The Fourth Horseman Read online

  Pete had to laugh. It was an old tradecraft trick; give them something so glaring that it would direct their attention elsewhere. A NOC, non-official cover agent, would never travel into badland with such an outrageous ID—therefore the ID had to be legitimate.

  In the kitchen, Louise put on the coffee, and Pete sat at the counter.

  “You haven’t asked what I’ll do if the guy is an imposter,” Pete said.

  “It’d mean that Dave is almost certainly the Messiah. You’d have to prevent the stand-in from warning him.” Louise turned around. “You were an interrogator before you were a field officer. Do you think that you can do whatever is needed if the situation arises?”

  Pete had thought about just that possibility. Mac had once explained to her that the thought of killing someone, anyone, was opposite of everything he was and everything he stood for. But the people he had eliminated were bad, many of them beyond any sort of redemption or even incarceration. If he hadn’t pulled the trigger, other very bad things would surely have happened.

  “I have to look at it like a soldier on the battlefield,” he’d said. “For every life I take I have to figure that I’ve saved ten, maybe fifty, maybe even one hundred or more innocent lives.”

  “Haven’t you been afraid of making a mistake?” Pete asked. At that time she’d been in the process of falling in love with him, and she wanted to know everything. Some of her questions had been reckless. But he’d taken them in his stride.

  “All the time,” he’d answered.

  Admitting something like that had to have been hard for him, but he’d explained another time that in the business, partners had to be completely honest with each other. No secrets whatsoever. By then she had been head-over-heels and the only word of his that had really registered was partners.

  “I’ll see when the time comes,” she answered Louise. “But first I’ll have a couple of questions for him.”

  “Like I said, keep your ass down.”

  * * *

  At first light Louise drove Pete out to Dulles, weekday traffic already building on the Beltway. On the way she phoned Otto, who had spent the night in his office.

  “We’re on the way to the airport. Have you had any word from Mac?”

  “He’s at a news conference with Powers and Rajput,” Otto said. “Are you on speakerphone?”

  “I can hear you,” Pete said. “How did he sound?”

  “Fine, but he doesn’t know that you’re on your way to London.”

  “Anything new from Boyle’s people?”

  “They’re wary of the guy, so they haven’t been crowding him.”

  “Someone should have gotten close enough for a positive ID. Maybe a telephoto lens?”

  “Boyle says Haaris’s tradecraft is too good for something like that. And anyway, they’re one hundred percent sure that it’s him.”

  “Christ,” Pete said.

  “It’s the reason for you going to have a look for yourself. Mac needs to know what’s coming his way—what might already be gaining on him. But watch yourself, Pete. The ISI is playing for very big chips.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  McGarvey had to show his passport before he was given his press credentials for the news conference. When he got to the main briefing room an aide to President Rajput had just come to the podium. The hall was filled to capacity with more than one hundred journalists seated and perhaps a dozen or more standing at the back.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” the aide said. His English was as crisp as his Western-cut suit.

  A woman with short, unkempt blond hair standing next to McGarvey wore an ABC pass on a lanyard around her neck. She glanced at Mac’s pass, and her eyes narrowed. “Dr. Parks,” she said in a low voice. “I’m a bit surprised to see you here. I would have thought they’d turn you away at the door.”

  “Freedom of the press.”

  The woman chuckled. “I read a few of your overnight blog posts about the situation here. Pakistan’s new prime minister is no friend of the U.S. and neither is the Messiah—who probably is nothing more than a stooge of the ISI.”

  “Well?”

  “All I can say is you’ve got balls showing up in Pakistan, let alone here.” She looked at the PM’s aide. “If they spot you this’ll be interesting.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Prime Minister Hasan Rajput and the Honorable Donald Suthland Powers, ambassador from the United States.”

  The journalists applauded briefly as Rajput and Powers strode into the room and took their places at podiums placed only a few feet apart. Rajput spoke first.

  “I’ll make just a brief statement, after which Mr. Powers will have a few comments, at which time we’ll open the floor for questions.”

  Like Powers, Rajput’s smile and easy manner were obviously forced. The political situation in Pakistan had radically changed, but the relationship between the two countries had deteriorated. The U.S. still needed Pakistan’s cooperation in going after the terrorists along the border with Afghanistan. And Pakistan needed the billions in economic aid from Washington to prop up its military.

  “Extraordinary events in recent days have propelled Pakistan into a new era—one, we hope, of peace and prosperity. My deepest wish is for the guns to go silent. All of the guns and bombs which will make drone strikes a choice of the past.” Rajput turned to Powers. “Which is why we invited you and your staff to return to your embassies—along with the ambassadors of all the other nations—so that we can get back to work. Welcome, Mr. Powers.”

  “It’s good to be back, Mr. Prime Minister, and I wholeheartedly share your desire for peace—but not peace at all costs.” Powers turned to the audience. “It’s also my hope that the violence which has swept across Pakistan for the past several years may have finally come to an end. The events of the past few days, as Prime Minister Rajput said, have been nothing short of extraordinary. In Washington we looked with some alarm on the happenings, wondering if Pakistan would dissolve into chaos—into the same sort of civil war that has gripped so many other countries recently. But it has not happened. Though the circumstances were nothing short of extraordinary, the results are even more stunning.” Powers turned again to Rajput. “President Miller sends her warmest regards, and her commitment to aide Pakistan on its road back to a lasting peace.”

  Rajput and Powers shook hands and held the pose for photographers to catch the shot.

  “And now we will take a few questions,” Rajput said. He pointed to a journalist in the front row, but McGarvey raised his hand.

  “Mr. Prime Minister, can you tell us the whereabouts of the Messiah? I would have thought that he’d be here today.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. You are?”

  “Dr. Travis Parks, PIP. I’d like to ask him a few questions. Perhaps even a one-on-one interview.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Parks, but the Messiah’s exact whereabouts are unknown to me, except that he is somewhere in Pakistan walking amongst his people, as he said he would do.”

  “With no security?” McGarvey pressed. “Aren’t you afraid that someone might assassinate him?”

  “No. It was the people who named him, and it is the people who will protect him from interlopers who wish to harm us, as has happened so many times in the past.”

  “Is it your government’s intention to follow the Messiah’s call for an alliance with the Taliban?”

  “Perhaps you would allow someone else to ask a question,” Rajput said. He pointed again at someone seated in the front row.

  “Thomas Allen, Reuters,” the journalist said. “But I would like to hear your answer to Dr. Parks’s question.”

  If Rajput was flustered, he didn’t show it, but Powers was fuming.

  “Yes, we are exploring commonalities that we might be able to exploit to prevent any future violence,” Rajput said. “I hope that answers your question.”

  “Why aren’t representatives from the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan here today?” McGarvey pressed. “Or from
the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen? All of them terrorists organizations whose stated purpose was to bring down the government.”

  “That will be all the questions for today,” Rajput said.

  “The U.S. has helped Pakistan hunt these people down, will that now change, Mr. Powers?” McGarvey asked. “Has the White House issued a new policy that you have come here to present to the prime minister, and perhaps at some point the Messiah? Are you willing to sit down with the Taliban leaders and open a dialogue?”

  For a moment Powers was at a loss for words, handicapped because he had been led to believe that McGarvey—as Travis Parks—was a CIA analyst who’d tagged along only to observe.

  “My readers would like to know, because it would be a tidal wave change that could have a serious impact on our relationship with India.”

  “I’m the ambassador to Pakistan, Dr. Parks, not India.”

  “I understand, sir, I’m merely asking if that consideration was in your brief before you left Washington?”

  “We have much work to do now, as you must suspect, but another news conference will be scheduled within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” Rajput said. “You will be notified.”

  He and Powers walked out, and the aide, clearly distressed, announced that briefing packages were available in the press room, along with secure Wi-Fi connections for those wishing to file their stories from the Aiwan.

  “Jesus, you hit them pretty hard,” the woman next to McGarvey said. She stuck out her hand. “Judith Anderson, ABC.”

  “Evidently not hard enough,” McGarvey said, shaking her hand.

  A mob of other journalists clamoring for attention surrounded them.

  “I’m sorry, people, but I don’t give interviews. You can read about it on my blog.”

  “Did you actually think that someone from the Taliban would be here today?” one of them asked.

  “Why not? This Messiah said they were partners, and except for the nuclear explosion outside of Quetta, Pakistan appears to have gone back to business as usual.”

  “I’d say that what’s happening on the ground, at least here in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, is anything but business as usual,” someone else said.

  “What do you know about the explosion?” another journalist asked.

  “What, you want me to share sources?” McGarvey said, laughing. He turned away and walked out of the room. Before he reached the broad marble stairs, Judith Anderson caught up with him.

  “Care to share a late lunch?” she asked.

  “I don’t think that it would be such a hot idea to stick close to me. At least not right now.”

  Her eyes widened a little. “You think the ISI might send someone to whack you?”

  “It’s happened out here before.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “I’ll take my chances,” she said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Judith Anderson followed McGarvey outside, where she hailed a cab. “I’m bunking at the Serena, and lunch and drinks are on me,” she said.

  Most of the other journalists had stayed behind to pick up their briefing packages and some of them to file their stories. It didn’t matter much that the ISI was monitoring the Wi-Fi connections in the Aiwan. They did it all over the country. No place was secure.

  “What do you want with me, Miss Anderson?” McGarvey asked her.

  “My friends call me Judy. But you’ve become the story now, because you challenged the ambassador.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “But you came down even harder on Rajput and he won’t get over it. Aren’t you afraid that he’ll send someone after you? Or at the very least order you out of the country?”

  “If that happens it means I wasn’t very far off the mark.”

  “No one thought that you were, but everyone else had the good sense not to push it. More than one journalist has been killed in Pakistan.”

  A taxi pulled up and Judy opened the door. “Just lunch and a beer, and I promise all I want is a backgrounder. Besides, you’ll stick out if you don’t mingle.”

  Otto had warned that journalists, unlike CIA operatives, ran in packs. “I’ll hold you to it,” McGarvey told the ABC correspondent and got into the cab with her.

  “Good,” she said.

  The Serena, only one of three hotels in Islamabad that served alcohol, was just off Constitution Avenue, and the ride was short. The bar was furnished with low cocktail tables and large easy chairs. A handful of other Westerners were finishing their late lunches and cocktails.

  “A civilized oasis in the middle of insanity,” Judith said.

  A waiter came with menus and McGarvey ordered a Heineken. She ordered a Pinot Grigio.

  “This isn’t your first time in Pakistan, is it,” the woman said as a statement of fact, not a question.

  “I’ve been here before.”

  “Funny, we haven’t run into each other. You’re provocative, and I tend to gravitate toward the type.”

  “It’s a big place.”

  “Journalists usually stick together. Same news conferences, same stories, same hotels, especially the same watering holes. I just got back from Quetta, which was a wasted trip, but I didn’t see you there.”

  “They had a nuclear event, and they sure as hell weren’t going to share it with a bunch of Western news people. The real story is here.”

  “The Messiah tops a nuclear explosion?”

  “In my world, yes,” McGarvey said. He’d come with her in part because of Otto’s advice, but also in a large measure to find out what she knew. Whatever it was would be something everyone else in the media knew or suspected. But she hadn’t brought up the attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Incredible as it seemed to him, the raids were still a secret known presumably only by the government and the ISI in Islamabad, the White House and the CIA in Washington, plus the Seal Team Six operators and NEST team.

  “Do you know what I think, Travis?”

  “No, but you’re going to tell me.”

  “Until yesterday I never heard of you. But I should have. Your blog posts are nothing short of brilliant. Right on the mark. And history says that you’ve been around for a couple of years now. Which either means you’ve created something out of whole cloth or I’m a lousy journalist. But I’m damned good. So what gives, Parks, if that’s your real name?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You mean here in this restaurant with you or here in Pakistan? Because the answers to both questions is you. You’re not a journalist, your blog is good but it’s a scam, so who are you? My guess would be CIA.”

  “How many others at the news conference do you suppose share your suspicions?”

  “Just about all of them,” she said. “If we’re right you’re a marked man. Why else do you think they didn’t follow you outside?”

  “But you did,” McGarvey said. “And I came with you to find out what you thought you knew. Trust me on this one, Miss Anderson, stay as far away from me as you possibly can. I’m going to lean on some important people who aren’t going to like it very much. They’ll push back.”

  “You’re here to find the Messiah.”

  “Yes.”

  “But there’s more. You want to find out who he is, because it’s a safe bet that he didn’t show up as some sort of an Islamic savior. He’s not here to save Pakistan. He has another agenda, and you want to know what it is.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fine, it’s the same thing I want. Same as just about every reporter over here wants to know.”

  The waiter came with their drinks.

  “We’ll order later,” Judith told him, her eyes never leaving McGarvey’s. She sat forward. “My people in New York tell me that this guy’s voice was probably altered by some electronic device. They’re trying to decrypt it now. But you already know this.”

  “Stay away from me,” McGarvey said, getting to his feet. He’d learned what he needed to know, and it wasn
’t going to make his job any easier. Once the Messiah came out into the open, if he ever did, he would be surrounded not only by palace guards but by the same horde of news people as were at the Aiwan.

  “Look, we can collaborate. In fact I’d rather share my sources with someone from the CIA than I would with another reporter.”

  “Someone will either try to kill me or have me arrested.”

  “And it’s the first option that you want. I can help.”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “And if you try to follow me, I’ll have you deported.”

  “It’s not so easy to push around a reporter.”

  McGarvey walked out of the hotel and headed down one of the side streets that eventually wound up back on Constitution Avenue in the direction of the Aiwan. The moment he had emerged, he knew that he’d picked up a tail. Two men in a yellow Fiat 500, not making much effort to hide the fact that they were following him.

  Two blocks away, through heavy traffic, he sprinted across the street and entered a narrow alley, the second stories hanging over the pavement, the shops here mostly silversmiths and rug merchants, plus a CVS pharmacy, and next door an outdoor barbershop.

  He waited until the Fiat turned the corner before he entered a tobacco shop so narrow that if he stretched out his arms he’d touch both walls, and walked straight back and out the rear door, which opened onto an interior courtyard filthy with garbage and the carcass of a dog that had been dead for at least a month.

  The only way in or out was through the tobacconist’s shop or above through the second-story windows of what were apparently apartments. Laundry hung drying from lines that stretched from building to building. No one was in sight.

  McGarvey stepped to the side as two men, both of them wearing jeans and khaki shirts, came out of the tobacco shop.

  They stopped short, McGarvey leaning against the wall behind them.

  “Looking for me, gentlemen?” he asked.

  Both of them turned at the same time, and the taller of the two pulled a pistol from a belt holster under his shirt.

  McGarvey was on him in an instant, grabbing the big Sig-Sauer, a long suppressor tube on the barrel, out of his hand, and smashing the butt of the gun into the bridge of his nose, knocking him backward.