Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel Page 28

  “That’s a lie,” Hatchett blurted.

  “We have your flight records, and we know the name of the hotel you stayed at. And we think that you were not alone. Someone else went with you. But the point is that you met with a Saudi-born assassin for hire. His name is Kamal al-Daran, but his code name is al Nassr. You paid him money to do something for you. What was it?”

  “You don’t have to answer any questions,” Berliner said, and he turned to Patterson. “This meeting is over.”

  “No,” Weaver said. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re working for you, sir,” Hatchett said.

  “I never ordered any meeting in Beijing.”

  “No, sir. It was me and Tom Harrigan and Dick Tepping. Tom took a leave of absence—left two days ago, and Dick is missing. No one’s heard from him in the last two days.”

  “You hired an assassin?” Weaver demanded. “I can’t fucking believe this. To do what? Kill me?”

  “No, sir. No, Mr. President, nothing like that. I swear to God. We hired him to set up three terrorist attacks here in the United States. But we’re going to notify the Bureau and the Secret Service so they can be ready to intercept before anything happens. It’ll look even better for you than taking out bin Laden looked like for Obama.”

  “Where?” McGarvey demanded.

  “San Francisco, New Orleans and west Kansas.”

  “When?”

  Hatchett looked away. “Tomorrow. Noon our time. All of them at once.”

  “Jesus,” McGarvey said. “He’s going to change the time.”

  “I’m on it,” Weaver said. “Walt, I’m not going to accept your resignation. We have too much work to do.” He turned to McGarvey. “And that includes you, Mr. Director. Stop this bastard. Permanently.”

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Page and Carleton Patterson took the DCI’s limo back to Langley while McGarvey walked down to the Situation Room with a stressed-out Hatchett and the NSA, Chester Watts. The Bureau’s SAC Sam Cohen and Secret Service Special Projects Director Jim Kernin had been called and were on their way.

  “It was never supposed to get this far out of hand,” Hatchett said.

  “You son of a bitch, do you realize the harm you’ve already done even if this shit goes no further?” Watts demanded. He was clearly holding his temper in check, but just by a thread.

  “He’s been under so many attacks since the election we had to do something. You heard what the Pentagon was planning.”

  “How much?” McGarvey asked.

  “A mil five in euros for each attack.”

  “I meant to have me killed. That was job one, wasn’t it?”

  Hatchett looked away for a moment. “A million,” he said.

  Watts was flabbergasted. “Where in the hell did you get that kind of money?”

  “PAC contributions we set aside during the campaign.”

  “You started planning this shit from the beginning?”

  “In case he won.”

  “Conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism. Conspiracy to commit murder,” Watts said. “It was a fucking uphill battle to just get this far, and you might have screwed the pooch for him. Christ, I could shoot you myself.”

  “I need a ride back to Langley,” McGarvey said. “Right now.”

  “How will it go down?”

  “He’s using ISIS fighters trained at a camp in northern Mexico, and they’re already in place.”

  “You don’t think he’s going to stick with the timetable?”

  “He’s going to tell his people to pull the trigger as soon as possible, and in the meantime he’ll come after me again. He’s tried and failed twice, he won’t be able to let it go.”

  “I’ll have a car for you by the time you get to the East Portico,” Watts said. “I can also get you a Secret Service detail.”

  “I won’t need it,” McGarvey said at the door. He turned back. “You said that one of your staffers was missing?”

  “Dick Tepping. No one knows where he is. He was supposed to come into Dulles on a flight from Indianapolis, but he never showed up here or at his apartment.”

  “Who is he? What does he do here?”

  “He’s an assistant press secretary.”

  “Does he carry a laptop?”

  “Of course,” Hatchett said.

  “It’s a possibility that al-Daran killed him and took it,” McGarvey said. “It’s why he knows just about everything that’s going on here.”

  * * *

  The black Cadillac Escalades the Secret Service presidential detail used were the same make CIA housekeepers used, except that the CIA’s were light gray for whatever reason. But the drivers were exactly the same; serious, accurate and very fast.

  McGarvey called Otto and gave him Tepping’s name and White House position. “He’s missing, and so presumably is his laptop. Find out if anyone has been online with the thing.”

  “You thinking al-Daran?” Otto asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  “I’m on it. Where are you?”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Have Estes come over, and I’ll need Louise on the phone. I need to know what else if anything the satellite picked up from the Mexican site.”

  “Pete’s here too,” Otto said.

  “Good. This shit is about to go down sooner than we thought, and we’re going to need all our ducks in a row.”

  * * *

  Estes was with Pete in Otto’s office when McGarvey arrived. It was a little after three in the afternoon.

  “We’re running out of time,” he told them.

  “I’ll get Louise,” Otto said. He had her on one of the monitors—no video, just audio for security’s sake—in under a minute.

  “I’m afraid that I’ve got bad news for you, Mac,” she said. “I just got off the line with Charlie Hays over at Surveillance Interp. He took an infrared pass over the training base last night just before midnight. The place was dark. He retasked the bird for another four-minute pass about two hours ago, and got the same results.”

  “Someone must have gotten to them,” Estes said.

  “Either that or their mission has been accomplished,” McGarvey said. “How’s Audie?”

  “Wanting to come home.”

  “Keep your head down, sweetheart,” Otto said.

  “You too.”

  “The attacks were all supposed to happen at noon our time tomorrow,” McGarvey told them. “One in San Francisco against the Golden Gate Bridge, the second against a big church in Colby, Kansas—not too far from where I grew up. And the third against one or more dikes and lift stations in New Orleans.”

  “One or two shooters in San Francisco and Colby, but probably more in New Orleans if they were planning on hitting more than one target,” Pete said. “Did Hatchett give you anything else? Any other details?”

  “Except for the precise time and places, he said they left it up to al-Daran.”

  “So why noon tomorrow?” Pete asked.

  Estes answered, “Because Weaver holds a news conference in the East Room at one every Sunday afternoon. Like FDR’s fireside chats, to keep the nation informed about what’s going on. He would have his headlines: ‘three terrorist attacks thwarted.’”

  “The Bureau would want to know how he came up with the times and locations,” Pete said.

  “That’d come later,” Estes answered again. “For the moment he would be America’s hero—something he predicted during the campaign. The savior of the nation.”

  “Cynical.”

  “Isn’t all politics, almost all the time?”

  “If al-Daran pushed the timetable ahead for more than a couple of hours—let’s say sometime this afternoon or evening—the Bureau and Secret Service might not have the time to move into place,” Pete said.

  “Won’t happen before eleven tomorrow,” Otto said. He was looking at images on a monitor.

  “Are you sure?”

  “The Colby target is Pastor Buddy Holliday’s B
aptist Ministry. Twenty thousand or more people attend his Sunday services, which don’t start until eleven sharp. His people won’t hit before then.”

  McGarvey had been listening to all of it, and he managed a slight smile that Estes caught.

  “You’re going to challenge the bastard,” the Harvard doc said. “Mano a mano. But how are you going to reach him?”

  “Tepping’s laptop.”

  “Jesus,” Pete said. “You want to meet him, but where?”

  Otto saw it too. “In the only city that would make any sense to him. New York.”

  “Is he there?”

  “He’s somewhere he doesn’t want us to know about. He turned off the GPS function in Tepping’s laptop.”

  “How do you know?

  “It’s up and running,” Otto said. “I think the bastard is waiting for Mac’s email.”

  “Manhattan’s a big place,” Pete said.

  “He’ll tell me where,” McGarvey told them.

  SIXTY-NINE

  It was dawn now, and Kamal had spent the evening with Sushi at the Lexington Avenue bordello. If there were any other clients in house Kiko and her girls were discreet; the place could have been his alone.

  “I think that you will not be coming back to us again for a very long time,” the girl in bed with him said. She sounded sad, but she was a good enough actor that Kamal couldn’t tell.

  “I might be back in the fall. Maybe I’ll buy your services for an extended time and take you on a vacation.”

  She smiled. “That would be nice.”

  Again Kamal couldn’t be sure if she was acting. He decided that she had the makings of a very good partner in the field. It would be something to look into if he ever came back.

  “I want you to leave now. But I’d like a toasted English muffin with cream cheese, black tea with lemon, a bottle of still water and a dish of fruit.”

  “Then goodbye again, Paul.”

  She put on a kimono and left the suite. After she was gone, Kamal powered up Tepping’s laptop, and ran through the seventy-five emails waiting to be read.

  He stopped at one that had been sent at 4:15 P.M. EST yesterday.

  I would like to get together. Just you and me before noon tomorrow.

  Name the time and place. Kirk McGarvey

  He stared at the message for a very long time not at all surprised that the man and his geek friend had figured out he had the White House staffer’s laptop, and had offered up the challenge.

  Manhattan, any time this morning, any place. I’ll give you one clue.

  Paul O’Neal

  As soon as he hit the SEND button, he shut the laptop down, then showered, shaved and got dressed in his jeans and white shirt. When he was finished, his breakfast was waiting for him along with the Sunday New York Times. He took his time, eating and skimming the paper. The food was indifferent and nothing in the news leapt out at him.

  For now, it was a quiet Sunday morning.

  He disassembled his Glock and gave it a thorough once-over before he holstered it, and pocketed two spare magazines.

  Next he unwrapped two bricks of Semtex, bundled them along with the cell phone receiver plugged into the plastique with a two-inch probe using surgical tape from his Dopp kit. He sealed the entire thing in a plastic baggy so that if there happened to be bomb-sniffing dogs they might not detect the explosive, unless they were right on top of it.

  He stuffed the flat bundle in Tepping’s computer bag then put on his black blazer.

  Before he left, he turned on his phone, entered an eighteen-digit code, leaving out only the last figure, which was the pound key, and shut it down. One key stroke and the Semtex would explode.

  He opened the lining of his roll-about and took out his last passport, driver’s license and Health Care Card that identified him as Wilson McBride, an Australian who lived in Sydney, and pocketed them along with a couple of family photos of a wife and two children and a Barclays platinum credit card with only a twenty-five-thousand-dollar limit. He would no longer travel as a rich man. And when he flew back to Europe it would be in business, not first class.

  He also pocketed the badge and ID card that identified him as Peter Jones, an inspector with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. At the last moment he stuffed Tepping’s laptop in the bag with the Semtex. It was possible that McGarvey might have another message for him.

  Kiko met him in the front vestibule. “Sushi tells me that you are going away again, and may not return until fall.”

  “Yes. And once again I will be leaving light.”

  “I will dispose of your things.”

  “How much did you get for them last year?”

  “Unfortunately, only five hundred dollars.”

  Kamal handed her one thousand. “This time I want you to destroy everything I’ve left behind. Without looking at anything. May I trust you?”

  “Of course.”

  Kamal looked her in the eye. “Do not disappoint me, madam.”

  “I value your business too much to ever let such a thing happen.”

  * * *

  Kamal walked the opposite direction down Lexington than he’d taken yesterday, and caught a taxi to take him to the Delta arrivals gate at JFK. He was depending on the same luck he’d had yesterday. It was a state of affairs that he didn’t much care for, but simply walking off with a baby in a carriage without raising immediate alarms was a delicate thing.

  Later today, while the entire country was in a state of shock that another series of attacks like those of nine/eleven, but this time not by air, had struck, he would be in a rental car heading back to Atlanta, where he would hang out for a couple of days before—depending on who, if anyone, was on his trail—flying to Paris. And a well-deserved retirement.

  * * *

  He got out to the airport a little after nine. In the arrivals/baggage-pickup area he studied one of the overhead monitors. He needed to get out of here and back into the city as soon before ten-thirty as possible, if he was going to have enough time to be at Cipriani in Grand Central no later than eleven-thirty, tops. By then the three attacks would have taken place, and the nation’s attention would be focused toward the west.

  The first international flight arrived at nine-thirty from Santiago. It was ten minutes early, and Kamal stood aside as the passengers began to show up for their baggage. None of them was carrying a baby or pushing a baby carriage.

  The next, Delta 7601 from Buenos Aires, came in on time at 9:55; this time a woman carrying an infant got off with two women—one of them obviously her mother, the other perhaps her sister, and they were met by two men and left as soon as their mountain of luggage was off-loaded from the carousel.

  Almost immediately Delta 3833 from Montreal, almost fifteen minutes late, off-loaded its passengers. Among the last was a woman carrying a baby. She was alone and no one was there to meet her.

  She was also carrying a backpack, and she picked up one roll-about suitcase and a baby carriage from the carousel.

  She was a young woman, Kamal figured possibly even a teenager. She rolled her bag and the baby carriage awkwardly out to the taxi queue, and when it was her turn, Kamal approached.

  “You have your hands full, let me help out,” he told her.

  The driver got out and Kamal showed him his commission badge. Between the two of them they got the girl’s things loaded in the trunk and they were on their way to an address in Brooklyn, Kamal riding shotgun. The driver kept looking nervously at him.

  “Is there trouble with my cab, sir?” the man asked. He sounded Russian or Ukrainian.

  “Absolutely not,” Kamal assured him.

  The address was off Flatbush Avenue and the driver took I-678 from the airport. Traffic was brisk for a Sunday morning but not terrible.

  Just before the exit, Kamal pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the driver, who nearly jumped out of his skin. The girl was occupied with her baby, who’d begun to fuss from the moment they’d left the airport
, and she had no idea what was going on in front.

  “We’re going left here, to Rockaway Beach,” Kamal told the driver. He kept his voice low, and the girl still had no idea that anything was wrong.

  The driver hesitated. Kamal jammed the muzzle of the pistol into the man’s side and he got off the highway.

  An old road that Kamal had pinpointed on a street map yesterday went left again toward Dead Horse Bay.

  The girl suddenly looked up. “This isn’t the way,” she said.

  “Be just a minute, sweetheart,” Kamal said.

  He had the driver pull over in a deserted grassy area, and when they were stopped he shot the man in the side of the head, and when he slumped over he shot him again in the head. Insurance.

  The girl was screaming.

  She clutched her baby in one arm while she frantically tried to open the rear door.

  Kamal turned around and shot her in the forehead. She fell back in the seat, the screaming baby slipping out of her arms. He shot her again in the head, then holstered his pistol.

  It only took a minute or two to stuff the bodies of the driver and the woman into the trunk, and put the carriage in the backseat, and with the driver’s shirt clean off the blood that would be visible to people passing in cars.

  The baby was only crying fitfully now, its eyes half-closed with sleepiness. Kamal placed the infant on the floor, so it would be out of sight from anyone in passing cars, especially when he got into the heavier traffic in Midtown Manhattan.

  SEVENTY

  It was a few minutes after eleven when McGarvey and Pete went up to the Grand Hyatt’s lounge overlooking busy 42nd Street. The place wasn’t open until two, but some prep staff were already in place.

  McGarvey and Pete had flown up to KLGA, which was the general aviation side of LaGuardia’s main airport, last night and had taken a taxi to the Grand Hyatt, where Otto had booked them a suite overlooking 42nd Street.

  “He signed his email Paul O’Neal, the name he used last year at the Grand Hyatt,” McGarvey had said before they’d left for the flight.

  “You think he told you where he could be found?” Otto asked.