The Fourth Horseman Read online

  For a time Haaris drove around south London as if he were merely trying to escape the memory of tossing his wife’s ashes in the Thames, but then he drove back to the Connaught, where he turned in the car and went up to his suite.

  A man who could have been his twin, dressed in khakis and a yellow V-neck sweater, was sitting on the bed, and when Haaris walked in he got up without a word and walked to the window, where he sat down and poured a glass of champagne.

  Haaris changed into a pair of jeans and a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves that buttoned into place. He left his passport, other IDs and money on the dresser, and without a word left the suite. Taking the service elevator down to the basement level he left the hotel via the loading dock. A dark blue Mercedes S500 with deeply tinted windows was waiting for him, the rear door open.

  He got in, closed the door and the driver headed away.

  THIRTY-ONE

  McGarvey rode with Otto out the back Campus gate at three in the morning, and they drove directly over to Haaris’s house in Embassy Row just off Massachusetts Avenue, in light traffic. They’d managed to get out of the OHB without being spotted by anyone who knew Mac, and the gate guards hadn’t paid much attention to who was driving. Their main brief was to vet everyone coming onto the Campus.

  After Landesberg had finished, around one-thirty, he’d turned on the lights in the big mirrors and swiveled McGarvey’s chair around. The effect was nothing less than stunning, and even for someone who’d used disguises before, a little disorienting.

  “Tamp down your west Kansas drawl, Mr. Director, and your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”

  Otto had gone over to the cafeteria for some coffee and doughnuts, and when he’d come back he’d almost dropped the lot, a large grin animating his face. “You’re a genius, my man,” he’d said to Landesberg.

  “What do you think, Mr. Director?”

  “I have to agree with Otto,” McGarvey said. “It’s me, but it isn’t.”

  “That’s the point.”

  Otto had phoned Louise to meet them at All Saints at seven sharp, and when she’d pressed he told her that he was with Mac on the Pakistani thing.

  Crime scene tape still blocked the front door of Haaris’s place, but not the driveway, when they pulled up. The houses in the neighborhood were all dark, except for the carriage lights out front. And before they’d come around the corner Otto had pulled over and brought up the security systems, including cameras and motion detectors, in every house, shutting them down with a universal password of his own design. The security services would show that the systems were operating as normal, but the view from the eaves-mounted cameras would show only a street with no traffic.

  Otto followed McGarvey around to the rear of the house, where Mac picked the lock to the kitchen hall in under twenty seconds, and they were in. They’d checked with London Station earlier and were assured that Haaris had arrived in the morning, had spread his wife’s ashes in an industrial section of the Thames and had returned to the Connaught, where he remained.

  “Find his computer. I’ll take the master bedroom,” McGarvey said.

  Otto went to the study, while McGarvey found his way to the master suite. The curtains were tightly drawn so he switched on a light in one of the bathrooms.

  The bed had been made up, and Deb Haaris’s walk-in closet, crammed with clothing and maybe two hundred or more pairs of shoes and boots, was a total mess. Clothes were piled on an upholstered chair, lying in heaps on the floor and stuffed in jumbled, sloppily folded piles on the shelves.

  Haaris’s closet, on the other hand, was precisely organized. Slacks were hung in order of color right to left, shirts the same, the fronts all facing left, as were the sport coats and blazers, first, a dozen suits and two tuxedos next. Shoes were on low shelves. Racks held belts and ties; drawers, socks, or underwear. Nothing seemed to be missing.

  McGarvey was not able to find a wall safe or floor safe or any other place to hide something in either closet, in the separate bathrooms or the bedroom itself.

  Otto was just coming out of the study when McGarvey passed through the living room.

  “Anything?”

  “Nada,” Otto said. “He’s a careful man.”

  “What about his computer?”

  “Empty.”

  “Even if he erased the hard drive, you can retrieve some of it, can’t you?”

  “You don’t understand, Mac. His computer is empty. The hard drive is missing as are the RAM chips. Nothing left but a keyboard, screen and hard-frame wiring.”

  McGarvey looked toward the front windows at the neighborhood, still asleep. “He did tell us one thing at least.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s not coming home. At least not soon.”

  * * *

  They stopped at an all-night McDonald’s not too far from the old Columbia Hospital for Women just off Pennsylvania Avenue. A few people were having early morning breakfast and coffee. Several of them were outside smoking at the picnic tables.

  “We’ve come a long ways together, you and I,” Otto said.

  “Yes, we have,” McGarvey said, not really hearing yet what his friend was trying to say.

  “There was a time in France when I didn’t think I was going to make it. No one knew what hacking was all about then, but I was really on the verge of being one of the true assholes. Doing that kind of shit out of pure spite. Boredom, maybe. I was pissed off at the world and really didn’t know why. Then you showed up on my doorstep one day and gave me my purpose.”

  “It was a two-way street. I was having my own troubles then, before Katy and I got back together.”

  “But then the two of you did.”

  “Not for long enough.”

  “But you had each other,” Otto said, looking away momentarily. “I was really jealous of you, until Louise. Mostly because I didn’t understand what it was like to…”

  “To be in love?”

  “Yeah. And here we are again, on the actual brink, you and I. We can’t do it alone, Mac. Never could. Of all people I thought that you would understand most.”

  Suddenly McGarvey understood what his old friend was getting at. “Two things,” he said, maybe a little too sharply. “Don’t write me off just yet, and second of all, leave Pete out of it.”

  Otto managed a smile. “I haven’t on the first, and I won’t on the second.”

  * * *

  Louise was already at All Saints when they arrived. Breakfast was being served to the half-dozen patients on the third and fourth floors, but Franklin hadn’t arrived yet. It was he who signed all release orders. Pete wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how much she protested, until the doctor said so.

  Last night Louise had stopped by Pete’s apartment to pack a couple of bags for at least a few days, maybe as long as a week, on Campus. “If she needs anything else in the interim, I’ll get them,” she told McGarvey.

  She was waiting upstairs in the second-floor visitors’ lounge, watching Good Morning America, when McGarvey and Otto got off the elevator and came down the corridor.

  “Is Pete awake yet?” Otto asked.

  “Awake, dressed and pissed off,” Louise said. “She wants out now.” She turned to McGarvey. “And who are you?”

  McGarvey and Otto exchanged a glance.

  “Travis Parks,” Otto told his wife. “He’s been assigned to act as Pete’s minder.”

  Louise guffawed. “Lots of luck, Parks.”

  McGarvey smiled. “Maybe I can take her by surprise for a change,” he said, reverting to his Kansas drawl.

  Louise’s expression changed by degrees. “My God, it’s you,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes, but I didn’t notice at first.”

  “That’s a good thing,” McGarvey said.

  He went down the hall to Pete’s room. The door was open and he knocked on the frame before he walked in.

  Pete was fully dressed, sitting on the edge of her bed, her breakfast tray untouched. She
looked up. And for just a moment her mouth pursed in irritation, but suddenly she brightened.

  “Kirk, you look worse than I feel.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  McGarvey showed up at Joint Base Andrews in a CIA Cadillac Escalade with civilian plates and was dropped off on the tarmac where a C-32A military VIP transport aircraft was boarding the Islamabad embassy staff for the overnight flight. The twin-engine jet was the military version of the Boeing 757, which the vice president and sometimes even the president used. In this case it was meant as a show of the U.S. commitment to diplomacy with Pakistan.

  A pair of embassy security officers in civilian clothes were checking the passengers according to a boarding list.

  “Travis Parks,” McGarvey told the men. He handed one of them his passport.

  “We understand your mission, Mr. Parks, but Ambassador Powers isn’t particularly pleased that you’re along for the ride,” the officer said. He checked McGarvey’s well-traveled passport closely before handing it back. “Will you be a part of our detail?”

  “I’m just going over as an observer. I’ll try to stay out of everyone’s hair.”

  “Do that,” the officer said.

  Hefting his single bag McGarvey went up the stairs and inside the plane a steward directed him to a rear section of the cabin that contained general business-class seating for thirty-two staffers. Most of the seats were taken and the staffers looked up with curiosity, some with a little animosity as he stowed his bag in an overhead bin and took a seat in the last row across from the galley.

  No one said anything to him, and once he was seated the other passengers went back to their conversations or to their laptops or telephones.

  He phoned Otto. “I’m aboard, but it’s a little frosty.”

  “Powers talked to you yet?”

  “Probably not till we’re airborne.”

  “I suppose it would be stupid of me to tell you not to annoy the man. He could send you back, no matter what Fay has to say about it. When he gets to his embassy he’s the boss.”

  “I’ll go in the front door and right out the back soon as we get there.”

  “To the Presidential Palace?”

  McGarvey had thought quite a bit about what his first moves would be once he got in country. His target was the Messiah, but first getting to General Rajput and the Shahid of the TTP who’d taken up residence in the palace would probably be necessary.

  “What’s the latest on Haaris?”

  “As of an hour ago he was still in London.”

  “In the hotel?”

  “He had lunch at a pub in Notting Hill and then drove down to Charing Cross, where he parked in the station lot, and from what I was just told he’s taking a leisurely stroll along the river. But he’s being very careful with his tradecraft, almost as if he were trying to hide in plain sight even though he’s already been made.”

  “Whatever moves he makes, tell Boyle to stay out of his way.”

  “He already burned one of Boyle’s people at the airport, and in fact had the agent drive him to his hotel.”

  “Whatever happens I want Tommy himself to stay away from Haaris. They’re old friends and I don’t want anything to interfere with Dave’s plans. And tell Boyle that if Haaris makes contact and wants to get together to beg off. I want to give him all the room in the world.”

  “Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, kemo sabe: what if we’re wrong, and Dave Haaris is not the Messiah?”

  “Then we’re wrong. Still leaves the Messiah, whoever the hell he is,” McGarvey said. “Are your programs making any progress identifying the voice?”

  “Sometimes they’re going around in circles. It’s almost as if the speaker disguised his voice that was inputted to the device. Maybe like adding a Southern accent, or an Indian accent, that was then altered. We may get to the false accent he used, but it might not tell us anything we can use. Could be he’s smarter than us.”

  “Or thinks he is.”

  * * *

  They departed around four in the afternoon. The flight plan would take them to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany for refueling, and a layover, before they started their second leg to Islamabad. Touchdown was scheduled for eight in the morning.

  A half hour later a steward came back with the drink cart, and McGarvey was told that there would be no alcohol service on the flight in respect for the Muslim tradition. He had a coffee instead. Still no one else bothered to speak to him or even look his way.

  At six when they were well out over the Atlantic the same steward came back. “Ambassador Powers would like to see you in conference section,” he said.

  McGarvey went forward to where Powers was seated at a small table. No one else was with him, and when the steward withdrew he pulled the curtain.

  The ambassador, unlike his namesake father, was a short, stoop-shouldered man, slight of build. His face was square, his eyes deep-set, and he looked like a scholar, like a professor of history in some Northeastern school. He motioned for McGarvey to sit down.

  “I argued against taking you along. The CIA chief of station is a capable man and runs a very tight operation. We don’t need a rogue operation out of the embassy. Not now, not under the present circumstances.”

  “You mean of course the beheading of Pakistan’s president, the detonation of a nuclear device and the top Taliban terrorist in the Aiwan.”

  Powers was vexed. “Don’t presume to tell me my job, Mr. Parks.”

  “Nor should you try to tell me mine, Mr. Ambassador. We both have difficult assignments.”

  “What exactly is yours?”

  “To observe.”

  “You work for the CIA, therefore in Pakistan you work for Mr. Austin. I want no mistake about that.”

  McGarvey took out his sat phone and called Walt Page’s private number.

  “You can’t use a telephone while we’re in the air,” Powers said.

  McGarvey put it on speakerphone when Page answered.

  “You must be in the air now, and I assume that you’re sitting across from Ambassador Powers, who has read you the riot act.”

  “Something like that. He wants to put me under Austin’s umbrella.”

  “Actually I want your Dr. Parks to leave my delegation as soon as we touch down at Ramstein,” Powers said. “We don’t need another spy just now. Diplomacy is the best defense for a situation that has spun nearly out of control.”

  “I can call John Fay.”

  “Secretary Fay is not in charge on the ground, I am.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Ambassador,” Page said. “I’ll telephone the White House. Dr. Parks is working on a presidential mandate. I’ll call back.”

  Powers sat forward. “For goodness’ sake, wait just a minute now,” he said. “There’s absolutely no reason to take this any further.”

  “I’ll stay out of your way, Mr. Ambassador. You have my word on it,” McGarvey said. “I fact I won’t even be staying at the embassy.”

  “In heaven’s name, where do you expect to go? I need to know what my staff is up to.”

  “I’m not on your staff.”

  Powers blustered for a moment or two.

  “What’s your pleasure, Travis?” Page asked.

  “I think that Ambassador Powers and I will come to an understanding, Mr. Director,” McGarvey said. He ended the call and got up. “I’m just hitching a ride to Islamabad. Once we’re there I’ll disappear. It will give you plausible deniability. You never knew who I was or even why I was on your flight.”

  Before Powers could reply, McGarvey went back to the aft section, where he stopped at the galley to talk to the stewards. He did not raise his voice nor did he whisper.

  “I’ll have a cognac. I think a nice Rémy will do. And with whatever you’re serving I’ll take a split of Dom if you have it, Veuve Clicquot if need be. But it damned well better be cold.”

  McGarvey turned to go.

  “Sir, we have our orders,” one of the stewards said.


  “Am I going to have to shoot you?” He smiled.

  PART

  THREE

  The Operation

  THIRTY-THREE

  The flight to Pakistan went without incident. They were directed to the military side of the airport, where they were met by an honor guard of Pakistani army, air force and navy at strict attention as Ambassador Powers came down the stairs.

  A black Mercedes limo and five white vans were parked at the end of a long red carpet, the drivers also waiting at attention.

  Powers and several of his top aides were met by Prime Minister Rajput, who was dressed in his army uniform.

  No civilians had gathered for the arrival, but the fact that Rajput was in uniform was not lost on one of the men who had been seated just in front of McGarvey. “The general is making his point,” the man said to his seatmate. “Whatever else is going on here between the Messiah and Taliban, the army is still in charge.”

  “They’re the ones with their fingers on the nukes,” McGarvey said, getting up and taking his bag from the overhead bin.

  The two field service officers glared at him as he made his way to the front of the aircraft. Two men whom he’d not noticed earlier were waiting at the main door as others on Powers’s team left the plane.

  The taller of them stepped forward to block McGarvey from leaving. “A word if you please. Dr. Parks. I’m Bob Thomas.”

  “We don’t want any trouble,” the other man said. They were both young and well built, with the no-nonsense attitude of ex–Special Forces.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Mr. Austin asked us to escort you to the embassy, where he’d like to have a word before you leave Pakistan,” Thomas said.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t come out here himself to meet the ambassador. But I suppose he’s a bit busy trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”

  “Are you armed?” the second officer said.

  “I don’t think it’d be very smart for an American to be running around Pakistan without some protection. Unless you guys were sent out to act as my bodyguards.”