McGarvey looked toward the front windows at the neighborhood, still asleep. “He did tell us one thing at least.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s not coming home. At least not soon.”
They stopped at an all-night McDonald’s not too far from the old Columbia Hospital for Women just off Pennsylvania Avenue. A few people were having early morning breakfast and coffee. Several of them were outside smoking at the picnic tables.
“We’ve come a long ways together, you and I,” Otto said.
“Yes, we have,” McGarvey said, not really hearing yet what his friend was trying to say.
“There was a time in France when I didn’t think I was going to make it. No one knew what hacking was all about then, but I was really on the verge of being one of the true assholes. Doing that kind of shit out of pure spite. Boredom, maybe. I was pissed off at the world and really didn’t know why. Then you showed up on my doorstep one day and gave me my purpose.”
“It was a two-way street. I was having my own troubles then, before Katy and I got back together.”
“But then the two of you did.”
“Not for long enough.”
“But you had each other,” Otto said, looking away momentarily. “I was really jealous of you, until Louise. Mostly because I didn’t understand what it was like to…”
“To be in love?”
“Yeah. And here we are again, on the actual brink, you and I. We can’t do it alone, Mac. Never could. Of all people I thought that you would understand most.”
Suddenly McGarvey understood what his old friend was getting at. “Two things,” he said, maybe a little too sharply. “Don’t write me off just yet, and second of all, leave Pete out of it.”
Otto managed a smile. “I haven’t on the first, and I won’t on the second.”
Louise was already at All Saints when they arrived. Breakfast was being served to the half-dozen patients on the third and fourth floors, but Franklin hadn’t arrived yet. It was he who signed all release orders. Pete wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how much she protested, until the doctor said so.
Last night Louise had stopped by Pete’s apartment to pack a couple of bags for at least a few days, maybe as long as a week, on Campus. “If she needs anything else in the interim, I’ll get them,” she told McGarvey.
She was waiting upstairs in the second-floor visitors’ lounge, watching Good Morning America, when McGarvey and Otto got off the elevator and came down the corridor.
“Is Pete awake yet?” Otto asked.
“Awake, dressed and pissed off,” Louise said. “She wants out now.” She turned to McGarvey. “And who are you?”
McGarvey and Otto exchanged a glance.
“Travis Parks,” Otto told his wife. “He’s been assigned to act as Pete’s minder.”
Louise guffawed. “Lots of luck, Parks.”
McGarvey smiled. “Maybe I can take her by surprise for a change,” he said, reverting to his Kansas drawl.
Louise’s expression changed by degrees. “My God, it’s you,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes, but I didn’t notice at first.”
“That’s a good thing,” McGarvey said.
He went down the hall to Pete’s room. The door was open and he knocked on the frame before he walked in.
Pete was fully dressed, sitting on the edge of her bed, her breakfast tray untouched. She looked up. And for just a moment her mouth pursed in irritation, but suddenly she brightened.
“Kirk, you look worse than I feel.”
THIRTY-TWO
McGarvey showed up at Joint Base Andrews in a CIA Cadillac Escalade with civilian plates and was dropped off on the tarmac where a C-32A military VIP transport aircraft was boarding the Islamabad embassy staff for the overnight flight. The twin-engine jet was the military version of the Boeing 757, which the vice president and sometimes even the president used. In this case it was meant as a show of the U.S. commitment to diplomacy with Pakistan.
A pair of embassy security officers in civilian clothes were checking the passengers according to a boarding list.
“Travis Parks,” McGarvey told the men. He handed one of them his passport.
“We understand your mission, Mr. Parks, but Ambassador Powers isn’t particularly pleased that you’re along for the ride,” the officer said. He checked McGarvey’s well-traveled passport closely before handing it back. “Will you be a part of our detail?”
“I’m just going over as an observer. I’ll try to stay out of everyone’s hair.”
“Do that,” the officer said.
Hefting his single bag McGarvey went up the stairs and inside the plane a steward directed him to a rear section of the cabin that contained general business-class seating for thirty-two staffers. Most of the seats were taken and the staffers looked up with curiosity, some with a little animosity as he stowed his bag in an overhead bin and took a seat in the last row across from the galley.
No one said anything to him, and once he was seated the other passengers went back to their conversations or to their laptops or telephones.
He phoned Otto. “I’m aboard, but it’s a little frosty.”
“Powers talked to you yet?”
“Probably not till we’re airborne.”
“I suppose it would be stupid of me to tell you not to annoy the man. He could send you back, no matter what Fay has to say about it. When he gets to his embassy he’s the boss.”
“I’ll go in the front door and right out the back soon as we get there.”
“To the Presidential Palace?”
McGarvey had thought quite a bit about what his first moves would be once he got in country. His target was the Messiah, but first getting to General Rajput and the Shahid of the TTP who’d taken up residence in the palace would probably be necessary.
“What’s the latest on Haaris?”
“As of an hour ago he was still in London.”
“In the hotel?”
“He had lunch at a pub in Notting Hill and then drove down to Charing Cross, where he parked in the station lot, and from what I was just told he’s taking a leisurely stroll along the river. But he’s being very careful with his tradecraft, almost as if he were trying to hide in plain sight even though he’s already been made.”
“Whatever moves he makes, tell Boyle to stay out of his way.”
“He already burned one of Boyle’s people at the airport, and in fact had the agent drive him to his hotel.”
“Whatever happens I want Tommy himself to stay away from Haaris. They’re old friends and I don’t want anything to interfere with Dave’s plans. And tell Boyle that if Haaris makes contact and wants to get together to beg off. I want to give him all the room in the world.”
“Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, kemo sabe: what if we’re wrong, and Dave Haaris is not the Messiah?”
“Then we’re wrong. Still leaves the Messiah, whoever the hell he is,” McGarvey said. “Are your programs making any progress identifying the voice?”
“Sometimes they’re going around in circles. It’s almost as if the speaker disguised his voice that was inputted to the device. Maybe like adding a Southern accent, or an Indian accent, that was then altered. We may get to the false accent he used, but it might not tell us anything we can use. Could be he’s smarter than us.”
“Or thinks he is.”
They departed around four in the afternoon. The flight plan would take them to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany for refueling, and a layover, before they started their second leg to Islamabad. Touchdown was scheduled for eight in the morning.