countries were piled neatly on the floor around him, and a television monitor, the sound very low, was tuned to CNN. The computer monitor on a credenza next to him was on, but showed only the CIA’s seal.
“Nice to see you back in one piece.” McGarvey got up, came around the desk and shook Trumble’s hand. “Gloria and the kids okay?”
“They’re out shopping. We need vacation clothes, but God only knows what they’re going to buy for me. Whatever it is, though, I’m going to have to wear it and like it.”
At fifty, Kirk McGarvey had worked for the CIA for twenty-five years and kept himself in superb condition by a strict physical regimen that included running and swimming everyday and working out at his fencing club whenever he could. He was a hard man, who until he’d taken over the job as DDO twelve months ago, had been the best field officer the CIA had ever known. The fact that he had been a shooter and had killed in the line of duty was widely known. What wasn’t so well known, however, was the number of people he had killed, or the tremendous physical and mental toll the job had taken on him and his family.
He was six feet tall, two hundred pounds and built like a rugby player with not an ounce of visible fat on his broad shouldered frame. But he was a Voltaire scholar and that curious combination — killer, academic and now administrator-seemed to fit him well. He exuded self-confidence, intelligence, honesty and above all dependability. He had never let one of his people down, he had never held anything back from them, unless in his estimation they didn’t have the need to know, and he was surrounded by a staff of very bright, very dedicated friends who excelled under his direction. There was a comfort zone around him. When you were with McGarvey you knew that everything would turn out okay. All hell might break loose, but you’d come out of it. He’d make sure of it.
His face was wide, handsome and friendly, unless he was being lied to. His motto was: Don’t bullshit the troops; tell it like it is, or don’t tell it at all.
“Do you want a beer?” McGarvey motioned toward the couch, chairs and low table by the window.
“Sounds good.” Trumble set his attache” case on the coffee table, dialed the combination and took out his report contained in a thin file folder.
McGarvey got a couple of beers from a small fridge in his credenza and brought them back. He took the report. “Not much here.”
“You might want to take a quick read, Mr. McGarvey.”
“Mac. But I’d rather hear it from you first. What are our chances?”
“Osama bin Laden is not a good man,” Trumble said, opening his beer. His hand shook a little and McGarvey noticed it. “He might be crazy.”
“What’d he say to you? What does he want?” McGarvey asked, giving his C.O.S his entire attention.
“Well, he says he wants to talk to someone in authority. Someone higher than a chief of station. It’s a good possibility that he means to assassinate whoever we send to him, providing he thinks that person is a worthy enough target.” Trumble had made the arrangements to meet with the Saudi multimillionaire terrorist in Khartoum, at McGarvey’s request. No U.S. intelligence officer had been able to get anywhere near him or his business interests in the Sudan, or his camps in the mountains of Afghanistan, but McGarvey had a hunch that he might be ready to talk. The bad part was that a lot of people here in Washington and in London believed that bin Laden was getting ready to make another spectacular strike again, but no one knew when, where or how. In 1998 more than five thousand people had been hurt and more than two hundred killed when a bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. There’d been many other attacks with loss of lives, but Nairobi had been the biggest to date. The general consensus was that there would be a next time and it would be even worse.
“They took my tape recorder before they brought me up to see him, but it really wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been able to keep it, because I wasn’t with him for more than two or three minutes. He told me that I was the face of evil and that if I were to die then and there, no one would shed a tear.”
McGarvey sat back, a dark, calculating expression in his gray-green eyes. Bin Laden hadn’t balked at the meeting, in fact he’d agreed to it almost too readily, which meant he wanted something, unless he was stalling for time. It was a possibility they would have to consider. Bin Laden could be keeping them talking while he was getting ready to strike. With the latest information McGarvey had seen and the reason he’d sent Trumble orders to set up the meeting, this time when bin Laden struck it would be worse than Nairobi, much worse than anything they could imagine.
“Did he give you any names, Alien? Anyone in specific who he wanted to talk to?”
“No, just someone more important than me.” Trumble shuddered. “The bad part is that he knows more about me than I know about him. He told me to get out or die, but I thought I could push it just a little. Maybe he was bargaining they do that a lot So I promised that we’d lift the bounty on his head like you suggested.”
“What’d he say to that?”
Trumble looked McGarvey in the eye. “His exact words. He said, “Your wife’s name is Gloria, isn’t it? Your children axe Daniel and Julie?”
“Jesus,” McGarvey said sitting up suddenly. “Were you followed back to Riyadh?”
“I don’t think so. Look, it was just his way of letting me know that his intelligence was at least as good as ours and that he wasn’t screwing around. Saving face is everything out there and we are the infidels. He’s taken to heart the idea of knowing his enemies. He could have killed me then and there, dumped my body somewhere it would never be found.” Trumble shook his head, as if he were trying to shrug off the incident, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “He doesn’t operate that way, on that small a scale, I mean. If he wants a bigger fish, killing me wouldn’t have done him any good.”
McGarvey got up and went back to his desk. “Who’s your ACOS?”
“Jeff Cook.”
“Is he ready to run a station on his own?”
Trumble was a little confused. “He’s coming along. I didn’t hesitate leaving him in charge. He can handle the routine, although his Arabic is a little weak. The Saudis get along with him okay.”
McGarvey picked up his phone. “Dahlia, have Dick come right over and then get me Dave Whittaker.” Whittaker was the area divisions chief in charge of all foreign CIA stations and missions. McGarvey held his hand over the phone. “Is he married, any kids?”
“No kids. He’s divorced, his wife’s back in Michigan, or someplace in the Midwest.”
McGarvey turned back to the phone. “Dave, I have a housekeeping job for you, but I want it done on the QT. I’m pulling Alien Trumble and his family out of Riyadh, effective immediately. In fact he’s in my office right now, so I want you to send a security detail over there to shut down his apartment and get his things back here.”
Trumble was floored, and he started to object, but McGarvey held him off.
“I’m putting his ACOS Jeff Cook in charge for the time being. We’ll see how it works out.” McGarvey was watching Trumble. “But listen to me, Dave, tell security to watch their step. Alien’s apartment could be rigged.”
Trumble’s stomach flopped. The thought that bin Laden could have ordered someone to booby-trap his apartment had never occurred to him.
“Bin Laden,” McGarvey said. “That’s what Alien told me, but I don’t want to take any chances. This isn’t going to turn out to be another Buckley case.” In 1985 CIA Director William Casey sent his Beirut COS Bill Buckley back into the field after the U.S. embassy out there had been sacked and his cover blown. He’d been picked up the day he got back. He was tortured and eventually murdered.
Dick Adkins, the DDO’s chief of staff, walked in from the adjoining office. Like McGarvey he wore no jacket, his tie was loose and his shirtsleeves rolled up.
“Hi, Alien,” he said. “How’d it go in Khartoum?”
“Not very well,” Trumble said, and they shook hands. He’d known Adkins for seventeen years, first running into him at the Farm, the CIA’s training facility near Williams burg, where Adkins had been camp commandant. At his welcoming talk to new recruits he’d impressed Trumble as a man who might be short on imagination, but who was very strong on details. The first impression he gave was that of a very steady hand on the helm. Nothing in the intervening years had happened to change Trumble’s mind. Adkins was doing the job now that he was always meant to do; acting as precision point man to McGarvey’s sometimes maverick tactics.
McGarvey hung up the phone. “I’ve pulled Alien out of Riyadh and put his ACOS Jeff Cook in charge for the time being.”
“I’d just as soon stick with it, if you don’t mind,” Trumble said. “I’ve developed a lot of solid contacts in the last three years.”
