walked out and had run to Switzerland, throwing away his marriage and young daughter. Because he had been too proud, and because he’d had nothing to give at that moment.
But now it was his turn. Katy was battered beyond anything he’d ever endured in his life, and she needed him more than he’d ever imagined anyone could need someone.
“Easy now,” he said, taking her arm and helping her down the boarding stairs.
One of the security officers came over, while the others, their heads on swivels, stood in a half-circle between the aircraft and the hangar’s open doors.
“Karl Tomlinson, Mr. Director, we’re here to get you to All Saints.”
“Is my daughter there yet?” McGarvey asked.
“Yes, sir, along with Mr. and Mrs. Rencke.”
They crossed to the lead SUV and McGarvey helped Katy step up and into the backseat. She was like a zombie, moving only when he helped her to move.
As soon as they were strapped in, the driver, with Tomlinson riding shotgun, took off and headed at a high rate of speed across the ramp to the main gate, where they were waved through, then directly up to Suitland Parkway and into Washington proper. At this time of the morning traffic was very light, and the driver only slowed for red lights, the chase car right on their tail.
“Anything new as of the last few hours?” McGarvey asked. Katy was staring out the window, apparently with little awareness of what was going on around her, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked the question.
Tomlinson looked over his shoulder, a hard expression on his square, solid face. “It was no drive-by shooting, sir. They were professionals.”
“They?”
“Someone called in, said they saw a man come around from Mr. Van Buren’s BMW and get into the passenger seat of a dark-colored SUV — possibly a Toyota or Nissan — a second man was behind the wheel.” Tomlinson glanced at Katy for a reaction, but she didn’t look up. “No descriptions or tag number, but it was a professional hit. Todd had apparently reached for his pistol, but never managed to draw it.”
Knives were stabbing into McGarvey’s skull; he kept seeing images of Todd and Liz and the baby, and of Todd in action. The kid had been damned good. Steady, reliable, and the hell of it was that he hadn’t needed the job. His parents had been wealthy and he’d inherited a lot of money and a big house. He’d come to work for the CIA out of ordinary patriotism, something that was a lot less rare, even in these times, than the average American realized.
“Did the Bureau pick up Josh Givens, the
“He and his wife and child were shot to death in their apartment, a few minutes after eight last night,” Tomlinson said. His accent was East Coast, maybe Connecticut or New Hampshire, and crisp. He was a professional in the middle of an assignment he found distasteful. “It was meant to look like a robbery. Money and credit cards missing.”
“Not likely,” McGarvey said, trying to see a reason. The stuff on the disk that Givens had handed over to Todd made absolutely no sense, and yet Todd and Givens had both been assassinated. The only common thread was the disk.
“We’re cooperating with the Bureau. They’ve agreed to keep a lid on it, and Mr. Adkins has agreed.”
Dick Adkins had been the deputy director of the CIA when McGarvey had been the DCI, and now he ran the show. He was a good administrator but not much of a spy.
Another thought suddenly struck McGarvey. “Was there a computer in the apartment?” he asked. “Maybe a laptop?”
“It wasn’t mentioned, sir,” Tomlinson said.
“Find out.”
Tomlinson turned away and said something into his lapel mike. It took a couple of minutes for the reply before he turned back. “No computer.”
“The disk in Todd’s car was not the one Givens handed him in the restaurant,” McGarvey said, at least one part of the assassination of his son-in-law and the reporter clear. “It was a fake. It’s why they had to get the computer.”
“I’ll pass that to the Bureau—”
“Not yet,” McGarvey said, his mind still spinning. If the disk was a fake, it meant the assassins may have been at the restaurant and witnessed the hand over. But it also meant that whoever had directed the hit had to know what Givens had been working on; had to know enough to manufacture the bogus disk so that it could be planted in Todd’s car after he’d been murdered.
Not only did they have the original disk and Givens’s computer that contained whatever it was the reporter had gathered about the Friday Club, but they had Todd’s cell phone from which they would have found out that his last call just before the murder had been to his father-in-law.
It made him the next best target. Exactly what he wanted.
All Saints Hospital was on a quiet side street not far from Georgetown University Hospital, in an undistinguished four-story brownstone with the emergency entrance at the rear. No sirens were ever used, and the brass plaque next to the gate in front read
Security in the main lobby was outwardly low key, one plain-looking man, who happened to be a weapons and martial arts expert, behind a desk. In the facility’s forty-plus years there’d never been any sort of an incident, nevertheless everyone — doctors, nurses, aides, security officers — were on their toes. Always.
The two Cadillacs drove through the electrically operated gate to the back, where the security officers got out first to make sure the parking area and emergency entrance were secured before they allowed McGarvey and his wife to get out of the lead car and hustle them inside. They were met by one of the nurses, a no-nonsense, severe-looking woman.
“Good morning, Mr. Director,” she said. “Would you like something for Mrs. McGarvey before we go up?”
“No,” McGarvey said. “We want to see our daughter.”
“Yes, sir. She’s on the fourth floor in the waiting room.”
McGarvey motioned for his security team to stay behind and he helped Katy back to the elevator and up to the fourth floor and the waiting room just across the corridor.
A stricken Elizabeth, dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers sat on a couch, Rencke’s wife, Louise, holding her shoulders. She looked up when her parents appeared in the doorway, and for a moment it seemed to McGarvey that she didn’t recognize them. But then she got up, slowly, like a tired old woman and came to them.
McGarvey folded her into his arms and held her, silently, for a long time.
“Oh, Daddy,” Elizabeth said softly, her voice husky, all the way from the back of her throat. “He looks so bad.”
“Where’s Audie?”
It took Liz a few moments to answer. “At the Farm, this is no place for her.”
Katy had come out of her trance, and she moved McGarvey aside. “Go see to him,” she said.
“He was assassinated,” Liz said. “Was it something he was working on? Do you know, because he didn’t say anything to me? Otto said he called you. But he never left a note. I was out on a field exercise, but I could have come into town with him. Maybe if I’d been there it could have been different.”
“It was something new, but he didn’t know anything about it until he got up here,” McGarvey said. “He was just coming up to see an old friend for lunch.”
“Who?”
“Josh Givens. They were friends in college.”
The name didn’t mean anything to Liz, and she shook her head. “Is he in the business?”
“He was an investigative reporter with the
Liz caught the past tense and her eyes hardened. “Did they get him, too?”
“Yeah,” McGarvey said, a sudden great weariness mixing with a deep rage that wanted to consume his sense of reason.
Liz and Katy and Louise were all staring at him. “Get the bastards, Daddy,” Liz said, the corners of her mouth down turned; a very hard look in her eyes.
