Berndt looked at the president, who nodded for him to go ahead. “No, Mr. Rencke, who?” he asked.
“The Swiss accounts belong to none other than our old friend Prince Abdul Salman,” Rencke gushed, excitedly, “and the Trinidad account belongs to him as well.” Rencke laughed. “But do you guys want to hear the kicker, Mr. President, do ya?”
Berndt looked at the president again. Rencke was a frightening man. Somehow he was able to trace a supposedly untraceable telephone circuit to the console in the White House situation room. The president was very likely to be there in this time of national crisis.
“Yes, Mr. Rencke, I would like to hear the kicker,” Haynes said.
“A businessman by the name of Thomas Isherwood arrived at the Juneau airport from Vancouver two days before Shaw almost went down. He took a cab to an air charter company where he had booked a flight to a fishing resort on Kuiu Island on the Inside Passage.” Rencke suddenly dropped the little-boy enthusiasm from his voice. Now he was a professional intelligence officer passing crucial information to the president of the United States. “He was supposed to stay for a week, fishing with friends. But when the charter pilot flew back for the pickup, no one was there.” Rencke paused for a second. “No one alive. The resort owner, his wife, and his daughter had all been gunned down.”
“We know most of that, Otto,” Adkins said. “What else have you come up with?”
“Oh wow, Mr. Adkins. Guess where Thomas Isherwood was from? Port of Spain, Trinidad.”
No one said anything.
“Do you get it, Mr. President? Saudi royal family money — Prince Salman’s money — has been transferred on a regular basis to Trinidad. The man traveling from Trinidad to Juneau via Vancouver was the terrorist Khalil. And at that very same moment Prince Salman himself was in Vancouver, supposedly on business.” Rencke laughed. “Bingo!”
“Good work, Mr. Rencke,” Haynes said. “I’ll want you to carry your investigation as far as you can. In the meantime I want to speak with Mr. McGarvey. I suspect that you know where he is at the moment.”
“But Mr. President, there can’t be any doubt that Khalil and the prince are the same guy. Gosh—”
“It’s an order, Mr. Rencke,” the president said. “I’m trying to save lives — his, his wife’s, and possibly a lot of innocent Americans. The attack is coming in less than two days. We don’t have much time to stop it.”
“No, sir, we do not,” Rencke said. “But it’s too late to reach Mac.”
Berndt’s stomach did a slow roll. “Why, Otto?” he asked. “Why is it too late?”
“He’s already inside.”
“That’s impossible,” Weissman sputtered. “We’re watching the place along with your people.”
“Nevertheless it’s true,” Rencke said. “I saw him go in just a couple of minutes—” Rencke stopped in midsentence.
For a moment Berndt thought that they’d lost the connection. But sounds were coming from the speakerphone. A woman’s voice perhaps, and then a man’s. But Berndt couldn’t make out any of the words.
“Otto?” Berndt prompted.
Still there was nothing.
“Mr. Rencke,” Haynes said.
“Power up your monitor, Mr. President; I’ll send you something that I’ve just picked up from one of our satellite intercept programs,” Rencke said. His voice sounded strangled, as if he had swallowed something bad.
A flat-panel computer monitor in front of the president’s position was already on, the image of some Hawaiian beach on its screen wallpaper. Haynes turned it so that the others could see the screen. “Go ahead, Mr. Rencke; we’re ready.”
The image of a battered Kathleen McGarvey came up. Dressed in what looked like cotton pajamas, she was sitting on the edge of a cot. Her face was bruised, and it was obvious she had been beaten. But she seemed to be alert and even defiant.
God help the sorry bastard who did this when McGarvey finds out, Berndt thought. He shuddered.
“My name is Kathleen McGarvey, and I have a message for all the mothers and fathers of all the children in the great Satan nation, the United States.”
“Where did it come from?” Adkins asked.
“It’s from a Saudi intel transmitter here in town,” Rencke said.
“Where did they send it?” Berndt asked.
“Al Jazeera’s main studio in Doha,” Rencke said. He was choked up, as they all were, watching McGarvey’s wife read from a prepared statement.
Her eyes were flitting all over the place, and Berndt suspected she was trying to tell them something, but for the life of him he didn’t know what it might be. “Otto, is she trying to signal us?”
“It looks like it, but it ain’t Morse code,” Rencke said over her voice. “But I’m on it.” The telephone connection was broken.
“There’s not a damned thing we can do now, except storm the embassy,” the president said, his eyes glued to the monitor. “And we definitely can’t do that.”
SIXTY-SIX
His pistol in hand, McGarvey held up just inside what had been a pantry beyond the mudroom down a short corridor from the rear entrance. It had taken him less than two minutes to blow the lock on the rear security gate, cross the narrow parking area filled with a half dozen cars, and let himself in.
He’d been prepared to blow the rear door or take down anyone who came to investigate, but the door had been unlocked and no one had shown up.
The storeroom was dark and smelled musty. It was filled with locked file cabinets, and shelves holding hundreds of what appeared to be U.S. government bulletins, documents, and at least five years’ worth of the Congressional Record pulp publication.
This was a trap. All his senses were superalert. No one had come to investigate the explosion at the back security gate, nor had the loading-entrance door been locked.
Where were the security people?
There were closed-circuit television cameras on the gate, outside the back door, and where the corridor opened into the large kitchen. They knew that he was in the building. Yet no one was rushing to intercept the intruder. It was very much unlike any Saudi operation he’d ever seen. Even their think tanks had tighter security.
Khalil wanted him to come here.
This was a large building with more than two dozen rooms. McGarvey had spent some of the morning trying to remember the layout. He’d only ever been inside once, after Yarnell’s death, and he supposed that the Saudis might have changed things around to suit their purposes. But Katy could be anywhere, and even without interference it might take a long time to find her. No matter what Khalil’s purpose was, the Saudis weren’t about to let an American stay here very long.
Khalil was here, though, he was sure of it. He could almost smell the man’s scent. “Here I am,” he murmured. “I’m coming.”
No one was in the industrial kitchen, nor did it look as if it had been used to cook a meal in a long time. There didn’t appear to be any foodstuffs, and the three gas stoves were pristine; there weren’t any pots or pans hanging on the hooks, nor plates or glasses on the shelves.
McGarvey stopped again and cocked an ear to listen. The house was dead quiet. Yet people were here.
A pair of swinging doors led to what had been a dining room large enough to seat thirty people. McGarvey eased one of the doors open and cautiously peered through the crack.
Nobody was there.