“Money. Ego. Arrogance,” McGarvey said. He’d seen the same sort of thing many times before. Men, and a few women, who’d thought that they were better than everyone else. Superior. Smarter. Quicker. Or, for some of them, it was the same sort of thrill that a bungee jumper gets when he steps off the edge. It was almost a death wish. When some traitors were caught they were relieved that they no longer had to lead a double life. In many respects prison would be easier.
Weiss, if he was guilty of anything other than being a simple asshole, was not cut of the same dangerous cloth as Rupert Graham. Men like Graham, and others McGarvey had come up against, who were as brilliant as they were ruthless, were at war with the world. Whatever brought them to that point, and there was no one reason that McGarvey had ever discovered, did not interfere with their skills on the battlefield.
Carlos the Jackal had been the first of the specialist killing machines in the modern era, and Graham was just another. He would never be brought to trial, because he would simply take his war into prison. Men like him had to be killed. There was no other solution.
“Hijo de puta,” Gloria said softly.
“Yeah.”
Coming back out of the field, as he had done countless times before in his career, brought back a host of memories. A good many of them were very bad: missions in which he had made kills; missions in which he had nearly lost his life; missions in which his family’s lives had been placed in jeopardy. Riding into the city he remembered the face of every person he’d killed. The number wasn’t legion, but over a twenty-five-year career he had a lot of blood on his conscience.
Adkins had sent a Company limo out to Andrews for them, and on the drive in McGarvey had made a quick phone call to his wife.
“Touchdown,” he told her.
“You’re in one piece?” she asked, and he heard the relief in her voice.
“All my fingers and toes.”
“ETA?”
McGarvey glanced at his watch. It was a couple of minutes after ten. When he looked up, his eyes met Gloria’s. There was an odd, hungry set to her mouth. “I should make it by lunchtime or a little later. How’d the move go?”
“Most of our worldly possessions are on the way south,” Kathleen said. “How about us?”
“Soon,” McGarvey promised.
“As in tomorrow or the next day?”
“Soon,” McGarvey said. He felt bad, because this sort of conversation had interrupted his marriage for a lot of years. These days Katy was more pragmatic about what he did, but the uncertainty and hurt was an ever-constant pressure in her gut. He could hear it in her voice. She was afraid for him.
“We’ll talk then,” Kathleen said and broke the connection.
The Company had provided them with a furnished apartment not too far from their house in Chevy Chase until McGarvey was finished with this assignment. He’d wanted her to drive down to their new place in Sarasota, and Liz had volunteered to ride shotgun for her mother. But Kathleen wasn’t leaving town without her husband.
“You okay?” Gloria asked.
McGarvey managed a smile. “Just trying to get retired and stay that way.”
“Soon?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Their driver radioed ahead and they were passed directly through the executive gate, and whisked to management’s underground parking where the elevator was waiting for them. “Welcome back, Mr. Director,” the driver said.
“I’m not back,” McGarvey told him.
He and Gloria rode up to the Directorate of Operations on the third floor. He got out with her. “You don’t have to come with me,” she said. “I’m a big girl, I can handle Mr. McCann.”
“I’m sure you can, but I’ll put in a good word for you anyway,” McGarvey told her. “This isn’t over, and I have a feeling I may be asking for your help again.”
Gloria’s eyes lit up with pleasure. “Any time,” she said, and she headed down the corridor to the DDO’s office.
McGarvey went in the opposite direction back to Rencke’s office, which a few months ago had been moved out of the mainframe room here to Operations, where he could be closer to the Watch. His big office behind glass walls had originally housed a dozen cubicles where Directorate of Intelligence analysts task-shared with DDO junior desk officers. Their offices had been scattered all over the third floor.
Rencke was standing in the middle of the room on one leg, like a flamingo, his red hair flying everywhere, while data streamed across nine computer monitors arrayed around the perimeter. The wallpaper on each of them was lavender. He was leaning up against a long conference table that was strewn with maps; high-resolution satellite photos in real light as well as infrared; stacks of file folders, many of them with orange stripes denoting top secret or above material; empty Twinkie wrappers and a half-empty bottle of heavy cream.
McGarvey knocked on the glass door and let himself in.
“Bad dog, bad dog, go away and come again another day!” Rencke shouted.
“Just me,” McGarvey said.
Rencke spun around so fast he almost fell over. “Oh, wow,” he cried. “Did you find the golden chalice? Did you?”
“You were right, it’s a submarine operation. The five guys they sprung last week had all been submarine crew.”
Rencke clapped his hands. “Uncle Osama isn’t about to waste the skills of a Perisher dude. No way.” He stopped suddenly, the animation leaving his face. “You found something else?”
“They were transferred to Echo the same night,” McGarvey said.
“Gitmo’s starting to smell like a barnyard,” Rencke said. “Any ideas?”
“Guy’s name is Tom Weiss. He’s the ONI officer in charge of interrogations,” McGarvey said. “He’s either an idiot or he’s on someone’s payroll.”
“Same one who hassled Gloria last week. He couldn’t have been terribly happy to see her on his doorstep again.”
McGarvey explained the confrontation they’d had this morning, and Rencke was loving it.
“Big man on campus got taken down a notch by the little lady.” He laughed. “Wait’ll I tell Louise. She loves that kinda shit.”
“Take a peek down his track, but don’t make any waves yet,” McGarvey said. “If he is dirty he’ll have cutouts, probably someone else there on base, unless he’s set up a little nest egg account somewhere. Maybe the Caymans. But he’ll have to have a line of communications.”
“If it’s electronic I’ll find it,” Rencke said. “But there might be a letter drop somewhere. Any idea how often he gets back to the States? Could be here, ya know.”
“I don’t know anything about the man, except that Gloria thinks he’s dirty, and for now that’s good enough for me.”
“She’s kinda like Liz, isn’t she?” Rencke said.
“I thought the same thing,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime, while Graham is looking for a crew, we need to find out where’s he’s going to get a sub and a weapon. And for some reason I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time on this one.”
“It’ll probably be a Kilo boat. I’m running an inventory right now for all of them our spy birds can spot, but we’ll miss all the ones either locked up in sub pens, or tucked away in some remote inlet somewhere. I was thinking about asking Pete Gregory. He’s a naval historian over at the Pentagon.”
“Go ahead and hack their database, but hold off on Gregory,” McGarvey said. “If you don’t find anything in the next twenty-four hours I’ve got someone else in mind who might be able to help us come up with a short list. And I know that he won’t leak anything to the ONI.”
THIRTY-THREE