The Fourth Horseman (22 page)

“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.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

In ten minutes they secured the aircraft for the night, got their bags and left. A pair of Toyota SUVs with deeply tinted windows waited just inside the hangar. They got into one of them and left.

Two men in dark blue blazers got out of the second SUV and stood at attention near the open rear door on the passenger side. One of them held an H & K submachine gun.

Haaris had worn his American civilian clothes over on the flight. He changed into the long loose shirt, baggy pantaloons and headgear he’d worn at his first appearance on the balcony of the Aiwan. He strapped the voice apparatus onto his neck, adjusted his scarf to conceal it and retrieved his bag containing some personal items and a change of clothes, plus a nine-millimeter Steyr GB Austrian-made pistol with a pair of eighteen-round box magazines. The reliable semiauto had always been a favorite of his, in large measure because it was accurate and could be disassembled for cleaning in under six seconds.

He checked the weapon’s load then stuffed it in his belt beneath his shirt and went to the open door of the plane.

If the two men by the black Toyota had suspected who their passenger was to be they didn’t make a big deal of it. The man with the weapon involuntarily stepped back half a pace, while the driver’s mouth dropped open, but only for a moment.

Haaris went down the boarding stairs, and he held up a hand. “There will be no conversations,” he told them in Pashtun. “You will not address me by name or title, nor will you speak of my presence with anyone. You are simply to take me to the Aiwan, stopping for no one, for no reason.”

The driver nodded and stepped away from the open rear door.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I must ask if you expect trouble this morning?” the man with the H & K asked. He was young, possibly in his early twenties, but he had the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d taken incoming fire somewhere.

“No,” Haaris said.

“There have been people on Constitution Avenue off and on ever since you…” He hesitated. “For the past several days.”

“Avoid them,” Haaris said, and he got into the car.

Within minutes they drove away from the airport and took the old main highway up to Islamabad. The morning was cool, as were many mornings in this part of the country. It was a contrast to muggy Washington. Haaris neither liked nor disliked Pakistan and its people, nor had he ever thought that he would be returning until eight years earlier when he first began to conceive a plan not only for revenge against too many people for him to count—except that he knew all of their names and positions—but for his immortality.

He did not believe in Paradise with its willing virgins and endless milk and honey, but as a boy in school in England he had developed the notion of an existence after life. The history professors taught him that. Almost no one remembered most of the players in the Trojan War, but everyone knew the name Achilles. Everyone knew the names Caesar and Marc Antony, but especially that of Caesar. German generals were famous, but Hitler’s name rose to the top of every schoolboy’s list of the most recognizable. George W. Bush was known, but not as well as Osama bin Laden. And in the end no one would ever forget the name Messiah.

*   *   *

The Presidential Palace was in the Red Section of the city, the area where most of the government buildings and foreign embassies were located. A small crowd of several hundred people were gathered in front of the imposing building, and as before they burned trash in barrels. Armed guards on the street just outside the fence looked out at the people but did nothing to send them away. The foreign press had dubbed them “the Messiah’s people.” It was they who had named him and it was they who continued to keep watch for his return.

They drove around to the rear entrance that led into the president’s colony, where his staff and families were housed. Though the gate was guarded by two armed soldiers—who admitted them without question—the colony itself seemed to be deserted. After President Barazani’s assassination his staff had fled for their lives.

According to Rajput the Aiwan itself had been deserted as well. Not even a maintenance staff had remained. It was as if the seat of power had been deserted so that the prime minister could govern Pakistan without interference.

Ghulam Kahn was the first president to live there, in 1988, and Barazani was the last. But Pervez Musharraf had lived elsewhere during his presidency. The real seat of Pakistan’s power was gone from this place. The PM was the chief administrator of the country, but the president had been the leader.

Until now.

They pulled up at one of the service entrances. The armed guard riding shotgun jumped out and opened the rear door.

As Haaris got out the guard saluted. “Do you wish us to stay here, sir?”

“No, you are finished for the morning. Thank you. And remember, do not discuss this with anyone. My reasons will become evident soon enough.”

Haaris waited just inside what had been a security vestibule, with a heavy steel door leading into the main floor of the building. Under normal circumstances the door would be opened electronically from the inside, but only after the visitor was positively identified and searched for weapons or explosives. This morning it stood wide open to a marble-floored corridor that led straight to the ornate entry hall where visiting heads of state or other VIPs arrived.

He could see the SUV through one of the small bullet-proof windows but could not see the driver or the armed guard because of the deep tinting of the car’s windows. After a moment or two, however, the Toyota moved off and disappeared around the corner.

Haaris remained for a full three minutes longer to make sure that guards did not return on Rajput’s orders.

He walked down the long corridor to the ceremonial staircase and went up to the president’s residence on the third floor.

The building was totally deserted, but the electricity hadn’t been shut off, the security cameras were still operating and the battery-powered emergency lighting had not activated.

Enough light came from outside that he could make his way to a window that looked down on the street to the people gathered there. They were actually very stupid. He had held Barazani’s severed head for everyone to see-—the severed head of the properly elected president—and one of Rajput’s shills had shouted “Messiah” a couple of times and the sheep had taken up the chant.

He’d made a brief speech that was broadcast over television, and here they were camping out on Constitution Avenue. Waiting for him to show up, to give them meaning in their meaningless lives.

That fact of the matter was, none of them realized that all life was pretty much without purpose unless you were willing to make it so for yourself.

He didn’t bother with lights as he got undressed, took a shower and went to bed. In a few hours the situation would change, because he would make it so. In a few hours he would lead the country in exactly the direction he’d planned for it to go.

When he slept it was without dreams. The sleep, he told himself when he awoke briefly just before dawn, of a man with a clear conscience and an even clearer purpose.

FORTY-ONE

Upstairs it took Pete less than ten minutes to change into jeans, a white blouse and dark blazer. When she was done she phoned Otto, who answered on the first ring as he usually did.

“Oh, wow, that went fast.”

“The guy’s a stage actor. He admitted that Haaris hired him to hang out. But the point is he told me that his contract would be up in two days. So whatever Haaris is trying to pull off, having an imposter here won’t matter because it’ll be too late for us to change anything.”

“Did he give you any hint what that might be?”

“None, but Haaris wouldn’t have told him something like that in any event,” Pete said. She went to the window. Nothing looked out of place on the street. “Get word to Mac, he’ll want the timetable. In the meantime I need to go to Islamabad as fast as possible and I don’t think a commercial flight will get me there in time.”

“You don’t want to go there.” Louise had come on the line. “Mac already has his hands full, he won’t be happy to have you jump into the mix.”

Pete wasn’t surprised that Louise had joined in. “Otto’s already filled me in, and it’s exactly what I need to do. The ISI won’t know about me, so I’ll be the loose cannon watching his back.”