McGarvey was afraid of something like this happening. Every woman he’d ever been involved with had been strong-willed, and sooner or later had lost her life because of it.
“Have Walt call one of his friends in London; maybe they can get their Home Office to convince someone from their embassy here to meet the plane and pick her up. It’d be more convincing that way since it’s a RAF flight.”
“She’s carrying a U.S diplomatic passport.”
“They’ll have to work around it,” McGarvey said. “Make Walt understand how important this is to me.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Otto promised. “But getting around Pakistan’s passport control will be a lot easier than getting around Pete.”
“Tell them they can do anything they want, short of shooting her.”
“Okay. In the meantime I’ll see what’s holding up our people from fetching your prisoner.”
“I need her gone as soon as possible,” McGarvey said and hung up.
“Who is Haaris?” Judith asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“CIA like you and whoever the woman is who’s coming apparently to help you? Maybe Haaris is a rogue CIA agent. Out of control. Someone you need to stop, for whatever dark reason.”
In the early morning light her complexion and features were fair, her blond hair tousled from sleep she looked anything but Middle Eastern. “You don’t look like an ISI operator.”
She smiled. “What’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?”
“You don’t look Pakistani. More like someone from Ohio.”
“Close, actually. Indiana. Michigan City. My dad, brothers and uncles worked in the steel mills and were union all the way. And Catholics. The workers and the priests versus the bosses. Made for interesting dinner table discussions.”
“But not your cup of tea.”
“No. The men were getting screwed in the mills, and their sons were getting raped by the priests.”
“There were other places you could have gone to. Other churches,” McGarvey said. “Why here where a girl who marries the wrong man can be stoned to death by her own father? Almost every day some sort of violence. Bombings, assassinations, coups — your own president had his head cut off.”
“It’s a long story, which I promise to tell you if you’ll hand over your pistol.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll be debriefed and probably be declared persona non grata,” Judith said. “We are allies, after all.” She smiled faintly. “So, I’ll take my chances. Who is Haaris and what is he doing in Pakistan?”
“The ISI tried to kill me.”
“Because they thought that you were a troublemaker.”
“Is that how your father and his friends treated troublemaking journalists in Michigan City?”
“We have a great deal of respect for the CIA.”
Someone was on the stairs below. McGarvey glanced out the window. A newer red Mercedes E350 was parked in front.
At that moment Judith leaped up and was on him in two strides, shoving him aside and grabbing the pistol on the window ledge beside him, then stepping back out of the way.
She nodded toward the door. “If you warn them, I’ll kill you.”
McGarvey got up and took a bullet from his pocket. “You might need a few of these,” he said.
She racked the slide, but the gun was empty.
“That’s the second time you didn’t notice the weight; makes me wonder what kind of training they gave you.”
“You bastard,” she screamed and she charged, swinging the butt of the pistol toward his face.
He easily grabbed the gun, twisted it out of her grip and shoved her away. “You’ll be okay. We don’t kill prisoners.”
“The fuck you don’t. How about renditions? How about Guantanamo? Waterboarding? Secret firing squads?”
McGarvey opened the door for two clean-shaven men in Western suits and ties. They could have been American businessmen.
“Who the hell are you?” Mac asked.
“SEAL Team Six; we were told you needed an extraction,” the shorter of the two said. His hair was above his ears and neatly combed, as was the other’s.
“Good disguise.”
“Makes us conspicuous, for all the wrong reasons,” the operator said. “Where’s the woman?”
McGarvey turned as Judith came full speed out of the kitchen, a butcher knife raised.
One of the operators pulled out a silenced Beretta nine-millimeter and fired one shot, catching her in the middle of the forehead. She fell back, dead.
“Gnarly,” he said.
McGarvey truly hadn’t wanted it to end this way. Katy had told him more than once that he had more respect for women then a lot of them deserved. But she loved him all the more for it.
“Take the body with you,” he said.
“Will she be missed?”
“She was ISI.”
Both SEALS fired several more shots into the woman’s body.
FORTY-THREE
With the dawn Haaris got out of bed, dressed in his Messiah costume and donned the voice-altering device before he crossed the hall and went into the president’s office. He wasn’t hungry, which surprised him a little, because he hadn’t eaten anything substantial since London, only a light snack on the flight over. But he was thirsty.
He found the small pantry hidden behind the rear wall. It was equipped with a wet bar and several top-shelf whiskeys, cognacs, gins and vodkas. A rack beneath the sink held a dozen or more red wines, and the cooler beside it was filled with whites.
A small fridge contained fruit juices, bottled tea and bottled water. He got a water and crossed to the windows. He stood to one side so it would be difficult for anyone to spot him but he’d have a decent sight line down Constitution Avenue. The crowd of a few hundred when he’d arrived had grown to a thousand or more people, many of them children. He had to wonder why, unless word had gotten out that the Messiah had possibly returned. With the rising sun some of them were eating flatbread for breakfast, while men sat smoking in the beds of pickup trucks. It did not seem like an angry mob to Haaris, rather a gathering of people patiently waiting for something to happen — or for someone to show up.
As a young student he’d learned from his teachers that the people of any nation deserved the government they had. If they were dissatisfied a revolution would occur. Sometimes the uprising took years, like in the case of the aftermath of Stalin and others in Russia, but unless it happened the people would be stuck with the likes of a Hitler, who had been replaced only by all-out war.
Haaris turned around as he raised the bottle of water to his lips but stopped short, not immediately recognizing the bearded man in white robes standing in the doorway. But then it came to him, and he smiled.
“The Tehreek-e-Taliban has sent you.”
“Yes. I am Mufti Fahad. We were told that you returned to the Aiwan.”
“Where is Shahidullah Shahid?”
“I am his representative.”
“Are you a scholar?” It was what the title mufti translated to.
“Yes.”
“Then am I to govern as a triumvirate with a prime minister and a man of learning?”
“And us with a man of mystery the people call Messiah? But your face is clean-shaven; you do well to cover it in public, lest a false impression be made.”
The mufti was dark-skinned with deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows. He stood with a bamboo cane in his left hand, favoring that leg as he took a step closer. He had a white lace cloth covering the top of his head.
“We will rule in peace,” Haaris said, the words sounding pompous to him.
“The jihad against the West will not be abandoned until sharia law is universal.”