“Ronni stay where you are, he has me,” Kangas shouted. “Sorry, Mr. McGarvey, but you’ll have to be satisfied with just me.”
A black rage threatened to block McGarvey’s sanity, but he forced himself to calm down. This was business, nothing more. These guys were only a means to an end. “Who were the shooters who took out my son-in-law and the newspaper reporter and his family?”
“Just one gun. Ex Green Beret, works out of our Washington office. He’s Mr. Remington’s right-hand man. He was our spotter at the airport when you came in. Short, dark.”
“Name?”
“Calvin Boberg. Lives down in Arlington.”
“Why are you telling me this?” McGarvey asked.
“Because if it was my family that got wiped out I’d go after the bastard who did it, and nothing could stop me.”
“How do I know it wasn’t you?”
“We’re contractors, which means we don’t kill women and children. But that’s what Admin’s come to, and now that Mr. Sandberger’s dead it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse, because Remington is a crazy son of a bitch.”
“But you were sent to Baghdad to kill me, and now you’re here,” McGarvey said. “Why specifically?”
“Because of what your son-in-law probably told you on the phone after meeting with the reporter.”
“The Friday Club?”
“Yeah, Mr. Foster, he’s one of our biggest clients, and he wants you dead.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, and I swear to Christ it’s the truth. But Remington and Sandberger were both worried that you would probably get too close for comfort. You were the company’s top priority.”
What Kangas was saying had the ring of truth to it, but there was more, just out of reach. McGarvey could feel it.
Something moved a little higher up the hill toward the road, but still to the left, but then stopped. Kangas had heard it and he stiffened.
“Tell him to walk away or I’ll shoot you right now and it’ll be just him and me,” McGarvey said.
“You’re going to shoot me anyway.”
“No need, I got what I wanted.”
Kangas shifted his weight to his left leg and started to swivel away from the gun pointed at the side of his head. The man was good, his movement sudden and swift, but he’d tensed the instant before he started to turn and McGarvey had felt it, and followed to the left, the pistol never leaving the contractor’s jawline.
“Your choice,” McGarvey said, jamming the pistol even harder.
“What do you want me to do?” Kangas asked, resignation finally in his voice.
“Tell your partner to toss his gun out where I can see it and walk back up to the car and wait for you.”
“Ronni,” Kangas shouted.
“I heard him,” Mustapha said from maybe only a few yards farther up the hill. “I can take him out from here.”
“Don’t miss,” McGarvey said, and he pulled the pistol’s hammer back. It was not necessary but the sound was distinctive.
“Do what he says, goddamnit, and we get to walk out of here alive!”
“I heard what you told him,” Mustapha said. “If Remington goes down, what about the money?”
“Screw the money.”
Mustapha was silent for several seconds.
“Come on, man,” Kangas said. “Just do it.”
Mustapha stepped into view, his hands in plain sight out to the sides. He let his gun drop to the ground. “If you’re going to shoot me it’ll have to be in the back,” he said. “But it wasn’t us who wiped out your family, you have my word on it.” He turned and started back up the hill.
When he was gone, McGarvey stepped back. “Go.”
Kangas didn’t bother turning around, just headed up the hill after Mustapha.
When they were both gone, McGarvey followed them, coming within sight of the road just as they were getting into the Taurus. A minute later they drove away, and McGarvey called Louise’s cell.
“Can I bum a ride?” he asked when she answered.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Remington was fifty years old, the same age his father had been when he’d hung himself from a ceiling light fixture, the only decisive thing the man had ever accomplished in his miserable life. And at this moment Remington figured that he had come to his own crossroad. Either the McGarvey situation would be resolved and Admin would continue its work in Baghdad for the State Department and here in Washington for the Friday Club, or everything would fall apart.
The cab had taken Colleen over to Reagan National Airport an hour ago, and before she’d walked out the door she’d kissed him, something she had not done in private for a very long time.
“It’s the shootings in Baghdad, isn’t it,” she’d said. “Roland was assassinated and you think you might be next?”
She was a bright woman, and never missed much, but he’d just smiled. “Anything’s possible, my dear. Might even get run over by a bus.”
“But you’re sending me up to New York just in case. How terribly romantic.”
“Just for a day or two.”
She gave him a double take. “You’re actually worried something like that could happen here. I mean just now that you’ve been handed the company practically on a silver platter. Doesn’t seem fair somehow.”
Remington had wanted to tell her to shut her mouth, but he’d held his smile. “Have a good time in New York.”
She’d given him a last, searching look. “Always do,” she said and she left.
It was quiet on Wednesdays, when the house staff had the day off. The only one left was Sergeant Randall, his driver and personal bodyguard, who had his own apartment in the carriage house above the garage at the rear of the property.
Remington stood by the French doors in his study looking at the rose garden. At this moment the bushes were bare, and looked dead. But in two months the garden — his personal project — would be magnificent. If everything held together that long, and he was here to see it.
It was coming up on nine-thirty, time to leave for the office, and yet the only word he’d received had been from Boberg who’d confirmed that McGarvey had shown up in disguise.
“A woman picked him up at the curb in a Toyota SUV,” Boberg reported. “But the plates matched some French doctor supposedly out of the country right now.”
“What about Kangas and Mustapha?”
“Last I heard they were following the Toyota into the city. Haven’t you heard from them yet?”
“No.”
“I’m in the office now, do you want me to try to reach them? Find out what’s going on?”
“I’ll take care of it myself from here,” Remington said. “But listen, Cal, I’m putting you in total charge of Admin for the next couple of days. I’m going to be busy soothing some ruffled feathers.”
“He hasn’t called here yet,” Boberg said, referring to Robert Foster.
“He’s waiting for me to take care of the situation. So just sit tight.”
“Business as usual?”
Remington laughed despite himself. “Or the illusion thereof,” he said. “Something comes up, call me.”
“Will do.”
Remington called the sat phone Kangas had been using since Baghdad, and it was answered on the second
