Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

Kathleen thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll shut off the upstairs phones, and you can catch the ones down here.” She gave him a wistful look, as if she knew that he wasn’t being completely honest with her, yet wanting to believe that he was. “Why don’t you cut up some onions. We’re having stroganoff, so if you want mushrooms, cut those too.” She smiled. “Unless a DDO is above such mundane household chores.”

  “As long as you don’t let it out,” McGarvey said. He patted her on the butt, and headed into the kitchen reasonably at peace for the first time in weeks. The mood wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now the problem of bin Laden would hold.

  In the quiet darkness of the night McGarvey went downstairs, got a Coke from the refigerator and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette by the pool. The sprinklers on the golf course were running, and combined with the clean smell of fresh-mown grass, the evening was perfect.

  McGarvey was content. He and Kathleen had always been good together in bed, but tonight their lovemaking had been particularly warm, tender and satisfying. Afterward he had held her in his arms and watched her go to sleep.

  The sky to the south was aglow with the lights from Washington, but in the opposite direction, over the golf course, the sky was filled with stars. The night sky was something that he’d not paid much attention to until Afghanistan. They were the same stars, yet here the sky was familiar and friendly, while over there the constellations themselves looked foreign, cold, indifferent, dangerous.

  He had to wonder how they could possibly understand each other if even the same sky overhead looked different. Talking with bin Laden in his high mountain cave they had spoken English, and although he understood the meaning of the words that the Saudi terrorist was using, he did not understand what they meant to bin Laden. A common language, but without a common understanding.

  There wasn’t even a common understanding about their daughters. It was the one point that McGavery thought he and bin Laden could connect with. But they might as well have been from different planets, the incident with Mohammed and Sarah on the way up proved that. Yet McGarvey was still certain that if the missile attack had never happened he and bin Laden could have come to some sort of an agreement.

  He couldn’t help but think about Sarah and Elizabeth, and compare them. They were both naive in their own way; Sarah about life in the West, and Liz about life with a man. They were both filled with energy. They were stubborn, willful, yet they had warm, giving and loving natures. Had the circumstances of their births been reversed, McGarvey had little doubt that both women would have fit well in their reversed roles.

  They were daughters of driven men.

  The President had said something about bin Laden’s daughter on television tonight, but for the life of him McGarvey couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Something about terrorism.

  He laid his cigarette in the ashtray and glanced to the south, but the lights of Washington had been turned off, or at least lowered. He had to squint to make out the end of the pool. He was sick to his stomach, and suddenly extremely dizzy and weak. He managed to hold onto the edge of the patio table and slump down in a chair, his head spinning so fast to the left that he had to look up to the right in order to stop himself from pitching to the patio bricks.

  The night was black, and had become silent except for the sound of his own rapidly beating heart in his ears. Something smelled bad, like the open sewer he’d crossed somewhere—he couldn’t remember where, though he knew that he should be able to.

  He lowered his head and gripped the edge of the table so hard that the muscles corded in his right forearm. His breathing was shallow, and for a minute or two he wasn’t even aware of where he was.

  Gradually, however, the dizziness and nausea began to subside, his mind began to clear, he began to smell the grass and water smells, and see the night sky again. But he was left weak and shaken, his heart still pounding.

  “Kirk?” Kathleen called from the patio door.

  He turned as she came outside, her body clearly outlined beneath the thin material of her nightgown. “Here,” he said, and she came across to him.

  “What’s the matter, darling, can’t sleep?” she asked.

  “I was thirsty.”

  She sat down beside him and laid her hand on his arm. “I was dreaming about Elizabeth, but I don’t remember what it was about except that I woke up.” She looked at his eyes. “You weren’t there and I got scared all over again.”

  McGarvey managed a reassuring smile, though he still wasn’t a hundred percent. “I’m here, Katy.”

  “Well you sound like you’re half-asleep sitting there,” she said. She took his hand. “Come on back to bed. Nobody’s going to call, and I’ve not set the alarm. In the morning I’m going to make bacon and eggs, grits and my mother’s biscuits and gravy. Damn the cholesterol, full speed ahead.”

  McGarvey smiled at her. “I love you, Kathleen.”

  She returned his smile. “Katy,” she corrected.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Chevy Chase Country Club

  Nothing new had happened until the President’s speech to the nation last night. Elizabeth McGarvey had not come to her mother yet, and the only reason Bahmad could think of was that there had been a delay in releasing the news of her father’s death. The Taliban were often like that. By 8:00 A.M. the sun was already warm, and sitting on the country club’s veranda drinking a cup of coffee before his tee time, Bahmad idly gazed up the eighteenth fairway in the general direction of Kathleen McGarvey’s house, outwardly in perfect control, but inwardly seething. There could be little doubt that bin Laden had seen the President’s broadcast, nor was there any doubt in Bahmad’s mind how the man was reacting. Bin Laden would be filled with an insane rage. He would be beside himself that the President had not only mentioned Sarah by name, but that the United States had killed her. It would be viewed as an act of massive arrogance on the part of a White House that was completely indifferent to the plight of more than sixty percent of the world’s population who lived in poverty. If, as a nation, you had the money to be an active trading partner, or if you had the oil or other natural resources necessary to feed a voracious economy that placed no restrictions on the conspicuous consumption of its citizens, then you could belong to Washington’s elite club. If not, you were nothing but pond scum; interesting under a microscope, but of no consequence in the real world. Bin Laden would want to strike back and do it now rather than stick with their schedule. If he did something foolish it could jeopardize everything, especially their element of surprise.

  It was midafternoon in Khartoum, the heat of the day. In bin Laden’s condition he should be resting now, but Bahmad knew better. Bin Laden would be fuming, pacing back and forth in the compound’s second-floor greeting chamber. He would stop from time to time to stride over to one of the windows, pull back the heavy drapes and look outside, half expecting to see … what? Enemy tanks coming up the street for him? Guided missiles falling out of the sky to kill the rest of his family? The guards who were constantly at his side would be nervously fingering the safety catches on their rifles wondering where the enemy that their leader was so nervous about would be striking from. Would they be strong enough to give their lives for him without hesitation? Enter the gates of Paradise with clean souls?

  In another part of the house, bin Laden’s wives, especially Sarah’s mother, would be dealing with their grief in their own way. Bahmad wondered if bin Laden had talked to them, tried to console them, or if he left them on their own? It was one part of bin Laden’s life that he wasn’t sure of. They had seldom talked about family matters except that Sarah had been his pride; his light; in many respects the reason for his existence.

  The President’s announcement last night meant nothing. Elizabeth McGarvey would come to her mother’s house in due course, and she would die. Then, in the early fall as planned, Deborah Haynes would die. Bahmad could see every step in perfect detail. It was like a well-crafted machine, a thing of
simple beauty. But its delicate mechanisms could be easily fouled with the wrong move now.

  The men he’d been talking with when he’d first arrived at the club were out on the first tee and the foursome he’d signed up with hadn’t arrived yet, leaving Bahmad temporarily alone and out of earshot of any of the other members.

  He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial button for the number of their relay provider in Rome. After one ring the call was automatically rolled over to a secret number in Khartoum. This was answered after three rings by one of bin Laden’s young assistants.

  “Ahlan, wa sahlan.” Hello, he said, somewhat formally, which meant he wasn’t alone.

  “This is Bahmad, I wish to speak with Osama.” Bahmad spoke in Egyptian Arabic, the universal tongue.

  “‘Aywa.”

  There was a chance that this call was being monitored by the National Security Agency. But Bahmad doubted that even the NSA had the ability to screen every single call made everyday around the entire world. The job would overwhelm even the most powerful computers. U.S. technology was fantastic, but not that good.

  “You would not be calling unless there was trouble,” bin Laden said, coming on the line.

  “On the contrary, everything goes well. It is trouble that I wish to avoid.” The Arabic sounded formal in Bahmad’s ears after speaking English for several days. “Didst thou see the President’s broadcast last night?”

  “Yes.”

  Bahmad could hear the strain in bin Laden’s voice. “You can accept the apology and I can withdraw. No harm will have been done.”

  “The harm has already been done. Irreparable harm to this family. Dost thou not understand?” Bin Laden switched to a slang Arabic used in a part of northern Afghanistan. “The daughters of the infidels will die like the pigs they are!”

  “Then I shall proceed as planned.”

  Bin Laden hesitated, and Bahmad could hear his indecision in his silence.

  “Thou must accomplish every aspect of the mission.”

  “I understand,” Bahmad said. “According to the timetable.”

  “There can be no mistakes.”

  “There will be no mistakes if we act in unison.”

  “There is very little time—”

  “In Paradise there will be all the time of the universe.”

  Again bin Laden hesitated. He had never been a rash man. He thought out his every move, as he was doing now, for which Bahmad was grateful. “Do not disappoint me,” he finally said.

  “I will not,” Bahmad replied.

  “There will be no changes. The package is on its way. Do you understand?”

  “‘Aywa.” Yes.

  “Allah be with you.”

  National Security Agency

  Navy Lieutenant Johanna Ritter, chief of European Surveillance Services, sat at her desk at the head of a row of a dozen computer consoles in a long, narrow, dimly lit room. Along one entire wall a floor-to-ceiling status board showed the major telecommunications hot spots serving Europe; places where telephone, radio and television signals tended to be concentrated. Satellites, telephone exchanges, radio and television network headquarters, cable television hubs. Ninety-five percent of all civilian traffic was funneled through these systems. Though thirty percent of all military traffic was handled by civilian facilities, the other seventy percent was monitored in another section of the NSA.

  Lieutenant Ritter’s specific assignment was monitoring European hubs. The main telephone exchange in Rome suddenly lit up in purple on the board, which designated a hit in a special search program that had been designed for them by the CIA’s Otto Rencke.

  She brought up the console on her monitor that was intercepting the signal. It was Chief Petty Officer Mark Morgan. “Mark, what’s so interesting in Rome?”

  “The vorep is chewing on it, Lieutenant, but it sounded like bin Laden to me.” VoReP was the Cray computer Voice Recognition Program.

  “Do we have a translation yet?”

  “Just a partial, ma’am. But we have an area trace on the originating signal. It looks like it came from right here in the D.C. area. But it was masked, so that’s about the best we can do.”

  “I want to hear this myself. I’m on my way.” Ritter unplugged her headset and went back to Morgan’s console. At thirty-two Ritter was the single mother of twin eight-year-old girls. She’d joined the navy right out of college, and because she was overweight, and in her own estimation not all that pretty, she had decided to make the navy a career. It was a good choice because she was very intelligent, yet good with detail, and she was very dedicated, in part because she figured she’d never get married and she needed to support her girls and her mother, who was their nanny. The world was tough, but as she imagined her movie star hero Kathy Bates would say: A woman’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

  Morgan’s console was the third from the end. He was temporarily off-line, his monitor showing the signal and content processing programs at work chewing on it.

  “What do we have, Mark?” Ritter plugged her headset in. Morgan looked up and gave her a smile. Although he was eight years younger than her, she thought that he was devastatingly handsome. The problem was he knew it.

  “Vorep gives it a ninety-seven percent bin Laden.” Morgan hit the replay button. “What we have so far from the machine translation will come up in the box.”

  There was silence at first, then a series of tones as the signal made its way through the telephone exchange in Rome. “Ahlan, wa sahlan,” a young man’s voice came over her headset. “Hello,” the single word came up in the box on the monitor.

  Ritter pressed her headset a little tighter, and listened to the rest of the conversation, which lasted just one minute and three seconds. Both men sounded as if they were under extreme stress, she read that part easily.

  “Okay, it looks as if we’ve bagged bin Laden, but who is Bahmad? And what happened to the translation program near the end?”

  “Vorep has nothing on Bahmad, and it’d be my guess that they switched to a local dialect that we don’t have.” Besides being good looking, Morgan was brilliant. His father was a special agent with the FBI, and with less than six months to go on his enlistment a number of companies were beginning to make him offers. As his release date got closer the NSA would offer him a deal as well. Like a lot of civilians working for the agency, he would be doing the same job only making four or five times as much money as the navy paid him. Ritter was afraid, however, that if she quit the navy hoping for better pay, which she needed, no one would make the offer.

  “Replay the second half,” she said.

  Morgan ran the last part of the telephone conversation again, and this time Ritter could hear the change in dialects, though the translation program was still running a blank.

  “Try Russian,” she said.

  Morgan switched languages with a couple of keystrokes. This time the computer came up with a number of words; some like water buffalo and barn animals that didn’t seem to make any sense in the context, but others, like daughter, package, en route and timetable, that did.

  “Okay, this looks like what the CIA wanted,” Ritter announced, straightening up. “I’ll take it from here and get it over to Langley. In the meantime I want you to clear your board and stick with the Rome exchange.” She gave him a warm smile. “Good job, Mark, but keep your eyes open, I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Morgan replied. He said it like Ritter had told him something so obvious it was stupid.

  Ritter caught the inflection. He was a little shit, and one of these days someone was going to bring him down a notch for his own good. But that didn’t change the fact he was cute.

  Chevy Chase

  “Do you think that bin Laden will accept the President’s apology?” Kathleen asked after breakfast.

  “He might,” McGarvey said, putting on his jacket. He came over and kissed her on the cheek. “What would you think about getting out of Washin
gton for a while?”

  “Would you come with me?” She looked up at him, knowing full well what his answer would be. He shook his head. “Do you think that he’ll send someone to harm Elizabeth because of what we did to his daughter?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Fine.” Her old attitude of disgust showed on her face, but then she softened. She was working at it. “In that case she’s right where she belongs, by her father’s side. And me leaving town wouldn’t do a thing to help.”

  “It won’t always be like this—”

  Kathleen laughed softly. “You’ve said that before. Tell me something new.”

  “I love you.”

  “That’s better.” She reached up and kissed him. “Maybe we can do something this weekend.”

  “Check the movies, see what’s playing,” McGarvey said. He got his car keys and left the house. It was a few minutes after eight and the morning was warm and muggy, it was going to be a hot day. He waved at the security officer in the van across the street and was about to get into his car when Elizabeth pulled up in her bright yellow VW, a big smile on her round, pretty face.

  She jumped out of her car, came over and gave her father a kiss. “Morning, daddy. How’s Mother?”

  “Fine. Are you just getting off work?”

  She nodded. “But I got Otto to promise to get a couple of hours of rest, and I came over to pick up a few of my things.”

  “Anything new?”

  Her face darkened. “Nothing yet, but Otto won’t give up. I think he’d work himself to death if somebody wasn’t there to watch out for him.”

  “I’ll make sure he gets some sleep this morning. Why don’t you go home and do the same yourself, you look as though you could use it. If something comes up I’ll give you a call.”

  She suddenly look embarrassed. “I won’t be there,” she said.

  “Are you staying here?”

  “I’ve moved in with Todd.” She girded herself for a storm, but McGarvey just gave his daughter a smile.