him barely suppressed.
He was stopped for just a moment. “Hi, Liz,” he said. He got the rest of the way in and grunted with pain. Elizabeth reached out a hand to help him.
“Daddy, what’s the matter?”
“I’m still a little stiff from climbing mountains,” McGarvey said, masking his pain and sudden dizziness. “Thanks for coming out to pick me up. How’s your mother?”
“Happy that you were coming back in one piece,” Elizabeth said looking at him critically to make sure that he was really all right. “I told her to stay home this morning because you’d have to be debriefed. She understood, but she’d like you to call her as soon as you get a chance.”
Yemm got behind the wheel. “How about it, boss, Bethesda or Langley?”
“My office, Dick.”
“They wanted to check you out first,” Elizabeth said.
“The office,” McGarvey repeated to his driver, and as they headed out, he turned his attention back to his daughter. “Okay, sweetheart, what’s the story? We have a problem, it’s written all over your face.”
“Bin Laden survived,” Elizabeth said, girding herself. She’d always hated being the bearer of bad news. Her father’s major fault, in her estimation, was wanting to protect everybody around him no matter what the cost was to his relationship with them, even leaving them. Her biggest problem, by contrast, was wanting to make everybody around her happy while still trying to somehow juggle her fierce independence into the mix. It couldn’t always work that way, and as a child she lied a lot; varnished the truth, as her father would say. But now in the real world in which people could and did get hurt without the absolute truth, that was no longer possible.
“Tom Arnette told me on the way over. He must have left the camp by now. Do we have any idea where he went?”
“He’s probably gone to ground in Khartoum, but we’re not sure yet. Otto’s working with Louise Horn over at NRO.” She smiled a little. “They’re quite a team.”
“Bin Laden’s going to come after us and we’re going to have to be ready for him.”
They passed through the main gate, the air force policeman snapping them a crisp salute, and then got on the Capital Beltway, the morning rush hour traffic horrendous.
“Was it bad over there?” Elizabeth asked.
“We could have had a deal,” McGarvey said heavily. “I think that he’s dying of cancer, and he wanted to make sure that his family would be taken care of.” He shrugged. “But he does know how to run a war, and his people are behind him one hundred percent.”
“I went to school in Switzerland with his daughter, Sarah. What did you think of her?”
“She’s a bright girl—” McGarvey stopped suddenly, realizing that she was trying to tell him something. “What?”
“The NRO got some really good high-angle frames of the camp during the raid and a few minutes on either side of it. We figured that Sarah left the camp about the same time as you did, and maybe she helped escort you part of the way back.”
“Did she get caught in the attack?”
Elizabeth’s lips compressed, and she nodded. “She was killed.” She reached for her father’s hand and squeezed it. “I saw the file photo we have of her and remembered her from that school outside of Bern. She’s younger than me,
and she was only there for a year, but I still remember her because of the bodyguards.” Liz looked away. “Now she’s dead.”
“What’s our confidence level on this?”
“Very high,” Elizabeth said. “We got some very good enhanced images of bin Laden with his daughter’s body in his arms.”
“Christ,” McGarvey said shaking his head. “There’ll be no reasoning with him now.” “It wasn’t your fault,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe he’d still listen to you if you could reach him.”
McGarvey looked at his daughter with a sudden overwhelming love and fear. He’d gotten inside bin Laden’s skin for a few minutes up there in his mountain cave. Or at least he thought he had. But just now, just at this moment, looking at his daughter, he was sure that he really understood bin Laden. Understood a father’s anguish.
“If his people had killed you I wouldn’t listen to him,” McGarvey said softly. “He’s coming after us now with everything he has. And it’s going to hurt.”
Fanaticism is a monster that could tear a society apart, Voltaire wrote two hundred fifty years ago, and it was just as true now as it had been then. “The fanatic is under the influence of a madness which is constantly goading him on.”
A daughter’s death at the hands of the infidels was the ultimate goad.
CIA Headquarters
McGarvey walked into his office a few minutes before eight. His daughter accompanied him. Now that he was back and he had found out about Sarah’s death, he had an unreasoning fear for Elizabeth’s safety even here in the building. His secretary wasn’t here yet, and he had a full plate so he could justify keeping her by his side, even though her job was in Rencke’s section.
He took off the blue jacket the air force had loaned him, tossed it on the couch and went to his desk, which was loaded with memos, telephone messages and mail.
“Get your mother on the phone, would you?” McGarvey asked his daughter. “And then have Otto come up.”
“Do you want some coffee, Dad?” Elizabeth asked, a secret smile on her lips.
“When you get a chance.” McGarvey turned on his computer, and as it was coming on-line he called Adkins’s office next door. “I’m back.”
“You’re supposed to be in the hospital.”
“Thanks, I’m glad to be back too,” McGarvey said with a chuckle. An outside line on his phone console began to blink, and Elizabeth motioned to him that it was her mother. “I want a meeting at eleven in the main auditorium with all our DO and DI department heads, the FBI’s counterterrorism people, INS, State, the DoD, Defense Intelligence, the bomb people over at the aTF.” Doug Brand-the new chief of Interpol — and anyone else you can think of.”
“He’s coming after us.”
“No doubt about it, Dick,” McGarvey said. “As soon as you set that up come on over, we have some work to do.”
“Will do,” Adkins said. “It is good to have you here, Mac, as long as you don’t push yourself.”
“Yeah, right,” McGarvey said. He broke the connection, and before he picked up the outside line he asked Elizabeth to call Dave Whittaker up. Whittaker was the DO’s Area Divisions chief in charge of all the foreign desks at Langley as well as all the Agency’s bases and stations worldwide. He punched the button for the outside line. “Hi, Katy.”
“Welcome home, darling,” Kathleen said. “How are you?” Her voice was soft and wonderful. McGarvey couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m a little battered and bruised, but it’s nothing life threatening, so you can stop worrying about me.” “I worry about you even when you’re in my arms,” Kathleen said. “Are you going to be able to get out of there sometime in the near future?”
“Tonight. And that’s a promise.”
“Shall I wait suppe
r?”
“I might be late.”
Now Kathleen laughed. “What’s new,” she said. “I’ll start something around eight.”
Rencke walked in, his red hair flying all over the place, his eyes red and puffy. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, but he was excited.
“Gotta go, Katy,” McGarvey said. “Love ya.”
“I know,” Kathleen said, and McGarvey broke the connection. He’d never understood that response before, but now he did, and it felt great.
“Oh, wow, Mac, am I ever glad to see you,” Rencke gushed. “Big time.” He hopped from one foot to the other, as he did whenever he was happy.
“I’m glad to see you too, pal,” McGarvey said. “But you look worse than I do. When’s the last time you got any sleep?”
Rencke completely ignored the question. “We’ve wiped out bin Laden’s daughter, and guess what? That makes nun one motivated dude.”
“He’s also very well informed,” McGarvey said. He told Rencke about the meeting with bin Laden in the cave, including the fact they knew all about the GPS chip. “He could have an informer somewhere inside the NRO.”
“Hackers,” Rencke said dreamily. He was making connections. His eyes went to the computer on McGarvey’s side desk. “The Taliban phoned Riyadh Ops and told them to send the C-130 an hour early or not at all,” he said softly. “And when it was taxiing away from the terminal they came after it.” Rencke focused on McGarvey. “Don’t you see, Mac, they were expecting you, and they’d been asked to stop you. By bin Laden. He’s into everything. He has connections everywhere because he’s rich, ya know?”
“We have to stop them from getting into our system,” McGarvey said.
“I’ll work on it,” Rencke replied absently. He came around behind McGarvey’s desk and studied the menu displayed on the computer. “Have you logged in yet?”
“No.”
“Well, if they’re in the system there’s no use letting them know that you’ve survived and that you’re back to work.” Rencke shut off the computer and went back to the front of desk where he stood like a schoolboy who has just done a tough problem on the blackboard. “It might give us a small advantage,” he said.
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