End Game

The light x the confusion x the salvation…

TWENTY-FOUR

When Alex Unroth was sixteen and a freshman at Pine View School for the Gifted just outside Sarasota, Florida, she was a slender attractive girl, short with beautiful dark eyes and silken black hair. The girls didn’t like her because she looked like an athlete — all lean muscle — though she never went out for sports. And the boys didn’t care for her because her breasts were too small and she was smarter than just about everyone in school.

Her stepfather, Leonard Unroth, was a drunk, and her mother laid around most days, reading movie magazines, eating candy and other sweets, and bitching about everything.

She remembered one night in particular, the start of her real education, when her stepfather came into her bedroom around two in the morning, pulled down the covers, pulled down her pajama bottoms, and began fondling her. She was a virgin, though she had begun masturbating and reading books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover two years earlier, so she understood all about sex. Especially its uses for control.

She touched his hand. “If Mom wakes up, she’ll hear us,” she whispered.

Leonard stopped for just an instant. “Fuck her,” he said, his breath from booze, cigarettes, and bad teeth nearly unendurable.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. You’ll take the fishing boat out, and I’ll come with you. I’ll tell Mom I’m going shopping with my friends.”

In the dim light filtering in from outside, she could see the confusion on his face. And suspicion.

“Some of the boys in school want to fuck me. But I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t want to make a fool of myself. You’ll teach me. But you’ll use a rubber.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Go ahead. And when you’re done, I’ll call the cops and you’ll end up doing jail time. It’ll have been the most expensive piece of ass you’ve ever had.”

He was stopped, directly over her.

“Either that, or we have a deal. Wait until tomorrow, and we’ll anchor someplace and you’ll teach me. It’ll be a deal we can both walk away from happy.”

Leonard backed off. “You’re a fucking whore,” he said.

“Not yet,” she’d replied.

The day was blazing hot and humid. Leonard found a relatively isolated spot to tuck in just north of the Holiday Inn near the airport. The boat was a battered old twenty-four-foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser, and belowdecks, with the hatch closed, the interior was like an oven.

Alex took off her clothes and lay down on the settee, spreading her legs for him.

It was only ten in the morning, but he was drunk on beer already. He pulled off his shorts and underwear, and spread her legs farther, pawing her with his calloused fingers.

She pulled a razor-sharp skinning knife from where she’d hidden it in the crack of the cushions and buried it to the hilt in his chest, directly into his heart. He gasped once and fell back on the cabin sole, dead almost immediately.

She checked the ports, but no one was around. For the next fifteen minutes she mutilated his body. Starting by cutting off his penis, she worked her way up to his neck, which she sliced from ear to ear, and then his face, which she skinned — cutting off his nose, his lips, his eyebrows, and his ears, leaving them lying in the incredible mess where she’d dropped them.

She drew water from the sink and washed her body, checking the long mirror on the back of the door into the tiny head to make sure she hadn’t cut herself. At that time she didn’t know all the details of forensic police work, but she didn’t want to leave any of her own blood behind in case she could be identified.

She’d brought a bikini, which she put on, and stuffed her clothes into a watertight plastic bag. Before she went out on deck and jumped overboard to swim ashore, she checked the portholes on both sides of the boat again to make sure no one was nearby to see her leave.

Onshore, she made her way across the rear property of the Holiday Inn, where behind a Dumpster she changed into a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Then, stuffing the plastic bag into her purse, she walked around the long end of the hotel’s parking lot, unnoticed, and out onto Tamiami Trail and to the first bus stop.

Her mother didn’t report her husband missing until the next morning, and it wasn’t until late that afternoon that his body was found. His time of death couldn’t be fixed to anything closer than a six-hour window, and when Alex’s mother had been questioned, she had no alibi. It was Alex who produced the time-and-date — stamped receipts from a couple of department stores that fell within the six hours, and she told police she had come home immediately after shopping, and then she and her mother had watched television together.

The brutal murder of Leonard Unroth was never solved and eventually went into the cold-case files. But for a time the people of Sarasota had been traumatized that a seriously disturbed nut-case killer was running around loose among them.

Alex graduated at the top of her high school class and then did three years at Northwestern, earning her degree with honors in foreign affairs with a double minor in Russian and Chinese. She had only a handful of boyfriends, but in Sarasota she sometimes worked the North Trail as a prostitute, and the kinkier the sex, the better she liked it.

At college, during the short breaks between the spring semester and summer semester, and then until the fall semester started, she went out to Las Vegas, where she worked first as an ordinary prostitute. Then one night a high roller picked her up — because he liked young stuff — and her second real education began.

She got a taste for the seriously bizarre, including role-playing, S&M, and a few other tricks, including orgasm at the moment of suffocation. Timing was everything in that game. At exactly the right instant during sex, her on top and her John on the verge, she would place a plastic bag over his head. At the instant he was about to pass out, he would come.

A certain type of man and a few women she had sex with liked it that way, and were willing to pay top dollar. Until the one night it went too far. Her John, paying her one thousand dollars, begged her to put the bag over his head, but he was too early. He had a heart problem, and he died while she was astraddle him.

She was honest with the hotel security people, who she’d always tipped very well, and they let her go.

“You just can’t come back here, sweetheart,” the chief of security told her with regret. He liked the money, but he also liked his sex with her straight.

Two weeks later she was in Washington, applying for a job with the CIA. And two weeks after that, her initial background check completed, she was called to an office in a federal building on the Beltway for her second interview with a case officer who wasn’t much older than she was and who sported an actual military-style crew cut. He said his name was Dominick.

“Northwestern’s a good school, and you picked the right studies,” Dominick told her. He looked up from her file. “What do you want to do for the CIA?”

She had smiled. The office was plain, only a table and two chairs, with a lousy view of the parking lot four stories down. The walls were bare, the floor a bland off-white tile, and there was nothing else.

“Truth, justice, and the American way — isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?”

Dominick showed no reaction.

“Seriously, I want to be a field officer. An NOC.”

“Why’s that?”

“I want to kill bad guys. I think this country has some serious shit coming its way. I want to be one of the guys on the front line, but I definitely don’t want to join the Marines.”

“Says you were questioned in the murder of your father when you were sixteen. Did you kill him?”

“Stepfather,” she said automatically. “No, but I should have. The son of a bitch tried to rape me. Someone else just beat me to it.”

“You don’t think you’d have any trouble killing a human being?”

“It would depend on who it was.”

Dominick gave her a long, appraising look. “You’re staying at the Hay-Adams. Expensive hotel.”

“I have a little money set aside,” she’d said.

“An inheritance?”

“No, I earned it the old-fashioned way.”

Dominick closed her file and got up. “We’ll get back to you, Ms. Unroth.”

“Don’t take too long. I was thinking about going to work for Microsoft.”

“You know computers?”

“I get by. But they’re going global, and they need someone who understands Russian and Chinese.”

Dominick showed her out, and she took a cab back to the Hay-Adams, where, before she went inside for an early lunch, she stopped a moment to look across Lafayette Park toward the back of the White House. Troubling times were coming for the country, and she wanted to be part of it. Soon.

Two weeks seemed to be the magic number for the CIA, because it wasn’t until then that they called her again, and in the same office she spent the better part of the day with a couple of clerks, filling out forms and questionnaires about her work preferences, her previously unreported skills, her work history, her next of kin — which was no one. Her mother had drunk herself to death last year.

The next day she was driven in a panel van with three men about her age to Camp Peary where her third real education began.

Marty Bambridge came in, and Alex looked up and smiled. The nameplate on her desk said: DOROTHY GIVENS.

“Good morning, sir. Go right in. The director is expecting you.”

“How was your vacation?”

“More like a long weekend,” Alex answered. “But it was good to get away from all the hullabaloo around here.”

“Amen.”

TWENTY-FIVE

It was coming up on noon, and McGarvey had left the bulk of the interrogation to Pete, content to let her lead because she was damned good. Schermerhorn, even as cynical as he was — as most NOCs tended to be out of necessity — had warmed to her, and a couple of times in the past half hour he had actually anticipated a question and answered it before she could ask.

“Would you like to stop for lunch?” she asked. “We can eat here, or there’s an Olive Garden not too far away.”

“We’re almost done. When I walk out the door, I’m going deep and I won’t be back.”

“We’re up to late oh two, just before the Second Iraq War, when you met Alex for the first time in Munich,” Pete said. “Tell us about it.”

“I’d never met the others till then,” Schermerhorn said. “I hadn’t even heard of them. And actually, it was in Frankfurt, at what had been an old Nazi Kaserne.”

This last bit came as a surprise to McGarvey. “The Drake Kaserne?” he asked.

“Yes, you know it?”

“I spent a couple of days there a while back. As a guest of the BND. If you were there, they knew about your op.”

Schermerhorn glanced at Pete and grinned. “Actually, we were thumbing our noses at them.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It was Bertie Russell’s idea. He was our chief mission-training officer. Been with us from the beginning. He was sort of like a father figure, except to Alex, who didn’t trust him. And the feeling was mutual.

“Our first task was to get to the Kaserne without being detected by the Germans, and simply knock on their door. We had passes that were worthless anyplace else. They scrambled, but they let us in. It was a fallback, you see, in case something went wrong in Munich. Bertie wanted us on record as being in country, so if it came to it, we wouldn’t get shot. And that was a possibility.”

“What was your cover story in Frankfurt?”

“Extrajudicial rendition. It was supposedly the real start to the hunt for bin Laden. The Germans were content to go along with us as long as we didn’t cause trouble for any German citizens. They were just happy we had let them in on what we were doing.”

“Did they ever catch on?”

“No. When we were done in Munich, we just packed up and left. In the mountains one day, and up at Ramstein on the big bird for Saudi Arabia the next.”

“This Bertie Russell, would he confirm any of your story?” Pete wanted to know.

“Ran over an IED in oh four, after all the bloody fighting was supposedly done and gone.”

“Convenient,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn flared. “Look, I came out of the woodwork to help you guys.”

“Help save your own life.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. Walt, Isty, and Tom didn’t do so well on campus. What makes you think it’d be any different if I let you take me into protective custody? So just let’s get that shit out of the way. I’m here to help.”

“With what?’ Pete asked, and the sharp question from her stung Roy.

Schermerhorn took his time answering that one. He got up again and went to the window, this time with a lot more caution. “Who else knows I’m here?”

“Otto Rencke.”

“Who else?”

“By now our deputy director of operations and the DCI,” McGarvey said. Otto had texted a query earlier, and McGarvey’s cell phone was on vibrate-only mode. He had excused himself and gone into the bathroom to answer.

“Bloody hell.”

“If you can’t trust people at that level, then what are you doing here with us?” Pete asked. She sounded as if she were gentling a skittish horse.

“Preventing world war three,” Schermerhorn said, coming back to the couch. “It’s there, the warning on panel four.”

“Save us the trouble and give us the message.”

“It’s not going to be that easy. You, Otto, whoever, needs to come up with the decryption if you’re going to believe it. Kryptos is the Holy Grail in a lot of people’s minds. My telling you won’t wash. Especially not on the Hill or at the White House.”

“You’re playing games with us now,” McGarvey said. “Your life is at stake here.”

“Here, yes, it is. Once I walk away and as long as I stay on my own and on the move, I’ll be fine while you do your job.”

“Okay, Roy,” Pete said. “Tell us how you did it. Changed the carvings on four. To this point we’ve stayed totally away from it. We didn’t want to call any attention to the thing. Everyone knows what’s carved into the copper plate, so no one really looks at it.”

“I suggested that the sculpture looked like shit, weathered and green. My supervisor didn’t agree, said copper out in the weather was supposed to look like that. It was the effect Sanborn was looking for. I couldn’t push it, of course, so I bided my time, until I pointed out that all the steel and burnished aluminum on the outside of the New Headquarters Building looked shiny and new. Kryptos didn’t match. It’d be my job to take off the crud and make it look new. And maintain it that way. If someone complained, we could also let it go back to natural.”

“And they went along with it?”

“Lots of really smart people work on campus. Lots of PhD’s, but if you ever look real close at them, you’ll find out just how naive and gullible they are outside their own narrow little specialties. They were easy.”

“You polished the sculpture. Then what?”

“Actually, it was a big job, because I not only had to do the plates themselves, but I had to polish the insides of each carving by hand, one by one. When I got to four, instead of polish, I used liquid metal to which I had added a copper tint.”

McGarvey saw the possible flaw. “In order to make something like that work, you couldn’t have changed, let’s say an A to an I, or vice versa. You would have needed to work out whatever message you wanted to put on panel four, and then figure out the code that would work as an overlay on the original letters.”

Schermerhorn shrugged. “I had a little help with my laptop, but my specialty was cryptography, and I just needed to come up with a modified one-time cipher. It’s completely random like the original, which is why no one was able to break the thing in the first place.”

“But you did.”

“You have to learn to think in random.”

“What’s on panel four?” Pete asked. “What did you try to tell us?”

“Something you wouldn’t believe if I just sat here and mapped it out for you. Plus, I don’t have all the answers — none of us ever did — except for maybe George. Listen, I’m just one guy on the run, a liar, con man, thief, killer by trade. And there’s only me and Alex left from Alpha Seven.”

“Plus George.”

“Yeah, but my guess is he’s never been on campus. Most NOCs never go near the place.”

“Except for Wager, Fabry, and Knight.”

“But someone on the inside, someone with access to real-time intelligence information has to be,” Schermerhorn. “Surely, you guys have figured that out by now.”

“Security has turned the entire campus upside down,” Pete said. She was clearly frustrated.

“Tell Otto what I said about four, and he’ll decrypt it in no time at all if he’s as smart as everyone says he is.”

“The only one left from your team is Alex Unroth,” McGarvey said.

“The Working Girl.”

“So you’re saying it’s she who killed the three on campus? What about Carnes and Coffin in Athens?”

“She moved around a lot. One day here, the next day somewhere else. Did it during our training at the Farm — sometimes she’d bug out for a day or two, and no one could get anything out of her. She did it in Germany, and of course in Iraq with George. We should have called her the Ghost, because she was damned good at disappearing right while you were looking directly at her.”

“She’s on campus in plain sight?” Pete said.

“Ever play Hide the Thimble?” Schermerhorn asked. “She’s there.”

“And you’re going to help us find her,” McGarvey said.

TWENTY-SIX

Otto showed up at Page’s office twenty minutes behind Bambridge, and fifteen minutes behind Carleton Patterson. He was distracted and didn’t wait for the DCI’s secretary to announce him; instead he just barged in.

“You’re late,” Bambridge said.

Page was behind his desk, Marty and Carleton seated across from him. The office was large, bookcases on the west wall, big — surveillance-proof — windows looking out over the Virginia countryside on the south, and a couple of good Wyeth paintings on the east.

Otto went to Page’s desk and wrote a note on a memo pad: When’s the last time this office has been security scanned?

Five days ago, Page wrote.

Otto motioned him to silence, and he used his cell phone to call a friend of his in the directorate of science and technology’s office of electronics. “Come up here now, would you?”

He hung up and again motioned for Page and the others to remain silent as he went to the director’s desk, picked up the phone console, and turned it over to look for any obvious signs of tampering.

“I just talked to Mac, and he and Pete are at a dead end,” he said. He got on his hands and knees and followed the phone cord to the jack in the floor.

“I didn’t think this was going to be all that easy,” Carleton said, picking up on Otto’s ruse.

“This kinda stuff never is,” Otto said, getting to his feet. “Toni Borman is on her way up with the old tapes of the preliminary interviews we did with Wager, Fabry, and Knight. Might be something we missed. Mac suggested it.”

He removed the battery and SIM card from his cell phone and laid them on Page’s desk, and then motioned for the others to give him their phones, which he dismantled as he talked.

“Thing is, we think whoever whacked our guys is long gone. I don’t know how the hell they got off campus, but there’s no way in hell they’re still here. Not with all the extra security we’ve put in place in the last thirty-six hours.”

Bambridge was frustrated, but Page had gotten it, and he motioned for his DDO to stand down. “So, what’s Mac suggesting?”

“If we can find something linking the three of them to someone else, a fourth party, it’d be our best lead. But it’s a long shot.”

“Nothing else we can do at this point, I suppose,” Patterson said.

Toni Borman, lanky, pleasant smile, and almost as tall as Louise was announced by Alex, and she went to work following Otto’s lead.

“Did you bring the interview tapes with you?” he asked.

“Actually, a thumb drive, encrypted of course,” Borman said. She took an electronic device about the size of a smartphone out of her pocket and methodically started on the room. High across the ceiling first.

“Did you listen to the interviews?” Otto asked.

“Some,” Borman said. “Mostly boring.” She worked her way across the walls, top to bottom, especially the light fixtures and electrical sockets, and the wall-mounted flat-screen television.

“Anything stand out in your mind?”

Borman shrugged and Otto shook his head.

“No, not really,” she said. She lingered at Page’s desk and his computer, and when she was done, she looked up. “You have the thumb drive — you listen. Maybe you’ll hear something I didn’t. But I didn’t pick up anything.”

“Thanks for your help,” Otto said, and went with her to the door.

“The director asks, we’re not to be disturbed for just a bit,” he told Page’s secretary.

“Of course,” Alex said.

Otto closed the door and sat down with the others.

“What the hell was that all about?” Bambridge fumed. “Security sweeps every key office on the entire campus every week.”

“On a schedule I know and we think someone else probably knows. We need to randomize the sweeps and notify no one of the time or office. The security people will just show up, and everyone will have to accommodate them.”

“Obviously, you believe there’s leak somewhere that whoever the killer is has access to,” Page said.

“Mac thinks there might be two of them, one still on campus and another free to travel around. Whoever the second one is was in Athens last year to do Joe Carnes, then again a few days ago to kill Coffin, and yesterday in Milwaukee to try for Schermerhorn. But they missed and killed his girlfriend instead.”

“Has he surfaced yet?” Bambridge asked.

“He showed up this morning, and he’s with Mac and Pete, plus with something else we’d already guessed. Or at least partially guessed.”

“How do we know he’s not the second killer?” Patterson said. “He kills his girlfriend, and his informant here on campus tells him we’re closing in on them, so he comes to us to ask for what? Protection?”

“He said he came to help find the killers. He doesn’t want to be next.”

“Does he know who they are?”

“Could be Alex Unroth, who’s the only other Alpha Seven operator still alive, or their supposed control officer, who they only ever knew as George. Trouble is, the team’s actual control officer was Bertie Russell — I checked — but he was killed in Iraq in oh four. There’s no record anywhere of a control officer with the work name of George who joined them on their mission three months before the war started.”

“What about when they came home?” Bambridge asked. “They must have been debriefed.”

“He didn’t come back with them, and apparently, the man was never missed.”

“None of them said anything? They didn’t ask their debriefers what happened to George?”

“No.”

“Why?” Patterson asked.

“Because of what George showed them was buried in the foothills above Kirkuk,” Otto said, and hesitated just as Kirk had told him to do.

“Well, come on, dear boy. Don’t keep us in suspense,” Patterson prompted. “What was buried?”

“He refuses to say.”

“This is bullshit, Walt,” Bambridge said. “Let’s get the guy in here right now. We have people who’ll find out whether he’s lying.”

“He’s already given us the answer,” Otto said. “He worked here for a couple of years as a maintenance man, and one of his jobs was to take care of the grounds, especially the statues and sculptures.”

“Including Kryptos,” Page said. “He has the solution to panel four.”

“Yes, but it’s not the original cipher, and he won’t give us the solution to the new one. But my darlings are already chewing on it, and I suspect it’ll only be a matter of a few days before they come up with the solution.”

“And?” Page asked.

“He changed the cipher on four,” Otto said, and before Bambridge could object again, he told them how Schermerhorn said he had done it. “I took a photo of panel four yesterday and compared it with the original. They’re different, all right.”

“Then he knows the answer,” Page said.

“Yes, he does. But Mac says he won’t tell us, because no one on the Hill or in the White House would believe him. They’ll have to see it with their own eyes when four has been decrypted.”

“This has gone from stupid to ridiculous,” Bambridge appealed to Page. “I say we bring him in immediately and end this right now.”

“They are bringing him in,” Otto said. “As soon as I finish my homework. It’s either Alex or George. I have their general descriptions, from which we can probably eliminate ninety percent of the personnel on campus. My darlings are working on that, too.”

“That’s something,” Patterson said. “But explain to me why he came to us either for our help, or to help us, and yet he refuses to tell Mac the message he put on the panel for everyone to see. What does he want? What’s his game?”

“He says he wants to help prevent world war three.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Schermerhorn had told his story, and he was agitating to leave. No way in hell was he sticking around to see how things turned out, and he sure in hell wasn’t going out to Langley to look at faces.

“I don’t care what Alex or George did to change their identities; it’s the eyes. I never forget the shape, and especially not the expression,” he’d told them.

McGarvey phoned Louise at two in the afternoon, after Schermerhorn had promised to at least give them until dark.

“I want to bring our guy over to your place, just for the night,” he said.

“We have the third bedroom upstairs. Anyway, Audie’s safe.”

“I didn’t ask Otto yet, because he’d say yes no matter what.”

“Will Pete be with you?”

“Yes.”

“Then if he gets out of line, there’ll be three of us to shoot him. See you in a half hour.”

McGarvey had phoned from the bedroom of Pete’s apartment, and when he came back to the living room, Schermerhorn was again staring out the window at the parking lot and street that led up to Dupont Circle. He was looking for someone to show up, and he turned around with a start.

“Who’d you call, some minders?” he asked. Minders were security officers. Like babysitters with guns.

“A friend at another safe house. We’re moving you there immediately.”

Schermerhorn was alarmed. “I said I’d give you until dark, but then I’m out of here. If you want to ask me some more questions, go ahead. But then that’s it.”

“We’ve already told your story to the DCI and the director of clandestine services, plus the Company’s general counsel. They know about the fourth panel, and they know you’re here.”

“Shit,” Schermerhorn said, and made for the door.

Pete pulled out her gun and pointed it at him. “I will shoot you, Roy,” she said.

Schermerhorn pulled up short and turned to her. “And then what?” he asked. Suddenly he didn’t seem so concerned.

“There’ll be a good chance you’ll be dead before we can get an ambulance over here.”

“I meant, I’m going with you to another safe house. But then what?”

McGarvey motioned for Pete to put down her gun. “We’re getting out of here just in case the leak at Langley also knows where you are. Could be we’re saving your life.”

“Noble of you.”

“Just protecting our investment. And when we’re done, you’ll be free to walk.”

“Providing I give you what you want.”

“The killer.”

Schermerhorn had brought nothing with him. He’d stashed what he’d taken from Milwaukee somewhere safe nearby, and when it was time to leave, he’d get out of Washington clean.

“To go where?” Pete asked on the way over to the Renckes’ safe house in Georgetown.

“Someplace safe.”

“That’s what Carnes and Coffin thought,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn fell silent, but he glanced over his shoulder out the rear window every ten seconds or so.

Pete was driving. “We haven’t picked up a tail,” she said.

“What about the gray Caddy Escalade? Been with us since we crossed Rock Creek.”

“It’s not one of ours,” Pete said. She turned left on Twenty-Seventh Street NW, and one block later right on O Street. The Escalade was no longer behind them. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Schermerhorn said.

McGarvey called ahead, and Louise opened the iron gate to the parking area behind the brownstone. She was waiting at the door for them as the gate swung shut.

“So who’s the mystery guest? One of the Alpha Seven crowd?”

Schermerhorn introduced himself and held out his hand, but Louise just looked at him for a moment then stepped aside so they could come in.

“Otto should be back any minute,” she said, leading them through the rear hall to the kitchen. “Said he’d finished with the meeting.”

“How’d it go?” McGarvey asked.

“Just about the way you said it would,” Louise said. “Anyone want a beer?”

Schermerhorn shook his head.“You’re Otto Rencke’s wife,” he said.

“So they tell me,” she said. “Someone killed your girlfriend.”

Schermerhorn nodded.

“Chewed her up just like the others.”

“It was meant for me.”

Louise got a couple of beers from the fridge for Pete and Mac, and one for herself. “Doesn’t seem as if you’re shook up about it.”

“Should I be?”

Louise gave McGarvey a look, as if to say, Scumbag, and Schermerhorn caught it.

“It’s the nature of the job,” he said. “You folks trained me.”

“Don’t get me started. I’ve known plenty of NOCs,” Louise said. She looked up at the monitor unit on the wall next to the back hall. “Otto’s home.”

“Does he know I’m here?” Schermerhorn asked.

“He does now,” Louise said.

Otto breezed in, gave his wife a kiss, and put his iPad on the counter. “Roy Schermerhorn, the Kraut,” he said.

“Did you come in clean?”

Otto laughed. “I don’t know. I never did check my rearview mirror,” he said. “You guys up for pizza tonight? We can order in.”

“Did you narrow down the range of possibles?” McGarvey asked.

“Thirty-seven of them, nine women, all of them about the right age, or close, though I wouldn’t trust the personnel files with my life. Nothing obvious jumped out at me, but these guys were professionals.”

“I’m not going to be able to tell you anything from looking at a bunch of files,” Schermerhorn said. “You’re wasting my time.”

Otto turned on his iPad and shoved it in front of Schermerhorn. The photograph of Walter Wager came up on the screen.

“Jesus,” Schermerhorn said, sitting down. “It’s Walt.”

“Mr. Ponderous,” Otto said. He brought up Fabry’s and then Knight’s photos from their personnel files. “They were hiding out in the open, hoping being inside they’d be safe.”

“Isty and Tom,” Schermerhorn said softly. He looked up. “Could I have that beer after all?”

Louise got him one.

Otto brought up Coffin’s prison photo. “Do you recognize this one?”

Schermerhorn stared at the image for a long time.

“The eyes ring any bells?” McGarvey asked.

“It’s Larry, all right. I’d recognize him anywhere. But he looks different. Worn-out, maybe sad. I don’t know. Not himself.”

“He was running for his life, just like you are,” McGarvey said. “Only he wasn’t quick enough. Neither were Carnes or the others.”

“Or your girlfriend,” Louise said into the sudden silence.

“You can see it in his eyes,” Schermerhorn said.

“He didn’t look like that the last time we saw him,” McGarvey said. “He took a sniper rifle round to the back of his head. Completely destroyed his face.”

“That’s what Alex and George did to the rag heads in the end,” Schermerhorn said, his voice soft.

“Are you ready to look at the rest of the pictures?” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn took a deep drink of his beer then nodded. “Sure,” he said.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Alex sat at her desk, trying to keep her heart rate normal, the expression on her face pleasantly neutral, as staffers came and went into the DCI’s inner office. The Speaker of the House had called for an update on the goings-on across the river. The president’s chief of staff asked Page to come in at nine in the morning to help with Norman Hearney’s briefing — Hearney was the new director of national intelligence. And Stanford Swift, an old friend from IBM, had called for lunch tomorrow, but Page had declined. “Full plate just now, Stan.”

The problem was trust, something Alex didn’t know if she could count on for much longer. In the four years since she’d started here first as a substitute for Page’s secretary, and then the full-time position when the woman was killed in a car accident, the DCI had come to trust her.

The most immediate problem was the Kraut showing up here in DC. By all rights, after the Milwaukee incident with his live-in, Alex had expected Schermerhorn to run for the hills. One less operator to have to worry about in the short term.

But sometimes, like right now, she felt like a juggler with too many balls in the air while standing barefoot on a slippery slope that kept moving. The center was starting to fall apart; it wouldn’t hold for much longer, and then God only knew what would happen next. Except the fallout would be lethal.

Her desk console chirped. It was the director.

“Dotty, could you come in for a minute?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Alex said.

She’d heard what Rencke had said inside. In the last three years she’d heard everything that had been said in Page’s office. Was privy to all his phone calls, all his e-mails, even his private ones, and especially the encrypted ones. She’d recorded everything against the day — which might never come — when she needed some insurance. Though what she knew of the recordings wouldn’t be of much help now.

Getting up, she considered taking her subcompact Glock 29 from its hiding place in her desk, but decided against it. If she had to kill the DCI, she would do it only if she had a decent chance of escaping. She took her iPad and stylus instead. Sometimes he liked to dictate letters or notes the old-fashioned way.

Page was staring out the window, his back to the door when Alex walked in.

“Have a seat, please,” he said, his back still to her.

She sat down across the desk from him.

“Hell of a way to go out,” he said.

“Sir?”

Page turned around. “I’m going to resign. I’m sure you’ve already guessed. A lot of people have. Means you’ll be handed your walking papers. New DCIs seldom keep their predecessor’s private secretaries.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Director. I’ve been thinking about retiring myself.”

“But you’re too young.”

“Thanks for that, sir, but so are you.”

Page let that hang on the air for several beats. He smiled. “I have a problem. This agency has a problem, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it, except I don’t want to leave without some sort of a solution.”

For once, Alex didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t mean to put any burden on you, but the fact of the matter is, I’ve read your personnel file.”

Alex stiffened. “Sir?”

“Harvard. International law. Impressive then and impressive now, according to your résumé.”

Alex had built a top-shelf résumé for herself mostly out of whole cloth, in which under various identities she had worked in a number of highly sensitive government positions — all of them as a private secretary to men who were dead. She’d fabricated pay records and all the paperwork to support her work history. And everyone vaguely remembered her, though no one could exactly remember what she looked like.

Again Alex held her silence, not knowing where he was going.

“Fact is, I need your advice. Not to be a sexist pig, but I need a woman’s point of view.”

Alex couldn’t help but laugh. “Not to be a sexist pig myself, sir, but sometimes a man does need a woman’s point of view.”

George had called her a man’s woman. It was something she’d resented at first, but operating side by side with him in the field, and in the evenings in bed, she’d come to respect him and had come to understand what he’d meant. Most men were total idiots, but George had been special. And Walt Page, in his old-fashioned gentlemanly way, was special as well.

“You’re aware of the terrible business of the past few days. Three of our people murdered. What you’re not aware of is two other murders, both of them in Athens. Both of them were NOCs, on the same surveillance team in Iraq before the second war.”

“Alpha Seven.”

“Yes. All that’s left of them now is a man and a woman, plus some mysterious man who supposedly was their control officer. But he doesn’t show up in any of our records.”

“Do you think one of them is the killer?”

“We thought so, but one of the operators who was living in Milwaukee showed up, and Mr. McGarvey has him at a safe house.”

“Maybe he’s the killer.”

“Mac doesn’t think so. Leaves the control officer, who for all we know might work right here on campus. It would explain how he could have gotten to Wager and the others.”

“And the woman,” Alex said, fighting to keep her voice and manner perfectly normal.

“Otto’s come up with a list of people who fit the general descriptions and who are about the right age. They’re showing the man photographs from personnel records. Thirty-seven people, nine of them women, you included.”

Alex forced a smile. “Me?”

Page nodded. “I had Otto pull your picture from his list. It would have been a waste of time.”

The photo in her personnel file was four years old, and she didn’t look anything like she had before the war. She had put on about thirty pounds, mostly around her hips and ass — which wasn’t all that terrible. During the war she had been mostly skin and bones. Too skinny, George had told her a couple of times. Her hair then had been thick and dark, but she had thinned it with chemicals, lightened it and highlighted it with blond streaks. Her face was fuller, and she even dyed her eyebrows and lightened her skin tone. The biggest change, and the one she liked most, was the Botox injections into her lips. And she smiled now, something she’d hardly ever done before. These days almost everyone warmed up to her the first time they met.

But the Kraut knew her just about as well as anyone else on the team, except for George, who she thought had truly loved her.

“Wasn’t a very flattering picture, as I remember.”

“I saw it, and everyone else who did wondered why you were smiling. Most of the personnel pictures look like mug shots, but not yours.”

“I guess I’m just a happy person,” Alex said.

Page nodded. “You don’t fit the profile of a killer, and Otto agreed.”

Alex laughed. “That’s a relief to know. But you said you need my advice.”

“I want this mess cleared away before I step down, and the president agrees. It’s where you come in. I want to lean on your woman’s intuition. If one of those eight women on Otto’s list is the killer, I think you could spot her before any of us could.”

“You want me to interview them?”

“Not until tomorrow. I’ll give you the list of names, and I’d like you to spend a couple of hours this afternoon going through their personnel files, see if anything jumps out at you. Look at their photographs, study their eyes. Toby Berenson thinks sometimes whatever’s going wrong shows itself in the eyes.”

Berenson was the Agency’s psychologist. The suicide rate among CIA field officers was much higher than the general population. And so were the rates of drug addiction, alcoholism, and suicide. He claimed to be able to detect the early signs by looking into the officer’s eyes.

“I’ll give it a try, Mr. Director,” Alex said. Her eyes were the same as they’d always been: neutral. But she was happy Page had pulled her file from Rencke’s list.

“Let me know by morning.”

TWENTY-NINE

It was past eight when Schermerhorn got up from where he’d been seated in front of Otto’s computer in an upstairs bedroom and went to the window to look outside. A car passed, but the streets in this part of Georgetown were almost always quiet, according to Otto.

“Makes it easier to spot someone trying to sneak up on you,” he’d said.

“But not impossible for the right man,” Schermerhorn had replied.

None of the photos Otto had brought back on his iPad rang any bells, nor did they even when displayed on the much larger screen upstairs. After dinner, Otto had retrieved the Agency’s complete dossiers on each of the thirty-seven possibles, and Schermerhorn had spent a couple of hours going over them.

“Nothing?” McGarvey asked at the door.

“No. It’s quiet out there.”

“I meant in the files. Did you recognize any of them?”

“There were two or three guys who looked possible. But unless their files were faked, none of them ever had the field experience the rest of us had.”

“How about the eyes?”

“No. But there’s a problem with the files.”

“What’s that?”

“There were supposed to be nine women, but I only count eight. One’s missing.”

Otto appeared on the monitor. “She’s Dorothy Givens, Walt Page’s secretary,” he said. He was seated at the kitchen counter, eating a piece of leftover pizza.

“That’d be just like Alex. She could be anyone anywhere.”

“I’ll be right up,” Otto said.

“It’d explain how your killer got their intel. If it is Alex, she would have bugged the director’s office.”

“It’s clean,” Otto said, pushing past McGarvey. “We checked.”

“Physically checked?” Schermerhorn asked. He’d heard this sort of crap before. It was part of one of their training evolutions. Look for the unexpected. Think out of the box.

“Old-fashioned,” one instructor had told them. “Like opening someone’s mail — paper mail. Peeping through keyholes, looking through bedroom windows.”

“His office was swept.”

“Maybe she put a water glass to her ear and listened through the wall,” Schermerhorn said. He was frustrated. Otto was supposed to be the best — but that was electronically. And now his worry that he wasn’t safe even here spiked.

Otto grinned. “You’re right, but she checks out. You can’t believe the hoops someone wanting that job has to jump through. She came out clean.”

“You picked her in the first place. Where’s her file?”

“Page vouched for her.”

“Her file, or don’t you guys give a shit?”

McGarvey nodded, and Otto shrugged and went to the computer. With a few keystrokes, he pulled up the secretary’s file. Schermerhorn got the feeling he’d been had.

The photograph of a woman with a broad smile filled the screen, and Schermerhorn’s first instinct was to step back. But he didn’t know why. The face was more or less the same shape, a little heavier than Alex had been. And the lips were filled out. In Germany and later in Iraq when they’d made love — more accurately when they’d had sex — she had complained that her worst features were her small boobs and skinny lips.

“But I know how to use them, don’t I?”

“No complaints from me,” he’d said.

As he looked at her image on the screen, he was pulled in from the get-go; yet staring at it, he also wasn’t sure.

“Well?” Otto asked.

“She’s squinting.”

“It’s called smiling. Dotty does a lot of it.”

Alex almost never smiled in the old days. And when she did, it was as if she were laughing at you. Nothing about her rare smiles had any warmth in them. She measured people by what they were worth — to her personally.

But she’d also been an expert at disappearing right in front of your eyes. Usually she didn’t have to move; instead, somehow, she instantly became a stranger. Someone you’d never seen before.

The last time they had made love, he had rolled over onto his back, still inside her, and when he looked up into her face, he didn’t know who he was making love to. The woman above him was someone he’d never met. And the effect had been so extraordinary, instantly his mood had drained completely away and he couldn’t wait to get free.

She’d laughed. “What’s the matter, Kraut? The cat got your ardor?”

And an instant later she was the Alex he’d been making love to, but the cat or something had gotten his ardor.

It was in Iraq the week before she and George had started on their rampage, as they’d called it. “Teach ’em a little respect,” George had said, and Alex had agreed wholeheartedly.

Nothing was ever the same for any of them after that, though Alex and George were the one subject all of them avoided, at all costs. The two of them were taboo. They were afraid to even approach them, the same as if the two of them were dangerous IEDs ready to explode and kill them all at the slightest touch.

In fact, thinking about them now, Schermerhorn remembered that when they got to Ramstein and George wasn’t with them, they were relieved. No one wanted to bring up his name. Not even Alex had mentioned him.

They were debriefed individually, but so far as he knew, no one was asked about George. He became the forgotten man in everyone’s minds. Left behind somewhere in Saudi Arabia.

All that came back to him in a rush as he stared at the image of the DCI’s secretary.

“The DCI was in California, Thursday, two days before Coffin was killed,” Otto said. “His secretary took Friday off and wasn’t back at her desk until Monday morning when the director was back. Common practice.”

“As his secretary, she potentially had access to everything he knew,” McGarvey said.

“That included personnel records for everyone,” Otto said. “She is in a perfect position to know what the killer knew.”

Schermerhorn couldn’t tear his eyes from the image on the screen. “Did you know that when Alex was sixteen, she murdered her stepfather? She told Tom about it one night in Munich. The two of them were drunk, and he’d asked her something stupid, like, if it came to it, could she actually pull the trigger to kill someone? ‘In a heartbeat,’ she said. ‘Been there, done that already.’”

“It was in her initial interview,” Otto said. “But no charges were ever filed.”

“Of course not. Even at that age, she was too good to get caught. But she told Tom that when her stepfather tried to rape her, she stabbed him in the heart, then cut off his dick and peeled his face with a fish-filleting knife.”

“I pulled up the newspaper accounts,” Otto said. “The murder was never solved, though the wife was a prime suspect.”

“But that’s Alex Unroth,” McGarvey said. “What about the DCI’s secretary? Can you at least make a guess? You said you would recognize the eyes.”

“She’s squinting,” Schermerhorn said again, staring at the image. Yet his gut reactions were bouncing all over the place.

He turned to look at Rencke and McGarvey. He wanted to run and hide deep more urgently than he’d ever wanted to in his entire life. Larry Coffin and Joe Carnes had evidently tried without success in Athens. And Walt, Isty, and Tom had tried right there on campus, supposedly the safest place in the world for an NOC who’d come in out of the cold. And that hadn’t worked either.

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked again at the image, absolutely hating what he was going to say next. “I’ll have to see her in person.”

“I’ll find out if she’s still on campus,” Otto said, and started to leave, but Schermerhorn stopped him.

“We need to go in cold; otherwise, she’ll figure out what’s coming her way and run.”

“She knows by now,” McGarvey said. “If she’s not on campus, we’ll go to her house — wherever she lives.”

“You’d better bring the militia, and you better expect there’ll be some serious collateral damage.”

“She might kill again?’ Otto said.

Schermerhorn laughed. “Who’s left? Just me and George.”

THIRTY

McGarvey sat behind the wheel of his Porsche SUV, parked in a lot adjacent to a small apartment building in a pleasant neighborhood north of Washington in Chevy Chase — coincidentally not far from the house he and Katy had lived in before they moved to Florida. It felt odd to him, being back like this.

Pete rode shotgun next to him, and Schermerhorn sat in the backseat, nervously checking out the neighborhood. Traffic was light at this hour, but except for the streetlights, it was very dark under an overcast sky.

“We’ll go in first,” McGarvey told Pete. He phoned her, and when they were connected, he put his cell phone in the lapel pocket of his jacket without turning it off. Whatever happened, she would hear it.

Otto had checked with Agency security, who told him the DCI had left around six thirty, and his secretary fifteen minutes later. Neither of them were still on campus. He pulled up Dotty’s address from the file.

Schermerhorn had asked for a pistol before they left the house. “If it turns out to be Alex, I don’t want to go up against her unarmed. You can’t believe how fast she is.”

Pete took a standard U.S. military — issue Beretta 92F out of the glove compartment and handed it back to him. “She won’t be much help to us if she’s dead.”

“Neither will I,” Schermerhorn said. He ejected the magazine to check its load, seated it home in the handle, and cycled a round into the firing chamber. He stuffed the pistol under his belt and beneath his shirt. “Let’s get it over with. I want to be long gone an hour from now.”

“We’ll see,” McGarvey said. He didn’t feel particularly comfortable, having a man such as Schermerhorn armed, but he wouldn’t hesitate for a second to shoot the man center mass if he became a threat. Or even looked like he was about to cause trouble. “You’re out here tonight just to make a positive ID.”

“You’d better be prepared for some serious shit to go down. Because if it is Alex, she’ll recognize me the minute we come face-to-face.”

It was exactly what McGarvey hoped would happen.

“I can have a SWAT team out here by chopper in fifteen minutes,” Pete said.

They’d discussed it before they’d left the safe house, and McGarvey had vetoed the idea. “There’ll be other people living in the building. I don’t want this to become a hostage situation.”

“Not her style,” Schermerhorn said. “If it’s Alex, she’ll have a plan for getting free no matter what the odds are against her. She might shoot someone, but she wouldn’t want to be slowed down with a hostage in tow.”

“Let’s go,” McGarvey said, and he and Schermerhorn got out of the car and headed across to the apartment building.

Pete got behind the wheel and turned the car around so it faced the street.

McGarvey’s main worry had always been collateral damage. Innocent people getting in the way of a gunfight. He’d been in the middle of such things far too many times in his career, and he didn’t want another repeat. He’d come to the opinion that he would rather let the bad guy walk away free than corner him — or her — where other people could get hurt.

Voltaire had the same philosophy a couple of hundred years ago: he reasoned it would be better to let a guilty man go free than to convict one innocent man.

They approached the building from the front and buzzed apartment 301 at the front on the top floor. Dorothy Givens lived in 104, at the rear on the bottom floor.

A man answered the intercom. “Who is it?”

McGarvey held up his open wallet. “Metro police.”

“What’s this about?”

“Open the door, Mr. Reading,” McGarvey said, reading the name off the tag beside 301. “We’re not here for you, but we could be.”

The door lock buzzed and they went inside. Down a corridor was the elevator, to the right a row of built-in mailboxes, below which were two larger lockboxes for packages. The doors to the two front apartments were left and right of the main entrance, and the doors to the rear two down a corridor past the elevator.

McGarvey went first.

Schermerhorn hung back a little, drawing his pistol and concealing it behind his right leg.

“Don’t shoot unless there’s no other way out,” McGarvey warned.

“I want this to be over with as much as you do. I’m tired of always looking over my shoulder. And if anybody has some answers, it’ll be Alex.”

“And your message on Kryptos.”

“But they moved it, and none of us knew where. Only Alex and George.”

McGarvey’s anger spiked, and he turned. “Moved what?”

“The package.”

“You’ll fucking well tell me what it is right now. No bullshit about Alex or the message on four.”

“One thing at a time. I want Alex neutralized, and I’m going to want a whole shitload of assurances first.”

“We’ll decrypt the thing.”

“By then I’ll be long gone, and it’ll be your problem. The biggest problem you’ve ever faced.”

McGarvey had considered the possibility that Schermerhorn was the killer. But he knew that was wrong five minutes after the guy had shown up at Union Station. The former NOC was determined, but he wasn’t certifiable. The killer had some sort of deep-seated psychosis that required him — or her — to destroy the faces, and therefore the identities, of their victims.

If Alex had been telling them the truth in Iraq about killing her father and slicing off his face, she was the obvious fit to the profile.

The problem he was having was coming up with the reason. In his way of thinking, it had to be more than just insanity. Crazy people had purpose, though almost always their motivations were obscure and often senseless.

They came to 104. “You’re here to identify her, nothing else,” McGarvey said.

“And?”

“The next move will be hers.”

“Christ. You have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?”

McGarvey knocked on the door. The building was quiet, and the corridor smelled faintly of cleaning fluid, even furniture polish on the shiny chair rails and oak wainscoting. Solid upper middle-class, no trouble here.

A shadow blocked the peephole.

“Who the hell are you?” a woman demanded.

“Ms. Givens? We’re from Mr. Page’s office.”

“Shit,” the woman said, and opened the door. She was tall, with a long thin neck and narrow features, high cheekbones, and blue eyes. Her hair was wet, and she was wrapped in a bath towel. “Has something happened to Dotty?”

“No,” Schermerhorn said.

“She’s fine so far as we know,” McGarvey said. “The director has been trying to contact her, but she doesn’t answer her cell phone. We were sent out to tell her there’s trouble with the White House meeting first thing in the morning.”

“I can’t help you guys. She’s not here.”

“This is really important.”

“She called about an hour ago, said she was spending the night with her boyfriend. She does that sometimes.”

“How do we contact him?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s got a place somewhere in Georgetown, but I don’t have the address or phone number.”

“You’re Ms. Givens’s roommate?”

“No, just a friend from New York. We used to work together at the UN, and I come down here from time to time. She comes up to stay with me every now and then.”

“Do you at least have a name for her boyfriend?”

The woman shrugged. “No last name — just George.”

THIRTY-ONE

Alex had the cabby drop her off near the end of Dumbarton Avenue NW, just a block from the edge of Rock Creek Park, and less than two blocks from Otto Rencke’s safe house, which itself wasn’t far from Kirk McGarvey’s apartment.

The evening was dark and quiet, the only real traffic and activity in Georgetown at this hour was down in the tourist section along M Street, with its bars, restaurants, and chichi shops. After work, she’d driven to her second apartment in Tysons Corner, just across the Dulles Access Road and not far from the CIA’s back gate, where she’d packed a few overnight things in a bag.

She called her sometimes roommate, Phyllis Dawson, using an untraceable pay-as-you-go cell phone. “I’ll be with George tonight, maybe tomorrow. I think he might propose to me.”

“What trouble are you in now?”

“Nothing serious, but someone from the Company might pay you a visit.”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

“The truth.”

“Yeah, right,” Phyllis had said, and laughed.

They’d worked together at the UN, spying on delegates for an international lobbying firm that worked for a consortium of international businesses. But they’d been too effective, both of them posing as high-priced call girls. When the WikiLeaks were made public, a couple of Brazilian diplomats had been burned, and Alex and Phyllis, who’d worked under assumed names, were forced out. Their control officer and his boss were more than satisfied when the girls simply disappeared without a fuss, happy to sweep the entire incident under the rug.

Phyllis, working under a new identity, had landed a job gathering intel for another international lobbying firm, this one dealing in the secrets of big banks.

They kept in touch from time to time to share gossip, the only people in the world with whom they could be totally open. Or nearly so, in Alex’s case.

Around the corner, Alex used a universal electronic key to open the door of a Ford Fusion, started it, and drove the two blocks to the Renckes’ safe house, where she parked across the street and a few doors down from the electric gate.

A few lights were on in the house. While driving past, she had spotted two old cars parked in back — one a Mercedes, the other a Volvo station wagon. One belonged to Otto, the other to his wife, who still used her maiden name of Horn.

It actually meant nothing that both cars were there. Nor did it make much sense to her to stay here very long, in case the car was reported missing and the police sent out a stolen vehicle notice on the net.

She thought there might be some obvious sign that Schermerhorn was here, but then she knew she was being foolish to hope for such luck. After twenty minutes she turned around and returned the car to where it had been parked.

After wiping down the steering wheel and door handle, she walked a few blocks to M Street, where she had a drink at Clyde’s in the Shops at Georgetown Park, which backed up on the old C&O Canal. The place was busy with the late after-work crowd.

The problem was timing her disappearance. If she went back to work in the morning, and McGarvey brought Roy over to look at the thirty-six suspects, it was possible they would end up on the seventh floor. She had altered her appearance enough that she was pretty sure she would never be picked out of a police lineup. But she and Roy had been a thing in bed for a short while and had lived in close quarters in Germany and again in Iraq. He might pick up on something if he saw her. Escaping at that point would be problematic.

On the other hand, she wanted to know how close they were to solving the mystery. The only way she could get that information was by sitting in her office and listening in on what was said in the director’s office via the direct wire link between her phone console and his.

She’d removed the light in the director’s console that showed when she was connected. Simple but effective.

The key was if someone had shown up at the Chevy Chase apartment, looking for her. But if they’d come that far, it meant they’d put her file back on the list despite Page’s removing it. It meant she was a suspect. But only Schermerhorn could possibly make that determination, and then only if he could meet her face-to-face.

Another possibility she’d considered, and the reason she’d packed an overnight bag, was her Tysons Corner apartment. There was a possibility, no matter how slight, that they had found the place. That in turn would mean they had discovered her Monica Wrigley persona. All her background preparations would unravel from that point.

But she couldn’t take the risk of phoning Phyllis again in case they’d requested an NSA look and listen. Nor could she avoid the risk of going to the office in the morning as normal to find out what was coming her way, if anything.

A reasonably well-put-together man in a business suit, tie loose, collar open, came over to her. He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe forty, and he had a wedding ring. He smiled.

“No line, but you’re an attractive woman,” he said. “My name is Jeff. May I buy you a drink?”

“Why not?” she said, and motioned for the bartender. “Your wife out of town?”

“She works for a senator who likes to go on junkets. They’re probably sleeping together.”

The bartender came and refilled her glass with a Pinot Grigio.

“Kids?”

“No time.”

“Never too late. Leave Washington, get a new life,” Alex said, her problem of staying away from her Tysons Corner apartment for the night solved. But she almost felt sorry for the guy, and she guessed she wanted to give him a chance. “Call her right now, wherever she is, tell her you love her, and ask her to come home.”

“She’s an ambitious girl. It’s one of the reasons we got married. But she won’t leave the senator.”

“When will she be back?”

“Not till Wednesday.”

“Five days,” she said. She took a drink of her wine and then smiled up at him. “Okay, Jeff, your place, or would you rather go to a hotel?”

He returned her smile, only the slight hint of guilt at the corners of his eyes. “I have a small place just up Potomac Street. It’s walking distance.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Like I said, she’s gone all the time. And we have snoopy neighbors where we live.”

It was nearly ten by the time they’d finished at the bar and walked across the street and up Potomac, to a corner building on N Street NW. His tiny apartment was up on the fourth floor, in what had once been an attic. The ceilings, especially in the tiny bedroom and kitchen, were sloped, and the place was sparsely furnished. It didn’t look lived-in.

Alex dropped her bag beside the couch in the living room and went into the kitchen, where she found a half bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter.

He carried a briefcase, which he dropped on a chair in the living room, along with his jacket. He slipped out of his shoes and took off his tie as he came to her.

Alex opened the Jack and took a deep draught before she handed it to him. “Do you have to go into the office in the morning?”

“I’m giving myself a long weekend,” he said, taking a pull on the bottle. He handed it back to her, and she took another drink.

“Sounds good,” she said. “We have the weekend. So why not get drunk and screw? If you’re up to it.”

He laughed and then took the bottle back. “I’ve been told I’m not half bad.”

They went into the bedroom, where she took off all her clothes first and then turned the covers down on the small double as he pulled off his.

“You like it a little rough?” she asked, facing him.

“I don’t know.”

She shoved him down on the bed and straddled him. “I’ll show you how we did it in Vegas.”

She bent down and kissed him at the same time she caressed both sides of his neck with her long delicate fingers. He slipped inside her, and after that it was easy.

Lightly at first, as she was fucking him, she applied pressure to his carotid arteries, and within ninety seconds he was passing in and out of consciousness, until he stopped breathing.

She held on for another three minutes, then reached down and felt for a pulse. But his heart had stopped. He was dead.

In the shower she vigorously washed her body, and after she had dried off, she rolled Jeff’s body onto the floor, then lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up. She was bone-tired. It had been a long, trying day for her. And the next few could very well be worse.

THIRTY-TWO

Schermerhorn stood at one of the bedroom windows on the second floor of the Renckes’ safe house, staring down at the quiet residential street. It was something he’d done a lot of since they’d picked him up. It was midnight, and nothing moved.

Otto was down the hall at his computer, trying to get some background on Dorothy Givens’s friend at the Chevy Chase apartment and trying without any luck to find the George needle in the Georgetown haystack.

Dotty or Alex — whoever the hell she was — had been lying, of course.

“The woman has a sense of humor,” Louise said.

“And she thinks we’re on to her,” Otto said. “The point is, will she show up at the office in the morning?”

“Absolutely,” Schermerhorn had said with conviction. “She wants to know who’s coming after her.”

“If she knows we’re breathing down her back, she’d be a fool not to run,” Louise said.

“Not Alex. Never been her style. She figures she can win with whatever hand she’s dealt.”

“Beer?” McGarvey asked.

Startled, Schermerhorn turned from the window. “Why not?”

McGarvey had brought up two bottles of Heineken. He gave one to Schermerhorn. “Why do you suppose she let us know it was her, with the George joke?”

“It’s always been her way. Whenever she walks into a room, she thinks she’s the smartest person there, and she needs to prove it.”

“Louise thinks we should just arrest her at the gate if she shows up in the morning.”

“On what charge? Thumbing her nose at us?”

“Suspicion of murder.”

“Look, McGarvey, there’s something you guys don’t understand. Even if Dorothy Givens is really Alex Unroth — and I couldn’t even tell you if that’s her real name — you have no proof she murdered Walt or the others.”

“She was gone from the office on the same weekend Joe Carnes was murdered in Athens last year, and again when Coffin was hit.”

“Check all the records, and I have a hunch you’ll find she was gone other times. Whenever the DCI was out of town and she had no work on her desk, she was free to go. Wasn’t it the same for your secretary when you were DCI?”

“Yes.”

“So that part is coincidental.”

“What about the killing of her stepfather? You said she admitted to doing it, and that she was perfectly capable of doing the same thing to Walt and the others. She and George did the same thing in Iraq.”

“Just because she was capable, doesn’t mean she killed our guys.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?” McGarvey asked. “This morning you were convinced she was the killer, but now you’re not so sure.”

“I’ve had time to think about it,” Schermerhorn said. He looked out the window again, half expecting to see her walking by or sitting in a car across the street. She was privy to everything the DCI knew, and probably a lot more than that. She would have made friends all over the place. The kind of people who fill in the blanks, the guys who tend to the details — the bits and pieces the bosses never have to deal with.

“You were in love with her.”

“We all were.”

“Still are.”

Schermerhorn focused on his reflection in the window glass, and he shrugged. “Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know.” He turned back. “But I can tell you I admire her, even if it turns out she did kill those guys.”

“Christ,” McGarvey said.

“You were out in the field. You know how it was.”

“Never as an NOC. I wasn’t that good of a liar.”

“Maybe not, but you were a damned good assassin.”

“Point?”

“The point is, if Dorothy Givens is Alex and we can prove she killed our guys, she won’t allow herself to be taken in. Could be you who’d have to track her down and kill her.”

“If need be.”

“But you’d need the proof first.”

“Yes.”

“Hold her down long enough to maybe take a cheek swab or maybe grab a glass or a cup she drank out of. Toss her apartment — toothbrushes, hairbrushes, lipstick, makeup. Lots of places to come up with a sample of her DNA, because I can guarantee the one that’s in her Company file won’t be the real one.”

“Again, what’s your point?”

“Have you seen the autopsy reports on Walt and Isty?”

“No.”

“But you know how they were killed. Their throats were sliced, their faces removed.”

“There were human teeth marks. The killer chewed open the arteries and then bit off their lips and nose and eyebrows,” McGarvey said.

“Right. But did you check the autopsies for DNA?”

“There was none. Apparently scrubbed away with alcohol.”

Schermerhorn nodded. “And it’s driving your forensics people nuts. You have a psycho killer running around loose inside the campus. But they’re smart enough to leave absolutely no physical evidence tying them to the crimes. So prove it’s Alex.”

“First we have to find her.”

“That’ll be the relatively easy part. If it is she who is doing the killing, then I’m next. She’ll come to me. But unless you catch her in the act, how will you prove it’s her?”

“I’ll ask her,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn was at a loss for words. Looking at McGarvey, he suddenly had a very clear understanding that everything ever said of the former DCI and more was true. And for a moment he was just as frightened for Alex that she was the killer after all, as he was frightened she wasn’t — and that the killer was George and they were all playing with fire.

Just the message he’d carved into the fourth Kryptos panel, and now he didn’t know why he had done it. What was the point? He had the urge to tell McGarvey what he had written, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Alex was front and center for now.

THIRTY-THREE

Alex walked back down to M Street before six in the morning, where she got a cab over to Reagan National. She rented a Chevy Impala from Hertz, using the work name documents for Alice Walker and paying for the car with a clean Capital One Platinum credit card.

Traffic was beginning to pick up, and she was careful with her tradecraft to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She took I-395 up past the Pentagon — where she’d thought George had been some sort of a liaison officer, but she had never been able to prove it — and then past Arlington National Cemetery and finally I-66.

Her primary instinct was to run, go deep, because there was no way in hell she was going to spend the remainder of her life in some jail cell. At the very least, sooner or later Jeff’s body would be found in his love nest, and someone at Clyde’s would remember her leaving with him.

It’d all be circumstantial, of course — she’d always made sure that any evidence tying her to any crime was weak. But if the Company’s investigators caught a break or two, there’d be enough to convict her.

And the thing of it was that she didn’t know why she had killed the poor bastard who’d just wanted a one-night stand while his wife was probably fucking her senator. Ever since she was a child, before she murdered her stepfather, she would blank out from time to time; she’d do things that later she couldn’t understand.

None of this was in any of her Company profiles, of course. She instinctively knew how to lie to shrinks, even good ones, and she never failed a question on a polygraph test, unless it was a lie she wanted to be caught at in order to prove she was human after all.

She checked her rearview mirrors at intervals, but nothing other than the Harley that had been on her tail for a mile before it passed her and sped off, and the old Lexus that had followed her all the way to where she’d turned north but had continued on I-66, no one else had been of any interest.

Driving past her apartment in Tysons Corner, she watched for signs that anyone had shown up or that a drone was circling overhead before she parked the Chevy around the corner at another apartment building a block away and went back on foot.

The car would be noticed sometime today, or perhaps tonight, but by then she figured her situation would be resolved one way or another. In any event, it would never be traced back to her real identity.

No one had tampered with the fail-safes on her front door, nor had the security panel just inside been touched. Had someone been here, the panel would have sounded a silent alarm and then gone into a default mode that was impossible to reverse.

She changed into a khaki pants suit, white cotton blouse, and sneakers. She kept a decent pair of black pumps in a desk drawer at work, which she changed into for important meetings, but like just about every other woman on campus, she preferred to be comfortable whenever possible.

Her real go-to-hell escape kit of several passports and other forms of identification, plus several credit cards and five thousand in cash — mostly U.S. and Canadian dollars, but a few hundred in euros and an equal amount in pesos — she kept in a storage unit nearby, filled mostly with boxes of old clothes she had bought at Goodwill and other thrift stores in the area. If the place were searched, half the boxes would have to be pulled out and emptied before her kit would be found.

As she stood at the door, she looked at the apartment that had been her secret home for the better part of four years. It was small, only one bedroom, and very neat and modern, with good furniture, top-shelf appliances, a big flat-screen TV and sound system, and some nicely framed art reproductions on the walls. But it meant nothing to her. In her entire life she’d never had a home that meant anything.

She tossed her big leather purse onto the passenger seat of her deep-green BMW 330ci convertible and headed to work as normal, expecting she would get a few answers she needed, but that she would be on the run again by noon.

The line of cars at the main gate was shorter than it had been for the past several days. When it was Alex’s turn, she handed the officer her ID and gave him a smile.

“Good morning, Don. Looks like you guys have got this down pat,” she said.

“Everybody’s finally cooperating,” he said, handing her ID back. “Have a good day, now.”

“You too.”

Driving up through the woods to the OHB, she decided today was routine unless the security officer was a damned good actor. Which she didn’t think he was. Evidently, no one had been put on alert about her.

She parked in the basement lot, the only secretary on campus who was assigned a space inside. As she swiped her card through the reader at the elevator door, a security officer’s image came up on the screen.

“Good morning, Ms. Givens,” he said, and the elevator door opened.

She smiled. Everything to this point seemed normal, but her instincts were starting to ramp up. Their instructors at the Farm loved to quote the Navy SEAL litany of Murphy’s laws. Number one was: If everything is going good, you’re probably running into a trap.

The seventh-floor corridor was empty this morning, but she was early; it would be another twenty minutes before most of the VIPs and their assistants and secretaries started arriving. Except for the five people in the Watch down the hall from the DCI’s suite, most of the offices were still empty.

The door to Page’s inner office was open when she walked in and set her bag behind her desk then looked in. Page was already there. He seemed to be in good spirits.

“Good morning, sir. You’re early,” she said.

“I think we’re going to hit pay dirt this morning. I don’t have to be at the White House until two, so maybe I’ll have some good news for the president by then.”

“Sir?”

“We think we have our killer narrowed down to thirty-six people. McGarvey is bringing someone in who might recognize them.”

“That’s wonderful news. But I thought your White House meeting was at nine.”

“It’s been moved. Sprague came on board when I explained what was going on.”

Peter Sprague was the president’s new chief of staff. He ran the White House with an iron fist. So far the media hadn’t caught on to the killings on campus, and the president had made certain there would be no leaks from anyone on his staff. Sprague made sure of it; just as the security team on campus made sure there were none from here.

“That’s good news,” Alex said. “I’ll update your agenda. I’m sure there’ll be a few additions.”

“Check with Ken, see if he has anything from the overnights I need to know about.”

Kenneth Whiteside was the midnight-to-noon chief of the Watch this morning.

“I’ll do that first,” Alex said.

She powered up her computer and, while it was booting, walked down the hall to the Watch and entered the director’s code on the keypad. Since the campus had been locked down after the first murder, the door did not automatically open. Whiteside had to make a personal identification of whoever wanted in.

When he saw it was her, he buzzed open the door.

“I’ll be glad when we can get back to normal,” he said. He was a short, slightly built man with sandy hair, already turning gray at the sides even though he was only in his late thirties.

Five days of twelve-hour shifts, with only the next four off, had taken its toll on him, as it had on the other four analysts in the long narrow room. They had the pallor of people who worked under fluorescent lighting and never got out in the sun much. They either worked here or they were at home, catching up on their sleep.

“You and me both,” Alex said. “The boss’s White House briefing has been pushed back to two, but he’d like to know if anything interesting showed up in the overnights.”

“I expected he would,” Whiteside said. He handed Alex a gray folder marked TOP SECRET. “The Pakis walked out on their talks in New Delhi six hours ago.”

A delegation from Pakistan had been in New Delhi for the past four days, trying to hammer out a nuclear disarmament treaty with their Indian counterparts. It was something President Langdon wanted very badly. He had been working with both governments for the past nine months to bring it about.

“They’ve run back to their embassy before.”

“They should be landing in Rawalpindi anytime now.”

“It’s serious, then.”

“The White House won’t be happy.”

Alex patted him on the arm. “They don’t shoot the messenger any longer.”

“Let’s hope not.”

Whiteside was one of the people on campus who Alex liked. He was a dedicated man who was happy with what he did because he loved his country. He was anything but cynical.

“I’ll let myself out,” she said, and opened the door in time to see McGarvey and a woman get out of the elevator with a man she would have recognized from across a football field.

She closed the door.

Whiteside had gone back to his desk. He looked up. “Forget something?”

“If we get anything new from our Islamabad and New Delhi stations, Mr. Page will want to know before he goes over to the White House. He’ll be leaving around one thirty, so anything at all until then.”

“I figured as much. I’ll give O’Connor the heads-up when he comes in.” Dale O’Connor was the incoming shift supervisor.

“Let’s hope it’s good news for a change.”

THIRTY-FOUR

McGarvey had to go through a major rigmarole to get Schermerhorn past the main gate and then badged so he could be taken upstairs to the seventh floor.

“So this is our Alpha Seven operator,” Page said when they walked in.

“What time are you expecting your secretary?” McGarvey asked.

“Why?”

“She might be the one.”

“I don’t think so. She’s been with me for my entire tenure. Damned fine worker, bright, loyal.”

“Sounds like Alex,” Schermerhorn said. “I just want to take a look at her, and then we’ll check the others.”

Page looked at him as if he were a disagreeable insect. “I sent her to the Watch for an update on the overnights.”

“I’ll check to see if she left her purse behind,” Pete said.

“If it’s her, she wouldn’t carry anything incriminating,” McGarvey said. “Just close the door, please.”

“I don’t like this, Mac,” Page said. “I’ve built a damned fine staff loyal to me because I trust them.”

“We’re not going to ask her any questions,” McGarvey said. “When she gets back from the Watch, ask her to bring you the overnights. Schermerhorn will take a look at her, and when she leaves, it’ll be up to him for the identification, and you for the next move. But you did ask for my help.”

Page had been standing behind his desk. He nodded and sat down. “Nothing like this has ever happened here. The few people who have any idea what’s been going on are frightened out of their minds, and the rest on campus don’t know what to make of the tightened security. They know something’s up. But not what, and it’s got them on edge.”

They all sat down across from him.

“How’s the situation between Pakistan and India coming along?” Schermerhorn asked unexpectedly.

Page was taken by surprise. “What?”

“Nuclear disarmament. It’s important out there. Christ, we don’t need a nuclear war, because no matter how local it is, once the genie’s out of the jar, it’ll spread.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Page asked.

Pete gave McGarvey a questioning look, but he motioned no. He suspected Schermerhorn was trying to tell them something in his oblique way. NOCs, even when they were telling the truth, never told it straight on. They tested the waters first. Always.

“I read the newspapers and the blogs — between the lines. Every now and then even al-Qaeda hits it on the head. Bin Laden kicked the Russians out of Afghanistan. Didn’t make him stupid afterward, just rabid.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Schermerhorn shook his head. “Goddamn bureaucrats. Linear thinkers.”

“Enough of this.”

“Be careful where you tread, Mr. Director. One of these days something just may rise up out of the dust and bite you squarely on the ass.”

Page’s intercom buzzed. It was his secretary.

“Mr. Whiteside has an update on the situation in New Delhi. May I bring it in?”

Page hesitated, but McGarvey motioned yes.

“Please do,” the DCI said.

Alex walked in, nodded to the others, her expression neutral, and handed the file folder to Page. “Mr. Whiteside said if anything new comes up before one thirty, they’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Dotty.”

Alex walked out, closing the door softly behind her.

She reached her desk, picked up her phone, and hit 70# in time to hear Page say: “Well?”

Schermerhorn was there; she’d recognized him the moment their eyes had met.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”

“Be sure,” McGarvey said. “Otherwise, we’re talking about an innocent woman.”

It was a fabrication. She’d heard it in Roy’s voice. He was lying for her benefit because somehow they knew she was listening in.

She pulled her Glock 29 pistol and silencer from its elastic holster attached to the underside of the bottom drawer, stuffed it into her purse, and slipped out the door.

A few people had started to show up, and she smiled and nodded as she made her way down the corridor and around the corner, stopping only long enough to make sure no one was coming after her.

Taking the stairs down two at a time, she reached the second floor before an alarm sounded.

“Attention, Security, OHB is currently under lockdown. This is just a drill. Repeat, the OHB is currently under lockdown. This is just a drill.”

She sprinted the rest of the way down to the parking garage. The stairwell doors were only locked from the outside. No security procedures were required to exit; nevertheless, she pulled out her pistol, shifted her bag to her left shoulder, and held the pistol at her side.

A lot would depend on the next sixty seconds. If the lockdown included the garage, the security barriers would be raised from the floor at the driveway out and she would be stuck here.

She pulled open the door and stepped out just as a security officer she only vaguely recognized came around the corner at the elevator door, twenty feet away. His sidearm was holstered.

He turned to her. “Sorry, ma’am, we’re under lockdown. You’ll have to go back up.”

Alex walked directly toward him, her eyes on his.

“Didn’t you hear?” the officer asked. His name tag read: SOLDIER.

Alex raised her pistol and pointed it at him. “Lay your weapon and your radio on the floor along with your security badge, and then step back.”

The man reached for his gun.

She changed aim to his head. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will. Do as I told you, immediately.”

The officer unholstered his pistol and laid it on the concrete floor, then took his radio from its holster on the opposite hip, unclipped the shoulder mic, and laid them on the floor.

“Your security badge.”

He took it off and laid it down.

“Turn around and walk away. If you shout for help, I will shoot you, and trust me, Soldier, I’m an expert marksman.”

“No way in hell are you getting out of here.”

“You’re probably right, and you can take credit for slowing me down. Go, and don’t look back.”

The officer hesitated for just a moment, but then turned around and headed toward the opposite side of the long garage.

Alex picked up his radio and badge, and then followed him just to where her car was parked. Making sure he wasn’t turning around, she got behind the wheel, started the car, and headed for the up ramp.

At that moment a klaxon blared.

She raced the rest of the way up to the exit just as the security barriers began rising from the floor.

A security officer stepped into view in the middle of the driveway.

Without slowing down, she aimed directly for him.

At the last moment he leaped aside, and she passed over the barriers, one of them ripping out her catalytic converter and muffler, and she was outside and free.

She had worked out this scenario before, and in fact, three years ago she had taken a drive around the campus, figuring out ways to get to the rear of the campus, via Colonial Farm Road, which connected through to an automatic gate that then led to Highway 193.

The gate would be locked down for her badge, of course, but she had Soldier’s.

THIRTY-FIVE

Page was on the phone with Bob Blankenship, the CIA’s chief of security. He put a hand over the mouthpiece. “She just made it out of the garage,” he told McGarvey. “We’ll have her at the main gate.”

“Give those guys the heads-up that she’s armed,” Pete said, coming in from the outer office.

“Stand by.”

“She had a pistol of some kind attached to the bottom of one of the drawers in her desk. She must have heard what we were saying, because she was in a big hurry. She got her gun but didn’t close the drawer.”

“No,” Schermerhorn said. “She wants us to know she’s carrying. She’s thumbing her nose at us because she has a plan.”

“Excuse me,” McGarvey said, and took the phone from Page. “Bob, Kirk McGarvey. She’s armed, but she won’t try for the main gate. Did any of your officers have a one-on-one encounter with her?”

“Tom Soldier in the parking garage just a minute or so ago. She disarmed him, but she didn’t shoot him.”

“Did she take his security badge?”

“Yeah, and his radio, but she left his sidearm on the floor.”

“No one got hurt?”

“No.”

“Stay off the radio. She’s going to try for the back gate, using your security officer’s badge, which I assume hasn’t been locked out.”

“Shit,” Blankenship said. “I have two people back there.”

“Tell them not to approach her, or she will shoot.”

“Can’t use the radio, so what do you want me to do? Write them a letter?”

“Radio them. But have the Virginia state police a block off one ninety-three and one twenty-three a couple of miles either side of the gate. If she gets out, she’ll try to commandeer a car or truck.”

“I’m on it,” Blankenship said. “But she’s just the DCI’s secretary, for Christ’s sake.”

“She was an NOC and a damned good one, from what I’m told. How soon can we get a couple of choppers in the air in case she abandons her car and tries to make it through the fence on foot?”

“At least fifteen minutes.”

“Too late. Tell your people to watch themselves.”

“This is unbelievable,” Page said. “Are you sure she’s the right one?”

“No. But she did take off with a gun she’d hidden in her desk, and she disarmed a security officer.”

“She didn’t kill him, did she?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Page asked.

“I’m going to ask her when I pick her up,” McGarvey said. “Roy’s coming with me.”

“Do I get a gun again?”

“Not this time.”

“What about me?” Pete asked.

“I want you to organize someplace secure here on campus for an interrogation. And I do mean secure. At least four people for muscle, and I want it done within the next half hour or less.”

“If she’s as tough as Roy thinks she is, it may take a while to get through to her.”

“Stock the cupboard,” McGarvey said.

Out in the corridor, he and Schermerhorn raced down to the stairwell. Several people out in the hallway moved aside as they passed. None of them knew exactly what was going on, but several of them recognized McGarvey and figured that if the former DCI was in such a hurry, whatever was happening to cause the lockdown had to be big.

“Unit two, copy?”

The radio on the passenger seat next to Alex had fallen silent — until now.

“Two, copy.”

“It’s possible she’s going to try to talk her way through the main gate. I want you to get over there ASAP. Take up position down on the Parkway in case she does manage to get through.”

“We’ll have to take the long way.”

“Hustle.”

Alex pulled off the road a hundred yards from the back gate, just as two men got into a Company SUV and drove off. It didn’t smell right to her. First there’d been a lot of radio chatter, then nothing, and finally the last exchange. It was a setup, of course. By now they would have notified the Virginia state police to block off 193 and 123 on either side of the gate. And it was also possible, though she wasn’t sure of the technical requirements, that the rear gate had been locked down even for security personnel.

“If you start to get sentimental, you might just as well write your will,” Bertie Russell had told them before they’d headed to Iraq. “Let it take over, and you’ll end up dead meat.”

Alex could not remember ever hearing any remark of his that could have been the least positive. But he’d always been right. And he’d been the only man in her life she hadn’t been able to seduce.

Just before Germany she’d gone to his quarters on the Farm, carrying two glasses and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, an inexpensive but decent champagne. It was after midnight, but he had been awake, and he answered almost as if he had been expecting her.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.

He was in a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. She was in sweats, nothing on underneath, and it was obvious.

He laughed a little. “I prefer Dom Pérignon, actually.”

“Not on my salary,” she said. And remembering the incident now, even in the middle of everything from last night and this morning, she’d been embarrassed at that moment. She’d felt shabby. Even cheap.

He’d shrugged. “Go back to your quarters, Alex. Get some sleep. We’re shipping out in the morning right after our final briefing.”

“I can sleep just as easily in your bed as in mine.”

“Go home.”

“What? Are you a eunuch?”

“No, just discriminating,” he’d said.

He was the only man who’d ever turned her down who she hadn’t wanted to kill. And she’d thought about him almost every day, wanting to try again, except he was dead. Only bits and pieces of him — nothing much identifiable as human — had ever been brought back for burial or cremation or whatever had happened in the end.

She powered the window down and searched the sky. They would have choppers up before long, looking for her on foot. Blankenship would know by now that she would try to make her way out the back gate. It was the obvious reason he’d broken radio silence.

She put the BMW in gear and slowly made her way down the shallow drainage ditch and into the woods. This part of the campus bordered on Langley Fork Park, which was for the most part heavily wooded. There were hiking trails through the northern portion of the sprawling park, but nearer the highway were baseball, soccer, football, and other sports fields. On weekends and throughout the summer, the place was busy. But this morning she figured it would be empty or practically so.

She pulled up about thirty yards from the tall razor-wire — topped chain-link fence that marked the edge of the CIA’s property. On the other side, no trespassing notices had been posted, marking it a restricted government area. Federal parks and roads property, a fiction no one had believed for a long time.

Stomping down on the gas, she headed straight for the fence, smashing halfway through but destroying the front end of the car. The engine bucked and heaved, then stopped.

She got out, stood beside the ruined car for a moment or two, but then retrieved her bag, her pistol, and the radio. She headed back the way she had come, but staying in the woods and out of sight of anyone passing on the road.

THIRTY-SIX

McGarvey pulled up just off Colonial Farm Road, where tire tracks led off into the woods to the west, took out his pistol, and got out of the car. The morning was bright and sunny.

In the distance to the south he could hear at least two sirens, possibly more, probably the Virginia state police setting up roadblocks.

“God damn it, I want a gun,” Schermerhorn said.

“In the glove compartment,” McGarvey told him. “But if you shoot at her for anything other than self-defense, I’ll shoot you myself.”

McGarvey started along the tire tracks, not believing for one minute she would try to kill him. She had had the chance, once she was armed, to walk back into Page’s office and kill them all, because she knew they hadn’t been allowed to pass through security while carrying their firearms.

She’d also had the chance, and the cause, to kill the security officer who’d confronted her in the parking garage. But she had merely disarmed him and let him walk away, knowing he would report the contact once he reached a phone.

Schermerhorn came after him, the Beretta 92F in his left hand.

McGarvey looked at him. “Are you ambidextrous?”

“No, always been a lefty.”

“What about Alex and George?”

“George is right-handed. Alex is a lefty just like me,” Schermerhorn said. “We were the only two.” He suddenly caught on. “The killer is right-handed?”

“The autopsies on the three killed here on campus showed they were murdered by someone right-handed. The CSI people confirmed it.”

“Lets me off the hook,” Schermerhorn said. “And Alex.”

“Leaves only George,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn stopped and scanned the woods ahead and to the left and right. “Then why the hell did she run?”

“Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”

“Great,” Schermerhorn said. “I will defend myself.”

They followed the tire marks another fifty yards or so through the woods until they came to the clearing, across which the green BMW convertible was crashed halfway through the fence. On the other side was a matching clearing that bordered the thick woods. Highway 193 was a mile or so off to the left, on the other side of the playing fields.

McGarvey walked to the car and looked inside. No blood, no purse.

In order to make it past the car to the other side of the fence, Alex would have needed to have gotten up on the hood and slid across. The car didn’t look as if it had been washed in the past week or so, and was a little dusty. But there were no marks on the hood.

He looked in the car again, but the radio was not there. She hadn’t left it on the passenger seat, or tossed it onto the floor or in the back. But once off campus, it would be out of range, so there was no reason for her to have taken it.

“She’s on foot. Shouldn’t be hard for the cops to round her up,” Schermerhorn said. “But they should be given the heads-up that she’s armed and she knows how to use a gun.”

McGarvey holstered his pistol and headed back to where he’d left his car. He phoned Pete.

“Did you get her?” she asked.

“We found where she crashed her car through the fence and then abandoned it. But she didn’t try for the highway. She’s still somewhere on campus.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“She’s not the killer, neither is Roy, so it has to be George. It’s why she came back to work for Page, and why she changed her mind this morning. She wants to find him to save her own life.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Set up a place where we can talk to her.”

“I’m on it now. The maintenance people are on their way over to the Scattergood-Thorne house, and I’m just leaving Bob Blankenship’s office. He’s sending four of his top people. But if she’s not the killer, this is mostly meaningless.”

“She knows who it is, but I think she also knows why.”

“What about you and Schermerhorn?”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes. In the meantime, tell Blankenship to cancel the lockdown and have all his people except the four stand down. And bring one of their radios with you. I want to talk to her.”

Alex was about to cross the road to the maintenance garage when McGarvey’s Porsche SUV passed, and she quickly ducked back into the woods. She’d only gotten a brief glimpse, but it was enough for her to recognize Roy in the passenger seat.

When the way was clear, she went across. Several pickup trucks with the CIA logo were parked in back, but no one was out and about. After ducking into the big six-bay garage, she held up in the shadows behind a stack of boxes marked MOTOR OIL in various weights.

Someone was talking inside what appeared from her vantage point to be a break room to her left. She could see a fridge and cabinets, and a coffee maker on the counter. Whoever it was sounded agitated, though she couldn’t make out the words.

To the right was a locker room with low benches and a dozen lockers adjacent to the showers and toilets.

She slipped inside then stopped again to listen, but the showers weren’t running. Everyone on duty was apparently either out on the job, mowing lawns, or in the break room. She opened six lockers in quick succession, finally finding a pair of coveralls and a ball cap that weren’t vastly too big for her, and put them on.

Whoever was in the break room was still arguing about something, and no one came out to see her slip through the rear door and get into one of the pickup trucks, start it with her universal electronic key, and drive off.

The questions in her head at this moment were the same as they had been from the day she had come back to the Company for a job inside: What the hell happened in Iraq, and what she should do about it, if anything?

Last year, when Carnes was killed in Athens, she’d damned well known it had been no accident. Joseph and no one else on the team, would have been so sloppy to allow something like that to happen.

She’d become ultracautious with her movements. It was when she had rented the second apartment in Tysons Corner and put the pistol in her desk.

And when Walt and Isty and then Tom had bought the farm — one, two, three — she knew she was somewhere near the top of the list, and her radar had risen. Someone was coming for her; it was just a matter of time, and just a matter of being prepared.

Coffin’s assassination in Piraeus had not come as a surprise, though he had danced all the proper steps to stay safe, ingeniously hiding himself in prison. But when McGarvey got involved, she’d known it was a foregone conclusion the rest of them would be killed. They had to be silenced.

The trouble was, she didn’t really know the entire why of it.

She drove past the large cluster of buildings on the main campus and headed the rest of the way up to the Scattergood-Thorne house, where she figured she would make her stand. She would see to it McGarvey came to her.

He was the one man other than Page who she felt she could trust her life with. But Page was an administrator on his way out the door, while McGarvey was a force within the intelligence community. A tough man, but she’d always heard, a fair one.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The lockdown was over, and people were beginning to move around the campus as business slowly returned to normal. McGarvey and Schermerhorn showed up at the Scattergood-Thorne house just as the caterers were stocking the larder in the pantry, and the four men from Blankenship’s flying squad were activating the electronic security system for the house and grounds.

McGarvey had been here once during his brief tenure as the DCI, hosting a strategic planning briefing for the heads of the US’s four major intel trading partners from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Along with the U.S., they were called the Five Eyes.

Pete met them in the front entry hall. “We should have everything squared away here within the next few minutes. With her still on the loose, I figured you’d be in a hurry.”

“Get rid of the muscle,” McGarvey said. “She came back because she wants to tell us something.”

“Bob thought you’d say something like that. He wants to keep at least two of them here at any given time. They can rotate on twelve-hour shifts.”

“Only one at a time, and as long as he stays out of the way.”

Otto came in, a big grin on his face. “That whole situation could have gone south in a New York minute. No one got hurt. She wants to talk.”

“That’s what I figured,” McGarvey said. “What about panel four? Are you making any progress?”

“My darlings are still chewing on it. But if Roy would help out, it would speed things up.”

“It’s a transposition code; I’ve already told you that much,” Schermerhorn said. “And you already have the six-letter solution Sanborn gave us. NYPVVT spelled out BERLIN in 2010.”

“You changed the code.”

“Yeah. But BERLIN is still there, still in the same position, just a different set of letters.”

“Damn it,” Otto said. He never swore unless he was frustrated, and he almost never got frustrated. “More lives are at stake here.”

“Including mine,” Schermerhorn said. “But the solution has to come from you; otherwise, no one will believe it.”

“No one meaning who?” McGarvey asked.

Schermerhorn shook his head. “You’ll see.”

One of Blankenship’s men came in from the back door. “We found a pickup truck parked behind the garage. It was taken from the maintenance unit about ten minutes ago.”

McGarvey took the radio from Pete, switched it on, and hit the push-to-talk button. “Alex, this is Kirk McGarvey. I’m here with some people who would like to talk to you. Why don’t you come in and join us?”

“If you’ve given Roy a gun, take it from him,” Alex replied. “And tell whoever Blankenship sent over to wait outside.”

“Pete Boylan is with me.”

“She’s okay.”

“Leave your pistol behind.”

“Not until I’m sure I’ll be secure,” she said. But not over the radio.

They turned around in time to see her coming down the stairs, the silenced Glock in her left hand.

The security officer reached for his pistol, but McGarvey motioned him back.

Roy had the Beretta out and was pointing it up at her.

“I asked you to take Roy’s gun,” she said tightly.

“No firing pin,” McGarvey said.

“Shit,” Roy muttered. He handed the gun butt first to McGarvey. “Thanks. If she had come out shooting, I would have been shit out of luck.”

“I lied,” McGarvey said, stuffing the pistol in his belt. “Nothing’s wrong with the firing pin.”

Alex laughed. She lowered her pistol and came down the stairs to them.

“You’ve come as something of a surprise,” McGarvey said. “But we know you’re not the killer and neither is Roy.”

“We’re left-handed,” Alex said. She handed the pistol to McGarvey, who gave it to the security officer.

“Leave us now,” he said.

“Yes, sir, I’ll be just outside.”

“Tell maintenance I’m sorry I screwed up their fence and then stole one of their trucks,” Alex said. “I also lifted a set of coveralls and a ball cap from someone’s locker. They’re upstairs in one of the front bedrooms, along with Soldier’s radio.”

Otto was staring at her with open admiration. “You were damned good,” he said.

“I still am.”

“I’m going back to my darlings to tweak the decryption program. I’ll let you know when I come up with something.”

“Even a partial something,” McGarvey said.

The room set up for them was the same one the conference had been held in. The windows were double glazed, white noise pumped between the panes to block out any laser surveillance. The walls were covered with sound-absorbing material that gave the appearance of an expensive damask treatment. And the entire space, top to bottom, was inside a Faraday cage to block electronic signals from coming in or going out.

McGarvey and Pete sat across the long table from Alex while Schermerhorn took up position at the end nearest the door, as if he wanted to bolt if necessary or even stop Alex if she tried to run.

“What made you think to come here of all places on campus?” Pete started.

“You wanted to ask me some questions, and had the tables been reversed, this is where I would have set up. Away from the OHB and out of the fray, so to speak.”

“But this is where Fabry was murdered.”

“I know. Almost a symmetry to it, my being here to help you catch George.” Alex pursed her lips. “It’s why we’re here like this, isn’t it?”

“Do you really give a rat’s ass about any of them, or me?” Schermerhorn asked.

She thought about it for a moment. “At first you guys were fun. We were a team. But then George dropped in on us, and everything changed.”

“For the better?”

“Just changed,” Alex said.

“Would you recognize George if you saw him, the same way you recognized Alex?” McGarvey asked Schermerhorn.

“Damn right.”

“He’s not here,” Alex said. “When Wager was hit, I started looking to see if anyone from the old team was here, besides him, Isty, and Tom.”

“But you didn’t try to warn them after Wager was murdered,” Pete said.

Alex shook her head. “It all happened so fast. There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t reveal my true identity. I found out about Joe Carnes and Larry Coffin, which left only Roy and George. Neither one of them were on campus, so far as I was able to tell.”

“But you knew the killer was right-handed, and that both of us are lefties,” Schermerhorn said angrily. “So then there was only George.”

This time Alex smiled. “Remember the story you told me a few days after we got to Iraq? About when you were a kid in Catholic school in Milwaukee?”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’d just had sex, so your memory might be a little fuzzy. But I know what you said.”

“I’m listening.”

“The nuns thought being left-handed was deviant, so they beat you for two years straight, making you use your right hand for everything. They put your left in a thick mitten. Put your arm in a sling. Even tied it to your side.”

“It didn’t take,” Schermerhorn said. “Soon as I got into public school, I went back to being a lefty.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “But you’d learned to use your right hand just as good as a natural.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

“That’s a refreshing bit of news,” Pete said. “Puts us back to two possibilities.” She made a point of laying her pistol on the table. “George and Roy. Sounds like a comedy act.”

“Not Roy. He was never capable of anything like that. Only I and George were.”

“You told us you looked, but George was not on campus.”

“I told you I looked. Doesn’t mean he isn’t — or wasn’t — here.”

“Then you think he’s gone?”

“I wish it were true. But as long as Roy and I are here, he’ll stick around or, at the very least, come back. He wants us both in order to finish his cover-up.”

“We could move you somewhere else, somewhere safer,” Pete said.

Schermerhorn laughed. “You said he found Larry Coffin in some Greek prison. He’ll find us unless we find him first.”

“For once Roy is right,” Alex said. “Why do think I turned around and came back inside? Maybe between the four of us, we can stop him.”

McGarvey noticed that a small bead of perspiration had formed on her upper lip, and her nostrils flared as if she were trying to catch her breath. She was frightened, and from what he’d learned about her background, and from her performance over the past four years and especially this morning, he was impressed.

“Stop him from doing what?” Schermerhorn asked.

“From killing us, for starts,” she shot back.

“And?”

“What the hell are you talking about? And we’re dead. That’s it. All of Alpha Seven gone.”

“So what? Why should we care? By your own admission, it was only you and George who were capable of chewing people’s necks away so they would bleed to death. Then destroying their faces so they would be unrecognizable even to their wives and children. Do you know Fanni Fabry is still in the hospital? She had a serious heart attack, and on the way in she kept telling the paramedic that she knew something like this would happen someday.”

Alex looked away. She was shivering.

“What wife knows her husband will die in that way?” McGarvey demanded. Katy had been afraid for him from the day she’d learned what he really did for a living. But she once confessed she couldn’t imagine the shock and pain of getting shot. It was beyond her ken. Beyond what normal people experienced or even thought about.

But knowing your husband would have his neck ripped open, his blood drained, and his face mutilated?

“I don’t know what he told her. He was a sweet guy — a good operator — but naive. Never was anything cynical about him. He believed in the best in people.”

“Including you?” McGarvey asked.

She nodded. “Even me until near the end.”

“That was when you and George went on your rampage in the oil fields.”

She’d become a little pale, much of the color gone from her face. She held her hands together in front of her on the table, her eyes downcast, and McGarvey had the feeling she was putting on an act for them. Maybe even for herself.

“George,” he prompted.

“He came swooping down on us early one evening, just around dusk. When he landed, he said he was the avenging angel. And I guess all of us believed him in one way or the other.”

“I didn’t,” Schermerhorn said.

Alex flared. “Bullshit, you all but put him on an altar and kissed his ass, just like the rest of us—”

“Why?” McGarvey interrupted. “This guy swooped down on you — exactly how, and what, did he say to make you not open fire first and check credentials afterward? Your team was in badland. He could have been anyone. Mukhabarat. Spetsnaz, GRU — the Russians had interests over there, still do.”

“He made a HALO jump, but it wasn’t until Carnes spotted his chute about a thousand feet up and maybe a klick or so out that we realized someone was dropping in for a visit. If it had been the Iraqi or Russian Special Forces or intel people, they would have sent in more than one man.”

This was her story and no one interrupted her, not even Schermerhorn, who looked as if he had been transported back to that time. His face was filled with a lot of emotion. Nothing hidden, unless it was another act.

“Besides, by the time he walked into our position, we had him covered. If he had so much as given any of us a bad look, we would have shot him. He just came up the hill and said ‘Hi, I’m your new control officer. You may call me George.’

“Chameleon challenged him, but he just said something to the effect that he knew where we were hiding and what our mission was. Said it was stupid at best and everyone at headquarters knew it, so he had come out to save our asses.”

“Those were his only credentials?” McGarvey prompted after she fell silent for several moments.

“That and he knew all our handles, something only Bertie knew. It was enough for us.”

“Why didn’t Bertie come with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who was your team lead before George showed up?”

“Larry was.”

“The Chameleon,” McGarvey said.

She nodded. “Anyway, our new orders were to harass the enemy. We weren’t going to confront them in a shootout. ‘This won’t be another O.K. Corral,’ he said. ‘We’re the insurgents. We’ll sneak down at night, take out a handful of soldiers, officers if possible, and then scoot back up into the hills.’”

“The Iraqis must have reacted.”

“At first they sent out patrols on foot, but we just avoided them. It was easy to do in that terrain. When they started sending up helicopters, it got a little tougher, but we managed.”

“Was that when you and George stepped up your attacks?” McGarvey asked. “Picked up the level of savagery?”

Alex glanced at Schermerhorn but then looked away. “He said they deserved whatever we could give them. It wasn’t just about the coming war; it was about a millennium plus of senseless murders in the name of a supposed prophet.”

“Muhammad.”

“He was rabid on the subject. We all thought he was probably a Jew, with his New York Brooklyn accent, or maybe even Upper East Side. Maybe had relatives who’d died in the Holocaust, maybe even people he knew in Israel.”

“Could he have been Mossad?” McGarvey asked. “It would explain his dedicated hatred.”

“Some of the guys thought so, but his English didn’t have the British accent Israelis learn in school.”

“I thought he was Mossad,” Schermerhorn said. “Born in New York but emigrated to Israel.”

“Then why in heaven’s name did you cooperate with him?” Pete asked gently but in genuine amazement. She wanted to hear his side of the story. “Maybe it was the fog of war?”

“I don’t know. But by then I think all of us, including Larry, were willing to follow Alex’s lead. And she seemed to think this guy was something special.”

“He was,” Alex said.

“How soon after he showed up were you sleeping with him?” Pete asked.

“A couple of microseconds. He said he had come bearing a gift — a secret that was going to change everything. And I wanted to find out what it was.”

“And did you?” McGarvey prompted.

“We all did, and believe me, it was nothing we expected.”

THIRTY-NINE

The sun had come around so that it shined directly into the conference room windows, which darkened automatically, giving the bright day the look of an overcast one. It seemed to fit Alex’s and Schermerhorn’s moods.

“Could I have something to drink?” she asked. “Coffee, water, I don’t care. It’s been a long morning.”

“You were telling us about a gift George brought you,” McGarvey said.

“He didn’t exactly put it that way. But he said he’d come to help.”

“And it did change everything.” Schermerhorn said.

“First something to drink.”

McGarvey nodded, and Pete went out of the room to get something. She left her pistol lying on the table, directly across from where Alex was sitting.

After a beat Alex stood up and went to the windows. “A white van is just leaving,” she said. “Blankenship’s minders?”

“I suspect it’s the caterers. They came to stock up for us.”

“You’re thinking about keeping me here, along with Roy, till this thing is figured out? It won’t be that easy, though. Not without George. So I suppose we’ll be the hand-carved ducks floating in the pond, the hunter hiding in the weeds.”

She went back to the table and looked at the pistol before she sat down.

“Will he show up?” McGarvey asked.

“It depends on his orders, I suppose, but he’s already demonstrated what he’s capable of. Five down, only the two of us left.”

“You looked for him here, but you said you couldn’t find him. Maybe he’s not the killer.”

Alex laughed, but it was without humor. “You still can’t imagine how easy it is to get in and out of this place. Especially if you’re willing to kill someone for it.”

“Are you?”

Alex looked straight at McGarvey. “Under the right circumstances, you bet. But so far no one has held a gun to my head.”

“What about the security officer in the parking garage?”

She laughed again. “Come on, McGarvey. You know as well as I do that most of your rent-a-cops are outclassed. As long as everyone plays by the rules, the system works. But step outside the playbook, and Blankenship only has a few good men who know what the hell they’re doing.”

Pete came back with a couple of liter-and-a-half bottles of Evian and several paper cups.

Alex opened one of the bottles, poured half a glass, and handed it to Pete. “You have to be just as thirsty as I am by now.”

“Yeah, listening to bullshit always makes me thirsty,” Pete said, and drank the water. She shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Unroth, but I’m not suddenly going to go all glassy-eyed and start telling the truth because something’s been put in the water. Though it’d be good if you and Roy did. Maybe we could get somewhere and actually save your lives.”

“Give Roy and me guns and a lot of ammunition and put us in a safe room here. Then send us a video feed of every single male and female on campus — George was a pretty boy. Narrow face, nice eyes, great lips. That would include all employees, including the guys in the Watch, the janitors and other maintenance people, the caterers who just came and went. Bus drivers and taxi drivers who drop people off at the OHB. Tour guides, along with all the VIP congressmen, Pentagon staffers. FBI people and any other LE person who’ve ever come on campus. The people who come in to fix the leaks in the roof, or the plugged-up toilets, or the electrical outlets that spark. The crews that blacktopped the road six months ago. The cable people — we just upgraded our fiber-optic network. How about pilots and passengers flying across our airspace? Anyone notice the hang gliders down in Langley Fork Park? Or hikers or campers not far from where I crashed through the fence? How about tunnels, storm water drainage pipes? You guys have all that covered?”

“I expect we have most of it,” McGarvey said, getting her point.

“Most of it’s not good enough. And who watches the watchers? Who minds the minders? This place leaks like a sieve.”

Pete sat down. “Wager and the others thought they were safer in here than outside,” she said.

“They were wrong, weren’t they?” Alex flared. “Like shooting fish in a barrel. You people still don’t get it.”

“Then why didn’t you run when you had the chance?” McGarvey asked. “Why’d you come back into the barrel, knowing all that?”

“Because of you.”

“Thanks for that, but I didn’t do such a hot job in Athens.”

“But you did. You were the lightning rod. George has an inside source here. You were hiding out in Serifos when Pete and Otto came to talk to you about the murders here on campus. Mr. Page knew about it, and so did I. But Marty Bambridge knew, and I expect there were people on his staff who also knew. And excuse me, Mr. Director, but when’s the last time you had your lighthouse swept for bugs? Or debugged your phones or computer? When Otto talks to you, he uses his backscatter encryption system no one has been able to break. But that in itself is a dead giveaway. He makes an encrypted call to Serifos, and voilà, someone like George could know he’s talking to his old friend Kirk McGarvey.”

“Nice speech,” Pete said.

“I’ll stay here as long as I think it’s safe for me to stay. But give me something to protect myself with when George does show up.”

“You’d just walk out the door?”

“Christ. Haven’t you people heard a thing I just said? Yeah, if the time comes, I’ll just walk out the door.”

“Let’s make sure he’s coming, and then help us to catch him,” McGarvey said.

“He’s on his way, Mr. Director, if he’s not already here,” Alex said.

“We’ll do what you’ve asked, except arm you. Otto can set up the video feeds, starting with personnel records of everyone on campus, along with the surveillance records for the past week. No need to get beyond when Walt Wager was murdered. Pete will take care of nailing down every opening in the physical plant, and I’ll stick it out here with you two.”

“Send Blankenship’s minders away.”

“I didn’t sign up for this shit,” Schermerhorn said.

“Fine,” McGarvey said. “We’ll ship your ass back to Milwaukee and let the cops straighten things out.”

“I want a pistol.”

“The surveillance system is pretty good here.”

“Didn’t help Walt.”

“It wasn’t armed when he was killed. You want to do this, I’m it.”

A look passed between Alex and Schermerhorn. “Set up the video feed for us, and if George is on campus, we’ll spot him,” Alex said.

“Something’s buried in the hills above Kirkuk,” Pete said.

“That’s what George came to tell us. And that’s the whole point, even though it still makes absolutely no sense.”

“Well, what is it, for goodness sake?” Pete asked.

Alex hesitated. “It isn’t so much what it is — or was, because I think it may have been moved after we left — but why it was, and its pedigree, if you will.”

“You’re making no sense,” Pete said.

“I know. But first decrypt Roy’s redo of Kryptos four, and let’s try to take George alive to give us some answers. Because without them, all our lives in this room — even yours, Mr. Director — will be forfeit.”

“Nothing’s that big,” Pete said.

“This is,” Alex and Schermerhorn replied almost simultaneously.

FORTY

Alex knew George was coming for her. They’d all known it to one degree or another. But she thought she was special, not so much for the sexual relationship she’d had with him, or for the rampages they’d gone on down in the oil fields, but because of her position of influence with the DCI. So she figured she would be the last.

It was very late, and while standing in front of the window in the back bedroom, she began to rethink her options. Perhaps coming back hadn’t been such a good idea, except that after looking at all the photos Otto had sent over — several hundred of them and many more to go — she was convinced George had left the campus.

And she had a pretty fair idea where he’d gone and why. Killing her and Roy wouldn’t be so easy for him now that McGarvey had become involved, and he had to know it. Maybe in the end he was becoming the duck decoy, and they the hunters.

Getting out of here and going to him seemed to her to be the only sensible thing to do now.

As luck would have it, Pete had checked her bag before they brought her back upstairs. She’d taken the radio, of course, and the Glock, but had left her spare underwear and wallet with her Givens’s things. But none of them had thought to search the room for her cell phone, universal car key, or the papers she’d used to rent the car at the airport.

McGarvey showed up at the open door. “Don’t you guys ever sleep?” he asked.

The house had settled down a couple of hours ago after he’d declared it a night. There’d be more videos and photos to see in the morning, but Blankenship had been given her list of the campus’s security defects, and his people were busy attending to them. Or at least starting.

“Only when it’s safe.”

“None of us understand why you don’t just tell us what George showed you up in the hills.”

“I suppose you don’t,” Alex said, turning to face him. Her room was dark, only the light from the hall spilling in. Schermerhorn’s door was closed. “Is Roy asleep?”

“He’s looking at some of the photographs again. Says he might have found a couple of possibilities.”

“Maybe I’ll help him.”

McGarvey looked at her for a long time. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day, and you guys need to be ready for it in case George does show up.”

“He could come tonight.”

“Daylight attacks so far.”

“What about security?”

“One of Blankenship’s guys is outside.”

“What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”

“Maybe you do,” McGarvey said. “Get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Alex said.

McGarvey went back downstairs. She could hear his footfalls, and then low voices, his and Pete’s. She wondered if they were sleeping together.

She retrieved her universal key and the Alice Walker IDs, credit card, and cash, and stuffed them into her pockets. Slipping on the maintenance man’s coveralls and ball cap, she went across the hall and tapped lightly on Schermerhorn’s door, keeping her eye on the head of the stairs in case McGarvey came back.

Schermerhorn didn’t answer, so she went in.

At first she thought he was gone. The computer was on, a man’s face on the screen. But then she realized he was standing in the deeper shadows in the corner.

“I’m getting out of here, but I need you to buy me a little time,” she told him.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded. He was bright enough to keep his voice barely above a whisper.

“They’re bound to check in the next hour or so. And when they find I’m not in my room, they’ll come here. Stuff some pillows under the covers next to you and tell them we’re sleeping together.”

“McGarvey won’t buy it.”

“He might if you’re loud enough.”

“Christ, how the fuck are you going to get out of here? And where are you going?”

“The how has always been my business, and I think you know the where. But just keep looking for George’s picture and keep your mouth shut. They’re not going to shoot you for helping me.”

“You’re crazy, do you know that?”

“Just like all of us were for keeping our mouths shut when we had the chance to blow the whistle.”

“Would have been our death warrants.”

“Still could be.”

“Just don’t kill any of the good guys,” Schermerhorn said.

“Might already be too late for that, Roy. Just watch your back, okay?”

She slipped out of his room and went to the end of the hall, where she crept down the narrow servants’ stairs that led to the kitchen pantry and the room with the dish cabinets and sinks for washing up.

Early in their careers, NOCs were trained to work on the other guy’s expectations. Do what they thought you would do, only in a different fashion. McGarvey and the minders expected her to stay and help them find George. And that was exactly what she was going to do — help them find George. Only in the way they hadn’t thought of.

She would leave them a trail of cookie crumbs so they could get the story from the horse’s mouth — in such a way no one in the White House or on the Hill could possibly deny it.

The door to the kitchen was open. A dim light illuminated the stair hall at the front of the house. The only sounds were the motors on the fridge and the deep freeze.

At the back door, which would have been the servants’ entrance and the place for deliveries, she hesitated for just a moment before she went out into the night.

The officer who’d been in the front stair hall had to have been relieved by now. So whoever was out here was on his own, and he hadn’t seen her.

A Cadillac Escalade, the semiofficial car of the CIA, was parked down by the garage next to the pickup truck, which hadn’t been returned to maintenance yet. A man was seated in the Caddy’s driver’s seat, which was sloppy as hell. Considering what had happened on campus over the past several days and what was possible to happen here at any moment, the officer’s disregard for security bordered on criminal.

She angled away from the house and approached the Caddy from the driver’s side, and it wasn’t until she got to within a couple of feet that the officer realized someone was coming up on him. He did a double take when he saw the maintenance department coveralls and ball cap.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his door coming open.

“I came for our pickup truck,” Alex said, keeping her voice low. “They told me you would be back here somewhere.”

“How the fuck did you get here? No one told me anything.”

“They dropped me off,” she said.

All of a sudden he realized he’d made a very bad mistake, and reached for his pistol holstered at his side.

Alex waited until he had it out then suddenly stepped inside his reach and snatched it out of his hand, twisting his wrist sharply to the left. It was a big Glock 20. She turned the pistol on him.

“If you cooperate for the next twenty minutes or so, I will not kill you,” she said. “And you can start by making no noise and by keeping your hand away from your radio. Nod if you understand.”

The officer hesitated only a moment, embarrassment all over his face, but he nodded.

“This is the plan. You’re going to drive me through the main gate and down to Turkey Run Park on the river. I’ll take your radio and the Caddy, and you’ll have to hoof it up to the Parkway to hitch a ride back.”

“I can’t let you do this; it’d mean my job,” the officer said.

“Don’t, and it’ll mean your life. When you get back, you can tell them you were doing a foot patrol around the house when I came up behind you with my own weapon, and you had absolutely no choice.”

“Did you kill those people?”

“No. But I have a pretty good idea who did, and I’m going to find him. You can tell them that, too. Give me your radio and get in the car.”

He did as he was told.

“VIPs get the armored version of this car, but I’m betting you guys don’t. So don’t do anything stupid. A ten-millimeter round will go through the windshield with no problem.”

Keeping the gun on him, she hurried around the front of the car and got in on the passenger side.

“No lights until we’re away from the house,” Alex told him. “Now go.”

FORTY-ONE

McGarvey and Pete stood together at an upstairs window facing the back. He had his cell phone out, and as soon as the security officer’s Caddy disappeared down the hill and around the sweeping curve through a copse of trees, he phoned the main gate and got the duty officer.

“This is Kirk McGarvey. Do you recognize my voice, or do I need to have Mr. Page phone you to verify?”

“No, sir, I was here when you were DCI,” the man said.

“A CIA Escalade will be coming through the gate within the next few minutes. A man driving, a woman in the passenger seat. Don’t interfere with them.”

“No, sir. The lockdown has been canceled.”

“I know. But I want you to call me as soon as the Caddy passes your position, and then confirm that both of those people are in the car.”

“Yes, sir,” the duty officer said with some hesitation. “Has this anything to do with our trouble?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “Call me.” He hung up.

“You’re taking a big chance she won’t shoot the guy soon as they get clear,” Pete said.

“She’s not the killer,” McGarvey told her on the way downstairs. “Call Blankenship and have him send over another one of his people.”

Pete glanced up. “What about Schermerhorn?”

“He’s not our killer either. It’s George — whoever the hell he is. And Alex has gone to find him.”

“Or join him.”

“I’m going to follow her and find out just that,” McGarvey said. “Call Blankenship now, and watch yourself. This is far from over.”

“You too,” she said at the door. She gave him a peck on the cheek, which stopped him in his tracks. It was unexpected.

He looked at her for a beat. “Take care of yourself, Pete. I don’t want to lose you.”

“And I don’t want to lose you.”

Outside, he got into his Porsche SUV and headed down the narrow blacktopped road that led around the OHB and main cluster of administrative buildings.

His cell phone chirped; it was the OD at the main gate.

“They just passed.”

“Thanks,” McGarvey said. He called Pete. “They’re out.”

“Blankenship isn’t happy, but he’s sending two of his people up here. He wants to know why we can’t go after his man.”

“Tell him I’m on it,” McGarvey said. He phoned Otto and told him the situation.

“We caught a break. We’re at the extreme end of a pass. I can task the satellite, but it’ll take a minute or so, and the angle will be very low.”

“How’s the decryption going?”

“Close,” Otto said. “Hang on.”

A couple of minutes later McGarvey drove past the main gate and down the hill toward the interchange with the George Washington Parkway, which to the right headed downriver toward Washington and, to the left, upriver, where it ended in a couple of miles at I-495.

Traffic was all but nonexistent at this time of the night, and when McGarvey got within a hundred yards or so from the interchange, he slowed to a crawl.

“They turned left,” Otto came back. “But that’s all I can give you for another eighteen minutes until a new bird comes up over the horizon.”

“How far behind am I?” McGarvey said, speeding up.

“About three minutes, but if she spots you, it’s game over unless all you want to do is get her back. And that could end up in a hostage situation gone bad, though I don’t think she’d take it that far.”

“Get back to the decryption. I want it as fast as possible,” McGarvey said, and hung up.

He swung left along the long curving entrance that merged with the Parkway, and tucked in behind a Safeway eighteen-wheeler that, the way it was driving, looked as if it were heading unloaded back to a distribution center somewhere just outside of the city.

The truck was speeding, about fifteen miles per hour over the limit, and he figured Alex wouldn’t be doing anything to attract any attention, so she would probably have the security officer drive only five or ten miles per hour over the speed limit.

Before long he would catch up with her.

At the last moment he caught a glimpse of the Escalade turning off the highway and disappearing into the woods toward the river. The brown National Park Service sign announced it was the entrance to Turkey Run Park.

Standing on the brakes, McGarvey managed to pull over about fifty yards past the entrance, the Escalade well out of sight. A car coming up in the distance seemed to take forever before it reached him and passed.

He slammed the Porsche in reverse and headed back to the park entrance, worried he’d read her wrong and she was capable of killing an agency security officer in cold blood. She could leave his body somewhere in the park, and by the time it was discovered in the morning, she would be long gone.

As he pulled into the park, he saw that the entry road paralleled the highway for a little ways before it passed the upriver exit road. He switched off his headlights and slowed down. In the distance a narrow blacktopped road turned right, while the main entry road continued to parallel the Parkway before crossing over to connect with the downriver-bound highway.

The park’s gate would be closed, but most of the park was heavily wooded, with hundreds of places to pull off and hide a body.

McGarvey took the road right into the park, slowing to a crawl. Less than one hundred yards in, he caught a glimpse of the Caddy ahead, and he got off the road. He jumped out of his car and ran through the woods, pistol in hand.

It was more than possible he had underestimated the woman and would be in time to see her gun down the security officer.

The road here was very narrow, trees close in, making it next to impossible for her to turn around. When McGarvey got to where the Caddy was stopped, the security officer was standing next to the car, his hands above his head, Alex ten feet away from him. McGarvey couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the officer shook his head, lowered his hands, and walked away down the road, deeper into the park toward the river.

Alex watched him until he was just about out of sight, and then she stuffed the pistol she’d been holding into the pocket of her coveralls.

McGarvey turned and raced as fast as he could to where he’d parked his Porsche, managed to get it turned around, and headed back to the access road, where he got lucky with a spot to pull through some brush and into a stand of trees.

Less than a minute later, Alex at the wheel, the Escalade passed and sped off to the upriver access to the Parkway, toward I-495, where she would either turn north up to I-270 into the Maryland countryside of small quaint towns, or south on I-495 and on to Dulles.

He got his car back up on the highway, headlights still out, and stayed well behind until he merged with the Parkway and spotted her taillights three-quarters of a mile away.

The highway crested a hill, and he lost her for a half a minute. He switched on his headlights and paced her, turning with her south onto I-495, where, within a couple of miles, traffic started to pick up and tailing her became much easier.

He called Otto. “She’s heading south on four ninety-five. Call Blankenship and tell him his officer is in Turkey Run Park, unharmed.”

“If she’s going to Dulles, we’ll have to get a team out there to look for her. I don’t know what ID she’d be traveling under.”

“How soon will you have a satellite in position?”

“Seven minutes. Do you want me to alert Dulles security?”

“If she knows we’re on her tail, she’ll break off and go deep. I want to know where she’s heading.”

FORTY-TWO

Alex took the battery out of the security officer’s radio and tossed it out the window just before she reached the Dulles Access Road and continued straight. It was possible that the unit had a built-in GPS, though she hadn’t heard of that being the case, but she wanted to minimize her risks while it was still possible to do so.

She’d taken a lot of care with her tradecraft. Slowing down, speeding up, switching lanes so suddenly, the drivers she cut off blew their horns, all the while checking her rearview mirrors. But nothing stood out.

It was possible they thought she might still be on campus, though the officers on the main gate had to have seen the Caddy passing by. But unless they suspected trouble, there would have been no reason to report it. The only issue she could see was that McGarvey or someone had by now discovered that the officer and his car were missing. She’d left the radio on to make sure he wasn’t supposed to make regular radio checks, but there’d been no queries.

In fact, she was just slightly disappointed McGarvey wasn’t on her tail. She’d figured it was a strong possibility he’d come after her. But then Pete Boylan was in love with him, and maybe she was making it obvious to him this morning.

She got off at Tysons Corner a few minutes after four and drove in a very roundabout way to the self-storage unit, using the keypad to gain entry. Her small locker was at the rear of the big facility, well out of sight of Leesburg Pike.

The only noise back here was from the light traffic on the highway. Washington was like New York City in that it almost never completely shut down. And there always seemed to be traffic on the Beltway.

Her unit was filled with cardboard boxes, mostly of old clothes, dishes, pots and pans, curtains, sheets, blankets, and pillows.

Making certain no one was coming, she crawled up on top of the pile and, near the back, moved several cartons, finding a large one that contained several layers of old shoes. Near the bottom she pulled out an attaché case, under the leather cover and linings of which were hidden several passports — two of them Canadian, one British, and two American — plus credit cards, driver’s licenses, international permits, and other forms of ID to match each identity. All the passports were well used and well within their expiration dates.

The cover and linings were formed into patterns that allowed X-ray machines to see through to the inside, but because of the patterns, the existence of the passports and other documents did not show up; instead they blended in.

One separate envelope contained a thousand dollars in cash, most of it American. In addition, a half dozen contracts for travel magazine pieces were contained in a file folder. Several travel guides for Europe and the Middle East, along with a compact Nikon digital camera and several copies of the magazines Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler filled the case.

From another carton she took out a small roll-about suitcase that contained enough clothes and personal toiletries to last her for at least two weeks of travel. They were a little musty, though she changed the items every month or so.

She took the attaché case and roll-about to the Caddy, then came back and put the cartons in place in the pile so it would take someone searching the locker hours to discover something might be missing.

All that had taken less than twenty minutes before she was driving out the gate and back onto the Pike.

Traffic had picked up a little, a lot of it garbage trucks, delivery vans from bakeries, and fresh produce suppliers for restaurant prep chefs. By six or six thirty every road from the Beltway into the city would be jam-packed. White noise.

Again taking care with her tradecraft, she drove back to her apartment in an erratic route, again pretty sure she hadn’t picked up a tail, though every hour that passed, the likelihood that the security officer had managed to call in to report his situation grew exponentially.

No suspicious cars or vans were parked anywhere near, nor had the Impala she’d parked next door been disturbed so far as she could tell by merely driving by.

She made two more passes before she parked the Caddy on a side street a block away, and walked back to the Chevy, where she put the attaché case and roll-about into the trunk. Before she drove off, she quickly checked the trunk, under the seats, in the glove compartment, and under the dash for any bugs or homing devices. So far as she could tell, the car was clean.

Three blocks later she pulled into a service station and filled up the tank. The sign in front advertised that a mechanic was on duty twenty-four hours every day. One of the service doors was open, the bay empty.

She walked in and the mechanic came over. “Good morning. You have a problem?”

“Might be leaking a little oil. Wonder if you could put it on the lift and check it out.”

“That’s a Hertz rental. Have them come out and switch cars.”

“I don’t have time to screw around with them this morning unless there’s problem. I’m driving up to New York.”

“Sure, bring it in,” the mechanic said.

She drove slowly into the bay, and the mechanic raised it on the lift. She started her own inspection of the undercarriage and wheel wells from the rear as he checked under the engine for leaks.

“Technically, you’re not supposed to be in here. Insurance.”

“How does it look?” Alex asked, moving forward.

“I don’t see anything wrong. What makes you think there’s an oil leak?”

“Just a feeling. My dad was a wrench, and he checked our cars every time we took a trip. Guess it just rubbed off.”

The mechanic stepped aside as she checked under the engine and in the front wheel wells, again finding nothing suspicious.

She gave him a smile. “The brakes look good too. What do I owe you?”

“Make it a twenty and we’re even.”

When the car was down, she paid him and drove off. The inspection only proved that the Company wasn’t using obvious bugs. The ones the size of a book of matches. But with the right satellite overhead, something as small as the end of a pencil would work, and no casual inspection would have found it.

Still, she didn’t think the car had been traced to her.

Instead of driving back to I-495, she took the Leesburg Pike a couple of miles north, where it connected with the Dulles Access Road, traffic definitely picking up as people headed to the airport for their early morning flights.

She continued to watch her tradecraft, but with the increased traffic she had no need for such drastic action as before. But each time she changed lanes to pass, she watched behind her to make sure the same car behind her wasn’t doing the same thing.

If someone was following her, she decided they were a lot better than she was.

It was just six when she pulled into the Hertz return lanes, and a man with a clipboard came out, checked the car over, entered the odometer and date and time into a handheld unit, and printed the receipt for her.

She got her bags from the trunk as another car drove up, and the attendant went to check it in. While no one was paying attention to her, she opened the attaché case and pulled out a passport, Gold Amex card, a few hundred in American dollars, and other items of identification under the name Lois Wheeler, and stashed her Unroth and Alice Walker papers inside.

The airport was the weakest link in her flight plan. Once they knew she was gone, they would expect her to run. But Dulles and Reagan National were obvious, especially since very few flights to Europe took off until later in the afternoon — most of them between four thirty and seven. It would leave her exposed her at the airport for nearly twelve hours, during which an even casual sweep would pick her up.

Except for Air France flight 9039 if she could book a last-minute seat.

She went into the main terminal, where she found a seat by a window and connected on her cell phone with the Air France website. Picking up reservations, she went to 9039 for this morning’s 11:45 A.M. flight to Paris. All but four seats were filled, one of them in tourist and the other three in first class. She booked a first-class flight, paying for it with her American Express card.

Next she called the Hotel InterContinental and booked a suite for five days, beginning this evening, so that when she arrived, she would have a room.

It was a bit of irony. The InterContinental was the hotel McGarvey often stayed at.

FORTY-THREE

At Dulles, McGarvey watched as Alex passed through security into the international terminal and disappeared down the long walkway into the concourse. So far as he had been able to determine, she had not spotted him behind her from Turkey Run Park down to the Tysons Corner storage facility, over to the apartment building where she’d left the Caddy and had picked up the Impala, or out here to the airport.

But a couple of times it had been close. She was a damned good field operator, and paranoid as hell now. Rightly so.

A forensics team had been dispatched to the storage facility and to the Caddy, but those moves were only a moot point designed to appease Blankenship, who was beside himself with anger.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Director, but if you had allowed me to leave four of my people there in the first place, none of this would have happened. As it was, Lloyd could have been shot to death. There’s no telling what this woman is capable of.”

“She is not the serial killer,” McGarvey had said, trying to calm him down.

“You bet the life of one of my people on that opinion, you know.”

“Yes.”

He phoned Pete next and brought her up to speed. “She made a couple of phone calls in the main terminal here at Dulles, and ten minutes later went to the Air France ticketing counter, where she got her boarding pass. She just now went across to the international terminal.”

“She’s getting out of Dodge. Paris?”

“Possibly, but most of those flights don’t leave until later in the afternoon or even early evening.”

“She won’t want to hang around there that long,” Pete said. “Maybe she’s leading you on a merry chase and plans on going out the back door.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just a hunch?”

“Something like that.”

“Then my question stands: What about Schermerhorn? Do we cut him loose, let him walk away?”

“Hold him until I find out where Alex is off to. We still might need his help.”

“Are you going after her?”

“Don’t have any choice,” McGarvey said.

He phoned Otto, who sounded excited. “Oh wow, Mac, the decryption is really close. I got Berlin, but it’s just a key, not the real part of Schermerhorn’s message.”

McGarvey explained where he was and what Alex had done.

“Give me a sec,” Otto said. He was back in less than fifteen seconds. “Air France flight 9039 leaves for de Gaulle at quarter to twelve this morning. Gets to Paris at noon.”

“It’d be a last-minute booking, within the past fifteen minutes.”

Otto was back again in under fifteen seconds. “Lois Wheeler, first-class, five A. Hang on.” Ten seconds later he came back. “I ran the passport number she used — it’s valid — and her Gold Amex just came up also as valid.”

“Arrange a jet for me at Andrews. I want to be waiting for her.”

“What about clothes, your passport?”

“I’ll stop at my apartment on the way.”

“That’ll take too long with traffic on the Beltway. I’ll send someone over to pack your things and meet you at the plane.”

“You’ll want to know my fail-safes.”

Otto chuckled. “This is me you’re talking to, kemo sabe.”

“Right,” McGarvey said, and started back to where he’d parked his car a few rows from the Hertz return lanes.

“I know it’s redundant to say, but watch yourself, Mac. If she joins up with George, there’s no telling what they’d be capable of doing. To you or anyone who gets in their way.”

Morning rush-hour traffic was in full swing when McGarvey got back on the Beltway. Joint Base Andrews was just over forty miles away, skirting to the south of Alexandria and across the river. Near Annandale an eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed and crashed on its side, blocking all but one of the eastbound lanes. Traffic slowed to a crawl for nearly forty-five minutes.

Otto called him. “Are you caught in that mess?”

“Right in the middle of it.”

“I have a Gulfstream standing by with its crew, and your things are already on board. Do you want to get off the highway somewhere? I can send a chopper for you.”

“How soon do we need to be airborne to beat the Air France flight?”

“We have all morning, but you might run into some trouble with the DGSE. It’s possible they won’t let you off the plane.” It was France’s primary intelligence agency.

McGarvey and Otto — but especially McGarvey — had a sometimes bloody history in France. The French intelligence people had long memories. Although he had been of some service to them at one point or another, trouble always seemed to develop around him.

“That’s something I’ll have to deal with when I get there.”

“Do you want me to call Walt, see if he can pull a few strings?”

McGarvey thought about it. “No,” he said.

“Okay, are you trying to tell me something?”

“I don’t know. But she and Schermerhorn said that whatever is going on—has been going on since oh two — is bigger than we can imagine, and they’re both frightened out of their wits. Five people have already lost their lives over this thing. Alex has gone runner, and Schermerhorn took the huge risk to change the inscription on panel four. And yet they won’t come out and say what the hell they saw buried in Iraq.”

“I can think of a lot of possibilities,” Otto said after a beat. “None of them pretty and at least one so political, the fallout would be more than bad.”

“Bad enough to kill for to keep it quiet,” McGarvey said. He knew exactly what Otto was talking about. He had thought about it since he and Pete had gone to Athens to talk to Larry Coffin.

His biggest problem was reconciling what he thought with what he thought he should do about it.

Traffic finally began to move, and a half hour later he was at the Andrews main gate, where he was expected and waved through.

He drove across the field to where the Navy’s C-20H Gulfstream, which the CIA borrowed from time to time, was waiting in its hangar, the forward hatch open, the boarding stairs down.

A chief petty officer directed him to park his Porsche off to the side, at the back of the hangar, and the jet’s engines spooled up.

“Your partner is aboard with your things, Mr. Director!” the chief had to shout.

“Thanks!” McGarvey said, knowing exactly who it was and why.

The pilot turned in his seat when he came aboard. “Soon as you’re strapped in, we’ll get out of here. We have immediate clearance.”

“Give me a minute,” McGarvey said, and went back to where Pete was seated, sipping from a bottle of mineral water.

“Before you start bitching at me, Blankenship assured me Schermerhorn was secure,” she said.

He supposed he was happy to see her, but he was vexed. He worked alone; it’s the way he liked it. But Otto had helped him almost from the start. And so had Louise, and his daughter and his son-in-law. And Pete had helped him a while ago in an operation that had gotten her shot. And here she was again, in love with him.

The flight attendant, a young petty officer, first-class, came back. “Sir?” she asked.

“Button up and let’s get out of here. And as soon as possible I want a very large cognac.”

FORTY-FOUR

Over the past few hours the images on Otto’s main monitor had begun to change in a way that was significant to him, and he was unable to stay seated now that he knew he was coming close. He bounced from one foot to the other, something he did when he was excited.

The 120-inch extremely high-def OLED flat-screen mounted on the wall above one of his desks was visible from anywhere in his primary office, but he had to look away from time to time or he knew he would explode.

He was always the odd duck. And when he was a kid in Catholic school, his classmates teased him unmercifully. And sometimes, after school and on the weekends, a few of the class bullies who’d singled him out would beat him. One time they’d broken a couple of ribs, another his nose and even his arm, and one winter his left leg — which still ached on rainy days.

It was impossible for him to go to the nuns about it, because they didn’t like him either. By the age of six or seven he was already smarter than they were in just about every subject — especially in math and science. But instead of treating him like a prodigy, they called him a liar. He was already solving college-level mathematical equations in his head, and they accused him of simply parroting the words and symbols he’d seen on paper. They’d never bothered to call someone who knew the math to check him out, because they were afraid of him. Instead of being proud of the genius they had in their classrooms, they were scared silly, mostly because he was already questioning the basic tenets of the faith, and they knew if he learned too much too soon, he would become an atheist and they would have failed as teachers.

It was just about the same for him in high school and even in college, because he’d developed the unfortunate habit — which he later managed to break — of laughing at people who couldn’t just “get it.” He had the tendency to solve problems they were grappling with and telling anyone who’d listen how stupidly easy they were.

He’d finally dropped out in his third year, and he spent several years of intense reading — not studying because he could “get it” just by reading — supporting himself by cooking in restaurants and any number of other jobs where he didn’t have to use his brain. But each time, he was fired because whatever he was doing, he did it better than the boss.

At one point he went to work for a Catholic diocese, running its books and doing some teaching, but by then he had discovered sex in a big way, and he was fired because he had not only seduced the dean’s twenty-year-old daughter but the dean’s nineteen-year-old son as well.

And then he came to the attention of the CIA.

Some letters and even scraps of words were beginning to emerge when his phone chimed softly. But it wasn’t Mac. The call was internal, ID blocked. He answered anyway, though the interruption just now was irritating.

“What?”

“Good morning. Marty asked that I check in to see what progress you were making.” It was Tom Calder, the assistant director of the national clandestine service. Bambridge had no idea how to deal with Otto, so he had taken to sending Calder to talk to him.

“I’m slammed down here, Tom. Tell him I’m being a bastard.” In Otto’s opinion, he was one of the smarter guys on campus.

Calder chuckled, his voice, like his manner, soft, even gentle, but refined. “I know, and I apologize, but I’d like come down for a chat. I’ll make it brief; we don’t want him going ballistic on us now.”

“Okay,” Otto said. He hung up and sat down at his desk, facing the big monitor.

Just about everyone in the CIA was ambitious. Everyone worked hard at their jobs; there was no doubt about it. But a lot of them worked just as hard at securing their career paths. Everyone wanted promotions, not only for the money, but for the prestige, for the increased power. The flavor of the intelligence business had always been the thrill of knowing something the general public hadn’t an inkling of.

Calder was no different than most of them. He wanted to take over and run the directorate the way he thought it should be run. He was doing that by making the clandestine service look so good, Marty would be promoted. Calder would be the logical choice to fill the vacancy.

In that much, at least, Otto agreed. Although Calder was in his late fifties, and starting to get a little old to run a directorate — by now he should have been the assistant director of the entire CIA — he would have done a much better job running the spies overseas than Marty had ever dreamed of doing.

It meant Calder was a spy for Marty. Part of his job.

Otto’s fingers flew over the keyboard, and the image on the screen changed, the train of characters slowed down, and the background went from a pale blue to a medium violet.

He didn’t disturb the ongoing decryption program — just hid it — and instead brought up on the monitor a version of the search that was six hours old, just before the word BERLIN had popped up en clair.

The state of his search was no one’s business except his and Mac’s. Everyone else — and that was everyone with a capital E—was an outsider as far as he was concerned. When the decryption was a done deal and he had shared it with Mac and they had produced the results they were after, then it might be time to spread the wealth. Until then, nada.

One of his monitors chimed. “Excuse me, dear, but Mr. Calder is at the door.” The computer voice was Louise’s.

“Let him in, sweetheart.”

The door lock popped, and Calder walked into the outer of the two rooms that were Otto’s domains. The first meant for a secretary or assistant he used for generally unclassified searches: the weather at some specific place and time, tides, moon phases (most operators liked to go out in the field during a dark night), airline, train and ship schedules, social security, passport, and driver’s license information — the easy stuff.

“In here, Tom,” Otto called.

Calder came into the inner sanctum and looked up at the main monitor. He was a slender man, thinning hair — a prematurely old man’s malady, one of many, he liked to say — and a shuffling gait. His expressions were always pleasant, and his eyes, pale blue, were kind and intelligent. Otto thought that he was a pleasant man, someone people immediately thought could be a friend.

BERLIN came up on the monitor.

“Ah, progress,” Calder said.

Otto glanced up at the monitor. “Just a key word. It’s come up several times.”

“What’s your best guess? Twenty-four hours maybe?”

“Twenty-four hours, twenty-four days, twenty-four years. Maybe never.”

Calder laughed softly. “I might believe that coming from anybody but you,” he said. “Marty’s keen on this, you know.”

Otto shrugged. “I’ll let you guys know soon as.”

Calder held his gaze for a beat then nodded. “Do that, please. We’d like to get this mess behind us.”

“Sure.”

Calder started to leave. “Have you heard from Mac or Ms. Boylan? Bob Blankenship wants to know what’s going on. Quite an embarrassment with his guy being taken and all.”

“He got back in one piece?”

“Thankfully.”

“They’re off campus, is all I know at the moment,” Otto said.

“Right,” Calder said, and left.

“Lou, is he gone?” Otto asked.

“Down the hall to the elevators,” his computer replied. “You have an interesting development on your Kryptos search engine.”

Otto brought up the decryption program in real time. After the briefest of pauses, he sat back and laughed, suddenly knowing with certainty what was buried in the hills above Kirkuk, and the why, but not who had buried it, though he had his strong suspicions.

FORTY-FIVE

Once McGarvey and then Pete Boylan had left, the entire atmosphere of the house had changed. It was late afternoon, and Schermerhorn stood at the head of the stairs, nervously listening to the clomping around on the ground floor.

Pete Boylan was an unknown, Mac had been the Rock of Gibraltar, but Bob Blankenship’s guys downstairs were amateurs. They were pretty good at what they did, providing muscle for security details. But so far as he’d ever been able to determine, they’d never make it in the field. Even the odd lot NOC would chew them up for breakfast without raising a sweat.

And right now he wasn’t feeling a lot of comfort.

He went back to his bedroom, which was at the front of the house, and looked out the window. Two Caddy SUVs were parked in the driveway, and he spotted at least three guys in dark nylon Windbreakers down there; one was behind a tree at the end of the driveway, another was off to the left at the edge of the woods to the west, and the third was leaning against the fender of one of the vehicles. He was actually smoking a fucking cigarette.

McGarvey had apparently suspected that Alex was going to slip away, and the fact that she had believed George was no longer on campus. He and Pete were following her; at least he figured that was their plan, though following Alex wouldn’t be so easy. She was damned good at spotting a tail and then evading it. Even double or triple teams were no match for her.

But it left two major concerns in Schermerhorn’s mind: Alex only suspected George was gone, and even if he had left, maybe he would double back to finish the job.

They’d all fallen in love with him almost from the moment he’d dropped in on them, with his urbane self-assurance, his ready smile, and his intellect and talent. All of them were smart, and well trained by some of the best instructors in any secret intelligence or military special forces organization in the world. But George outclassed them all from every angle.

The first was how he had come to them, with absolutely no fuss or bother. One day they were on mission, and the next he was in their midst and the mission had changed.

“You and I know no WMDs have ever been found here,” he’d told them.

“Not yet,” someone — it could have been Alex — had shot back.

George had laughed, that soft upper-crust British chuckle that said so much about his sophistication versus theirs and exactly what he thought about the difference. “No, not yet.”

“So what are you doing here?” Schermerhorn had asked.

“To put the fear of God into the rag heads down there,” George had said, waving an arm in the general direction of the oil fields a few thousand feet below.

He hadn’t meant the ordinary roustabouts, the drillers, the guys who worked the rigs; he’d meant the Iraqi military clumped around the waste gas fires, in hiding from infrared spy satellites.

At the time none of them knew exactly how he was going to accomplish the new mission, and if they had known, Schermerhorn wasn’t so sure they wouldn’t have gone along with him.

Isty had suggested they use their satellite burst transmitter to get a clarification of their orders. He had meant to keep his conversation private with a few of them, but George had been right there, in the darkness, like an apparition, and had heard everything.

“Excellent idea, Mr. Refugee,” he’d said.

And it hadn’t dawned on any of them until later that George had known their handles along with their nicknames — like Isty instead of Istvan.

“But you might want to consider a couple of things before you actually phone home. Not everyone has approved the new mission orders, so you’re likely to get some foot-dragging until a decision is made. In the meantime, the clock ticks, and when the troops come pouring across the border, a lot of the enthusiasm for battle we would have drained from the Iraqis will be in full strength. A lot more troops will lose their lives.”

As he thought about it now, it struck Schermerhorn that George had never once said our troops. He’d used the term the troops. But none of them had caught it at the time.

“What else?” someone had asked.

“We’re not going to fight a conventional war. I want you to understand that from the beginning. What I propose has nothing to do with the Geneva Conventions, because we will be taking no prisoners. No quarter for the wounded. What I do propose is terrorism, raw, up close, and bloody. I’m here to ram it home to the bastards, with or without your help.”

They’d gone along with him at first, but when a few of them had balked because of the savagery of their attacks — Schermerhorn among them — George had taken them to the cache, which was a couple of miles away and a thousand feet lower.

Schermerhorn had remembered his exact feeling the moment he’d understood what was buried there. It was slick. The entire thing was uptown. And he and Alex and maybe Larry had started to laugh, until it dawned on all of them that from that moment, their lives were all but forfeit unless the thing stayed where it was buried for all time, or unless it was found in just the right way, by just the right people. Any other circumstances would have been a disaster.

Still could be a disaster for them.

And it was exactly that, only in a way none of them had foreseen.

A bright flash followed by a small explosion went off somewhere a hundred yards or so into the woods. It was a flash bang grenade.

A diversion. It came into Schermerhorn’s head at the same moment: someone was right there behind him, and before he could move or even call out, a terrible pain ripped at his neck, and blood poured into his trachea, drowning him even as he began to bleed to death.

George had come back, or had never left in the first place. That thought crystallized in his head as he managed to half turn so he could face his attacker.

“I’m not who you expected, Roy?” the man asked.

His voice was vaguely familiar, but Schermerhorn wasn’t sure who it was, though in the back of his dying brain, he thought he should know.

“It was clever of Alex to get out while she could. But then she always was the cleverest of the lot.”

He sounded a lot like the Cynic to Schermerhorn’s ear.

Schermerhorn reared back and tried to put his shoulder through the window to alert the security guys outside, but the pane was Lexan, not glass, and he was rapidly losing his strength as he fought to clear his throat so he could take a breath of air.

“It’s too late for that,” the Cynic said. “Anyway, they’re all running after the first of the flash bangs I planted. They’ll be kept busy for a bit. Long enough.”

Schermerhorn heard music. Organ music, but more complicated than the hymns in church. And he thought he’d heard it somewhere before, though in his befuddled state, he couldn’t quite place where or when.

“None of you ever had any culture. Too bad for you. But then you were bred and trained to be liars, charlatans, and thieves. Killers without conscience if the need arose.”

Schermerhorn’s knees began to buckle, and the Cynic held him up, blood soaking the front of his white pullover.

“You want to know why. They all did. Even Joe when he lay dying on the pavement in Athens. I could feel that at the moment of impact, when he knew in a flash he was a dead man, that he wanted to know why.”

The music was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. It came to Schermerhorn all of a sudden, and he knew who the Cynic was. But like the others, he didn’t know why. And he couldn’t understand how this was happening in broad daylight.

“Despite your faults, all of you were so lovely. Maybe not so young, some of you, but naive.”

The day they’d all feared had finally come.

“In the end you guys were extra clever: you illuminated the new cache, and I wanted to know the GPS coordinates and the password, but that will have to wait for Alex.”

Schermerhorn was weak. He couldn’t exactly make out what the Cynic was saying to him, but he could still hear the music, maybe coming from a small player in the man’s breast pocket.

And then the Cynic began to eat his face, starting with his lips, and though Schermerhorn could still feel pain, he couldn’t cry out, nor could he even try to push back away from the horror of it.