“I’m not going to leave you,” Pete said.
“Haaris is going to make another announcement, first on radio and TV, and then he’s going to make an appearance on the front balcony of the Aiwan.”
“The announcement was made five minutes ago,” Otto said. “He’s going to speak to the people in person and reveal Pakistan’s true enemies.”
“Enemies, plural?”
“Yeah.”
“The crazy bastard’s engineered another nine-eleven.”
“There’s more. One of my darlings picked up a brief mention in the ISI’s mainframe about weapons inventories. We took out eighty-seven of their nukes and we know where most of the rest are depoted, but four are missing from Quetta’s list. The Taliban detonated one, so that leaves three unaccounted for. If the inventory is accurate.”
“London’s on the list. He’s got an ax to grind because of how they treated him as a kid.”
“That’d make him insane as well as brilliant,” Otto said. “A bad combination.”
“Tell Page what we think might be coming our way and have him inform Sir John.” Sir John Notesworthy was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
“What about the president?”
“That’s her call,” McGarvey said. “But I don’t think this’ll wait for a diplomatic solution.”
“You’re going ahead with the op,” Otto said. “You’re going to show up at the Aiwan and try to take him out. With what? You don’t have a sniper rifle, so it’ll have to be a pistol shot, which means short range.”
“It has to be that way.”
“Goddamnit, why, Mac? You might get close enough to him to pull it off, but afterwards you’ll never get out of there. The mob will tear you apart.”
“He’s almost certainly compartmentalized the entire thing, which means he’s the only one who knows all the details.”
“He won’t talk to you,” Otto said.
“I think he will,” McGarvey said. “Now get on it, but, listen, Otto, keep everything low-key. I suspect that he still has a go-to on Campus.”
“Your name or the op haven’t been mentioned. The list is very tight.”
“I know, but if word gets out that we’re taking a special interest in incoming flights and ships, especially to DC, New York and London — and if I can’t get to him in time — his plans will change. He could postpone everything for a week or a month, even a year. We couldn’t keep up the tightened security posture forever.”
Otto was silent for a long time, and Pete looked stricken.
“I’m getting word to Austin,” Otto finally said. “I don’t like this, Mac.”
“Do you think I do?” McGarvey asked.
McGarvey borrowed a pair of loose trousers and a knee-length shirt from Thomas, and armed with Pete’s Glock and a spare magazine of ammunition he came back downstairs to where she was finishing bandaging Thomas’s wound.
“Good luck, pal,” Thomas said, his voice strong. He was holding up well. Hate was a powerful motivator.
“Nothing I can do for you unless you go to the embassy with Pete.”
“They’d think I was you, and we wouldn’t get within a block of the place. Then both of us would be in the shit.”
“I’ll have somebody come back for you after it’s settled,” Pete said.
Thomas actually smiled. “Sounds good.”
Pete came outside with McGarvey. “I understand what you’re doing, though I can’t approve. Your chances are slim to none, and you know it.”
McGarvey shrugged. “I’ve faced worse odds.”
“I want you to know something first.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Nothing you can do to stop me, Kirk. But the fact of the matter is that I love you.”
McGarvey didn’t want to hear it, not from Pete, not from any woman. At night when he dreamed it was always of Katy. On the sailboat at anchor; at home in her gazebo on the Intracoastal Waterway on Casey Key; in Washington, Paris, Berlin, Toyko, once even Moscow and another time, Beijing. She’d wanted to see some of the places he’d been.
“So long as no one is shooting at us,” she’d said.
But it hadn’t lasted, of course. There’d been the of course almost from the beginning. All the women he had loved, including his daughter, had been taken from him because of what he did, because of who he was, who he had always been.
“I know that you feel something for me,” Pete said.
McGarvey looked away.
“I want to hear you say it. Just once.”
“No.”
“Even if you don’t mean it, Kirk.”
He looked at her. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s the best I can do for now.”
She smiled. “It’ll do,” she said.
SIXTY
Haaris, in his full regalia, including the voice-altering collar, sat behind the president’s desk watching a replay on a laptop of his canned announcement, which was being broadcast through just about every media outlet in the world.
The building’s staff was at a bare minimum, most of them security officers forbidden to come above the ground floor. No real work of government was being done from here; Rajput handled the day-to-day business of the country, and he was doing a reasonable job, considering the difficult circumstances.
Except for the business with Kirk McGarvey.
“We have come to a new juncture in Pakistan’s future, you and I,” his image on the monitor was saying. “One that I must apologize for not seeing. The signs were there for me to see even in my blindness.”
Haaris smiled. Politics was theater. Even, certainly, American presidents had always known it, especially Reagan, who’d been the consummate White House actor. But his had been an excellent presidency because of it. First, he had known how to hire bright people. Second, he had listened to them. And third, he played well on television.
“I have a way forward for us. Not with guns but with hope. With understanding.”
The mufti’s body lay where it had fallen, on its back, very little blood from the head shot, its arms splayed, one leg over the other.
“For us there will be no Shiite-Sunni war. We will not become another Iraq, dominated by the U.S. Our future is what we will make of it. And I promise that our future will be a bright one, beginning today.”
He got up and went to the double doors to the balcony. Already people were streaming onto Constitution Avenue. Many were coming from the direction of the parliament building, the National Library and the Supreme Court to the south, as well as the Secretariat to the north. But many came from the west, starting to choke rush hour traffic on Jinnah Avenue,
This time the crowd would be bigger than for his first public appearance. They wanted answers, and he would give them what they wanted.
He phoned Rajput. “Have you found him?”
“We think that he’s gone to ground in Rawalpindi at the house of one of our police informers, who works for the CIA but for us as well. We’ve tolerated the man because he’s given us good intel from time to time and we handed him bits of disinformation that we know got back to Austin’s people.”
“Do not try to take him into custody; this is very important, General. Kill him on sight. Am I clear?”
“Now that we know who he really is, he could be invaluable.”
“Am I clear?”
“Despite your clever speech this morning, you are not running this country. You are nothing more than a traitor — three times removed. First against Pakistan, the country of your birth. Second, against Great Britain, the country that educated you. And third, the U.S., the country that gave you employment and listened to your advice. Now where does your loyalty lie?”