But they had no idea of what McGarvey was capable of doing to them. And at stake now was more than bin Laden’s threat, or the safety of the ex-CIA director’s wife. At issue was the stability of the entire Middle East and all the oil there; it could make the difference between an America that continued to be strong and prosperous and an oil-poor America that could sink to the level of a third world nation.
Before that was allowed to come to pass, we would go to war, Berndt thought. And fighting to take control of Saudi Arabia would be one hundred times the nightmare that Iraq had been. All of the Middle East would be against us.
Berndt entered the Oval Office, as the president, standing behind his desk, was on the phone. Secretaries and staffers came and went in a continuous stream. The four television sets were tuned to the three major networks plus CNN. “We have a problem, Mr. President.”
Haynes looked at him. “I’ll get back to you,” he said, and he put down the telephone. “What is it, Dennis?”
“It’s Khalil and the Saudis,” Berndt said. He was sick at heart thinking about what they faced. Nothing like this had been on his mind when he’d accepted the president’s call to become the NSA.
The president’s chief of staff, Calvin Beckett, walked in. “What have I missed?”
“Get everybody out of here,” Haynes ordered, his eyes not leaving Berndt’s. “Give us a couple of minutes.”
“Shall I stay?” Beckett asked.
“You’d better,” Berndt said before the president could speak.
Haynes nodded after a beat, but said nothing until Beckett had ushered out the other staffers and closed the door. “Okay, what about Khalil and the Saudis?”
“We have the timetable for the attack. It happens in two days.”
“You have my attention,” the president said. “Do you know this for a fact? What’s your source?” He eyed the buff folder with orange diagonal stripes that the CIA used to hold classified documents with a Q rating, which was a step higher than top secret.
When Berndt was growing up in the midwest and involved with school politics and the history and social sciences clubs, it was the last era in which becoming president of the United States was considered to be a noble, worthy goal. That was no longer the case, he thought, sadly. Anyone wanting the job immediately came under the same close public scrutiny as a career criminal might. Something was wrong with you if you wanted to be president.
“Kirk McGarvey’s wife was kidnapped this morning at gunpoint and taken to the Saudi Embassy. The men who did it told her daughter they’d hold her mother for only two days, if Kirk were to withdraw from his investigation of Khalil.”
Haynes sat down. “God in heaven,” he said, at a momentary loss. But then he looked up, anger coloring his face. “That’s insane. Do you believe her?”
“Actually I got it from Otto Rencke, he’s McGarvey’s chief of Special Operations—”
“I know who he is,” the president interjected, angrily. “Is that his report?”
Berndt decided that no matter how this crisis turned out, he would leave Washington and return to academia. Working in this place could kill a man. “There’s more,” he said. He handed the folder to the president. “Rencke brought this over to me a couple of hours ago. Pretty well nails Khalil and Prince Salman as being the same man.” Berndt glanced over at Beckett, who looked skeptical. In this town it was usually the bearer of the bad news who was the first to fall. “From what I can gather, the evidence is mostly circumstantial — there’re no DNA matches or anything like that — but there’s a lot of it. And what they’ve come up with seems convincing.”
“Goddammit, I won’t have this,” the president shouted. “I warned him to stay out of it.”
Berndt girded himself. “Whatever we might have believed about the Saudis has changed. They took Kathleen McGarvey against her will, and they’re holding her in their embassy. Mr. President, we might be able to ignore the circumstantial evidence that the CIA has gathered on Khalil and the prince, but we cannot ignore this.”
“Where was she when they grabbed her?” Beckett asked. Like the president, he seemed to be having a hard time getting a handle on this latest development. “Not at home?”
Berndt shook his head. Rencke hadn’t been exactly clear where the kidnapping took place, just that it had happened. “Somewhere in Georgetown, I think. The men were driving a Comcast Cable TV van. Her daughter got the tag number and immediately called the Bureau and DC Metro. But by the time they found the van it was just going into the Saudi Embassy, so they had to back off.”
“Where’s McGarvey?” Beckett asked.
Berndt had asked Rencke the same question. “At home for the time being,” he said. But he didn’t believe it for one minute.
“Bring him in,” the president told Berndt. He managed a wry smile. “Ask him to come in.” He called his secretary. “I want to speak to Prince Bandar bin Sultan.” Prince Sultan, the son of the Saudi defense minister, was the ambassador to the U.S., and had been since 1983. He was a moderate.
The call went through to the embassy, and the president put it on the speakerphone “Prince?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, this is Mamdouh Nuaimi. The prince is out of the country at the moment. May I be of some assistance?”
“When do you expect the prince’s return?” Haynes said.
“Not for several days, I’m very sorry to report, Mr. President,” the deputy ambassador said. “Now, sir, is there something I may deal with?”
“Have the prince call me as soon as possible,” the president said, and he broke the connection. He got his secretary again. “I want to speak with Crown Prince Abdullah, and I don’t care what time it is in Riyadh.”
Beckett got on another phone and had his secretary dial McGarvey’s home.
“Tell him that we’ve been informed about his wife, and that I want to see him this morning,” Haynes told his chief of staff. He gave Berndt a bleak, angry look. “This could turn out very bad for us.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Berndt agreed.
Much worse than 9/11, with further reaching consequences. If they kept hitting us, sooner or later we could lose our national will to fight back. It had happened in Vietnam, and if the liberals had their way, we would get out of Iraq and step away from everything we’d worked for.
Beckett looked up and shook his head. “I got his answering machine. Either he’s not home or he’s not picking up.”
“Goddammit,” Haynes said, through clenched teeth. “Get Dick Adkins over at Langley, and find out what the hell McGarvey thinks he’s doing.”
The president’s secretary buzzed him, and Haynes put the call on the speakerphone. “Crown Prince Abdullah, good afternoon.”
“Mr. President, I am the crown prince’s personal secretary,” a man said. His English was heavily accented. “Unfortunately, His Excellency is in meetings. But he will be informed of your important call, and I am quite certain that he will arrange to speak with you at the first opportunity.”
The president hesitated, and it struck Berndt as an ominous sign from a man who was known for his decisiveness.
“Very well, I’ll wait for his call,” Haynes said, and broke the connection.
He sat back, looking at his national security adviser as if he were waiting for some advice. But for once Berndt was at a loss.
“There’s not much we can do about them,” the president said. “Not unless somebody finds us a new source of oil, pronto.” He shook his head. “God help the bastards if these attacks actually happen and if we can prove that Saudi Arabia was involved.” His jaw tightened. “I would ask Congress for a formal declaration of war.”