There were lights on in some of the apartments, and the parking lot was more than half-filled with decent-looking cars, most of them Fiats, VWs, and a few small Mercedes, plus a plain white windowless van, but Bernstein had parked in darkness near the trash Dumpsters. Their instructions, which they had received at the consulate’s primary contact telephone, had been very specific. No more than two people would be used to deliver the money. They would not be armed. And they would park directly beneath the one inoperable light stanchion in this lot no later than 9:10 P.M. It was that time now.
Headlights flashed around the corner of the building, and moments later a battered green Toyota pickup truck came into view and parked twenty meters away to the right of the white van.
“I can only see the driver,” Bernstein said.
The pickup’s headlights went out.
“Maybe it’s not our man,” Coddington suggested, and Bernstein could hear the first hint of tension in his voice.
“He’s just sitting there.”
“Can you tell if his engine is running?”
“No,” Bernstein replied. Suddenly he didn’t like the setup. They were boxed in back here. The only way out took them directly past the Toyota. He looked over his shoulder. A broad ditch, half-filled with water, separated the rear of the parking lot from the access road to another apartment block a couple hundred meters away. From there they could probably reach Chakiwarl Road. But if they got stuck in the ditch, they would be out of luck.
“I think we should get out of here,” he said.
The driver got out of the pickup truck.
“Hold on,” Coddington said. “This is it.”
The driver made no move to come across the parking lot, but he was staring at them. He was dressed in baggy dark trousers, a light shirt, and baseball cap. He was holding something about the size of a book in his hand. It did not look like a weapon.
“I’m going over,” Coddington said. “If this falls apart call for backup right away.”
“If it falls apart you’ll be dead,” Bernstein said. “Let him come to us.”
“No,” Coddington said. He got out of the car with the big aluminum case containing the five million and headed across the parking lot.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Bernstein swore. The hair at the nape of his neck was standing on end. He reached under the seat, brought out his 9mm Beretta, and switched the safety to the off position.
Coddington reached the pickup truck and for a minute or two nothing seemed to be happening. But then the informant handed the book, or whatever it was, to Coddington, who gave the man the aluminum case.
“Come on,” Bernstein murmured.
Coddington waited until the driver laid the aluminum case on the pavement and opened it, then turned around and headed back.
Bernstein tightened his grip on the pistol. If it went bad, it would be right now. He kept his eye on the informant, watching for the man to pull out a weapon, but it didn’t happen.
Coddington reached the car and climbed in the backseat. “Fish Harbor,” he said triumphantly. “Bin Laden’s at Fish Harbor in a compound. Now get us the hell out of here.”
Bernstein dropped the car in gear and started toward the exit, when four men armed with Kalashnikov rifles leaped out of the white van, and opened fire on the informant.
“Son of a bitch,” Coddington swore.
Bernstein floored it, spun the car around, and headed for the ditch. “Hang on!” he shouted.
A big explosion lit up the night behind them, and then the car, still accelerating, slammed into the ditch, the shocks bottoming out, the rear end fishtailing wildly, water and mud flying everywhere.
For just a moment it seemed as if they were going to be bogged down, but then they were rocketing up the other side and Bernstein hauled the heavy car down the access road toward the next apartment building.
“Are they coming after us?” he demanded.
“No!” Coddington shouted. “Christ, they shot him, and then tossed a bomb or something right on top of his body.”
The access road crossed behind the apartment block, and opened two hundred meters later back on Chakiwarl Road. There was no traffic and speeding away Bernstein checked his rearview mirror to make sure that they were not being followed.
“What about the money?” he asked.
“Gone,” Coddington said. “It proves that he wasn’t lying.”
“Yeah, doesn’t it now,” Bernstein replied. “But why didn’t they stop us?”
“Because you were too goddamned fast for them,” Coddington said. He was hyper. “And now we’ve got the bastard.”
“When are you going to let McGarvey know?”
“Right now,” Coddington said, pulling out his cell phone.
SEVENTY-TWO
It was 9:15 P.M. The afternoon had dragged for McGarvey and Gloria after Coddington’s initial call that contact had been made and the handover would take place sometime after nine o’clock. The bait had been taken, and now a major portion of the puzzle would be solved by al-Quaida’s reaction.
McGarvey had tried to warn the chief of station to bring plenty of backup in case he found himself in the middle of a firefight, or at the very least to insist on a rendezvous site somewhere very public. But he’d been told that this part of the mission would be strictly a local CIA operation.
He was in the bathroom, splashing water on his face, when his cell phone rang. He dried off and walked back into the bedroom to answer the phone on the third ring. Gloria stood at the window, an expectant look on her face.
“Yes?”
“We made the handover,” Coddington said. He was excited, all out of breath as if he had just run up a flight of stairs. “He’s at a compound in Fish Harbor. We’ve got the bastard now. This time we’ve really got him.”
“Listen to me, David. He’s not there, but the CIA is going to act as if they believe he is—”
“No, goddammit, you listen to me!” Coddington shouted. “They gave me a videotape. And that’s not all. Right after the handover we came under attack. The informant was killed and the money destroyed.”
McGarvey glanced at Gloria, who was staring at him, trying to gauge what was going on.
“Christ, they figured out someone was coming for the money, and where the handover was going to take place, and they were waiting for us,” Coddington said.
“Did they fire at your car?” McGarvey asked.
“No,” Coddington said. “We got out of there too fast.”
It never ceased to amaze McGarvey how people could believe what they wanted to believe, tossing out any fact that didn’t fit. The problem was especially bad in the intelligence community that was tasked with trying to come up with the right facts to fit whatever the current administration’s position was.
These were bright people, many of them even brilliant. But they were very often blinded by their own set of preconceived notions, and by a general bureaucratic malaise that seemed to affect nearly everyone the moment they got anywhere near Washington, D.C. Every single agency had its own unique culture, the primary driving force of which was nothing more than the survival of the agency.
In any given situation, if a piece of intelligence information promoted the agency’s survival, then it was branded as fact, whether it was true or not.
“That’s good news,” McGarvey said. “You might want to contact the ISI right away. If bin Laden is actually at the compound, he’ll probably try to get out of there tonight, so you’ll have to move fast.”
“That’s what I thought,” Coddington said. “But what about you?”
“We’ll backstop you in case you’re too late,” McGarvey said.