Fallout (35 page)

“Yes, we do.”

“You know where he is,” Luke said, reading her face.

Helen looked at the other FBI agents. “Maybe.”

Crumb asked, “What the hell else could he have in mind? He’s done more damage than any one person has ever done!”

“We’re beginning to believe that San Onofre was part of a much larger plan.”

Crumb asked, “Against the United States?”

“We don’t know. But against somebody.” Helen was fighting with herself about asking them the next question. “What if someone has heard him planning a mission for three days from now that includes carrying laser-guided bombs?”

“What? Where did you get that? You do know where he is!”

“We think so.”

“Where?” Crumb asked, sitting forward.

“Air Force base just outside Karachi.”

“Why don’t you get him?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning anything. Kidnap him. Kill him. Whatever you can do,” Crumb asked. “Hell, I’ll go kill him if you’ll get me onto the base and make me look like a Pakistani for about five damn minutes.”

“He’s not there as Riaz Khan. He’s there as another Major, which is who he probably is.”

“A new identity?”

Helen pondered how much to divulge. “He has resumed his original identity. We think.”

“The whole Riaz Khan thing was fake?”

“Probably.”

“Then how can the Pakistanis say they didn’t know anything about it?”

“The false papers go back several years. Unless they looked into it deeply, they would have no particular way of knowing.”

“But all by—”

“The point is, he is a Major in the Air Force, and is apparently about to do something in the next seventy-two hours with laser-guided bombs. We’re not quite sure what.”

“In Pakistan?” Vlad asked, listening intently.

“We’re not sure.” Helen looked at the chart of the world on the wall next to the board. “Would it be possible to attack an aircraft carrier with laser-guided bombs?”

“Whose?” Luke asked.

“Ours.”

“One of our carriers?” Luke was horrified.

“Yes. Headed toward Pakistan. They were scheduled to conduct a friendly port visit, but now almost certainly won’t—”

“You can hit a carrier with a laser-guided bomb,” Luke said, “but they’d have to be out of their minds to try. They’d never get close enough. If we even suspected they were coming, they wouldn’t have a prayer—”

“Wait a minute,” Vlad said suddenly, jumping up from his chair. He crossed to the back of the room and started looking through a stack of aeronautical charts until he found one of Pakistan. “Where did you say he is right now?” He was practically panting.

“We’re not sure.”

“You said you think you have found him. Where is this person?” Vlad said with a demanding tone.

“At an Air Force base. Near Karachi.”

Vlad unfolded the chart of Pakistan and began searching for Karachi and the surrounding airfields. He brought it to the front of the room and hung it from the special clips over the board.

“What are you thinking?” Luke asked.

“This man is working with big agenda. He did not want to die here because the full mission is not accomplished. Otherwise he would have turned and fought Luke. I have no doubt. It must have killed him to run away. He is going to do something else.”

The others rose to look at the chart over Vlad’s shoulder.

“Like what?” Brian asked, his mind spinning.

“He wanted to demonstrate his anger toward America. You did not support them after we—the Soviet Union—left Afghanistan. They turned to France for submarines and airplanes. But I believe his focus is somewhere else. He is—what do you say?—obsession . . .”

“Obsessed,” Crumb offered.

“Yes, obsessed with India. We have to look at India.” He grabbed a pen, measured three hundred miles from the Air Force base near Karachi, and drew an arc. His eyes darted across the chart until he recognized one area. “Chort!” he exclaimed. “Right here!” he said, pounding his finger into the chart again and again. “The Kakrapar nuclear plant! Here, in Surat! It is three hundred miles southeast of a forward-deployment airfield east of Karachi.” Vlad looked at the others. “He is trying to start a war between Pakistan and India. There is a large group of people in Pakistan that want a war with India more than anything else. They will do anything to achieve it. It is all about Kashmir. About Islam against Hinduism. Do not forget, there are many hard-line Islam with ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan who have been waiting for this moment for years. This is it!” Vlad exclaimed. “We talked about this all the time in Russia. It was big headache with the countries that border Russia on the south.” He was breathing hard, his face full of satisfaction and fear.

“He may be right,” Brian said, nodding as he scratched his head. “He may be completely right.”

Helen asked, “But how can you know all this?”

“I have flown many times with the Indian Air Force. I was part of the team that delivered the MiG-29s from Russia to India when they bought them. I have spent many days in northwestern India training the Indian Air Force pilots to fly the MiG-29. I heard all the stories of the war that will come between Pakistan and India. They both expect it. It is just a matter of when.”

“I need to pass this on to our intelligence people. They will decide whether to pass it on to India or not,” Helen said.

Vlad was already headed toward the door. “This man must be stopped. If they go to war, it will be terrible. India has publicly promised never to use nuclear weapons first, and Pakistan has refused to make the same promise.

“Believe me,” Vlad said. “The Indian Air Force is no match for the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis have more flight hours, they are better trained, and now Khan has been trained by TOPGUN instructors. They will not be able to stop him.”

“India has more airplanes,” Brian reminded Vlad.

“Yes, and poorly trained pilots. Plus the Pakistanis have F-16s and new Mirage aircraft. The Indians fly some MiG-29s, but mostly older MiG-21s and -23s. They often fly them into the ground because of poor maintenance.”

“So what now?” Stamp asked.

“I don’t know,” Vlad answered, assuming a position of leadership. “There isn’t much time. Seventy-two hours from when?” he asked Helen.

“From yesterday.”

“That means we have forty-eight hours,” Luke said. “If we warn India, and they start moving their Air Force, Pakistan will claim it as provocation.”

“Yes, yes, exactly.” Vlad nodded. “They need something much more clever than that.” He looked at Helen and Luke. “Perhaps I could call some people I know. They have certain contacts within the Indian government. They might be able to suggest something.”

Helen looked at him. She studied his face. “Call them.” She then turned to Luke. “One of our most difficult problems, of course, is confirming his identity. Pakistan continues to be outraged at the conduct of its former Air Force officer. We’re not so sure. But we need to identify him. Can you think of anything that would help us?”

“He wouldn’t let us take any pictures . . .”

“So you said. We went over his room for fingerprints. There weren’t any. None. Wiped completely clean. Just like the cars we found in the desert.”

“Fingerprints?” Katherine asked suddenly. “Luke, the vase!”

“What vase?”

“The Indian vase at our house!” She looked at Helen. “It’s an ornamental Paiute vase. He was fascinated by it and picked it up—”

“What is it made of?” one of the other FBI agents asked.

“Clay.”

He looked at Helen, who nodded. “We need to dust your house,” he said to Katherine. “Now.”

Renee opened her eyes to peer at the blue dial of the digital watch she always wore when not trying to look like a Pakistani woman. It was two o’clock in the morning. The knock was unmistakable and insistent. Her heart started to race. She’d never before been bothered at her apartment at night. She quickly reviewed what was in her apartment, what might implicate her in anything, but she knew it was clean. This was just where she slept. It wasn’t where she changed before going out into the city; it wasn’t where she kept her weapons, or her brown contacts, or dirty fingernails. It wasn’t where she wrote down anything in a report, or typed anything that anyone would care about, or had the computer on which she drafted e-mails. She knew she was clean. It was what allowed her to sleep at all.

She wrapped a robe around her nightgown and walked barefoot to the door. She looked through the peephole. “Yes?” she asked, turning on the light. She could see a large man standing at her door, with three others standing behind him.

“Open the door,” he demanded in Urdu.

“What? I don’t understand,” she replied in English.

“Of course you do,” he said, still in Urdu.

“What?” she said, ignoring him.

He switched to English reluctantly. “Open the door, now.”

“Why should I?” she said, implying offense. “It is two o’clock in the morning!”

“Because I have told you to! If you don’t, I will kick it in.”

“And who are you?”

“Internal Security. Open the door immediately!” The ISI. The Pakistani Secret Police, FBI, and CIA all in one.

She took her eye away from the door and looked around the room for some solution. Her chest heaved. She turned back to the door and yelled, “I am an American citizen! You have no right to enter my residence. I will go straight to the ambass—”

He stepped back and kicked.

She jumped back in time to avoid the door that tore away from the cheap frame and burst open.

“Stop!” she screamed. “You can’t do this!”

The man struck her and knocked her down on the floor, her face pressed against the hard tile. He climbed on top of her and pulled her arms behind her. The other three men entered the apartment and began tearing it apart. “You are under arrest for espionage,” the man hissed into her ear, his lips touching her hair. “Did you think we were stupid?” he then yelled, handcuffing her and pulling her to her feet.

The special agents and crime-scene technicians swarmed all over Luke and Katherine’s house: the bathrooms, the kitchen, the living room—everywhere.

Luke stood next to Helen watching as one latex-gloved FBI agent dusted the coffee table in the living room. “He wasn’t even in this room,” Luke told him.

“We do everything,” he replied.

Luke shrugged and spoke to Helen without looking at her. “Think it’s him in Pakistan?”

“We’ll know in just a few minutes.”

“How?”

“Our technician has the other prints with him.”

“Whose?”

She just watched the tech do his work.

Luke realized she wasn’t going to answer. “How’d you get them?” he asked, amazed.

Helen still didn’t reply. She reached for her cell phone, which was vibrating on her belt, and put it to her ear. “Li,” she said.

Luke watched as she frowned, listening to whoever was on the other end.

“Where is he?” She listened intently. “No, don’t wait for me. I’ll never get there in time,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Pick him up now. If you think he’s willing to talk at all, call me, and I’ll be there. . . . No, we’ve got to keep going here. Call me as soon as you bring him in.” She signed off, closed the phone, and replaced it on her hip.

“What’s that about?” Luke asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Is it related to this?”

“The Undersecretary.”

“Where is he?” Luke asked.

She ignored him.

The FBI technician had set up shop on the dining room table. He had cases opened, special lights set up, microscopes, and a laptop computer. The tapes that he’d used to pull fingerprints off the pot were carefully placed on slides to be scanned, digitized, and visually examined. He typed on the keyboard and brought up two images: the fingerprints he’d just taken off the mask and prints from another location that were already stored digitally on his laptop. He examined the two side by side, then adjusted the size of the new print to match the other one, overlaid the new print on the stored print. The correlation was nearly perfect. He didn’t have an entire print from the Paiute pot, but the one they got was 80 percent complete. He glanced at Helen, who was watching him carefully out of the corner of her eye. He put the first slide under the bright light of the double microscope, then put the other next to it in the second slide platform. He examined them together with the double eyepieces.

Luke watched Helen watch the technician. He followed her as she walked across the room, sensing that the technician was almost finished with his analysis.

Helen stood next to him, waiting. He adjusted the focus again, looked at the computer screen, and stood up next to her. She couldn’t stand it. “What do you think?”

“Good enough for comparison.”

“And?”

He studied the two images and did an automated computer comparison to confirm what he’d already concluded. He waited for the program to complete its analysis, then looked at Helen and said ominously, “It’s him.”

“Any doubt?”

“None.”

“That son of a bitch,” Luke said, amazed. “How did he get back to Pakistan?”

Helen nodded. “That is a question we will try to find the answer to one day. However, our current job is to get him. Either to bring him back here for trial or . . . some other option. The other options are not in my area.”

“Well, who is in charge of the other options?” Luke asked.

“That would be the other government agency. The one that begins with a C.”

The image of Khan sitting in Pakistan, safe and sound, was too much. “We don’t have a lot of time,” Luke said.

“Everyone is aware of that.” She dialed a number on her cell phone, a digital phone with some additional buttons Luke had never seen before. While it was ringing, she punched in a series of numbers onto the backlit screen. As soon as a connection was indicated, she hit “send” again, and the numbers were transmitted digitally.

“Was that for him? Did you tell the CIA that you’ve ID’d him?” Luke demanded.

She put the phone back on the clip on her belt and looked at Luke. “You ask a lot of questions.”