which was supposed to be for five nights.
“We have a most excellent restaurant on the third floor,” the clerk said earnestly. “It is open tonight from eight until the curfew at ten.” He seemed suddenly very proud. Like the cabbie, he wanted to please. He handed McGarvey the key for 411.
“Can I make a telephone call from my room?”
The clerk looked at him as if he was from another planet. “Where do you wish to call?”
“The Ministry of Security.”
“Oh,” the clerk said, relieved, and he grinned. “In the morning you can make arrangements for your call.” But he wouldn’t be here in the morning, and the clerk knew it.
“Are there any messages for me?”
“No, there are no messages,” the clerk said. “Mista, why don’t you stay here in this fine hotel tonight. You will see that our hospitality is very good. You will enjoy your stay with us. Guaranteed. Eat some good food, get some good rest after your long journey. These things are very good for you.”
“Thank you. I’ll do just that.” McGarvey picked up his bags and crossed the lobby to toe single elevator that was working. The other two had our of order signs in Arabic, French and English posted on them.
As the door closed, McGarvey looked back at the reception desk in time to see the clerk in heated discussion with three other men, these in military uniforms, who’d evidently been waiting in back. One of them was the military officer from the airport customs hall. At the last moment the officer looked up and his eyes met McGarvey’s. Even at a distance of a hundred feet the expression on his face was clearly bleak. McGarvey might be an important guest of Osama bin Laden, who himself was a guest of the Taliban, but he wasn’t welcome.
McGarvey’s room was small but more or less clean, although there was only one pillow on the large bed, and only one hand towel in the bathroom. But there was plenty of hot water and half a bar of very strong disinfectant soap.
It was nearly nine o’clock by the time he had cleaned up and had a cigarette on a small balcony that looked toward the city center. Already the temperature had dropped to the high sixties, and it was still going down.
He went downstairs to what had once been a good restaurant. Two thirds of it was blocked off by wooden screens, and none of the handful of patrons bothered looking up as he walked in and was immediately seated alone at a window table by an old man in a dirty apron who kept staring at him.
The only items available on the menu were a stew of vegetables, lamb kebabs and the flat bread called nan. There were only two bottles of Heineken left, according to the waiter, and each cost eleven dollars for which McGarvey had to pay cash on the spot. But the beer was cool, and the food was warm, plentiful and very good.
At ten o’clock sharp the waiters came out with the checks, and cleared the tables in a big hurry, although not everyone had finished eating. It was the law, McGarvey’s waiter explained. In any event it was time for all good and pious people to go home for their evening prayers before bed.
Back upstairs McGarvey changed into khaki trousers, a thick turtleneck sweater over a tee shirt, thick socks and desert boots. He put a few packs of cigarettes in his bush jacket and laid it over a chair, then opened his computer on the bed. He removed the six small screws from the laptop’s back panel with his penknife, and took out his Walther PPK and one spare magazine of ammunition. He resecured the back panel, cycled the weapon’s ejector slide several times to make sure it worked smoothly, reloaded the gun, and then dropped his trousers and taped the gun and spare magazine high on his inner thigh.
When he was finished he took his cell phone out on the balcony where he lit a cigarette. Someone would be coming for him tonight, there was little doubt of it after the way the cabbie and desk clerk had treated him. The only questions were: who was coming for him, how thorough would their search be and how far up in the mountains was bin Laden’s encampment?
He hit the speed dial, the phone took a couple of seconds to acquire the proper satellite, and the call went through. It was eleven at night here, and although the city was lit, it was mostly in darkness, as was the surrounding countryside. It was two in the afternoon in Langley. Two different worlds, McGarvey thought. One of simple insanity, and the other, more complex, but just as insane. There were no absolute truths.
His call was answered on the first ring. “Oh, boy, am I ever glad to hear from you,” Otto gushed. “They didn’t take your phone. That’s good.”
“I gave them the camera so they wouldn’t come away empty-handed,” McGarvey told him. It’s exactly what they figured would happen, and he had no need of the camera in any event.
“Has anyone made contact with yon yet?”
“No, but I think it’ll be tonight.”
“Standby, I’m going to calibrate,” Otto said.
Because of the curfew there was no traffic on the streets, but McGarvey was surprised that absolutely nothing was moving downtown, not even military vehicles. Otto was back a minute later.
“You’re at the hotel. West side. Looks like twelve meters, plus or minus one, above ground level. Fourth floor?”
“Four-eleven,” McGarvey confirmed. He rubbed his left side where he had lost one of his kidneys a few years ago in an operation that had almost cost him his life. The cavity wasn’t so empty now. Six months ago McGarvey had quietly implemented Otto’s idea of surgically implanting a small GPS homing chip, not much larger than a postage stamp including its long-life battery, in every CIA field officer’s body. The GPS chips were uplinked with the National Reconnaissance Office’s Jupiter satellite system that had been ostensibly put up to monitor military communications over India and Pakistan. But the satellites were steerable, and in fact could be positioned to receive the GPS chip signals from almost anywhere in the world. It could be seen as a provocative act from the right point of view, just like a police informant wearing a wire, but already it had proved its worth, especially in Iraq.
In one instance infrared KH11 satellite surveillance had spotted three Special Revolutionary Guard troop trucks heading out of Baghdad at high speed toward a suspected chemical weapons development laboratory that a CIA field officer was in the process of penetrating. Word had been sent to the agent to get out, and he’d made it with more than a half hour to spare. Without the GPS chip to locate his actual position Ops would never have known where he was, and word for him to pull out would not have been sent. He would have been captured or killed.
The chips were not meant for administrative personnel; there was a certain danger of complications from the operation because of the batteries. But McGarvey had one implanted in his side because what was good enough for his field officers was good enough for him. And despite his promises to Kathleen, and to himself, he knew deep in his soul exactly who and what he was. He was not ready to retire from the field for good, and probably never would be. It was like a narcotic, intelligence work; or, according to a number of good men who had gone before him, like a religion. You had to take it on faith that what you were doing was good and right. Once you went down that path there was no turning back. At least that’s how he’d felt then; he wasn’t as sure now.
“How is it over there?” Otto asked.
“Dark,” McGarvey replied. “Anything new on the shooters?”
“They showed up in Havana, just like Rudolph thought they would, but then they disappeared, like you predicted. Chances are they’re already on their way back. The big question, kimo sabe, is where is back!” Otto hesitated a moment. “But there’s another problem coming your way.”
“The Carl Vinson?” “Correctamundo. The battle group is already in the Gulf of Oman, though nobody is admitting it to us. Could be they’re planning an end run.” “Not until I’m out of here,” McGarvey said, wondering if he really believed that himself. “Take it to Murphy, I want my back covered.”
“Will do,” Otto said. “But there is some good news in all this. Liz went back to Paris and started making a lot of noise, so Dick had Dave Whittaker pull her back here. They put her down in Ops.”
“She’s not cleared for Meteor.”
Otto chuckled, happily. “She’s the boss’s daughter, you can’t keep anything secret from her.”
There was no use fighting the inevitable, McGarvey told himself. And there was nothing he could do about it now. “Okay, keep an eye on her.”
“Dick Yemm is on it. “After Alien and his family, nobody is taking any chances around here.” Again Otto hesitated. “Oh, and Mac, congratulations.”
“For what?”
“You know,” Otto said playfully. “I think it’s great, that’s all. Just super, ya know.” He meant Mac and Katy getting back together.
