word with the
“Let’s do it,” Kangas said.
He and Mustapha, dressed in jeans and dark Windbreakers, got out of the SUV, crossed the parking area, careful to stay out of the direct spill of the streetlight, and went directly to Givens’s town house. No one else was around, though traffic on University Boulevard/Highway 193, below, was steady. Nor did it appear that anyone was sitting on one of the balconies, or looking out a window.
At the door, Mustapha pulled on latex gloves, drew his silenced 9mm Austrian-made Steyr GB, and stepped aside as Kangas put on his gloves then rang the doorbell.
A few seconds later Givens answered the intercom. “Yes?”
Kangas held a CIA identification card in a leather wallet directly in front of the peephole. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but Mr. Van Buren sent me. It’s about your meeting this noon, and the disk. He has a question.”
“I told him to phone.”
“Yes, sir. But considering the nature of the information, he thought it might be safer this way.”
“Oh, all right,” Givens said, and a shadow moved away from the peephole. Moments later the deadbolt snapped back and the door started to open.
Kangas pushed hard, bulling his way into the town house, shoving Givens back against the hall closet door, and charging the rest of the way into the apartment.
“What the fuck—” Givens shouted.
Mustapha stepped into the apartment, closed the door behind him, and fired one shot into the middle of Givens’s forehead at point-blank range.
A young, attractive woman in shorts and a T-shirt, her feet bare, was at the kitchen counter when Kangas, a pistol in his hand, appeared in the doorway. She was looking up, surprise and fear in her eyes, her mouth pursed, as he fired one shot, catching her in the bridge of her nose, driving her back against the stove, where she crumpled to the floor.
A small, slightly built boy with tousled brown hair came around the corner, and before he could comprehend what was happening Kangas shot him in the head, killing him instantly and driving his body back out of the kitchen, blood splattering on the wall.
Mustapha came in from the living room and glanced indifferently at the bodies of the woman and boy. “I have his BlackBerry. I’ll take the study,” he said.
Kangas nodded. Mustapha was the computer expert, and the clock was clicking. Time was precious.
Careful not to step in the blood, Kangas went down the corridor to the master bedroom furnished nicely in Danish modern, and quickly searched the closet, where he found an old military .45 autoloader, but nothing in any of the clothing; then he checked the chest of drawers, rifling through the shirts and shorts and a small box with a few pieces of cheap jewelry, the armoire, again checking pockets and finally the two nightstands and the drawers beneath the bed, which contained only extra blankets, pillows, and sheets.
The framed pictures on the walls looked like family photos, and quickly taking them apart revealed nothing hidden. Nor did his search of the master bathroom, or of the child’s messy bedroom at the back of the town house, turn up anything useful.
Mustapha was buttoning up a laptop computer when Kangas came back. He looked up. “Anything?”
“No. You?”
“Everything’s in his computer,” Mustapha said. “Names, dates, places, transcripts of interviews, and lots of photographs.”
The study had been taken apart, books down from the shelves, drawers opened and emptied, framed photographs and certificates taken apart. It looked as if the place had been randomly searched, which was their intention.
“Nothing else?” Kangas asked.
Mustapha shook his head.
Kangas took out a plastic envelope that held a dozen strips of sticky tape each holding a fingerprint or partial print and transferred the prints around the apartment — doorknobs, countertops, and the woman’s purse and Givens’s wallet, which were first emptied of money and credit cards.
The entire operation had taken them less than seven minutes before they cracked the door to make sure that nothing moved in the parking lot, and then calmly walked back to the SUV and drove off, Mustapha behind the wheel this time as Kangas got on the cell phone.
Remington answered on the first ring. “Yes.”
“The problem has been taken care of.”
“Both problems?”
The question was more than rude, putting in doubt his ability and judgment, and Kangas bridled, but he held back a sharp answer. Remington might not have proper manners, he was a Brit after all, but he did know what he was doing, and the pay was good. The problem was Kangas had never much cared for taking orders. And he certainly never liked smug bastards who didn’t show proper respect. It was one of the reasons he’d left the Company, which was about little more than suits giving orders, many of which never made any sense because the bastards giving them either didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, or they’d had their noses so far up someone’s ass they couldn’t come up for air.
“Yes, sir, both problems,” he said after a brief hesitation.
They were back out on University heading toward the Beltway, traffic very light, when a pair of unmarked cars moving very fast passed them and pulled into the driveway of the apartment complex.
FBI, Kangas figured, and he glanced at Mustapha. They had cut it close this time.
“Do you have a delivery?” Remington asked.
“Yes,” Kangas said. “When?”
“Morning. Seven o’clock.”
Kangas wanted to ask why the delay if the operation had been important, but again he held back from the question. “As you wish,” he said.
“Make damn sure you come in clean,” Remington ordered brusquely. “No fuckups.”
The day would come, Kangas promised himself, when Remington would apologize for his incredible rudeness and lack of respect. It would be the last thing he did before he died.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
SIX
It was four a.m. in Washington when the CIA’s executive Gulfstream touched down at Andrews Air Force Base and quickly taxied over to a hangar well away from operations, and then inside, where its engines spooled down.
Katy had taken a light sedative just after they’d left Sarasota, but she hadn’t managed to get much sleep, and now she looked like hell, her hair a mess, her makeup smeared, and her eyes red and puffy. But she didn’t seem to care about her appearance or anything else, and McGarvey was worried about her.
“We’re here, sweetheart,” he said; she looked up at him but didn’t say anything.
A half-dozen Company security officers in dark blue Windbreakers were waiting with a pair of Cadillac Escalade SUVs inside the hangar. One of them was speaking into his lapel mike when the flight attendant opened the hatch, and McGarvey helped Katy to the steps.
“Thank you,” he told the young woman, who’d been solicitous but not intrusive on the flight.
A ground crewman opened the cargo bay hatch and took out the McGarveys’ hanging bag and overnight case, which one of the security officers took and placed in the back of the lead car.
It had been fifteen years ago, maybe twenty, when McGarvey had returned from an assignment that had gone bad in Chile, when Katy had given him her ultimatum: either me or the CIA. It hadn’t mattered that he had assassinated a woman — the wife of a general — who he’d thought was innocent, that he had blood on his hands, that he was battered physically and emotionally; he hadn’t been given the time to explain and ask for help. So he’d
