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  Bahmad handled the controller with great care. At the proper time and place, a dozen keystrokes would arm and fire the nuclear weapon. So much power, he thought with a sensuous pleasure.

  Killing McGarvey’s daughter had never been a part of his preliminary planning. But the rest was, and it had taken all of three months to have the equipment gathered and waiting for him should bin Laden give the order.

  He put everything back in the aluminum case, locked it and set it down. Then he got undressed and went to take a shower. A bullet in the head during an interrupted burglary, he thought. It would be the simplest and easiest method. But first dinner and drinks. He began to sing a song that he’d learned in London about a young woman who sold shellfish in Dublin’s fair city.

  Chevy Chase

  It had been a very stressful few days for Kathleen McGarvey Kirk’s leaving so suddenly on what even Rencke thought could turn out to be a dangerous fool’s mission had obliged her to think long and hard about their upcoming marriage, and how she was going to hold up under what could never be a normal relationship. Having a daughter in the business didn’t help much either. There were times when she wasn’t sure of anything, especially her own resolve. Looking objectively at herself she knew that there were other times when she was incredibly self-centered, even selfish to the point she didn’t want to hear what anyone else had to say. But she loved Kirk, she had never stopped loving him, and that was one constant embedded so deeply in her heart that nothing could ever tear it loose. The problem was within herself. In the old days, when she was threatened, she became a bitch. It was a defense mechanism that she used to shield herself from getting hurt. But that was just as stupid, she had come to feel, as Kirk’s penchant for running off to be alone when he was hurt. She insulated herself emotionally; he did so with distance. They both would have to change if they were going to make their marriage work this time. And that was something, Kathleen decided, that she wanted more than anything.

  She looked out the window of the front bedroom. A dark blue van was parked down the block. One of Dick Yemm’s people. The Company was keeping a watch on her twenty four hours a day. Instead of comforting her, however, she felt a dull, gnawing fear in her stomach. People who needed bodyguards were people in harm’s way, and she didn’t know if that was the part of Kirk’s job that she hated the most, or if it was his frequent absences. But already it was beginning to get to her; everything about the CIA and what it stood for, what its mission was, and the people who worked over there and around the world, gave her the willys whenever she thought about it.

  No place was safe for any of them. Alien Trumble and his family had learned that terrible lesson at Disney World, for God’s sake.

  The telephone rang. She crossed the hall to her bedroom and picked it up. “Yes,” she said sharply.

  “He’s out,” Rencke said.

  Kathleen closed her eyes, and released the pent up breath. “Thank God,” she said. “Is he all right, Otto?”

  “He was pretty banged up, Mrs. M. Dehydrated, fatigued, some cuts and bruises, but nothing life-threatening. He’ll be okay.”

  “When does he get home?”

  “He’s at the military hospital in Riyadh for now, but they’re planning on moving him to Ramstein sometime in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”

  Kathleen gripped the phone tightly. “You said he was okay. Just cuts and bruises. What’s going on, Otto? I want the truth, goddammit.”

  “Bin Laden’s people found out that he was carrying the GPS chip, and they operated on him to remove it. The stitches came out somehow and he lost a lot of blood.”

  Kathleen closed her eyes again and mentally counted to ten. “The dirty bastards,” she said softly. She opened her eyes. “What else is wrong with him?”

  “Nothing serious, Mrs. M, I swear to you. He’s been sedated and they’re pumping fluids into him. He wanted to get on the first plane for home, but they wouldn’t let him. Right now he’s getting exactly what he needs — sleep.”

  “I’ll fly to Frankfurt tonight. I can drive down to Ramstein and be there by noon.”

  “Bzzz. Wrong answer, Mrs. M.”

  “Then the Company can arrange to fly me over there direct.”

  “You wouldn’t do him any good by being there,” Rencke said miserably. “You’d only be compounding the security problems.” Rencke sounded frightened. “I’d do anything for you. Lie down in front of a train, fight a pack of alligators, but not this. Please just stay there. As soon as we can get Mac out of there we will. I promise you. Please Mrs. M. Please,” “I’m frightened,” she said-softly.

  “So am I,” Rencke replied. “But you gotta stick it out here and let us do our jobs.”

  She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Just keep me informed, will you?”

  “Count on it.”

  When Kathleen put down the phone it struck her as ominous that Otto had admitted that he was frightened too. According to him Kirk was going to be all right. So what else was coming their way?

  Georgetown

  It was after 11:00 p.m. by the time the pleasant neighborhood of three-story brownstone apartment buildings finally began to settle down. Bahmad had a slight headache from the wine, and from the effects of jet lag. He turned the block at Dumbarton and Thirtieth Street, and passed Elizabeth McGarvey’s building for the fourth time in as many hours. The windows of her third-floor apartment were still dark, and her car, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle, was still nowhere to be seen. He drove a dark blue Mercedes that the boat crew had arranged for his use. This quality of car was nearly invisible in this neighborhood. It blended with the other Mercedes and Jaguars. His entry into the United States had been without incident, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone was looking for him, let alone knew his face. Here and now he was completely anonymous, exactly as he wanted it, and exactly as he meant to keep it. If anyone took notice of him he would kill them.

  At the end of the block he turned the corner and found a parking spot. Switching off the headlights and engine, he checked the rearview mirror. No one was following him. Just ordinary traffic.

  He waited for a bus to lumber by then got out, locked the car and headed back to the corner and then down Thirtieth Street to Elizabeth’s building. He let himself in, finding himself in a tiny alcove, stairs to the right, apartment 1 to the left. Three mailboxes were set in the wall straight ahead. Elizabeth McGarvey’s was apartment 3 on the top floor. Unlike similar buildings in New York City there was no security here except for the apartment doors themselves. He had a feeling that after tonight that would change.

  There was no elevator, so he took the stairs two at a time, moving quickly and silently on the balls of his feet. He wore light brown slacks, a striped button-down shirt and a light jacket against the evening damp. Like everything else about him, the clothes were unremarkable.

  The door to the second-floor apartment opened and he heard a woman say something, her words indistinct. A man answered angrily. Bahmad held up on the stairs, contemplating turning around and leaving the building, or remaining here and killing the couple should they discover him. The voices were cut off when the door was slammed. He slipped out his knife and listened for footsteps in the corridor, but the building was silent. Whoever it was had gone back into their apartment.

  He moved cautiously up the last few stairs and peered around the corner. The landing was empty, the apartment door closed. He sheathed his knife and went the rest of the way to the top floor. At the door to Elizabeth’s apartment he knocked softly, and waited. But after a minute when no one came, he took out his lock pick set and had the door open in under thirty seconds. He took out his pistol, screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel, then after checking the stairs behind him, slipped inside, sweeping the gun left to right, looking for a target. But Elizabeth was not at home.

  He closed and locked the door, and silently went back to the bedroom to make sure that the woman wasn’t here, asleep in her bed after all. But the apartm
ent was empty. It was pleasant if inexpensively furnished, with a lot of books, a stereo system and a lot of CDs. But something was wrong.

  Stuffing the gun in his belt he went into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. It was reasonably clean, but something nagged at the back of his head. Something was out of place. Or, rather, something was not in its place. Something was missing.

  There were towels on the racks, but no pantyhose or bras hanging over the shower rod. On the sink counter were several bottles of perfume and lotions, but there were water marks where two bottles were missing. There was no toothbrush or toothpaste in the medicine cabinet, and a quick search of the shelves and other cabinets revealed no birth control pills or diaphragm, no douches or feminine deodorant sprays. He knew enough about Western women to understand that these were all common items in most bathrooms. But they were missing.

  Elizabeth McGarvey had moved out. The questions were how long would she be gone, and where had she gotten herself to.

  He switched off the bathroom light, waited for a minute for his eyes to adjust, then went back into the bedroom. The bed had been hastily made, which meant she wasn’t a neat housekeeper or she’d been in a hurry to get out of here. But most of the clothes were still in her closet, only a few empty spaces indicated that she had taken something, but not everything. It was the same in the chest of drawers. Some undergarments and tee shirts were obviously missing, but most had been left behind.

  Bahmad retraced his steps through the apartment, wiping down the few spots where he might have left fingerprints despite his care not to do so. He checked the street from the living room window. There were several empty parking spots out front, as before, but no yellow VW.

  He let himself out of the apartment, relocked the door, crept silently downstairs and left the building. Now he needed to find out where she had gone. If it was back to Paris, this mission would become complicated. But the Special Olympics weren’t for another two and a half months, so he had time to spare, though each time he crossed an international border there was the risk of discovery.

  But then another thought struck him all at once. When he got back to the car he took out his satellite phone and placed a call to a special number in the Taliban Military Intelligence Headquarters in Kabul.

  Colonel Hisham bin Idris answered on the second ring. “Hello.”

  “Is the situation resolved?” Bahmad asked.

  “I had sincerely hoped so,” the colonel replied cautiously. “You are not telephoning from nearby, are you?”

  “No, but I wanted to thank you on behalf of… everybody.”

  “You cannot return here.”

  “I understand that,” Bahmad said, reassuringly. “We have every intention of respecting your wishes. You have done so much for us—”

  “Yes, yes, but what do you want?” Colonel bin Idris demanded impatiently.

  “There is that other matter I asked you to help me with.”

  The colonel hesitated for just a second, as if he’d been distracted. “He’s dead.”

  “Are you certain? Did you see the body?”

  “What was left of it. He got caught in the mob and they tore him apart. There wasn’t much left.”

  “How sure are you that it was him?”

  “Very sure,” Colonel bin Idris said. “Then thank you again. It is a debt we shall never be able to repay—” Bahmad said, but he was talking to an open line. The colonel had broken the connection.

  Bahmad switched off the phone. When a young woman’s father was brutally murdered in a faraway land there was only one logical place for her to go. Sooner or later Elizabeth McGarvey would show up at her mother’s home, if she wasn’t already there, to grieve. He smiled. He would get to kill McGarvey’s wife after all.

  Falls Church, Virginia

  At that moment Elizabeth McGarvey was taking her overnight case and hanging bag from her car parked beside Todd Van Buren’s old Porsche. His apartment had once been the carriage house for the family estate. His parents lived in the mansion a quarter-mile up the curving driveway through some woods. They didn’t approve of the fact that he worked for the CIA, but he had been raised to be independent, and they tried not to interfere too much in his life. His independence was one of the things she most admired about him. In some ways he reminded her of her father.

  The night was still, the air sweet this far out of the city. Elizabeth hesitated, frightened, at his door. She had thought long and hard about making this move. They’d been lovers for three months. But she valued her own independence, and she didn’t know how she would tell her father, let alone face her mother. But she wanted Todd on more than an occasional basis. She wanted to wake up in the morning beside him, she wanted to show him what kind of a cook she was — her father had taught her a number of French bistro recipes — and she wanted to find out what kind of a cook Todd was. She wanted to be with him when he was sad as well as happy; angry as well as content; confused as well as assured. She thought that she was falling in love with him, but before she made a commitment she wanted to be sure. Tonight, especially, she wanted to be held, to be comforted.

  The light over the stoop came on before she could ring the bell and Van Buren opened the door. His eyes lit up, and he started to say something, but then did a double take when he noticed her bags. The expression on his face was comical, and Elizabeth laughed, even though she was in a brittle mood.

  “Am I going to have to stand here all night?” she asked. “Or should I drive around the block a couple of times while you get rid of your girlfriend?”

  “Your dad’s going to kill me.” He took her hanging bag, and stepped aside so that she could come in. She gave him a peck on the cheek.

  Only the light over the leather easy chair was on, a beer on the table beside it, and a book opened on the ottoman. The Sade CD she’d bought him was playing softly. Like her, Van Buren was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt.

  She followed him into the bedroom where he hung her bag on the closet door. “I’m glad you’re here, Liz.” He was bigger than her, but he had the compact build and fluid movements of a soccer player. He was an exotic weapons and hand-to-hand combat instructor at the CIA’s training facility, and he sometimes worked special assignments for the Directorate of Operations. She loved his butt, the angles and planes of his masculine face, and especially his hands on her body. He was strong yet very gentle.

  When he turned back to her, she was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sadness, and her eyes began to fill. She felt like a complete fool, anything but a McGarvey. “Is it okay that I’m here? Are you mad at me?”

  “What’s the matter, Liz.” Van Buren was alarmed.

  “Can I stay here at least tonight?” She hated this weakness in herself. Her father despised weaknesses in people.

  “You can stay forever, if you want,” he said seriously He took the overnight case from her and set in on a chair, then took her in his arms.

  “Don’t say that yet,” she warned. But then she couldn’t talk. She clung to him, her body wracked with sobs. She felt worse than a fool, like a sniveling idiot, but she’d been frightened about her father’s safety for so long that she couldn’t help herself. It was enough for now that she had someone to hold her. Someone other than her mother who had taken the news that her husband had gotten out with more panache than even Elizabeth thought she was capable of. This time her mother had been too strong.

  “I love you,” Van Buren said.

  She parted and looked into his face, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t making fun of her. She didn’t think she could take that right now. She felt so vulnerable, and yet she knew that she could take him apart. But he was sincere. He honestly cared, and she could see it in his eyes.

  “You called me a spoiled brat,” she said stupidly, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Yeah, and you’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” he said. “But you can be my spoiled brat if you’ll ease up a little and let m
e take the lead every once in a while.”

  She couldn’t help herself from laughing. She nodded. “Just don’t get any macho attitudes like ownership.”

  “Works both ways, Liz,” he said. He got out a handkerchief and wiped her cheek. She took it from him and did it herself.

  “Now, will you tell me what the hell is going on? Is it your dad? Is he okay?”

  “They’re taking him to Ramstein. He’s pretty banged up, but the docs say he’ll be fine.”

  “Christ. How’s your mother holding up?”

  “She’s dealing with it,” Elizabeth said. “I just came from there. Dick Yemm is with her, so I told her that I had to get back to work. I couldn’t stay there tonight.”

  Van Buren gave her a sympathetic look. “Are you sure about this?” he asked sincerely. “I mean if you just want to stay the night so you won’t have to be alone right now, I’d understand. I can take the couch.”

  She touched his handsome face. “It was going to happen sooner or later. The reasons are all wrong right now, at least they are for me, but I’m glad it’s sooner.”

  “So am I,” he said. He took her in his arms again, and now she was done crying. His body felt warm and strong and familiar. Comforting. Like coming home to a place you never knew how much you missed until you were there, she thought warmly.

  They kissed deeply, their hands all over each other; exploring, feeling. He picked her up and brought her to the bed. They undressed each other, and then made love, softly and passionately, even though she wanted to rush. She let him take the lead, and when they were finished she was glad she had.