The large table was still in place, but it was laid out with glasses, water carafes, and lined tablets and pens at each position. At one end was a complicated-looking, multiline telephone console, and beside it a red phone without push buttons. The room was apparently used for conferences.
But this wasn’t the headquarters of any Middle Eastern trade association. The Bureau had long suspected that Saudi intelligence was operating out of a safe house somewhere in the city that was independent of the embassy. McGarvey had a hunch that he’d just stumbled onto it.
The closed-circuit television camera mounted high on the wall on the other side of the room came to life and tracked McGarvey as he left the kitchen, hurried around the table, and made his way to the tall, ornately paneled sliding doors, which opened, as he remembered, directly onto the main stair hall.
If there was a security detail here, someone would be stationed in the front hall to screen incoming staff and visitors.
McGarvey put his ear to the doors, but there were no sounds. He eased one of them open slightly and looked out.
The large hall was empty, as was the railed second-floor corridor leading from the head of the stairs. Middle Eastern paintings and tapestries and long, curving scimitars decorated the walls. Persian rugs were scattered on the highly polished wooden floor. To the right a heavy wooden door with an oval, etched glass window led to a small vestibule. Directly across from the dining room was a counter about eight feet long. It was the security post. He could see the reflection of a monitor screen in the door glass.
McGarvey looked over his shoulder, but the way behind was clear. He was being led into a trap, but he had no options that he wanted to consider. Katy and Kahlil were here, and he was going to find both of them.
What bothered him most was not that Khalil had snatched Katy, but why he had not taken Liz as well and disappeared into the woodwork with both of them. If he were one of the al-Quaida leaders, he would be hunkering down now until the attack, and probably for the long haul. They had to know that the pressure to find them would be ten times what it had been after 9/11.
But Khalil had allowed Liz to leave, even telling her the timetable for the attacks.
For just a moment McGarvey felt a flash of self-doubt. Perhaps the cable television van transporting Katy had not doubled back here to drop her off before showing up at the Saudi Embassy. It was possible she was over there and not here after all.
He shook his head.
It was Khalil’s ego driving him now. After his failure in Alaska, he was willing to go to any lengths, take any risks to hit back. His actions had nothing to do with al-Quaida or striking a blow against the West; this was personal between them.
They were watching his every move. Khalil wouldn’t want to kill him at first, just disable him, bring him down. For that McGarvey would have to come out into the open where they could have a clear shot at him.
Which was exactly what he was going to give them.
He started to turn around, as if he had decided against continuing, but then he flung the doors open and darted out into the stair hall, sweeping his pistol left to right, covering the corners and then the upstairs landing for any sign of movement.
He was across the hall in a few long strides, where he levered himself over the counter and ducked down behind it.
He was somewhat exposed to anyone on the upstairs landing, but it couldn’t be helped. In any event he planned only staying long enough to find Katy.
Keeping one eye toward the landing, he quickly studied the security board. In addition to a telephone console and what appeared to be the controls for the front and back gates, there were two monitors. One of them showed the corridor between the kitchen and the rear entrance. The other was an outside view, at the front gate.
Beneath each monitor was a double row of switches that controlled which camera was displayed. And lying on the console was a floor plan of the building, the camera positions marked and numbered.
McGarvey glanced at the upstairs landing, then flipped the first switch. The view in that monitor changed from the kitchen corridor, to the rear gate.
Katy could be anywhere in the house, possibly in an upstairs bedroom, but more likely she was somewhere in the basement, where there were no windows from which she might attempt to escape, or signal for help.
He started with the cameras in the basement rooms. The first showed a view down a dimly lit corridor. The second and third showed empty rooms, both of which could have been used as interrogation cells.
He found Katy in the fourth, a room at the end of the corridor, and his heart leapt into his throat. She was seated on a narrow cot, her knees drawn up to her chest. He couldn’t see her face very clearly, but by the way she held herself he knew that she had been hurt.
For a second a monstrous dark rage welled up inside of him, threatening to block out all sanity. He looked up at the second-floor corridor, everything in his soul wishing for Kahlil to be there. Right now. Just the two of them.
But then he came down.
Katy was alone in the cell, and she didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger. He found the room location on the floor plan. The entrance to the basement was just off the rear corridor the way he had come in.
His eyes went to the monitor showing the front gate. A black Mercedes with heavily smoked windows had pulled up. The rear door opened and a man stepped out.
He looked familiar.
McGarvey checked the upstairs landing again, and when he turned back to the monitor the man from the limo was at the front gate, pressing the buzzer, looking up at the television camera.
Suddenly McGarvey was no longer sure of anything. He was looking into the face of a man who should not have been outside this building. Katy was here, and so should this man have been. Unless everything he believed was wrong.
Or unless something else was going on. Something to do with the al-Quaida attacks in less than two days.
And he was afraid for Liese’s safety because he had sent her on a dangerous wild-goose chase.
“Let me in at once.” The voice of Prince Salman came from the speaker next to the monitor, and McGarvey pressed the button to open the gate.
SIXTY-SEVEN
The large living room of Prince Salman’s chalet was silent and getting dark because storm clouds had blown in from the west, covering the late afternoon sky. Liese sat with her knees together, pistol in hand, across from Princess Sofia and the children.
She laid the gun on her lap, and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. She hadn’t even gotten through the first hour, and yet it seemed as if she had been here forever. But Kirk would call when he was in the clear, so she would have to hold on until then.
The first few minutes had been the worst, because she’d expected the security guards to try to take her by surprise. She’d been startled by every little sound, by every movement the princess or one of the children made. At one point a phone rang in another room, and for a couple of seconds she had the silly notion that it might be Kirk calling the security staff to let her go.
But no one came to talk to her, and gradually the house settled down until there were no noises. She wished she was almost anywhere else but here. In Kirk’s arms, she daydreamed, even though she knew that would never be possible.
“Sergeant, my daughter has to use the WC,” Princess Sofia said. The youngest girl had been fidgeting for the past five minutes.
Liese shook her head. “It will only be another hour. I’m sorry, but she’ll have to wait.”
The little girl’s eyes were very wide, coal black, her complexion a beautiful olive, her long dark hair in a single braid. She sat nearest to her mother, her tiny hands in her lap. Her tee shirt had Minnie Mouse embroidered on the front, from Euro Disney outside Paris.