McGarvey had to smile. She was bright as well as good-looking, but she still had a lot to learn, and the curve on this one would be steep. “I usually do, but your boss was getting set to gang up on you. And I’ve never liked bullies.”
She turned away. “I know what you mean.” When she looked back a veil had dropped over her eyes, as if she weren’t focusing. “Look, can I bum a ride to Arlington with you? I don’t think I want to be alone.”
“I have to go home and change first.”
“My apartment’s in Bethesda, on the way to where you’re staying. I have to change too. You could drop me off, and then pick me up on the way to Arlington.” She shrugged. “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” McGarvey said, and there was a sudden lifting at the corners of Gloria’s eyes that was mildly puzzling, but he let it go. She was under a lot of stress, and losing a partner was almost as traumatic as losing a spouse.
THIRTY-FOUR
Osama bin Laden, dressed in traditional Muslim garb, entered his inner sanctum prayer room at ten thirty in the evening, local time. He paused for a longish moment to study the faces of the four men gathered at his request, then stepped out of his sandals and took his place on the rug at the head of the room, his back to the television set that had been switched off.
“Good evening, my friends,” he said, his voice soft. “May Allah’s blessing be upon you. We are nearly ready to strike again at the infidel and this time we will hurt them worse than we did in Manhattan and Washington combined.”
Rupert Graham, the only Westerner at the meeting, gave bin Laden a bleak look. There was a leak somewhere in al-Quaida and it could very easily be either the Sudanese, Ghassan Dahduli, or bin Laden’s Saudi adviser Khalid bin Abdullah. The third man, Abdel Aziz Mysko, was from Chechnya, and Graham hadn’t met him until this evening. But he was in the inner command circle, which made him a suspect.
“Is it to be Allah’s Scorpion finally?” bin Abdullah asked, his eyes bright. He was a stoop-shouldered man with a dark complexion and a hawk nose; a third cousin of a minor Saudi prince, which made him royalty. He was an idiot, but he was a major money source for the cause.
“Yes, we have waited far too long since 9/11, and already the world is beginning to forget,” bin Laden said. He avoided Graham’s eyes.
“A wait that would have ended last week, if Captain Graham had been more thorough with his preparations,” bin Abdullah said harshly. “Pray that his spirit is more steadfast this time.”
“Perhaps we should find someone else to lead the mission,” Dahduli suggested gently. He was a homely, round-faced man with a closely trimmed full beard and very large lips and ears. He had been with bin Laden almost from the beginning, but hadn’t risen to the inner circle of advisers until many of bin Laden’s top people had been killed or captured during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for the simple reason he wasn’t very bright. He’d been a carpet merchant in Khartoum.
“That’s out of the question, my friend,” bin Laden replied patiently, as if he were a father explaining something to a son. “This is a submarine operation, and Mr. Graham is a submarine captain.”
Dahduli refused to look at Graham. “If that’s the case, why did we send him to Panama aboard an oil tanker? If he had been killed or captured, we would have lost his expertise.”
“Because the time was right to strike,” bin Abdullah said. “My money sources are beginning to demand action. They want something in return for the risk they are taking. With the Panama Canal destroyed by a Venezuelan ship and crew, oil from Saudi Arabia would become even more critical to the United States than it already is. Two hundred dollars per barrel would be conceivable. And such prices would surely bring the infidel to their knees.”
“As well as enrich the royal family,” Dahduli commented dryly. “But the question needs answering: If Mr. Graham’s skills are so important to our righteous cause, why was his life placed in danger on that mission?”
“Because we did not have a submarine or a weapon to fire or a crew to operate it,” bin Laden said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Graham’s breath quickened, catching in his throat. He shot a glance at the Chechen, who was the only man in the room other than bin Laden who didn’t look surprised. “Son of a bitch, you got a Russian Kilo boat,” he said, in wonder. “From the Pacific Fleet.”
Bin Laden smiled broadly. “You’ll see,” he said.
“We don’t have the boat yet, but it would only be a matter of days once I am given the word,” Mysko said. He had been introduced to Graham this evening as a major in the Russian Special Forces. He was a hard-looking man, very compact, with a three-day growth of whiskers, deep black eyes, and narrow high cheekbones that made him look like some dark jungle cat. Very dangerous. He’d pretended to go along with the Russians, fighting against his own homeland until eight years ago, when he came down to Afghanistan and joined forces with al-Quaida and the Taliban.
Graham turned to bin Laden. “Can we count on this man’s promise?”
Mysko flared. “You have never trained aboard a Kilo boat, can we count on you to know how it’s done without fucking it up?”
Graham willed himself to remain calm. He knew that he could kill the man here and now, but he did not want to ruin the chance to return to sea aboard his own submarine. With a Kilo boat the world would be his, because once he submerged, no navy on earth would be able to find him.
Even bin Laden’s Allah would be no match.
“My apologies, Major, I meant no disrespect,” Graham said humbly, his thoughts soaring. He was beginning to see Jillian’s face again.
Mysko’s smile was as sudden as it was disingenuous. “Nor I, Captain. But it has taken me many months, and a considerable amount of al-Quaida’s hard currencies to get to this stage. I would not like to see all of that effort go to waste.”
“I understand,” Graham said.
“Please tell them everything, Abdel,” bin Laden prompted, still smiling gently, and it came to Graham that the man was hiding something from them. Something important.
Mysko nodded. “I have arranged for us to steal a Kilo Six-fifty Class boat from Rakushka, which is about three hundred kilometers northeast of Vladivostok.”
Graham’s breath caught in his throat again, and he looked at bin Laden, who nodded. Almost every Kilo Class submarine was equipped with standard 533mm tubes, which gave it the capability of firing standard high-explosive (HE) short antisubmarine torpedoes as well as the long antiship weapons. But it had been rumored that a new class had been fitted with 650mm tubes that would allow the submarine to fire the SS-N-16 nuclear-tipped missile. That’s the class Kilo that Mysko was talking about.
Mysko glanced at Graham to make sure the 650 designation had been understood, and he smiled. “Security up there is normally loose, but I paid more than one million U.S. to a lieutenant general in charge of overall intelligence operations for the region, to divert the key guards for our boat during a twelve-hour window. When the time comes I will share all the details with you, for now I need only to know the target date.”
Bin Laden shook his head. “The details are not as important as the results,” he said. “And I will give you the date very soon.”
“Very well,” Mysko said. “I managed to come up with eighteen Russian crewmen, who were a lot less expensive than the one general. Eleven of them are already at Rakushka, but I will need forty-eight hours to get the rest of them up there.”
“Will they be sufficient to operate the boat?” Abdullah asked.