“I am at your service,” he said. Then he went back to scouting the road.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“From Chitral, madam, in the north, where the snow leopards run.”
“Do you miss home?”
“Never,” he answered sternly.
Then he looked back toward her and softened.
“Always,” he said. “My wife is here with me, and a daughter. But my father and mother stay in the mountains.”
Lucky man, she thought. At least he has a home and people waiting for him.
When they arrived at the white concrete facade of the hotel, the bodyguard took charge.
“It is not safe for you,” he said. He told Marx to wait in the lobby while he went up and checked the room. When she protested, he said proudly that it was his duty. She gave him the key card and took a seat on a brocaded couch amid the marbled expanse of the lobby, while Sergeant Asif went upstairs.
The explosion rocked the hotel with the fury of an artillery round. The bomb sucked in the oxygen and blew it out with a fiery roar. The building rumbled, and then shuddered, and the chandeliers in the lobby swung sharply on their moorings, adding the sound of tinkling glass. The alarm immediately sounded, too, like an air raid, and the sprinklers spurted jets of water onto the floor, and frightened hotel guests tried to run or hide. Marx moved toward the elevator, but a security guard stopped her and took her to a shelter in the hotel basement. She tried to call Cyril Hoffman, but she couldn’t get any phone reception in the concrete bunker.
When they let Marx go upstairs, the medics were still working on the torn and bloodied form of the bodyguard. The bomb had blown out the windows of the room, and burst the plumbing so that the floor was awash in water. There was blood on the walls. The rooms on either side were barely touched. It had been a professional job-an attempt to kill one person only.
Sergeant Asif’s mouth was still moving. They were taking him out on a stretcher now. The blanket covering him was already soaked with blood. There was an empty space under the blanket where one of his arms had been. The rescue workers tried to push Marx away so they could roll the gurney down the hall.
“I’m going with him to the hospital,” she shouted. “This man was my bodyguard. They were trying to kill me. He was protecting me.”
The Red Crescent attendants had no idea what the American woman was talking about, but she was so emphatic that they let her come along. Down in the lobby, a television crew from Dawn TV had already arrived. They photographed the American woman, now in a blood-streaked scarf, hunched over the body.
When the Red Crescent ambulance arrived at the naval hospital on Lalak Jan Road, a gaggle of television cameras was waiting. They all filmed the American woman escorting the body and later talking to the victim’s wife, who had rushed to the hospital from her home in I-9, near the railway station.
Sergeant Asif died of blood loss an hour after he arrived at the hospital. A detail of ISI officers, who had found Marx in the family waiting lounge with Sergeant Asif’s wife, now pulled her away and escorted her out the back door.
Among the millions of Pakistanis who watched the television images that evening was a research professor at the National University of Science and Technology. He didn’t pay much attention to the newscast at first. The reporters were describing it as one more terrorist attack in Pakistan’s long war, and speculating that it must be anti-American because it had taken place at the Marriott Hotel.
The professor suddenly took notice when the cameras showed the American woman who had accompanied the victim. His contacts had described the CIA operative who had arrived at the airport the day before. He knew that the target had survived the bombing at the Marriott. What surprised him was that she had accompanied the Pakistani sergeant to the hospital, and tried to comfort his widow.
The professor was confused. That image did not fit within his template of vengeance. He tried to put out of his mind the television picture of the American woman embracing the Pakistani widow as if she were her sister, but the image persisted.
Marx reached Cyril Hoffman two hours after the bombing, after the ISI had finally pried her away from the hospital.
“Somebody tried to kill me,” she said. But Hoffman already knew that. He’d received a call from General Malik thirty minutes before.
“No more heroics,” Hoffman said. “We are getting you out of there now, before you go out in a box.”
Hoffman had already discussed with the Pakistani general the procedures by which Marx would leave the country. An ISI convoy would take her to the military side of Islamabad Airport, where she would be held in a secure VIP area. Then she would be driven in an armored car to the Emirates plane as it was about to leave.
“Won’t that blow my cover?” she asked.
“I hate to break this to you, Sophie, but there’s nothing left of it.”
“I got what I came after,” she said. “That’s something, anyway.”
“What’s the short version?” asked Hoffman.
“We’re screwed. I’ll send you the details by cable. Have you told my boss?”
“Yes. I thought I really must. He was not pleased. He had some rather sharp words for me about your unauthorized trip. I believe the word ‘betrayal’ was used.”
All the anger that Marx had been feeling toward Gertz suddenly broke the surface. She looked around. Nobody seemed to be listening, but it didn’t matter.
“Oh, yeah? Well, fuck him. Tell him I said so.”
Hoffman laughed, a high-pitched chortle. “Now, now. Chin up, my dear. Get on that plane and don’t talk to strangers. Watch a nice in-flight movie, why don’t you. Have a beverage. And for heaven’s sake, be careful.”
She composed her message for Hoffman while she waited at Islamabad Airport to board the flight. She sent it in her funny name, to his, as an encrypted emaiclass="underline" To: Marcus Crabtree From: Doris Finn Here’s the bad news: 1. The Hit Parade’s network is compromised by Hostile Network (HN) that has used the public name Ikwan Al-Tawhid but is guided by a computer expert identified as “the professor.” 2. The Hit Parade’s financial transfers are being monitored by HN, in part by tracing SWIFT and IBAN account numbers. HN has a source at SWIFT HQ facilitating this analysis of financial flows. 3. The Hit Parade’s credit-card and travel records have been accessed by HN, using data-mining and probably also human sources, identity unknown. 4. The Hit Parade’s use of Alphabet Capital as a financial hub to coordinate money flows has been discovered by HN, probably prior to kidnapping of Howard Egan. 5. Identity of alleged HN agent in the SWIFT network: JOSEPH SABAH, Belgian national; residence Avenue George Bergmann 127, Watermael District, Brussels; cellular telephone 32-400-555-268. 6. Request operational support when I arrive in Brussels. Recommend we take immediate action ref: item 5. Here’s the good news: 1. There isn’t any. Finn
Marx did one more thing, once she was in her seat on the plane. She called Thomas Perkins in London. He didn’t pick up the first time. Rather than leave a message, she called twice more. The third time he answered.
“It’s me,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t say. But I’m coming home. It got a bit nasty out here.”
“That doesn’t sound good. Can I come get you? Send the G5 or something?”
“No. I’m fine. I called to warn you about something. Alphabet is in trouble. You need to send your employees home for a few days. It’s not safe. I can’t explain now.”
“It’s a little late for that, sweetheart. The trouble has already arrived.”
She froze. In her mind for an instant was the image of the trading floor in Mayfair, ravaged by the shrapnel of a suicide bomb.