But already it was beginning to get to her; everything about the CIA and what it stood for, what its mission was, and the people who worked over there and around the world, gave her the willys whenever she thought about it.
No place was safe for any of them. Alien Trumble and his family had learned that terrible lesson at Disney World, for God’s sake.
The telephone rang. She crossed the hall to her bedroom and picked it up. “Yes,” she said sharply.
“He’s out,” Rencke said.
Kathleen closed her eyes, and released the pent up breath. “Thank God,” she said. “Is he all right, Otto?”
“He was pretty banged up, Mrs. M. Dehydrated, fatigued, some cuts and bruises, but nothing life- threatening. He’ll be okay.”
“When does he get home?”
“He’s at the military hospital in Riyadh for now, but they’re planning on moving him to Ramstein sometime in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”
Kathleen gripped the phone tightly. “You said he was okay. Just cuts and bruises. What’s going on, Otto? I want the truth, goddammit.”
“Bin Laden’s people found out that he was carrying the GPS chip, and they operated on him to remove it. The stitches came out somehow and he lost a lot of blood.”
Kathleen closed her eyes again and mentally counted to ten. “The dirty bastards,” she said softly. She opened her eyes. “What else is wrong with him?”
“Nothing serious, Mrs. M, I swear to you. He’s been sedated and they’re pumping fluids into him. He wanted to get on the first plane for home, but they wouldn’t let him. Right now he’s getting exactly what he needs — sleep.”
“I’ll fly to Frankfurt tonight. I can drive down to Ramstein and be there by noon.”
“Bzzz. Wrong answer, Mrs. M.”
“Then the Company can arrange to fly me over there direct.”
“You wouldn’t do him any good by being there,” Rencke said miserably. “You’d only be compounding the security problems.” Rencke sounded frightened. “I’d do anything for you. Lie down in front of a train, fight a pack of alligators, but not this. Please just stay there. As soon as we can get Mac out of there we will. I promise you. Please Mrs. M. Please,” “I’m frightened,” she said-softly.
“So am I,” Rencke replied. “But you gotta stick it out here and let us do our jobs.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Just keep me informed, will you?”
“Count on it.”
When Kathleen put down the phone it struck her as ominous that Otto had admitted that he was frightened too. According to him Kirk was going to be all right. So what else was coming their way?
It was after 11:00 p.m. by the time the pleasant neighborhood of three-story brownstone apartment buildings finally began to settle down. Bahmad had a slight headache from the wine, and from the effects of jet lag. He turned the block at Dumbarton and Thirtieth Street, and passed Elizabeth McGarvey’s building for the fourth time in as many hours. The windows of her third-floor apartment were still dark, and her car, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle, was still nowhere to be seen. He drove a dark blue Mercedes that the boat crew had arranged for his use. This quality of car was nearly invisible in this neighborhood. It blended with the other Mercedes and Jaguars. His entry into the United States had been without incident, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone was looking for him, let alone knew his face. Here and now he was completely anonymous, exactly as he wanted it, and exactly as he meant to keep it. If anyone took notice of him he would kill them.
At the end of the block he turned the corner and found a parking spot. Switching off the headlights and engine, he checked the rearview mirror. No one was following him. Just ordinary traffic.
He waited for a bus to lumber by then got out, locked the car and headed back to the corner and then down Thirtieth Street to Elizabeth’s building. He let himself in, finding himself in a tiny alcove, stairs to the right, apartment 1 to the left. Three mailboxes were set in the wall straight ahead. Elizabeth McGarvey’s was apartment 3 on the top floor. Unlike similar buildings in New York City there was no security here except for the apartment doors themselves. He had a feeling that after tonight that would change.
There was no elevator, so he took the stairs two at a time, moving quickly and silently on the balls of his feet. He wore light brown slacks, a striped button-down shirt and a light jacket against the evening damp. Like everything else about him, the clothes were unremarkable.
The door to the second-floor apartment opened and he heard a woman say something, her words indistinct. A man answered angrily. Bahmad held up on the stairs, contemplating turning around and leaving the building, or remaining here and killing the couple should they discover him. The voices were cut off when the door was slammed. He slipped out his knife and listened for footsteps in the corridor, but the building was silent. Whoever it was had gone back into their apartment.
He moved cautiously up the last few stairs and peered around the corner. The landing was empty, the apartment door closed. He sheathed his knife and went the rest of the way to the top floor. At the door to Elizabeth’s apartment he knocked softly, and waited. But after a minute when no one came, he took out his lock pick set and had the door open in under thirty seconds. He took out his pistol, screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel, then after checking the stairs behind him, slipped inside, sweeping the gun left to right, looking for a target. But Elizabeth was not at home.
He closed and locked the door, and silently went back to the bedroom to make sure that the woman wasn’t here, asleep in her bed after all. But the apartment was empty. It was pleasant if inexpensively furnished, with a lot of books, a stereo system and a lot of CDs. But something was wrong.
Stuffing the gun in his belt he went into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. It was reasonably clean, but something nagged at the back of his head. Something was out of place. Or, rather, something was not in its place. Something was missing.
There were towels on the racks, but no pantyhose or bras hanging over the shower rod. On the sink counter were several bottles of perfume and lotions, but there were water marks where two bottles were missing. There was no toothbrush or toothpaste in the medicine cabinet, and a quick search of the shelves and other cabinets revealed no birth control pills or diaphragm, no douches or feminine deodorant sprays. He knew enough about Western women to understand that these were all common items in most bathrooms. But they were missing.
Elizabeth McGarvey had moved out. The questions were how long would she be gone, and where had she gotten herself to.
He switched off the bathroom light, waited for a minute for his eyes to adjust, then went back into the bedroom. The bed had been hastily made, which meant she wasn’t a neat housekeeper or she’d been in a hurry to get out of here. But most of the clothes were still in her closet, only a few empty spaces indicated that she had taken something, but not everything. It was the same in the chest of drawers. Some undergarments and tee shirts were obviously missing, but most had been left behind.
Bahmad retraced his steps through the apartment, wiping down the few spots where he might have left fingerprints despite his care not to do so. He checked the street from the living room window. There were several empty parking spots out front, as before, but no yellow VW.
He let himself out of the apartment, relocked the door, crept silently downstairs and left the building. Now he needed to find out where she had gone. If it was back to Paris, this mission would become complicated. But the Special Olympics weren’t for another two and a half months, so he had time to spare, though each time he crossed an international border there was the risk of discovery.
But then another thought struck him all at once. When he got back to the car he took out his satellite phone and placed a call to a special number in the Taliban Military Intelligence Headquarters in Kabul.
Colonel Hisham bin Idris answered on the second ring. “Hello.”
“Is the situation resolved?” Bahmad asked.
“I had sincerely hoped so,” the colonel replied cautiously. “You are not telephoning from nearby, are you?”
“No, but I wanted to thank you on behalf of… everybody.”
“You cannot return here.”
