point.”
“Yes, sir,” Pete agreed. “But she asked if she could remain.”
“I want to know what’s going on,” Liz said. “No one’s told me why he went to Washington, except to see a friend who you told me had been killed. But why?”
“We don’t know yet, sweetheart,” McGarvey said.
“Have you had a chance to take a look at the material on the disk that was found in Mr. Van Buren’s car?” Pete asked.
“His name was Todd,” Liz said sharply. “Let’s just start there, okay?”
Pete nodded, her eyes not leaving McGarvey’s.
“I’ve not seen it, but Otto Rencke filled me in.”
“What do you think?”
“Nonsense, of course.”
“Of course,” Pete said. “Not worth killing a CIA officer for. But your son-in-law, Todd, telephoned you from his car apparently less than a minute before the incident. What did he say to you?”
“That he had a meeting with Josh Givens in Washington, a friend of his from college, about some sort of conspiracy involving the Friday Club.”
“Did he say how he felt about the information he’d been given?”
“He thought it was unlikely, but he told me that Givens apparently believed it.”
“What was your advice to him?” Pete asked.
“I told him to discuss the situation with Mr. Rencke.”
“Was there any urgency in your instruction, Mr. Director,” Dan Green asked, gently, as if he was hesitant to interrupt. “I mean to say, was Todd to return to the Farm and, say, mail the disk to Langley, or perhaps send it by courier, or perhaps encrypted e-mail?”
“I told him to call Otto immediately.”
“Why was that, Mr. Director? Why the urgency?”
McGarvey had thought about that very thing after he’d hung up from Todd’s phone call. “I thought that Mr. Givens was a respected member of the press, with a good reputation, and I didn’t suspect that he would waste his time chasing after nonsense, nor would he have called on a friendship with someone inside the CIA with Todd’s…”
“Connections?” Pete asked.
“Yes, with my son-in-law’s connections unless he thought it was important. Todd said that Givens was deeply frightened.”
“By the Friday Club?”
“Yes.”
“But the disk was mostly nonsense, something a man of Mr. Givens’s experience would have understood,” Pete said. “How do you see that?”
McGarvey glanced at his daughter, who was hanging on his every word. The expression of feral anger in her eyes was something new, and disturbing to McGarvey. He’d seen the look before in the eyes of field officers who’d been caught out and were in a fight for their lives — kill or be killed — but such an emotion in his daughter’s eyes wasn’t right, and there was nothing he could say here and now to help her.
“The disk found in his car was a fake. His killers took the real one.”
Green nodded thoughtfully. “That would have to mean whoever was behind this had been closely monitoring Mr. Givens’s activities for a period of time long enough to suspect what might be on the disk he passed to your son… to Todd.”
Green exchanged a sympathetic glance with his partner, who pursed her lips. It was obvious that they were being cautious, perhaps overly so, for reasons McGarvey could not know. But he suspected that some instructions had been passed from Dick Adkins on the seventh floor.
“I’d think it would have to be more than one man; an organization large enough to conduct a decent surveillance operation,” McGarvey suggested.
“A government organization?” Pete asked pointedly. She was being leading, and making it obvious. Left hanging in the air: the CIA?
“I don’t think so.”
“Or, don’t hope so?”
“That, too,” McGarvey said, not willing to be drawn in, and yet wanting to help because he couldn’t cover everything even with Otto’s help. He wanted the Company to follow some leads, just not the same ones he was going to chase.
“You’re aware, of course, Mr. Director, that Mr. Givens, his wife, and small son were murdered last night,” Green said, his voice soft, sympathetic. “But you might not be aware that several sets of fingerprints were found linking two known felons who’ve done time for breaking and entering, strong-arm, drug trafficking and use, activities of that nature.”
“Found on Mrs. Givens’s purse, Mr. Givens’s wallet, perhaps places around their apartment where money or something worth money might have been hidden?”
Green conceded with a gesture.
“The place was searched.”
“Yes,” Green said, leading McGarvey down the path he’d chosen, leading McGarvey to make the conclusions.
“Trashed?”
“No, the apartment wasn’t trashed in particular.”
“Professionals leaving behind fingerprint evidence, but probably no DNA traces.”
Pete glanced at her partner as if to say: I told you so. “The Bureau did find traces of talcum powder in a few spots,” she said.
“Rubber gloves. Is that how you see it?”
“It’s likely.”
“Nothing useful was found in Todd’s car.”
“No,” Pete said, and this time she glanced at Elizabeth who’d closely followed the exchange.
“I know about the bullet to the back of his head after he was already dead,” Liz said. “So we’re all agreed these were professional hits. By whom and for what purpose?” But before she waited for an answer from anyone, she added: “By what Agency?”
“We don’t know that, sweetheart,” McGarvey said.
“But you do, Daddy,” she shot back. “You goddamned well have a good idea. Connected with Mexico City and Pyongyang? Is that it?”
She had caught all of them flat-footed, especially McGarvey. Officially Liz hadn’t been in the need-to-know loop for either operation. But her father had not only been the DCI, he had been involved in both, and the closest friend of the family was Otto Rencke, the Company’s director of special operations. If she wanted to she could learn just about anything she wanted to learn.
“Would you care to explain, Mr. Director?” Pete asked.
“You’ll have to get that from Mr. Adkins.”
Pete nodded. “Will you be staying here this evening?” she asked. “I mean to say that we will have a few more questions, and in any event since Todd’s telephone was taken, we have to assume that his killers know he spoke to you last, presumably about his meeting with Mr. Givens and the disk. Makes you a prime target.”
“I’ll stay until morning.”
“And then what, sir?” Green asked, his eyes drooping as if he just heard the saddest thing in his life. “Will you give us a heads up, because frankly we’re at a loss as to what is happening, or as Mrs. Van Buren rightly demands: why and by whom and for what end purpose?”
“Of course,” McGarvey said, and everyone, including the distraught Elizabeth, knew he was lying.
