one end of the room. He dimmed the lights and the same 3-D diagram that he showed McGarvey came up. It got everyone’s attention, and for the next ten minutes he explained what he’d come up with and what he thought it meant. When he was finished the room was so quiet that they could hear the gentle rush of air through the AC vents. The only thing left showing on the screen now was the engineering diagram of the device.
“I can see why he wants to talk to somebody,” Adkins said, subdued. “This might be too big even for him.” He tore his eyes away from the monitor. “Who are we going to send…?”
Whittaker interrupted. “That could be a moot point unless we can find him first. Our contacts in Kabul say he’s dropped out of sight again. The Taliban aren’t saying anything, as usual, but it’s possible he’s no longer in Afghanistan.”
“He’s done that before,” McGarvey said. “If he wants to talk to us, he’ll get the word out when he’s ready.”
The telephone console at McGarvey’s position burred softly. He picked it up. “Yes.”
“I’m here.” It was the CIA director, Roland Murphy.
“We’re just finishing, General. I’ll come over in a few minutes.”
“Very well.”
McGarvey hung up and checked his watch. It was coming up on two. “Okay, we have six hours to put this together. In the meantime I want our assets and people hunkering down for the moment.”
“While trying to find out where bin Laden is hiding out, and who ordered the hit,” Adkins said dryly.
“Right,” McGarvey said.
“You still haven’t told us who you’re going to send to meet with him if we can arrange it.”
“No, I haven’t,” McGarvey replied softly. There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. Voltaire wrote that to Cardinal de Berms. He was talking about the Catholic Church, which he despised, but the idea was no different here and now, McGarvey thought, because he was even wondering about admitting the whole truth to himself just yet, except that he had let Tremble and his family down.
It was one of the worse times in McGarvey’s life, because in his heart of hearts he knew that he was to blame for the deaths of Alien Trumble and his family. And he knew that he was going to have to drop a bombshell in the lap of the new President. When he walked into the DCI’s palatial office with its view of the river valley, Murphy was on the phone. He poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette and took a seat in front of the desk.
Anger would come, he knew, but for the moment it was his job to keep his head on straight so that they could pick up the pieces and avert a much larger, more terrible, even unimaginable disaster from befalling them. He also knew that he would forever look back at this time as a watershed in his own life; a new chapter in his long career in the Company beyond anything he’d ever imagined in his most violent nightmares. The same insistent voice in his head that had told him on countless occasions to get out while he could, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the people he loved and respected so that when the bad guys came looking they would find only him and not his friends, was hammering at the back of his head now. And he had run, more than once; from Lausanne, from Paris, and even from Milford, Delaware where he’d once taught eighteenth-century literature. But it had done no good, because each time the call to action had come he had responded. And each time someone he had cared for had lost their lives. Marta Fredricks, Jacqueline Belleau, even his ex-wife and daughter had almost been killed because of him. Now it was Alien and his family. McGarvey tried to see the good in what he had done, especially in the year since he had been called back to take over the DO, but he was having a hard time focusing.
He could almost hear the distant sound of trumpets; the battle horns; the sounds of men shouting and screaming, bullets flying; people dying because he knew that this one was going to be bad. A call to arms again, like he’d heard for twenty-five years? Or just now this morning an overwrought imagination caused by tiredness and guilt.
He looked at his hands and he could see Alien Trumble’s blood on them.
Roland Murphy finished his conversation and put the encrypted telephone down. He stared speculatively at McGarvey for a few beats, then the expression on his craggy, bulldog face softened, “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “We’re all feeling the same thing. But this was not your fault. Do you read me?”
“Ultimately everything that happens in the DO is my responsibility,” McGarvey replied softly. It wasn’t a matter of whose fault anything was, that was Washington bureaucratic bullshit. The only thing that mattered right now was making the right response. Already his black mood was being replaced by a quiet anger and determination, but he knew that he would have to be careful not to lash out at everyone around him. It was one of his least endearing character flaws.
“You’re right,” Murphy conceded. “But don’t beat yourself to death over it, because we have work to do. That was Dennis Berndt. We’re briefing the National Security Council at nine o’clock.” Berndt was the President’s national security adviser, and he was no friend of the CIA’s, though no one knew why. “They’re going to ask some tough questions, and we’re going to have to give them some tough answers.”
“The SNIE will be ready by eight,” McGarvey said. “But attacking bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan again is not one of the answers I’m going to give them.” He kept his anger in check and his tone reasonable. “There was no reason for him to kill Alien, and especially not his wife and children. Not now.”
“Speculation, Kirk, nothing more.”
“Maybe. But there’s no hard proof that bin Laden ordered them murdered.”
“Slaughtered, you mean,” Murphy replied sharply. His anger was bubbling to the surface. Like everyone else at headquarters he wanted to strike back right now at whoever was responsible. Which was a good thing, and something that the President was going to demand, providing they didn’t hit the wrong target for the wrong reason.
At sixty-two. Murphy was twelve years McGarvey’s senior, although this morning he looked twenty years older than that. In his day he had commanded a tank battalion, and he had earned the nickname Bull Murphy, after the navy’s Admiral Bill Halsey, because despite his size he could move quickly and decisively, and like Halsey he had no trouble making straight-ahead decisions. It was quite a combination, an old friend of Murphy’s had told McGarvey a few years ago. Watching Roland climbing in and out of tanks was like watching an angry bull that had taken ballet lessons. It was nothing short of awesome. You got out of the way when the man was on the move. But nearly two decades behind a desk had softened his lines, blurred the edges, slowed his body, though not his mind.
“It wasn’t his style, you know that. You read Alien’s report.”
“The bastard thinks he can kill our people and get away with it,” Murphy countered strongly. “Well, he’s dead wrong, and we’re going to show it to him.” Murphy had directed the CIA through three White House administrations, and he had never been responsible for the loss of an employee’s family. Do the job, but get it done safely, was his watchword. The old cowboy days of shoot ‘em outs in Czechoslovakia, parachute drops into Hungary, clandestine jungle training camps in Honduras and arms deals with the Contras were things of the past. Intelligence-gathering in the twenty-first century had become primarily a matter of technical means; electronic eavesdropping, satellites, computers. Shooters like McGarvey had become anachronisms, and Murphy, who had directed many such black operations, had always despised the endeavors with everything in his soul, while at the same time understanding that sometimes violent means were necessary. But he counted this tragic business with Trumble a personal failure. He was ready to turn the clock back. Strike the bastard responsible where he lived.
He glanced at the clock on his desk. “I want you ready at eight-thirty, that’ll give us plenty of time to get over to the White House. Since it’s your operation you’ll give the briefing.” He gave McGarvey another speculative look. “Killing one of our chiefs of station is one thing, but his family? That’s nothing but terrorism, and bin Laden is the master of it. We’re going to teach him a lesson. It’s something that the President wants, and it’s something I’m going to go along with.” “There’s another consideration, General.”
“Then you’ll have to offer the man an alternative, Kirk. Otherwise we’re going to war.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The DCI’s limousine pulled up at the White House west gate a few minutes before 9:00 a.m.” and the guard waved them through. Both Murphy and McGarvey were well known to the Secret Service. They proceeded up the
