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  “It’s the Canadian Special Operations base where your shooter was trained.”

  Hammond’s fear suddenly turned to anger. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but you supplied me with the contact info on both those guys. And they failed.”

  “You wanted them to fail, Thomas. You specifically wanted to give McGarvey a challenge that he would be likely to win. Well, it worked. Not only did he show up in Canada, he’s just now on his way home from South Africa.”

  “So what?”

  “He traced the shooters to their home bases.”

  “Again, what’s your point?”

  “Both of those guys had contact with Russia.”

  Hammond suddenly got it, all of it. “You recommended the shooters, so was it unfair for me to assume that they would be clean? No Russian connections? No SVR or GRU connections?”

  Tarasov glanced out the slider at the helicopter. “Neither of them has a Russian intel file.”

  “Any Russian connections they may have had will carry no real weight with McGarvey. One of them was a Canadian, the other a South African. What are you worried about?”

  “You.”

  Hammond spread his hands, actually relieved. “Life will go on.”

  “I meant what do you want to do next? Continue with the game, or quit?”

  “Actually, I was thinking about ending it as is. But I don’t like to lose.”

  “You may in the end, despite your money.”

  “You’re in the same position.”

  “No, Thomas. You have wealthy friends and money managers. All of whom would drop you in an instant if they thought you were creating a risk.”

  “Again, you’re in the same spot.”

  Tarasov shook his head. “You have movie stars on your side, hangers-on; I have a different class of friends.”

  “The ones who recruit killers for you.”

  “Da, and they don’t give a damn who their targets are, as long as the money is right. So the question I came to ask you is still on the board. What do you want to do next?”

  Hammond didn’t have to think about it. “Continue the game, providing you can give me someone better qualified.”

  “As you wish,” Tarasov said. He took a regular number 10 envelope from inside his jacket and held it out. “A man and a woman this time, and very capable. They’re called the Chinese Scorpions.”

  Hammond laughed. “Theatrical.”

  “Do not underestimate these people. One of their conditions is that they meet you face-to-face.”

  Hammond had started to reach for the envelope but stayed his hand. “Why?”

  “Their philosophy is a simple one. If they’re hired to do a job in which they might lose their lives or their freedom, they want to know who hired them.”

  “If they’re incompetent, they should fail.”

  “It’s not a matter of incompetence. It’s a matter of betrayal. If you are found out and give them up, they will hunt you instead of McGarvey.”

  Still Hammond hesitated.

  “This isn’t only about money now. So take care, Thomas.”

  “I was fucked over by the son of a bitch and his wife. And I didn’t like it very much. Maybe they’ll both die.” He took the envelope.

  Tarasov nodded. “Your call.”

  “Would you like to stay for lunch?”

  “No,” the Russian said. “I want to get as far away from you as I can, at least for now.” He went to the slider, but then turned back. “I wish you luck. I sincerely mean it.”

  * * *

  Susan joined him without a word, and they watched Tarasov board the helicopter and take off.

  “Chinese Scorpions?” she asked. “I love it.”

  “You heard?”

  “Most of it. Are you going to take the gig?”

  “Of course,” Hammond said. “But first, let’s fill Glory with a lot of friends and have a party in the middle of nowhere.”

  “We don’t have any friends, Tommy boy, but what the hell, it sounds like fun to me.”

  PART

  TWO

  Middle Game

  When he realizes he is being hunted, what will he do?

  Hide or fight back?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Chan Taio, wearing only black silk pajama bottoms, walked out onto the open second-floor balcony of his and Li’s duplex overlooking the beach and high-rises in Hong Kong’s Repulse Bay and breathed deeply of the mild morning air.

  At five ten, he was tall for a Chinese, and his muscles, especially those in his chest, were well defined. His facial features were almost Western mostly because he’d had his eyes altered when he was sixteen. A lot of his friends had done the same thing at the time. It was cool. And with the light brown wig he sometimes wore to cover his very short, intensely black hair, he could and had passed as a Westerner.

  He was at Zen peace with himself, though one section of his brain—and his heart, if he were to be honest—yearned for another operation. At thirty-one, he and his partner, Li, who was twenty-seven, were at the height of their physical and mental abilities.

  Their initial training days and nights for three grueling years had taken place at several mainland Chinese Special Operations Forces bases. Individual and small-team survival skills, camouflage, weapons, navigation, communications, infiltration and exfiltration, and close-combat scenarios, including sniper training and room-clearing in what were called kill houses.

  Finally, they’d been recognized for their outstanding all-around abilities and had been sent to the Special Operations Academy for junior officers in Guangzhou, which had actually been the beginning of the end for them. They’d become too good and too independent for the strict SOF regimen that forever bowed to a civilian leadership that demanded total obedience. Included in their orders was the strict rule that officers did not closely fraternize with each other.

  But he and Li fell in love at the academy after only three assignments—one of them when they were sent to London to kill a dissident who’d worked at a fairly high level for the Ministry of State Security in Beijing. The man had been responsible for recruiting, vetting, and assigning deep-cover agents around the world. At the time, he was working out of the Chinese embassy, and it was thought that he was making plans to defect to MI6 and had to be silenced.

  They had carried out the op with what a colonel had reported was a terrible, silent efficiency. “They were scorpions,” he’d supposedly said.

  Afterward, they had asked permission through channels to marry, but their request had been denied. They got orders, her to remain at the academy, him to Hong Kong. They were at the end of their third two-year term of service, and they’d resigned their commissions within one month of each other.

  Their discharges were honorable, so no one had come looking for them. Within a few weeks, Li had joined him in Hong Kong; they got married and began taking freelance operations, some ironically through the same SOF they’d been members of.

  Li, wearing only the silk top of Tiao’s pajamas, came to the open slider. “Enjoying the image of yourself in the glass, or is there another gaggle of Western girls in bikinis on the beach?” she asked, her voice musical.

  “Both, actually,” he said. He turned.

  She had her iPhone, and she brought it out and handed it to him. “This came overnight,” she said.

  It was a text message addressed to COUNTER-T EXECUTIVE ACTION SOLUTIONS. It was their business. The Counter-T stood for counterterrorism, and twice, they’d actually taken the simple assignments, in both cases acting as glorified bodyguards for business executives working in war zones, once in Afghanistan, and the second time in Syria.

  The real business of the business was assassination, such as the ones like the London op. They were fast, brutally efficient, obscenely expensive, and not once had they ever failed. In the trade, they had maintained the sobriquet as the Chinese Scorpions, nobody remembering where the moniker had originated.

  “Is it from anyone we know?”
Taio asked.

  “The Russian.”

  They never knew the Russian’s name, though they strongly suspected he worked for the GRU and that he handed out special assignments that couldn’t be traced back to Moscow, and paid very well and very promptly.

  “A special client needs an operation. Meet soonest aboard the MV Glory lying Skagway, Alaska. Legend as movie producers ex-Taiwan. Ten million U.S.”

  Taio texted back. “When?”

  Li looked past his arm at the screen.

  “Soonest.”

  “Who is the client?”

  “Details to follow acceptance.”

  “Is he involved with movies in the U.S.?”

  “Details to follow acceptance.”

  Li was a full four inches shorter than her husband and, at only a little over one hundred pounds, was tiny, her skin pale. People said that she looked like a porcelain doll. Her face was round, her lips full and her eyes wide and expressive. She smiled and looked up at him.

  “What would you like to do?” she asked.

  “We don’t need the money.” They’d paid ten million euros cash for their condo and owned a Mercedes convertible and matching Augusta motorcycles. Between assignments, they never took vacations, except locally. Their major source of recreation was planning, stalking, and killing individuals for hire. It was what they lived for.

  “That’s not what I asked, husband.”

  “I think we’d better dress warmly.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Alaska is bound to be cold, even at this time of the year.” Taio smiled, and Li nodded.

  “I’ll make our travel arrangements and pack while you do our research on the Glory, on Taiwan’s film industry, and our cover stories.”

  * * *

  Taio went back to the spare bedroom, which they used as an office, and powered up the laptop, which was connected through a remailer in Amsterdam that couldn’t be traced to Hong Kong. He pulled up Google and entered the ship’s name, coming up with a half-dozen vessels, most of them general cargo or bulk carriers and one tanker, but the sixth was a yacht owned by Thomas Hammond.

  Hammond’s name came up with more than one million hits, most of them for the American billionaire who’d made the bulk of his fortune in the dot-com boom, especially in California among the start-up high-tech companies that he acquired through hostile takeovers and then sold when their values soared through the roof.

  According to many of the news stories in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, and other business and human interest outlets, the man was classified as a modern-era robber baron who didn’t care who he ruined on his way to the top.

  Now only in his forties, he was part of the elite jet set. A playboy according to the LA Times, who’d been born of simple working-class parents in Philadelphia, and had never attended college but had begun his career by working as a runner on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, where he’d earned his first million by the age of sixteen.

  The many photographs showed him with a variety of wealthy people from all over the world. But the most recent photographs from the last few years showed him almost always in the company of the American movie star and movie theater owner Susan Patterson, herself a multibillionaire. The woman was beautiful, and Hammond was handsome in the role as a laid-back California surfer.

  Li came in and looked over Taio’s shoulder. “Who’s the woman?”

  “A former American movie star. Her boyfriend is a billionaire named Tom Hammond. He owns the Glory.”

  Li laughed. “What the hell are they doing in Skagway?” she asked. “I looked it up. That’s where half the world looking for fame and fortune showed up to get aboard the Klondike Gold Rush.”

  “A fitting place to meet a billionaire and his rich girlfriend.”

  “No question they can afford us, but I wonder who it is they want us to deal with.”

  “And why?” Taio asked.

  TWENTY-SIX

  McGarvey drove out to Langley with Pete, Otto, and Mary for an appointment with Taft and Thomas Waksberg, the DDO. The DCI’s secretary had called earlier that morning and asked for the one-on-one meeting. Pete went with Otto to his third-floor office, while Mary escorted Mac upstairs.

  “Don’t try to rile the man too badly,” she said when the elevator opened on the seventh floor.

  “He won’t like what I’m going to have to tell him,” McGarvey said.

  Mary smiled. “Mostly nobody does,” she said. “But it drives everybody nuts when you start pointing fingers at the Pentagon and especially the White House.”

  “Then I suggest you guys stay out of it, especially you.”

  “You’re on your own up here. I’m going back to my office next door and point my crew in the right direction to help out.”

  “And what direction is that?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t a clue, but I’ll figure out something by the time I get there.”

  * * *

  Taft was waiting with the portly Waksberg in the DCI’s small conference room. And Carleton Patterson, the Company’s general counsel, showed up from the elevator at the far end of the corridor at the same time McGarvey came down the hall.

  “Wait up,” Patterson said. He was a tall, thin, patrician man with white hair, who’d been the CIA chief legal beagle for more years than anyone wanted to count. And he dressed the part of the venerable old lawyer in three-piece suits, the bottom button of his vest undone, his shoes always highly polished, his bow tie correctly knotted.

  No DCI had seen fit to replace him, and it was said that he’d heard more gossip than even the walls in the OHB, or anywhere else on campus, had.

  McGarvey always had a great deal of affection for the man, and the feeling was mutual.

  “I haven’t see you in forever, my boy,” Patterson said as they shook hands. “And congratulations on your nuptials. Pete is well?”

  “Thanks. Yes, she is. And you look good.”

  “I’m thinking about going to pasture one of these days.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  They were opposite the conference room door, and no one else was in the corridor.

  “The general’s a good man.”

  “Most everyone who sat in that office was,” Mac said.

  “But he’s vexed. Some of his friends on this side of the river are starting to complain about you.”

  “Why?”

  “News gets out, Mac. You’re in town, someone has taken a couple of potshots at you, and already you’re sniffing around the Pentagon and the White House again. Makes some of these people nervous.”

  “I get a little nervous myself when someone starts shooting at me.”

  “Trouble does have a habit of following you around,” Patterson said. “Do you have any leads?”

  “None. But both guys were ex–Special Forces—one from Canada the other from South Africa—which means they were hired guns.”

  “There are a lot of people who’d like to see you dead. The list isn’t endless, but it’s large.”

  “I understand that, but the money for the two guns who came after me was big.”

  “Governmentally big?”

  “Yes. And curiously enough, the amount the second man was paid was twice as much as the first.”

  “Which means?”

  “Whoever hired the first guy didn’t think he would get the job done. So they hired someone better.”

  “Who also failed, and you think there’ll be a third?”

  “I’m betting on it.”

  Patterson nodded. “I thought you would say something like that,” he said. He knocked on the door, and they went in.

  “Here you are, then,” Taft said. He was at the head of the table, Waksberg at his left. “Have a seat,” he said, motioning to Mac and Patterson, who sat opposite.

  “I assume that you’ve been brought up to date,” McGarvey started.

  “Yes. Any idea who’s after you this time
?”

  “According to what we’ve figured out so far, no government I’ve clashed with in the past is behind it.”

  “We’ve come to the same conclusion,” Waksberg said. “But your assumption that it’s someone in the White House or Pentagon is an impossible leap.”

  “It’s just a starting point. I’ve gone head-to-head with staffers in both places in the past year or two. You’ve read the after-action reports.”

  “Doesn’t mean anyone left behind is holding a grudge,” Taft said.

  “Someone is.”

  “Whoever it is tried twice and failed twice. Don’t you think they’ve had enough?”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “In any event, I’m striking back.”

  “How, exactly?” Waksberg asked. “Give me the operational details.”

  “To start with, I’m going to step on some toes and see what shakes out.”

  “By throwing out blanket accusations?”

  “Yes, and I’d like your help.”

  “I don’t think that you need anyone but Mr. Rencke’s help,” Taft said. “But in fact, I’ve ordered him and Mary Sullivan to step down.”

  “That may not be the best idea,” Mac said.

  “And I want you to peacefully surrender yourself to protective custody.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not to protect you; it’s to help protect innocent civilians who might get hit in the cross fire,” Taft explained. “Van agrees.” P. Van Gessel was head of security.

  “That wouldn’t work.”

  “Why?” Patterson asked.

  “Whoever is after me would simply wait it out. Sooner or later, Pete and I would return to the real world, and it would start all over again.”

  Taft sat back, his lips pursed for a moment. “I’ve had two calls about this situation. The first was from General Leon in Pretoria. You came down hard on him.”

  “I meant to, and he did exactly what I’d thought he would do.”

  “And that was?”

  “Protect one of his own.”

  “And what did that tell you?”