In his Mercedes leaving the airport Naisir was angry with Schlueter for coming back to Pakistan like this, and even more angry with himself for allowing the situation to get so out of hand.
“Why the hell did you come here?” he demanded. He glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure they hadn’t picked up a tail.
“To deal with McGarvey,” Pam said. “He’s still here, isn’t he, or have you already taken care of the problem?”
“I met with him this morning at the hotel. He knows about my safe house, and I’m sure that he’ll show up sometime tonight or early in the morning.”
“The bastard screwed up everything in Norfolk,” Pam said. She was angry too. But all of a sudden she looked at him. “How can you be so sure?”
“He brought a woman with him, and we have her now.”
“She’s a CIA officer. He might cut her loose.”
“They came in as husband and wife, and my wife is sure that she’s in love with him.”
Pam shook her head. “You involved your wife? What the hell were you thinking, Major? Don’t you have any conception how dangerous this guy is? If and when he shows up he means to kill you. And if your wife gets in his way he’ll kill her too.”
Naisir glanced in his rearview mirror again.
“Damn, you’re expecting him to come up on your six. You better hope he doesn’t, because I can tell you something else. He’ll not only come after you; he’s already put a plan in place to get out of the country afterward.”
“He won’t live that long. I can guarantee that. I’ve hired four guys who know what they’re doing.”
“Dacoits,” Pam said disparagingly. “Shopkeepers.”
“These ones are special. There’s no way he’s going to get around them.”
“Unless he gets to us before we reach your safe house,” Pam said. “Are you armed?”
“Of course.”
“Did you bring something for me?”
“In the glove box.”
She took out a bulky Austrian-made 9mm Steyr GB, checked that there was a round in the chamber, and checked the eighteen-round magazine to make sure it was fully loaded. The gun had been decocked so it was in its safe mode. “It’d be poetic justice to kill the bastard with this,” she said. “The American Army Special Forces used to carry it.”
“You’re not going to kill him, and neither am I. We’ll leave that to the dacoits, who’ll also dispose of his body up north.”
“Unnecessary.”
“He was the director of the CIA, for the sake of Allah. The government of Pakistan does not kill such men. The ISI simply cannot do it, which is why I hired the dacoits. They’re outlaws who don’t care about the law—religious or secular.”
“You hired me to do a job because I’m not a Pakistani. Let me do this now so I can get on with the mission.”
Naisir maneuvered through traffic, his thoughts spinning in a dozen different directions, among them his future with the ISI; he’d once entertained the notion that someday he would rise far enough in rank that, along with his wife’s connections, he would become the head of the agency. It was still possible, especially if such a spectacular mission as eliminating the SEAL Team Six operators who’d taken out bin Laden were to come to complete fruition. Yet that operation, if it went wrong, could doom him and Ayesha to a prison somewhere, or even an assassin’s bullet, despite her family.
“You should not have come,” he said at length. “I have the situation under complete control.”
“I’m here, and I want to meet him.”
“As you wish.”
* * *
One block out Naisir called his wife to let her know he was close, but she didn’t answer until the third ring, and his gorge rose.
“We’ve had some trouble,” she said, and she sounded out of breath.
“Is it McGarvey? I’m just around the corner.”
“No. It’s the woman. She murdered Sipra. The others want to take her apart, but I convinced them to wait until you arrived. But the situation won’t remain stable for much longer.”
“Open the gate.”
The gate opened as Naisir came down the street, and he drove into the courtyard, the gate immediately closing behind him. Ayesha met him at the door.
“It was your foolish order to have her raped,” she said. She was agitated. And she eyed Pam. “What are you doing here? We don’t need you.”
“I think you do.”
Jat, the smallest of the four dacoits was waiting in the hall. The look on his face was neutral.
“Where is the woman?” Naisir demanded.
“This is not what we contracted for.”
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs. Swati is guarding her. We demand that she be eliminated immediately.”
“You demand nothing,” Naisir said.
The dacoit looked at Pam and Ayesha, and his expression darkened. “This is not right.”
Naisir turned to start up the stairs, but his wife put a hand on his arm. “There is a further complication,” she said. “I put the battery back in her phone and gave it to her. I wanted to try one last time to make her see reason and call off McGarvey.”
Naisir held his temper in check. He and Ayesha had had their differences, but he could not honestly remember the last time they’d argued or been cross with each other. She’d grown up with five older brothers, and that pressure, added to her privileged upbringing, had made her a fighter. She was an intelligent, tough, opinionated woman—not without loving kindness and gentleness—but a backbone of pure steel when the need arose.
“She is a trained CIA agent. You should not have done that.”
“Nor should you have ordered her rape.”
“Stay here,” he told his wife. “And you too,” he told Pam.
Upstairs Swati was standing in the open doorway to the front bedroom.
Naisir dismissed him, but it took the man forever to finally turn around and leave, an expression of insolence and even hate on his face. He and the others wanted blood.
Pete was seated on the floor, talking to someone on the phone.
Naisir pulled out his pistol as he strode across the room to her and placed the muzzle against her forehead. “Give me the telephone.”
Sipra’s body had been removed, but the table and one of the chairs were overturned, and there was a light brown stain on the wood floor.
“Got to go,” Pete said. She ended the call and handed up the phone. “The last guy who tried to kill me didn’t end up so good.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“McGarvey?”
“Actually, no. So how about either pulling the trigger or taking the fucking pistol out of my face?”