Joshua`s Hammer (65 page)

"Of course he's okay," Van Buren assured her. He was laughing. "He's your dad. The man is indestructible."

"I wish," Elizabeth said softly.

Deborah was beside herself with excitement. "Can we run now? I want to run."

"Later," Chenna said. She gave Elizabeth a warm smile. "Tell your dad thanks for me," she said.

Several other Secret Service agents had closed in on them, and a National Guard helicopter was waiting in the middle of the center span, its rotors turning.

"We'll run later," Chenna told the President's daughter. "But right now your mom and dad are waiting for you."

"Okay," Deborah said. She grabbed Elizabeth and gave her an exuberant bear hug. "I think that you're neat," she said in Elizabeth's ear. "And I hope that it'll be a girl."

Elizabeth's mouth dropped open, but before she could say anything Chenna and the other Secret Service agents were hustling the President's daughter to the golf cart that would speed her to the waiting helicopter.

THE FINAL MOVES

FIVE DAYS LATER

And they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. MARK 26:52

CHAPTER THIRTY

Khartoum, Sudan

Two canvas-covered tracks with Iranian Army markings pulled up in front of the compound just off the Sharia al-Barlaman a few blocks from the People's Palace. The back flaps were pushed aside and two dozen armed soldiers emerged.

Lieutenant Ahmed Ghavam jumped out of the front of the lead truck and began issuing orders. This was going to be done with dignity. Papa bin Laden was a friend of the state. A friend of all Islam, and neither his name nor his person would be besmirched.

When the troops were properly lined up at the front gate, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up across the street. A huge man, with tremendous mustaches and a thick beard got out of the car and shambled across the street. He had a smile on his broad face that looked as if it had been chiseled into place.

"He's not here," the huge man said amiably. He wore civilian clothes that looked very comfortable, but three sizes too large even for his impressive bulk. He was Captain Bakat Zamir, chief of Khartoum Regional Operations for the ISI, the powerful Pakistani Interservice Intelligence Agency.

Like Iran, Pakistan was a friend of bin Laden's. But the way the international climate was shaping up these days it was wise to at least pay lip service to the Great Satan in Washington, D.C." when it suited. This time bin Laden had gone too far. Even Dr. al-Turabi had tried to warn him, as had others in the National Islamic Front. But he was a headstrong man on a fat wa His own daughter had been killed by the infidels' rockets. Who could blame a father for striking back?

"I suspected as much," Lieutenant Ghavam said. "But I have my orders."

"They are sensible orders."

A CNN television van came around the corner at the end of the block. Both men had been expecting its arrival.

"Do you have any idea where he went?" Lieutenant Ghavam asked.

"Switzerland, perhaps. It's a matter of his health, I believe." The Pakistani intelligence officer shrugged. "But who knows? If he lives he will certainly strike again."

"If he dies?"

"No one in the West will ever know for sure. Insha'Allah."

Lieutenant Ghavam nodded. "Yes. Insha "Allah."

Bethesda Naval Hospital

It was night. McGarvey stood at the window of his fifth floor room morosely waiting for the dawn as he stared at the sodium vapor lights in the parking lot, his hands in the pockets of his hospital robe. He was being discharged tomorrow, his bullet wounds mended, the last bleeder in his head fixed and his life back to normal. For the time being no one was gunning for him and his family.

But the job wasn't over.

He turned and glanced at Kathleen curled up asleep in the easy chair next to the bed. She'd had the hardest time of all, waiting at home for the telephone call that her husband or her daughter or both of them were dead, all the while knowing that somebody could be coming after her again too.

He wanted a cigarette. But it had been nearly a week since he'd been pulled off the pilot boat and hospitalized without a smoke, and he had survived so far. Maybe it was time to give it up, if for no other reason than to get Kathleen to quit. But he felt like hell mentally and physically right now. Just maybe he needed a crutch after all, because nothing was going to be the same.

He turned back to the window and focused on his own reflection in the glass. There was only a small bandage on the side of his head, but he looked haggard. For the first time in his life he felt old. It was stupid, Kathleen would tell him. He was barely fifty and in this day and age that was definitely not old. But his career with the CIA, especially the last five or six years of it, had been tough on the body. He had the scars to prove it.

Elizabeth and Todd had come up last night to announce that they were getting married and' that she was three months pregnant. Kathleen was over the moon, but the news had the opposite effect on McGarvey. He was being terribly selfish, but he didn't know if he could handle the responsibility of another life in his life. Part of his reaction was the painkillers he was on and everything he'd gone through over the past couple of months, but he'd seen the hurt in his daughter's eyes when she realized that he wasn't happy. He was going to have to make it up to her, though it seemed to him right now that he'd been making up things to the people he loved for most of his life.

A street cop had once given him the only explanation that seemed to make any sense of his sometimes perverse moods. Cops see bad guys every day so that when they're off duty it's nearly impossible to see people as good. Everybody is a suspect. It can get so bad that you even begin to wonder about your own family. Selfish or not he had trouble seeing how adding another new life into the world could do anything except complicate things.

Otto had shown up with Louise Horn from the NRO, whom he introduced as a friend. They were going to find an apartment together to sorta share expenses. The way she had kept looking at him though made it clear that they would be sharing more than just the rent and utilities. Again McGarvey should have been happy for his friend. Kathleen was. She'd given them hugs. But what was the value of another relationship between two people in a world that seemed bent on its own destruction? Intellectually he knew that there was something terribly wrong with his way of thinking, but he couldn't shake it. Otto hadn't noticed, but Louise had and she'd given him a "screw you anyway" look that spoke volumes about how she really felt about her man.

The President and First Lady had come up yesterday too. The President had been in for his annual physical so it had been fairly easy for him to see McGarvey without alerting the media or creating a security problem. McGarvey was a dangerous man to be around. And when a President met in private with the CIA's deputy director of Operations it meant something big was up.

The half-marathon had been stopped because a gasoline tanker anchored in the holding basin posed a hazard. It had nothing to do with a terrorist threat, and thank goodness only a few of the runners had suffered anything other than some skinned knees and twisted ankles. "I'm not going to give the bastard, wherever he's hiding now, the satisfaction of knowing how close he came," the President told McGarvey in private.

"Or the other thing," McGarvey said.

The President's lips compressed. His was a good face; honest, straightforward, without guilt. "That came as a nasty surprise."

"One that won't go away."

"No."

"I want Dennis Berndt kept out of the loop this time."

The President flinched. "You can't think that he had anything to do with this," "No, I don't. But I want the need-to-know list kept to an absolute minimum. At least for now."

"Okay," the President agreed. At the door he turned back. "I can think of a lot easier jobs."

McGarvey smiled. "Me too, Mr. President."

"A penny for your thoughts," Kathleen said behind him.

He didn't turn. "I was thinking about Liz and the baby. I was a real shit to her."

"Yes, you were. But she doesn't think that you love her any less."

"I don't."

"She desperately wants to make you proud of her," Kathleen said. "I think she'd even throw Todd out a window if that's what you wanted."

"I want her to be happy--"

"Then tell her that, my darling. And tell Otto and Louise. They're a part of this family now too."

He heard her get up and come across the room. She put her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Like it or not your family is back in your life and it's growing. Not only that, there isn't a thing you can do about it. Too bad for you that we all love you."

McGarvey finally turned around and took her in his arms and held her close. He was battered, but he wasn't old, and even having a grandchild would not change that. He hoped in a way it would be a girl so that he would not only have Katy and Liz, but he'd have a miniature version of them running around too.

It was good about Otto and Louise because he had spent way too much time worrying about his friend's well being. Let someone else take over that duty.

And they had beat bin Laden. This time.

For the rest, he had work to do figuring out what had happened to the Russian bomb from Tajikistan, and how the bomb he'd disarmed aboard the pilot boat had gotten there. The legend on the matte black aluminum tag attached to the bomb's outer panel had been perfectly legible, even with his failing eyesight.

PANT EX CORP.

U.S.A.

Look for David Hagberg's exciting new novel EDEN'S GATE

available in hardcover June 2001

PROLOGUE

Reichsamt 17 June 1, 1945

Water was rushing somewhere, the sound hollow and frightening in the confines of research Chamber Gamma. A very slightly built man dressed in striped pajamas, the Star of David patch sewn on his left breast, stopped to cock an ear. Rows of beakers and chemicals and bunsen burners, two gas chromatographs and six powerful microscopes were arranged as final, silent, terrible witnesses to the horrors that had gone on down here since 1943.

The other sound he'd been hearing since early this morning came again; deep throated, almost below the level of hearing, in that place where you can only feel it. A thudding, like a pile driver. Distant. Somewhere above.

Manny Goldfine went back into the connecting tunnel between labs and shined the weak beam of his dying flashlight on the rough concrete ceiling. The crump came again, and dust filtered down. Explosions? He'd been trying to locate the exact source for three hours, and the sounds were bringing him, as he feared they would, toward the main elevator shaft. They were trying to get in. But that way was blocked for now. He and Sharon had seen to that last night. Then around two in the morning, he wasn't exactly sure of the time, he'd held her frail body in his arms and watched her the like the others, with long, wheezy gasps as she fought to bring air into her blood-filled lungs. In the end she'd looked up at him with love, and somehow managed to reach up with claw like fingers to brash at the fleck of blood she'd coughed up on his shirt. She'd been fastidious all her life.

"I'm sorry, my darling," she whispered, and then she'd died.

For a long time Manny sobbed because of the life he and his wife had never had; for the children they'd not been allowed to conceive and raise; for the picnics, and plays, and concerts they'd not seen; for the trip to Paris she'd talked about since they were kids together in Berlin.

Then he had gone on a berserk rampage against the bastard Nazis who had done this horrible thing not only to them, but to all their friends and relatives, and to their beautiful country. He'd raged against the bodies of the German scientists and SS guards, especially Lieutenant Grueber, whose body lay in corridor B. He'd kicked the heartless bastard until its skull was crushed.

Afterward he'd lain in a heap in the corridor near his wife's body, and waited for his own merciful death to come. The Germans would never again reach this place. He and the others had sealed off all the passages leading to the surface one hundred meters above. They were on the shores of Lake Tollense, so water had always been a problem, now it would be their salvation. They'd sabotaged the pumps and placed explosives against the west wall, on the other side of which was the bottom of the lake. When the wall went this place would flood instantly with no way of pumping it out short of draining the lake.

For some reason he had lasted longer than the others. He'd been alone with the bodies of five hundred jews, some of them test subjects, some of them like him, scientists, and one hundred Nazis plus the SS guards. During the night he was sure that he could hear them crying out in anguish; crawling toward him, seeking help, or revenge. Do research or die, they had told him. Do it well or your wife will die in front of your eyes. And their souls were coming for him now; for the terrible things he and the others had discovered and perfected.

Something in his heritage, he supposed, made him survive while others died. Grossvater Goldfine had lived to his hundredth birthday, and uncles Benjamin and David were both in their nineties when the Nazis came for them. They'd probably still be alive if they had not been murdered. Gassed, cremated. They'd all heard the stories, even down here. He was weak from hunger and overwork, but he was not sick. No heaviness in his chest. No blood in his stools, in his nostrils, none on his handkerchief.

Another much heavier thump came, and this time small pieces of the ceiling rained down on his head, the dust so bad now that it made him cough. He hurried to the end of the corridor and opened the heavy steel door. It was the last one of the complex. All the others, down every interconnecting tunnel all the way back to the dormitories that butted against the west wall, were in the locked open position. When the waters came the bunker would flood in seconds. Nothing would live down here. Nothing would ever live down here; the horrible secrets would be buried forever.

Looking back the way he had come he could just make out the detonator switch lying on the floor next to Sharon's body where he'd spent the night. Wires led all the way back to the explosives on the west wall. He could have turned the switch last night. He should have done it. He certainly wanted the peace; to be with his wife; no pain, no suffering, and especially no sorrows or loneliness. But something inside of him, some curiosity about how the end would play out had gotten the better of him. And then the explosions had begun. The SS was trying to get back in to save its own, or to reclaim the weapon hiding down here. Use it against innocent women and children. The indescriminate killer.