“Katy,” he called to her.
Her head snapped up and her eyes went wide. “Kirk? My God, is that you?”
“It’s me, sweetheart. Are you okay?”
Katy got up and hobbled to the door. She was obviously in a great deal of pain. The side of her face was swollen and bruised, and there was some blood on her pajama bottoms. “I’m afraid for the baby,” she cried. “Get me out of here, darling. Please.”
McGarvey looked at Salman, who was watching him with an inscrutable expression in his hooded eyes. It took every ounce of will in McGarvey’s body not to put one round into the man’s forehead. End it here and now, so that no matter what else happened the bastard would be dead.
But in less than forty-eight hours al-Quaida would hit us again.
Only Khalil knew exactly when and where the strike or strikes were going to take place.
He turned back to the viewing port. “Listen to me, Katy. I have to blow the door. I want you to turn the cot over on its side and get behind the mattress. When you’re set, I’ll do it.”
“Okay,” she said, and she turned away.
“I did not kidnap your wife,” Salman said. “I was at my embassy the entire time, and I can prove it.”
McGarvey stuffed his pistol in his belt. “Move and I will shoot you,” he said. He took out a Semtex packet, and quickly molded the small block of plastic explosive around the door lock and latch handle, while keeping a cautious eye on the prince.
The fuse was set for five seconds from the moment he cracked the acid cylinder.
He looked through the viewing port. Katy had the cot over on its side, and she was huddling down behind the mattress. “Are you ready?” he called to her.
She looked up over the edge of the cot. “Yes,” she shouted.
“Keep your head down,” McGarvey said. He cracked the fuse, then stepped a few feet away from the door, flattening himself against the wall and turning his face away.
The Semtex went off with an impressive bang, an eight-inch-wide piece of the door and its latch clattering off the corridor wall.
McGarvey pulled out his pistol, went back to Katy’s cell, and pulled the door open. “It’s okay now; you can come out,” he told her.
Salman raised his head. “May I get up?”
“Just a minute,” McGarvey told him. Katy was having trouble getting out from under the cot. “Stay put,” he warned Salman. He went into the cell, pulled the cot and mattress away, and helped his wife to her feet.
Katy came into his arms, shivering. He wanted nothing more than to hold her until she calmed down, but there was no time.
“We have to get out of here right now,” he told her. “Can you walk?”
She looked up into his eyes, and nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“On your feet,” McGarvey called out to Salman as he helped Katy to the door.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Kahlil, the bastard who did this to you.”
At the door Katy looked at Salman as he got to his feet. Then she turned back to her husband. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“What do you mean, Katy?” McGarvey asked. “It’s him. The man from the cruise ship, the one who brought you here, did this—”
Katy was shaking her head. She looked at Salman again. “Darling, I recognize the man, of course. He’s Prince Salman. He could practically be Khalil’s twin. But he’s not the one who beat me up. The one from Alaska. I know it for a fact, because he was just here not more than an hour ago.”
At that moment McGarvey realized the enormity of the trap he had walked into, because of nothing more than his ego, pitted against that of another man.
SEVENTY
Across the street in the CIA’s Boynton Towers safe house, Otto Rencke was on the phone with Elizabeth and Todd, who were racing over from the Saudi Embassy. He had called them the moment Prince Salman had driven up in the Mercedes and gone inside.
None of them knew what it meant, except that there was a very real possibility that he and Khalil were not the same person after all.
“What else is going on over there?” Liz shouted.
Rencke was having trouble grasping how he could have been so wrong. The data he’d gathered had been circumstantial, but there’d been so much of it. There’d been a long-term consistency.
“Nothing,” he said. He’d watched the front of the house through the standard-issue, mil specs, Steiner binoculars he’d drawn from one of the Covert Ops guys, who’d known better than to ask the special projects director any questions.
Except for Prince Salman’s arrival, there had been no activity over there. The window curtains were drawn, and there was no sign of any security guards within the gated area, yet by now the Saudis inside knew that McGarvey had gotten in.
The silence combined with his confusion put him off-balance.
“Have you tried my dad’s cell phone?” Liz asked, and Rencke could hear the traffic noises in the background.
“The Saudis have the building shielded. Nothing will get through.”
“Are you sure he got inside?”
Rencke swung the binoculars to the narrow side street that ran to the rear of the house, but he was unable to see the rear entrance from here. “I’m pretty sure; otherwise he would have come back here by now.”
“Then he’s got some kind of plan to get back out. But he’s been in there too long. I think he needs help.”
“I think so too.”
“Just a minute,” Liz shouted. Todd was saying something to her.
Rencke had loitered at the end of the block, waiting for McGarvey to emerge from the apartment building, and then had come up to keep watch. If something went wrong across the street or if Rencke figured McGarvey was taking too long, he was going to call for help.
“Otto, I need to know if my dad still carries the cigarette lighter my mother gave to him,” Liz said.
Rencke lowered the binoculars. McGarvey had quit smoking several years ago, so he had no need for a flame. But maybe he’d kept Katy’s present. Rencke tried to remember if he’d seen Mac with it recently. Maybe taking it out of his pocket and looking at it. Playing with it. “I think so, Liz, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.”
“That’s good enough,” Liz said. “I didn’t think he’d toss it in a drawer someplace.” She said something away from the phone, her voice muffled, then she came back. “Do you have your laptop with you?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tap into whatever computer controls the electricity over there, just like you did with the embassy?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Rencke said. “Do you want me to shut them off?”
“Yes, but give us five minutes to get over there,” Liz said. “Then call the fire department; tell them there’s a major blaze and a lot of people are trapped inside and are going to burn to death.”
Rencke caught her idea immediately. She was Mac’s daughter, and she was getting good at seeing into her father’s tradecraft. They were going to send McGarvey a signal that they were here to back him up.
Unless it was already too late.
SEVENTY-ONE
Khalil stood at the head of the basement stairs, with the Heckler & Koch M8 compact NATO carbine he’d gotten from the security people upstairs in hand. A long silencer was screwed to the end of the barrel. Although he wanted to take the woman with him, there would be a certain symmetry to killing her and her husband together.
What was most vexing, however, was Prince Salman’s barging in. He was going to have to die here today, shot to death by McGarvey. Afterward it would be up to al-Kaseem’s people to clean up the mess.