The Cabal

THIRTY-ONE

McGarvey flew a U.S. Airways flight out of Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall Airport a few minutes after five in the afternoon as a U.S. Marshal, touching down in Orlando at eleven-thirty. Rencke had arranged everything and the captain and crew thanked him.

“Makes us feel a lot better having you guys aboard,” one of the flight attendants said, flashing him a smile.

But he was focused and had simply nodded, and went inside where he took the train to the main terminal and the rental car counters where Rencke had arranged for a car under the same work name — Joshua Taylor — but with no reference to him as anyone other than a private citizen.

He was out of there by midnight heading down I-4 to Tampa and the Gulf Coast, where he would take I-75 south to his home on Casey Key. But it didn’t seem like coming home to him. All of Florida was empty now, devoid of any life, or any purpose of any happiness. It was just another place he was traveling through, because when this business was finally over and done he would never come back.

Traffic was light at this hour and he made good time. Once he reached the outskirts of Sarasota he called Rencke on the sat phone.

“Any trouble?” Rencke asked.

“None so far. Have you heard anything from the seventh floor?”

“Dick Adkins was fired. Apparently he and Langdon had it out, and on Shapiro’s strong recommendation, Dick was given the boot.”

“Has anyone been appointed interim DCI?”

“Dave Whittaker. The White House doesn’t want to put someone new in place until you’re brought in.”

“Is anyone looking for you and Louise?” McGarvey asked. It was the only thing left he had to worry about, except for his granddaughter. But whatever happened she was safe at the Farm.

“Not officially, but Tommy Doyle has sent out a number of posts on a couple blogs I check out from time to time.”

Doyle had been the deputy director of intelligence when McGarvey was DCI. He retired a few years ago, so it was tough to figure if he was trying to make contact with Otto on his own in order to find McGarvey, or if Whittaker or someone at Langley had put him up to it. Either way it would be too dangerous to respond to his queries and Otto agreed.

“The Bureau has two guys at your house, three teams rotating every eight hours. The off-duty guys are staying at a Holiday Inn up in Venice. I didn’t get any names, but their shifts start at oh six hundred, so if you mean to get in sometime this morning the guys on the twenty-two hundred shift should be getting bored and tired around four in the morning. It’d give you two hours to get in and get back out.”

“The timing’s right,” McGarvey said, thinking ahead. The closer he got the odder it seemed to him that he was going to break into his own house. It wasn’t real. When it was over he would go back to Greece, at least for the interim, until he healed. If ever.

“Honest injun, Mac, these are the good guys. Louise is right, you can’t go in there and do something… stupid.”

“Don’t worry,” McGarvey said. “I won’t hurt anything but their pride.”

“That’s bad enough.”

The village section of Siesta Key with its restaurants, bars, and nightspots, one barrier island north of Casey Key, was lit up and busy as normal on an evening, but the residential areas, especially south of the village, were dark and quiet as was also usual for this time of night.

It was past the tourist season, and many of the houses on the Gulf side of the island as well as the Intracoastal Waterway side were closed down, no one in residence until sometime around Thanksgiving. McGarvey had no trouble finding a stretch of half a dozen such houses on the ICW that were dark, and he shut off his headlights and pulled into one of the driveways.

The house next door had a small inboard/outboard powerboat on a lift out of the water. McGarvey jimmied the lock on the back door of the house, first making sure there wasn’t an alarm system, and in the kitchen found the boat’s keys, and in the garage found a couple of jerry cans of gas and after a couple of minutes searching a roll of duct tape.

Ten minutes later he had the boat cover removed, had lowered the boat into the water, had gassed it up and started the engine, which kicked into life on the third try. Since it was an I/O, its exhaust and engine noises were quieter than those of an outboard motor hanging on the transom. It was a small bit of luck.

Easing away from the lift, he gingerly made his way across the shallow water of Little Sarasota Bay to the green 57 ICW marker and turned south in the middle of the channel before he turned on the boat’s navigation lights and increased the throttle. It was just coming up on three-thirty in the morning, the air perfectly still, the overcast sky pitch black except for the glow of Sarasota.

His house, about four miles south, was just north of the smaller swing bridge at Blackburn Point. These were waters he knew well. Besides their sailboat, which they kept in downtown Sarasota at Marina Jack, they had a small Boston Whaler runabout that he and Katy often took up the ICW as far as Anna Maria or sometimes down to the Crow’s Nest in Venice for leisurely Sunday brunches.

Just now the two houses north of his on Casey Key and several to the south were empty for the summer. All of them maintained private markers leading to small backyard docks.

Twenty minutes later he throttled back to idle, switched off the boat’s nav lights, and angled west to the island just after marker 37, no need to raise the engine because water depths here in the channel were three feet at lower low tide right up to the docks, less than five hundred yards outside the channel.

From here he could see the red and green lights on the Blackburn Point bridge and make out the silhouette of his house, and the spindly outline of the gazebo in the backyard where Katy had loved to have a morning cup of tea or an early-evening glass of wine.

At the last moment he cut the boat’s engine and drifted to the dock two houses up from his, and tied bow and stern lines to the cleats. He speed-dialed Rencke’s number, and Otto answered on the first ring.

“I’m tied up just north of my place. Can you cut the house alarm system?”

“Stand by,” Rencke said.

Now that the boat’s engine was off, the night had become silent, except for the frogs and other animals and the sounds of what was probably a night hunting bird in the distance.

“Done,” Rencke said.

“I’ll let you know when I’m out of there,” McGarvey said, and he broke the connection.

Pocketing the duct tape, he jumped up on the dock, and headed through the sea oats and tall grasses at the water’s edge to the edge of his property. Only a few people had put up fences or security walls down here, which was just as well because McGarvey had a clear sight line, and he spotted the Bureau agent sitting in the gazebo almost at the same moment he smelled the man’s smoke and saw for just a brief moment the glow from the tip of the cigarette.

It was damn sloppy, but it told McGarvey that at least this man wasn’t expecting trouble, which in a slight way was troublesome. If the Bureau didn’t expect McGarvey to show up here, why had they posted guards, at least one of whom was lax?

He waited in the darkness a full five minutes to make sure the second man wasn’t on this side of the house, and that no communications passed between them, then he angled away from the water, his path between the house and the gazebo.

The agent, stood up, took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt out into the water, and McGarvey silently raced the last five yards, leaped over the gazebo’s low rail and hit the man low in the back with enough force to knock him down, but not enough to break his back.

McGarvey put pressure on the man’s carotid arteries and within seconds the agent was out. Working quickly McGarvey slapped a piece of tape over the agent’s mouth, then taped his wrists and elbows behind his back, his ankles and knees together and finally his torso and his legs to the gazebo’s rail.

The agent was beginning to come around when McGarvey disappeared up to the house, opened the rear door, and slipped inside, into the kitchen where he was brought up short.

He could smell Katy’s scent, and he stepped back, the same dark rage from Arlington threatening to blot out his sanity. It had only been a few days since they had left for Washington to see about Todd, yet it was a lifetime, ten lifetimes ago. But she was here.

He stayed at the kitchen door for a full minute, before he was able to rouse himself enough to go upstairs to the master suite, which was even worse for him than the kitchen. Katy was everywhere here. Her clothes, the bed, the bathroom, photographs of her on the walls, on the bureau were almost overwhelming even in the dark. He could almost expect to hear her voice telling him to stop brooding and come to bed.

Taking a small, red-lensed pen light from the dresser drawer on his side of the bed, he was about to turn and get his things from the secret floor safe in the walk-in closet when the small, framed photograph of him and Katy on the top deck of the Eiffel Tower, taken when they were very young, before Liz was born, caught his eye. Another tourist had agreed to take it, and looking at the image now McGarvey was brought back to that simpler, happier time. Nothing had ever been the same again.

He pocketed the photograph and went into his closet where he switched on the pen light. The floor safe was open and empty.

Rearing back he switched off the light, and went to the windows that looked down on the pool, the gazebo, and the dock. They had expected him to come here to retrieve his things; money in different currencies, passports and ID sets under four different work names.

But they’d gotten sloppy, waiting.

He hurried downstairs, mindful of the corners, expecting an armed man to materialize out of the darkness, yet he didn’t pull his gun. These were Bureau agents. He wasn’t going to be placed under arrest, nor was he going to hurt anyone beyond what was necessary.

Outside, he hurried across the yard to the next-door neighbor’, keeping in the deeper shadows as much as possible and well away from the gazebo.

A few minutes later he was aboard the boat, had untied the dock lines, and using the emergency oar poled himself on an angle to the north out to the ICW before he switched on the engine, and idled a half-mile farther, before he switched on the nav lights and increased his speed.

No one else was out here on the water this early in the morning, and most of the houses along the shore were in darkness, but it wasn’t until he reached the dock on Siesta Key, had replaced the boat on to lift and had re-covered it, and was in his car heading off the island did he take a deep breath.

When he reached I-75 on the mainland he turned south and merged with the very light traffic before he called Rencke.

“I’m away,” he said.

“Nobody got hurt?”

“No. But they knew I was coming. They searched the house and cleaned out my safe. I don’t have anything now except for what you got for me.”

“You’re heading south,” Rencke said. “Good. I want you to go to Miami. I’ll book you a room in the Park Central under your Taylor work name; it’s still safe and so’s the car.”

“I didn’t want this.”

“None of us did, Mac. But it landed in our laps and now we’ll deal with it,” Rencke said. “Do you remember Raul Martinez?”

“Your contact in Little Havana. He arranged for me to see General Marti last year.”

“Right. He’ll be showing up at your hotel within the next thirty-six hours. Just sit tight until then.”

THIRTY-TWO

Robert Foster’s sprawling eighteenth-century home on a sloping hill above the Potomac River between Fort Hunt and Mount Vernon, about fifteen miles south of the White House, was aglow the next evening as S. Gordon Remington and his wife, Colleen, arrived in their Bentley.

Remington had preferred to drive himself, rather than be chauffeured. Some outings were better left away from prying eyes, even sympathetic ones. And he had remained sober all day, a fact Colleen had noted and appreciated, because she, too, was aware of just how much actual power Foster and his Friday Club wielded in Washington. This was no group to be trifled with. And the fact that she and her husband had been invited for cocktails and dinner topped even the A list, the only invitation better was to the White House.

They were admitted by a large, stern-looking man in a broadly cut suit, which Remington figured concealed a pistol in a shoulder holster, and were directed to the pool area in the backyard. Soft jazz was piped from several speakers as a dozen well-dressed couples circulated between a self-service bar and a table laden with hors d’oeuvres centered by an elaborate ice sculpture. Notably missing were the musicians, a bartender, and servers.

“He likes his parties lean and mean,” Colleen said as they headed to the bar.

“I would have been disappointed if his house staff had been on hand tonight.”

Colleen gave her husband a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

And he smiled at her. “This is the inner circle, sweetheart. All of us can discuss anything we want without fear of being overheard and misunderstood. Keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”

Colleen started to bridle when a stern man who could have passed for a minister, a plain, almost mousy woman at his side, came over and stuck out his hand.

“David Whittaker, acting DCI,” he said. “I’m pleased to meet you finally. Bob has told me about you and your work for the club. We appreciate your efforts.”

They shook hands and introduced their wives.

“I wasn’t aware you were a member,” Remington said. Sandberger had warned him about sticking to a fine line between familiarity and awe. These were Washington’s true power brokers, but Admin, in Roland’s words, was “covering their asses.”

Whittaker smiled faintly. “Charter member, actually. Bob’s an old friend; he and I go way back together.”

“He’s not here yet?”

“He’ll be down in a bit,” Whittaker said. “Likes to make his entrances. His only fault, I suspect, but he’s a bit of a showman, if you know what I mean.” He spotted someone just coming in. “Please, enjoy yourselves,” he said. He nodded to Colleen and he and his wife went to greet the new arrivals, Dennis Tressel, the assistant adviser to the president on national security affairs, and his wife.

“You never told me about this,” Colleen said, reprovingly yet with a bit of admiration.

Remington got two glasses of champagne and they stepped aside. “Actually, the Club is a new client. Roland knows more about them than I do. We’re just stand-ins tonight.”

“I approve, Gordo,” Colleen said. “These people need to be our group, if you know what I mean.”

“Perfectly—” Remington said, but his wife had spotted someone she evidently knew, and she waved and walked off, just as the armed man from the front hall who’d directed them back here approached.

“Mr. Foster would like to have a word, sir,” the bodyguard said. His accent was Cockney and it grated in Remington’s ears.

“My wife?”

“You won’t be long, sir.”

Remington noticed Whittaker and a couple of other men, including Tressel, disappearing through the pool doors back inside the house. “Of course.”

“Just this way, then, sir,” the bodyguard said, and Remington followed the man back into the house behind the others, who’d obviously been here before and knew the way.

Upstairs and down a short hall, the bodyguard stopped at double doors and stepped aside. “Mr. Foster is expecting you, sir.”

“Royal Marines?” Remington asked.

“No, sir,” the bodyguard said. “United States Marines, Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Schilling.” He turned lightly on his heel and walked back past the stairs and went through a door at the end of the hall.

Remington hesitated for just a moment. This was his initiation, something Roland had mentioned. “Tell it like you see it. Don’t be an asshole, but remember Foster hired Admin because of our track record. They need us more than we need them.”

Remington knocked once, and went in.

Robert Foster, seated on a couch in the middle of the tastefully furnished, book-lined room, was a man in his mid-sixties, short, somewhat stocky with the build of a midwestern farmer, who touted himself as nothing more than a “servant of the common man.”

Seated on the couch with him and in chairs across a coffee table, were Whittaker and Tressel, plus Air Force general Albert Burnside, who was the chief political adviser to the Joint Chiefs.

Foster was as far right a conservative as was possible, with exceedingly strong views on everything from the role of religion in government, to abortion, states’ rights, the Constitution and the makeup of the Supreme Court, and the powers of the executive branch versus a meddling, ineffective Congress. And he was a multi-millionaire with a law degree from Florida’s Stetson University and an MBA from Harvard.

To this point in his career he’d made his money as an economic adviser to several foreign governments, including South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Czech Republic, but most notably Mainland China in the mid-nineties. The last had taken his supporters somewhat by surprise, until they realized that an emerging China would be needed to shore up the U.S. government, which would, in Foster’s estimation, be faced with a financial meltdown. It was because of his advice that China had become a major bondholder for the U.S. In some circles he had come out the hero — America’s savior, or so the conservative think tank Arnault Group had labeled him. But Democrats, except for the ones he had bought and paid for, were dead set against him, calling him “America’s Judas Iscariot, the man who sold his country for silver.”

Foster looked up and smiled. “Gordon, welcome to my home. I assume you know most of the others here tonight?”

“Good evening, sir,” Remington said. “Some only by reputation, I’m afraid.”

“Well you know David and Dennis but perhaps not General Burnside.”

“I’ve read his position memos you were kind enough to share with Admin,” Remington said. “I assume these gentlemen have been briefed on our contract with you.”

“Roland is a regular,” Foster said. “Normally he would be here this evening, but since he’s out of the country I invited you.”

“May I ask the reason?”

Whittaker got up and poured a glass of champagne for Remington. “This is a council of war, Gordon. And since Admin is on the front line we thought it best that you were briefed.”

“Are we talking about Kirk McGarvey?” Remington asked. The champagne was first-rate. Cristal or Krug, he guessed.

“Indeed we are,” Foster said. “And by the way, David is the CIA’s new director.”

“I heard,” Remington said. “Dick Adkins’s resignation came as a surprise.”

“Langdon fired the fool for standing face-to-face in the Oval Office and defending McGarvey.”

“Actually did us a service,” Foster said. “With Adkins gone Mr. McGarvey doesn’t have many friends. And witnessing the deaths of his family at Arlington has unhinged the man.”

“He’s dangerous,” Remington said.

“Yes,” Foster said.

“But he knows nothing,” Whittaker said. “He suspects there may be a connection between the incidents in Mexico City and Pyongyang, but he can’t prove a thing.”

Remington had a fair guess what they were talking about, something of the smuggling of radioactive material across the border from Mexico and less than one year later the assassination of a high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer in North Korea’s capital had been in the news. But Sandberger had not briefed him on what role, if any, the Friday Club had played in the incidents, and he held his tongue.

“The man is a bulldog,” Foster said. “He’ll never give up. Especially now.”

“We’ve anticipated just that,” Remington said. And all eyes were turned toward him. “Roland is remaining in Baghdad for more than contract negotiations. He’s there because we think McGarvey will come after him. And Baghdad is Admin’s city, where accidents can and do happen.”

“None of you still know the measure of this man,” Whittaker said.

“He’s just that,” Remington disagreed. “Just one man, while we have in excess of one hundred highly motivated, highly trained shooters on the ground, along with a sophisticated infrastructure of weapons, surveillance, and communications. When he shows up in Baghdad he will die. At this moment he is Admin’s number one priority.”

“There you are, gentlemen,” Foster said. “Thank you, Gordon. We have the utmost confidence in your company. Now, please, rejoin your wife and the others outside. We’ll finish up in here in a couple of minutes and have something to eat.”

When Remington was gone, Foster turned back to the others. “McGarvey may be Administrative Solutions’ top priority, but I’m afraid we’ll have to turn to even more drastic measures.”

“What do you have in mind, Bob?” General Burnside asked.

“Neither the Mexican nor the North Korean missions had the desired effect.”

“Because of McGarvey,” Whittaker suggested.

“In part,” Foster agreed. “Once he’s out of the way, we’ll need to look to Taipei to meet our objective. Hong Kong is too small, only Taiwan will do. And it may be up to our navy to trigger the spark. The pressure will fall on the Pentagon’s shoulders.”

“I’ve already begun to put some pieces into play,” General Burnside said.

“Tell us,” Foster said. “And leave nothing out.”

THIRTY-THREE

On the beach in front of the Park Central Hotel, McGarvey stopped a moment and looked back at the balcony of his fifth-floor room. He thought he’d spotted a movement, but then it came again, a random breeze fluttering the drapes on the partially open patio window and he relaxed a little.

He’d checked in late, and if anyone at the desk remembered him, but under a different work name from last year, they didn’t show it. The Park was one of the older, refurbished hotels in the heart of Miami’s art deco district, the last place anyone, especially the FBI or someone from Admin, would look for him.

For the moment he was reasonably safe here, but he was chafing at the bit to get started. And it was next to impossible for him to erase the vision of Katy’s limousine exploding in front of him. He couldn’t put out of his head the last touch, the last kiss, the last words, and it was driving him nearly insane; his rage was a barely controlled thing just beneath the surface.

He’d gotten up before dawn, and waited until the gift shops along Ocean Drive opened. He bought a pair of swim trunks and a beach jacket, and went across to the ocean where an attendant brought him a beach chair. He’d left the jacket behind and went into the water, warm at this time of the year, and began swimming straight out to sea. His stroke was strong, even, measured and he let a slight rip current help carry him farther.

At one point he thought he’d heard a lifeguard’s whistle, but then it faded and he put more effort into his stroke until looking over his shoulder he could see the buildings, but not the beach itself, and he rolled over on his back and floated on the long, gentle swells.

Otto would get him to Baghdad in such a way that Sandberger and his people wouldn’t know about it until it was too late. There was a connection between Admin and the Friday Club and he was going to find out about it, whatever it took. Afterward he would take whatever leads he could extract and go after them until he reached the end.

It didn’t matter, now, who he brought down. But someone was going to pay for Katy and Liz and for Todd, and pay dearly.

Forty minutes later he was back on the beach, where he dried off, got his beach jacket, gave the attendant a twenty-dollar bill, and walked back across to his hotel and up to his room.

He’d left a couple of obvious fail safes, including a hair across the door seam, and the carpet scuffed in a certain way just inside the door, that would have easily caught even an amateur’s notice, but the smudge on the inside door handle was hidden, and might have been missed. But nothing had been disturbed. So far he’d attracted no notice.

He stripped and took a long hot shower, followed by a cold one, then shaved and got dressed in a pair of jeans, a khaki sport fisherman’s shirt, untucked, and a pair of deck shoes. When he came out the missed call light on his encrypted sat phone was blinking.

It was Otto and he answered as usual on the first ring. “Are you okay?”

“I went out for a swim.”

Otto was silent for a beat. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “But now you need to keep a lower profile. A federal judge signed a warrant for your arrest and the Bureau has issued an APB, with emphasis on central and southern Florida. They figure you’re still in the state, because they know what you were looking for in your house, and probably why. So they’re backtracking to find out what ID you used to get down there and when they get that they’ll have you.”

“I’ll need to get out of here sometime tonight.”

“Sooner than that. Martinez will get your package in a few hours, and he’ll come over to the hotel for the delivery. I’m still working on some of it, but I’m taking my time. This has got to be right the first time, because after your deal in Frankfurt they’ve gotta expect you’ll go up against Sandberger again. This time in Baghdad. So they’ll be looking for you.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“First off you’ll have to change your appearance, but nothing drastic. Martinez will have everything you need. I’ve lifted two of your ID photos from your Company file and altered them. You’ll see from what I’ve done what you’ll have to change. Hair dye, skin tone, that sort of thing.”

“We’ve been through it before.”

“Yes,” Otto said. “I thought about getting you out under a diplomatic passport, but I think that’s just what the Bureau might be expecting. Homeland Security has probably been notified, which means the TSA guys at every airport in the country will be on the lookout for someone with your general build traveling under the ID of a State Department FSO.”

“No weapons.”

“That would compound the troubles, and it’s also something they expect. I’m working on getting you two sets of legitimate passports and IDs. Maybe one as a contractor and the other as a journalist. I’m working on that part.”

“What about out of Kuwait?”

“You’ll need a guide.”

“I don’t want to involve anyone else,” McGarvey said. People close to him tended to get themselves killed. He didn’t know if he could handle much more of that.

“You don’t have much of a choice, kemo sabe. The situation out there is too fluid for you not to rely on local knowledge. Hell, just getting from Kuwait City to Baghdad is a tough nut to crack even for a convoy. You gotta listen to me, Mac.”

But it was hard. He wanted revenge, and yet he knew that he wasn’t thinking straight.

“Pull your head out, Mac. Honest injun. This is too important to screw up. You and I both know that Mexico City and Pyongyang were connected and there’s more to come.”

“How’s Audie,” McGarvey asked, changing tack. Otto was correct, there was no getting around it. He’d always considered himself a loner, but almost from the beginning he’d had Otto’s help. Only it wasn’t until now that he really understood just how much help his friend had given him.

“She’s fine, and she’s going to stay put until we get this shit settled. Are you with me?”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said. “I’ll need to know who Sandberger’s surrounding himself with, the layout of where he’s staying, and my chances of getting to him when he’s least protected.”

“What I can’t come up with before you head out this afternoon I’ll have waiting for you in Kuwait,” Otto said. “Question.”

“Go ahead.”

“What if Sandberger and Administrative Solutions are nothing more than they advertise themselves?”

“That’s not true.”

“Goddamnit, Mac, isn’t there anything Louise or I can say to make you back off just for a little while until I come up with something concrete?”

“No,” McGarvey said, a coldness closing over his heart. “It’s too late for that now.”

Otto was silent for a long moment, when he was back he sounded resigned. “Your call, kemo sabe. I’ll do everything I can from this end to get you the intel you need.”

“As you always have.”

“But I need you to listen to me — really listen to me, no shit. I’ll give you the truth. I’ll never blow smoke up your ass. My promise. And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll listen back.”

McGarvey looked out the window. The morning sky over the Atlantic was perfectly clear. When the sun is shining anything is possible. It was one of Katy’s favorite sayings. She hated dark, cloudy, rainy days.

“Promise,” McGarvey told his old friend.

THIRTY-FOUR

Dick Adkins had never been much for confrontations, nor had he ever been much of a spy, in the sense of a field agent, or a special operative like McGarvey. But he was a good administrator and while under his watch morale at the CIA hadn’t been given much of a boost, yet it had not sagged with the economy and political tides as other agencies, in particular FEMA and Homeland Security, had.

But pulling up at the security gate at CIA Headquarters he wondered if coming back to confront Dave Whittaker made any sense, or would make any difference. He was certain that the only man who had any real inkling of what Mexico City and Pyongyang meant, and what was still coming after them, was McGarvey. And the Company needed to cut him some slack.

The guard recognized Adkins, but for just a moment he seemed unsure of what to do. He glanced at something to his right, then looked back, smiled and nodded. “Good afternoon, Mr. Director,” he said, and he waved Adkins through.

Evidently word had not filtered down to the security personnel that Adkins no longer had access. It was something he’d counted on.

He drove up the curving road to the Old Headquarters Building, past the visitors’ parking lot around to the gated entrance to the executive underground parking garage. He’d neglected to turn in his security pass and it still worked to raise the barrier. Down on the third level he pulled up beside the DCI’s slot, occupied now by Dave Whittaker’s dark green Chevy Impala.

His pass also worked in the private elevator to the seventh floor, and stepping off the car he was taken aback for just a moment. A longstanding tradition had been for all the doors on the seventh floor to be left open. Everyone up here was cleared for just about everything that went on. And every DCI, back as far as Adkins could remember, had liked to come out of their offices and wander up and down the corridors to see what was going on. The only doors left closed were the ones to the director’s office and to his private dining room.

But this afternoon every door on the seventh floor was closed. That fact seemed somehow ominous to Adkins as he walked down the hall to the DCI’s office and went in.

Dahlia Swanson, the secretary Adkins had inherited from McGarvey, had already been replaced by a much younger woman with her dark hair up in a bun, reading glasses on a gold chain perched on the end of her nose. She looked up in momentary surprise, but recovered nicely.

“Mr. Adkins,” she said pleasantly. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Whittaker?”

“Is he in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Adkins said, and he went around to the door to the DCI’s office and let himself in before the secretary could pick up her phone.

Whittaker was seated at his desk, his back to the door. He was staring out the windows at the softly wooded, gentle West Virginia hills, and it was a second or two before he swiveled around, and his right eyebrow twitched.

“Thought I’d come by for a chat,” Adkins said, dropping into a chair in front of the desk.

“You’re a surprise, Dick. How did you manage to get in?”

“My security passes have not been invalidated yet. You might want to have a word with Housekeeping, they tend to drag their feet unless given a nudge now and then.”

“What do you want?”

“That’s the rub, then, isn’t it? You have your hands full trying to satisfy a president who, like most presidents before him, doesn’t want to listen to the truth, while at the same time you’re trying to rein McGarvey in without forcing a bloodbath.”

“Trying to save your friend?”

“Save him from what, Dave?” Adkins asked. “The Bureau has been given a warrant for his arrest. Are they really expecting casualties?”

“I’m sure it’s something they’re considering. He took down the two marshals at Arlington.”

“He didn’t kill them.”

Whittaker hesitated a moment, a disagreeable expression on his long face. “What’s your point? What are you doing here?”

“You no more believe Mac is a traitor than I do. It means you have to find him before the Bureau does, and definitely before the marshals do, because if someone makes a mistake — and it won’t be Mac — someone could get hurt.”

“You came here to help me?”

“To advise you, unless you still think Van Buren’s death was a random act, and that Mac’s wife and daughter were blown up by terrorists with no specific target in mind. Just mayhem at Arlington.”

“We have no other supporting evidence, Dick. You know that. Christ, I wish it were different.”

Adkins had wished his coming here wasn’t an exercise in futility, but he was beginning to seriously wonder. “IED’s have moved from Iraq and Afghanistan to America. A lot of people are asking why the hell the government isn’t doing something about it.”

“Homeland Security—”

“Bullshit. These weren’t homegrown terrorists, and everyone knows it. Puts the pressure square in your lap. Or are you still blaming McGarvey for the deaths of his wife, daughter, and son-in-law?”

“I’ll ask again, what’s your point?”

“Connections.”

Whittaker shrugged. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”

“Mac went to Mexico City to figure out what a Chinese intelligence officer was doing down there, and he found out a lot of polonium-210 was being smuggled across our border. And it disappeared. Less than one year later a Chinese intelligence officer is assassinated in Pyongyang and when Mac unravels that mess — averting an exchange of nuclear weapons in the region — we find out that our deputy director of operations was involved in both operations. And when all was said and done, Mac was accused of being a traitor to his country. Now you tell me what’s bullshit and what’s not. Because there’re damn well some connections there that need the light of day.”

Whittaker got very still.

“You know that I still have some political capital left,” Adkins said. “How about if I hold a news conference and lay out what I know and suspect about Mexico City, Pyongyang, and Arlington? You’d have the media crawling all over this place, but more importantly all over the White House. I wonder what Langdon’s reaction would be, considering his energy bill is falling apart, and we’ve had the first serious terrorist attack on our soil since nine/eleven?”

“One call and you’d be stopped.”

“I didn’t get the word until it was too late. Anyway, once the cat’s out of the bag it’s too late.”

“One last time, Dick. What’s your point? What do you want?”

“Has anyone seen Otto Rencke lately?”

Whittaker was startled. “No,” he said. “Is that significant?”

“I’d think so,” Adkins said. “Instead of trying to find Mac and corner him, look for Otto. If Mac fights back someone will get hurt.”

“If Rencke fights back the son of a bitch could do us a lot of harm.”

“At least no one would get physically injured,” Adkins said. “Find him and you’ll find Mac.”

“And then what?” Whitttaker asked.

Adkins got to his feet. “Maybe you’ll find the connections. Mexico City to Pyongyang and to whatever else Mac is looking for.” At the door Adkins looked back. “It’s important.”

Whittaker nodded. “I’ll do what I can. No promises.”

“Good enough.”

THIRTY-FIVE

McGarvey’s sat phone rang. It was Otto. “He just pulled up in front of your hotel.”

“Did he come in clean?” McGarvey asked. He’d been here, in one place far too long to trust anything.

“I haven’t picked up traces of anyone interested. But you might want to take a look down his track.”

McGarvey broke the connection, slipped out of his room, and as one of the elevators started up from the lobby, he ducked into the alcove containing the ice and vending machines, pressing back into the corner.

At this hour of the early afternoon the hotel was not very busy, and the car came directly to the eighth floor. Moments later a slender man, with a narrow, clean-shaven, olive-complected face, dressed in a European-cut suit, carrying an attaché case in his left hand walked by. McGarvey didn’t think he’d ever met the man, and he pulled out his pistol and chanced a quick look out into the corridor.

The man stopped at the door to McGarvey’s room, and knocked. In the meantime the elevator continued up.

McGarvey stepped out of the alcove and keeping the pistol at his side moved toward the man, who suddenly stopped knocking, but did not turn away from the door.

“It’s me,” the man said as McGarvey reached him, and his voice was vaguely familiar.

“Who are you?” McGarvey said, as he patted the man down for a weapon.

“Raul Martinez. We met a couple of years ago, here in Miami. You were here to see General Marti about his daughter.”

“You look different.”

“Everyone needs a little change every now and then,” Martinez said. “Otto asked me to tell you that Audie is just fine. She’s safe at the Farm.” He turned finally to look McGarvey in the eye.

The last time McGarvey had seen Martinez, the CIA operative could have been out of central casting for a Miami Vice episode; peg-legged slacks, embroidered Guayabara shirt, pencil-thin mustache, and slicked-down shining black hair. He looked like a lawyer or businessman now. But the eyes were the same: cool, assured, haughty, on guard. McGarvey relaxed.

“You ought to think about becoming a spy.”

“Too dangerous,” Martinez said.

“I’ve heard,” McGarvey said, holstering his pistol. He let them into his room, relocking the safety bar.

“With all the heat out there, I made sure I came in clean,” Martinez said, laying the attaché case on the bed.

“Have I been traced here to Miami?”

“No, but the federales are beating the bushes across the entire Southeast, but mostly here in south Florida. The U.S. Marshal and Bureau guys are practically tripping over one another. But they’ll get their shit together soon enough, and then it’ll become a little rough for you to stick around.”

“I want to get out of here this afternoon.”

“You’ll just make it if we work fast,” Martinez said, and he opened the attaché case and started pulling stuff out. “United leaves MIA at ten after five, gives you about three hours.”

He took out an eight-by-ten photograph of a McGarvey with short, gray hair, glasses, and a ruddy complexion, and laid it on the bed. “Tony Watkins, a freelance journalist accredited with the U.S. Army.” He handed McGarvey a pair of barber shears, and a bottle of hair dye and a couple of brushes, one of them small, and nodded toward the bathroom. “Better get started. We’ll talk while you work.”

McGarvey pulled off his shirt, tossed it aside, and went into the bathroom, where he propped the photo on the counter, and started to work on his hair.

“The small brush is for your eyebrows,” Martinez said from the bedroom. “I have lotion for your face and the backs of your hands that will age you a few years. We don’t want to overdo it.”

McGarvey had gone through these kinds of routines before, it was all standard tradecraft that even the kids at the Farm were taught from the get-go.

“I’m laying out all your paperwork for you, including your passport, D.C. driver’s license, health insurance cards, Army credentials, credit cards, even photos of your wife and kiddies, plus a portfolio of your work and a small digital video camera.”

“When do I get to Kuwait City?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, quarter after five. It’s the best we could do on such short notice. Miami to Orlando, then Washington’s Dulles and finally across the Atlantic. But your layovers are short.”

McGarvey had been on those kinds of interminable trips before. He’d catch up on his sleep, because he was sure he’d need it once he was boots on the ground. “What’s the drill in Kuwait City?” he asked, matching his appearance in the mirror with that in the photograph. He was close.

“You’re booked at the Airport Crowne Plaza. A little rich for a freelancer, but you’re a successful journalist,” Martinez said. He came to the bathroom door. “That’s close enough. Use the dye.”

McGarvey put down the shears. “Don’t check me out of this hotel until the last minute. I’d like at least a twelve-hour head start.”

“That’s what Otto figured. Once you’re gone I’ll clean up the mess, and get rid of your old work name credentials. And your weapon. You’ll have to travel bare this time. Lots of suspicious people in Kuwait.”

McGarvey didn’t like it, but he understood the necessity. “What comes after the Crowne Plaza?”

“Khalid Hadid will pick you up in front sometime before midnight for the run to Baghdad. He’ll have some new clothes and field gear for you, including a helmet and Kevlar vest, which you might need, along with a weapon or weapons. We’re leaving it up to his judgment what’s best up there, but it’ll probably include a Kalashnikov.”

“Who is this guy?” McGarvey asked, brushing in the hair dye, and it began to work almost immediately, lightening his brown hair, and blending the gray at the sides.

“He’s one of ours. A NOC from the old days. Just before the end he was one of Uncle Saddam’s Republican Guards. Had a couple of really good chances to whack the bastard, but he was told to back off.”

McGarvey looked at Martinez’s reflection in the mirror. “It was a war we wanted.”

“Something like that. Anyway, he knows what he’s doing, so he’ll be an asset.”

McGarvey concentrated on the hair dye for a minute or two, making sure he’d covered everything, including his eyebrows. The chemical stung his scalp but it was fast-acting.

“I’ll put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and lock the safety bar before we clear out. I’ll drive you to the airport, but we’ll leave by a service exit in back. My car’s parked just around the corner.”

When he was done with the hair dye, McGarvey stripped and showered off the excess chemical. When he was finished, he applied the lotion to his face and the backs of his hands, which gave his skin a slightly red and mottled cast, as if he’d spent too many years outdoors in harsh conditions.

Martinez had packed everything except McGarvey’s khaki slacks, a white pullover, blue blazer, shoes, and a change of underwear, plus the portfolio and digital camera.

“Look, Mr. McGarvey, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a bunch of bullshit what they’re trying to do to you,” Martinez said as McGarvey was getting dressed. “The word’s gotten around headquarters what’s going on and everyone’s behind you. Especially after your wife and daughter, and son-in-law.”

“They’re charging me with treason,” McGarvey said, putting on his blazer and pocketing his new IDs, passport, and airline tickets. “If the media picks it up there’ll be a firestorm. Those guys are a hell of a lot more tenacious than the Bureau. So if it happens, keep your ass down.”

“Do you have a timetable?” Martinez asked.

“No. But I suspect the shit will begin to hit the fan a lot sooner than we want.”

THIRTY-SIX

At that moment Remington, still in his pajamas and robe with his family’s monogram on the right breast, put down the encrypted telephone in his study and sat back for a moment to admire the view of his backyard.

Sandberger was in Baghdad settling the details for Admin’s new, lucrative contract with State, and nothing other than the McGarvey issue was pressing at the moment in the office, so he’d opted to stay home for the day, all his important calls rolled over to his home phone.

Roland had once told him that the Brits, especially the gentry, were not exactly lazy, but they did know how to relax. It was something Americans had never learned. Another reason they’d made such a good pair, opposites were complementary.

McGarvey had apparently shown up in Miami for whatever reason and he was flying to Kuwait this afternoon. Presumably he would make his way to Baghdad from there, though Remington’s contact didn’t know all the details yet, nor did he know if McGarvey would be traveling under a work name. But he was on his way, as they expected he would be, to confront Roland. And it was exactly what they wanted.

He telephoned the office and was connected with Gina Ballinger, Admin’s housekeeper who provided cover identities for Admin’s contractors who needed anonymity, as well as their travel arrangements and whatever other equipment or services they would require at both ends of the assignment.

“Two for Baghdad,” Remington told her. “Tim and Ronni this time.”

“Certainly, sir,” Gina said. She’d been an accountant and had the rare ability to keep her eye on the details — all the details, all the time.

“We’ll need speed, luv.”

“Do you want them staged through Kuwait, or will this be direct from Frankfurt to Baghdad?”

“Keep them away from Kuwait. Frankfurt would be best. And send them first class this time.”

“Equipment?”

“The usual in Baghdad. This will be a surgical strike. We have word on the whereabouts of Muzammil Suhaib.”

“He’s not coming up on my database,” Gina said after a moment’s hesitation.

“This is something new.”

“Shall I add his name?”

“That won’t be necessary for the moment,” Remington said. The Suhaib name was a code word that would eventually be used for records and payroll after McGarvey had been taken down and Kangas and Mustapha were back in the States. It would give them time to sanitize the operation. It was something that Gina had done before. Often.

“I understand,” she said. “Will they be coming into the office, or should I arrange for a drop at the airport?”

“A drop would be best,” Remington said. “I’m going out in a few minutes. As soon as you’ve made the arrangements, text me. All I need are the flight number and time.”

“Dulles?”

“I don’t see any reason why not,” Remington said, and he broke the connection and sat again for a minute or so contemplating not only the chances for their success against a man such as McGarvey, but the consequences if they failed.

His opinion had been to sidestep the issue. McGarvey was already under suspicion of treason; it was a charge the White House wanted to press. And his actions at Arlington and his disappearance afterward were not those of an innocent man.

With Foster’s connections McGarvey wouldn’t have a chance in hell to prove his innocence, especially if he took down more U.S. Marshals or perhaps a couple of Bureau agents. It was even likely that he would be shot to death attempting to escape.

But Sandberger had been adamant. “I want the son of a bitch taken down, Gordo. And I don’t give a damn what it costs. Everything else is secondary.”

McGarvey’s arrogant appearance at the Steigenberger had so infuriated Roland that, in Remington’s estimation, he wasn’t thinking straight.

He telephoned Kangas, who answered on the first ring. “You and Ronni are leaving this afternoon. Meet me in front of the Lincoln Memorial in forty-five minutes.”

“Free the slaves, is it?” Kangas replied.

Remington bit back a sharp retort. They were expendable. No matter what happened in Baghdad, it would be their last assignment. They were getting out of control. It was the same reason why they’d been fired by the CIA. Free the slaves, indeed.

Remington finished his coffee, got dressed, and left his house, cabbing over to the Mall, getting there a full twenty minutes early. His tradecraft was a little rusty; it had been years since he’d taken part in a field operation, but old habits died hard, and there were some survival skills you never forgot.

The day was bright and warm, and a lot of tourists were in town, which was why he had picked this place. Depending on what happened in Baghdad, Kangas and Mustapha might attract the wrong sort of attention. Meeting anonymously like this the same day they left the country would provide some deniability later if questions were to be raised.

He walked down from the foot of 23rd Street where the cab had dropped him, and around the circle toward the Reflecting Pool, intending to wait there to see what developed when Kangas and Mustapha arrived, but they were already there.

Vexed, he walked down to them. “I said forty-five minutes.”

“Insurance,” Kangas said insolently. “You can never tell what’ll happen, so you cover your bases.” He glanced down toward the Vietnam Memorial, the black wall filled with the fifty thousand plus names of war dead. “Don’t want to end up like those poor bastards.”

“We all die sooner or later.”

“I meant wasted,” Kangas said. “What’s our assignment?”

Gina had texted him with the flight information on the way over. “McGarvey’s in Baghdad. I want him taken down.”

“There’ll have to be a bonus,” Mustapha said.

“Another one million dollars.”

“Another two million dollars,” Kangas said. “Each.”

Remington was momentarily taken aback, but he managed to smile. “Of course. The first half will be in your accounts by the time you touch down.” It wouldn’t matter, because recovery of Admin’s funds from dead men’s accounts was SOP. There were no next of kin benefits in this business, and everyone understood it. The idea tended to sharpen up the average contractor.

“Baghdad’s a dangerous place, we’ll need some gear, and some intel. How long has he been in country?”

“Our intel says he’s not there yet. We think he’s going through Kuwait and then presumably by ground transportation the rest of the way. We’re sending you through Frankfurt and from there direct, so you’ll be in place at least six, maybe twelve hours before him.”

“Equipment?”

“You’ll be met at Dulles with your instructions, including the name of your contact in country, and any updates we have on Mr. McGarvey’s itinerary. You’re flying United 8826, leaves at quarter to six.”

“What about ground support?”

“You’re on your own after you’ve met your quartermaster,” Remington said. “Which means you are to have no contact whatsoever with anyone working for us or any other contractor service. If you do, the deal is off, you’ll forfeit your bonuses and you will be terminated. Can you handle it, or should I send someone else?”

“We can handle it,” Kangas said, his eyes narrowed.

“Don’t miss this time.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

A couple of hours out of Kuwait, McGarvey ordered a bloody Mary from one of the business-class attendants and settled down to familiarize himself with the material Otto had sent to him via Martinez.

Besides the name Tony Watkins, a freelance journalist who had published articles in the Washington Post and New York Times as well as journals such as Jane’s Defense Weekly, which Otto had included for McGarvey to read, he’d memorized the man’s background — place of birth, education, family. All of it was manufactured, of course, but convincing enough even if someone curious were to search out the published stories under his name.

Everything was going to happen very fast once he was on the ground, so even if someone started poking around it would already be too late. He would be gone, headed back to the States under a different work name.

Watkins was an expert on weapons including all types of handguns and personal defense weapons such as the Heckler & Koch MP5 room broom, and on IEDs. According to the legend Otto had built for the character, Watkins had apparently witnessed several IED incidents, in one of which he’d lost someone close.

When he came to that part, McGarvey looked up and stared out the window for a long moment, seeing the explosion at Arlington, seeing and knowing that his wife and daughter were dead, completely beyond saving. He closed his eyes, the cruelty of what Otto had done beyond belief. But it was just for a moment, until he understood that if for whatever reason someone on the ground questioned him about his background, he wouldn’t have to lie about his loss. He would be convincing. And a part of him, the professional part, had to admire the touch, and he suspected that it could not have been easy for Otto to include it.

It was around four in the afternoon in al Kuwait, but only seven in the morning back in Miami. He’d actually gotten a couple hours of sleep, and for once since Arlington he’d not had the dream. He’d become super-focused on the job ahead. Confronting Sandberger was only the first part of what he wanted to do, because he was certain that threads had to go back to Foster and the Friday Club. But untangling that mess wouldn’t be easy, or clean, in part because he suspected that the incident in Mexico City and the one in Pyongyang were connected.

Foster had some goal in mind, some reason for the operations and for the killing of Todd and Liz and Katy. And there was no power on earth that was going to stop him from finding out what that was.

But the threads went to the CIA itself, and even the White House, as if Givens had been correct in fearing there might be some sort of a shadow government in Washington.

The question always in McGarvey’s mind throughout his career was who to trust. There weren’t many people left for him.

The Crowne Plaza with its soaring atrium lobby and glass elevators was just a few minutes drive from the airport, and could have been in just about any country. Airport hotels everywhere had the same general look and feel to them.

In the cab on the way to the hotel Otto called him on the sat phone. “Any trouble with customs?”

“No, everything went smoothly,” McGarvey said. “Has anything new developed in Washington?”

“If you mean with the Friday Club, no. And, man, I’m telling you they’re tight. Getting intel on them beyond their public persona is impossible. I mean, I get their social security numbers and tax returns, I even get the position papers Foster and some of the others have written, but everything else is a blank. I can’t even come up with a members list.”

“No connections between them and Mexico City or Pyongyang?”

“Not so far, but I’m working on it, trust me.”

“Anything else on Sandberger and his people on the ground in Baghdad?”

“Aside from the fact that he’s surrounded himself with more muscle than usual, nothing. Except that his contract negotiations with the State Department finished two days ago, but he’s stayed there.”

“He knows I’m coming.”

“Yeah,” Otto said, and he sounded glum. “Go ahead and unpack, then get something good to eat, but you’re leaving everything behind, except for your IDs and Army passes and accreditation cards. Hadid will be picking you up around nine.”

“What about the background files Martinez gave me?”

“They’re all printed on smart paper,” Otto said. “Soon as you leave the hotel, I’ll send a signal and erase the imbedded memory. And once you’re done in Baghdad and on the way back out I’ll erase the rest of your documents.”

“That’ll put me in Hadid’s hands.”

“He’s been risking his life for us for a long time. He’s a good man who’s willing to go back into Iraq even though the Sunnis have a contract on him.”

“What about in Baghdad?”

“That’ll be up to you, Mac,” Otto said. “He’s willing to do anything you want him to do. But he’s putting himself in a tough position.”

“I’ll need him to stay put, out of my way. I’m handling Sandberger myself.”

Check-in went without a hitch; upstairs McGarvey unpacked his things and distributed them around the room and in the bathroom as if he were planning on staying for the four days the room had been booked. He laid the files in plain sight on the desk, and went downstairs to the Fauchon’s of Paris restaurant in the lobby, getting a table near the back but from where he could watch the front entrance.

He was served a good rib eye steak, no beer or wine of course, and when he was finished it was a couple of minutes before nine. As he signed the check a slightly built man, dark eyes and hair and thin mustache, handsome as many Iraqis were, sat down across the table from him.

“Tony, good to see you again,” he said jovially, his English good. “Did you have a pleasant flight over?”

The waiter collected McGarvey’s check. “Would the gentleman care for something?” he asked Hadid.

“A dry martini, straight up, very cold.”

The waiter turned and stalked off.

“He’ll remember you,” McGarvey said.

Hadid smiled. “But not you.” He stuck his hand out. “Khalid Hadid. Are you ready to rumble?”

“Any time,” McGarvey said, and he started to rise but Hadid motioned him back.

“Wait for one hour, then come out. We’ll be in a dark blue Range Rover, soft top.”

“We?”

“Yes, my son Saddam is making the trip with us,” Hadid said, grinning broadly. “His name is a joke, but Hussein thought it was kind of me to name my only boy after him.”

“It was a dangerous game.”

“All life is a danger, Mr. Tony, you of all people should know this. Anyway, my Saddam is sixteen today and this is his first trip. Someone might be expecting you. But not an entire family.”

Before McGarvey could ask another question Hadid turned and headed across the busy grand lobby.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The moment Sandberger found out that McGarvey had landed in Kuwait under the name Tony Watkins, he telephoned Stuart Marston, the U.S. envoy from the State Department he’d worked with on the new contracts. Marston was a player, his father a family friend of Foster’s.

“There’s been a new development. The one we talked about a few days ago. I’ll have to remain here in the city for a day or two, possibly longer.”

“I heard the rumors,” Marston said.

“It’s true, the son of a bitch is coming here gunning for me. But he’s in for a nasty surprise.”

“I don’t know what you’re planning, but you’d better be damned careful if you’re contemplating any sort of gunplay. Right now the situation is relatively calm. Better than it’s been since the beginning. Shooting an American will be dicey.”

“The man’s been accused of treason.”

“But not indicted,” Marston said. “And he was the director of the CIA. Not every president hated him.”

“You tell me, Stu, am I supposed to simply sit on my ass and let the man kill me? It won’t happen. I have people who’ll take care of the situation.”

“I’m not telling you what to do, that’s not my job. All I’m saying is that if you get yourself involved with McGarvey, and the situation goes south — if civilians get in the way and are hurt — Admin’s contracts would be in serious jeopardy.”

The man was an ass licker in Sandberger’s opinion. The only reason he was given a seat, and only on the sidelines, with Foster was because his old man had been a powerful senator from Montana, and his uncle had been one of the biggest cattle ranchers in that state plus Wyoming and Colorado. Money had always been the real raison d’être in Washington.

But Sandberger forced himself to calm down, putting aside for the moment the incident with McGarvey in Frankfurt. “What do you suggest?” he asked.

“I think we can kill two birds with one stone, if we’re smart about it,” Marston said.

“I’m listening.”

“Do you know Mustafa Kabbani?”

“He’s chief of Baghdad police, but I’ve not had any direct dealings with him. Admin’s contracts have always been with the State Department.”

“From what I’m told McGarvey almost always works alone. So when he shows up here he’ll be armed but on his own. The FBI has a warrant for his arrest, and if the Baghdad police were to take him into custody and let the Bureau transport him back to Washington it’d be a feather in their cap. And a feather in yours for showing restraint.”

“I see your point,” Sandberger said.

“I’ll arrange a meeting for you.”

“When and where,” Sandberger asked without hesitation.

“One hour from now at the Babylon.”

The Babylon Hotel on the banks of the Tigris River in the Zuweia District was unique in that manager and staff didn’t seem to mind that most of its guests arrived heavily armed. AK-47s were as common as attaché cases. And alcohol was served, though usually only in the guest rooms from minibars. But exceptions were made.

Sandberger went straight through the lobby to the patio and pool area that overlooked the river, to where Captain Mustafa Kabbani, drinking beer from a frosted mug, was seated alone at a small table. He was a big barrel-chested man, in his late forties, with thick, salt-and-pepper hair, a large mustache, and long delicate fingers.

He looked up and nodded toward the chair across the table.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Sandberger said, sitting down.

“We have mutual friends, and perhaps a problem that will result in a mutual benefit to both of us. What is it that you want? Exactly.”

The waiter came and Sandberger ordered a cold beer then outlined what probably would happen in the next twenty-four hours or so. “Do you know McGarvey?”

“I’ve heard of the man. But why is he coming here to assassinate you? And what has he done that his government is charging him with treason?”

“He wants me dead because he believes I murdered his son-in-law. Which is a lie, I was here in Baghdad at the time. But exactly why he’s being charged with treason I’m not sure. I only know that the FBI wants him for questioning, as does the U.S. Federal Marshal’s office. Apparently he shot a marshal when he escaped a few days ago.”

Sandberger’s beer came, and Kabbani turned to look at something across the river. He remained silent like that for several long moments before he turned back. “Which would be more to your advantage? Kill him or arrest him?”

“That’s totally up to you, Captain. But if only half of what I’ve heard about him is true, it might be easier all around to shoot him as he was trying to escape.” Sandberger looked across the river, but he couldn’t make out anything that might interest the policeman. “I’m sure his U.S. warrant has shown up on Interpol’s net, which you should have access to. I suggest you print out the warrant and photo or photos and watch for him.”

“Will he have help here?” Kabbani asked. “Does he have contacts with the military, or perhaps with the State Department?”

“None that I know of.”

Again the policeman hesitated. Clearly he was weighing his options. “At one time Mr. McGarvey was the director of the CIA. It is a powerful position. He must still have many friends in Washington.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Killing him will not be without political risk.”

Sandberger sat back. “I was told that you would help.”

“Such an operation could bring about certain expenses not in my budget,” Kabbani said, leaving the thought hanging.

Sandberger smiled. “Something will be arranged. I signed a new contract for services.”

“Yes, I know. Could you be more specific?”

“How many men will you require?”

“I think six—”

Sandberger interrupted. “Make it twelve. But the Basra Highway from Kuwait will have to be watched. We don’t think he’ll be flying in.”

“Then I will send some men out to meet him. Not policemen. Perhaps we will be able to deal with the problem before it arrives here.”

“Call me as soon as you have the situation in hand,” Sandberger said. He got up and started to leave, but Kabbani stopped him.

“McGarvey’s wife and daughter lost their lives in an IED explosion at Arlington Cemetery,” the policeman said. “It is a very bad business involving a man’s family.”

Sandberger started to protest, but Kabbani held him off. “I will take care of this problem for you. Administrative Solutions will be here for at least one more year. It could be I will require a favor in that time.”

“All you have to do is ask, Captain,” Sandberger said, and he turned and walked back across the lobby and out of the hotel, where a valet parker brought his Humvee.

Driving away he promised himself that Chief of Police Mustafa Kabbani would lose his life in an unfortunate accident before the month was out, that is if McGarvey didn’t kill him first. It was a matter of sanitation.

THIRTY-NINE

Kuwait International Airport was ten miles south of the city center, and the highway leading from the hotel branched east toward the Persian Gulf and west toward the city of al-Jahrad, at the head of al-Kuwait Bay, before it turned due north through the oil fields toward the border with Iraq.

It was getting dark when McGarvey emerged from the Crowne Plaza and walked across the broad driveway covered by a canopy to the dark blue soft-top Range Rover, and got in on the passenger side, Hadid at the wheel. The backseat was empty.

“I thought your son Saddam was coming along,” McGarvey said.

“Wait,” Hadid said, and he pulled away from the hotel, down the long driveway, and out onto the west highway, the airport lit up behind them; the city of al-Kuwait sparkling to the east.

Traffic was heavy, and everything seemed to move at breakneck speed. But there were no military vehicles, nor could McGarvey pick out any obvious signs of damage from the first Gulf War. Kuwait was a tiny but modern oil-rich country apparently no longer affected by what was happening in Iraq.

Once they had reached the head of the bay and made the turn north, the border fifty miles away, everything changed. From here nearly everything moving on the road was a military supply transports of one sort or another, many of them eighteen-wheelers, all of them traveling in groups of eight or ten vehicles accompanied by several RG-33s, which were mine-resistant, light-armored vehicles equipped with M2 heavy machine guns. The peace had been all but won, but the road to Baghdad was still dangerous and would remain so for the foreseeable future.

“Are you expecting trouble tonight?” McGarvey asked.

“If we were military we might expect something interesting, Mr. Tony, but since we’re simple civilians we will be reasonably safe from the insurgents,” Hadid said. “Our only real concern will be bandits.”

“Have they become a problem?”

“Always a problem,” Hadid said, checking his rearview mirror, and he slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road, nothing in any direction out here except the waste gas flames atop oil rigs in the distance.

A minute later one of the convoys passed, raising a storm of dust.

When they were gone Hadid powered down the soft top, jumped out, and went around back where he opened the rear hatch to an empty space.

McGarvey got out and came around to the back as Hadid undid a pair of concealed fasteners and the carpeted floor slid out revealing a long space the width of the car and all the way forward to just behind the front seats. A young man with the wisp of a beard on his chin nimbly hopped out, a big grin on his face, his dark eyes large and round.

“Good evening, Mr. Tony,” he said, his English passable. “I am Saddam.” Like his father he wore a dark robe and headdress, sandals on his feet.

Hadid reached inside the dark space and helped a slightly built figure out and over the lip of the rear bumper. For a moment McGarvey thought it was another, much younger son, until he realized it was a woman.

“My wife, Miriam,” Hadid said proudly.

Her face was perfectly round, her complexion smoky, her smile as bright as her son’s. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Tony,” she said, her accent British. She, too, was dressed in a dark robe, her hair covered.

McGarvey suddenly had a very bad feeling. Inside the hidden compartment he could make out at least three AK-47s, and a couple of canvas bags that almost certainly held spare magazines. “I appreciate the help, but I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he said.

“Is it my son, or are you a chauvinist American?” the woman asked.

McGarvey nodded toward the weapons. “I don’t want to be the cause of a woman going into harm’s way. I’ll get to Baghdad on my own.”

“Then you are merely a sad American. We heard of your loss. It must be terrible.”

“We will present less of a threat, a family traveling with an American journalist,” Hadid said.

“People are expecting me in Baghdad. There’ll be trouble.”

“Once we get you there you’ll be on your own until it’s time to return,” Hadid said. “You’ll stay at the Baghdad Hotel, while we’ll stay with my wife’s uncle. When it’s time for you to leave we’ll come back in the same fashion, but you will cross the border with a new identification, and appearance.”

McGarvey looked over his shoulder the way they had come, and he could see the glow of al-Kuwait on the horizon. Getting back to the city would be a problem, but he’d faced worse. Once back at the Crowne Plaza Otto could arrange for something else. Anything else.

“What explanation will you give when you are picked up by a military patrol, unless of course you are murdered first?”

“We’ll take your wife back to the city, and start over,” McGarvey said.

“Have you been to Baghdad before?” Miriam asked.

“Once, a long time ago.”

“But not since the war, and the chaos left behind when Uncle Saddam was caught and executed. You don’t know the full extent of the troubles between the Sunnis and Shi’ites.”

“Believe me, Mr. Tony, my wife and I have worked together ever since our marriage sixteen years ago,” Hadid said. “She is an unusual woman for an Iraqi. She was educated in England, and her father was a general in Saddam’s army. She knows her way around. In the beginning it was I who was learning from her. She worked on the outside of the palace while I worked on the inside. We are a team.”

“It will be better for you if we do this together,” Miriam said. “And if I thought the danger would have the possibility of becoming overwhelming, do you think I would allow my son to ride with us?”

“Be sensible,” Hadid said.

The situation sounded anything but sensible to McGarvey, but it was far too late for him to back down. Sandberger was the tie to Foster and the Friday Club. Almost nothing else mattered.

“Do you have a weapon for me?” he asked after another hesitation, and Hadid looked relieved.

“You may have your sat phone now, you will have your weapon once we cross the border.”

The last thirty miles up to the border was heavy with traffic, only one vehicle out of fifty a civilian car. The Baghdad road wasn’t exactly the gateway to the country. But it was bandits who gave civilians trouble, while it was the Sunni and Shi’ite radicals who targeted the military and Iraqi police.

“Saddam and I are actually quite good marksmen in our own right,” Miriam said conversationally at one point.

“Unusual for an Iraqi woman,” McGarvey said.

“Not as unusual as you might expect, but we don’t parade in the streets firing into the air like the men. When we shoot it’s from concealed positions at a specific target.”

A conglomerate of lights in addition to the red taillights of the trucks heading north, and the headlights of vehicles heading south, straddled the highway. Northbound traffic was backed up for one hundred yards or so, which according to Hadid was nothing compared to the delays during daylight hours when most convoys preferred to run. Then traffic could be backed up for miles.

“Are your passport and Army credentials in order?” Hadid asked.

“Yes,” McGarvey said, uncomfortable that he wasn’t armed.

“You will need to show them to the Kuwaiti Army patrol on this side of the border and then to the Iraqi police on the other side.”

“What about the Americans?”

“Delta Company, First Light Armored Recon Battalion. But they’re on standby with fifty-caliber Sasser sniper rifles in case someone tries to make trouble.”

“You have good information,” McGarvey said, impressed.

“It’s my part of the world,” Hadid said. “My life depends on good information.”

They moved forward slowly, until ten minutes later they reached the border crossing and a pair of Kuwaiti army border guards, armed with American M16s, asked to see their papers.

Hadid’s and his family’s papers raised no interest, but McGarvey’s passport and especially his U.S. Army credentials did, and one of the Kuwaiti border guards took the documents across the road to a low concrete block building, with machine-gun emplacements looking north on the roof.

Traffic began to back up behind them, and a U.S. Army captain jumped out of his RG-33 at the head of a convoy and came up to them.

“What’s the trouble up here?” he demanded, and he spotted McGarvey in the backseat. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m an American freelance journalist,” McGarvey said, meeting the officer’s eyes.

The captain held out a hand. “Let’s see some ID.”

“No,” McGarvey said. “And I suggest you get back in your fucking thirty-three until we’re cleared here.”

At that moment a Kuwaiti officer came from the concrete block building, and ignoring the American officer, looked in at McGarvey. “You have an American Army pass. Why is it you didn’t fly direct to Baghdad?”

“I’m doing a piece on convoys traveling the Baghdad Road,” McGarvey said. He glanced at the captain. “And the men running them.”

The Kuwaiti officer handed McGarvey’s papers back. “You may pass,” he said, smiling slightly. “Good luck.”

“Is there something we should be aware of tonight?” Hadid asked, but the Kuwaiti had turned and headed away.

“Maybe I’ll see you in Baghdad, Captain,” McGarvey told the American. “What’s the name of your CO?”

The captain turned and stalked off, and Hadid moved past the barrier where they were stopped by a pair of Iraqi police who inspected their papers. When they looked at McGarvey’s he was sure they recognized the name, but they handed the papers back, stepped aside, and waved them through.

“They might be expecting me,” he told Hadid when they were on the other side and accelerating into the dark night.

“I saw it, too,” Hadid said. “But I have a few tricks up my sleeve, you’ll see.”

FORTY

Kangas and Mustapha had flown first class from Washington and had fully indulged in the free bar service, so that by the time they touched down at Baghdad’s International Airport, if not drunk they were certainly less than sharp.

Their contact man at Dulles had assured them that McGarvey was traveling undercover as a freelance journalist by the name of Tony Watkins, and was driving up from Kuwait, which gave them a twelve-hour head start. They weren’t worried. It wasn’t often that the cheap bastards handling travel arrangements for Admin sprung for first class, and they’d meant to enjoy every minute of it, because once they got to Baghdad they figured they’d be put up in some shit hole of a hotel.

It was early evening and the airport terminal was fairly busy. Since the so-called peace, a lot of international business was returning to the country, especially people interested in oil.

Through passport control and customs a young man came up to them and without a word handed Kangas a thick manila envelope then turned around and walked away, lost in the crowd almost immediately.

“Welcome to the hot zone,” Mustapha said. “Make sure it isn’t a fucking letter bomb, because that kid was for sure not our quartermaster.”

“Too light,” Kangas said, and he and Mustapha went down the corridor to an empty boarding area and opened the envelope. Remington had provided them with five thousand in U.S. currency, mostly hundred-dollar bills, a pair of presumably untraceable credit cards, and confirmed reservations for a suite at the new Baghdad International Airport Hotel and Business Center, along with a photo of Harry Weiss, their on-the-ground Admin contact, who would meet them once they checked into the hotel.

“This keeps getting better,” Mustapha said.

“There’s always a catch,” Kangas said. He was beginning to get a seriously bad feeling between his shoulder blades. He’d never really trusted Remington, and with this added luxury he was becoming even more distrustful.

“Yeah, taking McGarvey down,” Mustapha said. “We’ve already seen the bastard in action.”

“He won’t be expecting us,” Kangas said, but he wasn’t so sure.

The hotel was on the airport property and just down a walkway from the terminal. Big and ultra modern, especially by present-day Iraqi standards, the place reminded Kangas of hotel/business centers in places like Dubai. Everyone was in a hurry, everyone seemed to have bags of money, and everyone smiled at everyone else without meaning it. It was, he suspected, a dangerous place. But it was handy to the airport, so once their business in town was finished they could get back here and get out on the first available flight. Admin had provided them with open-ended tickets, which meant they could hop aboard any flight. Their first-class status gave them priority.

The lobby was plain and functional, yet luxurious at the same time. The clerks, almost all of them young, dressed in identical gray blazers with gold buttons, bustled seemingly everywhere.

The clerk at the reception desk brought their reservations up on his computer, printed out the arrivals document, and had Kangas sign it. “Welcome to the Baghdad International Airport Hotel, gentlemen. A credit card will not be necessary, your firm has arranged for all of your expenses.”

“Right,” Kangas mumbled.

The clerk handed them each a key card. “Will you be needing help with your luggage?”

They had each carried only a single overnight bag. They’d be staying only as long as was absolutely necessary. Hopefully they’d be in and back out in twenty-four hours or less. “Not necessary,” Kangas said.

They took the elevator up to their twelfth-floor suite, the balcony looking toward downtown Baghdad, about fifteen miles away. In addition to a pair of bedrooms with king-sized beds and separate Jacuzzis, the sitting room was well furnished with a modern couch and chairs, a desk, a large HD plasma television, and a well-stocked minibar. A guest half bath was just inside the entry hall.

The red message light on the telephone began blinking at once and Kangas answered it.

“Message from Mr. Weiss. Please meet him in the lobby bar at your soonest convenience,” a recording of a woman’s voice said. “If you would like to hear this message again, please press one.”

“Our quartermaster wants to meet downstairs in the bar,” Kangas said hanging up.

“That was quick,” Mustapha said.

“The sooner the better.”

Although security at this hotel was probably reasonably tight, this was Baghdad, and Kangas felt vulnerable without a weapon, something he expected their quartermaster was going to fix first thing.

They used the stairs to the tenth floor, where they made sure the corridor was empty before they took the elevator to the lobby. It was an old survival trick they’d learned in the CIA. Never willingly give up any information about yourself. In this case, by taking the elevator from the tenth floor, anyone spotting them emerging into the lobby wouldn’t necessarily know they were staying on the twelfth. It was minor, but such little things in the field added up.

They recognized Weiss, seated at a booth in the far corner of the lobby lounge, from his photograph. Kangas thought he looked like a poofta, the same as Remington: narrow, sloped-shoulders; light, sand-colored hair; and tiny round face with droopy eyes that seemed to see nothing.

But he looked up from his drink as Kangas and Mustafa came over, and motioned for them to sit across from him. “You assholes look like shit,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you, too,” Kangas said, letting Mustapha slide in first. He never liked for his movements to be confined.

“First class doesn’t mean you show up drunk. Do you have any idea who the hell you’re going up against?”

“We’ve seen him in action, we know,” Mustapha said. “But he won’t be here until sometime tomorrow. By then he’ll be road weary, but we’ll have had a good night’s sleep and a big breakfast.”

“And this city belongs to Admin,” Kangas added.

“I speak the language, do you, prick?” Mustapha said.

Weiss sat back. “Okay, if this weren’t so important to Roland I’d tell you guys to get the fuck out of here first thing in the morning. As it is I hope you go up against McGarvey one hundred percent. If you miss the smallest step he’ll have you for lunch.”

“We’ll take care of our business,” Kangas said. “What about our equipment?”

“In a leather satchel at my feet. Wait five minutes after I’m gone, then pick it up and take it to your room.”

“Where will he be staying?”

“The Baghdad Hotel where a lot of journalists who don’t care to stay in the Green Zone hang out,” Weiss said. “Give me the photo you got at the airport.”

Kangas had figured Weiss would want it back. He handed it over. “Not a very good likeness.”

Weiss gave them both another appraising look, before he got up. “Stupid bastards.”

As soon as he’d left, Kangas reached under the table for the satchel, then slid out of the booth, Mustapha right behind him, and they left the lounge, holding up just at the entrance to see which way their quartermaster was heading. But Weiss was nowhere to be seen.

“Not bad,” Kangas had to admit. The man might have looked like a poofta but he knew his tradecraft.

FORTY-ONE

Heading north from the border away from the head of the Gulf, toward Basra, the night turned warm, even sultry. This, Hadid explained, was the region of the famous Fertile Crescent, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, near the Garden of Eden.

More oil rigs dotted the horizon, and to McGarvey the area seemed anything but fertile. It was mostly desert now, and when a breeze blew it stank of oil and natural gas.

“We’ll have no trouble until after Basra,” Hadid said, checking his rearview mirror often. “It starts to get bad once we get near An Nasiriyah. The convoys take the route on the west side of the river, but we’ll cross over and take the eastern route. It’s about the same distance, but I know it better.”

“Wouldn’t we be safer traveling in the middle of a couple of convoys?” McGarvey asked.

Hadid glanced at him and shook his head. “No,” he said, and he checked his rearview mirror again.

For the moment they were alone on the road, though in the distance behind them they could make out the lights of an oncoming car or perhaps the convoy that had been directly behind them at the checkpoint. It was time for the weapons.

Hadid pulled over and they all got out and went around to the back of the car where Hadid opened the lid and brought out a Glock 17 for McGarvey with a silencer and three magazines of ammunition plus three AK-47s with the satchel of spare magazines, which went to McGarvey, Saddam, and the woman.

They all piled back inside the car and Hadid pulled away before the oncoming lights had reached them.

Saddam and Miriam both handled the AKs with practiced ease, checking the actions, loading the weapons, and racking rounds into the firing chambers as McGarvey was doing the same.

The woman looked up, catching McGarvey watching her. “Little children know how to use this weapon,” she said.

“Have you ever killed a man?”

Her lips compressed, but she didn’t look away. “More than one,” she said. “I didn’t care for it each time.”

“Most people usually don’t,” McGarvey said.

They had switched positions at the stop; McGarvey now riding shotgun in the front seat with Miriam and her son in the back, watching for trouble on either side of the road and to the rear.

The night was pitch black here, except for the Range Rover’s headlights. And it was beginning to cool down.

Miram said something to her husband in Persian, and Hadid looked in his rearview mirror. “Someone back there seems interested in us, I think.”

McGarvey looked back and he could see that the headlights were moving up on them very fast. “I don’t think it’s the convoy.”

“No, it’s only one maybe two pairs of lights,” Hadid said. He was searching for something on either side of the road.

Miriam said something else, her tone urgent.

“This will do,” Hadid said. “Hold on, it’s time to give them a little surprise.”

He jammed on the brakes suddenly, doused the lights and swerved off the road to the right, across a shallow ditch, and headed for a small concrete block structure, just reaching it as a Toyota heavy-duty pickup truck roared up and without slowing down careened off the road.

“Shoot now,” McGarvey shouted, and he opened fire with the AK-47 at two figures dressed in black braced in the bed of the pickup truck with what looked like an M249 squad automatic weapon, which was a Belgian-made 5.66mm light machine gun mounted on a pedestal. One of the guys was a shooter the other the loader.

Miriam and Saddam began firing at the pickup truck at the same moment the M249 began banging away, several rounds slamming into the rear of the Range Rover before Hadid hauled the car behind the building, and there was no target for several beats.

“I’m going to try to get behind them,” Hadid shouted, as they reached the far end of the building and he hauled the big SUV around the corner.

The Toyota was right on their tail, but didn’t have as tight a turning radius, so the rounds from the M249 went wild out into the desert night.

Two seconds later, Hadid shouted something in Arabic as they came back to the front of the building, where another Toyota heavy-duty pickup truck was waiting in ambush just off the side of the road, and he swerved hard to the right.

“Stay on our rear,” McGarvey shouted to Miriam and the boy at the same moment they started taking incoming fire from the second pickup truck. McGarvey opened fire with his AK-47, walking the rounds across the field as Hadid jinked left and right, in an attempt to keep out of the line of fire.

For just an instant the Range Rover and second pickup truck were in perfect alignment, and McGarvey hit the shooter and loader and walked his rounds forward to the driver and passenger, taking them out, running dry in the next instant.

The first pickup truck had careened around the corner from behind the building and opened fire as McGarvey reloaded, and swung around to fire toward the rear.

Miriam and the boy were both down, blood everywhere, and once again Hadid swung hard right putting the Toyota in a perfect firing position. McGarvey took out the shooter and loader in the bed, and emptied the remainder of the AK-47s thirty-round magazine into the cabin.

The pickup truck suddenly swerved sharply to the left, its front left fender slamming into the side of the building, slewed away and rose up on its right side flipping over, its engine screaming up the scale until something loud popped and the Toyota ended up rocking on its roof.

Hadid jammed on the brakes and pulled to a stop, the night suddenly very quiet.

He pulled out a pistol, jumped out of the Range Rover, and started toward the upside-down pickup truck.

McGarvey put down his weapon and reached over the back of the seat, making a quick check of the woman and boy. They were both dead. Miriam’s chest was blown half away by the machine gun’s rounds, and Saddam’s face had been destroyed, the back of his head completely gone.

“Khalid,” McGarvey called, a great sadness coming over him, along with a deep, deep bitterness. All such a terrible waste.

McGarvey turned around as Hadid fired once into the cab of the pickup truck, then reached inside and dragged out a body. He said something, and then spat on the body.

McGarvey got out of the Range Rover and walked over, as Hadid went around to the other side of the Toyota.

“Sunnis,” Hadid said, looking up. “The bastards will do anything to break the peace. They have no morals, Mr. Tony. No real religion.”

“Your wife and son are dead,” McGarvey said. There was no way of softening the blow. The situation was what it was.

Hadid shook his head, his mouth open, but then he went back to the Range Rover and stood at the rear passenger door. He dropped his pistol on the ground and began to beat his chest with his right hand, a high-pitched keening wail coming from the back of his throat.

McGarvey walked back to him. “We’ll return to Kuwait now so you can attend to your family.”

After a long time Hadid looked at him, shook his head, then gazed at the bodies of his wife and son. “They were Sunnis and they have no morals,” he said. “They cannot be allowed to win this war.”

The Sunnis felt the same about the Shi’ites, but McGarvey said nothing. The deep division between the two Muslim sects was something a westerner could not really understand. The rift was even deeper than between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland in the sixties and seventies.

“I will take them to the home of Miriam’s uncle in Baghdad. They will receive a proper burial before the sun goes down,” Hadid said. “If you will help me we will place them in the secret compartment in the back. Hopefully there will be no further trouble for us tonight.”

FORTY-TWO

Sandberger, having drinks with a couple friends from a rival contractor service, Decision Infinity, looked up as Harry Weiss came into the barroom of the new Ritz-Carlton Baghdad in what had been the Green Zone. It was around ten in the evening and he’d been expecting his point man on the McGarvey issue about now, but he didn’t much care for the look on Weiss’s face.

“Sorry, gentlemen, but business calls,” he said. He finished his martini and got up.

Jerry London, DI’s CEO grinned. “Trouble, I hope,” he said, and his exec, Ken Brody, glanced over at Weiss standing at the bar and raised his glass.

“Bloody well hope old Harry has brought you shit news, you son of a bitch,” he said, laughing.

“I hope you get syphilis and your dick rots off,” Sandberger replied and the two men laughed.

“The game starts in my suite at midnight,” London said. The CEO and execs of most of the contractors usually got together at least once a week for high-stakes poker, courtesy of Uncle Sam.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Sandberger said and he walked over to where Weiss was waiting, and the two of them left the bar, crossed the lobby, and took the first elevator up to the eighth floor.

Neither man spoke until they were safely inside Sandberger’s suite. Contractor firms were under fire again in Washington, and the CIA sill maintained a strong presence in Iraq, and especially here in Baghdad. No public spaces — barrooms, dining rooms, elevators, and even corridors — were ever completely safe from electronic surveillance. Only individual rooms and suites that were swept on a regular basis, as was Sandberger’s, could be considered private.

“They’re here,” Weiss said. “Drunk, as you figured they might be.”

“I don’t care unless they get themselves in trouble tonight,” Sandberger said, but in fact he did care. McGarvey was no one to screw around with. Captain Kabbani had been so self-assured that it had been obvious he had no real idea what the former CIA director was capable of. And there was a very real possibility that his people would have failed tonight, and McGarvey would actually be showing up here sometime in the morning.

“They’re a couple of loose cannons, but I think they understand who they’re up against. They oughta be sober and rested by morning, unless they’re complete idiots.”

“They know their tradecraft, and neither of them has ever been afraid to pull the trigger.”

“Do you think McGarvey will make it this far?” Weiss asked.

“I think it’s a possibility that we have to consider,” Sandberger said.

“What can I do?”

Weiss was Admin’s on-the-ground CO here in Baghdad, and to date he’d done a credible job. Such a good job in fact that Sandberger was torn between bringing him back to Washington to take overall command of operations or leaving him here. He would decide after the McGarvey business was settled and Foster finally got off his back. But Weiss would have to name his own successor, and it would have to be someone good.

“He has reservations at the Baghdad Hotel. Go over there and keep your eyes open. I want to know not only if he shows up, but if he’s alone.”

“If I have the chance I’d like to take him out myself,” Weiss said.

“No,” Sandberger shot back. “Kangas and Mustapha are expendable, you’re not.”

It was a little past two-thirty in the afternoon in Washington when Sandberger used his encrypted sat phone to reach Remington at his home, and he was more than a little angry that his partner wasn’t in the office, and he said so.

“I’ve never punched a clock, and I don’t intend to begin now, old man,” Remington replied. “Is there anything that I’ve mishandled to this point for the company?”

The man’s British sarcasm rankled, but Sandberger held his temper in check. Remington had been a steady if unimaginative hand from the beginning. “Your people are here, and drunk.”

“Not surprising. But they have a twelve-hour head start. And I think they’re smart enough to sober up in the meantime.”

“Don’t you think first class was a little excessive?”

Remington chuckled, his English superiority showing again. “Last banquet for the condemned men,” he said. “They haven’t strayed from their quartermaster have they?”

“Not yet. But I’ve put someone else on the job. Could be McGarvey will never reach Baghdad.”

“That might not have been the best call, Roland,” Remington cautioned. “It’s not our people, I hope.”

“Captain Kabbani is handling it for us.”

“The man’s a buffoon.”

“Yes, and just as expendable as Kangas and Mustapha, and a hell of a lot less expensive. We’re not running a goddamned charity.”

“Don’t lecture me,” Remington shot back. “You’re gone and I covered for you at the Club. That’s what partners are for. And we are partners, unless you want to dissolve the arrangement, a move I would not strenuously object to.”

Sandberger realized that once again he’d gone too far, but the Foster contract had been a constant drain on his nerves from the start nearly two years ago. If he had known then what he knew now, he would have turned it down, no matter how fabulous the money was. But now he and Remington were in it up to their necks, and they would have to see the business through until Foster reached his ultimate goal — something that gave Sandberger nightmares.

“Sorry, Gordon, it’s the pressure,” he said.

“I understand,” Remington said reasonably. “By this time tomorrow the issue will be resolved.”

One way or the other, Sandberger thought but didn’t say. “I’ll call you.”

“Do,” Remington said and he rang off.

Leaving Sandberger to pour a stiff brandy and stare out the window at the river and try to quell his rising concern that this business with McGarvey and the Friday Club was a very long way from any sort of acceptable resolution.

A couple of minutes before midnight, as Sandberger was getting set to go up to the poker game in Jerry London’s suite, Captain Kabbani called on the house phone.

“I’m in the lobby. We need to talk.”

“Is there trouble?” Sandberger asked, a tightness gripping his chest.

“It’s better if you come downstairs.”

“I’m on my way,” Sandberger said. He went to the bureau in the bedroom, and got his SIG-Sauer P226 pistol and shoulder holster. If they were going to talk it would not be in the one of the hotel’s public spaces, nor was he having the captain up here. It meant the streets, and for this business he would go without his bodyguards, as he had when he initially met the cop.

Kabbani, dressed in robes instead of his khaki policeman’s uniform, was seated near the doors, and Sandberger passed him without a greeting and walked outside and headed down the street.

The cop caught up with him half a block away. “I received word a half hour ago that eight Sunni rebels working for Saddar Mukhtar were found shot to death on the north road outside Basra.”

Sandberger had almost expected the news. But eight-to-one odds were too lopsided even for McGarvey. “He must have had help.”

“Almost certainly. And it could have been a trap if there was a leak in your company. This man could have been waiting for them.”

“If there’s any leak it’s in your police barracks,” Sandberger retorted angrily. “But there wasn’t any. The people you hired were not good enough. And I warned you.”

“What about my money?” Kabbani said. “I have debts.”

“So do I.”

“This is still my country, my city. Accidents do happen.”

At this moment they were alone on the sidewalk, though there was traffic on the street.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what I’m saying, Mr. Sandberger,” Kabbani said. “And this evening you do not have your bodyguards with you. Perhaps that was a mistake.”

Sandberger lowered his eyes and nodded. “I thought it might come to this with a bastard like you.”

“It’s the cost of doing business in Baghdad since the war and the pullout of most of the American soldiers. Not so easy for men such as yourself to call for help.”

“The cost of doing business in Baghdad,” Sandberger repeated. He glanced up as a police car, its blue lights flashing passed by without slowing.

Kabbani pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Sandberger’s chest. “I hope for your sake that you brought my money with you.”

Sandberger smiled inwardly, but he nodded, a grim set to his lips. “As a matter of fact, I thought it would come to this,” he said. “But not out here in plain sight. And put that gun down, as you say my bodyguards aren’t with me and I’m not armed.”

Kabbani concealed the pistol in a fold of his robes and motioned toward a narrow alley nearby. “In there,” he said, glancing around to make sure no one had spotted the exchange so far. But except for the traffic on the street, no one was nearby.

The narrow alley was dark, littered with garbage and the burned-out remains of an automobile chassis that had been dragged off the street a couple of weeks ago.

“Here,” Sandberger said reaching into his jacket. He pulled out his pistol and before Kabbani could react he shot the cop once at point-blank range in the forehead. The man fell backward, dead before his body hit the ground.

Sandberger waited several seconds to make sure no one had heard the shot and was on the way to investigate. But Baghdad was still in a state of siege. Gunshots in the night were common, even in the peace. Curiosity was practically nonexistent.

Holstering his pistol, Sandberger went through the cop’s robes to see if he’d been carrying a wire or anything else that might incriminate Admin. But he’d not even carried his police card. Just the pistol and a set of car keys.

Sandberger slipped out of the alley and headed back to the hotel, satisfied that he would only be fashionably late for the poker game.

FORTY-THREE

Hadid said nothing for the remainder of the trip up to Baghdad, which they finally reached late in the morning. Instead of driving straight into the city, Hadid headed west through Saddam City to a neighborhood called Quds. The busy streets were rat warrens of narrow lanes that twisted through mostly one- and two-story ramshackle concrete-block buildings. Most of them were private homes and some had small gardens off rear courtyards, others had retail businesses on the ground floors.

He called someone on his cell phone and at the end of one very narrow street he stopped at a corrugated-metal gate, blew the horn once, and moments later the gate swung inward and Hadid drove through into a dusty courtyard. He turned around so that the nose of the Range Rover was pointed toward the gate being closed by an old man with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.

“That is my uncle Fathi,” Hadid said. “I told him about Miriam and Saddam and he has agreed to help. His wives will make my family ready for burial, which must be completed before sundown today. You understand?”

“Yes,” McGarvey, thinking about the funeral for his wife and daughter. “What can I do to help?”

“Nothing, Mr. Tony. You will remain here in the car, you will speak with no one, you will make no eye contact, you will make no moves. Do you understand this completely?”

“Yes.”

“This will not take long and then I will take you to the al-Zuhoor where you have a suite.”

“I thought it was the Baghdad Hotel.”

“It is the same. But the name in Arabic is The Flowers Land. And it is in its own compound along with the Hamara Hotel, where most of the western journalists who do not want to stay in the Green Zone have rooms. It is also where many of the contractors stay. And for that I have a plan.”

His uncle came over with three other men as Hadid got out of the Range Rover and went around back and opened the hatch. No one looked at McGarvey in the passenger seat. Before they had entered the city, Hadid had stopped and raised the top.

“Do we need to hide the weapons?” McGarvey had asked.

“Here it is not necessary,” Hadid had told him, and once inside it became obvious why. Every third or fourth person seemed to be carrying a weapon of some sort, either a pistol or a Kalashnikov. The peace was still an uneasy one.

The four men removed the bodies of Hadid’s wife and son and carried them gently across the courtyard and into the house. The Range Rover’s windows were down and McGarvey heard a keening wail coming from inside, and he understood what these people were feeling now; he really understood them, and it hardened his heart further for the business ahead.

Hadid came out of the house, his face an unreadable mask, got in the car, and started it as his uncle came out and opened the gate. “Now it is time for you to go to work, or rest if need be. But if I may suggest, you should complete your business as quickly as possible. This evening. And I will come back after the funeral.”

“No,” McGarvey said. “The rest I will do alone until it’s time to leave the city.”

The al-Zuhoor was a shabby six-story hotel at the end of a street partially blocked by two concrete blast walls, almost directly across the Tigris River from the Green Zone. Next to it, but behind the same blast barriers, were the two large buildings of the Hamara Hotel.

Hadid slowed down at the gap in the walls, and eased through the opening and stopped. A pair of stern-looking men armed with Kalashnikov rifles materialized, one of them on the driver’s side, the other a few feet and slightly behind McGarvey.

“What do you want?” the guard asked Hadid in English.

“I am this man’s driver. He has a reservation here.”

“Name?”

“Mr. Tony Watkins. He is a freelance journalist.”

“American?”

“Yes.”

“Release the hood and rear hatch,” the guard said, which Hadid did.

Two other men came over, one of them searching under the Range Rover’s hood and in the back, while the other checked the undercarriage with a slanted mirror attached to the end of a long aluminum pole as the two armed guards stayed where they were.

The man at the back of the car said something, and the guard near Hadid raised his rifle a fraction. “There is blood in the back.”

“We were on the road from Basra last night,” Hadid said. “There is blood and shell casings in the backseat, and, as you can see, bullet holes in my car. But no explosives.”

The hood and rear hatch were closed and the men with the rifles stepped back.

Hadid drove up to the glass-fronted entrance, next to the restaurant. A big awning covered what had apparently once been a sidewalk from the street that was now blocked off by a chain. No one seemed to be around, and the restaurant was empty.

“Take one of the rifles and a couple magazines,” Hadid suggested.

“Let’s save them for the return trip,” McGarvey said. He had the Glock, the silencer, and three magazines of ammunition. Enough for tonight.

Hadid nodded. “I will wait for your call, Mr. Tony. Good luck.”

“I’m sorry about your wife and son.”

“They are in Paradise now, waiting for me.”

McGarvey’s reservation for five days was in order, and the bald clerk sitting on a stool behind the counter in the tiny lobby checked him in and handed him a key. No porters were around, and except for the clerk and one man who was a westerner in jeans and a light sweater sitting reading a New York Times, the lobby was deserted. The man never looked up.

His suite on the sixth floor, had a view of the concrete blast barriers, and consisted of a sitting room, small bedroom, and bathroom. The place was shabby but fairly clean, and the wheezing air conditioner kept the rooms reasonably cool.

McGarvey laid his overnight bag on the bed and phoned Rencke, who answered, as usual on the first ring.

“Oh, wow, you made it,” he said. “Louise said that one of her KH-elevens picked up some trouble on the Basra Highway about the time you should’ve been there.”

“That was us. Hadid brought along his wife and son, and both of them were killed. Did you know him?”

“Not personally. But he’s done work for us since before the first Gulf War. He came highly recommended. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “I just want to do what I came to do and then get the hell out of here. Where’s Sandberger staying?”

“He has a suite in the new Ritz-Carlton. Eight-eleven. But he almost always surrounds himself with bodyguards. And honest injun, kemo sabe, if you get into a shoot-out you’ll be outnumbered and outgunned.”

“I want to get his attention,” McGarvey said. “I want him to know that I’m here, and why. And I want that to get back to the Friday Club in spades.”

“Go easy.”

“I want to hurt him,” McGarvey said.

“Jesus.”

McGarvey broke the connection then lay down on the bed to get a few hours’ rest, something, it seemed, that he hadn’t gotten for a very long time. But this evening he would need to be in top form.

FORTY-FOUR

Sandberger had just sat down for lunch alone at a table in the Ritz-Carlton’s dining room and ordered a Bombay martini straight up with a twist when his encrypted sat phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Weiss calling from the Baghdad Hotel across the river.

“He showed up a couple of minutes ago,” he said. “I waited to see what room he was given. He’s in suite six-oh-seven.”

“Did he come in alone?” Sandberger demanded.

“Wait, there’s a lot more. You said he was coming in under the name Tony Watkins, a freelance journalist, right?”

“Yes.”

“I would never have recognized him from the photographs I’ve seen. He’s in a disguise and a damned good one. Not so obvious so you wouldn’t take a second glance. I was close enough to the desk to hear the name, otherwise I would have missed him.”

“Did he make you?”

“He glanced over at me, but there was no reaction that I could see. He just got his key and went up. Elevator straight to the sixth floor, no stops in between.”

“Was he carrying any hardware that was obvious?”

“Probably a pistol, unless he’s crazy. But his only luggage was a small nylon overnight bag.”

“What else?”

“He came into the hotel alone, but I got a look at the car and driver who dropped him off. Didn’t get the tag number, but the guy driving was obviously an Iraqi.”

“Anyone we know?”

“I never saw him before. Anyway he just dropped McGarvey off in front and then drove off. The car was a Range Rover and shot up pretty good. Holes looked recent. Still shiny metal. Bandits on the Basra Highway, I imagine.”

Sandberger gripped the telephone a little tighter, checking his anger. It was the outcome he’d expected, because Kabbani had been an incompetent fool. Now the police chief was dead, the people he’d hired down south probably dead as well, and McGarvey was here in Baghdad. But it was not the outcome he’d hoped for.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Call Kangas and Mustapha. But wait until nightfall. I don’t want them doing a daylight operation. They can go in after dark. But you’ll have to stick it out there to see which way McGarvey moves, and keep us advised. But I’d rather you lose him than have him spot you. Are you clear on that point?”

“Yes, sir,” Weiss said. “But you have to understand that if I do lose him, and our guys miss, he’ll come after you.”

“Not the worst-case scenario,” Sandberger said, and he glanced over at his personal bodyguards, Carl Alphonse and Brody Hanson, seated at one of the tables by the entrance. Unlike the idiots Kabbani had sent to ambush McGarvey, and even Kangas and Mustapha, the two men with him now were among the best he’d ever worked with. Tough, ruthless, and, above all, capable. If they had any fault it was their arrogance. But they had the skills and experience to back it up.

McGarvey was here and he would not live through the night. Sandberger found that he was looking forward to getting back to Washington. He and Gordon would have to make a decision about Foster and the Friday Club. The money was fabulous but the risks were beginning to rise to an unacceptable level. Time to get out, he decided. But in order to do that Admin would have to manage a number of erasures.

Kangas and Mustapha were about to go downstairs to the bar for a couple of drinks and something to eat when the phone in their suite rang. This day had been long and boring, and at one point Mustapha had suggested they say the hell with it and head back to the States. Kangas answered and he recognized Weiss’s voice.

“He’s at the Baghdad Hotel as we thought he would be. He’s in six oh seven.”

“Did he come alone?”

“An Iraqi driver brought him in, but left immediately. And it didn’t look as if he was carrying any heavy hardware, though he’s almost certainly armed.”

“Where are you?” Kangas asked. He snapped his fingers and gestured to Mustapha that the mission was a go.

“Somewhere near enough so that I can watch his movements. He went upstairs around noon, and he hasn’t come down since.”

“Did he spot you?”

Weiss had supplied them with Knight’s Armament PDWs that, on full automatic, fired the 6 × 35mm cartridge at seven hundred rounds per minute, and three thirty-round magazines each. With the stock folded and the suppressor removed the super-compact weapon was less than eighteen inches long. Mustapha was fixing his weapon diagonally across his chest with a big Velcro pad.

“He saw me, but I don’t think he felt that I was any sort of threat or he would have done something about it by now,” Weiss said, and he gave Kangas a description of McGarvey’s new look.

Kangas had another thought. “Where will Mr. Sandberger be tonight?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business.”

“Yes, it is. This guy came here to take him out. If we get over to the hotel too late he might be on his way over to wherever the boss is staying.”

“Mr. Sandberger is well protected.”

“Yeah, so was the pope.”

Mustapha was wearing a Kevlar vest and he pulled on a dark blue Windbreaker, which he zipped up. It was obvious he was carrying, but then so were a lot of others in the city.

“He’s staying at the Ritz-Carlton in the Green Zone.”

“Good. Tell him to stay there until we’re finished,” Kangas said. “We’re on our way.”

“Not until tonight.”

“We’ll handle this now,” Kangas said and hung up.

FORTY-FIVE

Well rested after sleeping all afternoon, McGarvey took a shower and dressed in blue jeans, a dark pullover, and dark blazer. The Glock 17 Hadid had supplied him with went in a holster on his hip, beneath the jacket, and the silencer and spare magazines in a pocket.

He went to the window and looked at the lights in the Green Zone across the river. Many sections of the city were dark or nearly dark, like his mood he thought. Otto was a friend, but he didn’t understand loss and rage. Nor should he need to understand.

Rencke called on the sat phone, just as McGarvey was about to walk out the door. “You may have more trouble coming your way.”

“What is it?”

“A pair of Admin’s tough guys showed up in Baghdad yesterday evening. Timothy Kangas and Ronni Mustapha. Ex-CIA NOCs. They were fired a few years ago for using excessive force, operating outside their charters, and more or less telling the establishment to screw itself. One of my programs monitoring Sandberger and his people tripped, but I didn’t catch it until a few minutes ago.”

“Are they staying with Sandberger, or Admin’s people?”

“No, and that’s what triggered the search engine. They’re staying at the Baghdad Airport Hotel, and they have open-ended first-class tickets on United, which was another trigger.”

“They know I’m here and they were sent over to take me out,” McGarvey said. “It makes getting a message to Sandberger that much easier.”

“I looked at these guys’ jackets, Mac. They’re good. And I suspect they’ve been ordered to stay away from Admin’s operations in the city. You’re a separate contract. But it doesn’t mean they won’t call for help if they think they need it.”

“It’ll hinge on what they know. My work name and this hotel.”

Rencke hesitated a second or two. “If they have that info it means we have a leak here. And it’d have to be someone fairly high up in Ops. Maybe even the seventh floor.”

“Work out a sting.”

“Shit, shit. I hope to hell I’m wrong, kemo sabe. Honest injun.”

“Contact Hadid and tell him I’ll need a ride out of Dodge in about two hours,” McGarvey said.

“Where do you want him to pick you up?”

“Have him circle the block around the Ritz-Carlton. I’ll find him.”

“Watch your ass, Mac,” Rencke said.

McGarvey broke the connection, pocketed the phone, and looked around the suite. He wasn’t coming back, and there was nothing else he needed to take with him except Watkins’s passport. It didn’t matter about his fingerprints; even if some Iraqi investigator did lift them, the FBI wouldn’t cooperate with an identification, nor would the CIA.

Downstairs, the lobby was deserted except for the same bald clerk as before. When McGarvey approached the desk, he looked up, his eyes watery. “Sir?” he asked.

“Two friends of mine may be looking for me. If they show up tell them that I’ve gone next door to the Hamara Hotel to have a drink.”

“Of course, sir. Your name?”

“Tony Watkins,” McGarvey said and he walked out and started down the path over to the much larger hotel, when something out of place caught the fringes of his attention, and he turned suddenly to go back as if he had forgotten something. The same westerner who’d been sitting in the lobby at noon was now sitting behind the wheel of a fairly new C class Mercedes sedan, parked to one side of the concrete blast barrier. It was a different pair of armed guards on duty this evening. They were sitting on lawn chairs in front of a pile of rubble ignoring the man in the Mercedes, nor did they bother to look up when McGarvey, apparently changing his mind again, turned back and headed to the Hamara.

Portions of the long walkway between the hotels were in darkness, and McGarvey picked a spot where he could wait in the shadows from where he could see anyone coming from the Baghdad Hotel, yet they would not be able to see him.

He’d thought at the time that it was odd that a man was seated alone in the lobby of the hotel, but since there’d been no contact, he’d all but put it out of his mind. Now he knew that the man was a spotter, sent by Admin to keep tabs on him. As soon as the muscle that had been sent over to deal with him showed up, the spotter would direct them to the Hamara.

And he only had to wait five minutes before two men came up the path. They looked like NOCs, anonymous, not particularly large or beefy, and they moved easily on the balls of their feet, their attention in all directions, like rotating radar beams. They were expecting trouble.

McGarvey eased a little farther back into the shadows so that he was partially hidden behind the bole of a palm tree.

The two were dressed nearly alike, baggy khakis and dark Windbreakers with more bulk than was likely. They were wearing vests under the jackets, and by the look of it even in the dim light McGarvey could tell they were carrying some heavy hardware strapped to their chests. The Windbreakers were zippered, which was a mistake on their part. It would be awkward for them to draw their weapons.

McGarvey waited until they were just past then drew his pistol and stepped out on the path. “I expect that you’re looking for me.”

They both reached for their weapons.

“I have no intention of killing you this evening, unless I’m forced into it,” McGarvey told them, and they stopped. “Please turn around.”

They did as they were told, their jackets half unzipped, and he saw their weapons.

“Knight PDWs. Nice. Which one of you is Tim Kangas?”

The one on the left pursed his lips.

McGarvey nodded pleasantly toward the smaller man on the right. “That means you must be Ronni Mustapha. Former NOCs, and I’m told quite good, though you had a little trouble with discipline and following orders.”

“We’re here,” Kangas said. “What do you want?” He showed no fear, only a wariness; he was looking for an opening.

“You were sent here by your boss at Admin to kill me. Fair enough. But I’m here just to gather some facts. Maybe we can work something out.”

“What’s in it for us?” Muataspha asked.

“Your lives, of course,” McGarvey said.

“What do you want?”

“Someone placed an IED at Arlington Cemetery. Was it on Admin’s orders? Roland Sandberger or Gordon Remington?”

“We don’t know,” Kangas said.

McGarvey suddenly raised his pistol to point directly at Kangas’s head and took several steps closer. “I asked you a question. The people killed in that explosion were my wife and daughter. I’m motivated.”

“We know about you, Mr. McGarvey, but it wasn’t us at Arlington. And if it was Admin we were not told.” No fear showed in his eyes, just the same wariness.

“Why were you sent here to assassinate me? Who ordered it?”

“Our boss, Mr. Remington.”

“Why?”

“You’ve been declared a threat to our operations,” Mustapha said. “I’m sure the order originated from Mr. Sandberger because of an incident between the two of you in Germany.”

“Toss your weapons in the bushes,” McGarvey said, and he watched their eyes as they very slowly did as they had been told. They were professionals. They knew how to back away when the odds were not in their favor so that they could live to fight another day.

“Now what?” Kangas asked.

“Go back to the airport hotel, and in the morning get on your United flight back to the States,” McGarvey said. “My issue is with Sandberger, not with his foot soldiers. But if I see you again I’ll kill you. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes,” Kangas said, and McGarvey stepped back off the path to let them pass. “What do you want us to tell Mr. Sandberger?”

“Whatever you want,” McGarvey said, and he watched as they walked back the way they had come, his body bathed in sweat. It had taken everything in his power not to kill them. But they were just foot soldiers, and he wanted word to get to Sandberger.

FORTY-SIX

Sandberger was in a booth at the bar in the Ritz-Carlton when Weiss phoned to tell him what had happened on the path between the two hotels, and for several long seconds he could not answer. His throat was constricted and the muscles in his face were rigid.

The American call girl he was seated with turned pale.

“Mr. Sandberger?” Weiss said.

“Just a moment,” Sandberger said, coming down. He laid the phone on the table, pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the girl with a smile. “Next time I’m in town,” he said.

The girl took the money, grabbed her purse, and slid out of the booth, her short skirt riding up. She had great legs and a tight ass. “Sure thing,” she said, and she left.

Sandberger picked up the phone. “Tell me everything,” he said, his voice even. He was back in control.

“McGarvey came out of the hotel and headed over to the Hamara about five minutes before our guys showed up. I told them where he’d gone, and they went after him. A couple of minutes later they came back in a big hurry, without their weapons. I told them to go back to their hotel and fly out first thing in the morning. We don’t need them here now that McGarvey’s made them.”

“How do you know they had no weapons?”

“Their jackets were open, the Velcro pads were empty, and no shots had been fired,” Weiss said. “What do you want me to do?”

“They didn’t say anything else to you?”

“They didn’t even want to look at me.”

McGarvey was a sharp bastard, easily still as good as his reputation, and he didn’t know that Kangas and Mustapha had been the triggermen on his son-in-law and for the IED at Arlington, otherwise he would have killed them.

“Stay where you are,” Sandberger ordered. “He’s probably coming over here next. I want to know when he leaves.”

“Yes, sir,” Weiss said. “I’d still like to take the bastard out myself, if the opportunity is there.”

Sandberger was about to tell him no, but he realized all of a sudden that he was being stupid. “If you get the chance, do it,” he said, and he broke the connection.

His bodyguards, drinking Cokes, were seated together at a table near the door. He waved them over.

“Kangas and Mustapha screwed up,” Sandberger told them. “McGarvey will be coming here tonight.”

“When?” Alphonse asked.

“I don’t know yet. But I have a spotter watching him.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Station two of our people on each side of the driveway. He’ll probably be showing up in a cab, and I’ll have the tag number for our guys. I want him taken down, priority one.”

“What about us?” Hanson asked. He looked as if he were itching for a fight.

“You’re sticking with me, because I think we might have underestimated the son of a bitch. And if he actually makes it this far, I wouldn’t put it past him to know my room number.”

“There are two stairwells plus the elevators. We’ll need an extra hand if we’re to cover all three,” Alphonse said.

“I want one of the stairwells wired. One pound of Semtex should be enough.”

“Could be collateral damage.”

“We’ll blame it on McGarvey. He’s a ruthless son of a bitch who’s practically under indictment for treason, and who’s unhinged by the deaths of his wife, daughter, and son-in-law.”

“When do you want it done, sir?”

“Wait until we find out if he’s gotten past our people and is actually inside the hotel,” Sandberger said.

“Where will you be?” Hanson asked. “In case we have to fall back for some reason.”

“In the suite with a surprise, because if he gets that far it’ll mean at least one of you is down.”

Hanson smiled. “Not a chance in hell of that happening, Mr. Sandberger,” he said.

FORTY-SEVEN

McGarvey had walked the rest of the way up the path to the Hamara, but instead of going inside he handed the doorman a hundred-dollar bill and had him call for a taxi, which had just come through the blast-barrier entry that served both hotels.

“Where would you like to be taken, sir?” the doorman asked.

“The American embassy,” McGarvey said, and got in the cab.

Before the driver had got the cab turned around, McGarvey held another hundred-dollar bill over the seat. “Do you understand English?”

“Yes, sir,” the cabbie said. “Very much.”

“This is yours if you do exactly as I say with no questions.”

The driver looked uncertain for just a second but then he nodded and snatched the hundred. “Where do you want to go?”

“Not far. And when I tell you to stop, do it immediately. I’ll get out and you will drive away. Do you understand? There’ll be no shooting.”

“Yes, sir. Perfectly.”

McGarvey slid over to the driver’s side of the rear seat and unlatched the door but did not open it. “Now, head to the exit, slowly.”

The driver did as he was told, and at the end of the Hamara’s driveway McGarvey sat back so that his face and shoulders were in deeper shadow. “See the Mercedes parked by the blast barrier?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Drive close to it, slow down so I can get out, and then leave.”

The cabbie glanced in the rearview mirror for just a moment, and once they were out in the Baghdad Hotel’s driveway, still moving slowly, he swung close to the Mercedes and pulled up short.

McGarvey slipped out of the cab and drew his pistol as the driver immediately made for the exit through the concrete barriers.

Keeping low McGarvey used the retreating cab as a shield until at the last second he ducked around the trunk of the Mercedes and yanked open the passenger-side rear door, and slipped inside, laying the muzzle of the big pistol in the side of the spotter’s face.

Weiss was reaching for something on the console beside him, but McGarvey jammed the pistol harder.

“Do exactly as I say or you die now.”

Weiss stopped short.

“If you were reaching for a pistol, pick it up by the barrel and hand it back to me.”

For just a beat Weiss hesitated, but then he slowly handed a standard U.S. military-issue Beretta 92F 9mm autoloader over the seat.

McGarvey pocketed the weapon. “I assume that you work for Admin, and it was you who brought Kangas and Mustapha over to take me down on Sandberger’s orders.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Weiss said.

“If you know who I am, you’ll know what I’ve gone through, and you’ll have to guess that I don’t give a shit who I take out,” McGarvey said, his voice reasonable.

“Okay.”

“Was the IED at Arlington planted on Admin’s orders?”

“I don’t know,” Weiss said, but McGarvey slammed the muzzle of his Glock hard against the man’s cheek, opening a two-inch gash, which immediately began to bleed. “Christ!”

“Tell me what you do know,” McGarvey said.

“You can beat on me all you want, you bastard, but I don’t know,” Weiss said. “If it was a Admin operation it could only have been authorized by Mr. Sandberger or Mr. Remington. No one else in the company has the power to make that kind of a decision.”

McGarvey glanced over at the armed guards sitting just inside the blast barriers, but they hadn’t moved from their folding chairs. “Why were Kangas and Mustapha brought over here?”

“To kill you.”

“On Sandberger’s orders?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” McGarvey asked.

“Mr. Sandberger thought that it was likely you were coming here to assassinate him.”

“And why do you suppose I’d want to do something like that? What do you think I have against your boss?”

“Because you think he ordered the assassination of your son-in-law. And maybe had something to do with the Arlington thing.”

“You’re learning,” McGarvey said. “And you know goddamned well that your boss ordered the hits on my son-in-law and the newspaper reporter because they were getting too close to the Friday Club. And the IED at Arlington was meant for me, but a mistake was made.”

Weiss said nothing.

“Call Sandberger and tell him that you spotted me leaving in a cab, but that you have no idea where I was going.”

Sandberger was still in the booth when Weiss called the second time. Since then the bar had filled up, and he’d switched from martinis to Bud Lite. Four of his people were outside watching the driveway, and Alphonse and Hanson were nursing their Cokes across the barroom near the door.

“He just left in a cab.”

“Which way is he headed?”

“I didn’t see.”

“Aren’t you following him, for Christ’s sake?” Sandberger demanded, his voice rising.

“It happened too fast. By the time I realized it was McGarvey in the back of the cab, it was out on the street and for some reason the stupid bastards at the barrier wanted to check my ID.”

Suddenly nothing was making sense to Sandberger, and he had a strong premonition that wherever Weiss actually was at this moment, McGarvey was there with a pistol to his head. Weiss was too good to have been taken like that, but he was also smart enough to give some sort of a clue if he got any opening. “Who was the lead man on the barrier? Was it Johnny Karp?”

Weiss had no reason to know the names of the contractors guarding the hotel entrance. They operated out of a small and not very well known company headquartered in Los Angeles.

“Johnny left around four, I don’t know who the hell this guy was,” Weiss said.

That was it, McGarvey was with him. “Okay, I want you to get back here as fast as you can. I think McGarvey’s probably going to back off for now, but I want to talk to you.” He motioned Alphonse and Hanson over.

“I think you’re right. He might even be trying to catch up with Tim and Ronni.”

“I’ll be in my suite,” Sandberger said. “Come right up.”

“Yes, sir,” Weiss said and the connection was broken.

Alphonse and Hanson slid in the booth across the table from him. “I just got off the phone with Harry. I think McGarvey got the drop on him and they’re on their way over. Alert our people outside — Harry’s driving a dark blue Mercedes C class — I want them both taken out. Then get upstairs and wire the east door. I’ll be in the suite with a little surprise.”

His two bodyguards got up and left the bar.

Sandberger finished his beer, laid a couple of twenties on the table, and went out to the elevators just off the lobby. He’d always been of the opinion that second-rate personnel were not capable of handling first-rate problems. Sometimes the only way to make sure that a job was done right, was to do it yourself.

The McGarvey problem would end tonight.

FORTY-EIGHT

They crossed the Tigris above the section known as Babil, and Weiss kept nervously glancing over at McGarvey. The Ritz-Carlton tower rose above most of the other buildings in the Green Zone and traffic here had dramatically increased. Baghdad wasn’t back to normal yet, but the city’s people seemed to want to head that way, and McGarvey hoped the lives we had given up to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime were worth the results.

“Look, you know you won’t get within a hundred yards of Mr. Sandberger,” Weiss said. “He knows you’re coming.”

“Your little play with the hotel guard’s name was obvious,” McGarvey said.

“I meant that Tim and Ronni must have called him by now.”

McGarvey shook his head. “I think they went back to their room in the new airport hotel, and they’ll be on the first United flight back to the States. Theirs was supposed to be an independent operation. With the deals on the table for Admin from State, your boss doesn’t want to take any chances of a shoot-out except in self-defense.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the Friday Club, and I’m here for the answers. But I don’t think your boss is going to be very happy how I ask.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Certifiable,” McGarvey said, his anger in check, his level of awareness tuned to everything around him, inside and outside the car. He was going to have one chance to get Sandberger alone long enough to find out who had killed his son-in-law and Katy and Liz. To do that he figured he was going to have to either take down whatever assets Sandberger had put in place, or sidestep them if possible. Probably shooters in front of the hotel, on either side of the driveway. Maybe a spotter in the lobby. And certainly men in the eighth-floor corridor, at the stairwells and elevators, because he was pretty sure that Sandberger would have retreated to his suite where it would be much easier to defend himself than out in the open. The man would be treating this affair like a military operation. But all battles had losers as well as winners.

A block from the hotel McGarvey had Weiss pull over and stop at the curb. This close inside the zone traffic, most of it civilian, was heavy. “You have a choice,” he said. “I’m getting out of the car and you’re free to go. But if you want to try something stupid I will take you out.”

Weiss licked his lips but said nothing.

“If you do drive over to the hotel, I’d advise that you keep your head down, because I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. My only interest this evening is Sandberger. Clear?”

Weiss nodded, but held his silence.

McGarvey opened the door and started to get out of the car when he felt Weiss make a sudden lunge. Dumb, but not unexpected. Sandberger’s orders would be for his people to take whatever opportunity came along.

“Bastard,” Weiss grunted.

McGarvey slipped out of the car and slid half a step to the right as he turned and brought his pistol to bear. Weiss had grabbed a spare pistol, another Beretta 9mm, from probably under the seat, and was raising it when McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the middle of his forehead and slamming him back against the driver-side door.

The noise, partially contained inside the car and muffled by the sounds of traffic, went unnoticed. None of the cars or trucks passing slowed down.

Slipping his pistol into the holster beneath his jacket McGarvey closed the car door, and headed down the street to the Ritz. Other people were on foot, some of them in western dress so he figured he wasn’t terribly obvious.

About fifty yards from the hotel’s sweeping driveway that led up to the entrance portico he pulled up and slipped into the shadows of a line of small shops, shuttered now, in the lee of what was probably a building containing some Iraqi government function. Such places were scattered all across the Green Zone.

He watched for a full five minutes as cars and cabs came and went, spotting a pair of men stationed in the driveway leading to the hotel’s entrance, and another pair on the opposite side for vehicles leaving. Dressed in the near standard contractor’s uniform of jeans, dark shirts, and Kevlar vests with a lot of pockets, they were waiting for Weiss to show up, presumably with his passenger, and their orders were to take out both of them.

It was a little risky to stage a shoot-out these days, but before the cops showed up they would probably plant some explosives in the car. They were simply doing their jobs, protecting the hotel from suicide bombers.

McGarvey moved back until he was clear, then ran down the street, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, until he found a service driveway that led to the rear of the hotel.

When he was out of sight of anyone on the road, he took out his pistol and screwed the silencer onto the end of the barrel.

Sandberger eased the door open and looked out into the corridor. Alphonse leaned against the wall a few feet from the elevator, which meant that Hanson was just around the corner from the east stairway door.

“Keep on your toes,” he told his bodyguards. “If McGarvey’s going to show tonight, it’ll be within the next half hour, or less.”

Alphonse nodded, and Sandberger closed his door, keeping it slightly ajar with a book of paper matches. He went across to the sliding door that led onto the small balcony and opened it. The cool evening air with the sounds of traffic and the smells unique to Baghdad — rotting garbage, diesel fumes, and a hint of cordite — were immediately there.

Before he switched off the lights he removed the silenced Sterling submachine gun’s thirty-four-round box magazine, checked one last time that it was full, and slammed it back home. The unique weapon, which used nonsubsonic 9×19 mm Parabellum ammunition, had been used by British special forces, including the SAS. It had been one of Remington’s suggestions that Admin’s people might find the weapon handy in special circumstances.

Like now, Sandberger thought as he waited half inside and half outside the slider.

McGarvey was good, if even half of what he’d heard was true. He had gotten past Kangas and Mustapha, and had somehow gotten the drop on Weiss. However unlikely it might be, it was possible he would get past the four men watching the driveway, and perhaps even Alphonse and Hanson up here.

But anyone coming through the door would take the full thirty-four rounds. Survival this up close and personal would be impossible.

A delivery van was backed up to the loading dock and an older man in Arab dress was pulling out plastic flats filled with bundles of cut flowers and carrying them inside through the open roll-up door.

McGarvey waited until the florist went inside, then ran around to the end of the loading dock and ducked down in the shadows in the corner. Five minutes later the man came out, closed the delivery van’s doors, and left.

As soon as the van was out of sight, McGarvey jumped up on the delivery dock and peered around the corner into the receiving area, where all the supplies for the hotel were received and processed. Two men were directly across a fairly large space where they were loading the flats onto a pair of hand trucks. When they were finished they pushed the carts off to the left where they boarded a service elevator.

When the doors had closed McGarvey hurried after them, and waited, until the car stopped at the lobby level. Sandberger’s suite was on the eighth floor. He would have people watching the stairwell doors and the guest elevators. But he might have overlooked the service elevators, which the maids, room service people, and maintenance crew used.

McGarvey brought the elevator down then hit the button for the eighth floor. He suspected that the doors would open not onto the main corridor but onto a service corridor, and when the car reached the eighth floor he was proven right. This corridor, which ran the length of the hotel along the rear walls of the rooms, was unpainted concrete walls and floors, with minimal lighting from basic ceiling fixtures.

Several doors opened onto the main guest corridor, one at each end opposite the emergency exits, and one at the vending machine alcove.

McGarvey went to the west emergency door and examined the hinges. It was wired, a small grey mass of Semtex molded into the jamb about chest high. It came to him that only the two bodyguards from Frankfurt would be up here, one on the elevators and the other on the stairwell door.

He turned and hurried back the way he’d come, past the service elevator, which had been recalled to the kitchen level, to the door opposite the east emergency exit.

Opening the door just a crack he saw a man in a contractor’s uniform leaning against the wall less than ten feet away. The man spotted the open door immediately and he reached for his pistol holstered high on his right hip.

McGarvey pulled the door all the way open and raised his pistol. “I’ll kill you right now,” he said in a low voice.

The contractor’s hand stopped just above the butt of his pistol. He was weighing his options, and it was obvious in his eyes.

“Who else is up here with you?”

“I’m alone,” Hanson said.

“You had a partner when I saw you in Frankfurt,” McGarvey said. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“As you wish,” McGarvey said, and slipped out of the service corridor to where the contractor stood, batted the man’s hand away from his gun, and pulled it out of its holster. It was a 9mm SIG-Sauer. McGarvey dropped it to the carpeted floor and kicked it away.

“Now what?” Hanson asked, tensing his muscles, getting ready to spring.

“We’re going for a walk,” McGarvey said, roughly hauling the man around, and shoving him from behind.

“Bloody hell,” Hanson said, but McGarvey jammed the muzzle of the big silencer hard against the base of the man’s head, and they headed slowly to where the corridor turned right.

At the corner, McGarvey suddenly shoved Hanson away and stepped to one side as Sandberger’s other bodyguard stationed at the elevator realized that something unexpected was happening, and he grabbed for his pistol.

McGarvey fired two shots, both hitting Alphonse in the head, knocking him backward against the wall where he collapsed to the floor, leaving a bloody streak as he fell.

Hanson spun on his heel and started to charge, when McGarvey turned and pointed the gun at the man’s head, and the contractor pulled up short.

“Lie to me again and you’re dead.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Hanson said.

“No need for it, unless you were personally involved in the murders of my son-in-law, wife, and daughter.”

“No,” Hanson said, and McGarvey believed him.

“Your boss has the answers. So what we’re going to do, is knock on his door and you’ll tell him whatever you need to say to get him to open up. Then you can go.”

“Right.”

“I have no beef with you. Unless you do something stupid you can walk away from this thing. But time is short, so make your decision.”

“No choice, do I?”

“No,” McGarvey said.

“You can’t be lucky every time, you bastard,” Hanson said, but he headed down the corridor, past Alphonse’s body lying in a heap, to Sandberger’s suite. He started to knock on the door, but then backed off.

McGarvey saw that the door was open and he pulled Hanson back. “Tell him I’m down.”

Hanson was clearly nervous now. But he turned back to the door. “Mr. Sandberger, it’s me, Brody. We got him.”

No one answered. Hanson started to turn back but McGarvey bodily shoved the contractor into the suite, and stepped aside out of what he expected would be the line of fire. And he was right.

Something that sounded like a silenced, heavy-caliber automatic weapon opened up, the bullets slamming into Hanson’s bulletproof vest, but at least one hitting the contractor in the leg and another in the face just above and to the right of the bridge of his nose.

The firing stopped, and McGarvey stepped over Hanson’s body and entered the room. Sandberger at the open slider was trying to reload, but McGarvey, still moving forward, fired one shot, hitting the man in the right thigh, dropping him to the floor.

“There’ll be people all over the place up here, because someone must have heard something,” McGarvey said. “So I don’t have much time. Does Admin have a contract with the Friday Club.”

“Fuck you,” Sandberger said.

McGarvey fired a second shot, this one destroying the man’s kneecap, and Sandberger cried out.

“Who killed my family?”

“You’re a dead man.”

McGarvey stepped closer and placed the muzzle of the silencer on Sandberger’s forehead. “Your people did it to cover up whatever the Washington Post reporter found out about Foster and his group. Is that worth dying for?”

“You’ll never take me back to Washington, and even if you did it wouldn’t do you any good. I have friends—”

“You’re right,” McGarvey said, and he fired one shot.

Sirens were approaching from the north by the time McGarvey made it down to the service floor and out onto the street. Before the police arrived at the hotel Hadid pulled up with the Range Rover, and McGarvey jumped in.

“Time to leave?” Hadid asked.

McGarvey nodded. “Time to leave.”

FORTY-NINE

It was one in the afternoon in Washington when Remington and his wife, Colleen, met for lunch at the George Hotel just down from Union Station. She’d remarked that it was an odd choice, but he hadn’t explained that he wanted to come here to satisfy a perverse curiosity to see where the Washington Post reporter had met with McGarvey’s son-in-law. The dining room/bar area was faintly art deco and nice, though not grand. Not up to Colleen’s usual standards.

But she hadn’t complained, and in fact had stopped all her complaining after the dinner party at Foster’s home. She’d been impressed with her husband, and he’d even cut back on his drinking — because of the crisis mode Admin was in — which impressed her all the more.

“What made you think of this place?” she asked when their martinis came.

The dining room was nearly full, but the service was good.

Remington shrugged. “Someone mentioned the place. Thought we should give it a try.”

She looked around, and smiled. “I approve. Anyway, Gordo, I’m famished.”

Remington’s sat phone vibrated in his pocket and he hesitated whether to ignore the call, but with everything happening here in Washington and in Baghdad, he answered it. “Remington.”

Colleen shot him a disapproving look.

“We’re in deep shit over here, sir.” It was Peter Townsend, Sandberger’s administrative assistant, who’d done all of the nuts-and-bolts negotiations with the State Department reps in Baghdad. A lawyer by training, he’d served one term as a junior congressman from the Russian River area of California. He sounded shook up.

“What is it?”

“Mr. Sandberger was shot to death in his suite about an hour ago.”

Remington was struck dumb for just a moment, and it must have showed on his face because Colleen put down her drink and gave him a concerned, questioning look. “What about Hanson and Alphonse?”

“They were taken out, too, but it looks as if Mr. Sandberger killed Brody. It’s not making any sense to me, because Harry Weiss was found shot to death in his car a block from the hotel. What the hell is going on? I wasn’t told that we were facing any sort of a threat of this magnitude.”

It was McGarvey, of course. Couldn’t be anyone else, but for now they needed to do some serious damage control. “Okay, listen up. I’ll come there as quickly as possible, but it probably won’t be until tomorrow. In the meantime you’re the on-site supervisor as of this moment. I want the mess cleaned up before I get there. Get in touch with Captain Kabbani, he’s been of some help in the past.”

“His body was found in an alley a block from the hotel. He’d been shot to death at close range. You have to tell me what the hell is going on if you expect me to take care of this shit, because I have no idea what’s coming next. And what do I tell our guys that’ll make any sense?”

Remington didn’t have a clue, but Townsend was waiting. All of Admin was waiting because he’d just become president of the company. The easy way, he couldn’t help but think, and he smiled for just a moment, and his wife’s right eyebrow shot up.

“Goddamnit, I’m in the hot seat. I’m not a contractor, I’m a negotiator, a lawyer.”

“Do you know Stuart Marston?” Remington asked.

“Yes, of course I do. He’s been our point man at State. Helped put the deal through for us.”

“Call him, set up a meeting and tell him what you know—”

“I don’t know shit,” Townsend shouted.

“Calm down, and let me finish,” Remington said. Colleen was watching him, hanging on every word. “Tell Stu that we think it was Kirk McGarvey. The man’s gone over the edge, and he had some sort of a personal vendetta with Roland.”

“Holy shit,” Townsend said.

“Get a hold of yourself, Pete. Until I get there you’re Admin in Baghdad. Work with Marston. Work the problem, don’t let it work you.”

Townsend was silent for several beats, and when he came back he sounded as if he was coming down. “Do I mention McGarvey’s name? I mean the guy was the DCI at one time.”

“The FBI is looking for him, and Justice is considering bringing him up for treason,” Remington said. “So definitely mention his name. It’s something that guys like Marston understand.”

“It’s late here, I’ll call him in the morning.”

“Call him now. He needs to hear about this from us, not the Iraqi police.”

“You’re right.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can. But keep in touch.”

“Will do,” Townsend said and he rang off.

Remington broke the connection and lowered the phone.

“Talk to me, Gordo,” Colleen said, keeping her voice low.

“Bit of a muckup over in B-town,” Remington said. “Roland and a couple of his people have been shot to death.”

“Good Lord,” Colleen said, but then he could see in her eyes that she understood the consequences as well as he did. “Do you actually have to go over there?”

“We’ll see,” Remington said, and he dialed Robert Foster’s private number, which would be rolled over to wherever the man was. Anywhere in the world.

On the third ring it was answered by a voice mail message. “Leave your name and number after the tone.” But before Remington could leave a message, Foster came on.

“Good afternoon, Gordon. Is something bothering you that you called this number?”

The waiter came over to take their order, but Remington waved him off and waited until he was out of earshot.

“I just received word that Roland was assassinated in Baghdad about an hour ago. His bodyguards were taken out, as was Baghdad’s chief of police.”

“That’s certainly a stunning development. Do you know who was behind this and why?”

“It was McGarvey,” Remington said. “Our operations over there are facing a potential meltdown. I’m flying over tonight to straighten it out.”

Foster’s reply was immediate. “No. I want you to remain here in Washington. Business as usual. Do you have any idea where Mr. McGarvey is at this moment? Certainly not still in Baghdad?”

“I’m not sure, but I believe he’ll try to get out of the country, probably either through Kuwait, the way he got in, or perhaps across the border into Turkey.”

“Is he receiving help from the CIA?”

“Unknown, but I’d say it’s fairly unlikely considering the charges Justice is preparing to file against him.”

“I was under the impression that you had arranged for some of your people to take him out.”

“Apparently they failed.”

“Are they dead?”

“I don’t know, they haven’t surfaced yet. Last I heard they had reached Baghdad.”

Foster was silent for a moment. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to arrange for your contract over there to go to Decision Infinity. They can use the money. I need all of your attention devoted to the McGarvey problem.”

“That would put Admin in a bind,” Remington protested, even though he had to agree with what was coming next. “We’re carrying a large salary and training budget.”

“We’ll take care of your company,” Foster said. “Your main objective now is to kill Mr. McGarvey as soon as possible. I don’t care where or how, just get the job done, Gordon, and you will be a busy man, because we have the main issue to contend with.”

“I wasn’t in on that loop,” Remington said. “Roland never discussed it with me.”

“Conclude the McGarvey business, and you will be brought into the loop, as you call it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Remington said, but he was talking to a broken connection.

FIFTY

The sky to the east was just beginning to lighten when Hadid slowed down and pulled off the highway a few miles outside of Az Zubayr, a small city just north of the border with Kuwait and barely twenty miles from Basra.

“It’s too dangerous to cross the border now,” Hadid said. “It’s what the authorities will expect Mr. Tony to do. We’ll stay here until nightfall, when Mr. James will spring into existence.”

The battery in McGarvey’s sat phone had worn down, and the Range Rover’s cigarette lighter receptacle didn’t work, but Hadid had promised that when they finally stopped, the phone’s charger could be directly connected to the battery under the hood.

They followed a dirt track for a few miles out into the desert until they came to what at one time in the past might have been a farm or more likely a small sheep station. A main stone building in absolutely horrible condition, a gaping hole in one of the walls, and half the roof missing, sat at the edge of a small dried-up stream. Several other, much smaller buildings in even worse condition made up what would have been a small compound, sections of a stone wall visible here and there.

“This belonged to one of my uncles, but during the first war the U.S. Army based three tanks here. They didn’t leave much.”

“Who owns it now?”

“The family, so this in some respects belongs to me,” Hadid said. “But no one cares. There is no oil just here.” He drove around to the back of the main structure and backed the Range Rover inside, where most of the roof was intact, then shut off the ignition.

It was a good spot, covered from the air and from the highway or anyone coming up the dirt track. Getting out of the car McGarvey felt a sense of sadness for the people who had lived here, their shattered lives. Maybe they had dreamed of cashing in on the oil revenues that had never materialized. All that had shown up on their doorstep were Iraqi tanks and American ordnance.

Hadid had opened the hood. He took the sat phone charger, cut the wires from the plug with a penknife, and peeled them back so they were long enough to be wrapped around the battery terminals. He plugged the other end into the phone, and a second later the charge indicator lit up, and he grinned. “Now we will spend the day here — you and I plus the battery — recharging.”

They sat on the open tailgate and ate their breakfast of flat bread, figs, goat cheese and American vinegar, and sea salt potato chips. Hadid had brought several bottles of sweet tea for himself, along with several liters of water and two cans of Heinekin for McGarvey.

“After the last twenty-four hours you’ve had I thought beer would be better than tea.”

“No worse than yours,” McGarvey said, opening one of the warm beers. “What’s next for you?”

Hadid smiled wistfully. “The sadness is leaving, Mr. James. They are waiting for me in Paradise. This I truly believe and it gives me comfort.”

There was nothing to be said in reply.

“After you are safely back at the Crowne under your new identity, I’ll return to my duties in Baghdad. And for you, did you accomplish what you came here for?”

“A part of it.”

“But there is more back in Washington?”

“A lot more,” McGarvey said looking away.

“Revenge is never the just thing,” Hadid said. “But very often it is the only thing for the soul. I hope you finally find what you are looking for.”

McGarvey was dead on his feet, and bunked out in the rear of the Range Rover he managed to sleep through most of the day, although he continued to have dreams about the explosion that had killed Katy and Liz, and about Todd’s battered body covered by the sheet at All Saints. And on waking around four in the afternoon the images didn’t want to fade.

Hadid was already up, and he was in the front room of the house, looking through a pair of binoculars up toward the highway. “I thought we might be having some visitors,” he said, not looking over his shoulder.

“Civilian?” McGarvey asked. He thought it was a good possibility that either the Baghdad police or more likely Admin would have sent someone after them.

“American military. But why they got off the highway is a mystery.”

“They’re gone?”

“Yes,” Hadid said, lowering the binoculars. “We have a few more hours to wait. There’s more food and water, but no beer.”

McGarvey went back to the car, got the things Hadid had brought for him, and using the door mirror on the passenger side dyed his hair dark brown, darkened his complexion with one of the chemicals Martinez had supplied him with in Miami, and finally placed contact lenses in his eyes to change their color from gray green to blue. When he was finished he exchanged the passport and other documents that identified him as Tony Watkins a freelance journalist, with the papers of James Hopkins, a contractor with Decision Infinity.

He got dressed in khaki slacks, a black short-sleeved polo shirt, and a bush jacket with a lot of pockets. A nylon sports bag contained a few toiletry items, a week-old New York Times with an article about DI, and a fresh shirt, underwear, and socks. Hopkins was nothing more than a tired contractor going home on leave.

Hadid had disconnected the sat phone from the battery and laid it on the seat. When McGarvey was finished he switched it on. It showed a full charge but no missed calls. By now Otto would have heard about Sandberger and the others at the Ritz, but he was holding back, knowing what else had probably happened overnight.

Hadid was looking at him. “You look the same, but different. I would never have picked you out in a crowd as the same man who was Mr. Tony. Whoever arranged this disguise for you was very good. It’s subtle.”

“Let’s hope the people at the hotel, and especially the customs and passport people at Dulles, think the same thing.”

“They’ll be watching for you?”

“Absolutely.”

FIFTY-ONE

It was nearly nine in the evening in Washington, which put it around five in the morning in Iraq, when Remington, calling from his office just inside the Beltway in Alexandria, finally managed to reach Tim Kangas at the Baghdad airport hotel.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded.

“The son of a bitch got the drop on us, which means he must have spotters here on the ground.”

“We have big problems coming our way, tell me everything,” Remington said, and Kangas did.

“You wanted us to keep a low profile here, arm’s length from any Admin personnel other than Harry Weiss. He told us to come back here and fly out on the first available flight. Which we’re planning on doing. Leaves at six local.”

“I still want you back here as soon as possible, but everything’s changed,” Remington said. Admin was in crisis mode, and he’d required that the five office staff remain until he could fully brief them and give them orders that would make sense. First he had to gather the facts.

“What’s happened?” Kangas demanded, his voice suddenly guarded.

“Weiss is dead, shot to death by McGarvey because you failed to do your job.”

“Bastard. He’s gotta have help here on the ground.”

“That’s not all. There was a shoot-out at the Ritz last night. Alphonse and Hanson are dead, and so is Mr. Sandberger.”

The connection was silent for a long time, and when Kangas finally came back he sounded shook. “We don’t need this shit. With all due respect, Mr. Remington, we’re bailing. You can take this job and shove it.”

It was about what Remington had expected. “The contract still stands. Two million for each of you when you take McGarvey down.”

The hesitation was shorter this time. “Do you want it done here?”

“McGarvey’s probably already on his way back here, either through Kuwait or possibly across the border into Turkey. Either way you’re too late to catch him. But if you’re on the next flight back, you’ll beat him here. You know what he looks like and unless you don’t know it yet, he’s traveling under the work name Tony Watkins, as a freelance journalist. Once you’re on the ground call me, and I’ll tell you what flight he took and when to expect him.”

“We’re supposed to take him down at the airport?”

“Only if he’s not taken into custody, which is a possibility. If the FBI picks him up, you can back off. If not, you can take him just like you did his son-in-law.”

“What about equipment?”

“Something will be arranged.”

“Wait one,” Kangas said and the connection went quiet. He came back ten seconds later. “All right, we’re in. But we want our backs covered, so make damn sure he won’t have help at Dulles.”

“Don’t worry, Admin takes care of its own,” Remington said, and he broke the connection and sat back. The beauty of the situation was that neither Kangas nor Mustapha could prove that they’d been ordered to assassinate McGarvey. Their orders had been verbal. Nothing written and neither of them had been wearing a wire. And they would never allow themselves to be taken into custody. Their backgrounds were too dirty, and by the time the FBI came looking, Admin’s records would show they’d been terminated months ago.

He got up and went out to the operations room where the five office staff were waiting. They looked up with interest because they knew that something important was happening.

“I need to make one more call, and then I’ll brief you in the boardroom and you can go home and get a few hours’ sleep.”

“What’s going on Mr. R.,” Calvin Boberg, the operations manager, asked. He’d been with Admin from the beginning, and was irritated that he’d been told nothing.

Remington held up a hand. “Five minutes, please.”

Boberg wanted to argue, but he shrugged. He was tired and he and the others wanted to go home.

Remington telephoned Ivan Miller, his contact at the FBI, who worked as the acting assistant director of the Bureau’s Domestic Intelligence Division. Remington didn’t know for sure, but he was convinced the man had a connection with the Friday Club, because he had landed in Admin’s lap within one week of the Friday Club contract.

His wife called him to the phone, and he sounded guarded. “Good evening, Gordon. Not a social call, I suspect?”

“You may have heard that we ran into a spot of trouble in Baghdad.”

“Just found out about it before I left the office. Could it have involved McGarvey?”

“We have that as fact,” Remington said. “He gunned down Roland and at least three of our people. Now he’s on his way back here.”

“I’m told that a Baghdad police captain may have been involved as well?”

“I just learned about that myself, and there’s very little doubt that McGarvey was the triggerman. The captain was Admin’s liaison for security measures.”

Miller hesitated for a moment, and Remington could hear music playing in the background, and maybe the sound of young voices. Miller had two teenaged children at home. “What can I do for you, Gordon?”

“This time it’s what Admin can do for the Bureau.”

“I’m listening.”

“McGarvey is definitely coming home. But you might not know he’s traveling on false papers and with a pretty fair disguise. It’s possible he could walk right past your Homeland Security TSA people.”

“Tell me,” Miller said.

“He’s traveling as a freelance journalist under a U.S. passport in the name of Tony Watkins.”

“How do you know this?”

“Two of our people had contact with him but managed to get away undamaged.”

“Lucky.”

Remington gave him the Tony Watkins description. “I think Admin can give the Bureau convincing evidence of McGarvey’s involvement with the shootings.”

“Roland was more than a partner, he was a personal friend from what I understand,” Miller said. “You must be shocked.”

“Devastated,” Remington said. “Do us a favor and pick him up. Or, better yet, shoot the man as he tries to escape.”

“You’d like that.”

“We all would,” Remington replied.

Boberg, Admin’s secretary Sigurd Larsen, the firm’s equipment specialist Roger Lewis, their computer expert David Thoms, and their in-house travel agent Gina Ballinger sat around the table in the conference room. They looked up with interest and a certain amount of concern when Remington walked in.

“Mr. Sandberger along with two of his bodyguards and Harry Weiss were shot to death last night in Baghdad.”

“My God,” Sigurd gasped. “Insurgents?”

“No. It was a man named Kirk McGarvey.”

“Son of a bitch,” Boberg said. He was a short, narrow-hipped man who was hard as bar steel. Remington had personally recruited him from the British SAS. “Have we got someone on the ground to take him down?”

“He’s on his way back here, and I have two angles covered,” Remington said. He explained about Kangas and Mustapha and about the FBI that would have agents in place to grab McGarvey traveling as Watkins the moment he stepped off the jetway. “But there still could be a mistake, so I’ll need a spotter out there.”

“Harry was a good friend,” Boberg said. “I’ll take care of it myself. Just in case.”

“If he’s taken into custody he’ll likely face treason charges. But he mustn’t be allowed to make it away from the airport and go to ground. At all costs.”

“Understood,” Boberg said, softly.

FIFTY-TWO

Despite the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the end of organized fighting in the north, the Kuwaiti military maintained a strong presence on the border with Iraq, mostly to intercept insurgents who might want to send suicide bombers across.

A few kilometers north of the Iraqi town of Safwan, which was on the main north-south highway, Hadid pulled off the paved road, doused the headlights, and headed east into the desert toward the even smaller town of Umm Qash.

“I have a cousin there,” Hadid said. “He and his two brothers and one cousin, my wife’s nephew, all work in the oil fields across the border.”

“Are we going to cross with them?” McGarvey asked.

Hadid shook his head. “Too dangerous for them, and I promised they wouldn’t become involved. But I know this border area. The crossing will be easy.”

The two towns were only twenty-five kilometers apart and yet after fifteen minutes of driving fairly fast, there were no signs of lights out ahead, though to the south waste gas fires from wellheads lit up the night sky with an eerie glow. This place was otherworldly and had been ever since the first Gulf War, when the invading Iraqi army had set most of those wells on fire. The air tasted of crude oil.

At one point the rough track dipped down into a shallow valley and Hadid stopped. “We’ll bury your weapon and old papers here, but you may keep your satellite telephone.”

He took a small shovel and a Kuwaiti Gulfmart Supermarket plastic bag from the back of the Range Rover, and dug a shallow hole in the sand a few feet away. He put McGarvey’s things into the bag, tied it shut, and buried it.

“Will you come back for at least the pistol?” McGarvey asked.

“No need, Mr. James. Guns are plentiful here.” He grinned in the darkness. “Maybe in five thousand years an archaeologist will dig it up and it will be placed in a museum of antiquities.” He laughed.

It struck McGarvey that Hadid was trying very hard to find something to laugh about after having lost his wife and son. But there was nothing more to say, and he couldn’t find the will yet to look for humor in his own life. But then he didn’t have Hadid’s faith in a Paradise.

Back in the car, they waited with the engine running. Ten minutes later Hadid glanced at his watch, and two minutes after that they spotted the glow of a pair of headlights traveling east to west in the general direction of Safwan.

“That is the Kuwait Army patrol,” Hadid said. “Five minutes late.”

They waited another full five minutes, before Hadid put the Range Rover in gear and they continued down the valley for about five or six kilometers until a hundred meters from an oil rig they bumped up onto a dirt road and turned west toward the highway back down to Kuwait City, reaching the pavement ten minutes later.

McGarvey powered up the sat phone and when it had acquired a bird, phoned Otto, who answered on the second ring. The man never slept. “You made it across the border.”

“We’re on our way down to Kuwait City. What’s the word on the ground in Washington?”

“All hell is breaking loose on just about every site on the Internet. We’re in lockdown mode here, and the entire country is in an uproar about the president’s lack of a strong response over the IED in Arlington.”

McGarvey’s hand tightened on the phone. “Any leads on who did it?”

“None,” Otto said. “But the Bureau is taking big heat from the White House because they haven’t bagged you yet. It’s the only thing Langdon can do, except wring his hands. His advisers have convinced him that you’re a traitor over the Pyongyang thing last year, and nothing any of us can say to him makes any difference. It’s spooky, Mac, honest injun.”

“Anything about the situation in Baghdad?”

“The Bureau had it eight or nine hours ago, which makes me think someone in Sandberger’s outfit has a friend in the building. They even knew about your Tony Watkins ID, and they’re waiting for you right now at Dulles.”

“I’ve already switched IDs to Hopkins.”

“How does Hadid think you look?”

“Good enough,” McGarvey said.

“I can book you into LaGuardia if you want to avoid a possible hassle,” Otto suggested.

“Make it Dulles. I think I can get past the Bureau guys, but I’m pretty sure that Admin will have someone posted out there as well, and I want a shot at spotting them.”

“Give me a minute or two and I’ll see what I can do,” Otto said, and he was gone.

Traffic was picking up now the closer they got to al Kuwait, but almost all of it was convoys headed north. It was a never-ending stream 24/7.

Hadid glanced over at him. “Was that Mr. Otto?”

“Yes.”

A big grin crossed Hadid’s face. “I met him last year in Washington. He is a strange and wondrous creature. Very brilliant. Very…” He searched for the word. “Exotic.”

“Eccentric,” McGarvey said.

Otto was back. “Can you make it to the airport by ten-thirty?”

McGarvey relayed the question to Hadid who nodded vigorously and sped up. “Just.”

“We’ll make it.”

“I’m booking you first class on United 981. Leaves at eleven forty-five your time, and touches down here at six forty-seven tomorrow morning.”

“Good enough,” McGarvey said. “They’ll be watching for Tony Watkins, and someone’s bound to sit up and take notice if he doesn’t show.”

“Get me a minute, I’m looking at the passenger manifest and pulling up passports. My darlings are looking for a reasonable match with Tony Watkins.” Rencke’s darlings were his custom-designed computer programs.

The lights of al Kuwait lit up the night sky and the tops of some of the taller skyscrapers were beginning to dot the horizon.

“Okay, I have a match, but I won’t put it into place until you guys are aboard and airborne. Real name’s Fred Irwin, works for State as a deputy assistant secretary for communications. When he gets off in Washington he’ll be pegged as Tony Watkins. Should tie everybody up long enough for you to get clear. But it won’t take long for the Bureau guys to realize who he really is, so you’ll have to hustle.”

“Have a rental car waiting for me,” McGarvey said.

“Too slow. I’ll pick you up myself.”

“Bring me a weapon, and a silencer.”

“Will do,” Otto said. “And you better get some sleep on the flight over. I think you’re gonna need it.”

Hadid pulled up at United’s departures area five minutes after ten-thirty. The long sweep of the driveway was busy with cars, taxis, and buses. A lot of flights heading west across the top of the African continent left around this time, for arrival in New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Miami first thing in the morning. The fourteen-hour nonstop flight was grueling for coach, but actually pleasant in business class and especially in first class.

McGarvey gathered his overnight bag. “Thanks for your help,” he said.

Hadid shrugged and smiled shyly. “It was for a good cause. My family’s cause. I am getting paid very well.”

McGarvey nodded. “I’m sorry about your wife and son.”

“But you don’t understand, Mr. Kirk, a Muslim’s grief is short-lived because it is tempered by joy. Go in peace.”

“Insh’ah Allah,” McGarvey replied.