A number of people came to visit the Tomb of the Unknowns, some of them taking a few pictures and then heading off, while others lingered. A few glanced down at the funeral preparations, but then turned away. The reminders of death were everywhere here, of course, but no one wanted to be reminded of any sense of immediacy. Whoever was going into the ground down there had died very recently. It was difficult to think about.
For a while after the chairs had been set up, and the workmen had driven away, only the occasional visitor passed on the road in front of the open grave, until fifteen minutes before the hearse with Van Buren’s body was due to arrive. At two, a plain blue Chevy pulled up and the chaplain, in uniform, showed up and walked down the hill to the grave site.
Others started arriving in singles and pairs, at least a dozen and a half cars, most of them civilian, until a Lincoln limousine showed up, and Kangas and Mustapha sharpened up. A pair of large men dressed in dark business suits, obviously bodyguards, got out of the limo, and looked around for several long seconds before one of them opened the rear door, and a slightly built man with thinning hair, also dressed in a dark business suit, got out, and the three of them joined the others waiting at the side of the road.
“All the big dogs will be here,” Kangas said. The man from the limo was Dick Adkins, director of the CIA, and supposedly close with McGarvey.
“Maybe we should take them all down.”
“What’re you crazy?” Kangas said. “Christ, what the fuck’s the matter with you, man?”
“I’m steady, so just take it easy.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, then?”
“Just a thought, don’t have a fit,” Mustapha said. “The Company screwed us. Payback works for me. I mean, if we’re here and we’ve got the hardware, why not do a little something extra for ourselves?”
“Then what?”
Mustapha was gazing at the people gathered down the hill from them, a crazy look in his eyes that worried Kangas, who’d seen the same shit-faced expression on a kid in Baghdad a couple of years ago, just before the bomb went off, killing twenty Iraqi police recruits. Like the kid, and now Ronni, was seeing the face of Allah, or something. Paradise. It was all nuts.
“I don’t know,” Mustapha said, and he relaxed a little. “Maybe I’m just yanking your chain.”
“You’re a crazy son of a bitch.”
Mustapha laughed. “And you aren’t?”
For a second Kangas wanted to say something, thought he should say something, but then he turned away and shook his head. Just then the funeral procession, led by the long black hearse, came past on Memorial Drive. A few people turned to stare, but most turned away.
“Okay, here we go,” he said.
Following the hearse, a black Lincoln limousine pulled up above the grave site, a pair of bodyguards got out and helped two women out of the backseat. From photographs Kangas recognized them as McGarvey’s wife and their daughter — the wife of the CIA officer they’d taken out.
Four other cars pulled up, and people got out and joined the two women, and Kangas felt a brief pang that the funeral party was so small. But then he figured that his own wouldn’t be any larger, because besides Ronni there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of people who gave a damn. He hadn’t spoken with his ex-wife in nearly five years, they’d had no children, his mother was dead, his stepfather didn’t give a shit, he had no siblings and only a handful of aunts, uncles, and cousins, none of whom he’d spoken to for a long time.
“No McGarvey,” Mustapha said.
“Not yet,” Kangas said, and a Cadillac Escalade with government plates came down the hill and pulled up at the end of the line. The windows were so heavily tinted that Kangas couldn’t make out who was inside, but then a woman got out from behind the wheel, and a very short man got out from the other side.
They stood there for a moment or two, looking at the group gathered near the hearse. The rear doors opened and a pair of large men got out, one from either side, followed by Kirk McGarvey, on the passenger side.
“Bingo,” Kangas said, half under his breath. Yet he was a little disappointed, because the former DCI didn’t look like much after all.
TWENTY-FOUR
Liz had insisted that there be no church or chapel service, Todd would not have wanted it. What ceremonies were to be performed and what words were to be said, would take place graveside. She’d also insisted that his name as a CIA officer not be placed in the public record, instead she wanted only the anonymous star on the marble wall in the lobby of the OHB at Langley.
“He belongs there with those heroes,” she’d instructed. “He was one of them. He’d feel at home there.”
Nor had she wanted a big crowd, though all the instructors at the Farm and many students of Todd’s wanted to pay their respects today. She hadn’t wanted to share her grief or theirs with them.
“Stay here, please,” McGarvey told the deputy marshals and his CIA minders. “You have my word I won’t try to run.”
Ansel and Mellinger didn’t like it, but they nodded, and McGarvey walked past the line of cars to where Katy and Liz were standing near the hearse. The chaplain had walked back up the hill, but stepped discreetly aside.
Katy was holding on to their daughter, and she looked awful, her hair and makeup a mess. He’d never seen his wife this way, but Liz was practically catatonic with grief.
“It wasn’t just a robbery, was it?” Katy asked, her voice trembling, and barely audible.
“No,” McGarvey said, kissing his wife on the cheek. “Where’s the baby?”
“At the Farm.”
Liz suddenly focused, and she looked from her father to the hearse where the funeral director and his assistant had opened the rear door and withdrew the flag-draped coffin out onto a wheeled stand, and she almost collapsed.
“Easy, sweetheart,” McGarvey said, taking her arm.
“It’s not real,” she whispered. “This is
She was trembling, but not crying, and McGarvey’s heart broke not only for Todd, but because he couldn’t do a damn thing for his daughter when she needed him more than she’d ever needed him.
“Is it someone we can find and punish, Daddy?” she asked, her grip tightening on his arm.
“Yes,” he said close to her. “I’ll find them, I promise you.”
“No trial.”
“No trial,” he said.
Six men who’d come up from the Farm to represent everyone there, took up positions on either side of the coffin as pallbearers, and Liz turned to look at the people gathered on the side of the road, waiting to follow the coffin down the hill.
“We have to wait,” she said. “Otto and Louise aren’t here.”
McGarvey looked around, but she was right, and a tiny worry began to nag at the back of his head. “They’re probably hung up in traffic. They’ll get here, but we need to start now.”
Liz glanced at the people waiting, then up into her father’s face. “Okay, Daddy,” she said.
McGarvey nodded at the pallbearers, who gently lifted the coffin off the trolley, and with the chaplain in the lead they started down the hill, Liz’s and Katy’s bodyguards nearby, reminding everyone that this business was far from over.
Dick Adkins and Dave Whittaker held back, even though it would be up to Dick to present Todd’s widow with the flag, and McGarvey suspected they wanted to distance themselves from him until they saw which way he would jump. After Germany they were treating him like something volatile, nitroglycerin ready to explode at the slightest mishandling.
When the mourners were seated, and the coffin placed on the lift’s framework over the open grave, the chaplain began, and when he spoke Todd’s name out loud, Liz squeezed her eyes shut. Todd’s parents were dead, and only a few distant relatives had shown up. He’d once explained to McGarvey that his family was filled with odd
