McGarvey shook hands. “It’s good to be back, Mr. President, but we have a bigger problem now than when we started.”
“Kill bin Laden and our problem is solved,” Berndt said. “Not this time,” McGarvey disagreed. “Why not?”
“Because bin Laden has already left Afghanistan and has gone to ground somewhere. Finding him would take too much time, the bomb is already on its way here.”
“You don’t have any proof of that,” Berndt objected angrily.
“Sit down, Dennis,” the President said, somewhat irritated, and he motioned the others to chairs.
“I’ve already briefed the President and Mr. Berndt on the substance of your briefing this morning,” Kolesnik said. He looked like a linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings, with broad shoulders, a thick neck and a very short haircut. His eyes were penetrating, and seemed to take in everything and everyone in the room all at once. He was not smiling.
“Good, it’ll save us some time,” McGarvey said.
“You’ll get whatever resources you need,” the President assured him. “The military, if you want them. Maybe Dennis is right. If the CIA can find out where bin Laden is hiding we can send the marines in after him. Whatever it takes.”
“The bomb is already on its way here, and he might not even know where it is himself.”
The President looked at McGarvey for a long moment. “I didn’t have much of a choice. As far as we knew you were dead.”
“I understand. But the point is we have a new situation now and we have to deal with it.”
“Well, it certainly would help if we knew the intended target,” Berndt interjected prissily. “Maybe if we kidnapped him we could get some useful information, whether he knows where the thing is or not.”
“We know what he’s going to try to hit,” McGarvey said. “Or at least we’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“What?” the President asked.
“You, Mr. President. And your family.”
“How do you know this?” “You ordered the cruise missiles to his camp and killed his daughter. Now he’s going to try the same thing in retaliation; to kill you and your daughter.”
Berndt started to bluster again, but this time he thought better of it. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the photograph of Deborah Haynes on the desk. She was pretty, with a Siberian cast to her features, but with long, streaming blond hair and innocent eyes. “That’s about what we figured,” Kolesnik said. “But protecting the President and his family will be next to impossible unless they go to a secret location and stay there until we can find and secure the device.”
“It’s something to be considered.”
“No,” the President stated flatly, and before Kolesnik or Ridgeway could object, he went on. “Every President since Kennedy has been faced with the same decision. And they all made the same choice; they stuck it out. If I took your suggestion and headed for the hills there’d be a brand-new cottage industry springing up overnight. If you want a President out of Dodge City, just threaten to kill him and he’ll run. How about congressmen, governors, mayors, hell your next-door neighbors?” The President looked again at his daughter’s picture. “It’s up to us to stop men like bin Laden, and every other lunatic out there who wants to pull us down to their level.” He sat forward. “I made a promise to the American people that if they hired me for this job I would do whatever was necessary to take back the fear, and I’ll be damned if I’ll run.”
“But you can minimize your risks,” Murphy said.
“I appreciate the suggestion, General. But if the device comes in by air and is detonated over the city, say somewhere fairly close to where we’re sitting at this moment, I wouldn’t have much of a chance. Isn’t that correct?”
“If we had five minutes’ warning we could get you and your family downstairs,” Kolesnik countered.
“What about the rest of Washington?” the President asked rhetorically, his voice soft. He shook his head. “This isn’t an assassin’s bullet we’re talking about. Something aimed directly at me alone. We’re talking about an act of terrorism. Something that could kill thousands.”
“That’s right, Mr. President,” Murphy agreed.
“Then it’s up to us to stop them before the bomb gets here.”
“We’ll try. In the meantime you’ll have to curtail your schedule. At least try to make it easier for your people to protect you.”
“No.”
“Goddamnit, Mr. President, we’ll do whatever we can to protect your life, but you’re going to have to help us,” Murphy said sharply. He was the only man in the office who could talk to the President of the United States like that and get away with it.
McGarvey shook his head. “Sorry, General, but the President is right. Cutting back his public appearances won’t make a bit of difference unless he goes all the way and hunkers down in a bomb shelter. It’s up to us to figure out exactly how they mean to hit him and get there first.”
“Is there anyone else in this room who thinks this is crazy except for me?” Berndt asked.
No one answered him.
“The ball is back in your court, McGarvey,” the President said. “What do you suggest?”
“Go on television tonight and tell the country what you’ve told us here.”
“That would get bin Laden’s attention,” Kolesnik said. Obviously he was the only one who understood where McGarvey was coming from.
“It’d be like thumbing our noses at them,” Berndt objected.
“That’s right. It would make bin Laden and his people look like fools. They would have to make the attack, and the sooner the better.”
“You’re looking for them to make a mistake, is that it?” the President asked, “Drive them out into the open, make them take chances that they would not have taken otherwise?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wait a minute,” Berndt broke in. “What are you talking about? What chances?”
McGarvey wanted to smack some sense into the silly bastard. Yet Berndt was very good at his job of advising the President on national security concerns. At least he was unless he was backed into a corner and was in danger of being made to look like a fool. Like now. Then he became an impossible ass.
“If they want to change plans in midstream because of what the President has to say on television tonight, they’ll have to communicate with each other,” Kolesnik explained patiently. “Probably by telephone, which the National Security Agency will be looking for.”
“That’s a little thin, isn’t it?”
“It’d be a start, Mr. Berndt.”
“Like poking around in the dark hoping for a lucky break.”
“That’s right. But there’d be a bunch of very good people out there doing the poking around.”
“I’ll go on television at nine o’clock,” the President said.
“I’ll call Tom Roswell with the heads-up,” Murphy promised. Roswell was head of the NSA headquartered at Fort Meade. “We might know something as early as tomorrow.”
“Good,” the President said. “McGarvey, we’ll try to work with you this time instead of against you.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Too little too late? McGarvey wondered. He and Murphy rose and they shook hands with the President. At the door he turned back. “You might want to consider something else, sir. Explain what happened in the cruise missile attack and apologize for killing his daughter. It’ll probably cause a storm of protest, but you would have taken the high ground.”
“That was my plan. I’m truly sorry that it turned out the way it did, and I’ll say so. But it will have nothing to do with taking the high ground, as you put it.”
It was about what McGarvey hoped the President would say. He and Murphy left the Oval Office and headed back to the west portico.
“He’s a good man,” Murphy said. “Maybe we’ll come out of this in one piece after all.” “As long as Berndt stays out of the mix we might just have a chance.”
Murphy shook
his head. “Not much chance of that, Mac. The man wants to be President.”
Chevy Chase
McGarvey got out to his ex-wife’s house a few minutes before seven. He drove himself in his Nissan Pathfinder despite the risk of his vision going haywire. He figured that he could pull off the side of the road if it happened again, but he wanted to be away from the CIA, if only for this one evening. It was something that was becoming more and more important to him.
A gray Chevy van was parked across the street from Katy’s house. As McGarvey turned the corner he phoned the special operations number that rolled directly over to the van. “This is McGarvey, I’m coming up the block.”
“Gotya, sir,” the security officer said.
“Any activity tonight?”
“It’s been real quiet so far, just a little local traffic is all,” the officer said. “Sir, where’s your driver?”
“I gave him the night off,” McGarvey said, pulling into Kathleen’s driveway. “And I’m putting out the Do Not Disturb sign, so the phones will be off. If you come knocking on my door it better be real important.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer said. McGarvey broke the connection, then switched the cell phone off and laid it on the passenger seat.
The day had been warm, and when Kathleen came to the door she was wearing shorts and a tee shirt, nothing on her feet. Her hair was up in a wrap. A momentary flash of irritation crossed her face, changing immediately to one of relief and concern. She never liked being caught unprepared, especially when it came to her appearance.
“Hi, Katy,” he said, coming in. He kissed her on the cheek, closed the door with his foot, and then took her in his arms and held her very close. She was shivering. “I was worried about you,” she whispered urgently.
“I know. But I’m back now.”
“Elizabeth let the cat out of the bag. She told me where you’d gone and what you were trying to do. Then we heard that something had gone wrong with your chip and I didn’t know what to think.” She studied his face. “You look pale, Kirk. Are you in pain?”
“Some bumps and bruises, but no bullet holes this time,” he said. Kathleen looked worn out. “Can I stay the night?” he asked. “No phones. I even switched off my cell phone, and I told the mounty outside to mind his own business.”
Kathleen smiled. “The boss give you the night off?”
“Something like that,” McGarvey said. “Do you have anything in mind? Or do you want to hold off for a little while to figure out if you really want to get back to being a CIA wife?”
She touched his cheek. “I love your face,” she said. “Fact of the matter is that I never stopped being a CIA wife. But this time I’ll try to be a little less demanding.” She was wearing his mother’s ring, the one he’d given her at Jake’s.
“How about if I fix myself a drink while you go up and take a shower?” McGarvey said. “I’ll shower when you’re done. The President’s going to be on TV at nine, and we want to see him.”
“Is he going to talk about bin Laden and the attack on his camp?”
“He’s going to tell everybody that we missed bin Laden and killed his daughter by mistake. The President’s going to apologize for it.”
Kathleen’s hand went to her mouth. “My God. He’s going to come after us now.”
“The President knows the danger to him and his daughter, and they’re not going to take any chances.”
“I meant us,” Kathleen said. “You and Elizabeth.”
“We’ll get to him first,” McGarvey promised her with more assurance than he felt. “We know what’s coming and we know all about his contacts and networks. Our people are on a worldwide alert, and every law enforcement agency in the country has started an all out manhunt.”
“It didn’t help Alien Trumble and his family, and those other people.”
“This time we know that it’s coming, so he can’t take us by surprise again.”
She reached past him and turned both locks on the door, and then activated the alarm system. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
“She’s still at work. She and Otto are running search programs.”
“Does she know what’s coming our way?”
“Yes.”
Kathleen thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll shut off the upstairs phones, and you can catch the ones down here.” She gave him a wistful look, as if she knew that he wasn’t being completely honest with her, yet wanting to believe that he was. “Why don’t you cut up some onions. We’re having stroganoff, so if you want mushrooms, cut those too.” She smiled. “Unless a DDO is above such mundane household chores.”
“As long as you don’t let it out,” McGarvey said. He patted her on the butt, and headed into the kitchen reasonably at peace for the first time in weeks. The mood wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now the problem of bin Laden would hold.
In the quiet darkness of the night McGarvey went downstairs, got a Coke from the refrigerator and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette by the pool. The sprinklers on the golf course were running, and combined with the clean smell of fresh-mown grass, the evening was perfect.
McGarvey was content. He and Kathleen had always been good together in bed, but tonight their lovemaking had been particularly warm, tender and satisfying. Afterward he had held her in his arms and watched her go to sleep.
The sky to the south was aglow with the lights from Washington, but in the opposite direction, over the golf course, the sky was filled with stars. The night sky was something that he’d not paid much attention to until Afghanistan. They were the same stars, yet here the sky was familiar and friendly, while over there the constellations themselves looked foreign, cold, indifferent, dangerous.
He had to wonder how they could possibly understand each other if even the same sky overhead looked different. Talking with bin Laden in his high mountain cave they had spoken English, and although he understood the meaning of the words that the Saudi terrorist was using, he did not understand what they meant to bin Laden. A common language, but without a common understanding.
There wasn’t even a common understanding about their daughters. It was the one point that McGarvey thought he and bin Laden could connect with. But they might as well have been from different planets, the incident with Mohammed and Sarah on the way up proved that. Yet McGarvey was still certain that if the missile attack had never happened he and bin Laden could have come to some sort of an agreement.
He couldn’t help but think about Sarah and Elizabeth, and compare them. They were both naive in their own way; Sarah about life in the West, and Liz about life with a man. They were both filled with energy. They were stubborn, willful, yet they had warm, giving and loving natures. Had the circumstances of their births been reversed, McGarvey had little doubt that both women would have fit well in their reversed roles.
They were daughters of driven men.
The President had said something about bin Laden’s daughter on television tonight, but for the life of him McGarvey couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Something about terrorism.
He laid his cigarette in the ashtray and glanced to the south, but the lights of Washington had been turned off, or at least lowered. He had to squint to make out the end of the pool. He was sick to his stomach, and suddenly extremely dizzy and weak. He managed to hold onto the edge of the patio table and slump down in a chair, his head spinning so fast to the left that he had to look up to the right in order to stop himself from pitching to the patio bricks.
The night was black, and had become silent except for the sound of his own rapidly beating heart in his ears. Something smelled bad, like the open sewer he’d crossed somewhere — he couldn’t remember where, though he knew that he should be able to.
He lowered his head and gripped the edge of the table so hard that the muscles corded in his right forearm. His breathing was shallow, and for a minute or two he wasn’t even aware of where he was.
Gradually, however, the dizziness and nausea
began to subside, his mind began to clear, he began to smell the grass and water smells, and see the night sky again. But he was left weak and shaken, his heart still pounding.
“Kirk?” Kathleen called from the patio door.
He turned as she came outside, her body clearly outlined beneath the thin material of her nightgown. “Here,” he said, and she came across to him.
“What’s the matter, darling, can’t sleep?” she asked.
“I was thirsty.”
She sat down beside him and laid her hand on his arm. “I was dreaming about Elizabeth, but I don’t remember what it was about except that I woke up.” She looked at his eyes. “You weren’t there and I got scared all over again.”
McGarvey managed a reassuring smile, though he still wasn’t a hundred percent. “I’m here, Katy.” “Well you sound like you’re half-asleep sitting there,” she said. She took his hand. “Come on back to bed. Nobody’s going to call, and I’ve not set the alarm. In the morning I’m going to make bacon and eggs, grits and my mother’s biscuits and gravy. Damn the cholesterol, full speed ahead.”
McGarvey smiled at her. “I love you, Kathleen.” She returned his smile. “Katy,” she corrected.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chevy Chase Country Club
Nothing new had happened until the President’s speech to the nation last night. Elizabeth McGarvey had not come to her mother yet, and the only reason Bahmad could think of was that there had been a delay in releasing the news of her father’s death. The Taliban were often like that. By 8:00 a.m. the sun was already warm, and sitting on the country club’s veranda drinking a cup of coffee before his tee time, Bahmad idly gazed up the eighteenth fairway in the general direction of Kathleen McGarvey’s house, outwardly in perfect control, but inwardly seething. There could be little doubt that bin Laden had seen the President’s broadcast, nor was there any doubt in Bahmad’s mind how the man was reacting. Bin Laden would be filled with an insane rage. He would be beside himself that the President had not only mentioned Sarah by name, but that the United States had killed her. It would be viewed as an act of massive arrogance on the part of a White House that was completely indifferent to the plight of more than sixty percent of the world’s population who lived in poverty. If, as a nation, you had the money to be an active trading partner, or if you had the oil or other natural resources necessary to feed a voracious economy that placed no restrictions on the conspicuous consumption of its citizens, then you could belong to Washington’s elite club. If not, you were nothing but pond scum; interesting under a microscope, but of no consequence in the real world. Bin Laden would want to strike back and do it now rather than stick with their schedule. If he did something foolish it could jeopardize everything, especially their element of surprise.
Joshuas Hammer km-8 Page 33