streaming down her pretty cheeks that night. “I love him, Daddy,” she had blubbered. “But I don’t know what to do.”
“What happened, sweetheart?”
The strangest look crossed her face, as if she was trying to think of something to say. But then she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she’d said in a small voice, her tears drying up. “I must have forgot on the way over.”
Then Todd had shown up, anguish in his eyes, near total devastation, and he and Liz had embraced and had left together. McGarvey had never found out what they’d argued about. But he could see them now, see their faces, hear their voices as clearly as if they were standing right here in front of him.
“Has Liz been told yet?” he asked, coming out of himself.
“No. That’s why we’re headed down now. She’s going to need someone next to her when she finds out.”
“Start at the beginning and tell me everything you know,” McGarvey said, desperately pulling himself together, but it was like swimming upstream against an impossible current.
“The Bureau has taken over from the VHP. His body was found beside his car. He’d been shot several times right through the window glass and the sheet metal on the driver’s side door, probably from a car next to his. His wallet was gone, but once the tags were run, they came up with Todd’s name and the CIA security notification number. Blake downstairs called me a couple hours ago, and I had him put a total lid on it. No one is to be told anything.”
“It wasn’t a drive-by shooting or robbery,” McGarvey said.
“The Bureau’s seeing it as a professional hit.”
“Witnesses? I-Ninety-five is a busy highway that time of day.”
“None have come forward so far,” Rencke said. “But maybe later when we go public someone will make the call.”
McGarvey was starting to settle down a little, his experience kicking in. Someone had assassinated his son- in-law for so far an unknown reason or reasons that most likely had something to do with Howard McCann’s connection to Robert Foster and the Friday Club and whatever it was Givens had uncovered. “What’s on the disk?”
“Nothing believable, Mac,” Rencke said. “Honest injun. It’s like the ravings of a maniac, or someone on a bad acid trip. The Friday Club has supposedly come up with a plan to overthrow the government by force, arresting the president and his cabinet and putting them on trial for treason.”
“When?” McGarvey asked, for want of anything else to say. Rencke was right, it was crazy beyond belief, but then so had crashing airliners into tall buildings.
“That part doesn’t matter. The guy leading the army is Howard McCann in hiding somewhere nearby, gathering an elite strike force of disaffected SEALs, Delta Force, and Bureau and Company field officers.”
“McCann is dead.”
“Yeah. Which makes the disk worthless.”
“Somebody must have thought differently,” McGarvey said.
“His cell phone was missing too, and if they can crack the encryption algorithms they’ll have his phone book. Lots of important numbers.”
“My number will come up,” McGarvey said. “Todd called just before it happened.” Christ, he didn’t know how he was going to tell Katy. He didn’t know about his daughter. Hell, he didn’t even know about himself, what he would do once he caught up with Todd’s killers. But he was sure they wouldn’t live to see a court of law let alone the inside of a jail.
“One of our Gulfstreams is on the way down for you. Should be at SRQ within the hour.”
“Get Liz to All Saints. She’ll need someone with her. Maybe Louise.” All Saints was the hospital in Georgetown that the CIA and most of the other intelligence agencies in the area used. Everyone on the staff had secret or better clearances and there’d never been a leak from the place, no matter the circumstances nor how high the patient’s profile might have been. “I assume Todd was taken there.”
“Yeah,” Rencke said. “And you’ll have some muscle.”
“For the time being,” McGarvey replied, a little distantly now that he was ramping up to go back into the field. “Send somebody over to pick up Givens. Give it to the Bureau for now, but I want him brought out to the Campus and secured.” The Campus was the cluster of buildings, above- and belowground, at the Agency’s Langley headquarters.
“Pushing a
“Do it,” McGarvey said. “We’ll see you at the hospital.”
“Right,” Rencke said and broke the connection.
McGarvey looked out the window but Katy was gone, and when he turned around she was standing in the doorway a stricken look on her features.
“Who’s going to All Saints?” she asked.
“Liz,” McGarvey said and he started toward his wife, but she held up a hand.
“How bad is she?”
“It’s not her.”
Katy’s eyes narrowed. “Not Audie. Is it Todd? Has there been an accident?”
He had dreaded this moment for his entire career, but it was the nature of the business that casualties would occur. It was war, us against them. Only when the star that would be put up in the lobby of the Old Headquarters Building, anonymous, no name, representing a fallen agent you were close to, was the burden next to unbearable.
“Todd was shot to death this afternoon.”
Katy went pale. “Dear God in heaven,” she said softly, and she looked deeply into her husband’s eyes. “Assassinated?”
“Yes.”
“Has Elizabeth been told yet?”
“Otto and Louise are driving down to the Farm right now. He called me from the car. They’ll be there for her, and they’ll chopper up to the hospital. Todd’s body is there.”
“Why?” Katy asked, her voice plaintive, pleading.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.”
Katy hesitated for just a beat. “I’ll pack if you’ll clear the table,” she said, and she turned and left.
And so it begins, McGarvey thought, rage already building up inside of him.
FIVE
Givens’s town house was in Berwyn Heights, northeast, just within the Beltway, in a pleasant brick and redwood complex, with a pool, clubhouse, and playground for the kids. Thousand Oaks was home to mostly young, upwardly mobile couples, near to a good private prep school, shopping malls, and a couple of decent restaurants. His town house was a three-bedroom — one for him and his wife, one for their only child, Larry, four, and one for an office where he was trying to work on a novel.
The dark blue Toyota SUV backed into a parking spot just at eight, and Kangas doused the headlights and shut off the engine. They would have made the hit earlier, on the road as they had with Van Buren, but their instructions had been to contain the situation. It meant they needed access to the newspaperman’s personal computer, so they’d waited until Givens had left the
They watched as he went up the walk and entered his apartment.
It was a matter of timing. It was unlikely that the CIA would have allowed news of the assassination of one of its officers to go public, at least until it was known why the kill had been made. That meant Givens would not know that the man he’d met for lunch was dead, and that he was likely to be next.
But sooner or later the Company, probably through the FBI, would be sending someone over here to have a
