If you come face-to-face with the man, kill him. He will not give you a second chance. Osama had been very specific. And very respectful.
Nothing stirred inside the suite as he eased the door open with his toe, nor were there any lights, except the lights from outside on the brightly lit Place filtering through the floor-to-ceiling French doors covered with diaphanous sheers.
The security chain wasn’t in place, but a man such as McGarvey might not feel he needed the extra protection.
“Service de chambre,” Khalil called, pleasantly.
He waited for a moment, and when there was no reply from within, he checked over his shoulder to make sure no one had gotten off the elevator. Then he drew his pistol, pushed the door the rest of the way open, and stepped inside.
He checked behind the door, then closed it. To the right was a small half bath for guests. Straight ahead, past an elaborate wet bar on the left, the chamber opened to a large, expensively furnished sitting room. Moving through the shadows without noise, he crossed the sitting room and checked the equally expansive bedroom, dressing area, palatial bathroom with a sunken Jacuzzi on a raised platform, and separate shower-stall bathroom.
McGarvey’s shaving things were laid out at the double sinks, and his tuxedo was neatly pressed and ready on the bed.
Khalil studied the arrangement for a second or two. McGarvey was planning on going to the casino tonight. But not until later. For some reason he’d left his room, perhaps to have a drink at the bar or an early supper, but he would be back to dress.
The tension that Khalil had initially felt — that somehow McGarvey knew that he was coming and had set a trap of his own — subsided. Walking back into the sitting room, he was slightly irritated with his foolish fears. McGarvey was simply one man. An imaginative and capable fighter, especially when he was defending his wife or trying to save women and children — people who Americans almost universally thought of as innocents—but for all of that one man who would be entering a killing chamber when he walked through the door.
He went to the double French doors, and careful to keep out of sight of anyone looking up from the Place, parted the curtains and studied the busy street scene. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Mostly tourists were going about their business; some of them he expected were Americans, enjoying themselves while Mohammed’s sword once again hung over their country.
It amused him to wonder if any of them would feel the least bit of guilt for being here when the attacks happened in a few days. There’d been little or no media coverage about the Americans who’d been vacationing when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were hit. Yet nearly every human being on the planet knew exactly where they were and what they had been doing that day.
They would remember again.
The French doors opened onto a narrow balustraded balcony. From this point there was no view of the street directly below because a palm tree came up almost even with the balcony, and the broad fronds were in the way.
He unlocked the doors and eased one of them open a crack. The sheers immediately billowed into the room, and he could hear the street sounds and smell the night sea air. He took a very brief look outside before he ducked back out of sight. The balconies off the rooms adjoining this suite were about two meters apart, a manageable distance. The hotel’s stonework had joints that were deep enough and well placed so that a man, even in a hurry, could easily climb up to the floor above or even to the roof, if need be. And the palm tree was within reaching distance.
He closed the French doors, but left them unlocked.
He walked across the sitting room to the corridor door, then turned and looked into the room, seeing what McGarvey would see when he first walked in. Like anyone standing in front of the French doors, McGarvey would be silhouetted by the light from outside for just a moment before he reached for the light switch.
Khalil turned and examined the wall between the corridor door and the door to the half bath. There was a panel with three switches. One of them probably controlled the bathroom light, while the other two were for the entry hall light and probably one or more of the table lamps inside the sitting room.
McGarvey would come in, see or hear nothing out of the ordinary, then half turn to his right to turn on the lights.
At that point Khalil would shoot him dead from the shadows beside the French doors. It was a distance of perhaps twelve or fifteen meters. Not a difficult shot, especially since the target would be well lit.
Once McGarvey was down, Khalil would have two avenues of escape, the primary one being through the corridor, downstairs, and then out of the hotel. But if someone were in the corridor, he would leave via the balcony and make his escape either left, right, up, or down. The overnight bag he’d left in his room was empty, and he had sanitized his computer, trashing the hard disk and wiping the entire unit down for fingerprints, so there was nothing to go back for.
Khalil took the pistol out of his shoulder holster, and as he walked back to the French doors, he took the Vaime silencer from his jacket pocket and screwed it on the end of the Sig’s threaded barrel.
Below on the Place the traffic was increasing. It was well after eight o’clock, and by ten, when the serious gambling and partying got into full swing, it would be like a carnival on the streets.
No one would hear or see a thing. And certainly no one would notice the pudgy man in the cheap dark suit going about his business, probably a minor functionary at the hotel on his way home after his shift.
FORTY-FIVE
Away from the sidewalk café, McGarvey led Liese across the street into the Place in the opposite direction from the hotel. She did not offer any objections or question the direction they were going. She was openly happy and content to be with him, even with the danger they both faced. They passed shops selling Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint-Laurent, Gucci, and Givenchy. Traffic was increasing, and every second car, it seemed, was a Rolls-Royce, Bentley, or Ferrari. Yet most of the people on foot wore casual clothes, some even shorts and sandals.
He wanted to put some time and distance away from the café before they headed back to the hotel in order to spot anyone tailing them. Now he was watching not only for someone on Salman’s payroll, but also perhaps someone working for the Swiss.
Nothing had changed in the past ten years as far as Liese’s infatuation with McGarvey went. If anything, he thought, her love had deepened, even though they had not seen or even spoken with each other until just a couple of days ago. It wasn’t rational. “Look, nothing is going to happen tonight,” he said.
Liese made it a point not to turn and look at him. But she looped her arm in his, as if they were lovers out for a stroll. “I know. Just let me indulge my fantasy for a little while.”
It wasn’t what McGarvey meant. “I’m not talking about what’s not going to happen in my room tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re not going to make love, if that’s what you’re expecting. But I’m talking about Salman. He’s not going to invite me to go to Corsica with him, and so far, unless his people are damned good, he’s sent no one to follow me.”
She shook her head and looked up at him. “I wouldn’t count on it, Kirk. After all, he did have you aboard his yacht this morning.”