Khalil decided not to kill the man yet. But it was going to give him pleasure when he did. The chief of station had lived for too long in the West. He had practically become one of them.
“Send it,” Khalil said. “I’ll leave tonight.”
Al-Kaseem hesitated for a moment, his jaw set, but then he nodded. “As you wish.” He sat down at the computer, brought up the Internet, went to the Al Jazeera Web site, and attached the video file. He glanced up at Khalil, then turned back and hit the Send Now icon.
At that moment there was a small explosion somewhere directly below them.
“McGarvey,” the chief of station said. “He’s here already. The embassy attack was just a ruse.”
Khalil headed for the door. “No one is to kill him. He’s mine.”
“What shall we do?” al-Kaseem demanded.
“Let him find his wife, of course.”
SIXTY-FIVE
Dennis Berndt had attended numerous National Security Council meetings and other crisis gatherings, but never before had he seen a roomful of people with so much fear, anger, and confusion on their faces.
Herb Weissman was the first to arrive at the White House from his office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, followed by Dick Adkins from Langley, Frank Hoover from downtown, and Crawford Anderson, from his office in the Old Executive Office Building. He was chief of DC operations for Homeland Security.
They gathered in the basement situation room, and Berndt was in charge until the president, running late, came down with his chief of staff.
“We need to figure out what we can do, and we don’t have much time to come up with a recommendation,” Berndt told them. There had been no need to go over the specifics with any of them; they were all in the loop. They’d had the better part of an hour to ponder the facts.
“Has anybody located McGarvey?” Weissman asked. “Fred Rudolph is in charge over at the embassy. As of fifteen minutes ago McGarvey had not surfaced, and his daughter isn’t talking.” He glanced at Adkins. “It’s your surveillance teams over there who started all this, for God’s sake. They won’t back down.”
“They won’t until Mac’s wife is released,” Adkins said.
“If they’re ordered, will they disobey?” Berndt asked, although he expected that he already knew the answer. All of them in the room did. As young as she was, Elizabeth Van Buren had already gained the reputation as a tough, capable field officer who in many respects was following in her father’s footsteps. It was possible that if she continued on her present path, she would someday become deputy director of operations, a position no other woman had ever risen to.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t want to give the order, Dennis.”
Berndt was instantly angry. “We’re in a no-win situation here, Dick. If the president orders them to stand down and they refuse, they would be subject to arrest. All of them.”
Adkins shook his head. “You know better than that.”
“I wouldn’t care to send my people to do it,” Weissman said. “Somebody could get hurt, and anyway we’d be playing right into the Saudis’ hands. If they’ve got McGarvey’s wife over there, they don’t have a moral or diplomatic leg to stand on. If we start fighting among ourselves, they can claim anything they want.” He looked around the table. “Hell, they could even admit they have her, but are concerned about her safety.” He smiled ironically. “Fact is, she might be in the safest place in Washington right now.”
The others agreed. “Which leaves us with McGarvey, because we sure as hell can’t storm into somebody’s embassy with the National Guard, guns drawn, and demand they turn over someone they may or may not be holding prisoner,” Berndt said. “Where is he, Dick?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, somebody does,” President Haynes said, entering the room. He moved fast, reaching the center chair around the table and sitting down before everyone else could get to their feet. He was clearly seething with anger.
“Mr. President, we were just—”
“Never mind that for the moment,” Haynes said. He fixed each of them with a baleful look. “I’m late because Crown Prince Abdullah finally called me about two situations. The one at the embassy angers him the most.” The president’s jaw tightened. “The son of a bitch actually threatened to cut off oil shipments to us for thirty days if I didn’t do something immediately.”
Berndt had been afraid of just this from the moment he’d been informed about the developing situation at the Saudi Embassy. As the president’s adviser on national security affairs, he should have been in on the call.
Haynes anticipated Berndt’s concern. “I was just leaving the Oval Office when his call came through. Sorry, Dennis, you were already down here and there was no time to get you back upstairs.” The president seemed to look inward for a moment, as if he was girding himself for some difficult decisions. “He flatly denied that Kathleen McGarvey was being held prisoner at the embassy.” The president looked pointedly at Adkins. “He gave me his word, Dick.” Haynes shook his head. “I couldn’t very well call him a liar.”
“No, Mr. President,” Adkins said.
Thank God for that much, Berndt thought. “I don’t believe that Saudi Arabia can afford to cut off our oil, Mr. President. They’re in desperate need of money, and our surveilling their embassy, no matter how vigorously, would not give them sufficient cause.”
“Exactly,” the president shot back. “But there was a second situation he wanted to know about, the one that puzzles him most, happening at this moment outside Lucerne. A Swiss federal cop by the name of Liese Fuelm has taken Prince Salman’s wife and four children hostage in their own home.” Again he directed his attention to Adkins. “Does that name ring any bells?”
Adkins nodded. “Kirk knows her.”
It was obviously the answer Haynes expected to hear. “Despite my warning, he’s directing a full-scale assault on the prince, who, so far as I know, is at the embassy now, and on his family in Switzerland. A neutral country.”
“The Saudis kidnapped McGarvey’s wife, Mr. President,” Berndt suggested, as gingerly as he could. “In his mind he has cause.”
“Do you know this for a fact, Dennis?” the president demanded.
“I got it from Otto Rencke, his special projects director, who got it from Mac’s daughter,” Berndt said. “She was in Georgetown when they grabbed her mother. The kidnappers told her that they would keep Mrs. McGarvey for two days, and nothing would happen to her if Mac backed off. They drove off in a cable television van, which the DC police spotted entering the Saudi Embassy parking garage beneath the building.”
“We’re using that as our operational timetable, Mr. President,” Anderson, the Homeland Security DC chief said, but the president held up a hand, cutting him off. “I know who can reach him,” Haynes said.
Berndt knew as well. “He might have his hands full,” he said.
But Haynes was having none of it. “Get Rencke on the speakerphone now,” he ordered. “I’m going to end this standoff so that we can concentrate on stopping the bastards from hitting us again.”
Which was exactly what McGarvey was trying to do, Berndt thought. But he didn’t give voice to it.
“We’ve got forty-eight hours, give or take,” the president said. “We ought to be able to find them by then.” It was wishful thinking.
Using the president’s telephone console, Berndt dialed the emergency number Rencke had left for him. It was answered on the first ring.
“Oh wow, Mr. Berndt, am I glad you called. I’ve got some good dope on the Saudis. I’m following their financial trails. At least one line of money goes from several Swiss accounts into one in Trinidad. And you’ll never guess who the payer and the payee are. You’ll never guess, not in a zillion years!”