probably fell overboard.”
“Very well.”
“Get rid of his clothes, and clean the blood off the deck, please,” Anne Marie said, and she went back into the salon where she poured another glass of Krug. She was no longer bored.
In the morning she would call Lt. Col. Mustapha Amrusi, chief of Libya’s External Security Organization and ask if she would be welcome in Tripoli first thing in the morning, merely in transit for a flight to Dubai, which considering the amount of money Amrusi and others had made from the MG, would not pose a problem. She would call for her private jet to pick her up and the ship would return to Monaco. For the moment she felt that it would be best to stay away from Europe.
But then her mood darkened as her thoughts turned to Wolfhardt. She would miss him.
PART THREE
The Following Weeks
FORTY-ONE
Three days after Oslo, Eve went back to her office at Princeton to make the final preparations for moving out to Vanessa Explorer, and McGarvey cabbed from Dulles to his apartment in Georgetown.
None of Schlagel’s crowd had been there at the airport, which had not been a surprise to McGarvey after the assassination attempt, but it had been a momentary relief for Eve.
“How’s Mr. Jacobsen, have you heard anything?” she’d asked McGarvey at the airport.
“Tore up his right shoulder pretty badly, but he’s a hero for saving your life,” McGarvey told her.
“I’m glad. He’s a genuinely nice man.”
“What’s next?” he’d asked her before they parted.
“Depends on when the next shot will come.”
“I think you’ll be okay for now,” McGarvey told her, and yet he was having a hard time accepting that the situation was all that simple. The assassination attempt and the shooting of the two assassins had ended it all a little too neatly for him. He just wasn’t sure that it was over with yet. Some intuition, some voice, niggled at the back of his head.
She shrugged. “In any case Princeton first, then back here to Washington for a couple of days, and then out to my rig. The extra million-plus will be a big help, because Commerce doesn’t want to give me any funding, and NOAA’s strapped.” She’d smiled uncertainly. “What about you?”
“We’re still looking for the guy at Hutchinson Island, but we’re coming up empty-handed.” Which was a puzzlement to McGarvey, because Yablonski was damned good and Otto was even better. Whoever the contractor was, he’d left absolutely no track. Almost as if he were a street person, homeless with no background, no driver’s license, no passport, no traceable bank accounts, no criminal record, nor any record tying him to any military service in the world, including the South African Defense Force.
Eve got serious. They were standing outside in the queue for a cab, and the place was noisy. “Do you think he’ll be the next to come after me?”
“Not just you personally. He’ll want to sabotage the oil rig somewhere out in the middle of the Gulf. Send it to the bottom.”
“With me and everyone else aboard.”
“Whomever he’s working for definitely wants to see you fail.”
“InterOil gave me the rig.”
“To prove your project can’t work.”
Eve had turned away, a sudden look of anguish and incomprehension coming over her, as if after finally reaching this point, the Nobel Prize, the rig, the vindication of her science, she still had enemies who not only wanted to see her fail, but were willing to do horrible things to make that happen. “I always figured that I knew what rationality was. Rational thoughts, rational arguments, which would result in logical outcomes. But I’m not so sure anymore, you know?”
McGarvey felt sorry for her. “How rational are two professors fighting for the same tenured position?”
She looked startled, as if it were a new concept, but then she smiled and nodded. “You’re right, of course. You should see the fights. No holds barred. Common sense out the door. Pitiful, actually, because it’s all about professional jealousy. But this isn’t the same, is it? It’s not that simple.”
“No,” McGarvey admitted. “But what they’re doing is rational from their perspective because they’re protecting what amounts to several trillions of dollars over the next fifty to one hundred years. And all that’s not just for the rich guys. It includes the oil field workers from the geologists all the way down to the grunts, most of them with families to support, mortgages, braces for their kids’ teeth, college funds, eventually retirement, and you’re the one who wants take all that away from them. And Schlagel is an opportunist, and from his pulpit what he is doing is rational. He wants to be president, he needs a cause, and you’re it. Do you think any of them would hesitate to pull the trigger if they thought it would make their lives a little better, a little safer?”
Eve’s lips compressed, but she nodded. “I see your point,” she said. Her cab came and she kissed McGarvey on the cheek. “Dinner in town when I get back?”
“Sure thing,” McGarvey said.
After he’d shaved, taken a shower, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a white shirt, and a dark blue blazer he found the note from Gail on the kitchen counter, welcoming him home. The Air France flight had landed around one, and now it was a little past three, and she’d written that she would be at the office when he got back. He found the note slightly disconcerting. It was the message from a wife to her husband, possessive, expectant, confining just now.
Staying in his apartment, cooking, making love, was giving her a sense of ownership. It was a natural feminine emotion to make sure that the nest was safe from predators that his wife Katy had found early on didn’t work with McGarvey. Couldn’t work. Same as his career with the Company. They wanted ownership. Some years ago a deputy director of operations had called him an anachronism, a throwback to the Wild West, a cowboy. And the man had argued that the CIA no longer had need of his kind. Yet they’d kept calling him back to figure out the mess of the day that couldn’t be addressed by any governmental agency on any sort of an official basis.
Sitting in the backseat of a cab heading out to Tysons Corner, he wondered, as he had wondered before — often — if it wasn’t finally time to get out. But it was a meaningless question, especially now that he had the bit in his teeth.
Otto called on his sat phone. “Oh, wow, Mac, she really looked good on stage. Especially the freedom of speech thing. Have you watched CNN’s take on the assassination attempt?”
“No, what’s happening?”
“Oslo took the wind out of Schlagel’s sails, and he’s backed way off.”
“Just for now,” McGarvey said. He was beginning to have a grudging respect for the reverend, who was no tent revival preacher, no simple circus performer. The man knew when to strike, and when to lay back. His timing was that of a national level politician, of a serious presidential contender. Though he would never directly attack Eve, he was capable of inciting it — that was already proven — and he had the motivation.
“That’s for sure, but it gives you some breathing room.”
“Anything new on our contractor?”
“Nada, but I have a couple of ideas that we can talk about over dinner tonight. Bring Gail with you, because she’s part of this thing, too.”
McGarvey was feeling cornered again, the same anger he’d carried around for more than a year still simmering just beneath the surface, but Otto was an old friend — his only friend. “Don’t play matchmaker,” he warned.
