Gambit Read online

  “I was just getting in a cab on M Street to come back to the hotel when we heard the gunfire. I’m not shitting you, Bobby, it scared the hell out of me.”

  “Not to worry.”

  “Did they kill the drunk?”

  Perkins hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Okay, well, I feel safer. Maybe next time I’m in town, if you can keep the bad guys at bay, we’ll get together.”

  “I’d like that,” Perkins said, his tone not so light.

  Susan broke the connection. “Your guy?”

  “Could have been a coincidence,” Hammond said.

  “But you doubt it.”

  Hammond nodded.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where’s the boat?”

  The boat was Glory, a 380-foot motor yacht built a few years ago by the Italian shipyard Codecasa in Tuscany. She wasn’t the largest vessel in the billionaires’ circuit, but she’d made the Atlantic crossing three times now with absolutely no trouble. And last year, she had transited the Panama Canal.

  “Seattle. We’re having some work done on the engines.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I was thinking about spending a month or so on the inside passage up to Anchorage until it’s time to take her back across the pond. Something different.”

  “The only ice I like is in my drink,” Susan said, but then another thought occurred to her, and her expression and attitude changed. “You’re not done.”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that the second guy probably failed?”

  “I’d hoped he would,” Hammond said. “I don’t want it to end so quickly. I want the bastard to hang out in the wind for a while.”

  “Okay, so it’s still a game. But we know what McGarvey is capable of if he finds out who’s behind it. So it’s a dangerous game. And I’ll ask again: Where’s the profit in it, Tom? It has to be worth something to you.”

  “It is. But for now, like you said, it’s still just a game.”

  “Like the movie,” Susan said. But she had another thought. “Which is why you want to get out of Dodge. Alaska until the dust settles on this move.”

  “I’ve never been up there. Have you?”

  “You’ve already lost two shooters. How many more are you willing to lose?”

  “In chess, it’s called a gambit. Sacrifice a piece or two for a shot at the ultimate prize.”

  Susan shook her head in wonder. “You’re nuts, do you know that?”

  “Yes, but I’m rich, so I can afford to be.”

  * * *

  Susan had a bellman bring up her bags, which she had parked in the lobby storage room, and when she had cleaned up and was dressed, she came out as Hammond was getting off the phone.

  “Can’t get in touch with your Russian friend?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Hammond said. He’d opened a bottle of Krug, and he poured her a glass. “Do you have anything pressing in LA?”

  “Nothing I can’t duck out of.”

  “You’re tagging along with me.”

  She took the champagne, drank it down, and offered her glass for a refill. “Wouldn’t miss it for all the world,” she said as he poured. “But it won’t be just us aboard, will it?”

  “No, we’ll have a few friends up.”

  She grinned. “You’re fun and all that, Tommy boy, but too much of the same thing can get boring. Maybe we can entice one of my exes to join us.”

  “Why not all four of them, and their current wives?” Hammond said.

  She raised her glass. “The alibi heard round the world.”

  TWENTY

  At Otto’s house in McLean, Mary was making them breakfast, and Otto was helping. He went out to the screened porch in back with coffee for McGarvey and Pete. “Mary’s Southern, so we’re having grits with our bacon and eggs.”

  “I hope we’re having more than coffee to wash it down,” Pete said.

  “I heard that,” Mary called.

  “Mimosas,” Otto said, and he started back to the kitchen, but Lou’s voice materialized.

  “We have a fingerprint match on the shooter,” she said.

  “That was quick.”

  “They were in our own database. His name was Donald Hicks, thirty-seven, never married, though he was never evaluated as gay. Until four years ago, he was a highly decorated sniper for Canadian Special Operations.”

  “Then what?”

  “He received an other-than-honorable discharge, and he dropped out of sight,” Lou said.

  McGarvey had an idea. “Lou, I’d like you to do a data search, starting four years ago.”

  “Of course, Mac.”

  “Can you access the records of passenger arrivals at all three airports in Moscow?”

  “For Donald Hicks?”

  “Yes.”

  “He may have traveled under false papers.”

  “Let’s try Hicks first.”

  Lou uncharacteristically hesitated for a beat. “I’m searching now. But if his name does not come up, I can access the National Security Agency’s facial recognition files.”

  “Unless he traveled under disguise,” Otto said.

  It almost sounded as if Lou laughed. “Of course, dear,” she said.

  “Make the same search for the South African shooter.”

  “Of course.”

  “In the meantime, get me a flight to Ottawa sometime this afternoon,” McGarvey said. “And I need the name and private number of the current commander.”

  “The current commander is Lieutenant Colonel Horace Vickery. Shall I make the call on your phone now?”

  “Please do.”

  “Who shall I say is calling, and the reason?”

  “Tell him I’m calling and that I will explain,” McGarvey said.

  Mary came from the kitchen but didn’t say a word. Neither did Otto or Pete.

  By the time Mac had taken his phone out of his pocket and switched it to speaker mode, it was ringing. A man with a gruff voice answered.

  “Mr. Director, your call comes as something of a surprise. How may I help, and with what?”

  “One of your former operators, who was discharged four years ago, tried to kill me last night, and I’m trying to find out why.”

  “Sergeant Hicks,” Vickery said.

  “I’d like to fly up to talk to you and to anyone who knew him personally.”

  “Has he been taken into custody?”

  “We had a gun battle, and he lost,” McGarvey said.

  “I see,” Colonel Vickery said. “If you can snag a ride on a government or military aircraft, I can get you clearance to land on base.”

  “Mr. McGarvey will be arriving in a Navy Gulfstream C-20G,” Lou broke in. “Direct from Andrews.” She gave the tail number.

  “I’ll alert tower ops,” Vickery said.

  McGarvey hung up. “Anything on Hicks showing up in Moscow?”

  “Nothing yet,” Lou said. “Your ride is being preflighted, and your crew will be in place by the time you get to Andrews.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No sweat,” Lou said.

  “Do you want me to tag along?” Pete asked.

  “Not necessary; I’ll be back by this afternoon. If you or Lou think of any other means to trace either of the shooters, keep on it. As soon as I get back, I want to talk with Slatkin’s old CO in the Recces.”

  “Will you want to fly over there?” Pete asked.

  “Whatever it takes,” McGarvey said.

  “You don’t think this is going away,” Otto said.

  “No.”

  * * *

  Canada’s Special Operations Regiment was based at Garrison Petawawa on the west bank of the Ottawa River in the Laurentian hills, 110 miles northwest of the capital. The sprawling base of more than five thousand military personnel, one thousand civilian employees, and nearly six thousand dependents had been in existence as a military training
base since 1905.

  McGarvey’s ride touched down a few minutes before one in the afternoon, only puffy white summer clouds overhead, and a light breeze directly down runway 27. A jeep was waiting for him.

  “I shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours,” he told the captain.

  “Direct back to Andrews, Mr. Director?”

  “I think so.”

  * * *

  Colonel Vickery, in camouflage ODUs, was waiting in his office with another man also dressed in battle camos at base headquarters when McGarvey arrived.

  They both got to their feet and shook hands. Vickery, who was a solidly built man in his midforties with a large head, square face, and a drooping jawline that made him look like a bulldog, introduced the other much shorter, more compactly built man as Captain Roger Confrey.

  “Roger and Don went through training together and were deployed three times to Afghanistan,” Vickery said when they were seated.

  “You say that he tried to take you out, sir?” Confrey asked. He sounded and acted like a smart-ass.

  “Yes.”

  “At what range?”

  “Less than five feet.”

  Confrey shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like the Don I knew. He was a long-range shooter. Nevertheless, I’m surprised he didn’t succeed. No disrespect intended.”

  “None taken, Captain,” McGarvey said. “Maybe he should have stuck with his sniper act.”

  Before Confrey could respond, Mac turned to Colonel Vickery. “We think he might have been working as a contractor for the SVR or GRU. Would that have fit with his profile? I understand he was given a OTH discharge.”

  Confrey started to say something, but Vickery held him off. “I was the exec here at the time. Don opted not to go through with a court-martial, taking his other than honorable instead. We had some pretty good evidence than he’d been a walk-in at the Russian embassy down in Ottawa. The RCMP gave us the heads-up, including some photographs.”

  “He didn’t deny it?” McGarvey asked.

  “No.”

  “Was he being accused of spying for the Russians?”

  “No. He explained that he was applying for a visa. He wanted to go hunting in Siberia.”

  “Why was he threatened with a court-martial?”

  “He held a top secret clearance, which meant he wasn’t to have contact with any foreign government for any reason without authorization.”

  “So he quit, and you just let him walk out the door?”

  “He actually had applied for and received a visa, and he’d signed up and paid for the guided hunting tour with a legitimate company.”

  “So he would have been given a disciplinary notice in his jacket and that would have been it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then why did he accept the OTH discharge?”

  “Because he was hardheaded,” Confrey said.

  “But he did try to kill me, and now it seems more than likely he was working for the SVR, Captain. Makes him more than hardheaded. In fact, the price tag on me was $5 million, half of which had already been deposited in his offshore account.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The flight out to Seattle’s Boeing Field went smoothly, though Susan complained most of the way that she was bored out of her skull. For all of her adult life, she’d surrounded herself with people.

  On movie sets with camera operators, soundmen, makeup and costume people, set dressers, directors, and the occasional VIP fans and sometimes more than one boyfriend or husband at a time.

  On-location shoots with the same numbers of moviemakers along with sometimes big crowds of extras, plus the onlookers at the fringes.

  And although Hammond did enjoy her company in and out of bed, sometimes she was a royal pain in the ass, and he told her so.

  An hour or so out of D.C., she had gone into the private sleeping compartment at the back of the plane and took a couple of lines of coke. To calm her nerves, she explained, and when she came forward again and sat down across from Hammond, she was animated but reasonably pleasant.

  “I don’t like being cooped up,” she said.

  Hammond poured her a glass of Krug. “I’m not going to put up with your bullshit much longer.”

  “I know that I can be a super bitch if I think shit’s not going my way. But you’re right about one thing.” She looked out the window.

  “What’s that?”

  When she turned back, she managed a weak smile. “We haven’t heard from your number two, which means he’s probably failed.”

  Hammond had realized the same thing last night. “It’s one of the reasons I decided to back off for a bit.”

  “Why don’t you just forget about it altogether?”

  “It’s too late. McGarvey won’t let it go.”

  “I know. And that’s what worries me the most. We’re not going up against an amateur. This guy is good.”

  “It’s me, not we.”

  She smiled. “That’s very noble of you, Tom. But not normal. What gives, or is it that worriers want to hide under a porch alone so that they can lick their wounds in private?”

  Hammond had thought about the advice Tarasov had given him at the beginning. “If you want the deal, there’ll have to be a quid pro quo. But if you go ahead, don’t change your outward lifestyle. Don’t go into hiding somewhere. Stay out in the open with your circle of friends and lovers in full view. Make it a game if you like, but understand that once you start, you won’t be able to go back. You’ll have to make sure that he dies.”

  And it had become a game in his mind before he’d hired Slatkin, a man he was sure would fail.

  But now that they were in the middle of it, he was beginning to get a case of cold feet. And yet he had to keep telling himself that a man, even one as good as McGarvey, could not keep up against a constant stream of attackers, each one better than the last. Sooner or later, McGarvey would make a mistake. And in the meantime, the game was getting as interesting as climbing the north face of the Matterhorn without safety ropes except for his wealth, to which he wanted to add something significant.

  He forced a smile. “Even I get to be noble every now and then,” he said.

  She raised her glass to him and took a drink.

  Tarasov’s advice was to continue as normal.

  “Anyway, I have a surprise for you once we land.”

  She brightened. “Friends to meet us?”

  “Something you like even more than that.”

  * * *

  The landing went smoothly, but it wasn’t until they had taxied across the field to Clay Lacy Aviation’s private terminal and Susan spotted the KOMO television remote truck and the cameraman and woman reporter waiting out front that she became her old self—or at least her public self.

  “You son of a bitch!” she shouted, laughing and unbuckling.

  “I thought you’d like a little publicity,” Hammond said.

  “I do, but I look like the Wicked Witch of the West.” She jumped up and headed to the rear. “Give me five.”

  Toni Hopkins, the pretty stew, came from the galley. “Looks like your call made a hit,” she said, grinning.

  “The lady does like to be in front of the camera. Any camera.”

  “Captain Bellows would like to know if we should take the plane back to LA.”

  “Yes. And you guys can have a couple of weeks off. We’re taking the boat up to Anchorage.”

  “Supposed to be spectacular this time of year, if a little isolated.”

  “Something new,” Hammond said, and he didn’t know why.

  Susan had done her face, fluffed up her blond hair, which she’d had colored last week, and put on a pair of skintight designer jeans with bangles up the seams, a very low-cut white blouse, and spike heels. “How do I look?” she asked, coming forward.

  “Stunning as usual, Ms. Patterson,” Toni said sincerely.

  “Give that girl a raise.”

  “Consider it done,” Hammond said.

  Th
e copilot, Joe Barnes, had opened the forward hatch and stood aside, and Eddie Bellows, the pilot, had turned in his seat.

  “Good flight, guys,” Hammond said.

  “Thank you, sir,” both men said.

  Hammond took Susan’s arm as they descended the steps to the tarmac.

  “It would have been better if at least a handful of fans had shown up,” she said.

  “A handful would have been tacky, sweetheart, and it was too late to arrange for more.”

  They walked across to where the reporter and her cameraman were waiting, and Susan struck one of her hipshot poses.

  “Susan Patterson, still as gorgeous as ever,” the reporter said.

  “Well, thank you, darlin’,” Susan said. “It’s lovely to be back in Seattle.”

  “A little bird told me that you might be here scouting out locations for an upcoming project. Any truth to the rumor?”

  “You know I can’t reveal too much about what might or might not be in the works, whoever the naughty boy was who let the cat out of the bag, but let’s just say that Seattle has always been in my heart as one of the most photogenic cities on the entire planet.”

  “A beauty in the heart of beauty,” the reporter said, and Susan lapped it up, practically purring.

  * * *

  Mac was due from Canada in two hours, and Mary and Pete were out back having a glass of wine and talking when Otto was coming downstairs.

  “A possibly interesting development,” Lou said.

  Otto didn’t stop. “The Moscow airport search?”

  “No. I thought I might turn up something if I were to search backward to all of Mac’s contacts over the past four years.”

  “Yes, go on, please.”

  “The business in Cannes after the attack on the AtEighth pencil tower on East Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan brought Mac in contact with a number of people.”

  “I know this. Please elaborate.”

  “Two of the principals who helped Mac gain access to the pencil tower across from the UN are being interviewed on television at this moment.”

  “Where?”

  “An ABC affiliate in Seattle. You might want to watch the playback.”