do you want?” the guard asked Hadid in English.
“I am this man’s driver. He has a reservation here.”
“Name?”
“Mr. Tony Watkins. He is a freelance journalist.”
“American?”
“Yes.”
“Release the hood and rear hatch,” the guard said, which Hadid did.
Two other men came over, one of them searching under the Range Rover’s hood and in the back, while the other checked the undercarriage with a slanted mirror attached to the end of a long aluminum pole as the two armed guards stayed where they were.
The man at the back of the car said something, and the guard near Hadid raised his rifle a fraction. “There is blood in the back.”
“We were on the road from Basra last night,” Hadid said. “There is blood and shell casings in the backseat, and, as you can see, bullet holes in my car. But no explosives.”
The hood and rear hatch were closed and the men with the rifles stepped back.
Hadid drove up to the glass-fronted entrance, next to the restaurant. A big awning covered what had apparently once been a sidewalk from the street that was now blocked off by a chain. No one seemed to be around, and the restaurant was empty.
“Take one of the rifles and a couple magazines,” Hadid suggested.
“Let’s save them for the return trip,” McGarvey said. He had the Glock, the silencer, and three magazines of ammunition. Enough for tonight.
Hadid nodded. “I will wait for your call, Mr. Tony. Good luck.”
“I’m sorry about your wife and son.”
“They are in Paradise now, waiting for me.”
McGarvey’s reservation for five days was in order, and the bald clerk sitting on a stool behind the counter in the tiny lobby checked him in and handed him a key. No porters were around, and except for the clerk and one man who was a westerner in jeans and a light sweater sitting reading a New York Times, the lobby was deserted. The man never looked up.
His suite on the sixth floor, had a view of the concrete blast barriers, and consisted of a sitting room, small bedroom, and bathroom. The place was shabby but fairly clean, and the wheezing air conditioner kept the rooms reasonably cool.
McGarvey laid his overnight bag on the bed and phoned Rencke, who answered, as usual on the first ring.
“Oh, wow, you made it,” he said. “Louise said that one of her KH-elevens picked up some trouble on the Basra Highway about the time you should’ve been there.”
“That was us. Hadid brought along his wife and son, and both of them were killed. Did you know him?”
“Not personally. But he’s done work for us since before the first Gulf War. He came highly recommended. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” McGarvey said. “I just want to do what I came to do and then get the hell out of here. Where’s Sandberger staying?”
“He has a suite in the new Ritz-Carlton. Eight-eleven. But he almost always surrounds himself with bodyguards. And honest injun, kemo sabe, if you get into a shoot-out you’ll be outnumbered and outgunned.”
“I want to get his attention,” McGarvey said. “I want him to know that I’m here, and why. And I want that to get back to the Friday Club in spades.”
“Go easy.”
“I want to hurt him,” McGarvey said.
“Jesus.”
McGarvey broke the connection then lay down on the bed to get a few hours’ rest, something, it seemed, that he hadn’t gotten for a very long time. But this evening he would need to be in top form.
FORTY-FOUR
Sandberger had just sat down for lunch alone at a table in the Ritz-Carlton’s dining room and ordered a Bombay martini straight up with a twist when his encrypted sat phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Weiss calling from the Baghdad Hotel across the river.
“He showed up a couple of minutes ago,” he said. “I waited to see what room he was given. He’s in suite six-oh-seven.”
“Did he come in alone?” Sandberger demanded.
“Wait, there’s a lot more. You said he was coming in under the name Tony Watkins, a freelance journalist, right?”
“Yes.”
“I would never have recognized him from the photographs I’ve seen. He’s in a disguise and a damned good one. Not so obvious so you wouldn’t take a second glance. I was close enough to the desk to hear the name, otherwise I would have missed him.”
“Did he make you?”
“He glanced over at me, but there was no reaction that I could see. He just got his key and went up. Elevator straight to the sixth floor, no stops in between.”
“Was he carrying any hardware that