The Fourth Horseman

by David Hagberg

  The second man was just reaching for his pistol when McGarvey jammed the muzzle of the silencer into his forehead.

  “Who sent you?”

  The man had his pistol out and he was raising it, when McGarvey fired one shot. Before the man crumpled to the dirt, the first officer had recovered enough to press his attack, a crazy, failure-is-not-an-option look in his eyes.

  “Who are you?” McGarvey demanded, but the guy kept coming, and McGarvey fired another shot, catching him in the bridge of his bloody nose, and he went down hard.

  “Shit,” a woman said from just inside the tobacco shop.

  McGarvey spun around, bringing the pistol to bear.

  Judith Anderson stepped back half a pace, her empty right hand coming up.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  McGarvey lowered the pistol. “I told you to stay away from me.”

  “Saying something like that to a journalist hot on a story is like throwing petrol on an open fire,” Judith said. She stood flatfooted, her eyes wide, her mouth half open. She looked vulnerable.

  In the not-too-far distance they heard sirens. She looked over her shoulder. “Someone must have reported this. We have to get out of here.”

  McGarvey stuck the pistol in his belt under his jacket. He turned one of the bodies over and came up with a wallet in the man’s back pocket. The ISI card, with its wreath and crescent moon emblem, and the service’s motto, “Faith, Unity Discipline,” identified the officer as Kaleem Babar. The other ISI officer was Raza Davi.

  “ISI?” Judith asked.

  “Yes,” McGarvey said.

  The sirens were a lot closer. “The stupid bastards left their keys in the Fiat. And unless you know the city better than I do, I’ll drive. But right now, the last place you want to be is in an interrogation cell in Rawalpindi.”

  McGarvey followed her through the tobacconist’s shop to the narrow street where the yellow Fiat was parked, its engine idling. No one was in the immediate vicinity, though traffic one block away seemed to be flowing normally.

  Within a minute Judith had driven to the corner and tucked behind a three-wheeled truck and other traffic heading in the opposite direction of the Aiwan. The day was bright and hot, the air polluted with a combination of dust, charcoal smoke and something else with a pungent smell.

  The ISI had always been in firm control of the government here, and if something, anything happened that displeased the military intelligence service it reacted. In McGarvey’s estimation a few pointed remarks from an American journalist rated an expulsion order. But the two ISI officers who had followed him into the dead-end corridor had been ordered to kill him, not arrest him. And the main problem at the moment was staying alive until the Messiah showed up and then somehow getting close enough to put a bullet in his brain.

  Ambassador Powers was at the U.S. embassy, and Prime Minister Rajput was at his post. Both of them primary movers and shakers. If anyone knew when the Messiah would show, and where, they would.

  “You’re not just another blogger,” Judith said. She was driving them out of the diplomatic sector, the traffic even heavier here. Mopeds competed with cars and with trucks and buses of all sizes, no one obeying traffic laws or the white-gloved cops standing at busier intersections.

  Again McGarvey got the strong impression that the country—or at least the capital—was at peace with itself. The riots of just a few days ago were completely forgotten, and if anyone was making any noise about the nuclear event in the northwest, it was below the background level of business as usual.

  “Those guys were trained intelligence officers. Taking you out should have been easy as pie. But you disarmed one of them and killed them both without a moment’s hesitation. Says to me my first impression was right.”

  “Where are you taking me?” McGarvey finally asked.

  “A reporter friend of mine has an apartment here in the city. The AP’s bureau chief. He’s still up in Quetta trying to interview someone at the military base where we think the nuke must have come from. There’ve been no reports of any recent Taliban activity up there, so it could mean the government moved one of the weapons for some reason. It’s Randy’s theory that the nuclear depot has been infiltrated, but by whom is anyone’s guess.”

  A police car, its lights flashing, its siren blaring, came up behind them and bulled its way through traffic, then disappeared through a red light around the corner onto the Avenue G8.

  “It’d be a good idea to ditch this car as soon as possible,” McGarvey said.

  “I think you’re right,” Judith agreed. “Randy’s apartment is just a few blocks from here.”

  She turned down another avenue in what was known as the G7-3 section of the city, and a few blocks later came to the Al Habib Market, mostly empty of shoppers at this hour, the morning and noon crowds gone, and the afternoon trade not yet picking up.

  Finally stopping at the rear of the market, Judith took a long scarf out of her purse and covered her hair, wrapping the extra length once around her neck and over her left shoulder.

  “You might want to wipe the gun down and leave it behind. If you’re caught with it you’ll definitely be tied to the killings.”

  “They were sent to take me out, so that’s not an issue,” McGarvey said.

  The street back here was quiet, and at the moment no one seemed to have noticed them. McGarvey walked with Judith in the opposite direction of the market, turning back toward the broad Luqman Hakeem Road two blocks to an eight-story apartment building.

  “No doorman here, which is one of the reasons Randy picked the place.”

  The building was modern and seemed well maintained. The AP bureau chief’s small, well-furnished apartment was on the fifth floor facing a long strip of businesses: a pizza place, a FedEx office, banks and offices for several airlines, including United of Holland and Saudi Air. Beyond that was a large green space in the middle of which was a building in the general shape of an X that housed offices of the United Nations.

  Judith tossed her scarf aside and laid her purse on the table near the windows. “Randy always keeps his fridge well stocked. How about another beer?”

  “Sounds good.”

  She went in the kitchen and McGarvey went through the woman’s purse, coming up with an old Russian-made 5.45-millimeter PSM pistol. He removed the eight-round magazine, unloaded it into the bottom of her purse and ejected the round out of the firing chamber.

  He’d just closed the purse and stepped away from it as she came out of the kitchenette with the beers.

  “Do you need a glass?” she asked.

  “No, and I don’t need this now,” McGarvey said, taking the ISI officer’s pistol out of his belt and placing it on a shelf of one of the bookcases flanking a small flat-screen television.

  She handed him a beer and perched on the end of the couch. “CIA?” she asked.

  “You thought so at the news conference. What gave it away?”

  “Your blog, partially. Some of the others claimed they’d been reading you from the beginning, but that’s a line of bullshit. I should know about you but I don’t. And unless I miss my guess you’re here to assassinate the Messiah.”

  McGarvey just shrugged, sure now who she was and where she was going.

  “That’s a pretty tall order, but beyond that I want to know why,” Judith said.

  “You want to know or your viewers want to know?”

  “Two speeches and he’s brought calm to this place. Something neither the government nor the ISI has been able to do. So what’s Washington worried about, the alliance with the Taliban? Because if that’s what’s put the bug up Miller’s ass then she and her advisers ought to rethink the thing. If the Taliban is willing to lay down their arms and work in a real partnership with General Rajput to bring a lasting peace, isn’t that exactly what Washington wants?”

  “If that’s what this Messiah wants we have no objections.”

  Judith smiled in triumph. “I knew you were CIA. But you don’t
think that’s what he and the new PM want.”

  “I’d like a chance to ask him.”

  “Before you assassinate him.”

  McGarvey took out his encrypted sat phone and called Otto, who answered immediately. “Judith Anderson. ABC correspondent.”

  “Are you in a safe place?”

  “For the moment.”

  Judith put her beer down and went over to her purse. She pulled out the pistol and pointed it at McGarvey. “You’re under arrest, Dr. Parks, or whoever you really are.”

  “Never mind,” McGarvey told Otto. “She’s holding a gun on me, she’s almost certainly ISI and I’m under arrest. But if she was sharp enough she’d have realized by now that the gun is too light. No bullets.”

  Judith racked the slide back.

  “What do you want to do?” Otto asked.

  Judith went for the gun on the bookcase, but McGarvey grabbed her arm, pulled her away and got the pistol himself. “Sit down, please, Miss Anderson, or whoever you really are.”

  She did as she was told, but she only sat on the arm of the couch as before.

  McGarvey gave Otto the address. “Get someone down here to pick her up and take her across the border to Jalalabad. I want her to disappear for the time being, but I don’t want to shoot her if possible.”

  “That’ll take a few hours, kemo sabe.”

  “Fine. In the meantime she and I are going to get better acquainted. I’m sure she has lots of stuff she’s willing to share. After all, we’re allies.”

  “I’m on it.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Pete’s flight landed a half hour early at Heathrow and it was only a few minutes before eleven at night when the cabby dropped her off in front of the elegant Connaught hotel in Mayfair. She hadn’t been able to get much sleep, worrying about Kirk in Islamabad, even though Otto had assured her two hours earlier that he was still in one piece.

  “Where is he right now?” she’d asked.

  “In an apartment with a beautiful woman the ISI sent to find out who he is and arrest him. But it’s okay, she’ll be on her way to Jalalabad within the next hour or so.”

  Pete almost laughed, except for the fact that the ISI was already on to him. “He must have made some waves.”

  “The understatement of the year. He showed up at a news conference for Rajput and Powers at the Aiwan and asked some pretty pointed questions about the Messiah and the Taliban. He made international headlines.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s exactly what he wanted to do, call attention to himself right off the bat. He thinks it’ll draw the Messiah out in the open.”

  “So how did he end up in some apartment with the woman?” Pete asked, her voice a little bit edgier than she wanted it to be.

  “That’s the tough part,” Otto said, and he told her what McGarvey had told him.

  “Two dead agents and one who’ll turn out missing, all in his first afternoon there. The ISI is going to shoot him on sight.”

  “Which means you’re going to have to press on to see if the guy at the Connaught is actually Haaris.”

  “Is he in the hotel for the night?”

  “Last I heard he came back a half hour ago, had a late dinner and went up to his suite. You’ll have to somehow dig him out of there tonight.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I’m checked in, and then I want you to let Tommy Boyle in on what we’re doing. If the guy turns out not to be Dave, which I’m betting will be the case, I’ll need some muscle to put him on ice somewhere without making a fuss.”

  “If it is Haaris, Mac might want Tommy to ask him for help.”

  “You don’t think it’s him.”

  “No. And when you find out, Boyle’s not going to like it very much.”

  “I’ll tell him what’s going on, but Marty will have to back me up.”

  “Page will handle it personally.”

  “One more thing, Otto: has anyone on Campus figured out that Mac is in Pakistan in disguise? You said he made the news; will anyone in our shop recognize him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I did,” Pete said.

  “But you’re special,” Otto said. “Watch yourself with this guy.”

  “Will do.”

  Pete secured her reservations for three nights with a platinum AMEX that Otto had got for her under the name Doris Day, to match her passport. She only had the one bag but a bellman in a black apron carried it up to her elegantly furnished third-floor room that looked out toward Hyde Park, just a few blocks away. She tipped him, and when he was gone she called Otto again.

  “I’m in,” she told him.

  “Haaris’s minders think that he might be in the bar.”

  “Are they here in the hotel?”

  “No, across the street in a van, but they have a clear view of the lobby.”

  “I’m on my way down.”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “If it’s Haaris he knows who I am and we’ll have our little chat. If not, I’ll strike up a conversation and seduce the bastard. Let’s just hope he isn’t gay.”

  “I’ll call Tommy now and give Page the heads-up.”

  Pete had brought along a revealing scoop-neck, thigh-high black Spandex dress, silver hoop earrings and four-inch spikes, for just this sort of an encounter. It gave her no place to hide her pistol, even though it was a subcompact conceal-and-carry Glock 42, but if she got into a shooting situation her part in Mac’s op would be over before it began.

  She touched up her makeup, fluffed up her short hair and took the elevator downstairs. crossing the lobby to the corridor to the Coburg bar. At this late hour the room was mostly empty, a few of the low tables filled with well-dressed men and women. When she came in, a number of the patrons looked up. She’d gotten their attention.

  A man with light hair and small shoulders sat alone at one of the tables, his back to her. He did not turn around to look as she crossed the room to him, but if he wasn’t Dave Haaris he was a hell of a good stand-in.

  “David?” she asked.

  He looked up. “Do I know you?”

  It wasn’t Dave, but his facial features and voice were nearly perfect matches. Pete sat down across from him. “No, but David does. The question is, what the hell are you doing impersonating him, and when did he leave for Pakistan?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss—”

  “I think you do,” Pete said. A waiter came over and she ordered a Pinot Grigio.

  The man laid a fifty-pound note on the table and got up.

  “The problem for you is that you’re in a room that Dave paid for, and so far as the hotel staff is concerned, you are him. Makes you guilty of fraud at the very least. And at the most it puts your life in jeopardy. Please sit down.”

  “Bugger off,” the imposter said.

  Pete’s phone went off and she took it from her purse. It was Tommy Boyle.

  “Are you with him?”

  “Yes, and he’s not Dave. You might want to have the two gentlemen from the van parked outside come in.”

  “Ten seconds.”

  “Sit down,” Pete said.

  The imposter deflated all at once. “It was a simple job of work. Nothing more.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “Mr. Haaris. A gentleman.”

  “To do what and for how long?”

  “Act as if I were him. Move around, see the sights. For two more days and then I was to leave.”

  “Did he warn you that someone like me might show up?”

  “No.”

  Two men in dark blue blazers walked in and came over. “Miss Day?” the larger of the two asked. “Mr. Boyle sent us. Is there a problem?”

  “No, except that this guy isn’t Dave Haaris.”

  “My name is Ronald Pembroke, I’m a stage actor,” the imposter said. “So far as I know I’ve broken no British laws.”

  “Yes, sir,” the one CIA agent said. “We’d like to have
a little chat with you.”

  “You have no authority here, you’re Americans.”

  “If you’d like I can have someone from New Scotland Yard handle it,” Pete said. “I’m sure that they’ll figure out something to charge you with.”

  “We just want to ask you a few questions, sir, and then you’ll be free to go,” the CIA officer interjected.

  The other officer smiled. “Of course, if you’ve actually threatened this lady, who is a close personal friend of mine, I’ll be forced to break one of your bones. Won’t be pleasant.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The imposter gave Pete a bleak look but then got up. “You’re CIA, right?” he asked.

  The shorter of the two officers took his elbow. “Just outside, sir. It’ll only take a few minutes and then you can get your things and check out. We’ll even drive you home, if you’d like.”

  They left as the waiter brought Pete her drink.

  Boyle was still on the line.

  “They’re off,” Pete told him.

  “I’ll meet you at the embassy and you can tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Boyle, I’m still in the middle of something, but I’m sure that Mr. Page will fill you in when he feels that the time is right. In the meantime, whatever you do, don’t let this guy near a phone or a computer.”

  FORTY

  The private jet that had been arranged for Haaris touched down at the old airport outside Rawalpindi around two in the morning. The French crew had been solicitous, but after they had taxied to an empty hangar across from what had been the main terminal, and the engines spooled down, he dismissed them for the rest of the day.

  “I may have need of you late this evening or first thing in the morning,” he told the pilot, who was an older man with gray hair and a large mustache.

  “We’ll need to find accommodations,” the pilot said.

  Haaris smiled at him and the copilot, and the pretty flight attendant who stood just behind him in the tiny galley. “Actually, a car is waiting to take you to the Serena. A pair of suites has been booked for you. When I have need of the aircraft I’ll leave word.”