The house was set back fifteen meters from the street behind a tall wrought-iron fence. It was an armed camp in the middle of the infidels’ headquarters. The windows were all blank, either curtained or silvered. Nothing could be seen through them, nor was there any activity in the driveway at the front.
After this blow, the search for bin Laden would intensify again, and sooner or later all his doubles would be captured or killed, and it would finally be his turn. No man was immortal. But even that didn’t matter, Khalil thought, for the jihad had had a life of its own.
The struggle would go on despite any man’s passing, be it bin Laden or McGarvey.
Khalil switched his leather overnight bag to his left hand, took a security pass card out of his pocket, and swiped it through the reader on the electric gate. The lock buzzed, and as the gates swung open he stepped inside the compound and started across the driveway to the front door.
Someone shouted something on the speaker above the card reader behind him, and as Khalil mounted the three steps to the entryway, the door opened and a very large man dressed in a Western business suit was there.
“Good morning, brother,” Khalil said, pleasantly, in Arabic. “I’m here to see al-Kaseem.”
The security officer wasn’t impressed. He studied Khalil’s face without recognition, glanced at the bag in his hand, then glanced over his shoulder at the electric wrought-iron gate, which was swinging shut.
“There are no visitors here. How did you get in?” he demanded.
Khalil held up the pass. “Take me to al-Kaseem, please.”
The security officer reached for the pass, which was exactly what Khalil thought he might do. The fool.
Khalil moved his hand to the left, diverting the officer’s attention; took a quick look over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t being observed by someone passing on the street; then easily shouldered the man back into the stair hall and slashed the edge of the plastic card across the bridge of his nose, opening a small gash that immediately welled blood.
The guard roared something unintelligible as he struggled to regain his balance. He pulled out a boxy Glock semiautomatic, but Khalil stepped inside his reach, grabbed the man’s arm under his own, and stepped sharply to the left.
The security officer’s arm bent backward nearly to the breaking point before he dropped his pistol.
Two other security guards came up the hall from the rear of the house on the run, their pistols drawn.
“I’m going to step back,” Khalil said, loudly enough for them to hear, and they pulled up short. “I don’t want anybody to do something foolish that would make me cause further pain or suffering. I am a friend, and I come in peace. Rashid al-Kaseem will verify my identity.”
A security officer behind a short counter to the left had risen and pulled out his pistol. He was pointing it at Khalil’s head. “Take care that you do not reach for a weapon, or I will shoot you,” he called out, in a steady voice. He was a professional.
“I am unarmed,” Khalil said. He spread his arms and stepped back.
The security officer he’d damaged started for him, but someone at the head of the stairs shouted an order, and the officer stopped in his tracks.
Khalil looked up as Rashid al-Kaseem, chief of station for Washington Saudi intelligence, came down the stairs. He was a short, dapper man, dressed in a conservative British-cut tweed sport coat, gray slacks, and a club tie. He was bald except for a fringe of dark hair above his very large ears. He was only a very distant cousin in the royal family, but he had a lot of respect from the major princes. He knew things. He saw and heard things. One day he would rise to head all of Saudi intelligence, which was a very powerful position within the kingdom.
“Achmed, pick up your weapon, and see to your injury,” al-Kaseem said. “If you need stitches, someone will drive you to the embassy. The rest of you, return to your duties. And there is blood on the floor. Clean it.”
When the others were gone, he motioned for Khalil to follow him, and together they went upstairs and down the broad, expensively carpeted corridor to a small book-lined office at the rear of the building. A hum of muted conversations, a few voices raised in anger or frustration, came from behind closed doors. This place, like just about every other office in Washington, was on an emergency footing.
When they were alone, al-Kaseem turned on him. “What are you doing here, now of all times?” he demanded, harshly. He was one of very few men who knew Khalil by sight.
Khalil considered the possibility that the intelligence chief, who had entirely too high an opinion of himself, might beg for mercy as his life’s blood drained from his body. The expression in his eyes at the end would be most interesting. “I have a job to do, and I require your assistance, here and at the embassy.”
“That’s impossible—”
“I’m going to set a trap, and the timing will be delicate. I’ll need a van and at least two men plus a driver. I mean to kidnap the wife of the CIA director.”
Al-Kaseem was struck dumb.
Khalil took four fat envelopes out of his pocket and handed them to the intelligence chief. “Place these in your safe for me. And see that they are not tampered with.”
Ernst Gertner was at Zurich’s Kloten Airport when Liese arrived on a charter flight from Marseille at four o’clock in the morning. The French authorities had held her until all the ballistics reports were completed, and to finish interrogating her about her relationship with Kirk McGarvey, a man who’d always been of great interest to them.
Gertner was in a higher-than-usual state of agitation, and he kept flapping his arms as if he were an ostrich trying to take off. “Goodness gracious, what am I supposed to do when one of my star officers simply goes off into the bush without a word, against all orders to the contrary, and then gets herself involved with a shooting death?”
Liese was beyond tired, and very worried about Kirk’s reception back in Washington. He’d gone against his president’s orders. Not only that, but Khalil wasn’t finished. He would continue to go after McGarvey until one or both of them were dead.
She looked up at Gertner, almost feeling sorry for him. “Sorry, captain, I was following a lead. And we almost got Khalil.” She looked away momentarily. “It was very close.”
“The French are distressed—”
Liese turned back. “Are you going to fire me for good this time?” she asked. She felt alone and isolated, and frightened.
“As of this moment you’re on administrative leave, but I’ll expect you to stand it at the chalet.”
Liese shook her head. “He’s not guilty, you know.”
“For heaven’s sake.” Gertner puffed up. “Then explain why he left you alone in the corridor to face Khalil while he went off gallivanting around outdoors?”
FIFTY-TWO
It had only been forty-eight hours since McGarvey left for Monaco. He’d promised Katy he would come back safely, and that he would deal with Khalil. It was unsettling to return home with his work left undone, and the danger to the U.S. worse than before he’d left.
Coming up the cul-de-sac from Connecticut Avenue to his house, he could see that the security detail was gone, but he said nothing to Adkins, who had ridden beside him in silence most of the way from the airport. There was nothing to say that they hadn’t said to each other the morning McGarvey left headquarters. Adkins was directing the CIA’s efforts to track down the al-Quaida terrorists before they struck. In that administrative task he was every bit as good, if not better, a DCI than McGarvey was.