Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel Page 18

  “Deeply enough for impeachment proceedings?”

  “I cannot say that with one hundred percent confidence, but the consensus within the other agencies, especially the German BND, French DGSE and Iran’s MOIS, is that Congress will vote for impeachment.”

  “The Republican-controlled Congress?” The prince asked.

  “Yes, sir. His own party has never supported him.”

  Prince Awadi finally turned. “And what of McGarvey?”

  “He still lives.”

  “Yes, I know. But why have you failed me?”

  Abboud had never felt closer to death in his life. “Al Nassr failed.”

  Awadi said nothing.

  “But there is another development. A second party, we don’t know who yet, may want the same thing we want. McGarvey was severely wounded; nevertheless, he showed up at the CIA’s training camp south of Washington, where another attempt was made on his life. But it wasn’t our operators from New York. It happened before they left their offices at the UN.”

  “Find out who they are, and what they wish to ultimately accomplish. Perhaps we can help them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What else?”

  “One of our Falcon Eye surveillance satellites that we share with the United Arab Emirates has reliable imagery that shows Mr. McGarvey arriving at Camp David two days ago.”

  “The resolution is not that good.”

  “No, sir. But one of our on-the-ground observers at Langley witnessed Mr. McGarvey along with the DCI Walter Page boarding the director’s Dauphin helicopter, which landed at Camp David forty-one minutes after takeoff.”

  “Was Weaver in residence?”

  “We believe so.”

  “Assuming McGarvey met with him, what was the subject of their conversation?”

  “Unknown at this point. But we think that it may have had something to do with the death of a National Security Agency analyst by the name of Susan Fischer. She was one of ours.”

  “It was on the news. Who killed her?”

  “We don’t know yet, but her assassins—there were two of them—were killed. One of them we believe was killed by McGarvey. But the other we don’t know yet. We have two other sources in D.C. who we’re approaching.”

  “Will her death hamper the plan?”

  “Not significantly, sir.”

  Awadi nodded, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “And what contact have we had with al Nassr?”

  “None.”

  “Stop his payments.”

  “That has been done, sir. But there may be still another issue.”

  Awadi’s mouth tightened. “What are you telling me now, Captain? More bad news?”

  “He may have another employer. We have reasonably reliable intelligence that he was spotted in Beijing last month, meeting with someone still unknown at an undistinguished hotel.”

  “His only mission for us was to kill McGarvey. He failed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The double doors opened as the Prince’s secretary appeared. “Your pardon, Prince, but the king has called.”

  “Leave!” Awadi screamed at the top of his lungs.

  The secretary withdrew and closed the doors.

  Abboud didn’t move a muscle. “I’ve changed my mind. I want you to regain contact with al Nassr. Offer the man any money he wants. You have my personal authorization; all other considerations or orders are rescinded. McGarvey must die. And soon.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll try.”

  “You’ll do!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Find out who the second group is. Offer our help. Discreetly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Awadi went to his desk and sat down. He opened a drawer and took out a WWII German Luger, and handled it for a moment or two, almost lovingly, like an old friend or a precious objet d’art, before he laid it down.

  “Did you know Major al-Sakr?”

  “Not well, but yes, sir,” Abboud said. He was having a little trouble with his legs.

  “He was al Nassr’s control officer. He failed me. Don’t you follow in his footsteps. Resolve this issue, Captain. Am I clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Get out of my sight.”

  Abboud saluted, did an about-face and went to the double doors, which opened before him. Back in the anteroom with the secretary, as the doors closed, he heard Prince Awadi laughing like a madman, and he was sincerely happy he had survived the encounter.

  FORTY-THREE

  Dinner was at the Renckes’ house in McLean. Louise had made small pizza crusts and a good tomato sauce, and had laid out all the toppings, from mushrooms and anchovies to cheeses, pepperoni, hamburger and even ham and bacon. Four small pizza stones were ready in the dual ovens.

  “Each man for himself,” she’d said. “Beer’s in the fridge.”

  Otto had not been himself for the past two days, ever since McGarvey had returned from meeting with the president, and he’d been working around the clock in his office and even at home.

  “I’ve lost him,” he said when they sat down at the kitchen counter while they waited for their pizzas to bake. His face was long.

  “He’s here in Washington,” McGarvey said. He’d known that the man was coming, and he could almost feel the assassin’s presence. Just the same as he’d felt it in New York.

  “You’re probably right, but I can’t find him. He’s done with his business in Mexico and he’s here to finish what the kid at New College botched and whoever it was at the Farm.”

  “How about Grace Metal?” Pete asked.

  “She came up clean on every one of my search engines,” Otto said. He shook his head. “Doesn’t say much for me and my darlings.”

  “Paper records, verbal orders,” McGarvey said.

  It was the one weakness in Otto’s search engines, or any system that trolled the expanse of the computer-driven world. If it wasn’t on some digital file somewhere it was inaccessible except the old-fashioned way: HUMINT—human intelligence gathering. Someone had to get into a file cabinet somewhere, or a daybook or calendar, to read what was written by hand. Or eavesdrop on a conversation, as Otto had done with Echo and Colonel Chambeau at the Watergate bar.

  “Ball’s in your park again, Kemo Sabe,” Otto said. “Sorry.”

  “Let’s take it one name at a time,” McGarvey replied. “We’re pretty sure he was in Atlanta and in Mexico, and assuming I’m right and he’s here in D.C., he’ll be living large under a cover name.”

  “The guy’s a pro. His cover names last time were bulletproof.”

  “I understand. But he can’t have an unlimited supply of legends—passports, credit cards, driver’s licenses—which would have to lead back to histories, including Social Security numbers here in the States or national identity numbers in France and most other countries.”

  “It could mean that he’s used whatever IDs he has more than once,” Pete said. “Luxury hotels in Chihuahua, maybe Dallas or Houston or some other port of entry to the U.S. from Mexico. Atlanta. New York. And here in Washington. And we have at least three pictures of him that you could use to match passport photos.”

  Otto brightened and he started to get up. “I’m on it.”

  “After dinner,” Louise said. “In the meantime I’ve been thinking about what our guy was doing in Mexico. I talked to a pal of mine over at the NSA who’s willing to let me have a couple of very brief unscheduled looks at that slice of Mexican desert. I’d have to redirect the bird’s cameras, and the look-downs would be at pretty extreme angles. But if there is some sort of an installation down there not managed by complete idiots, they’d have the ephemeris of our satellite, and would cover up when they knew it was overhead. Might catch them with their pants down.”

  “You’d have to burn an asset,” Pete said.

  “He’s a good friend,” Louise said. “Anyway, we’re talking about more important things here.”

  “In the meantime we have Ge
neral Echo and Colonel Chambeau, who both had contact with Fischer,” McGarvey said. “I think it’s time I paid them a visit.”

  “I’ll back you up,” Pete said.

  McGarvey wanted to tell her no, but he thought that would be useless, and in any event, considering what had gone down at the Watergate, she was right. He could use her on his six.

  He nodded. “In the meantime I want a complete list of all the intel officers your program identified as co-conspirators in your Consortium. Depending on whatever I can get from Echo and Chambeau, we might be able to pick out a couple of them that I personally worked with sometime in the past.”

  “In the meantime you have a big target on your back that two separate groups are aiming at,” Louise said. “Walk with care, Kirk.”

  “I’ve been completely transparent for the past two days. Running in the park, walking around Georgetown. I even went to the Lincoln Memorial yesterday and sat on the steps. Waiting for someone to show up.”

  Pete was a little angry. “While you sent me to the campus to help Otto.”

  “No one was following me. No one on the rooftops. Never the same car or van circling the block. The same guy stopping to look in the window of a store across the street. Or sitting on a picnic bench in the park, or leaning against a parked car on a direct sight line to me.”

  “It’s not the operator you see, it’s the one you miss,” Pete argued. “These people are pros.”

  “I think you’re wrong. At least up to this point. The kid who put the Semtex in my car was an amateur.”

  “He damned near killed you.”

  “He would have, had he put the bomb under my seat and not on the passenger’s side. Or if he’d sealed the thing in plastic so I wouldn’t smell it, or attached it to the undercarriage. And cutting the ropes on the Ball Buster left too much to chance. I grabbed the second rope to stop my fall and I was lucky it didn’t break.”

  “So they sent amateurs. If al-Daran is really here in town, he’s come to finish the job. And that guy is damned good.”

  “You’re right. But first I want to know what he was doing in Mexico.”

  “Whatever it was, it won’t make much difference if he lays low somewhere with a decent sniper rifle,” Louise said. “You walk out the front door of your apartment building, or out this front door, and he takes his shot. One shot.”

  “He won’t play it that way,” McGarvey disagreed.

  “What are you talking about? He wants you dead.”

  “He wants more than that. He wants to look into my eyes when he’s in the act of killing me. He wants to see fear, or resignation or some other crazy thing. He needs for this to be personal.”

  “Same difference, Mac. Dead is dead, no matter how you slice it.”

  “I want him face-to-face. I want to ask him who he’s working for, and what they want.”

  “The Saudis, probably,” Pete said.

  “Then I’ll want the name of his control officer,” McGarvey told her. “But I don’t think it’ll be that simple.”

  “What, stopping him from killing you?”

  “To find out who he’s working for,” Otto said. “There’re two groups here, remember? Both of them wanting to take Mac down. But why? To make a fool of Weaver? To force him out of office?”

  “Maybe we ought to take a look at Heaney,” Pete suggested. Edward Heaney was the vice president.

  “The man’s a dolt,” Louise said. “He couldn’t even get out of his own way.”

  “Maybe it’s an act.”

  “I don’t think so,” McGarvey said.

  “That said, what’s the plan?” Louise asked. She was the mother hen, and forever was wanting to know the details so that she could fit everything together to protect her people.

  “I’ve already confronted Weaver—and so far there’s been no retaliation. Now I’m going after the Consortium—the intel people Otto’s programs have identified.”

  “You went after Fischer and she was assassinated,” Pete said.

  “I’m going to try Echo next, then Chambeau, but you’re going to back-stop me,” McGarvey said. “Then depending on what I turn up or don’t, I’ll work my way down the list. And if someone in the Company is a part of this, we need to find out who it is.”

  “I’ve come up with blanks so far,” Otto said. “But I’d bet just about anything it wasn’t Grace Metal.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Kamal, dressed in a pair of jeans, a dark T-shirt and sneakers, sat on the open tailgate of an older Ford F-150 pickup that he’d bought for a few thousand dollars from a car lot across the river in Annandale the day before yesterday.

  He’d used cash from the supply brought with him from France, plus what he’d gotten from Baz in Mexico.

  It was after seven in the evening and he’d been parked in the trees across from a baseball diamond two blocks behind the Renckes’ McLean house for the past half hour, concentrating on the control panel of the high-end civilian drone he’d bought and had delivered to an accommodations address in Manassas two days before he’d bought truck.

  McGarvey had been easy, too easy, to follow from his Georgetown apartment, across to the park, in a cab to the Lincoln Memorial, where the bastard had sat eating a sandwich on the steps. He’d been alone.

  The DJI Inspire Special Edition drone equipped with a fairly low lux video camera hovered several hundred feet above the two-story colonial, its four electric motors almost completely silent and undetectable from that distance.

  He’d followed McGarvey and his girlfriend from Georgetown, where the Rencke woman had let them in almost two hours ago. Since then there’d been no activity, except for the occasional car on the street passing the entry to the cul-de-sac where the Renckes lived.

  He took a chance and hit the HOME button on the controller and the drone immediately peeled off station and made a direct line back to Kamal’s position.

  It came in for a landing just a few minutes later, and Kamal quickly replaced the batteries for the third and final time, and sent it back to the cul-de-sac just as McGarvey came out of the house and got into the Toyota SUV.

  At that same moment the garage door opened, and an older BMW convertible backed out and stopped next to McGarvey. The woman behind the wheel was Pete Boylan, her face clearly recognizable as she looked up into the sky directly to where the drone was hovering.

  Kamal zoomed in on her face.

  She turned away for a moment, evidently to say something to McGarvey, then looked back up toward the drone, and winked.

  Kamal reared back from the screen. She’d been looking directly at him, the same smirk on her lips as she had when he’d briefly held her hostage last year in Monaco. She was an arrogant bitch, and once McGarvey was finally dead, no power on heaven or earth would stop him from attending to her. In detail.

  McGarvey left first, the woman right behind him, and they headed directly to the Beltway, where they went south. A few minutes later McGarvey took I-66 to the west toward Fairfax while Pete Boylan took the interstate to the east, back toward town.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he knew where they were going: McGarvey to see General Echo, and the woman back to her apartment in Georgetown.

  The bastard knew that he was being followed and he’d sent his girlfriend out of harm’s way. Touching, and Kamal toyed with the idea of letting McGarvey continue his investigations tonight, while he followed the woman and killed her.

  But that would come later. Job one for the Gang of Three and even more important for himself, was McGarvey, and tonight the bastard was going to die. It was something he’d been looking forward to for a long time. Too long.

  He set the drone on self-pilot and headed it southeast toward Reagan National Airport. With any luck it would get sucked into an engine of an aircraft either taking off or landing. In any event, its flying into a controlled airspace would keep the FAA and the police busy tonight.

  Tossing the controller aside, he got behind the wheel of the truck at the s
ame moment his cell phone chimed. He’d put the SIM card and battery back in but he hadn’t expected a call. Very few people knew this number.

  His first thought was Otto Rencke, and he was about to remove the battery, but decided against it. If it was McGarvey’s friend, perhaps he and his wife would die tonight as well.

  Kamal answered on the third chine. “Yes.”

  “Al Nassr, do you know who this is?”

  The man spoke English but with an Arabic accent. Almost certainly a Saudi, and almost as certainly someone from the GIP.

  “No.”

  “Do you know the name Sa’ad al-Sakr?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes, and I’ve taken over his desk. I am Captain Yaser Abboud. And the fact that I know the major’s name and I know yours and I know this number must mean something.”

  “Continue.”

  “I have been authorized to place you back on the payroll. You would have only the one operation for us.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You are to kill Kirk McGarvey. And we understand that you already tried and failed to do so within the last month. Why?”

  “He was lucky.”

  “I mean, we want to know who you are working for. Who else has hired you to kill McGarvey?”

  Kamal sat back. What he was being asked made no sense. Unless the GIP was not involved with the Gang of Three he’d met in Beijing. “Susan Fischer,” he said on impulse.

  “She was stupid.”

  “And so are Echo and Chambeau?”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Someone did.”

  “Was it you?”

  “No. But I was going to her for information. She was one of my sources on my last mission.”

  “If not you, who, then?” Abboud demanded.

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, or are you people complete idiots? It was McGarvey, of course. He knows about you and the others. And he’s coming after you. She was first. And at this very minute he’s on his way to see the general.”

  “Do you mean Echo?”

  “What other general are we talking about?”