“I was sent over to try to make a difference.”
“Did you?” she asked, her voice sharp, only because she was hurting for him.
“I hope so,” he said.
He kissed her on the cheek and took his Mercedes CLS500 down to West Potomac Park, where he walked over to the Vietnam Memorial wall with its fifty-thousand-plus names. It was three on a weekday afternoon, but the weather was good and a lot of people were in the park, many of them seated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
A man something over six feet tall, with the frame of a footballer, wearing jeans, a polo shirt and a Yankees baseball cap, stood at a point at the wall where several KIAs named Johnson were engraved. He was Colonel Hasan Kayani, who controlled all ISI activities in the U.S. from his offices at the UN in New York. The FBI knew him as a low-level diplomat with the Saudi delegation, but when he left the city he traveled with a British passport under the name Wasif Jones. His English was spot-on, in part because he’d always been a quick study, but in a larger measure because he, like Haaris, had been educated in the UK. And also like Haaris, had been bright enough to hide his radicalism when he had been recruited by the Pakistani intel service nine years earlier.
Haaris had been a walk-in recruit up in New York and had been feeding Kayani information about the CIA’s activities in Pakistan for the past three years. The colonel knew that Haaris had been sent to work with the ISI in Islamabad, but he did not know that Haaris was the Messiah. Only General Rajput knew that secret.
“The general said that you had received some rough treatment,” Kayani said, glancing over.
“I’ll live,” Haaris said, that old phrase of his sounding odd in his ears now.
“My God, Page will be beside himself. Your trip to Islamabad completely backfired. Have you been debriefed yet?”
“I’m on my way over.”
“What do you think of this Messiah business? Crazy, if you ask me.”
“The people in the street are behind it. And we’re finally going to have peace with the Taliban. So who knows where it’ll lead?”
“Not me. But no one else knows what to make of it either.”
“Thanks for taking care of the McGarvey business. That bastard could have created some trouble. He usually does wherever he goes.”
“The mission failed,” Kayani said. “I thought that you would have heard by now.”
Haaris forced himself to remain calm. He needed only one thing from this buffoon, and the man had screwed it up. “What happened?”
“I don’t have all of the details at this point, except that the powerboat my two people rented in Sarasota crashed on the beach and exploded. I’ve not heard from them since, so I assume they died in the crash.”
“What beach?” Haaris asked, his voice even.
“Apparently directly across the street from Mr. McGarvey’s house.”
“Send someone else to do the job.”
“Don’t you think that he will be alerted to the fact that someone is trying to kill him? The CIA will certainly take notice.”
“I want the bastard dead within the next twelve hours — twenty-four at most. And I don’t give a damn how many assets you have to burn.” Haaris turned to the man. “Have I made myself clear, Colonel? Do you understand what’s at stake?”
At stake was Haaris continuing to feed solid-gold intel to the ISI in the person of Colonel Kayani. The pipeline from the CIA had made the man’s career.
“Consider it done.”
The Cadillac SUV was passed directly through the main gate, and driving up the road through the woods to the Original Headquarters Building — the one always shown in TV and in the movies — McGarvey had the same sensation he always had coming back like this. It was part excitement to be back in the hunt, part nostalgia for days past and sometimes just, at some point way in the back of his head, the tiniest bit of fear, or more accurately, concern, that sooner or later he was going to screw up. Sooner or later he would go up against someone, or someones, better than he was.
They parked in the underground VIP garage, and Pete went up to the seventh floor with him. She left him at Page’s office. “They’re expecting you.”
“What about you?”
“They want me to sit in on Dave Haaris’s debriefing.”
McGarvey’s ears perked up, though he didn’t let it show. “They suspect him of something?”
“Good heavens, no,” Pete said. “I’ve known about the guy for a few years now, and without him we wouldn’t have a Pakistan Desk. But he was over there in the middle of it; the Taliban picked him up on the airport road, and the ISI managed to get him released. We just need the details. Might be something that could help. He’ll point the way.”
SIXTEEN
McGarvey was shown straight through by the DCI’s personal secretary. Page was sitting on one of the couches in the middle of the large office, facing Marty Bambridge and the CIA’s general counsel, Carlton Patterson, who were seated on the other. Otto was perched on the edge of Page’s desk.
“Oh, wow, Jim Forest is looking for you,” Otto said. He was a barrel-chested odd duck of a computer genius, with long red hair tied in a ponytail. He wore jeans and a KGB sweatshirt. He was McGarvey’s best friend, and they had a long history together.
“I expect he is,” McGarvey said. Forest was the chief of detectives for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, and he and McGarvey also had a history together. He would be taking the boat accident as no coincidence.
“Good afternoon,” Page said, gesturing McGarvey to an empty chair. “You weren’t injured?” he asked. He’d run IBM until the president before Miller had tapped him to take over the CIA, and the administration saw no need to replace him.
“It was close, but Miss Boylan was waiting for me on the beach, and she helped out.”
“She told me,” Bambridge said. “A pretty big chance for her to take, wouldn’t you say?”
“Don’t start, Marty, I didn’t come up here to play your games,” McGarvey said. He too had a history with the deputy director of the Clandestine Service, not much of it any good. In his estimation Bambridge was a damned good desk jockey but not much of a field officer, though he fancied he was.
“My dear boy, have you been brought up to date on the situation in Pakistan?” Patterson asked. He was a tall slender man, with thinning white hair and the patrician manners of an old-school gentleman. He’d been the Agency’s general counsel for what seemed like forever. In his early eighties, everyone in the business was much younger than he; his “dear boys” and “dear girls.”
“Miss Boylan briefed me on the flight up, and Otto sent me some material while we were still in the air. But I don’t know what the president thinks I can do about it.”
“You’re not an analyst, Mac,” Otto said. “But I think the woman is off her rocker if she’s going to send you out to do what I think she will.”
Page’s jaw tightened. Like just about everyone else on the campus he tolerated Rencke mostly because he had a great deal of respect and even awe for the computer guru. And it was once suggested to him that since it was Otto who had designed the advanced computer systems for the entire U.S. intelligence community — including the National Security Agency’s telephone and Internet monitoring capabilities — he could also destroy them.
McGarvey let Otto’s comment slide for the moment. “What’s Dave Haaris recommending?”
“Nothing yet,” Bambridge said. “He’s being debriefed at the moment. Soon as he’s done he wants to get back with his people and come up with a plan. He said we’re going to need one to get ourselves out of this mess.” He hesitated.