The hall door behind DeCamp opened and Wolfhardt, holding a 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol expertly in his left hand, came in. “Considering your abilities I thought it best to lie about where I was,” he said.
“An advantage,” DeCamp told him. “Now what?”
“She was telling the truth about Ms. Renault. We thought she was still in Paris. It wasn’t our intention to kill her.”
“Now what?” DeCamp asked again.
“More work, if you’ll cooperate.”
“For the Saudis? Al-Naimi?”
“Yes, and they have even more money than her,” Wolfhardt said, nodding toward Anne Marie’s body. “And a longer reach, and collectively a greater intelligence, more connections, more power here in the Middle East and everywhere else.”
“Including Washington?” DeCamp asked, wanting to keep Wolfhardt engaged.
The German laughed. “Of course. Why do you ask?”
“I was thinking about disappearing there.”
“You are a clever bastard,” Wolfhardt said. “What else are you carrying?”
DeCamp started to move away, drawing the German half a step forward, and he pulled out his KA-BAR knife with his right hand and turned back, parrying Wolfhardt’s gun hand, the single silenced shot popping into one of the sliding glass doors, and plunged the knife into the man’s chest, between the ribs, hitting the heart center mass.
He stepped back to avoid the initial gush of blood and looked into Wolfhardt’s eyes as the man sank dead to the floor.
“As I told your boss, beware the anger of the legions,” DeCamp said.
He left the penthouse, careful not to step in any of the blood, and took the elevator down to the garage. A few minutes later he was driving away from the building and heading for the highway back to Abu Dhabi, his work finished. Melbourne, he thought. He would go to ground in Australia where he would wait to see what shook out.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
McGarvey and Gail, dressed in hazmat suits, took a golf cart up A1A to the north end of the plant where Eve was inside one of the construction trailers poring over blueprints of the transformer yard with Townsend and Strasser. They looked up, startled, when the door opened.
“Do we have breakout up here?” Townsend demanded, and Eve looked as if she were a deer caught in some headlights.
McGarvey took off his hood. “You’re clean, I didn’t want to be recognized.”
“Mac,” Eve said with obvious relief and pleasure. “I was getting worried. Have you seen the crowd?”
“A hundred thousand people are on their way, and it’s why I’m here.”
Gail had taken off her hood. “Before anything happens we need to get you back up to Vero. But just for tonight.”
Townsend was angry. “What the hell are you talking about? Will there be another attack?”
“Schlagel is supposed to be here around six, and once he gets his people fired up there’s no telling what might happen,” McGarvey explained. “But Eve is one of his main targets, so I want her out of the line of fire. And if I could move the power plant I’d do that too.”
“Well, I’m sure as hell not leaving,” Townsend said, and Strasser nodded but he didn’t seem to be quite as enthusiastic.
“I can’t leave like this,” Eve said. “I mean how long is this supposed to go on? Vanessa is under repairs right now and InterOil is promising they should have her up here within a week. Are those crazy people going to keep on attacking? Killing more people?”
“It stops tonight,” McGarvey said.
“We’ve lost Lisa and Don already, and all the others. I’m not going to put more of my people in harm’s way,” Eve said, her voice rising.
“It ends tonight,” McGarvey said again, and it finally penetrated for her and for Townsend and Strasser.
“The National Guard isn’t going to stop a crowd that big, not unless they mean to block the road with tanks and actually fire into them,” Townsend said. “And getting Dr. Larsen up to Vero is out, because Schlagel’s people are blocking A1A from the north as well.”
“Actually Colonel Scofield is going to pull back and let them past the barriers.”
“Gives them access to South Service,” Gail said.
“And everywhere else,” Strasser said. “Including places that are contaminated. A lot of people will get hurt. We can’t allow that to happen under any circumstance.”
“I agree,” McGarvey said. “But at the right moment we’re going to have Schlagel dress in a hazmat suit and meet me in the South Service lobby.”
Townsend was skeptical. “What makes you think he’ll agree to something like that? What’s in it for him?”
“I’ve been a thorn in his side ever since the first attack here, and the attack on Vanessa Explorer.”
“Goddamnit, stop right there,” Townsend said. “Because if I’m reading you right, you’re telling us that Schalgel was somehow involved. And I’m just not buying it. The man wants to be president, and the media is all over him. He can’t take a dump without it being reported on.”
“He’s involved,” McGarvey said. “And I’m going to prove it tonight.”
“How?” Townsend asked.
And McGarvey explained it to them, getting the same initially incredulous reaction that Gail had given him.
“You think he’ll fall for a cheap stunt like that?” Townsend asked. “It makes no sense.”
“He’ll have no other choice. His ego will demand it.”
Townsend and Strasser weren’t seeing it, but Eve was.
“I’m a bigger issue to him than you are,” she said. “All the more reason for me to stick around.”
But McGarvey disagreed. “He’s getting desperate now that his people failed to stop your project.”
“And desperate people do desperate things,” Gail said. “Without us, the project goes on. But if something should happen to you, it’s over.”
Eve wasn’t happy, but she nodded. She’d seen firsthand what people opposed to her project were willing to do. “Still leaves us with the problem of how to get me out of here.”
“A police helicopter is coming up from Miami with a couple of FBI agents who’ll take you up to Vero and stick around until morning. If things go bad down here they’ll make sure that you get back to Washington.”
“If things go bad here tonight, we’ll have bigger problems than getting Dr. Larsen to safety, because it’ll mean that Schlagel has won and nothing will stop him,” Townsend said. “Everyone loses, including us.”
Strasser shook his head in wonderment. “One man against a mob of one hundred thousand?”
McGarvey smiled. “I’ll have Gail with me. Cuts the odds in half.”
“What about us?”
“Anywhere but South Service,” McGarvey said. “If he sees anyone else he’ll take it as a trap and won’t play along.”
SEVENTY-NINE
Twenty minutes after Eve was safely away with her minders, Mac and Gail were back at the decontamination tent preparing the hazmat suit Schlagel would wear if he took the bait, when Colonel Scofield radioed.
