Gambit Read online

  “What’s not so common,” Voltaire had written, “is common sense.”

  But apparently the quote most important to McGarvey, because it had turned up in so many places in his file, was the one about how it was better to free a guilty man than convict an innocent one.

  Li came out with a cup of tea and joined him. For a longish time, neither of them spoke, staring across the bay at the lights and to sea as dozens of fishing boats headed out.

  “He is a romantic, lost in a terrible destiny,” Li said.

  “Voltaire?”

  “That, too. But his assignment to Chile where he was sent to kill a general and ended up killing the man and his wife has apparently haunted him for years.”

  “She was a monster as well.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t know it at the time when he pulled the trigger. And even afterward when he’d learned the truth, he still made mention of it as a low point of his career.”

  “I read it, but what do you mean about his terrible destiny?”

  Li looked at him, her pretty mouth downturned. “Since that time, his wife and daughter were killed by a car bomb meant for him.”

  “Yes, I saw that in the file.”

  “Then his girlfriend in Switzerland was killed, chasing after him. Another was killed at a restaurant in Georgetown. His best friend’s wife was gunned down. And the woman he recently married was at least twice wounded, both times seriously.”

  “It’s the business,” Taio said.

  “Yes, but don’t you see my point? I’m certain that he looks on the deaths of every woman he’s ever been involved with as retribution for his assassinating the general’s wife in Chile.”

  Taio saw what his wife was getting at. “The key to McGarvey is his wife.”

  “Threaten her and he’ll come running right into our arms,” Li said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Hammond and Susan arrived at the Pisa Airport aboard his Bombardier jet shortly before noon. They’d taken a twin-engine Otter from Skagway down to Juneau, where the crew brought the jet to pick them up. And then it was a grueling three-leg flight, first to LA to repack their bags, then cross country to Washington, where they stayed the night at the Hay-Adams, and then across the Atlantic.

  Susan hadn’t been happy about Washington. “Like pissing into the wind,” she’d said at one point.

  “McGarvey and his wife are in Florida,” Hammond said.

  “But the CIA is just upriver, and so far as we know, the computer geek and his wife are still there.”

  “Don’t get your ass in a bundle, sweetheart. You’re a movie star, and I’m an entrepreneur. We’re players.”

  She’d managed a smile. “But this time we’re playing in a different ballpark. McGarvey’s.”

  “We’ve hired the best; now let’s go spend some money.”

  * * *

  The shipyard sent a Cadillac limousine to take them to the Principe di Piemonte Hotel with its views of the sea on one side and the Viareggio Promenade with its collection of art nouveau buildings on the other.

  At Hammond’s request, they were booked into the Seaview Suite, which was the best in the upscale but not fabulous hotel, where lunch settings for four had been laid out. A bottle of Krug was already chilling when they arrived.

  “Your guests have been notified,” the head bellman of the three who’d carried their bags up and unpacked said. “If there’s anything else, please don’t hesitate to call me personally.”

  Hammond pulled out three one-hundred-euro notes, but the bellman shook his head.

  “Thank you, sir, but your stay with us has been taken care of by the Codecasas,” the bellman said. He shooed the other two ahead of him and closed the door softly when he left.

  “With what you’re planning on spending, they could have done better than this,” Susan said cattily.

  “I don’t think they’re going to be very happy when I tell them what I want them to build for us,” Hammond said.

  “Us?”

  “Like you said, in for a penny, in for a pound.”

  “Are you getting cold feet? Misery loves company, something like that?”

  “On the contrary, I’m getting my second wind, and I’m starting to enjoy the hunt even more than I’d hoped I would.”

  Susan gave him an appraising look. “You’re certifiable.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Along for the ride.”

  “Even if it takes us to hell?”

  Susan nodded.

  “Then to tell you the truth, I hope McGarvey kills the Scorpions.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I don’t want it to end so quickly.”

  “Foreplay.”

  Hammond smiled. “Exactly. And I don’t like losing, never have.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Antonio Codecasa—a distant relative of Giovanni Codecasa the shipwright, who’d founded the company in the early 1800s—showed up with a tall, slender, beautiful woman he introduced as Sophia Vargas, the company’s chief interior designer.

  Antonio had been the chief yacht coordinating designer when Hammond had ordered Glory built, and over the nearly two years it had taken from when the keel was laid down until the yacht was turned over as ready for sea in all respects, they had built a mutual respect.

  “Antonio,” Hammond said, the two men embracing.

  “My old friend, I am very happy to see you again,” Antonio said. He and Susan exchanged a kiss, and then he introduced Sophia, whose English was Oxford perfect.

  “I did my apprentice at Seagrams,” she explained. It was one of the major interior design studios in London.

  “I can’t imagine the Brits teaching an Italian anything about design,” Hammond said.

  “Sophia, who is a cousin to the family, taught them more than they taught her,” Antonio said. “But then you’re here because you want a retrofit so soon?”

  “I want a new ship, and you’re not going to like it.”

  “A smaller yacht?”

  “Bigger.”

  Antonio was suddenly wary. “How big?”

  “Five hundred feet.”

  “One hundred fifty meters,” Antonio said. “Impossible. Our yard was strained beyond the limit when we built Glory at only one hundred fifteen meters.”

  “I don’t want to take my business elsewhere,” Hammond said. “Money is no object, you know this.”

  Antonio was shaking his head.

  “I’ll go into a partnership with you to build a new yard. Once the Susan P shows up on the circuit, especially Cannes and Monaco, our new yard will turn a fantastic profit.”

  Susan stepped back and almost dropped her flute. Hammond looked at her and grinned. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Jesus, you were serious,” was all she could say, but she was impressed.

  “I’ll want it in two years.”

  “No,” Antonio said.

  “I’ll write you a check this instant for whatever sum you name.”

  Antonio shook his head.

  “Including a down payment on the yard.”

  Antonio shook his head again.

  “You can’t refuse,” Hammond said.

  “Three years.”

  “Thirty months, starting today. Give me a dollar figure, and I’ll write the check. Then we’ll have some lunch, and I’ll show you some sketches I made.”

  “The Russian won’t like it,” Antonio said.

  Viktor Sheplev’s yacht Anna was larger than Glory but so over-the-top glitzy that most of the players on the circuit thought it was tacky.

  “He won’t know the difference. No other private yacht in the world will be classier.”

  “Yes, sir. And I will make sure of it,” Sophia said. “Now, I would like a glass of champagne, and I would like to make a few sketches for you and your beautiful lady.”

  * * *

  After a very long lunch, which included Hammond’s check to Codecasa for $150,000,000, he and Susan went fo
r a long walk on the beach, just beginning to empty out of the tourists going back to their hotels to clean up and get ready for the dinner hour.

  “When did you come up with this idea?” she asked.

  “When I decided that I’d had enough of Alaska, because up there in the wilderness, I was starting to get nervous.”

  “Fear is sometimes good,” Susan said. “You were spending money, but you weren’t really in charge. Here is different. Like you said, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. I get it. But why name what’s going to be the grandest yacht on the circuit after me?” They stopped and she looked up at him. “Tommy, are you saying that you’re in love with me?”

  “If I was, would you tell me to go to hell?”

  She pursed her lips, but then shook her head. “No one has ever said that they were in love with me and meant it.”

  “I am,” Hammond said, and he meant it. But one distant part of him realized that he wanted Susan close to him just as a drowning man wants a life jacket. He was drowning over the McGarvey thing, and he didn’t want to go under without company.

  THIRTY-THREE

  McGarvey walked down to the dock where his forty-two-foot Whitby ketch was secured and buttoned up against the weather. It was early afternoon, a light sea breeze making the summer heat and humidity bearable on the Gulf Coast island of Casey Key.

  To his right on the expansive lawn that ran down from the two-story Florida-style house and uncaged pool behind it was the gazebo he’d had built for his wife Katy. It had also become Pete’s refuge even before they’d gotten married. A place of peace and tranquility, both women had said at one point or another. Safety.

  The island here was so narrow, bounded by the Gulf to the west and the Intracoastal Waterway to the east, that there was only one road, and the house lots took up the entire width.

  Pete came from the house with a couple of frosty bottles of Corona with slices of lime in the necks. “Are we going for a boat ride?” she asked.

  “I was thinking about it. Might not be a bad idea to head a few miles offshore and putter around for a day or two. Maybe catch some fish, go for a swim if the days are calm enough.”

  “And have an unlimited view in every direction.”

  “Including up,” McGarvey said.

  Pete was a little startled. “I didn’t think of that one.”

  “If I were gunning for me, I might consider using a lightplane.”

  “That would mean at least two of them. The pilot and a shooter.”

  “I would shoot back.”

  “We would shoot back,” Pete said. “And forget about trying to send me back to D.C. It’s more dangerous up there than here. Especially if you didn’t announce where we were heading.”

  “But I did. I had Otto send emails to Ward over at the DIA and Sherman at the White House, in case either of them wanted to talk to me again.”

  Pete grinned. “I’m sure they both realized that you still didn’t trust them and were setting them up in case something happened down here. Which couldn’t have made them very happy.”

  “No.”

  “Something is going to happen here, isn’t it?”

  “I think so,” McGarvey said.

  Lou’s voice came from a speaker in the gazebo. Otto had set it up about six months ago as part of the house security system and as a means of instant communications.

  “You have visitors pulling into the driveway,” she said.

  “Are you carrying?” Pete asked, and McGarvey nodded.

  “Can you identify them?”

  “Two men, one of whom is James Forest, but the other is unknown to me.”

  Forest was chief of detectives for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, and an old local acquaintance of Mac’s. He’d been involved in one way or another in several incidents that had happened here, including one at New College when a bomb went off in Mac’s car, taking his left leg off just below the knee and nearly killing him.

  “Tell them to come around back to the pool,” McGarvey said.

  “Of course,” Lou said.

  “Word gets around,” Pete said as they headed up to the house.

  * * *

  Forest was a very young-looking, dark-haired man in his early forties who not long ago had worked as an undercover drug enforcement officer posing as a teenager. He was dressed in a sport coat and open-collar shirt, while the other, much larger man with thinning blond hair, a beak-like nose, and sour expression wore a shirt and tie despite the warmth. McGarvey immediately pegged him for a Bureau agent.

  “That sounded like Otto’s wife at the front door,” Forest said.

  “It’s his new AI program,” McGarvey said.

  The other man nodded. “I’m Special Agent Owen Spader, SAC Tampa.”

  “Would you gentlemen like a beer?” Pete asked.

  “Not on duty,” Spader said, his tone abrupt enough to be irritating.

  McGarvey motioned for them to have a seat at the poolside table. “What brings you guys out here?”

  “We want to know why you’re here,” the Bureau SAC said.

  “This is our home, and other than that, it’s none of your business.”

  “You were involved in two shooting incidents in Washington.”

  “Georgetown, actually,” Pete said.

  “There were two fatalities.”

  McGarvey just looked at the man.

  Forest was clearly embarrassed. “Do you think whoever is coming after you this time will try again? Down here?”

  “It’s a possibility, Jim.”

  “I’ve been instructed that if you were to admit to such a thing, I was to take you into protective custody,” Spader said.

  “No, thank you,” McGarvey said.

  “It wasn’t a request.”

  “Lou,” McGarvey said, not taking his eyes off the agent.

  “Yes?”

  “With my compliments, please telephone Mr. Kallek for me.”

  “He’s not currently in his office.”

  “Find him.”

  Spader shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, sir. My brief was to ask if you wished to be placed into protective custody but not to force the issue.”

  “Lou, cancel the call, please.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I’d like at least to station a couple of my people nearby.”

  “Whoever might be coming my way will be a professional shooter, almost certainly at the international level. No offense intended, but your guys would stand out like lighthouses.”

  “How about you, Mrs. M?” Forest asked.

  “Run and hide?” Pete asked. “Not a chance in hell. And my friends call me Pete.”

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Pete asked after the two men had left.

  “A couple of guys just trying to do their jobs, especially Jim. It has to seem to him that just about every time I come down here, a shitstorm follows me.”

  Pete laughed out loud. “You do know how to show a girl a good time.”

  McGarvey studied her face. He was in love with her, but it wasn’t the same as it had been with Katy. Just as intense, but different. “Sorry you married me?”

  Pete gave him the same frank look. “If that were a serious question, I just might shoot you here and now and get it over with.” She smiled a little sadly. “My only complaint is that it took you so long.”

  “I didn’t want anything to happen to you, like the others.”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  Mac looked away. “And I didn’t want you to think that I needed you to replace Katy.”

  “But you did, and I did replace her. Just in a different way, I hope.”

  “I wasn’t looking for a clone or her twin sister.”

  Pete reached over and took his hand. “If you hadn’t already guessed, Kirk, I’m head over heels in love with you. Have been for a long time. Whatever happens to you, happens to me. To us. You and me, babe, like the song.”

  “I’d hoped you woul
d say something like that.”

  “Fair enough. We started with beers, so if you fire up the grill, I’ll make burgers and beans. And afterward, we’ll go over just how we’re going to get ready for our guests.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  On the flight from Hong Kong to Geneva via Doha, Qatar, Taio read the long dossier on McGarvey again, and he picked out several troublesome bits and pieces he’d missed the first time. At one point, looking up, he caught Li’s attention.

  “What is it?” she asked, her little voice very soft. Even though they were flying first class and had no immediate seatmates, they’d kept their voices low.

  “Perhaps we should have asked for a higher fee.”

  “He’s a formidable man. Have you learned something new about him?”

  “He has more kills to his credit than we do. Twice as many, actually, and that’s just the ones generally credited to him.”

  “We knew this from the beginning. What is troubling you now?”

  Li had picked out the fact that McGarvey was a romantic who had lost every woman who’d ever loved him, except of course for his current wife. And she had rightly assumed that a possible weakness would be the wife. If she were endangered, he would move heaven and earth to protect her. But therein lay the conundrum.

  “His wife is his vulnerability.”

  “Yes, we know this. But what else?”

  “Two attempts have been made on his life in recent days, but by amateurs who I believe were meant to fail.”

  “Our employer’s little sport. He didn’t want McGarvey to fall so easily. He wanted to play cat and mouse with the man.”

  “And McGarvey has almost certainly figured out by now what’s happening, though he doesn’t know who is behind it or why.”

  “He has to suspect the Russians, or maybe the Pakistanis. Their grudges run deep.”

  “That’s not the point. What is relevant is that he suspects the attacks will keep coming until he is taken out,” Taio said. “And if you were in his position, what would you do?”