“Set,” she said in his earpiece.
“Joe?”
“Set.”
“I’m going in,” McGarvey radioed. Their communications units were encrypted, so there was little chance that their transmissions had been monitored. Nevertheless he watched the guards in the subbasement for any sort of a reaction. But one of them laughed, and the other lit a cigarette.
They might have been planning for trouble, but they weren’t expecting anything immediate.
“Can you lock down just that elevator?” McGarvey asked.
“No problem,” Rencke said. He entered a few commands into the computer, and a small red tab popped up beneath the elevator command display. “If they want to get back to the twenty-fifth floor they’ll have to use the stairs.”
McGarvey hefted his nylon bag, and nodded toward the main elevators across the atrium. “Those still work?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going up to the twenty-sixth floor,” McGarvey said. “Once I’m there lock these elevators down too. I don’t want anyone sneaking up behind me.”
“You got it,” Rencke said. “And Mac? Good luck. Okay?”
“If anything goes wrong, call Gloria and get the hell out of here,” McGarvey said, and he stepped out from around the counter and sprinted across the atrium.
Graham hesitated for a moment at the end of the long corridor that led back to bin Laden’s prayer sanctuary and held his breath to listen. But the building was deathly still. The hair at the nape of his neck bristled, and his gut was tight, though he didn’t exactly know why.
Something was coming; something was about to happen. The air was pregnant with possibilities.
He had sent Sampson down to the garage to wait for him until it was time to meet with McGarvey, and he had delayed answering bin Laden’s summons for as long as possible. Something had been odd about his driver since shortly after they’d returned from the Pearl, and when the man had relayed bin Laden’s order ten minutes ago, Graham had been sure the bastard was hiding something.
In the meantime all but a handful of the mujahideen usually up here had been sent over to the Fish Harbor compound on a show of force guarding the bin Laden double. Depending upon how quickly ISI reacted, the imposter would either be allowed to get out and make a run for the mountains, or he and his freedom fighters and whoever managed to get inside the compound would all be destroyed in a series of powerful suicide bombs.
It was a ruse they had used before. The CIA was convinced that bin Laden and most of his key lieutenants were hiding in the mountains along the border with Afghanistan. It was a fiction that the Pakistani government was willing to maintain for the gullible Americans.
All but one American.
Around the corner, Graham used a house phone to call Sampson. “Get the car ready, we’re leaving in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Sampson said. “But there’s something wrong with the elevator. Do you have it locked?”
For just an instant it made no sense to Graham, but then all of a sudden he had it. McGarvey was already here. Somehow the son of a bitch had followed them from the hotel.
“Get the car ready, but send the others up here.”
“How?” Sampson demanded.
“The west stairwell, you idiot!” Graham bellowed. “McGarvey is here.” He slammed down the phone, checked the load on his Steyr, and started to the east stairwell.
Bin Laden came to the door of his prayer room. He was dressed now in his traditional Arab garb of headdress and flowing white robes. “Captain Graham,” he called.
Graham stopped in his tracks and turned back, the pistol hidden at his side behind his leg.
“I would like a word with you about Mr. McGarvey,” bin Laden said. He was flanked by his two mujahideen personal bodyguards, armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
“What about him?”
“There is a possibility that he traced you here after your meeting this evening,” bin Laden said, his voice soft as if he were talking to a schoolboy. He stepped aside. “Please join me. We’ll have tea and discuss how you will deal with this problem. And with your next assignment.”
“First let me fetch something from my room,” Graham said.
“If it’s your weapon you’re after, you will not be needing it. I have sent for help.”
“Okay,” Graham said, but he spun on his heel and ducked around the corner before bin Laden’s bodyguards could react.
At the end of the corridor, he tore open the stairwell door just as the first of the two mujahideen opened fire from the end of the corridor, but by then he was racing down the stairs, taking them three at a time.
He had no idea how McGarvey had found this place, but with a little bit of luck the bastard would be coming through the garage, that by now was unguarded except for Sampson, whose pistol’s firing pin was missing.
He wanted McGarvey dead, but first he wanted the American to kill bin Laden, because the worldwide repercussions would be so great that no one from the CIA or al-Quaida would bother looking for one British ex-pat.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Stepping off the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor, McGarvey heard the brief burst of automatic weapons fire directly below. It was a single Kalashnikov and very close, no more than one or two floors down, which at least meant that Otto wasn’t involved.
He stopped in his tracks for just a moment, to wait for more gunfire, but the building fell silent again; no screams, no shouts, nothing.
He could think of any number of possibilities, not the least of which involved Graham, who might have outlived his usefulness to al-Quaida. He keyed his lapel mike as he crossed the corridor to a pair of highly polished oak doors. The brass plaque on the wall identified the offices as MI-RANI TRADING COMPANY: KARACHI, BERLIN, PARIS, LONDON.
“Otto, I’m on twenty-sixth, somebody’s shooting just below me.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Rencke radioed back. “But you’re going to have company. Two guys from the garage are on their way up the stairs. The only one left is Graham’s driver, and it looks as if he’s getting set to get out of there. He found the tracker and destroyed it. What do you want me to do?”
“Graham’s probably on his way down. Make sure Gloria and Bernstein have the heads-up. But tell them to be careful.”
“I read you,” Bernstein radioed.
The channel was silent for a moment. “Gloria?” McGarvey radioed.
There was no answer.
“Check on her, Joe,” McGarvey ordered.
“You got it.”
“Otto, I want you to shut down the main elevators. If you don’t hear from me sooner, turn them back on in ten minutes and get the hell out of the building.” McGarvey set his bag down, and using the same universal card key Rencke had used downstairs, unlocked the door and let himself in.
“It’s done,” Rencke radioed.
“I’m in, shut down the alarm system for the entire floor.”
“Stand by,” Rencke said.
The anteroom was large and expensively decorated with ornately framed seascapes on the walls, several tall plants, and a tasteful grouping of dark wine leather furniture on an Oriental rug facing a receptionist’s desk.
“Done,” Rencke radioed.
“Start the clock now,” McGarvey said. He crossed to the door beyond the reception room, let himself into a plushly carpeted corridor, and hurried to the palatial office at the end. This one was at the rear of the building, opposite from the M. R. Kayani Road’s main entrance, and was furnished like the reception room with massive, dark leather and oak furniture, including a very large executive’s desk and credenza in front of tall glass windows.