“He didn’t kill them,” Louise said. “Anybody hungry for breakfast?”
“Sure,” McGarvey said. “Then I’ll need to borrow your car.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Wherever Gordon Remington is holed up. Because if the two contractors at Rock Creek report in, he’ll go to ground. Might run anyway because of Baghdad, and I definitely want to catch him before he gets too far.”
Louise looked up at her husband. “You’d better tell him,” she said, and she went down the hall to the kitchen.
“Tell me what?” McGarvey asked, going upstairs.
Pete Boylan stood at the open door to Otto’s workroom. She was dressed in jeans and a light sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up, and even though her face was bruised, and she had a bandage on her left arm, she still looked fetching. “You’re a popular guy, Mr. Director,” she said. “You might think about hanging out here until after dark, less chance of you being spotted.”
“I walked right past the two Bureau agents at the airport.”
“Yeah, and they’re mad as hell,” Otto said, and he led McGarvey back to his workroom. Two long tables filled with large wide-screen computer monitors, keyboards, and several pieces of equipment that prevented electronic eavesdropping, prevented virus infections, and allowed an undetectable wireless connection through the system at a Starbucks half a block away had been set up in a long V shape.
“You need to take a look at something,” Pete said. She sat down at one of the keyboards and pulled up the FBI’s For-Internal-Use-Only Persons of Interest page. The first name on the list was McGarvey’s. Included was a lengthy file with photographs of him in various disguises and in various locals including Frankfurt, and most recently Baghdad — but none showing him at any crime scene.
“They know you were there,” Pete said. “But take a look at this.”
She brought up the rest of his file, including his bio and a fairly complete rendering of his CIA jacket from day one right up to the Mexico City and Pyongyang incidents.
“All classified top secret or above,” Pete said.
“I’ve been looking, Mac, but I have no idea how that stuff got to the Bureau,” Otto said. “No traces were left behind in any of the Company’s computer systems. So if someone hacked our mainframe they were better than me.”
“It was probably done the old-fashioned way,” Pete said.
And McGarvey saw it before Otto, who was too tied into his computer world to think along a parallel line. “Someone copied the paper files and hand-carried them across.”
“Someone with access,” Pete said. “Someone on the seventh floor.”
Otto saw it, too. “This proves it,” he said. “We thought McCann was working with someone else in the company,” he explained to Pete. “Maybe someone he was reporting to.”
“Well, he’s still there, and he’s trying to bring you down, Mr. Director,” Pete said.
“Show him the rest.”
“Okay, so the Bureau is looking for you, but so is the U.S. Marshal’s Service.” She brought up the Service’s internal-use files and came up with the same dossier on McGarvey. “And the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, D.C.’s Metro Police, and just about every law enforcement agency — state, county, and municipal — in a several-hundred-mile radius. Homeland Security has you on its watch list. And just this morning Baghdad police were seriously looking for you, and Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S. filed a formal complaint.”
Nothing was a surprise to McGarvey except the speed at which everything was happening. “Foster must be getting nervous to go to these lengths,” he said.
“I came over last night and Otto briefed me,” Pete said. “But we still don’t have enough proof that Foster’s Friday Club has anything to do with this, or with the Mexico City or Pyongyang incidents. Leastways nothing we can take to the Justice Department.”
“How’d you find this place?” McGarvey asked.
“I sent an e-mail to Otto’s home account and he answered me within ninety seconds.”
“Untraceable,” Otto said.
“Most of the people I talked to on Campus think someone is gunning for you, but their hands are tied. They’re afraid for their jobs. It’s scary over there. Morale has never been so low.”
“Technically makes you a traitor,” McGarvey said.
She smiled. “Just doing my job, Mr. Director.”
“Might be easier if you started calling me Mac. My friends do. The ones in this house at least.”
“You’d be surprised how many friends you have in this town,” she said.
“And just now too many enemies,” McGarvey said. “But you’re wrong about proof, I’ve got all I need.” And he told them about Kangas and Mustapha in Baghdad and again in Rock Creek Park this morning. “Admin is right in the middle of it.”
“On the Friday Club’s orders,” Otto said. “But the stuff on the disk they found in Todd’s car is worthless. So right now all we have is your word that a couple of Admin contractors at gunpoint told you everything.” Otto shook his head. “We need more than that to convince just about everyone in Washington including the president’s staff that you’re no traitor.”
“We can go after these two guys,” Pete said. “Present them as material witnesses.”
“They’re just shooters, not planners. They heard stuff, but they probably had no direct contact with Foster and his group,” McGarvey said. “It’s why I went to Baghdad, to see what Sandberger had to say. But he was willing to take a bullet rather than tell me anything. Which leaves us Remington.”
Otto was clearly worried. “What do you have in mind?”
“Find out where he lives, find out what security measures he has in place, and if he has bodyguards, and then I’ll go over to see him.”
“And if he’s willing to take a bullet the same as Sandberger, that’ll leave us with squat,” Otto said. “Admin killed Todd and Katy and Liz. We already had that pretty well figured out. But as bad as it is you gotta calm down and think it through. Honest injun.”
“Goddamnit, I’m not going to walk away,” McGarvey said, his entire body numb. Killing Sandberger had been satisfying. Too satisfying, and yet Otto was right, killing Remington would do nothing for them.
“Okay, so if you get nothing out of Remington, what next? Foster?”
“Yes.”
“And after him you’d be gunning for some top people in this town,” Otto said. “Think it out. Where does it end? And more important than that, where’s the connection between Mexico City, Pyongyang, and now? Because I don’t see it.”
“You still need material witnesses,” Pete broke in. “One material witness who would be willing to testify against Foster to save his butt. S. Gordon Remington.”
“That’s right,” McGarvey said.
“To save his butt from you,” she said quietly. “There’s no way you can run around Washington on your own — especially not during the day — no matter how good your disguise is.”
Louise was at the door. “She’s right. I recognized you because we’re friends. Could happen again if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Otto can check out Remington’s house and security measures and I’ll go over there myself later, around dinnertime, and ring the doorbell,” Pete said. “I’m not very threatening-looking, and he wouldn’t be expecting someone like me to show up.”
“He’s ex-SAS,” McGarvey said. “Sandhurst.”
“No offense, Mac, but he’s an old guy who probably hasn’t been on a field assignment in years. And I’m pretty good. I think I can take him down, and bring him back here, and we’ll have our foot in the Friday Club’s front door.”
It made sense but McGarvey didn’t like it. “That puts you on the firing line.”
“I didn’t lose a child or a spouse, but I did lose a partner who was my friend. And I’ve been on the firing line before.”
“You can’t go on a field ops with an empty stomach,” Louise said. “Breakfast is ready.”
