ring.
“It was a bloody fucking circus,” Kangas shouted.
Remington could hear the sounds of people and traffic in the background. “Where the hell are you?”
“On the Mall, in front of the Vietnam Memorial. Figured we needed to be around a lot of people. The son of a bitch is good, and we’re going to need some serious help if you still want him taken down.”
Remington held the phone tightly to his ear, but his other hand was shaking. He hadn’t had a drink in two days, and he needed something now. “What happened?” he demanded.
Kangas settled down and went over everything that happened from the moment McGarvey showed up and Boberg told them about the Toyota SUV. “The bitch driving stopped up in Rock Creek Park and McGarvey jumped out and ran into the woods. It was a setup.”
“Which you must have guessed.”
“Right. But the guy knows his stuff.”
“Why didn’t he kill you?” Remington asked, afraid that he already knew the answer, and knew he wouldn’t like it.
“He wanted us to take a message back to you.”
“Me, personally?”
“He mentioned you by name, and he also said he knew about Foster and the Friday Club. Said he was coming after everybody because of what happened to his son-in-law and wife and kid.”
“He knows Admin was involved? That you and Ronni were the triggermen?” Remington asked, astounded.
“He knows Admin was involved, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him what part we played,” Kangas said. “So what’s next? If you want us to go after him again, we’ll need more money, but we’ll arrange for our own extra muscle.”
Remington’s stomach was sour. “What’s next, you pricks?” he practically shouted into the phone. “You’re fucking fired, that’s what’s next. And you’ll have more to worry about than McGarvey, because every contractor on our payroll will be gunning for you. And I’ll make goddamned sure that every other service knows how incompetent you are.”
“Just maybe you’re our next target,” Kangas said.
“In your dreams,” Remington shot back. But he was talking to dead air. The connection had been broken.
He slammed the phone down, and went to the wet bar where he picked up the brandy decanter, but after an intense moment put it back. “Not now,” he muttered. “Not like this.”
It had been the worst possible news. Sandberger, and now this. And for the first time since he’d gotten out of the service, just before he’d teamed up with Roland to start Admin, and before he’d married Colleen and her money, he felt as if his back was truly up against the wall. He imagined that his father had felt the same thing at the end. But the old man had run out of options; no place to go and no money with which to get there.
Remington went back to his desk and sat down. It was different for him. He had set aside a fair amount of money — some of it siphoned from Admin and some of it from Colleen — and he owned a pleasant eighteenth- century villa in the south of France, just a few kilometers inland from the Med. Life could be comfortable there.
A new life, he thought. But first he had to cover his back. Maintain the illusion that Admin was still up and running and very much on track, which would give him time to slip well clear before he was missed. Twenty-four hours, tops.
Reluctantly he called Foster’s encrypted number, which wasn’t answered until the fourth ring.
“I expected a call from you much sooner, Gordon. What is the current situation vis-a-vis Mr. McGarvey?”
“I sent two shooters after him here in Washington this morning.”
“But they failed again, is that what you’ve telephoned to tell me?” Foster asked.
“Yes, sir. But it’s worse than that. Apparently McGarvey not only knows that Admin engineered the deaths of his son-in-law, wife, and daughter, but all of it was at the behest of the Friday Club. At your behest.” Remington hoped the bastard was squirming. That all of them in the man’s little group of tin-pot lobbyists were. None of them had any class that only centuries of English breeding could produce.
“How could he know such things unless someone from your staff said something. How about your two shooters?”
“They don’t know that you are a client. Only Roland and me and a few key people know about it.”
“It’s possible somehow they found Givens’s real CD and it’s also possible that Roland opened his mouth to try to save his life,” Foster said. “But it doesn’t really matter at this stage, because Mr. McGarvey has no proof. Couldn’t possibly have.”
“Perhaps you should see that the FBI takes a more active interest in arresting him. Maybe there could be an unfortunate shoot-out.”
“No,” Foster said flatly. “Your firm was hired to take care of just this sort of thing, and will continue to do so. Whatever it takes, no matter how much money you need, no matter how many Admin personnel it takes, I want McGarvey eliminated.”
“That may be messy.”
“Handle it.”
“McGarvey will almost certainly come after you, and quite soon I would think. Probably tonight. I’ll be sending Cal Boberg out to your place. He’s one of our best. He’ll handle it, as you say.”
“I’ll be expecting him,” Foster said. “But Gordon, I have my own security measures out here. Make sure he’s forewarned. His only mission will be to provide an outer layer of defense should McGarvey be foolish enough to come all this way.”
“Yes, sir,” Remington said.
After he hung up, he thought about his next moves. He would be out of here no later than midnight and on his way first to Atlanta aboard the company jet, as a diversion, and then off to Paris, commercial, and his new life. Long before his rose garden bloomed he would be eating clementine oranges from his own trees.
He telephoned Boberg at the office. “A change of plans, Cal. I have a new assignment for you.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
On the way back to the Renckes’ brownstone in Georgetown Louise was silent, almost as if she were afraid to ask the one question that had been on her lips the moment she’d seen him waiting by the side of Rock Creek Road.
And he was glad for it, because he felt battered, physically as well as emotionally. Admin had killed just about everyone he truly loved on the orders of the Friday Club. Robert Foster’s orders. S. Gordon Remington’s orders. Roland Sandberger’s orders.
But just before Louise pulled into the driveway back to the garage in what once upon a time had been a mews of carriage houses with apartments above, she glanced at him. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been better,” he said. He felt that a great weariness was falling on him because of what he knew, and because of what would have to happen next.
“Did you kill those two guys?”
“No need for it,” he told her. “I wanted information and they gave it to me. It was a part of the bargain, so I had them toss their weapons and let them drive away.”
“Will they come back?”
“Maybe,” McGarvey said. “And if they do I’ll kill them.”
Louise said nothing, just shook her head and parked the car. They went inside together and Otto came to the head of the stairs. His operational headquarters, as he called one of the front bedrooms filled with computer equipment, was on the second floor. He’d spent most of his days and nights up there since Todd’s funeral and the explosion afterward.
“How’d it go,” he asked.
