The Fourth Horseman

by David Hagberg

“As soon as Dave Haaris disappears I think the Messiah will show up. But it won’t happen until the staff at the Presidential Palace has been purged of everyone who supported Barazani, including just about everyone in the compound.”

  “It’s not been in the news yet, but the purge has already started. Quietly, but it won’t be long before word of it gets out.”

  “I’m going down to talk to him now.” McGarvey got up and went to the door. “When does our ambassador and his staff leave for Islamabad?”

  “Two days.”

  “You’re a friend of Fay’s. Have him include me in the delegation.”

  “Not a chance they’d take you. And even if they did you’d be recognized the moment you got off the plane.”

  “I’ll be an assistant to the military attaché. Different name, different appearance. No one will recognize me.”

  “Once you’re there, then what?”

  “I’m going to kill the Messiah.”

  * * *

  A haggard-looking Dave Haaris was alone in his office reading a summary report on the developing situation in Islamabad that had been sent down to him from the Watch, when McGarvey was buzzed through.

  “Thanks for coming to see me,” Haaris said. “I want to apologize to you personally for my behavior last night. I wasn’t myself.”

  “No need to apologize to me, but you might want to have a word with the Pakistani ambassador and with your old friend Rajput, who’s filed a formal complaint with the White House.”

  “I’m rather afraid that I’ve lost the ear of the president.”

  “What was the point of confronting Rajput so publicly?” McGarvey asked. “What sort of a reaction were you looking for?”

  Haaris took a moment to answer. “The general has never been a friend of mine, old or new, but I have met with him a sufficient number of times to have made a measure of the man. And there’ve been the odd psych reports, which contained some nuggets. But I didn’t get what I was looking for. Either he’s a better liar than I thought he was or he truly knows nothing about my wife’s assassination.”

  “So now what?”

  “Deborah is being cremated this afternoon, and I’m taking her ashes to London. She thought it would be elegant if her remains were to be spread on the Thames. Actually, she’d always thought it would be both of us. Mine because she thought I wanted to go home, and hers because she wanted to be with me.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Tonight. Since I’m no longer required to be at the White House, I thought I’d see some old friends at the SIS and get their take on the situation. Pass it along to my people here.”

  “What about the Messiah?”

  “What about him?” Haaris asked.

  “The president has asked me to assassinate him.”

  Haaris was taken aback. “How extraordinary.”

  “The same order was given for bin Laden.”

  “I meant how extraordinary that you would tell me such a thing, unless you firmly believe that I’m the Messiah.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Haaris smiled. “Good heavens, you were the director of Central Intelligence once upon a time. Didn’t you learn as DCI that there are more leaks here on Campus than there are in a peasant’s roof?”

  “I could ask you who you heard it from.”

  “I don’t recall, but perhaps it was from Miss Boylan. We had a chat a couple of days ago, she might have mentioned it. I understand that she was involved in an automobile accident this morning. How is she?”

  “Dead,” McGarvey said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  McGarvey went back up to Page’s office, where he briefed the director on his conversation with Haaris.

  “I’ll have Tommy Boyle put a tail on him,” Page said. Boyle was the CIA’s London chief of station and a friend of Haaris’s. “But I don’t understand the part about Miss Boylan.”

  “As long as most everyone thinks she’s dead, she’ll stop being a target,” McGarvey said.

  “If Marty’s in on it he’ll want to use her as an asset.”

  “I don’t want to worry about her, so keep Marty out of it.”

  “I understand how you feel,” Page said. “But she’s a capable field officer who’s proved her worth on more than one occasion. From what I understand she was of some assistance to you in Florida a few days ago.”

  “Have our media people pass it along to the Virginia Highway Patrol. They can make the announcement that one of our officers was killed in a car crash on the parkway. It was an unfortunate accident.”

  “I’ll do it, but you’re the only one who’ll be able to convince her to lie low.”

  “Have you talked to Fay yet?”

  “I was waiting until you spoke with Haaris. You still mean to go through with the president’s request?”

  “Like I said, Walt, I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

  “You understand that this won’t be like the bin Laden op. You’ll be totally on your own. If you’re captured or taken out, we’ll deny your orders. And I got that directly from Kalley. Not in so many words, of course, but her meaning was clear.”

  “I’ll have Otto send up a passport name, photo and number later today or first thing in the morning. You can tell Fay to tell the ambassador that I’m a CIA officer, but I’ll be tagging along purely as an observer.”

  “What about our station staff at the embassy?”

  “I don’t want to interact with them unless it becomes necessary. If this thing goes south I want Austin to stay in the clear.”

  “I suppose if I briefed Carlton he would say that you had finally gone completely out of your mind,” Page said. “And I’d have to agree with him.” Carlton Patterson was a longtime admirer of McGarvey’s.

  “You’re right, so don’t bother him,” McGarvey said.

  “One of these days when you walk out of this office you won’t come back.”

  “You’re almost certainly right about that too. But it’s what I signed up for at the beginning.”

  “Take care of yourself, Mac.”

  * * *

  Otto was in his office monitoring the same feeds from Pakistan that the Watch was receiving when McGarvey showed up.

  “Louise has been bugging me about Pete. How’s she doing?” Louise and Pete had become fast friends over the past couple of years.

  “She’ll be okay. I’m bringing her out here first thing in the morning as soon as Franklin releases her.”

  Otto had to laugh. “Do you think she’s going to stand for it—putting her on ice so you don’t have to worry about the pretty little woman? I can just hear what she’ll say about that move. Even Louise will think you’re nuts.”

  On the feed was the image of a stern-looking man in traditional Punjabi dress, seated behind a desk, the national flag behind him, the translation of what he was saying in a crawl across the bottom of the monitor.

  “Shahidullah Shahid,” Otto said, “official spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. He’s been speaking for the past hour and a half about unity. But it’s not so important who he is but where he is.”

  “Could be anywhere.”

  “The Aiwan,” Otto said. “In fact he’s seated at the president’s desk.”

  “The ISI has finished its purge.”

  “Mostly a bloodless coup so far, except for Barazani.”

  “Any sign of the Messiah?”

  “Not yet, and Shahid hasn’t even mentioned him, at least not by name. But he admits that he’s not the only man in charge of the government. And if Haaris is the Messiah, all we have to do is keep a tight rein on him, which shouldn’t be so tough so long as he stays in Washington.”

  “He’s taking his wife’s ashes to London tonight. Says that she wanted them to be spread on the Thames. Page will have Tommy Boyle put someone on him.”

  “Okay, same difference. As long as we can see him anywhere but Islamabad he won’t be able to get into much mischief.”

&n
bsp; “I need a new ID set—driver’s license, credit cards, passport, family photos, medical insurance card. I don’t want to use ones I’ve already fielded.”

  “By when?”

  “In the morning at the latest. Page is going to get me a slot on Power’s team when they return to Islamabad. Should be tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Everybody knows your face, so we’ll need to change it. Saul Landesberg over in Technical Services is about the best around. I’ll give him the heads-up. When do you want to do it?”

  “Now. I want to see how it plays here first, because if it doesn’t I’ll have to find another way.”

  Otto gave him a long, odd look but picked up the phone and called Technical Services. “Saul, Otto. I have a job for an old friend. But this would have to be totally off the grid. And quick. Like right now.”

  * * *

  Landesberg was a short, slightly built man with thinning fair hair and wide, serious eyes, who seemed to have a perpetual broad smile plastered on his wide face. He’d cleared the two technicians from his small studio before McGarvey and Otto showed up.

  “Judging from Otto’s call, I thought it might be you, Mr. Director, but I didn’t breathe a word to anyone. Where are we off to?”

  McGarvey had never actually met the man, but he’d heard of him. He’d been named by a number of NOCs as the “Artist.”

  “Pakistan, in a couple of days,” McGarvey said.

  “Good Lord, not as a Paki? You’re too damned big.”

  “No, I’m going in with our embassy staff as an observer.”

  “So everyone will know that you work for the CIA but as a wonk, not a spook. An intellectual. An academic. Maybe Harvard or some such on contract to the Intelligence Directorate.”

  He had McGarvey take off his jacket and shirt, and sat him down in a swiveling salon chair in front of a bank of mirrors, some of them reflecting close-up views of McGarvey’s face, neck and upper torso.

  “Do we have a name?” he said, brushing his fingers though McGarvey’s hair. Feeling the structure of his forehead, cheeks, nose, chin. Peering into his eyes.

  “Travis Parks.”

  “Dr. Parks. Cultural anthropology, but only as the first layer of your cover. It’s a subject almost nobody knows anything about. Your real specialty, of course, is government studies. You’re on board to take a close look at what’s really happening in Islamabad. Friend or foe.”

  Landesberg shut off the lights in the mirrors so that they went blank. “We’ll make you a little older, gray at the sides, shorter hair. Do you tolerate contacts?”

  “I don’t want to fuzz out if I’m in the middle of a shooting situation,” McGarvey said.

  “No contacts. Gray green it is. A little broader nose, thicker eyebrows, heavier cheeks, maybe a jutting chin. Sallow complexion. A little sagging of your jowls, a few wrinkles on your neck, same complexion on your chest and back, gray hair. Nothing over the top, but cumulatively the effect should be enough that your own mother wouldn’t recognize you, and yet you’ll have complete mobility.” Landesberg laughed. “Won’t run or fall off. You’ll even be able to take a cozy shower for two.”

  THIRTY

  Haaris never had trouble adjusting to time zone changes. His body clock was on U.S. eastern, where it was one in the morning, while it was six in the morning when he arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport. He’d only napped for an hour or so, but walking through the concourse to Immigration Control he was alert.

  Several international flights had arrived at about the same time and the terminal was very busy; even so he spotted his tail within twenty-five feet of his gate.

  He presented his U.S. passport to the agent at one of the windows.

  “Good morning, Mr. Haaris. What is the purpose of your visit to Great Britain?”

  “I’ve brought my wife’s ashes over, she wanted to be buried here.”

  The uniformed agent looked up, startled. It was an answer she’d not often heard. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. Was she a British citizen?”

  “No. But she loved everything here, especially the countryside in spring and summer.”

  “You might need a permit, sir.”

  “Actually, no, unless you want to scatter them on private property or in a public park.”

  The woman stamped the passport and handed it over. “Do you have friends here?”

  “Yes,” Haaris said, and he pocketed his passport as he moved down the hall to Baggage Claim and Customs.

  Deborah’s ashes were in a small cardboard carton that he had packed into a zippered nylon bag. The only other luggage he’d brought over was a wheeled bag. When it was his turn at one of the counters, he handed over his passport and customs declaration.

  “Anything to claim, sir?” the agent asked. “Tobacco, spirits, plant matter?

  “Only my personal belongings plus my wife’s cremated remains.”

  “May I see?”

  Haaris opened the nylon bag. The box had been sealed in Washington with tape from the funeral parlor. He handed the agent the death certificate.

  “Sorry to do this, sir, hope you understand,” the agent said. He handed the box to another agent, who stepped across to a baggage scanner and ran it through. A few moments later he brought it back.

  The customs agent cleared both bags. Haaris walked out into the main terminal and headed toward the ground transportation exit, where the man in the dark blue blazer and open-collared white shirt who’d tailed him from the gate unobtrusively fell in behind him.

  Just at the doors to the cab queue, Harris suddenly turned and walked up to the agent. “I assume that Tommy Boyle has sent you to watch over me.”

  The CIA officer, caught out, smiled and shrugged. “Mr. Boyle thought you might spot me, sir. But considering what happened to Mrs. Haaris, he thought it might be wise to watch your back.”

  “Good enough. I assume you have a car?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you can save me the cab fare and drive me into town. I’m staying at the Connaught, actually, just around the corner from our embassy.”

  “Yes, sir, I know it.”

  Haaris arched an eyebrow. “You do?”

  Caught out again the young officer could only smile. “I meant to say I know where it is.”

  The officer’s car was a white Ultima, and he was a good driver. The traffic was heavy on the M4 into the city center, and they didn’t speak much except about the weather in London versus Washington.

  At the hotel a uniformed bellman opened the door for Haaris while another opened the boot and took out the two pieces of luggage.

  Haaris looked back through the open door. “Tell Tommy that I’m sorry but I don’t want any company this time around. But if he wants to keep a tail on me, stay out of sight. He’ll understand.”

  The young officer didn’t know what to say.

  Haaris had made reservations for five days in a corner suite, and after check-in he ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon. He took off his jacket and tie and laid them on the bed. When the wine came he sat by the window looking out of one eye down on Mayfair toward Buckingham Palace and out of the other toward the nylon bag with his wife’s remains.

  He’d felt no remorse, killing her. It had been a necessity. Nor had he ever felt any love for her. She had been another necessity for his cover. The union had been perceived as odd by others, which was exactly the sentiment he’d wanted to promote. Looking too closely at something unusual diverted attention from reality.

  Things like that, people’s perceptions of him, were another thing he’d hated about the West—especially Great Britain and even more so the U.S. Narrow-minded, provincial bastards, all of them, who couldn’t see past their own self-perceived superiority. The white man was the world’s salvation. Always had been.

  Of course life wasn’t any better in Pakistan, or India, or China or even the new Russia with its oligarchs. But he’d worked all of his adult life to pit the East against the West. Pakistan against t
he U.S., who was the real enemy, not India. The ISI against the CIA. The man on the street in Rawalpindi or Lahore against the man from West Point or Des Moines.

  It had always been a grand game for him. Revenge. Making England and the ISI the sparring partners for his game was far too tame. But antagonizing the U.S., which still held out hopes that by sending massive amounts of military aid to Islamabad that Pakistan would actually be a moderating influence on the Taliban and the dozens of other terrorist societies in country, was actually sweet.

  Washington had never learned the folly of its ways. The Pentagon supplied bin Laden and al Qaeda with Stinger missiles and other weapons to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan, apparently never really understanding the first principle of blowback. The generals never dreamed, or never wanted to admit, that someday those same Stinger missiles would be used against its own forces.

  Just as they could not see that all the military aid to Pakistan would one day come back and bite them in the arse.

  Payback time was coming, and Haaris had a front-row seat for the most over-the-top game on earth: revenge for all the shit he had taken since his uncle had brought him to England.

  Sitting now drinking his wine he understood that he’d never really considered the possibility that he was insane. Stark raving mad, as one of his teachers at Eton had railed. “All wogs are barking mad. Happens at birth.”

  It was the same when he was eight and nine, and being raped by the older boys. No matter that his grades were in the top 5 percentile, he was a wog. A thing. An object to be used.

  And he’d bided his time.

  He took a shower and changed into a pair of khaki slacks, a light yellow V-neck sweater and a comfortable pair of walking shoes. He arranged for a rental Mini to be brought to the hotel and took the nylon bag with Deb’s ashes downstairs.

  Ten minutes later he drove off, all the way down to Pulham, where he parked in the lee of the Putney railroad bridge and dumped Deborah’s ashes in the river. They floated on the surface and spread out as scum, along with the oil slicks and other industrial flotsam. It was several minutes before the broad patch disappeared downstream.

  One of Boyle’s minders, driving a shiny gray Vauxhall had pulled over fifty yards away, and when Haaris got back in his Mini and drove off the CIA officer pulled in behind him, staying three or four cars behind.