The Fourth Horseman Page 9

  NINETEEN

  “The man’s peckish,” McGarvey said on the way over to the White House. Pete was driving her BMW three hundred series convertible. She’d flown to Munich and bought the made-for-Europe model, and drove it for a month so that when she had it shipped back to the States it came in as a used car. She’d left to try to get over McGarvey, and she had come back with a car.

  “Wouldn’t you be?” she asked.

  They were on the parkway across the river, and McGarvey was in what almost amounted to a funk. He knew damn well what the president was going to ask him to do, and even some of the why of it, and he was almost 100 percent certain that getting close enough to the Messiah to put a bullet in his brain, and then getting the hell clear, was the wrong thing to do.

  Except that the president would consider him expendable. If he killed the Messiah and then was caught, she could deny any knowledge. McGarvey was a rogue agent. There’d be no compunction in the White House about tossing him to the wolves. And if it came to pass that he was arrested and placed on trial, someone would show up to silence him.

  It put him in a “damned if he did, damned if he didn’t” position. Which, he thought, he ought to be accustomed to by now. He’d been in similar situations just about all his professional career. Starting with taking out the general and his wife in Chile, what seemed like a couple of centuries ago.

  “A penny,” Pete prompted.

  “The president is going to make some wrong decisions over this thing because of the missing nuclear weapons. And I don’t know if she’ll be willing to listen to me.”

  “Like you said, you can just walk away if it doesn’t feel right. But she does have a point: at least thirty nukes are unaccounted for, and we’re in no position to demand to be told who’s holding the triggers.”

  “That’s one of the parts that bothers me the most. Our people went in and neutralized a lot of them, and yet other than the firefights on the ground, the government hasn’t said a word. It’s business as usual over there, according to just about everyone. For all intents and purposes Pakistan is at peace.”

  “The calm before the storm?” Pete asked.

  “Maybe,” McGarvey said. “But whatever happens, could be it won’t turn out so well for us as we want it to.”

  * * *

  They were expected at the East Gate and were allowed through. Pete parked at the foot of the stairs at the east portico and went up with McGarvey; one of the president’s staffers, who did not identify himself, escorted them to the West Wing.

  “Just you, Mr. McGarvey,” the staffer said.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Pete said.

  President Miller was seated behind her desk, and when McGarvey walked in she picked up her phone and told her secretary that she was not to be disturbed. They were alone in the Oval Office.

  “Thank you for coming so soon,” Miller said. She motioned for McGarvey to have a seat across from her.

  “A call from the president is something difficult to ignore.”

  Miller smiled faintly. “For you, not so difficult sometimes.”

  McGarvey shrugged. There was no answer. “Madam President, will someone be joining us?”

  “No. This meeting is just between you and me.”

  “Considering what I expect you’ll ask me to do, I think a witness might be wise.”

  “For exactly that reason there will be no witness,” the president said. “I want you to find and assassinate the man the Pakistanis are calling the Messiah. The one who beheaded President Barazani. I assume that you’ve seen the tape.”

  “Before I agree to take on the job, I think that you have to consider what might come of it, whether I succeed or not.”

  “I have,” the president said coolly.

  “Such an act, even if it could be done, could spark a regional war. India might not sit on its hands if Pakistan’s government fell apart. So far as I’ve been briefed, this Messiah has not threatened to retaliate for the attacks by our nuclear response teams. Send Don Powers back to talk with him.” Donald Suthland Powers, Jr. was the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, and his father had been a legendary director of the CIA a number of years earlier. He and most of his staff had left the embassy shortly after the attacks by the Taliban had begun.

  “This Messiah murdered the legitimate president in cold blood with his own hands. Nasir was murdered as well. And two hours ago I got word that the supreme court has granted the man executive and legislative authority for the next four years. He’s become a dictator.”

  “The same thing happened with Musharraf in two thousand, and the country settled down. They avoided a war.”

  The president was sharply angry. “Don’t try to teach me history or politics, Mr. McGarvey.”

  “I’m sorry, Madam President,” McGarvey said. “But don’t try to teach me my business.”

  The president started to say something, but McGarvey held her off.

  “Someone on your staff, or possibly at the CIA, knowing that you had asked for me, tried to have me killed.”

  “I’m told that many people and even a few governments would like to see you neutralized.”

  “Two most likely Middle Eastern men, both of them dead. Maybe the autopsies will give us a clue where they were from. For now I’m betting Pakistan.”

  “I told no one at the CIA why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “That’s right.”

  The president got it, and she flared again. “No one on my staff has any knowledge of who hired someone to kill you.”

  “Before I agree to do this thing, I’ll first do as you suggested and eliminate the other possibilities. If someone else is gunning for me, I’ll find out who it is.”

  “We don’t have time. The situation is too unstable. It won’t last. And at this moment I have to consider the primary threat that Pakistan poses—that of her thirty or more remaining nuclear weapons, and her ability to deliver them. And you must know that a good number of those weapons are tactical only—with ranges under one hundred miles. They’re meant for only one thing, and that’s to kill their own people.”

  “Is that what your advisers are telling you?”

  “No one expects India to send ground troops across the border.”

  “Do you actually expect me to take on an entire country?”

  “No, Mr. McGarvey, just the man; the country will follow.”

  McGarvey got up.

  “I’m not finished with you, mister,” the president practically shouted. “If need be you’ll sit this one out in jail.”

  “That would be much easier for me.”

  Miller sat back and ran her fingers through her short dark hair, a calculating look in her eyes as she considered her viable options.

  At that moment McGarvey almost felt sorry for her. Just about everyone who wanted the presidency was shocked and disappointed at exactly how little actual power they had. They were mostly administrators, who hopefully would, from time to time, come up with some idea that actually worked. Truman had been right: the buck did stop in this office, though a lot of presidents after him had tried to sidestep the responsibility.

  “Tell your staff what you’ve asked me to do.”

  Miller started to object, but he held her off again.

  “Tell them, and say that I’m thinking about it. In the meantime get Powers in motion to head back to Islamabad with most of his staff—just the volunteers—plus one.”

  “You.”

  “Yes. But I’ll need a day or two to see who might come out of the woodwork after me. And this time I’ll try to keep them alive long enough to ask some questions.”

  “Let the CIA know,” the president said.

  McGarvey shook his head. “Just the opposite. I’m going to tell them that I’m not taking the job.”

  “I see,” the president said. “Isolating my staff from the CIA’s.”

  TWENTY

  Haaris stopped at a 7-Eleven just off Massachusetts Avenue and bought the early editi
on of The Washington Post before he drove the rest of the way home. It was coming up on three in the morning and not a lot of traffic had been moving on the parkway down from the CIA or anywhere in the city.

  Steering his team into coming up with the recommendation that the U.S. should take a wait-and-see attitude on the Pakistan issue for at least the next forty-eight hours had been relatively easy, considering their respect for him, and considering he had hand-picked each of them, not for their intelligence and certainly not for their ability to think outside of the box. They’d also agreed to recommend that the entire U.S. embassy staff be sent back to Islamabad, and that an attempt at a dialogue with the Messiah be initiated.

  Deb had heard the garage door open, and wearing only one of his old T-shirts as a nightgown, was waiting for him in the kitchen. Her blond hair was tousled and she was half asleep but she was smiling.

  “I was getting worried about you,” she said, coming into his arms.

  She was warm and soft and for just a moment he responded. She was a dolt, but she was sometimes comforting, and her love for him was unconditional. He knew what he was doing and why he was doing it—that hate burned deeply—but every now and then, like right now, he wavered.

  He kissed her deeply, and when he withdrew she didn’t want to pull away.

  “Come to bed, darling,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Fifteen minutes. First I have to do something at my desk, and then I’ll take a shower.”

  “Haven’t you done enough work for one day?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  She smiled again. “Maybe I’ll go back to sleep.”

  He pecked her on the cheek. “I’ll figure out some way of waking you.”

  She laughed and went back to their bedroom.

  Haaris poured a glass of wine and went into his office, which overlooked the large backyard and flower garden that was Deborah’s second leading passion. It was pleasant here in the summer, when on rare occasions they sat outside listening to the night sounds, the traffic and the troubles they represented seemingly in another universe.

  He turned on his computer, and once he was online entered a forty-seven-character alpha-numeric-case-sensitive totally random password that he changed on a regular basis. Almost at once a Pakistani ISI Web site came up through remailers in Sri Lanka, India and the Czech Republic.

  He turned on the computer’s camera and held up the morning’s Washington Post. The lead stories were about the confusing issues unfolding in Pakistan. The main headline read: PAKISTAN’S BARAZANI CONFIRMED DEAD NEW MESSIAH TAKES OVER. Only the center of the front page itself, not the borders and not his hands, was visible in the image.

  Entering another long password, he brought up a sub-program that contained four speeches that he had prepared five months earlier.

  He clicked on one and opened it. The room was dark, the background anonymous except for a computer-generated image of Pakistan’s green and white flag with the crescent moon and a single star. He was seated on an easy chair, only his head and shoulders visible. His face was almost completely covered by a kaffiyeh, his eyes in deep shadows. The image he presented was meant to be ominous, and it was.

  “My friends, we have reached the first of many way points in our blessed journey together,” he said in English.

  He picked up a Washington Post from off camera and held it up. It was dated five months earlier. Haaris clicked on the newspaper and moved it off screen, replacing it with the morning’s front page.

  “We are at peace. Across our great nation the guns and bombs have stopped. We are no longer at war with each other or with our neighbors. And yet America still sees us not as equals but merely as a client state.”

  His image on the screen let the newspaper fall away.

  “Our commerce is back to normal. We have asked the other nations to return their ambassadors and staffs so that we may all continue our peaceful coexistence.

  “My dreams for Paradise here in Pakistan continue. Allah has spoken to me with his message of strength.

  “Be strong of heart, for the way ahead may be difficult.

  “Be strong of mind, for we will face many problems.

  “Be strong of arm, for the tasks that we are faced with will seemingly be without end.”

  Purely bullshit, Haaris thought. Karl Marx had written that religion was the opiate of the masses. Well, this is exactly what he was giving them.

  His speech went on in the same vein for a few more minutes, until in the end he promised that he would be among them. He would be a man on the street, a simple wayfarer on the highways, in the hills, on the deserts, by the sea.

  He used a translation program to render his words into Punjabi before taking the speech processor out of his sealed attaché case and downloading it to the program that changed his voice to the same one he’d used on the balcony of the Aiwan.

  Ten minutes after sitting down at his desk, he attached the speech to an e-mail—also sent through the remailers to the PTV, Pakistan Television Corporation, the main government-controlled network of stations throughout the country. Within minutes it would be broadcast as a flash bulletin and be rebroadcast dozens of times over the coming days.

  Haaris sat back. “The Messiah has spoken again.”

  “I don’t understand,” Deb said at the door.

  Haaris controlled himself not to overreact. He turned to her and smiled. “I thought you had gone to bed.”

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  He couldn’t see any anger, just confusion. He got up and went to her. “I wish I could tell you, but it’s stuff for work. We’re doing a disinformation operation, trying to sow a few seeds of doubt about this guy calling himself the Messiah.”

  “That was you on the computer.”

  “Yes, it was. My idea.”

  She looked up at him, searching his eyes for the truth of what he was telling her. “What about the shower you mentioned?” she asked.

  To the outside world looking in at them, their marriage must have seemed odd. They were mismatched. And yet it had to be obvious that they were very much in love. Deb believed it. And now it was coming to an end as all things must.

  He slipped off his shoes and led her back to their bedroom suite, where in the bathroom he took off her T-shirt and kissed the nipples of her breasts.

  “I’d like the water hot,” he said.

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you too.”

  She stepped into the shower and started the water.

  He waited for just a second or two then got in with her. She started to laugh because he had not undressed. He kicked her feet out from under her, grabbed her shoulders and slammed her face down onto the raised lip of the shower stall with every ounce of his strength. The side of her head cracked like an eggshelll, blood poured out of the wound and her legs jerked several times before they were still.

  When he was certain that she was dead, he went into the bedroom and phoned 911.

  “My God, my wife fell in the shower and hit her head,” he cried. “She’s not breathing! I don’t know what to do!”

  “Who is calling?”

  “Please hurry,” Haaris sobbed. He gave the address then left the phone off the hook, turned on the front porch light and unlocked the door, then went back to his wife.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was late when McGarvey heard a soft sound on the stairs outside his Georgetown apartment. He unlocked the door then sat down in the dark in his living room, a cognac at hand, his Walther PPK in the nine-millimeter version on the small table beside him.

  After he’d left the White House, he phoned Walt Page’s office and left a message for the director as well as for Bambridge that he’d turned down the president. He told them that he would stick around Washington for the next day or two and then head back to Florida.

  He’d not answered Pete’s calls and had dinner alone at a small place a few blocks away down on M Street. Afterward he made a show of drink
ing too much at the bar before he staggered back home to his third-floor apartment in a brownstone across from Rock Creek Park.

  But he hadn’t been drunk then, nor was he drunk now.

  He’d phoned Jim Forest at the detective’s home. “How are things going?”

  “I was wondering when you were going to call,” Forest said.

  He and McGavey weren’t exactly friends, but they did have a mutual respect. Mac thought the kid was a good cop, though sometimes a little too earnest.

  “I wanted to give you time to get the autopsy results.”

  “You got out of Dodge before I could get to you. A Gulfstream left SRQ for Andrews. I assumed that you were aboard and that you were definitely involved. But the one guy had a forty-five-caliber slug in his head, and you carry a Walther. Mind telling me what the hell you’re involved with this time and who was helping you?”

  “I can’t tell you a lot, except those two guys came to kill me, and I think they may be Pakistanis.”

  “Holy shit,” Forest said softly. “They rented the boat at Marina Jack up in Sarasota under the name Walter Smith. One of them showed a New York driver’s license and left a deposit with an American Express gold card in the same name. But the rental agent said neither guy’s English was very good.”

  “Anything show up in their dental work?”

  “Nothing yet. But a coroner’s jury wants to talk to you.”

  “Later, once I get something settled.”

  Forest was silent for a beat. “Is this about what’s going on right now in Pakistan?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Just tell me that you’re not bringing any more shit down here. I have my hands full as it is. The chief knows that I know you, and he’s asking some very pointed questions. You come back to Sarasota and bring another shooting war with you, we’ll probably both end up in jail.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. A lot depends upon what happens here in DC over the next twenty-four hours or so. Could be it’ll all blow away.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No.”