Resurrection Day (39 page)

A sea of FBI tech vans and unmarked cars were parked all over the wire-fenced warehouse lot. It looked a frenzy of activity, and agents were positioned at the steel-mesh entrance gates to keep back the curious onlookers — a few dozen local kids and passersby who stopped to gawk.

It was dark when Collins and Kursk drove up to the gates, and when they were waved into the warehouse parking area they saw Morgan over by an office door, hands on his hips as he watched a couple of crime-scene techs carrying in their equipment from one of the vans. He came over when he saw Kursk and Collins climb out of the Ford.

'Looks like this is where they disappeared to after the Wentworth.' Morgan jerked a thumb towards the warehouse. 'One of the search teams in the area noticed the front gates unlocked and decided to have a look around. The door into the office had been left open. They found the Explorer parked inside the bay, along with a white Ryder van.'

'They find anything in the vehicles?'

Morgan nodded. 'A couple of wooden planks and some discarded clothes in the van — two men's parkas and a woman's leather jacket. One of the parkas was bloodstained — looked like it got punctured by grenade shrapnel. There were also tyre marks on the ground that looked like the motorcycle variety. Seems like they must have had a bike or two stashed in back of the Ryder, all ready for a quick getaway. They sure had things planned real well, left nothing to chance.'

They moved over to the loading bay. The roll door was up and inside the warehouse they saw the dark blue Explorer and the Ryder. Crime-scene techs wearing latex gloves were working on both vehicles under the harsh electric glare of a half-dozen mobile arc lamps. Others were busy taking photographs, while a half-dozen techs wearing white disposable overalls were on their hands and knees, moving up the warehouse in a line, sweeping the floor for the smallest trace of evidence. 'Did the guys turn up anything else?'

'We found nothing in the clothes' pockets — no wallets, no papers, zilch. The Explorer's cab looked pretty clean inside, same with the Ryder. But the van had rental papers in the glove compartment in the name of Raoul Khan. Turns out it was hired six days ago in McLean, Virginia. We sent a couple of guys over to the Ryder office to question the female staff member who dealt with Khan. They called in a couple of minutes ago. She remembered the guy. From the description she gave, it sounds like it could have been Rashid.'

Collins looked over the warehouse. Apart from the Explorer and the van, it was bare as a bone. 'Who owns this place?'

Morgan consulted his notebook. 'Small company called Treasury Allied Properties in the District. Hired it out almost five weeks ago. A three-month lease to a guy named Ethan Nadiz who paid cash up front and said he wanted it for short-term storage. Our people are on their way to the company offices right now with photographs of Rashid and Gorev. Got a feeling in my water it'll turn out to be Rashid again. Man's got more aliases than I've had undercover.'

'Any witnesses see Rashid and the others drive in or out of here?'

'One so far. Guy who works in a furniture warehouse across the street says he thinks he saw the Explorer drive in here some time after two o'clock this afternoon. That fits with just about after they fled the Wentworth. But he was too busy to notice who was in the vehicle and he didn't notice them leave again. We're questioning folks and traders in the area — got a couple of dozen guys knocking on doors right now.'

'The store owner ever notice anyone come and go from here before?'

Morgan checked his notebook again. 'He had to come in early a couple of weeks back to do a stocktake. Five a.m., and he's getting out of his car and sees a guy driving out of the warehouse. Thinks it was the same Explorer. He barely got a glimpse of the driver but he thought maybe he could have been Arab. I showed him Rashid's photograph but the face didn't register. Still, my money's on Rashid. Seems like he's been a busy boy these past few weeks. And keeping his head low by coming in here at odd hours, hoping no one would see him.'

Collins stepped closer to the Explorer, where the techs were still working away, and peered inside, then moved over to the Ryder, Kursk following behind. There was nothing to see in either cabin. Both vehicles looked clean. 'What about the rest of the warehouse?'

'Empty apart from the trucks.'

'The office?'

'Looks like it hasn't been used. Nothing but a banged-up old table and chair and a couple of rusting filing cabinets, empty.'

'Did anyone check the building for chemical trace?'

Morgan nodded. 'One of the first things they did. The WMD guys went over it with their chemical detectors. Came up clean. Either Rashid and his friends didn't keep the stuff here, or it was too well sealed in its container to leave any marker.'

'Terrific' Collins gritted his teeth, slammed a fist into the side of the Ryder in frustration.

'Know how you feel,' Morgan said. 'But at least we know how they got away.'

The White House 6.05 p.m.

'How long have we got?'

The President had temporarily abandoned the NSC meeting, left the conference room with a select group of his closest advisers, and moved to the Oval Office. As he took his place behind his leather desk, he had addressed the FBI Director.

'Just under two hours, sir,' Doug Stevens replied. 'He wants the link-up ready to go at bang on eight p.m., Eastern Standard Time, for a live two-way transmission, using one of the frequencies Dick's people suggested to Samar Mehmet.'

Six other people were crowded into the room: Dick Faulks, the head of the CIA; Paul Burton; General Horton; Charles Rivermount; and two of the President's other advisers, from whom he frequently took counsel: Mitch Gains, a former judge, and Bob Rapp, the long-time press adviser. The room crackled with apprehension.

'Despite his refusal to help, Samir Mehmet must have spoken to Hasim after all,' Faulks said to the President. 'I kind of figured he would.'

'What else exactly did the sonofabitch have to say?'

'That's it, sir. Only that he's going to talk to you,' Stevens replied.

The President ran a hand over his jaw, then looked at the circle of faces. 'You can bet what this is really about, can't you? Abu Hasim's already heard what happened. He's heard we almost messed up his operation. I don't believe he's really going to talk, at least not in any meaningful way. He's going to give it to us in the neck, tell us we're rattling him. He's going to rant and rave and then he's going to threaten us all over again. Tell us he'll wipe us all out if we don't play the game like he says. The damned sonofabitch ... ' The President suddenly pounded his knuckled fist on the desk, anger turning his face crimson. 'Doug, I'm going to have trouble with this. I'm going to have trouble not telling this major-league asshole what I honestly think of him.'

'You can't do that, sir,' Bob Rapp broke in. 'The last thing you want to do is anger Hasim. That's only going to jeopardise whatever chances you've got to convince him to give us more time, or even make him change his mind.'

The President took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiped his mouth. 'Bob, I don't hold out much hope of convincing him of anything. He's a mass murderer, a crazed terrorist killer of the highest order. A man who's got nothing in his heart but hatred for me and for the American people. He's not going to listen to a damned word I say.'

'Mr President, we've got less than two hours. That doesn't give us much time to prepare.' Mitch Gains was looking at his watch in near-panic. 'We need someone professional to help give us an angle on how to approach this, advise us on how to play it. Bob's right. The last thing we want to do is say the wrong thing and blow it. It's maybe the only opportunity we're going to get.'

'Who would you suggest?'

'We'll have to take whoever's closest,' Bob Rapp replied. 'Professor Janet Stern's only a couple of blocks away, staying at the Willard. And the CIA's Franklyn Young is in the Marriott, around the corner.'

'Get them here. Fast.'

Alexandria 5.40 p.m.

'The woman's name is Karla. That much I'm certain of. I don't remember her family name.'

'She's Chechen?' Morgan asked.

'Palestinian.'

Morgan took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, frowned at Collins, then looked back at Kursk. 'So what's the connection to Gorev?'

They had left the warehouse, walked over by the perimeter fence. Far off, lights blazed in the District, the red beacon on top of the Memorial flashing in the darkness. Kursk paused to light the cigarette Morgan offered, and Collins answered for him. 'When Gorev served with the KGB, he taught at Patrice Lumumba University. Guerrilla warfare was one of his specialist subjects.'

Kursk nodded as he drew on his cigarette, said to Morgan, 'That's where he met her. Lumumba was no ordinary university, but a training school for terrorists. At that time, the KGB gave support to many revolutionary groups around the world. Some were offered places at the university, to train in terrorist warfare, and they came from many countries. The Italian Red Brigade, the Irish Republican Army, the PLO, the Japanese Red Army, revolutionaries from almost every part of Africa and South America. Among Lumumba's most famous graduates was Carlos Sanchez — Carlos the Jackal. But there were many others. Hundreds, if not thousands.'

'So where does this Karla fit in?' Morgan asked.

'She came with a PLO group. For many years they sent their most promising recruits to Lumumba, until Moscow decided to stop helping Yasser Arafat. But Karla, I believe, was one of their best.'

'You met her?'

'Just once, in Nikolai Gorev's company, at a party in Moscow. That's where I saw her. He introduced us.'

'How come you still remember her?' Morgan asked.

'I remember that for the last few months of her stay in Moscow she and Gorev became lovers. And when the time came for her to leave and return to the Middle East, Gorev resigned from the KGB. Soon after, he joined the army and was sent to fight in Afghanistan.'

Morgan raised an eyebrow, said a touch mockingly, 'Sounds like the man had a broken heart.'

'I can't say. And what the circumstances were of their parting I don't know. Nikolai Gorev wasn't the kind of man to talk about his private life. But I got the feeling she meant a great deal to him.'

'You're sure it's the same woman?'

'I'm certain. And seeing them both together makes me even more certain.'

Morgan took a drag on his cigarette, said to Collins, 'Abu Hasim supports anyone with a grudge against Israel, right? It's got to work the other way round, too. So I guess it makes sense a woman like her would be involved with Hasim. But how do we get some background?'

'Murphy's talking with the Israelis. If she's PLO, Mossad ought to have something on her. And he'll have Moscow try and dig up her file from Lumumba. Between the two, he ought to come up with something.'

Morgan, distracted, looked over towards the warehouse, then stubbed out his cigarette. An agent, talking on his cellphone, was holding up his hand and waving him over. 'Bet that's Murphy now, looking for an update. Be right back.'

Kursk drew on his cigarette, turned to look beyond the warehouse perimeter, towards the lights of the District. He was exhausted, guessed Collins felt the same. 'Are your people still checking the hospitals?'

Collins nodded. 'Gorev hasn't turned up at any of them yet, or in any of the doctor's surgeries that were visited.'

'I doubt he will look for medical help in such places. Not if it would risk attention from the police. Nikolai is no fool. If he needs a doctor, he will have found someone he thinks he can trust. A Chechen, or an Arab perhaps. Or a doctor who has dealings with the criminal world.'

'We're checking on all those too.'

Kursk nodded towards Washington's blaze of night-time lights. 'You can be certain he and the others will be even more careful after this. Only go out in public when they must. In such a big city, they will be even more difficult to find.'

'Are you giving up, Major?'

'No. But after tonight, there are only five days left. We had our luck, I think, by finding them once. From now on, it's going to be impossible. Don't you agree?'

Collins looked out at the darkened capital. 'You got a wife, Kursk?'

'Yes.'

'Kids?'

'A daughter. She is nine.'

'I've got a friend. A woman. She's got a three-year-old boy. I care about them both very much. Have you thought about how your daughter might die if she was in Washington and the device went off? Gassed to death like those men kidnapped in Azerbaijan? Maybe you ought to think about it, Major. You might be more eager to find Gorev and put him out of this game for good.'

'You think what I did was deliberate, to stop you killing him?'

Collins fixed the Russian with a stare. 'I don't know what to think, Kursk. If you did it for the right reason or the wrong. But you know the question I keep asking myself? How could anyone like Gorev square it with his mind to kill hundreds of thousands of men, women and kids?' He clicked his fingers. 'Snuff out their lives in cold blood, just like that.'

'I can't answer that question for him.'

'Then I'll answer it for you. Because he's an insane killer, pure and simple. A terrorist who hasn't got a shred of conscience, just like Rashid. The woman too, for all I know. And the sooner you accept that truth, the better we'll get along.'

'Gorev may be a lot of things, but he's not an indiscriminate killer, Agent Collins. Yes, he's killed in the past. But it's always been political, for the Chechen cause. I know him. He's not a mass-murderer. He's not some madman who'll destroy a city for the sake of it.'

'So what makes him tick? What drives him on in a situation like this? Why's he thrown in his lot with Rashid?'

'I can't say how or why he became part of this. But I can think of two good reasons. He wants his Chechen comrades released. Or else, somehow, he's been given no choice.' Kursk looked at Collins' face. 'There is a third, but it is doubtful. That he wants the same thing as you. Some kind of revenge.'

'I don't want revenge, Kursk. I want justice.'

'Isn't it sometimes the same thing?'

Collins was silent. Kursk tossed away his cigarette. 'May I say something?' He put out his hand. 'We end this now. Help each other. Not argue.'

Collins ignored the offered hand, went to speak, but Morgan caught his eye over by the Ford. He was waving at them. 'Get over here, Jack.'

Collins went over, Kursk behind him. Morgan finished talking on the radiophone, jumped into the Ford. 'Get in.'

Kursk got in the back as Collins climbed in the front passenger seat. 'What's up?'

'Some guy found the bodies of a teenage couple out at a picnic area in some woods in Maryland, about thirty miles from here. Both with multiple gunshot wounds.'

'What's it got to do with us?'

Morgan hit the ignition. 'It happened less than three hours ago, Jack. And here's the cherry. A witness saw a guy on a motorcycle drive out of the area in a damned big hurry.'

Washington, DC 6.35 p.m.

When the British Army under General Wade attacked Washington in 1814 and his rampaging troops torched the White House, the blaze was so intense that almost half the presidential residence was gutted. To this day, the blackened scorch marks may still be seen on the two-hundred-year-old mansion's original solid granite foundation posts, which were left exposed in the basement kitchens area, a reminder of a bitterly fought colonial war.

As the man stepped down into the cramped White House kitchens that evening, he paused for a moment to lean against one of the blackened granite posts and took a deep breath. A steward bustled past, dressed in a white waistcoat and dark pants, and carrying a silver tray. Behind him, a few seconds later, came a stocky, sad-faced Secret Service agent with a moustache, who looked to be on his way upstairs. He had a rutted scar on his nose, and the man instantly recognised him as Harry Judd, the Deputy Assistant Director of Protection. Judd paused for a second, the recognition mutual, and said politely, 'Good evening, sir. Can I help you?'

'No, thanks.' The man smiled back. 'Just getting a breath of air.'

'Of course, sir.' Harry Judd nodded and went out through a pair of swing-doors towards the stairs.

As soon as he was gone, the man glanced towards the kitchens, saw a white-hatted chef busily working over a stainless-steel worktop, too preoccupied to notice him. Making sure that Harry Judd was gone, the man turned right, slipped through another set of double doors, and found himself in the narrow East Wing delivery yard, deserted apart from some overflowing garbage bins.

There was a raw breeze, a hint of rain in the night air, but he ignored it, feeling the icy beads of perspiration on his face as he moved out into the dimly lit yard, knowing what had brought him here.

He had made a request to the President that he have a couple of minutes alone to mull over the impending meeting with Professors Janet Stern and the CIA's Franklyn Young, left the Oval Office, and taken the stairs down to the basement kitchens. But the request was a lie. Fifteen minutes ago, in the middle of the heated Oval Office meeting when the President had gathered his closest, most trusted advisers around him, the man had felt his cellphone vibrate discreetly in his inside breast pocket. After a brief pause, the phone had vibrated again.

The cellphone's throb had caused him a moment of near-panic that sent shock waves through his body. It was absurd: knowing that in the middle of the heated private gathering, listening to the President's tirade against Abu Hasim, he was the enemy in the camp, sharing the absolute confidence of the man he was betraying. He was perspiring heavily as he took the cellphone from his inside breast pocket. Switching it on, he checked the missed numbers in the green-illuminated window, to make absolutely certain that by some fluke they weren't wrong-number calls.

Neither were. His heart pounding, the man glanced above him. There were security cameras and listening devices almost everywhere in the White House, and at least one camera was positioned on the parapet wall high above the delivery yard. For all he knew, there might even be discreet microphones hidden around the walls. He was faced with a dilemma: he couldn't leave the White House at such a critical moment, but he knew that the two calls he'd received — two rings, followed by three more, both calls ten seconds apart — indicated that it was imperative he phone Mohamed Rashid.

He had thought about it frantically, reasoned that coming down to the kitchen yard was his best bet. To all intents and purposes his visit there was innocent: it wasn't unknown for White House staff to slip down to the yard area for a breath of air, a smoke, or even to make private calls from their cellphones. A gentle enquiry he'd made weeks ago to one of the Secret Service agents assigned to him had suggested that the yard wasn't bugged, but he couldn't rely entirely on that information, and he knew he'd have to make sure he kept the call he was about to make as brief and cryptic as possible, in case there really were microphones planted in the yard.

Turning his back on the parapet camera, he wiped the patina of cold sweat from his face and nervously punched in the number.

Harry Judd, the Deputy Assistant Director of Protection, descended a stairwell deep into the bowels of the White House. He'd been on duty all day with hardly a break, and had just scrounged a cheese sandwich and a cup of decaf coffee in the kitchens to keep him going.

When he came to the bottom of the stairs he halted outside a solid, smooth vault door. He flicked up the cover on the control panel on the wall to the left and punched in a six-digit code. Seconds later came a hissing sound as the airtight rubber seal around the door decompressed. Then the sixteen locking bolts disengaged with a clunk, and an electric motor whirred as the door swung open. It was eighteen inches thick, solid steel, and behind it was the President's bunker.

Judd stepped in. The lights came on automatically, and he moved to the centre of the room. It measured twenty-five square feet, its seamless concrete walls painted a cream colour. Around the walls were eight bunks, a couple of couches, and various metal cabinets in which were stored emergency equipment: first-aid kits, spare communications transceivers and batteries, a number of weapons and their munitions, decontam suits, oxygen, bottles, food ration packs, and more. As a temporary refuge in the event of a WMD — Weapons of Mass Destruction — attack, it had everything a small number of survivors might need to hold out for a couple of days, a week tops. Outside in the hall was another airtight steel door to an emergency evacuation tunnel that led up to a secret exit on the White House lawns.

The survivors could evacuate when it was considered safe to do so — assuming they came through the attack alive. There was a reasonable chance: the bunker's chemical, biological and radioactive nitration systems were claimed to be excellent, and had been verified as serviceable by a team from the Army Corps of Engineers that same afternoon, but until an actual WMD attack happened, you never could tell.

Judd took a good look around the room and made sure the seals on the metal cabinets were intact and unbroken. Everything was secure. He'd already checked the bunker earlier that day but he'd wanted to check it again, if only to reassure himself he had things under control, and despite the fact that the bunker room always gave him the creeps. It was cold, almost eerie. Standing there alone, under the low concrete ceiling, it felt to Judd like being in one of those pharaoh's tombs in Luxor that he'd visited with his wife Phyllis fourteen years ago when they'd taken a two-week vacation in Egypt — just before she'd upped and left him for a mild-mannered history professor over at Georgetown U who didn't have to work nights for a living, run alongside a limo, or risk getting his ass shot at by assassins.

Judd shivered. Being sealed up in a place like this wasn't his idea of fun. Still, he wouldn't be guaranteed a place in here anyhow. He'd be way down the list. Chances were, the device went off, he was a goner, like a lot of other folks in the White House who weren't on the A-list. As he stood there in the cold, unwelcome chamber, Judd ran a forefinger along the dented scar on his nose, and thought: Whoever winds up down here, the President included, could be locking themselves into a burial chamber. What if the filtration system went bust, or didn't do its job properly, or the rubber door seals leaked, allowing microscopic traces of the nerve gas to invade the room? Not enough to kill you instantly, rather slowly and agonisingly. Personally, Judd thought, he'd rather go quick — a deep sniff of the gas, a few seconds of intense pain, and then oblivion. Way to go.

Judd stepped out of the bunker and punched in the code. The solid metal door whirred back into place and the rubber seal hissed as it was repressurised.

Chesapeake 8.15 p.m.

Karla Sharif turned the Plymouth into the cottage at Winston Bay. As the headlights swept up the driveway and panned across the building, she thought she noticed a movement behind one of the downstairs curtains. The rain was coming down in sheets, and as she drove into the garage at the side she saw Rashid's Yamaha parked there. She was drenched as she went up on to the veranda and opened the door.

She got a shock when she saw Rashid. He looked different: his blond hair was dyed black, and the earring was gone. He had a surly look on his face as he stood just inside the doorway, clutching the Skorpion machine-pistol in his hand as he scanned the veranda.

'Where's Gorev? Why isn't he with you?'

'I'll tell you inside.'

Salem 8.30 p.m.

Ishim Razan was in the study of his New Jersey mansion, a glass of whisky in his hand as he watched the rain sweep across the lawns, lashing the tall cathedral windows. He wore a troubled frown as he stared at the drenching storm, his mind tortured by confusion. The door opened behind him and one of his bodyguards came in. 'Yegori called, Ishim.'

'And?'

'He says it's done.'

'What took him so long?'

'The weather was bad, and the woman drove a long distance. To a house in Chesapeake, over two hours away. Some place called Winston Bay.'

'Was she alone there?'

'Yegori can't be sure. The house is in its own grounds. He's going to need more time to have a look around. The men will stay in a motel near Chesapeake for the night, and Yegori says he'll check with you in the morning.'

Razan frowned, then nodded his satisfaction. 'How is the patient?'

'Sleeping. He ought to be fine until the doctor gets back.'

'Don't let Eduard leave his side for a moment. Understood?'

'Yes, Ishim.'

The bodyguard withdrew, leaving Razan alone again. For a moment or two he remained by the rain-lashed glass, his brow knitted in thought, his mind still confused. Then he made the decision. Putting his whisky down, he crossed to a table in the corner, picked up the phone and punched in a number.

Chesapeake 8.16 p.m.