from her husband back to McGarvey. “Is it possible, Kirk?” she asked. “I mean, Otto and I haven’t discussed it or anything — there was no need for it — but I think it’s a fabulous idea. I know it’s way too soon—”
McGarvey had seen the logic and the love in Otto’s offer the moment the words came out of his friend’s mouth. And he could see that Louise was so happy she was frightened. They wanted children.
He nodded. “Liz would have liked that,” he said, a tremendous burden, one of many on his shoulders, lifted. “So would have Todd.”
“She’ll stay at the Farm for now,” Otto said. He’d poured McGarvey a snifter of cognac and brought it over. “Sit down now and drink this. We have a lot to talk about. Somebody wants you dead, because sure as hell that was no accident, nor were Mrs. M. and Elizabeth the targets. You were. Which means someone was shitting enough Twinkies they thought they could get away with assassinating not only a CIA officer and a newspaper reporter, but a former director of the Company. A man who’ll probably come under indictment for treason over the Pyongyang thing.”
McGarvey leaned back against the counter and took a drink. Too soon, he wanted to say. Time to run, this time for good. Maybe back to Greece. Bury himself so that he could start to heal.
He didn’t know if he could stay here now and yet he knew damned well it was too late for him to turn away. It had been too late after the polonium thing in Mexico, and far too late when he had killed Turov in Tokyo and when Todd had put a bullet in McCann’s head at the safe house up near Cabin John. All that had happened over the past year, and yet it seemed like a century ago.
And here he was, and it still wasn’t over.
His grip tightened on the brandy snifter and he looked down at what he was doing, his knuckles white, and with the most supreme effort of his life, he loosened up, took another drink, and put the glass down with a steady hand.
“What is this place?” he asked.
Otto exchanged a relieved glance with his wife. “We bought it about six months ago, just after the incident with Turov and Howard. I wasn’t picking up anything solid about what had been going on, but I thought there was a possibility that more would be coming down the pike. So I figured one of these days we might need a safe house off the Company’s books. Totally untraceable as are the utilities and taxes and the car. Sort of a hideout but right in the middle of things, you know what I mean?”
“Why weren’t you at the funeral?” McGarvey asked. “Liz asked about both of you.”
“Otto had a hunch that if something were to happen, Arlington would have been a good place for it,” Louise said. “I’ve learned to trust his instincts.”
“Why not more security officers?” McGarvey asked.
“I don’t know who to trust, Mac,” Otto said. “Honest injun, I can’t find anything, but I know something’s there. Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered. We didn’t know about the IED.”
“Someone had to be within a sightline to push the button. Did you see anything, did anyone see something?”
“There were lots of cars, and all of them got out of there in a big hurry after the blast. The shooters would have probably been among them.” Otto spread his hands. “I don’t know yet if any security cameras picked up something, but I’ll check on it this afternoon.”
“I’m not turning myself in,” McGarvey said. “Not until this is resolved.”
Otto nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m going after Roland Sandberger, this time for real.”
“That’s wrong, Kirk,” Louise said. “There’s no proof he ordered this thing. You’ve killed people, like a soldier on the battlefield. But not this. Not execution style.”
McGarvey ignored her, his grief changing into a black rage he was having trouble controlling. “I want to know where he is right now.”
“After Frankfurt he went back to Baghdad, and Remington came home,” Rencke said. “But Louise is right, we have no proof that Admin was involved.”
“I’ll get the proof just before I kill him.”
Again Rencke exchanged a look with his wife, and spread his hands. “He always travels with two bodyguards. Tough guys. Well trained and highly motivated to keep the guy who signs their paychecks alive. They won’t be easy. And Baghdad’s still a dangerous place. Accidents happen all the time.”
“Works both ways,” McGarvey said, his bitterness barely below the surface.
“What happened to Dan Green and Pete Boylan?” Louise asked, trying to defuse McGarvey’s anger.
“Dan is dead, but I’m not sure about Pete. I think her airbag might have deployed in time to save here. I don’t know.”
“We should check on her,” Louise told her husband.
“I’ll need a weapon, whatever air marshals are carrying these days, probably Glock twenty-threes, and a Galco shoulder holster, some clothes, an ID, and a couple hundred dollars cash. And a sat phone. Encrypted.”
“You’re not getting to Baghdad like that,” Rencke said.
“Orlando, and I’ll need a rental car there.”
“You’re going home,” Rencke said. “But you don’t have to do anything like that. I can get everything you need from here.”
“I don’t want you and Louise involved more than you already are.”
“No shit, Mac, don’t do that to me — to us. You can’t just turn your back.”
“Goddamnit, I don’t want anyone else to get hurt!” McGarvey shouted coming away from the counter. “It’s enough. It’s… enough.”
Rencke nodded. “Okay, kemo sabe. I’ll get you to Orlando, but you gotta know that the federal marshals or at least the Bureau probably have someone watching your house.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’re not going to hurt our own people,” Louise said, angrily.
“No,” McGarvey said. “Not badly.”
“When do you want to leave?” Rencke asked after a beat.
“Tomorrow afternoon. First I have to get some rest.”
“In the meantime what about me?”
“Find a connection between Sandberger, McCann, and the Friday Club. Someone funded the polonium-210 in Mexico and the hit in Pyongyang. Find the money trail, and maybe we’ll find out the why.”
THIRTY
The director of Central Intelligence Dick Adkins sat in the backseat of his armored Cadillac limousine heading up 17th Street to the White House wondering what the hell he was going to tell the new president that made any sense. Except for the fact he’d once worked with and then for McGarvey before becoming DCI himself, this briefing would have landed in the lap of Madeline Bible the director of National Intelligence.
But President Joseph Langdon had asked specifically for Adkins, and although he’d been in office six months no one in Washington had really taken his measure yet. Everyone, including the media, was still being cautious, and Adkins wasn’t looking forward to the meeting.
At five-eight with a slender build, thinning sand-colored hair, and a pleasant if anonymous face, Adkins had never aspired to run the CIA. Unlike McGarvey he was more of an administrator than a spy, and unlike most of his other predecessors he’d never been politically connected. He’d just inherited a job that no one seemed to want when McGarvey left the Agency. He’d been stuck with it through the previous administration, though he had the feeling his tenure was about to come to an abrupt end.
They went up West Executive Avenue and stopped at the guardhouse, but were immediately waved through; Adkins’s face was a familiar one. The president’s national security adviser Frank Shapiro, a hawk-nosed ultra-liberal, met him at the West Entrance, a sour expression on his narrow face.
“You’re late, Mr. Director.”
“Unavoidable,” Adkins said, not rising to the bait. Within ten days after the new administration was in place,
