What made no sense to McGarvey were the Saudi ambassador and embassy staff. The royal family was walking a tightrope, continuing to sell oil to the U.S. while funding and even encouraging terrorism. Kidnapping the wife of an important American government figure and then holding her hostage at the embassy was risky.
Too risky for the Saudis? Or was he missing something?
He went to the closet, where he stripped off his shirt and khaki trousers, changing into dark slacks, dark blue sneakers, and a black pullover that covered the pistol holstered at the small of his back. He also donned a lightweight reversal windbreaker — dark on one side and white on the other — that had several zippered pockets.
“Dad?” Elizabeth called from the front hall.
“It’s okay; I’m changing,” he called back. “Be right down.” He opened a secret compartment in the floor of the closet, which contained his escape kit: six clean passports under six different names from the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, and Canada; credit cards and other bits of identification to match; twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, mostly in U.S. currency, but some in British pounds and a fair amount in euros; hair dyes; lock picks; a spare Walther PPK with several magazines of 9mm ammunition; a custom-made Austrian silencer; a stiletto; several small bundles, each the size of a package of cigarettes, that contained blocks of Semtex explosives and securely protected acid fuses; and a few other odds and ends.
The cache was an old habit of his. Whenever he landed somewhere, one of his first tasks was to establish an escape kit against the day he might be required to step outside the establishment and suddenly go to ground.
Like now, he thought. On his own for the most part. Beholden to no one, following no orders other than his own, on a single-purpose mission.
He taped the spare Walther to his left calf, strapped the stiletto in its leather sheath to his chest beneath his windbreaker, and pocketed a small mag light with red and white lenses, two spare magazines, the silencer, and three of the Semtex packages.
He left everything else. He had no need for the passports or the money, because when this was over he wasn’t going to run. And he decided he wouldn’t need the lock picks. What he was going to do would not require stealth. He had the Semtex for any locked gate or door he might encounter.
For just a moment he stood over the compartment staring at the envelope of cash and identification documents. His first instinct had always been to run. It was a survival tactic he had learned in the jungles of Vietnam. Plus he’d always wanted to distance himself from the people he loved so that they would not come into harm’s way because of him.
No running this time, he thought, closing and securing the compartment. Not now. Never again.
Downstairs Elizabeth was in the kitchen drinking from a bottle of Evian. When McGarvey came in, her eyes were round and worried and still apologetic for a situation she felt was largely her fault.
“Where’s Otto?” McGarvey asked.
“In your study. He’s trying to get to Dennis Berndt, to tell him about mother.” Elizabeth hung her head. “The dirty bastards. I pretended to be her bodyguard. If they’d known I was her daughter, they would have taken me too.” She looked up at her father. “But I didn’t know what else to do, Daddy.”
“You did the right thing, sweetheart,” McGarvey assured her. In all likelihood they might have killed her and left her body to be identified. It would have been an even more powerful incentive for McGarvey to rush into the trap, blinded not only by fear for his wife’s safety, but also by grief over his child’s death.
“You’re going after her, but how are you going to get in?” Elizabeth asked. “The Saudis aren’t just going to let you come up to the gate and invite you in.”
“You and Otto are going to create a diversion,” he said. “But not until tonight, after midnight. And in the meantime we’ve got a lot to do. I want to make them nervous. Maybe the Saudi ambassador will put pressure on Khalil to give it up, at least release your mother. Stranger things have happened, and I don’t think they want that kind of political trouble, especially not right now.” Something else suddenly occurred to him, and he looked away.
“Daddy?” Elizabeth asked. “What is it?”
Men like bin Laden and Khalil and their followers firmly believed they were in a war for their very existence, and they believed that there were no innocents in the war. Every Christian and Jewish man, woman, and child was not only fair game in the jihad, they were also the prime targets. It was a view 180 degrees out of sync with what McGarvey had always believed. Minimize the risk to the noncombatants. Minimize the collateral damage.
The woman desperately screamed for her baby, but there’d been no hope. Khalil had known it, as he had known McGarvey would try to save them anyway. The dark water aft of the cruise liner had become a killing ground, the woman and child the bait.
Just as Katy was the bait. And just as Kahlil had picked out another killing ground.
Rencke came from the study. “I got to Berndt, and he’s agreed to take this to the president—” He looked from McGarvey to Liz. “What’ve I missed?”
“I just thought of something,” McGarvey said. “But I’m going to need an untraceable cell phone. Is that possible?”
Rencke shrugged. “Sure. Where’s yours?”
“Out on the hall table.”
Rencke went to fetch it, and when he came back he was entering a series of numbers. He pressed the pound key, and then Send. A code came up, and he entered a second series of long numbers and letters, pressing the pound key and Send again. Another code appeared on the display, and Rencke looked up, grinning. “You’ll keep the same number, but all your calls in and out will be routed through a redialer in Amsterdam.” He handed the phone to McGarvey. “It’ll drive anybody monitoring you nuts trying to figure out how you got outta Dodge so fast.”
“What are you going to do?” Elizabeth asked.
“Play Khalil at his own game.” McGarvey said, pulling up a number from his cell phone’s memory. He pressed Send. “Give him something that he’ll understand.”
It was after lunch and Liese Fuelm was getting ready to pull the pin and head back to her apartment in town when her cell phone vibrated at her hip. She was accomplishing nothing out here on the lake. They had learned that Salman was in Washington, probably stalking Kirk, but that’s all she’d been told. Gertner wanted her here, where keeping an eye on her would be easy. The hell with him.
The caller ID showed a U.S. area code and number, but the call was coming from Amsterdam. “Oui?”
“Hello, Liese, is your phone being monitored?” McGarvey asked.
Liese’s stomach gave a little lurch. Ziegler was upstairs getting some sleep, and LeFevre was in the kitchen finishing his lunch. For the moment no one was seated at the equipment table. “Just a minute.” She went over to the recording machines and pressed the Pause button. “It’s okay now, Kirk. Are you really in Amsterdam?”
“No. I want you to do something for me.”
Liese was thrilled. “Yes, of course. Anything.”
“Don’t be so fast to agree. What I’m asking will be dangerous. Could get you hurt, and at the very least get you fired.”
“I don’t care—” Liese protested. The man she was in love with had asked for her help. There could be only one answer.
“You’re still in love with me, aren’t you?”
Liese closed her eyes. She nodded. “I’ve never stopped loving you, Kirk.”