The princess herded her children to the modernistic white leather couch, and the youngest girl, with long dark hair and big eyes just like her mother, began to cry. Her mother said something to her and then gathered her up.
Keeping her pistol trained on the princess, Liese took her cell phone out of her purse and speed-dialed McGarvey’s number. It answered on the first ring.
“Are you in?”
“Yes.”
“Has anyone been hurt?” McGarvey asked, and Liese could hear the genuine concern in his voice. It was reassuring.
“Everyone is fine. Frightened, but okay,” she said. “But this is bad, Kirk.”
“I know,” he said, “but we didn’t create the situation. They did. Just give me a couple of hours. I’ll call when we’re set here with the answers.”
“Kirk? They deny it.”
McGarvey hesitated. “They might not know, Liese. They’re innocents.” He hesitated again. “That’s the difference between us. It’ll always be the difference. We don’t harm innocent people to make political statements.”
Except now, Liese thought.
SIXTY-TWO
Sitting in her mother’s car directly across the tree-lined street from the front entrance to the Saudi Embassy, Elizabeth waited for the signal from her husband that the street from the Watergate Hotel and apartments had been blocked to traffic. So far they’d not been interfered with. Though by now DC Metro would have been informed that something was going on down here. And the Bureau would be getting into the act soon because somebody from the embassy was probably raising hell.
Besides Elizabeth’s car, CIA surveillance teams were working from four vans — one parked directly behind her, one at each end of the street, and one at the rear of the Saudi compound across from the loading ramp, which led down into the basement parking garage. In the past ten minutes two limos with smoked windows had left the embassy.
Todd’s voice came into her earpiece. “We’re in place. Nobody else is leaving for now.”
“Copy,” Elizabeth spoke into her lapel mike. “Any sign of the cops or the federales at your end?”
“Not yet, Liz. But they’re coming.”
Elizabeth looked in her door mirror. She could see the tail end of Todd’s van, but there didn’t seem to be any activity up there. “Have you picked up something on DC Metro’s Tac One?” It was the FM radio channel that police dispatch used to communicate with its units on the streets.
“No. But Adkins called my cell phone and wanted to know what the hell we were doing, and was your dad down here with us.”
“What’d you tell him?” Elizabeth demanded.
“That we were putting pressure on the embassy to flush your mother out. That your dad wasn’t here and so far as we knew he was at home where he should be.”
“Did he buy it?” Elizabeth asked. All her father wanted was a couple of hours.
Todd chuckled. “No way But he didn’t press me. He just warned me that Fred Rudolph was raising holy hell, and that the Bureau was probably coming our way.”
“It’s going to get real interesting around here with DC Metro and the Bureau trying to figure out what we’re up to.”
“That’ll take at least a couple of hours, don’t you think, darling?” Todd asked.
Elizabeth smiled wickedly. “At least,” she said. “Okay, boys and girls, stand by. It’s showtime.” Her laptop was connected to the CIA’s mainframe via the Internet. The program she was tapped into had been created less than an hour ago by Rencke; it could take control of the electrical power grid for the entire city and the surrounding areas out to, but not including, Dulles International. Otto had isolated the area of the Saudi Embassy.
Elizabeth clicked on that line. When it was highlighted, she hit Enter.
It would take ten seconds for the proper relays to be opened, and then the lights would go out. After that it was anyone’s guess what would happen. But the pressure would be on.
She speed-dialed her father’s cell phone. He answered immediately.
“Yes.”
“Less than ten seconds,” she told him.
“Anything from the Bureau yet?”
“No, but they’re on the way. Rudolph is putting the squeeze on Adkins.”
There was a pause for just a moment.
“Okay, sweetheart, nobody gets hurt down there,” McGarvey said. “Do you understand what I’m saying? If there’s even a hint of trouble coming your way, I want you and the others to immediately bail out. No grandstanding. Your mother’s not in the embassy in any event. All you guys are doing is providing me with a diversion.”
But Elizabeth knew that people were going to get hurt, probably killed, though not here at the embassy. “When are you going in?”
“I have one phone call to make that could put an end to this business right now,” McGarvey said. “It’s worth a try.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a second. She had read her father’s file. The complete file. She knew what he was capable of, just as she knew that like any really good soldier or field officer, he always did everything in his power to avoid conflict.
She opened her eyes as electricity to the entire block went off. The red lights on the security cameras in front of the embassy winked out, and the traffic signals at the end of the street went dead.
“The power’s off,” she told her father.
“Stall them as long as you can, sweetheart,” McGarvey said.
“Good luck, Daddy,” Elizabeth said, but her father was already gone, and in the distance she could hear the first of the police sirens.
Across the street in his fifth-floor office, Nuaimi had just gotten through to Dennis Berndt over at the White House when his telephone went dead. At first he thought that, as incredible as it seemed, the president’s national security adviser had actually hung up on him. But when he tried to buzz his secretary to call again, he realized that the buttons on his phone console were all dead.
He slammed down the phone and switched on his light. But it too was dead. The faulty plumbing was not an isolated incident after all. Someone had cut their water, and now the electricity was off.
Pushing away from his desk, Nuaimi went to the door and threw it open. His secretary, startled, looked up. “The electricity has failed, Your Excellency.”
“Get me Besharati—” Nuaimi said, just as his chief of security walked through the door.
“The water was no coincidence,” the man said. He was tall, and lean as a greyhound, and he made most people he came into contact with nervous. Nuaimi thought of him as a Nazi, but he was very capable at his job. “Apparently we’re under assault. I’d suggest that you place a call to the secretary of state and demand an explanation.”
“The phones are dead.”
Besharati handed him a cell phone. “Make the call now, Your Excellency, before the situation gets out of hand.” His attitude was demeaning, and peremptory.
Nuaimi took immediate offense because he stupidly had not thought of using a cell phone. “Who do you think you are?” he demanded, sharply.
“I’m sorry, Your Excellency. I was merely trying to assist you—”
“Then take a dozen of your men, with arms, and surround this building as a show of force.”
Besharati looked amused. “I do not think that is advisable—”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Nuaimi said. “I gave you an order, and I expect that you will carry it out immediately.”
Besharati lowered his eyes and nodded. “As you wish, Your Excellency.” He turned and walked out, leaving Nuaimi wondering what in Allah’s name bin Laden’s people could be thinking. It was common knowledge that members of the Saudi royal family had been supplying the terrorist with money all along. But after the terrible attacks of 9/11, he thought Crown Prince Abdullah might have reined them in.