It was difficult to believe that bin Laden would actually take refuge in a place like this. But then the man had lived in caves in Afghanistan that were nothing from the outside, while inside they were reasonably well heated and ventilated and more or less comfortable. If this compound were a semipermanent home for the Saudi billionaire, it could very well be fitted out in luxury.
He rolled down the window and held his breath for a long moment to listen. In the far distance there was a siren, but here except for the muffled sound of an electric motor running — perhaps a generator or an air conditioner — the night was almost perfectly still.
Something was wrong.
Just beyond the compound, an open field sloped up to a reinforced embankment on which was one of the railroad spurs that serviced a long line of sprawling brick warehouses. The field was jammed with shacks and shipping containers, home to at least five hundred families, possibly more. A ditch serving as an open sewer ran down the slope and emptied onto the paved road in front of the compound. A thin stream of sewage trickled to a wide iron grate and disappeared, probably to end up emptying directly into the harbor about three blocks away.
There was the stench of a squatters’ slum, but there were no lights, no sounds, no movement. It was as if the entire village within the city had been deserted.
Or as if the people were cowering in their hovels, afraid of something. McGarvey switched off the Fiat’s engine, but before he got out he removed the lens from the dome light and took out the bulb. He pocketed the car keys and the GPS tracker, then screwed the silencer on the threaded muzzle of his Walther PPK.
He had changed to dark sneakers, black jeans, and a lightweight dark pullover before he’d left the hotel, and now, keeping to the shadows as he worked his way down the street, he was nearly invisible.
Gloria showing up in Karachi had come as an unpleasant surprise that nagged at him like a dull toothache. She had no idea how badly she had jeopardized the mission. The moment he’d seen her at the hotel, he’d almost decided on the spot to back away, return to Washington, and start the search for bin Laden all over again.
Damned near every woman who’d ever been involved with him had gotten herself killed sooner or later. They’d all thought that they were in love with him, while none of them had the faintest idea what that might mean in terms of their own safety.
Even Gloria, who was a trained field officer, had no idea what she had gotten herself into, or the danger she posed. McGarvey no longer had an absolute freedom of movement. No matter what happened now he was bound to look out for her; he was handicapped because of her and he didn’t like it.
But the prize he’d come for was worth everything. If he could get next to bin Laden for even one moment it would be enough. The man would die. And with him would die the one question for which McGarvey had never gotten a satisfactory answer. Why?
He’d come face-to-face with the man several years ago in Afghanistan, and although they’d spoken the same language, spoken about the same issues, McGarvey had not been able to get a real handle on the man.
Bin Laden wasn’t some West Bank fanatic, or a religious zealot, or a man with a grudge against the West, which made understanding him all but impossible. The CIA had supported him and his mujahideen in the Afghan war against the Russians. But near the end of that struggle, it was as if a switch had flipped inside bin Laden’s head. One day he was America’s ally and the next we had become Satan, and he had declared a jihad not only against the West, but against Israel and anyone who supported her, and against the members of the Saudi royal family who had sold their people and Islam to the West for the sake of oil without sharing the money with al-Quaida.
There are no innocents in this struggle, he’d told McGarvey. Infidels, men, women, children, it did not matter. They would all die.
At the end of the warehouse, McGarvey held up for a moment. Across from an open area that led back to the loading docks, the burned-out wrecks of two cars had been pushed off the side of the road, and were piled in a tangled heap. Twenty meters farther, the wall of the compound rose five meters from the street, the coils of razor wire at the top glinting in the stray light. A set of sturdy-looking double doors, wide enough to admit a car or even a small truck, seemed to be the only way into the compound from this side. From where he stood, he could just make out the roofs of three buildings behind the wall, on one of which was a small satellite dish. Electric wires snaked down from a power pole at the corner.
He looked back the way he had come, and then searched the slum village that covered the sloping field. The stench of human waste was nearly overpowering, but there was no noise, and the silence raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
Taking the GPS tracker out of his pocket, he keyed the three twos and the pound symbol. Within a couple of seconds the display showed al-Turabi’s signal still inside the compound.
It did not necessarily mean that bin Laden was here. But al-Turabi was a top lieutenant, and this is where he had come as soon as he had escaped from Camp Delta.
If bin Laden wasn’t here, he was probably very close, and al-Turabi was the key to finding him.
McGarvey pocketed the GPS tracker, checked his pistol, and then leaned up against the brick wall to wait for an opportunity to get inside the compound to present itself to him.
Gloria Ibenez was beside herself with worry. She stood at the window of the tenth-floor suite, looking down at the modern city, its skyscrapers lit in mosaic patterns. Somewhere below a siren was wailing, and twenty minutes ago she’d thought she’d heard gunfire somewhere in the distance.
She had promised Kirk that she would not leave the room until morning. If he hadn’t returned by then she was to go immediately to the U.S. Consulate General on Abdullah Haroon Road, which was just a few blocks from the hotel. Dave Coddington, the CIA chief of station there, would be able to help her. If McGarvey had been successful in killing bin Laden, the backlash would be immediate and very big. No American in Pakistan would be safe.
Under no circumstances was she to use the telephone. The opposition would almost certainly be monitoring calls from the hotel, and if they found out that she was alone and vulnerable she would become a target.
“You’re here, and there’s nothing I can do about it now,” he’d told her, his tone harsh. “If we’re to have a chance of surviving, you need to keep a low profile.”
She nodded her understanding, loving, his eyes and the set of his mouth even when he was angry.
And here and now, more than five thousand miles from home, she could put the notion of McGarvey’s wife in a back compartment of her head. She didn’t have to think about the other woman in Kirk’s life; it was only her waiting for him in his hotel room, only her who had come to Pakistan to help him, only her who cared enough to be at his side, and only her who truly understood what he was, and loved him all the more for it.
A telephone burred softly, bringing Gloria out of her thoughts. She turned away from the window as the phone rang again. It was McGarvey’s satellite phone in his overnight bag in the closet.
She got to it on the fourth ring. “Yes?”
“Oh wow, Gloria,” Rencke gushed. “Where’s Mac?”
“He’s going after the man, but I don’t know where that is. He told me to stay here.”
“Why are you in Karachi? How’d you get there?”
“I booked a flight with my own money,” she said defiantly. “I wanted to help.”
There was no telling how Kirk would react when he found out that she lied about Otto’s help. But she would cross that bridge when she came to it. “Is there something wrong?”