untidy piles against the wall. “She’s a friend,” he said distractedly. “A very bright friend.” He stopped and gave Elizabeth an owlish look. “She says we have some serious trouble coming our way. And Louise does not exaggerate. Never.”
Elizabeth helped him clear the table. “What kind of trouble?”
“She’s bringing over some satellite shots.” He stopped again. “But she sounded scared, Liz. I’ve never heard her like that.”
“I don’t know what else can go wrong,” Elizabeth said.
“Plenty,” Rencke told her.
Louise Horn got to Rencke’s office a few minutes later, a big leather photograph portfolio under her arm. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a month. “Hi,” she said, almost shyly.
Rencke introduced her to Elizabeth, and they shook hands.
“You’re Kirk McGarvey’s daughter, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m working with Otto for now.”
Louise and Rencke exchanged a worried but warm glance. “Well, wherever your dad is right now, he’s going to want to know about this,” she said. She took a dozen 100em X 100em photographs that had been made from the transparencies, and spread them out in sequence on the conference table. “These are mostly enhanced KH-13 images of bin Laden’s camp before, during and after the missile raid.” She handed a large magnifying glass to Rencke.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asked.
“Upper right quadrant, first three shots. There’s someone coming down the hill into the camp from the south. That’s a few minutes before the missiles hit.”
Rencke studied the photographs for a minute. “Could be Mac’s escort coming back.”
“We figured that was one possibility,” Louise said. “We don’t have any establishing shot showing him leaving, but assuming he wasn’t there during the raid…” She trailed off and looked at Elizabeth. “Sorry, but this isn’t going to get any easier, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all right,” Elizabeth said. “I’m here to do a job just like everybody else.”
“He wasn’t there,” Rencke said. “I talked to him via satellite phone.”
“Okay, maybe his escort then, or one of them.” Louise directed his attention to the next series of shots. “Lower center this time. There, below the helicopter, you can see the figure. The next is the heat bloom from a missile strike.”
Rencke studied the photo. “Right on top of him.”
“Not quite, but close,” Louise said. “You can see in the next two shots that she’s down, but primarily intact.”
Rencke and Elizabeth looked up. “She?” Rencke asked.
Louise nodded tiredly. “We weren’t sure at first, so I had my people go back and re-enhance every image we down loaded from the get-go. Then I pulled up bin Laden’s package.”
Rencke moved ahead to the next photographs, which he studied for a long time. When he looked up he handed the glass to Elizabeth. “Bin Laden is alive.”
Louise nodded. “I hope they don’t shoot the messenger, but somebody’s got to tell the navy that they missed.”
Elizabeth bent over the table and studied the images, especially the last few, which showed bin Laden carrying the body of a woman, her long black hair streaming nearly to the ground. “Who is she?” Elizabeth asked, looking up.
Louise took two more photographs out of the portfolio. One was a blown-up and enhanced section of one of the satellite photos, showing the face and neck of the body in bin Laden’s arms. The second was a file photograph of a young, beautiful woman dressed in traditional garb, except that her face and hair were uncovered. They were the same woman.
“Sarah bin Laden. His daughter.”
It hit Elizabeth all at once. “My God, I know her.”
“How? Where?” Rencke demanded.
“I don’t know, but her face, it’s so familiar to me.”
“The Bern Polytechnic,” Louise said. “I checked the records, she was there one year the same time you were. I wondered if you would remember her.”
“She was younger than me, I think, but we might have had a couple of the same classes.” Elizabeth looked up in amazement. “I remember her because she always had bodyguards around her. Some of the other girls thought it was cool, but I thought it was a pain in the neck.” She looked at the photograph again. “She was sorta quiet, and very smart. But she was never allowed to go into town, or on trips with us. I remember that, because we all thought it was sad, you know. The poor little Arab rich kid.”
“Well, our missiles killed her and not bin Laden,” Louise said.
“Adkins has to see this,” Elizabeth said, a cold fist closing around her heart. Bin Laden would be insane with rage now.
Rencke’s brain was going a mile a minute. “The President has to be informed,” he said distractedly. He focused on Louise. “Good job, kiddo,” he said softly. “But you’d better stick around, there’s gonna be some questions.”
“I figured as much,” she said. “I’ll be next door in the Pit if you need me. Maybe we can come up with something else. The weather over there is still on our side.” She glanced at Elizabeth. “Too bad about his daughter.”
“He’s going to come after my father,” Elizabeth said.
“I think you’re right,” Louise replied. “But from what I understand, your dad is a pretty tough dude himself.” She smiled. “It’s not over so don’t count him out yet.” She turned back to Rencke. “When you’re ready for a break give me a call. We can go over to my apartment and I’ll fix us some supper.”
“I’ll call you,” Rencke promised, but he’d already lifted the phone to Dick Adkins.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
McGarvey pulled off the side of the highway and got out to check under the hood. An armored scout car was parked a couple of hundred yards away at the road to the airport.
They might be looking for a Rover, but they were expecting an American. McGarvey had taken the time to pull Panel’s clothes over his khakis and sweater. He wore a cap, and although he was clean shaven he’d wrapped a cotton scarf around his neck and chin. It might be unclear to someone passing, or to someone standing beside the road exactly who or what he was.
The trip down the valley from the bombed-out village, and the path along the river cliffs in the dark had taken him much longer than he expected. It had already been light when he’d passed Charikar. Stopped now beside the road he was seeing a lot of traffic, most of it big trucks bringing food into the city from the countryside.
By now Farid and the other mujahed would be missed. Someone else might have been sent to find out what had happened, and each hour that passed the likelihood that the Taliban in Kabul had been notified increased exponentially. It was important that he get to a place of relative safety very soon so that he could get a few hours’ rest, and hopefully something to eat and drink. He was at his extreme physical limit. He was having trouble concentrating on what he was doing, trouble keeping in focus.
He closed the Rover’s hood and got back behind the wheel. A couple of cars and a broken-down old bus passed him, none of the drivers slowing for the checkpoint. In the rearview mirror a minute later McGarvey saw what he had been looking for. A convoy of what appeared to be at least six large trucks lumbered down the highway, a cloud of blue-gray exhaust trailing behind them.
He put the car in gear and waited until the lead truck was almost upon him, then suddenly gunned the engine and pulled out in front of it. McGarvey glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see the driver shake a fist at him as the distance between them closed alarmingly fast. He stomped the gas pedal to the floor and the Rover shot
