Sterling turned and was about to leave when the COS stopped him.
“This is a CIA issue now, Russ. We’ll keep it that way. If and when the ambassador needs to be told, I will be the one doing the telling. Clear?”
FIFTY-THREE
The GPS tracker, disguised as a nonencrypted sat phone, raised no eyebrows at the customs counter in the Jinnah International terminal, for the simple reason that so many businessmen carried the phones these days they’d become commonplace. But security was tight as it had been for a long time. McGarvey’s luggage was X-rayed, then hand-searched by customs officers, as was his body after he’d taken off his shoes and his jacket and turned out his pockets. His hefty Philippe Patek chronometer was examined by two different officials before he was allowed to put it back on his wrist.
It was early evening when he shouldered his bag and headed across the busy concourse to the taxi ranks out front. Ostensibly he was here, under his own name, to do freelance research for the State Department’s upgrade of its Pakistan country guide blue book. He wasn’t carrying a diplomatic passport, nor did he have the credentials of a journalist, so he’d been given no preferential treatment. On the other hand he’d not become the center of anyone’s attention. So far.
Although he thought he could feel eyes on him, people watching his every move, he’d spotted no one obvious. But if bin Laden’s people didn’t know that he had arrived in the country yet, they would certainly get the heads-up when he checked into the Pearl Continental downtown where Rencke had booked him an executive suite for ten days.
For now he was a man apparently in no hurry, here in Pakistan to spend some of his government’s money. Islamabad might buy the fiction, though al-Quaida would certainly not.
Bin Laden would know for certain that there was only one reason McGarvey had come back. The question was how arrogant the man had become; how much of the fiction he and his people had created about his powers had he begun to believe. Enough so that he thought he was invincible? A spider that was willing to let its prey come into the web?
Just outside the automatic doors, McGarvey stepped to one side and held up well out of the steady stream of passengers who had just gotten off three flights that had arrived within minutes of one another, and from the mob of cabbies who descended upon them.
The night was warm and humid, with a mélange of smells unique to this port city; burned kerojet, the sea, diesel fumes, rotting fish and garbage, and some indefinable combination of spices and unpleasant human odors.
An older-looking, ragtag, stoop-shouldered man, wearing a dark suit coat over a dirty white shirt, baggy trousers, and flip-flops, approached from the end of the cab ranks, a green baseball cap in his left hand. “Good evening, sir. May I offer my cab into the city?” His heavily accented English was barely understandable.
“I’ll wait until the crowd thins, thank you,” McGarvey said.
“Yes, but my cab is clean and my rates are reasonable.”
Rencke had arranged an initial contact, but this was Karachi and the messenger could have been compromised, though the man’s encounter key words were correct.
“Very well,” McGarvey said, and he followed the cabbie to the far end of the cab ranks and then across four lanes of the very busy departure road.
Police were directing traffic, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to McGarvey, though the feeling that he was being watched continued to grow; as if someone were sighting a rifle on the back of his head.
He tossed his bag in the backseat of the cab, and climbed in as the driver got behind the wheel. “The Pearl Continental on Club Road.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said and they headed into Karachi, merging smoothly with the rushing traffic that consisted not only of cabs and buses, but of horse-drawn carriages, human-powered rickshaws, and bicycles.
A small leather case lay on the floor behind McGarvey’s feet. He picked it up and opened it. His pistol, two extra magazines of ammunition, a bulky encrypted satellite phone, an envelope containing ten thousand dollars cash, and another containing three passports — one U.S., one British, and a third French — had been sent over in a diplomatic pouch earlier today. The cabbie was a contract worker for the U.S. Consulate here.
“Good flight over, sir?” the driver asked, all traces of his Pakistani accent gone, replaced by what sounded like California to McGarvey.
“Bumpy,” McGarvey said. “Thanks for my things. Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. McGarvey, but I know Todd Van Buren, your son-in-law from the Farm.” The driver looked in the rearview mirror. “Name’s Joe Bernstein.”
“Pleasure,” McGarvey said. “Anyone behind us?”
“Thought I might have spotted the same motorbike that was parked down the block from the consulate this afternoon. But it’s gone now.”
“How about at the airport?”
“You came in clean, unless someone was on the same flight.”
“It was vetted in Riyadh,” McGarvey said absently, his mind elsewhere. There should have been someone at the airport. The motorbike was a possibility, but according to Bernstein it was no longer behind them.
“Any idea how long you’ll be here, sir?” Bernstein was asking.
“Couple days,” McGarvey replied. They had to know he was coming.
Bernstein handed a business card over the back of the seat. “If you need anything at arm’s length from the consulate, call me at the cab company. It’s an answering service.”
McGarvey focused on the driver. “What’s your job here?”
“Just a driver with big ears,” Bernstein said. “You’d be surprised what people will say in the back of a taxi. They think they’re invisible.”
“You speak the language?”
“Fluently. My grandmother was a Pakistani. Didn’t move to the States until she was twenty-five.”
“Then keep your ears open for me, Joe. I want to know if my name comes up.”
“Will do, Mr. M. I’ll leave a message at the hotel for you. A chalk mark on the FedEx box in the lobby.”
They rode the rest of the way into the city in silence. Once they passed the Chaukhandi Tombs and got off Hospital Road into the center of downtown, traffic seemed to increase tenfold, and everyone seemed to be moving at a frantic pace, as if they needed to get off the streets as quickly as possible lest something catch up with them. Pakistan had been a nation in turmoil from its beginning in 1947.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled into the driveway of the Pearl, where a bellman came over to open the cab door for McGarvey.
“Need anything, give me a call,” Bernstein said.
“Could be I’ll need to get out of Dodge in a hurry.”
“When?”
“I don’t know yet, but if the need arises it’ll be all of a sudden.”
“I’ll work on it,” Bernstein said as the bellman opened the door.
McGarvey got out of the cab, handed the bellman his B4 bag, and carrying the small leather case with his weapon, phone, cash, and passports, entered the hotel. The lobby was moderately busy with people checking in, and others at the hotel for dinner.
He checked in at the desk with his own American Express card, but the clerk refused it.
“It’s not necessary, Mr. McGarvey.Your wife has already checked in, two hours ago.”
McGarvey was taken aback. He simply couldn’t imagine Katy being here. It made no sense. But a sudden understanding dawned on him, and his anger spiked. “Did she leave a message?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. McGarvey said that she would be waiting for you in the coffee shop,” the clerk said. “It’s just across the lobby to your left.” He glanced at his computer screen. “Your dinner reservations are for eight.”