Face Off--A Kirk McGarvey Novel Page 24

  “Why?”

  Najjir shrugged. “Money, of course. I knew that since Paris was a failure I wouldn’t be paid, and I had expenses. McGarvey was too valuable an asset to walk away from.”

  “What is your price?”

  “What was my price for the tower?”

  “No. I want you to go to New York and kill two men. But the timing will have to be perfect.”

  “Who are these men?” Najjir asked.

  “Americans, but interestingly enough they work for the Russians,” Awadi said. “Will you take the assignment?”

  “At what price?”

  “One million euros.”

  “Two million.”

  Awadi nodded.

  “Do I have a contact in New York?”

  “Yes, a Russian SVR colonel who works under cover at the UN.”

  “Then consider it done, my prince,” Najjir said, and he laughed. Once again he had escaped the hangman’s noose.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  As soon as he got to the CIA, Bambridge went next door to Gibson’s office, but the general wasn’t in, and his secretary didn’t expect the director until later this afternoon.

  “He didn’t mention to me that he would be gone this morning,” Marty said.

  “No, sir.”

  Bambridge held back from asking the smug bastard, whom Gibson had brought over from his old Pentagon staff, where the director had gotten himself to. He was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have been given an answer, in any event.

  Back at his desk he considered phoning Rodak, but held off on that too. A DCI being out of the office for the better part of the day didn’t mean a thing in itself. Very often they met with people on the Senate’s Subcommittee on National and Central Intelligence or with other congresspeople who wanted individual briefings.

  And from time to time he went over to the Pentagon for an exchange of information. The new director of national intelligence had never served in the military and wasn’t close to any of the Joint Chiefs, so briefings were never as extensive as they had been since the previous administration. The task had fallen back to the CIA.

  Next he phoned Rencke to see if they’d been able to nail McGarvey’s exact whereabouts, but the geek’s machine, speaking in a woman’s voice that sounded faintly familiar, answered.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bambridge, but Mr. Rencke is out of the office at the moment.”

  “Can I reach him at home?”

  “No, sir.”

  Bambridge hung up and dialed Rencke’s rollover number, but it did not ring, so he called Rencke’s computer again.

  “May I be of assistance, Mr. Bambridge?”

  “I’m trying to reach Otto, but the rollover number I have for him does not answer.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Please dial his new rollover number.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I do not currently have that number.”

  “Bullshit,” Marty shouted.

  “May I be of any other assistance?”

  “Fuck you,” Bambridge said, and he slammed down the phone.

  His secretary knocked once on the door and came in. “Is there a problem, sir?” he asked.

  Bambridge looked up. He was annoyed, and frightened now. “If I’d needed you I would have fucking called you. Get out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sat for several moments staring at his wife’s photograph. She was very often a total pain in the ass, and sometimes he wondered why he had put up with her for so long. But very often she gave good advice, and in his heart of hearts he understood that she was smarter than him.

  She was ready to go to ground, and that was good enough for him.

  He called her at home. “Pack a few things; we’re going away soon.”

  “Do we need our passports?”

  “No, the ones in the dresser are expired.”

  “I understand,” Pamela said. “Are we going by car or should I call our travel agency and book tickets?”

  “I’ll take care of that too,” Bambridge said. “But let’s have lunch at the old place, say one o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there,” Pamela said, and she hung up.

  Their old place was Clancy’s, an Irish bar not too far from Union Station. He’d never mentioned it to anyone other than Pamela, whose suggestion several years ago had been to have a private go-to place. Just for the two of them.

  Next he telephoned Rodak’s private number. “Yes.”

  “I’m just leaving Langley now.”

  “He’s expecting you.”

  Hanging up, Bambridge opened his safe and took out his go-to-hell kit of passports, IDs, and photographs under the names James and Betty Flannery, at an address in New York City. They both wore glasses. Her hair was pinned back in a bun, and his was streaked with gray. The changes were minor, but enough to match the passport and other photos.

  He held the packet in his hand for a long moment or two. He’d had these things for a number of years now, changing the photos from time to time to more closely match their actual ages. The kit in a clear plastic baggy had been nothing more than an exercise in spycraft. An exercise, until now.

  A subcompact Glock pistol with two magazines, a silencer, and a cleaning kit were contained in a small zippered leather case, and for a moment he stayed his hand from reaching for it. If he needed to shoot his way out of a situation, it would already be too late to disappear.

  But he had no intention of being arrested, put on trial like Ames and Hanssen, and spend the remainder of his life in prison.

  He locked the safe, wrapped the gun case in a folded Washington Post, and left his office, not bothering to say a word to his secretary.

  * * *

  The security guard at the White House gate notified Rodak, who showed up at the entrance to the West Wing just as Bambridge pulled up in his Chevy Bolt EV.

  “You just may have a chance to get out of this shit with your ass intact,” Rodak said.

  “My ass? You’re just as deep into the shit as I am.”

  “But it was your idea.”

  “One that you wholeheartedly agreed with,” Bambridge said. “I’d become the new DCI and you would hand an almost certain reelection to your boss. We’re both stakeholders here, Bill, and don’t forget it.”

  They entered the West Wing, passed the Cabinet Room, and walked directly down to the Oval Office, where the president’s secretary announced them and they went in.

  “Close the door,” President Weaver said. “And no interruptions for the next five minutes.”

  When the secretary had withdrawn, the president typed something on his computer keyboard, and after a moment looked up. “The recording devices in this room have been turned off, and neither of you is wearing a wire. Do you understand that this conversation never took place?”

  Bambridge had no earthly idea what to say. He nodded.

  “Bill tells me that you and your wife are probably going to disappear. I assume that you have a place in mind, and the means to get there in secret, so that issue is not on the table.”

  Bambridge started to deny it, but Rodak cut him off.

  “No one will try to trace you,” Weaver said. “You simply decided to retire early, and where you went is no one’s business.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. President?” Bambridge asked. He could think of nothing else, except that he was being given an opportunity here, though not the one he’d hoped for.

  “Bill will give you the details, but for now I can tell you that Kirk McGarvey is definitely being held by the Russians at their Spetsnaz base at Novorossiysk. At the moment they have no other choice but to execute him, destroy his body, and deny they’d ever had him. And if it were strictly up to me, I wouldn’t say a word.”

  There was a but there, Bambridge was sure of it.

  “But I’m going to give them a way out, and you’re going to provide it,” Weaver said. “Do you understand?”

  “No, sir,” Bambridge said. He felt as if he
were standing at the edge of a very deep gorge and only the slightest misstep would send him to his death.

  “The Russians have a bigger problem on their hands, and we have the means to help them. In exchange, we’ll get Mr. McGarvey and solve their problem.”

  “I’m not sure that I follow you, sir,” Bambridge said.

  “Oh, but you do. It was you and Bill who cooked up the scheme to begin with. I’m only sending you to undo it.”

  “Paris was a distraction,” Rodak said.

  “Except for McGarvey,” Weaver said. “Now get to it. I expect the entire thing to be cleared up within the next seventy-two to ninety-six hours.”

  * * *

  Rodak walked Bambridge back outside, where he handed him a file folder. “Your instructions.”

  “For what?”

  “You’re to go to New York, find this man, and kill him.”

  Bambridge stepped back. “Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m an administrator, not a trained operative.”

  “Then why do you have a pistol and fake passports in your car?”

  “I’m going to ground.”

  “Yes, and we won’t get in your way,” Rodak said. “The dossier and photograph were printed on a paper that will disintegrate within the hour. They can’t be copied, so I suggest that you pull over somewhere and memorize the contents.”

  “Christ.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  It was very early in the morning, McGarvey figured around five or so, when Raya got up from where she’d been seated across the table from him and yawned. She had merely chatted with him for the past several hours, sending the doctor away almost immediately.

  “Breakfast, I think, and then a few hours’ sleep, before we start again this afternoon,” she said.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Mac said.

  “On the contrary, your mentioning a missing nuclear weapon has any number of people in Moscow excited. They want to know more, as in how you came by such knowledge.”

  “Then it’s true?”

  She managed a smile. “Well, if it is, Mr. Director, we’re all in what your people might call a world of shit.”

  “My source is usually accurate. The confidence level was high, the last time I checked.”

  “Rencke?”

  Mac shrugged.

  “Are we being hacked?”

  “You guys started it.”

  “Cyber warfare has a lot of people in the Kremlin worried.”

  “In Washington and Langley too.”

  Raya shook her head. “What the hell are we supposed to do with you?”

  “Subotin shouldn’t have agreed to take me.”

  “In that, we agree one hundred percent.”

  She went to the door and it opened. The same two guards who’d brought him were there with the shackles. But she waved them back.

  “I’ll escort Mr. McGarvey back to his cell.”

  “But we have our orders, Major,” one of them said.

  “Yes, you do, now get the fuck out of my way, pizda.”

  The guards stepped aside, and Raya motioned for McGarvey to come with her, and she marched down the corridor to the elevator.

  Something had changed in her attitude toward him. Earlier she had been confident and even friendly, but she was troubled now. Maybe even a little frightened. The missing nuclear weapon, if Otto’s sources had been correct, had to have shaken up the Kremlin all the way to the top. To Putin himself.

  His people had to be scrambling now, trying to figure out not only what to do with a former DCI but also how to find the missing nuke, and who took it, and how, and why.

  They got on the elevator, and when the doors had closed, Raya produced a key and shut the car off.

  “You will escape now, and I would like it very much if you didn’t kill me,” she said. “I’ve been instructed to help you.”

  If it was a setup to get him outside, where he would be shot to death, he wasn’t seeing it in her eyes. “What do you have in mind?”

  “What did you have in mind? You said that you would escape from here, and kill me doing so.”

  “The border with Ukraine is only a couple of hundred miles north. I thought that you could drive me up and I’d get across on my own.”

  Raya managed a slight smile. “I’m sure that once they realized not only who you were, but who I was, they would have been more than delighted to have us both. A reversal of our present situation, except that they would have hailed your rescue from us, and the capture of a key aide to President Putin, as a coup.”

  “I’m sure that they would. But Moscow would have to retaliate. Me showing up with you in tow would have been over the top.”

  “But if you came across alone, it would be better. So just before the border you would have killed me and disposed of my body.” She reached for the elevator key. “Something like that?”

  McGarvey had to shrug. “I would have changed my mind. You’re not the bad guy here.”

  “Chivalry?” she asked. “Don Quixote tilting at windmills to save his Dulcinea?”

  “Not quite.”

  She turned the key and they started up. “In fact I have the same helicopter that fished you out of the sea, waiting to fly us to the Black Sea Fleet base next door, where a transport jet will take us to Moscow. Mr. Putin would very much like to talk to you before he sends you home.”

  “I’m sure that General Subotin isn’t happy.”

  “He hasn’t been told.”

  There had been just the faintest glimmerings of a possible coup in the making. Putin was very unpopular in some circles, among them the SVR. Otto had mentioned it a year or so ago, but only as something highly speculative that only one of his darlings had picked up.

  “Less than ten percent confidence, kemo sabe,” Otto had said. “But interesting nevertheless.”

  “Have you shared this with Walt?” Walter Page had been the DCI at that time, and Bambridge his DDO.

  “Of course.”

  Which meant, the errant thought struck Mac on the way up in the elevator, that Marty could have known about it for that long as well. The possibilities just now were tantalizing.

  The corridor on the ground floor, leading to the front of the administration building, was empty of people at this hour. But in the operations center at the rear of the long, low building, people came and went with some apparent urgency. This was a Spetsnaz base, so if ops was humming, it meant one or more field missions were in full swing, or at least ready for launch.

  No one paid them any attention as Raya went past the CO’s office and outside, where a Gazik was parked.

  No one was anywhere in sight, though the parking lot was well lit, as were the guard towers along the security fence in the distance. The evening was overcast and warm, the air still, but all of Mac’s senses were on high alert. Trouble was very near.

  “Do you have a pistol for me?” he asked.

  “No need,” she said, getting behind the wheel, as Mac got in on the passenger side.

  She drove them a quarter mile to the hangars along the main runway, where a Hind helicopter was warming up. The crew was expecting them, and before they got aboard they were given life vests and helmets.

  McGarvey looked over his shoulder, but no one was behind them. They had merely walked away. It made no sense.

  The helicopter trundled out onto the apron and in moments they were airborne for the short flight to the navy base. The Black Sea, off to their left, was dotted with the lights of outgoing and incoming ships. This was Russia’s main port and it was busy 24/7, every day of the year, sunshine or sleet. Plus the city was a vacation spot of sorts, the weather usually Mediterranean. Yet the Spetsnaz base had been built because of the proximity to Ukraine, which was in effect surrounded by Russian forces.

  A bright flash bloomed in the woods to the east and was gone in a second or two.

  “Spetsnaz night ops?” Mac asked.

  “They’re training for something big,” Raya said.

&nb
sp; “Big?”

  “I have no idea. But when they do night training ops, I’m told, something important is on the table. Same as your SEAL Team Six operators.”

  The navy base sprawled along the coast and inland, well toward the side of the bay nearest the Crimean Peninsula less than one hundred miles away. Lights were everywhere, though there didn’t seem to be much activity visible as they came in for a landing just fifty yards from a Tupolev TU-154M, which was a narrow-body three-engine jet that was sometimes used as a military VIP transport.

  They jumped down onto the tarmac and surrendered their vests and helmets. As they walked toward the jet, the chopper took off.

  It was barely airborne and away when a half dozen military troop transports came from the other side of the Tupolev, lights on, sirens blaring. Almost immediately at least one hundred heavily armed men in black camos leaped from the vehicles and formed a cordon.

  “SVR?” Mac asked, raising his hands at the same time Raya did.

  “Da.”

  “Evidently Subotin knows more than you thought he did.”

  SIXTY

  Otto had sent Louise back to Pete’s apartment to get a few things, and then to their safe house in McLean. Pete had objected; she wanted to stay until they found Mac. But she was dead on her feet, and in the end Otto won out.

  “The surveillance systems are up and running, but I don’t want you guys to go anywhere unarmed, and that includes inside the house.”

  Staring at the display one of his darlings had put up on the main monitor, he phoned the house. It was just past nine in the evening, and Louise answered on the first ring.

  “What’s up?” she demanded.

  “Everything okay there?”

  “Just peachy. Like I said, what’s up?”

  The screen showed the image from one of the newer Aurora surveillance satellites that was in geosync orbit covering a swath of Russian territory from the border with Ukraine all the way down to the Spetsnaz and Black Sea bases.

  It was mostly dark on the tarmac of the fleet’s main airstrip, on which a Tupolev transport aircraft was parked, boarding stairs pulled up to the open hatch.