Resurrection Day (60 page)

Gorev and Karla pulled into the cottage driveway. Mohamed Rashid appeared on the veranda, and stepped down to the van as Gorev climbed out. 'Well, how was it?'

'All right.'

'They didn't try anything?'

'Far from it.' Gorev explained what had happened.

Rashid was deeply uneasy. 'This could mean serious trouble.'

'That's where I think you're wrong. You really believe he's going to tell the authorities he's in the business of supplying police uniforms and weapons? He'd be putting himself behind bars. Visto will settle his own scores, like any criminal, not take them to the police. But we've got plenty of breathing space we'll be long gone by the time he's well enough to come looking for us.'

'Did you have to shoot him?'

'It's the only kind of response he understands. If I hadn't made my point, he'd have attempted to come after us tonight, tried to follow us here, I'm convinced of it.'

'How do you know he didn't?'

'We took the back roads, and checked behind us every mile of the way. I'm positive we weren't tailed.'

Rashid still looked uneasy as he went to inspect the van, getting into the cab. 'It's exactly what we need. Where are the rest of the things?'

'In the back. You'll find they're all in order. Visto kept his word about that.'

Rashid went round the back of the van, opened the door and, using a pencil torch, searched through the suitcases and the cardboard box of decals until he was completely satisfied. 'Good. It looks like we have everything. But I'm still not entirely happy about all this, Gorev. Something tells me we're on risky ground.'

'Look, Rashid, we did what we had to do under the circumstances. Whether you still use the van or not is your decision.'

Rashid grunted, nodded towards the garage. 'Get the van inside.'

'What about the car?'

Rashid held out his hand for the keys. 'I'll have need of it later.'

'For what?'

'That's my business,' Rashid said gruffly. 'In the meantime, you two better get your things together and then sleep while you can. Assuming there are no last-minutes hitches, and everything goes to plan, we'll be out of here long before noon.'

Washington, DC 5.55 p.m.

Kursk was alone in the office when his cellphone vibrated. 'Major? It's me, Suslov.'

'Well, Suslov?'

'I did like you asked. Called the big names first, worked my way down the list.'

'Did you get a reaction?'

'Yeah. Most of it hostile. The mafia hard men, they don't like people like me asking too many questions, least of all for the FSB. In fact, one of them accused me of being a snitch ... '

'But did you find anything out, Suslov?'

'Not a fucking thing. They all said the same — they never heard of this guy Gorev. Didn't know who the hell I was talking about.'

'There must be more names you can try ... '

'Kursk, believe me, I've tried them all. You don't want to destroy that file on me, fine, OK, but I've done my best. So do me a favour, Major — I don't want to talk with you, so don't call me again. Me, I don't want to wind up with a rubber necklace.' The line clicked dead.

Kursk, despondent, switched off his phone, crossed to the nearest desk. A terrible feeling of hopelessness gripped the pit of his stomach. His only hunch had led nowhere. Standing there, he turned towards the window, looked down at the police barriers and the pedestrians in the cold streets, and thought of his wife and daughter. He smiled to himself when he remembered the note little Nadia had left for him reminding him to fix the kitchen sink; the childish hearts and flowers, and the dozens of kisses she'd drawn around the message, in bright pink marker.

In all the frantic, exhaustive chaos of the last few days, he hadn't even had time to call his family. He missed Lydia, missed Nadia, longed to see them. He would call them now. Maybe Murphy was right. Maybe it was time to get out of Washington.

The White House 11.15 p.m.

As the meeting in the situation room progressed, the President turned to General Horton.

'General, I believe you can report on the progress of our withdrawal?'

'Yes, Mr President. We're almost forty per cent complete.'

'We've only got twelve hours left, General ... '

'I'm aware of that, sir. But as you know, we've got an additional slew of aircraft already arriving in the Gulf right now, both civilian and military. And three naval carriers are steaming on their way from the Indian Ocean, arriving in five hours' time. That will speed things up.'

'But will we make the deadline?'

'It's close, but we're hoping, sir ... '

'Don't hope, just make sure we do. Speed it up more. Do whatever you have to.' The President turned to Bob Rapp. 'I believe the press have started asking questions, Bob?'

'Yes, sir. Jerry Tanbauer at the Times called me this evening. He'd heard that there was a large number of our troops being shipped back from the Gulf. I gave him the Christmas story, but that didn't really satisfy him.'

'So?'

'I pleaded ignorance, but said I'd find out what I could and get back to him tomorrow. That ought to stall him for now. But I believe the press office has already had calls from NBC and CNN late this evening. I'm pretty sure we can hold them off until tomorrow, right after the deadline, but any longer than that and there's going to be major speculation in the papers and over the airwaves. Several Middle East stations have already been making enquiries about the reason for the large numbers of troops being sent home.'

'So have the Saudis,' the Defence Secretary interrupted, speaking to the room at large. 'I informed the President that my office, as well as the State Department, had several frantic calls from Riyadh — both from the royals and their senior military people wanting to know what was going on. There were other top-level calls from Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Publicly, the Arabs are saying nothing, but privately I guess it's no lie to say they're getting shit scared.'

The President nodded. 'I should also make you all aware that in the last hour all of the heads of the Gulf states have asked to speak to me personally about the matter. I've had it explained to them that I'll talk to each of them privately tomorrow, in the early afternoon, to explain the troop movements. Meanwhile, of necessity, I had to give them assurances that nothing unusual was happening. I had to lie, of course. But we have to keep them all on hold for now, for our own security. And the same rule still applies to everyone here — no one leaks anything to the press.'

General Horton said, 'Sir, the foreign press wires are going to be hopping during the night. What will we tell them?'

'We stall 'em. Stick to our original story for now, that this is a matter of seasonal leave. That the stable situation in the Gulf allows us to send large numbers of US servicemen and women home for the holiday period ... nothing more than that.'

'But sir, before noon tomorrow they're going to find out that this is a complete withdrawal ... '

'And not long after noon tomorrow, hopefully, when the device is located and we defuse it, they'll have our honest admission of what's happened. But not until then.' The President gestured to the FBI Director. 'Doug, I suppose I'm asking too much by hoping that we've got something by now?'

Doug Stevens shook his head solemnly. 'We're swamped, sir. We're still faced with the big problem of trying to keep the search discreet, and that's constraining us because we've had so much ground to cover. I know for certain we're not going to get through this investigation before the deadline. I'm sorry, sir ... but it's just not physically possible. We'd need a lot more than twelve hours.'

The President, downhearted, made a steeple of his fingers, touched them to his mouth. 'We understand your predicament, Doug. But keep at it. We can't flag — not for a moment — even though we think the situation's hopeless.'

'Sir, what about the Israelis?' Katherine Ashmore interrupted.

'They're on board. I spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister. He'll have the prisoners in his jails flown to our staging point — a Russian airbase outside Sevastopol, on the Black Sea — in just under three hours' time, arriving at five a.m. President Kuzmin suggested this airbase both for his convenience and because of its proximity to Afghanistan. I should inform you that the British- and German-held prisoners will arrive at Sevastopol in the next two hours, as will the al-Qaeda prisoners from our own penitentiaries, and all will be held secretly at the base, under heavy guard. As we speak, President Kuzmin's prisoners are being boarded on to two Russian civilian aircraft at Moscow's Vnukovo airfield, and are scheduled to land at Sevastopol no later than four a.m. From there, they'll all be taken under guard aboard two hired-in 767 US commercial aircraft and flown to their final destination, once we learn that destination from al-Qaeda's point man in Pakistan.'

'Did you tell the Israeli PM about our Gulf withdrawal?' Rebecca Joyce asked.

'I told him everything, Rebecca. I had to. And with the proviso that he keep it entirely to himself. At least until after noon tomorrow. Naturally, the Prime Minister is deeply shocked, and seriously worried. He sees our withdrawal as a catastrophe for Israel. It puts his country in an impossible position, under immense threat.'

'What if he changes his mind? What if he has second thoughts, confides in his cabinet, and they consider that Israel would stand a better chance of surviving if he didn't release the prisoners? That way, we might be forced into a position where we couldn't meet al-Qaeda's demands, and so our troops would remain in the Gulf.'

'That point brings me to a vital piece of information you all need to be aware of. Mr Secretary, would you care to enlighten us?'

'Yes, sir,' the Secretary of Defence answered. 'Israel needs our aid, that's a given. But she'll need it even more from now on, without our US presence in the Arabian Peninsula. I suggested to the Israeli Prime Minister that to counter his fears we set up a number of temporary US bases on Israeli soil. He was in full agreement, and I've been working out the details with the help of General Horton. Our plan is that by midday tomorrow at least thirty per cent of our troops — among the last to be evacuated will be moved to temporary bases in Israel. This move has helped to placate the Israeli PM just a little. In fact, we've already sent a forward group of two thousand men, part of our Gulf contingent, to help set up these emergency bases, and more troops are on their way this minute.'

Charles Rivermount frowned, raised his hand. 'Mr Secretary, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Abu Hasim said he wanted all our troops out of the Middle East. Israel's part of that region. Aren't we setting ourselves up for trouble here when Hasim finds out — as he surely will — that we've simply moved some of our forces to Israel?'

'Hasim said the Arab Middle East region,' the Defence Secretary replied. 'I need hardly point out that the Israelis are Jews, not Arabs. And if we want to get technical here, strictly speaking Israel is part of the Levant region.'

Mitch Gains said, 'Mr President, that kind of playing with words may not stop Hasim from seeing such a move as a serious breach of trust. It might even make him think that you're trying to dupe him. The sort of lunatic mind that he has, he might see it as an extreme provocation, one that could send him over the edge. He might well say to hell with it, and set off his damned bomb.'

'General Horton already made that point to me, and made it strongly,' the President replied. 'However, I've made my decision, and I intend sticking to it. If Hasim wants to argue the point, we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.'

'But, sir, aren't we stepping into a minefield? Al-Qaeda might think we've double-crossed them ... '

The President raised a hand. 'I'm sorry, Mitch, but I'd like to wrap this up, and there are a couple of serious points I need to raise before I do.'

He turned to the faces around the table. 'Ladies and gentlemen, as I said, I'm not moving from here until this thing is over and done with, one way or another. The rest of you, however — for the continuation of national security — I'm ordering to leave Washington from ten a.m. tomorrow. Each of you will remove yourselves, and your immediate families if they're here, to outside of the District. You may invent whatever reasonable excuses you can think of — a surprise trip, a sudden emergency that requires you to leave with your family — anything, except, obviously, the truth. Nor are you to make your leaving look like a mass evacuation. You will each take a small number of personal belongings, use different routes, and will be driven and accompanied by a Secret Service escort.

'You will all rendezvous at an as yet undisclosed point outside Washington, from where you will be moved to a secure destination, along with members of our government and Senate — those who are in or near DC. They will be both advised of the situation and removed from the capital an hour prior to the deadline, but not before, and with the same conditions attached as apply to yourselves.'

'Would our destination be Mount Weather, sir?' Rebecca Joyce asked.

Mount Weather, in Berryville, Virginia, was a COG — Continuance of Government — facility, a billion-dollar tunnelled mountain site of over four hundred acres, run by FEMA. It contained a vast complex of secure underground bunkers designed to safely house the US President and his government in a national emergency. With its own dedicated water supply, communications facilities, utilities, bunks and sleeping quarters for up to two thousand people — and even its own crematorium — it was protected by a guillotine entrance gate and a thirty-four-ton metal blast door that was five feet thick, which took fifteen minutes to open or close.

'That's not yet decided, Rebecca. Ladies and gentlemen, I deeply regret that you are most definitely not allowed to include relatives and friends among those you take with you — only your immediate dependent family. Harsh as that sounds, you must understand that if you ignore my warning, you risk causing public suspicion and, ultimately perhaps, untold chaos in this city. Which, in turn, could lead to the terrorists panicking and exploding their device. I'm sure no one wants that horror on their conscience. If anyone attempts to break that rule, they'll be dealt with severely by me, or the Vice-President in my stead.

'So, to finish. I've arranged that all the prisoners will be ready to be transported from Sevastopol from seven a.m. tomorrow morning, EST, to be flown onward to their final destination. Once that has been accomplished, and our troop withdrawal is completed by the deadline, then hopefully the location of the device will be made known to us. But as a precautionary measure in case Abu Hasim goes back on his word or something goes horribly wrong between now and then and the device explodes I've ordered our emergency responder teams to be on twenty-four-hour standby.

'The responders haven't been told the reason why — just that a top-secret exercise is imminent. As of tonight, FEMA's pre-disaster recommendations are being put in place. Emergency medical supplies, food and decontamination suits will be secretly stored in locations throughout the District, in subway stations, in designated warehouses and depots, both close to and within the potential disaster zone. Emergency field hospitals, food stores, blankets, cots, field kitchens and temporary accommodations are being provisionally prepared and made ready to be rushed to strategic points outside the District. Our National Emergency Response Team has been put on alert, and is standing by, positioned in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Vital government departments and their staff have already been targeted for priority evacuation, and high-priority papers, files and items essential to government will be secured and removed in the early hours of the coming morning.

'Our evacuation plans for the city — imperfect as they might be — are ready to go operational if they're needed. Despite our best efforts, if this thing goes belly up because some madman wants to destroy Washington no matter what concessions he wins, then at least I'd like us to be as prepared as we damned well can. Tomorrow morning, eight-thirty a.m., we'll meet back here again for one final conference before the deadline.'

The President rose. Everyone in the room stood, their faces sombre. 'Until then, let's all pray that this city gets safely through the night.'