“I want to help you.”
“I know,” he said, turning to her. “Thanks for Karachi. It could have been messy.”
She smiled. “I was just doing my job.”
From the Beltway they took the George Washington Parkway down to the Building. One of the security officers escorted them up to the seventh floor using the director’s private elevator. Dhalia Swanson, Adkins’s secretary, passed them straight in.
“Good to see you back, Mr. McGarvey,” she said warmly.
“Thanks, but I’m not back,” McGarvey told her. She’d been his secretary when he’d served as DCI.
“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling.
Dick Adkins was waiting with his number two David Whittaker, Howard McCann, and Otto Rencke.
“Sorry to have to pull you out like that, but from what I understand you may have been walking into a situation,” Adkins said. “The president asked that we get you back here pronto.”
McCann had a scowl permanently etched on his square features, but Adkins looked like a man who’d gotten some very bad news and was flailing around trying to figure out what he should do about it. Americans had been rubbed raw by the events — natural and manmade — of the last few years, and they were increasingly looking to Washington to do something, or heads would continue to roll.
Counterterrorism had become the political hot potato of the decade. “It’ll take at least ten days for Graham to get across the Atlantic,” McGarvey said. “What do you need me for? The navy should be able to handle it.”
“A Second Fleet carrier battle group is already on the way to Panama to set up a blockade,” Adkins said. “There’ll be some tough questions when the media finds out, but that’s not our concern for the moment.”
“Do we have any idea what weapons are aboard?” Gloria asked. McCann shot her a furious look, but she ignored him.
“Quaddafi won’t even admit it’s his submarine,” Adkins said. “The president talked to him two hours ago. According to the good colonel, his submarine was scuttled in the Bay of Sidra. It’s anybody’s guess what’s aboard.”
“Graham’s not heading for the canal again,” McGarvey said. He’d had time to think about what he would do if he were in Graham’s shoes, with a boat and crew, presumably weapons, possibly even some very nasty weapons, and a deep-seated grudge against a system that he figured killed his wife. Graham had become a renegade of the worse kind; intelligent, highly trained, and well motivated.
“Where then?” Adkins asked. “New York? The president wants your best guess.”
“Washington,” McGarvey said. “They managed to do a number on the World Trade Center in New York, but except for a relatively small amount of damage to the Pentagon, their plans for Washington were a bust. They’ll try again.”
“They wouldn’t even have to get close if they had a couple of cruise missiles,” Rencke spoke up. “They could lay a couple hundred miles off and launch from there. We wouldn’t have much warning time.” He was sitting cross-legged on a chair, his red hair flying everywhere. “Better than even chance he’s got ’em, and maybe more bad shit.”
“Like what?” McCann asked.
“Anthrax at least. Maybe even a small dirty nuke or two.”
“Where the hell would Libya get anything like that?”
Rencke gave McCann an amused, condescending look. “Don’t you read the newspapers, Howie? The deserts over there are gushing with oil. And that spells m-o-n-e-y, with which an enterprising soul can buy just about anything.”
“The Foxtrot was on a southwest heading,” Adkins reiterated.
“Then why did you pull me out of Karachi?” McGarvey asked. Adkins shook his head. “Maybe we’re wrong about Panama. Or, maybe you’re wrong about Washington. We could probably come up with a dozen different scenarios that a man like Graham might come up with. But it’s the plan that we haven’t dreamed up is why we wanted you here. You know bin Laden better than anyone else on our side. And right now Panama is our most likely bet, and you are our insurance.”
McGarvey turned to Rencke. “Keep me in the loop.”
“Will do, kimo sabe,” Rencke said.
“I’m going home,” he told the others. “We’re probably missing something that’s important. Let’s just hope we can figure out what it is before it’s too late.” He turned to McCann. “By the way, Ms. Ibenez was working for me. I asked her to backstop me in Karachi, and she did a hell of a job, so if I were you I’d take it easy on her.” He smiled. “I’d take it as a personal favor, Howard.”
SIXTY
Graham stepped into the officer’s wardroom a few minutes after midnight Greenwich mean time. The three Iranians and two Libyans seated around the cramped table looked up with various degrees of expectation and hate in their eyes. He’d called the meeting, but had not told them why.
He locked the door, and spread a large-scale chart on the table, holding the rolled edges down with teacups, and a couple of ashtrays.
Ziyax was the first to recognize what it was, and he looked up in surprise. “That’s the American coast. The Chesapeake Bay.”
“Exactly,” Graham said. “We’ll be there nine days from now.”
“Insanity,” Ziyax said softly, and he looked at the others around the table. Only al-Abbas, his former XO, nodded, but al-Hari, Chamran, and Sayyaf, all Graham’s people, shot him a dark look.
“Why do you say that?” Graham asked mildly. He’d made his final plan the instant his chief engineer had shown him the two nuclear weapons. Bin Laden had kept that part from him in case he was captured by the Western authorities before he could board the sub and make it out into the open Atlantic. But he needed these men to carry out the attack. If there was going to be trouble, which he expected there would be, he wanted it out in the open and dealt with well ahead of time.
“In the first place the water there is too shallow for a submarine, and the entire area is crawling with American military. Especially the navy. Their Second Fleet is based at Norfolk.”
“Actually you’re wrong about the depth of water, the York River is deep enough to hide us, but you are definitely correct about the military presence, which is exactly why we’ll get in without trouble.” Graham smiled. “They won’t be expecting us.”
“For good reason,” Ziyax argued. “If we get bottled up in the bay we’d never get out. A few rusty Russian torpedoes are no match for a good ASW warship. Even for a captain with your training and experience.”
“You are right again,” Graham said. “At least as it concerns us getting out of the bay once we’re inside. But the fact of the matter is I have absolutely no intention of trying to escape.”
Ziyax opened his mouth, but said nothing.
Al-Abbas leaned forward, his eyes narrow. “You arrogant ass, you’re planning on committing suicide with us.”
It was exactly how Graham had foreseen this meeting. Not only were they all fools, but they were idiots as well. In fact, in his estimation most of the Arabs he’d dealt, with were scarcely one generation away from being ignorant desert-wandering nomads. Bedouins. Even some of the Saudi royal family he’d met were no different, despite their expensive university educations in the West, and their wealth. Bin Laden himself had once admitted that living the tribal life in the mountains of Afghanistan had been a time of joy and cleansing for his soul. Which was a crock of horseshit.
“I have no intention of committing suicide,” Graham said. “Although when we have finished our mission if you would like to die for the glorious cause I won’t stand in your way, Lieutenant Commander. In fact, I could probably be persuaded to help.”