“Get your mother on the phone, would you?” McGarvey asked his daughter. “And then have Otto come up.”
“Do you want some coffee, Dad?” Elizabeth asked, a secret smile on her lips.
“When you get a chance.” McGarvey turned on his computer, and as it was coming on-line he called Adkins’s office next door. “I’m back.”
“You’re supposed to be in the hospital.”
“Thanks, I’m glad to be back too,” McGarvey said with a chuckle. An outside line on his phone console began to blink, and Elizabeth motioned to him that it was her mother. “I want a meeting at eleven in the main auditorium with all our DO and DI department heads, the FBI’s counterterrorism people, INS, State, the DoD, Defense Intelligence, the bomb people over at the aTF.” Doug Brand-the new chief of Interpol — and anyone else you can think of.”
“He’s coming after us.”
“No doubt about it, Dick,” McGarvey said. “As soon as you set that up come on over, we have some work to do.”
“Will do,” Adkins said. “It is good to have you here, Mac, as long as you don’t push yourself.”
“Yeah, right,” McGarvey said. He broke the connection, and before he picked up the outside line he asked Elizabeth to call Dave Whittaker up. Whittaker was the DO’s Area Divisions chief in charge of all the foreign desks at Langley as well as all the Agency’s bases and stations worldwide. He punched the button for the outside line. “Hi, Katy.”
“Welcome home, darling,” Kathleen said. “How are you?” Her voice was soft and wonderful. McGarvey couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m a little battered and bruised, but it’s nothing life threatening, so you can stop worrying about me.” “I worry about you even when you’re in my arms,” Kathleen said. “Are you going to be able to get out of there sometime in the near future?”
“Tonight. And that’s a promise.”
“Shall I wait supper?”
“I might be late.”
Now Kathleen laughed. “What’s new,” she said. “I’ll start something around eight.”
Rencke walked in, his red hair flying all over the place, his eyes red and puffy. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, but he was excited.
“Gotta go, Katy,” McGarvey said. “Love ya.”
“I know,” Kathleen said, and McGarvey broke the connection. He’d never understood that response before, but now he did, and it felt great.
“Oh, wow, Mac, am I ever glad to see you,” Rencke gushed. “Big time.” He hopped from one foot to the other, as he did whenever he was happy.
“I’m glad to see you too, pal,” McGarvey said. “But you look worse than I do. When’s the last time you got any sleep?”
Rencke completely ignored the question. “We’ve wiped out bin Laden’s daughter, and guess what? That makes nun one motivated dude.”
“He’s also very well informed,” McGarvey said. He told Rencke about the meeting with bin Laden in the cave, including the fact they knew all about the GPS chip. “He could have an informer somewhere inside the NRO.”
“Hackers,” Rencke said dreamily. He was making connections. His eyes went to the computer on McGarvey’s side desk. “The Taliban phoned Riyadh Ops and told them to send the C-130 an hour early or not at all,” he said softly. “And when it was taxiing away from the terminal they came after it.” Rencke focused on McGarvey. “Don’t you see, Mac, they were expecting you, and they’d been asked to stop you. By bin Laden. He’s into everything. He has connections everywhere because he’s rich, ya know?”
“We have to stop them from getting into our system,” McGarvey said.
“I’ll work on it,” Rencke replied absently. He came around behind McGarvey’s desk and studied the menu displayed on the computer. “Have you logged in yet?”
“No.”
“Well, if they’re in the system there’s no use letting them know that you’ve survived and that you’re back to work.” Rencke shut off the computer and went back to the front of desk where he stood like a schoolboy who has just done a tough problem on the blackboard. “It might give us a small advantage,” he said.
“Good point,” McGarvey agreed. “Has there been any word from bin Laden or his people about the raid?”
“Not so much as a peep,” Elizabeth said. “I have a halfdozen search engines going on the Net, but we’ve come up empty-handed so far.” Elizabeth looked perplexed. “But I don’t get it, Dad. You’d think he would want to get the maximum mileage from his daughter’s death. I mean guys like that usually take advantage of anything that comes their way. Something like the evil empire killing innocent women and children. Something. Anything.”
“Would bin Laden know for certain that we knew his daughter had been killed?” McGarvey asked.
“He could know our satellite schedule,” Rencke said. “But if we don’t issue an apology, something he might expect us to do, there’s no way for him to know for sure.”
McGarvey turned back to his daughter. “Do you mention her death in your search engines?”
Elizabeth shook her head uncertainly. “No.”
“Okay, that’s one piece of information we won’t put out,” McGarvey said.
Understanding dawned on Elizabeth’s face. “He figures that if we know that we killed his daughter, we’ll also know that he’s going to come after us.”
“Something like that,” McGarvey said tiredly.
“But, Dad, that makes us the same as him,” Elizabeth protested. “He’s going to use his daughter’s death to give himself an advantage over us. And now we’re going to do the same thing.”
“That’s right, Liz,” McGarvey said, liking it even less than she did. But he had traveled with Sarah, eaten with her, talked to her, had even saved her from rape. “Have we come up with anything new on the Russian weapon?”
“No, and we probably won’t,” Rencke said. “The Bolshies are running scared and they’re covering up now, ‘cause they know the score.”
“Did you get into the old Lubyanka mainframe?”
“It was easy green,” Rencke said. “But there wasn’t much. They’re not even talking about it amongst themselves.” He got a wistful look on his face that was almost comical in its intensity. Someone who didn’t know him would believe that he had lost his mind or had zoned out. But then he smiled shyly. “I figured there had to be something, ya know. So I snooped around their out-station files, and you’ll never guess what I came up with.” Rencke looked around for someone to guess, but then shrugged. “There was a military trial yesterday. A captain and a colonel were found guilty of theft and dereliction of duty. Pretty common these days. But they were executed. Lined up in front of a wall and shot dead, big time. And guess where all this took place.”
“Tajikistan,” McGarvey said.
“Yeah,” Rencke replied. “Yavan Depot, right where the weapon came from. Which means we’re not going to get diddly from the Russkies. They’re going to deny everything. We are definitely on our own, kimo sabe.” “The bomb is on its way,” McGarvey said.
“You can bet the farm on it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I told you that we should have waited a few days,” First Officer Joseph Green said. Captain George Panagiotopolous glanced over at the pissant little man standing in front of the radar. The storm” was going to be a good one, he could not deny that, but it wasn’t a typhoon. He’d sailed through those by whatever name they were called — hurricane, anti cyclone extratropical storm — in four different oceans. Rough, dangerous, uncomfortable, but not impossible for a ship like the Margo.
