Or he had gone hunting.
McGarvey had left his cell phone at the house. He did not want to be traced. Not with what he was going to do, contrary to direct orders from the president. He stepped around Rencke and gazed across the fairway toward his house. He could see a corner of the roof and the chimney, but nothing else. Still there was no one else in sight. Nor were there any sounds: no lawn mowers, no barking dogs, sirens. No sounds of gunfire or cries for help. The country was holding its breath. Waiting.
Rencke was closely watching him. “What is it, Mac?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Call my house.”
“Okay,” Rencke said. He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial. “Who do you want to talk to?”
“Whoever answers.”
“It’s ringing,” Rencke said.
McGarvey turned back, snapshots of what Khalil and his people had done on the cruise ship flashing in his head. He could still hear the mother’s screams for her infant in the freezing water.
Rencke shook his head, a frightened expression in his eyes. “It’s your answering machine. No one’s picking up.”
At that moment they both heard a car coming very fast up the gravel road to the maintenance barn. McGarvey drew his gun, flicked the safety catch off, and motioned for Rencke to drop down out of sight.
Let it be Khalil, he told himself. Let it end here and now.
Elizabeth hauled her mother’s Mercedes around the maintenance barn to the cart path leading to the fifteenth fairway and jammed on the brakes, sending gravel and loose dirt flying. She’d been continuously on the phone to the Watch officer at Langley, who’d put out an APB to Washington Metro Police and the FBI to look for the Comcast maintenance van. She gave the license number, and made sure the Watch officer understood that under no circumstances was the van to be stopped.
By the time she had retrieved the car keys, the van was long gone, so she hadn’t even tried to go after it, relying on the Watch officer to get it right.
Two minutes ago the FBI surveillance unit in front of the Saudi Embassy on New Hampshire Avenue, just off Juarez Circle, reported the van entering the parking garage at the rear of the building.
Elizabeth her heart in her throat, leaped out of the car and raced up the path through the woods to the shelter hut, hoping that she wasn’t too late to catch her father and Otto. No one was around. In fact the maintenance area was deserted. But not many people were out playing golf when the country was on red alert.
She saw the fairway and then the hut at the same moment a figure moved in the relative darkness inside. “Shit,” she said under her breath, and she reached for her pistol. Something had gone wrong here.
Before she could veer off the path and get her pistol out, her father stepped out of the hut. “Liz, what are you doing here?” He had his gun out. Otto was right behind him.
“They’ve got Mother,” she cried, reaching them. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let her leave the house. We shouldn’t have gone to Yarnell’s. It was a set-up, like they were waiting for us.” She said it all in a rush.
McGarvey holstered his pistol, controlled anger in the set of his features. “Slow down, Liz. Who has her?”
“It was the Saudis. They had a gun to my head, and told me that she wouldn’t be hurt, provided that you stayed out of the way And they said that she’d be released in two days.”
“Oh, wow, that’s the timetable,” Rencke said.
“Were you able to follow them?” McGarvey asked, his tone still reasonable.
“They were too fast, so I had the Watch officer call DC Metro and the Bureau,” Elizabeth said. “They spotted the van going into the Saudi Embassy just a few minutes ago.” She tried to gauge her father’s mood. He was like a volcano on the verge of exploding. She’d read his missions files, and had seen him in action more than once. He never went off halfcocked, but when he moved it was awesome.
“This has to go to the president,” Rencke said. “He can put pressure on the Saudi ambassador.”
McGarvey shook his head, his jaw set. “You can try, but the Saudis will deny they have her.”
“They didn’t hurt her, Daddy,” Elizabeth said. Tears welled in her eyes. She hated to cry. It was weak. “I’m sorry. It was my fault. But I did exactly what they told me to do so that no one would get hurt. I didn’t want that.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, God.”
McGarvey took her in his arms. “Take it easy. It’s not your fault. You didn’t kidnap her. And I know you did your best.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked up into her father’s face. “We’ll get her back, Daddy,” she said. “You’ll get her back, won’t you?”
“Count on it, sweetheart,” McGarvey said, his gray-green eyes already seeing beyond her.
FIFTY-FIVE
The Saudi deputy ambassador to the United States, Mamdouh Nuaimi, was deep in thought looking out the window of his office toward the Watergate Hotel complex when his secretary buzzed him. These were troubling times, and he wished that he were just about anywhere except here in Washington.
“Prince Salman has returned, Your Excellency,” the male secretary said.
Girding himself for a potentially difficult encounter Nuaimi keyed the intercom. “Please ask the prince to come in.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nuaimi got to his feet and adjusted his tie as Prince Salman, also wearing a Western business suit, with a correctly knotted silk tie, walked in, a scowl on his dark features. Nuaimi came from around his desk, and embraced the prince.
“You honor me by coming here,” Nuaimi said, his Arabic formal, as befitted a man of the prince’s wealth and position of power. “Will you have tea?”
“The honor is mine, Deputy Ambassador,” Salman responded, correctly, if somewhat brusquely. “I have no time for tea. I was summoned and here I am. What do you want?”
“It’s a matter of some delicacy that the ambassador asked me to handle,” Nuaimi said, choosing his words with care. The prince was not a man to be offended by a careless remark. And although Nuaimi, whose brother was the oil minister Ali Nuaimi, had wealth and power, it was nothing in comparison to Salman’s. “It is the troubling time we find ourselves in at the moment.”
A brief smile crossed Salman’s thick lips. “It will serve the bastards right, another 9/11 They haven’t awakened to the real world, even yet.”
“Pakistan is cooperating—”
Salman dismissed Nuaimi with a flick of his hand, as if he were shooing away an annoying but ineffectual insect. He was obviously in an extremely foul mood. “Make your point, Mr. Deputy Ambassador,” he demanded, rudely.
Nuaimi smiled, ignoring the insult. “As you wish. The ambassador would like to know if there is anything he can do to enhance your current visit, considering the difficult moment we find ourselves in. If an al-Quaida attack were to occur, there would certainly be a problematic backlash. We merely wish to provide good advice and security for our citizens.”
“You want me to leave?”
Nuaimi spread his hands in a gesture of peace and conciliation. “We understood there was an unpleasantness in Monaco between you and the former director of the CIA. You were on your way to Corsica. Perhaps you should go there now. Or perhaps return to your family in Switzerland.”
Salman flared. “Only Crown Prince Abdullah himself can order me to leave,” he shouted.
“Please, no one is ordering you to do anything against your will.” Nuaimi said. “Not I, not the ambassador. We are merely suggesting that for your personal safety you might wish to leave the U.S. as soon as possible.”