“No,” the driver replied succinctly. Karachi was his city The suggestion that he had been careless in his duties coming from anyone other than Khalil would have angered him. As it was, he took it to be a reasonable question from a professional.
He pushed a button on a remote control, and a steel gate rolled back allowing them entry. Five levels down, at the far southeastern corner of the ramp, he stopped in front of a single elevator, its doors open.
“Leave my bags in the trunk, and remain here. I won’t be long,” Khalil said. He got out of the car and walked across to the elevator. The doors automatically shut and the car started up.
The floor-selection panel was locked out, and a miniature closed-circuit television camera was mounted in the ceiling. Security was unobtrusive but tight. Wealthy men conducted their business in this building. It was expected that security measures would be in place.
In order to hide the lizard, change his color to red and place him in a rose garden.
The elevator stopped at the twenty-fifth floor. Across a thickly carpeted hall, a plain wooden door opened as Khalil approached. An old man in evening clothes, whom Khalil had known all his life, nodded pleasantly. “Good evening, Mr. Rashid. I trust your trip was a productive one.”
Khalil preferred the mountains, although this place was a more secure hideout. “I’m in a hurry.”
The old man smiled indulgently. “If you will just go straight through, Mr. bin Laden is waiting.”
Khalil passed through the small, plainly furnished receptionist’s office, into a dimly lit, plushly decorated corridor right out of an English manor house, to a small windowless room at the end. The walls were plain plaster, and the only furnishing was a Persian rug in the middle of a plain tiled floor. A single light in the ceiling cast a pale yellow glow.
He slipped off his loafers and sat down at one end of the carpet to wait, but it was only a minute or two before the door opened and Osama bin Laden, dressed in a British tailored business suit, but with an open collar, a gentle smile on his clean-shaven face, walked in. Khalil started to rise, but bin Laden waved him down.
“Please, do not arise for me, my friend.” He spoke in Arabic, his voice strong and clear. He took off his shoes and sat down on the rug. “You had a safe journey. Would you like refreshments?”
Khalil looked for a sign in bin Laden’s eyes that he was disappointed or angry because of the failure to kidnap Shaw. But there was nothing to be seen except for the pleasure of seeing an old and trusted lieutenant.
“No, thank you, my brother. In fact, it is not my intention to stay with thee for long this evening. I have further urgent business elsewhere.” The Arabic language was more formal than English; rightly so, in Khail’s mind.
“All of us have urgent business to attend to now,” bin Laden said. “I have ordered the next phase in the war against the infidels to begin. I have rereleased the message.”
Khalil let his surprise show. The tape was not to have been made until after Shaw had been safely brought to Pakistan, put on public trial, and convicted for the world to see. “The timing is perhaps incorrect?”
“In fact, the timing is perfect,” bin Laden replied mildly. “My message was delivered to Al Jazeera last night, and as I suspected would come to pass, a copy of the tape was handed over to the CIA in Doha and transmitted to Washington. By now the criminals in the White House believe they know what they are faced with.”
“We have lost the element of surprise that made the September attacks so successful,” Khalil pointed out. He had come to Karachi expecting to be chastised for his failure. Instead he was being told the next attack on American soil was going ahead
“We will strike fear into their hearts,” bin Laden said. His voice was still mild, but he was angry. His mouth was set, his eyes narrowed. This was bin Laden just before a battle.
Khalil knew that he had to choose his words with care. “Yes, my brother, but their law enforcement agencies will be watching for our soldiers.”
Bin Laden’s expression darkened. “They are already in place.”
“The necessary supplies are there?” Khalil blurted. He had trained some of the boys who would provide the support network in the States. It did not matter to him if they died in battle, but he did not want them to give their lives for no reason.
Bin Laden’s broad nostrils flared. “Everything was moved into position over the past two months.”
Khalil felt the first hint of trouble. He had dropped out of sight for the past two months in order to have the time to validate his Trinidad identity. He had left the real work, bin Laden was telling him, to someone else while he went about the business of conducting a doomed mission.
Bin Laden took four envelopes out of a breast pocket and laid them on the carpet beside Khalil. “These are the four death letters from our martyrs. You will personally deliver them along with fifty thousand dollars in cash to each family after they succeed. Then our cause will have more righteous converts. Money will come to us as it did after the September attacks. As it would have had you not blundered your very nearly foolproof task.”
Every muscle in Khalil’s body stiffened. Any man other than bin Laden who spoke to him like that would die now. But he gave no outward sign of his almost overwhelming rage. “It will be as you ordered. When will the attacks take place?”
“Very soon, my brother. You will keep yourself in readiness to make the deliveries. And you will remain out of reach of Western intelligence.”
“I have a most important task to—”
“Yes, killing Kirk McGarvey. Someone else will do it.”
“He is mine,” Khalil blurted.
Bin Laden’s gaze turned ice cold. “You have another mission,” he said. “See that you do it well. When the moment comes, there will be a great outpouring of fear and anger. It will be a dangerous time. There will certainly be reprisals, and we all must be ready for them. The families of our heroes must be made to know that our hearts are with them in Paradise.”
Khalil calmed himself by shear force of will, an artery in his neck throbbing. He would not be denied what was rightly his. No power on earth, not even his loyalty to bin Laden, would stop him.
Bin Laden got to his feet. “Go to your family now, and make peace with Allah. The time will be soon.”
Khalil picked up the envelopes. “How do you wish me to get the cash?”
“You are a wealthy man. You supply the money. Take it from one of your bank accounts. The ones in the Cayman Islands, or perhaps the ones in the Jersey banks. It is of no matter to me.”
When bin Laden left the room, Khalil pocketed the envelopes and settled back. He was no longer angry. He knew what he had to do, and he had a good idea how he would do it.
McGarvey was a man without a future.
TWENTY-THREE
Ten time zones to the west, a Navy C-130 Hercules fitted out as a hospital transport, carrying SecDef Shaw, DCI McGarvey, and their wives, touched down at Andrews Air Force Base and taxied directly over to one of the alert hangars on the far west side of the base.
A number of people were gathered on the ramp, several of them highranking brass, presumably from the Pentagon, waiting for their boss. In addition to several military staff cars and four windowless vans with CIA series tags, there was an ambulance and a Cadillac limousine.
Watching from a window, McGarvey picked out his deputy director Dick Adkins, who stood near the limo, his hands in his pockets, his slight shoulders slumped, and his thinning, sand-colored hair ruffled in the breeze. Next to him, by contrast, was a mountain of a man who looked like a heavyweight prizefighter. McGarvey figured the muscle would be his new bodyguard; number three — after DickYemm and Jim Grassinger — in less than eighteen months. It didn’t say much for job security.