Soldier of God (45 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
At that moment McGarvey realized the enormity of the trap he had walked into, because of nothing more than his ego, pitted against that of another man.
Across the street in the CIA’s Boynton Towers safe house, Otto Rencke was on the phone with Elizabeth and Todd, who were racing over from the Saudi Embassy. He had called them the moment Prince Salman had driven up in the Mercedes and gone inside.
None of them knew what it meant, except that there was a very real possibility that he and Khalil were not the same person after all.
“What else is going on over there?” Liz shouted.
Rencke was having trouble grasping how he could have been so wrong. The data he’d gathered had been circumstantial, but there’d been so much of it. There’d been a long-term consistency.
“Nothing,” he said. He’d watched the front of the house through the standard-issue, mil specs, Steiner binoculars he’d drawn from one of the Covert Ops guys, who’d known better than to ask the special projects director any questions.
Except for Prince Salman’s arrival, there had been no activity over there. The window curtains were drawn, and there was no sign of any security guards within the gated area, yet by now the Saudis inside knew that McGarvey had gotten in.
The silence combined with his confusion put him off-balance.
“Have you tried my dad’s cell phone?” Liz asked, and Rencke could hear the traffic noises in the background.
“The Saudis have the building shielded. Nothing will get through.”
“Are you sure he got inside?”
Rencke swung the binoculars to the narrow side street that ran to the rear of the house, but he was unable to see the rear entrance from here. “I’m pretty sure; otherwise he would have come back here by now.”
“Then he’s got some kind of plan to get back out. But he’s been in there too long. I think he needs help.”
“I think so too.”
“Just a minute,” Liz shouted. Todd was saying something to her.
Rencke had loitered at the end of the block, waiting for McGarvey to emerge from the apartment building, and then had come up to keep watch. If something went wrong across the street or if Rencke figured McGarvey was taking too long, he was going to call for help.
“Otto, I need to know if my dad still carries the cigarette lighter my mother gave to him,” Liz said.
Rencke lowered the binoculars. McGarvey had quit smoking several years ago, so he had no need for a flame. But maybe he’d kept Katy’s present. Rencke tried to remember if he’d seen Mac with it recently. Maybe taking it out of his pocket and looking at it. Playing with it. “I think so, Liz, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.”
“That’s good enough,” Liz said. “I didn’t think he’d toss it in a drawer someplace.” She said something away from the phone, her voice muffled, then she came back. “Do you have your laptop with you?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tap into whatever computer controls the electricity over there, just like you did with the embassy?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Rencke said. “Do you want me to shut them off?”
“Yes, but give us five minutes to get over there,” Liz said. “Then call
the fire department; tell them there’s a major blaze and a lot of people are trapped inside and are going to burn to death.”
the fire department; tell them there’s a major blaze and a lot of people are trapped inside and are going to burn to death.”
Rencke caught her idea immediately. She was Mac’s daughter, and she was getting good at seeing into her father’s tradecraft. They were going to send McGarvey a signal that they were here to back him up.
Unless it was already too late.
Khalil stood at the head of the basement stairs, with the Heckler & Koch M8 compact NATO carbine he’d gotten from the security people upstairs in hand. A long silencer was screwed to the end of the barrel. Although he wanted to take the woman with him, there would be a certain symmetry to killing her and her husband together.
What was most vexing, however, was Prince Salman’s barging in. He was going to have to die here today, shot to death by McGarvey. Afterward it would be up to al-Kaseem’s people to clean up the mess.
There were other Prince Salmans in the royal family. Playboys who were willing to fund al-Quaida in the hope that when the Islamic revolution finally hit Saudi Arabia with full force, there would be a place for them in the new government.
As he’d done with Salman, Khalil would change his appearance and time his moves to match those of his new prince. The cover had worked for a very long time, and from the beginning he’d only hoped to have a few years, moving in Salman’s shadow. But he’d picked well, and Western intelligence agencies had inadvertently helped by concentrating on the prince. They had bought into the fiction, and yet had been unable to do much of anything because of Salman’s relationship with the last three White House administrations.
But it had to be done now, before al-Kaseem finally mustered the courage to do something foolish.
“McGarvey,” Khalil called down to the basement. “You must know by now that you have made a mistake. Would you like to make a deal?”
“Thank Allah you’ve finally come,” Prince Salman shouted. “He’s armed with a pistol and a knife.”
Khalil wondered how the fiction had held up for so long with such an idiot. Even more amazing was Salman’s friendship with the past three American presidents. But it was about to end. “Yes, I know, which is why I am making him this offer.”
“I’m listening,” McGarvey said.
“You are a very inventive, persistent man,” Khalil said. “Is Prince Salman unharmed?”
“Yes, so far.”
“Then release him, and I will allow him to leave the building,” Khalil said. “He is an innocent man, of no use to either of us. Although after Monaco he cannot be your friend.”
“He stays,” McGarvey said.
Khalil’s gorge rose. “He’s nothing more than a playboy.”
“At the very least he probably supplies you with money, and you’ve been masking your movements behind his for years. You wanted us to believe that he was a terrorist. The FBI will be interested in him.”
Khalil was momentarily taken aback. How could they know that? Unless Salman had talked about the Trinidad banking connection. All the careful planning was beginning to unravel because of one man. And they were so close to something that would be an even bigger blow to Americans than 9/11. “As you wish, keep him. But you must realize that there is no way out for you. You’re going to die down there.”
“Sorry, pal, but you’ve got it wrong,” McGarvey called from the basement, his voice maddeningly calm. “You’re going to die for what you did in Alaska, and for what you did to my wife down here. And your death won’t be a pleasant one.”
Khalil’s nerves were jumping all over the place. He wanted to open up with the M8 and spray the corridor. Maybe he would get lucky and at least hit one of them with shrapnel. But suddenly a calmness descended upon him like a soothing mist. Al-Kaseem was wrong. McGarvey had no plan. He’d just bulled his way into the building with only one thought in his head: to rescue his wife.
“Just you and me, then,” he said. “You can keep Salman or kill him, whatever you want to do. But at least let your wife leave. I suspect she needs medical attention.”
McGarvey’s wife said something. Although Khalil couldn’t make out the words, he could detect the urgency in her voice.
“You’d have to kill her,” McGarvey said. “At this point you don’t have any choice. She’s seen your face.”
“I give you my word as a Saudi prince that I will allow her to leave this place unharmed—”
McGarvey laughed. “Why don’t you come down here where I can see you? Then we’ll let both of them go.”
“You would shoot me the moment I reached the bottom of the stairs.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” McGarvey said. “I give you my word as an American gentlemen.”
Khalil shivered in anticipation. The killing was going to be very good.
Khalil reached into his pocket for one of the stun grenades he’d gotten from the Security section’s armory, when al-Kaseem hurried down the corridor from the front hall, a determined look on his face. “We heard an explosion, but the monitor is out so we couldn’t see a thing.”
“He’s rescued his wife,” Khalil said. “From her cell. But they won’t get out of the basement alive. And neither will the prince. Now leave me to finish the job.”
“I talked to the deputy ambassador on his cell phone and outlined what was going on over here,” al-Kaseem said.
Khalil smiled inwardly, though he was irritated. He’d always considered al-Kaseem to be at least competent. But the man was buckling under the pressure. Making stupid mistakes. “Was that wise? Talking on an unencrypted line?”
“I didn’t have to go into detail,” al-Kaseem said. “He understands the situation that you have put us in. We won’t participate in another 9/11. The retributions will be much worse.”
“I agree,” Khalil said. “This will be much worse than 9/11. So it’s up to us to clean up this particular mess, no matter whose fault it is.”
“He’s going to speak with Crown Prince Abdullah—”
“Abdullah will not be in for his call. Nor will Prince Bandar.” Khalil was tiring of the arguments. “Nuaimi is to be the scapegoat. His career is dead. And when he returns to Riyadh in the aftermath of the attacks, he will probably be shot. Take care that you do not join him.”
“First you need to get out of this building, and then out of Washington,” al-Kaseem said, angrily. “Take care that I don’t withdraw my support. You would find that your escape would be much more difficult without me.”
Khalil looked at him as a snake might look at a mouse. “Rashid, are you threatening me?”
“I’m trying to talk some sense into you.”
“Leave me to attend to this business, and I will soon be gone.”
“Perhaps I’ll shoot you myself and turn your body and the letters in my safe over to the FBI,” al-Kaseem said. “I could end this madness.”
“Yes, you could,” Khalil said. He casually raised his carbine, thumbed the safety selector to semiautomatic, and squeezed off two rounds, the first catching the intelligence officer in his neck, destroying his windpipe, and the second entering beneath his chin, the round spiraling up into his brain and exiting the back of his head in a spray of blood and tissue.
He looked up at the camera.
“I am in charge for now,”
he said in Arabic.
“Leave me alone and none of you need die.”
“I am in charge for now,”
he said in Arabic.
“Leave me alone and none of you need die.”
He turned back to the stairway. “Listen to me, Mr. McGarvey. It is just us now. There will be no further interference. I’m giving you one last chance to send your wife and Salman out of there. Otherwise all three of you will die.”
Another sharp explosion came from the corridor below.
“McGarvey!” Khalil shouted. He pulled one of the British flash-bang grenades out of his pocket, yanked the pin, and tossed it down the stairs.
Rencke’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he hacked his way into the Potomac Electric Power Company’s mainframe computer on Pennsylvania Avenue. The only way in which to shut off an individual building’s electricity was to physically pull the plug at the meter. With the computer the entire block would have to go down, which would include power to the Boynton Towers and its elevators.
The system controlling the area around the Saudi Embassy, the Watergate Hotel, and the Kennedy Center had been modernized, but the system for most of Georgetown was still of the old style. So although he got in with ease, it took him several minutes to figure out the antiquated system.
He was frustrated with himself not only because of the precious minutes he was wasting chasing after old computer codes, but because he had been so terribly wrong about Khalil and Salman. “Bad, bad, bad dog,” he muttered. He wished his wife were here. She would understand his frustration, and help him through it.
The apartment door burst open, and he heard Liz and Todd racing down the hall, but he was almost there with the right computer line so he didn’t look up.
Suddenly Liz was over his shoulder. “Did you shut it off?” she demanded, out of breath.
Todd grabbed the binoculars and went to the window.
“I’m on it,” Rencke told her.
“Did you call the fire department?”
“Not until I find the right line—” Rencke said. Then it came up: the cross-reference that isolated Scott Place off Thirty-second “I got it. Call them.”
Elizabeth dialed 911. “How long will it take?” she asked Rencke.
“I don’t know. Thirty seconds, maybe longer.”
“Do it,” Liz said. “I want to report a fire,” she told the emergency operator.
Rencke highlighted the line and hit Enter. Soon power to the entire block would shut down; then it would be up to Mac.
“It’s the Middle East Center for Advanced Studies,” Elizabeth said. “Just off Thirty-second Street in Georgetown. Scott Place.” She went over to the window. “Anything yet?” she asked her husband.
“Nothing,” Todd said.
“There’s not much smoke, but there are a lot of people who might be trapped inside, so hurry,” she told the operator. She broke the connection and speed-dialed another number. “Call our guys at the embassy and get them over here,” she told Rencke. “I’m calling the Bureau. And get DC Metro too.”
“I’m on it,” Rencke said. He speed-dialed The Watch, which was the operations center over at Langley. When the shit started hitting the fan, they would need all the help they could get.
And all the witnesses.
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