The Cabal

SIXTY-TWO

Louise was shaking and subdued when they got back to the brownstone and Otto gave her a hug, and then held her until her shivers subsided. “You did good,” he told her.

“I’m sorry I put you through something like that,” McGarvey told her.

They were standing in the stair hall, and Louise looked at him. “Pete will be okay, won’t she?”

“She lost a bit of blood, but she’ll be fine by morning. It was nothing serious.”

Louise shook her head and then looked from McGarvey to her husband. “You two have been doing this for a lot of years.”

Otto just shrugged.

She shook her head again. “I never imagined what it was like for real, until tonight,” she said.

“Are you okay?” Otto asked.

“I just need to clean up,” she said, and she went upstairs.

“It was Kangas and Mustapha, the guys from Baghdad and early this morning in the park,” McGarvey said. “They’re both down, and so is Remington and his driver.”

“Metro D.C. cops are all over it, and so is the Bureau,” Otto said. He was excited. “But you got Remington’s flash drive from Pete?”

She had handed it to him before she passed out. McGarvey gave it to Otto and they went upstairs to his computers, where Otto plugged it into one of the machines and brought up the drive. It was encrypted as Remington had said it would be, but Otto brought up one of the decryption programs he’d devised for the CIA and National Security Agency about nine months ago and set it to work on the drive. The sensitive program had never been meant to leave either agency, but Otto backed up everything he did. Always.

“This could take awhile,” Otto said.

“How long?” McGarvey asked. “With Sandberger and Remington both down, Admin has to be hurting, and Foster and his crowd will be getting nervous about now. I want to finish this tonight.”

“Could be a matter of minutes or days. I don’t know how good his algorithms are.”

“Better than your stuff?”

Otto grinned shyly. “There’s always a first, ya know.”

McGarvey glanced at the monitor. Line after line of figures marched down the screen, the pace accelerating. “I need to take a shower and change out of these clothes. I got Pete’s blood on me putting her in the car.”

Otto’s eyes were wide. “What you told Louise is true, right? She’s gonna be okay?”

“Unless she has broken bones, or the bullet in her hip hit a major artery, she should be up and around by morning. Franklin’s a good doc.”

“The best,” Otto said, and he turned back to his computers.

McGarvey went to the room they’d set up for him, took a shower, changed into jeans, another dark pullover, and dark boat shoes. He field stripped his Wilson, cleaned it with the kit from his bag, reloaded the one magazine he’d used, and holstered the pistol at the small of his back.

All of that had taken less than fifteen minutes, and when he got back to the computer room, Otto was hopping from foot to foot, grinning ear to ear. “Am I good, or am I good? You tell me, kemo sabe.”

“You cracked it?” McGarvey asked.

“Bingo,” Otto said, and he suddenly became serious. “And you’re not going to believe this shit. Foster has everybody involved, and I mean everybody.”

“Someone else in the Company other than McCann?”

“David Whittaker, our acting DCI,” Otto said. “How about them apples?”

“It had to have been someone near the top,” McGarvey said, but still he was amazed and a little bit saddened. He’d worked with Whittaker for a number of years when the man was the assistant deputy director of operations, under McGarvey, and the head of operations when McGarvey had briefly run the Agency. When Adkins had taken over the top job Whittaker had become the number two man.

“Can you hack into David’s computer?”

“The one connected to the mainframe, but not his laptop unless he’s online.”

“Keep an eye out for it,” McGarvey said. “Who else is on the flash drive?”

“How about Dennis Tressel and Air Force general Albert Burnside and Dominick Stanford and Charles Meyer, and about thirty-five others? All men, and except for Whittaker, the number two or three at their respective agencies.”

“I don’t know these people.”

“Tressel is the assistant to Frank Shapiro, the president’s adviser on national security affairs; Burnside is the chief political adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Dominick Stanford is the assistant to the State Department’s deputy under secretary for economic affairs; and Meyer is one of the chief policy advisers to Senator Walter Stevens.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Nobody knows who they are. And that’s the entire point. All of them are under the radar, and yet they’re the ones who really run the show. They’re the guys who feed policy to their bosses, the ones who actually steer their agencies.”

“To do what?” McGarvey asked. “It can’t be anything like what you found on the disk that Givens supposedly gave to Todd.”

“The names are on the drive along with the financials — who was getting paid and how much, but not for what operation. That’s something Remington apparently hadn’t known.”

“Did McCann’s name show up?”

“Yeah. The Friday Club passed him eleven million dollars over a two-year period, which matches the Mexico City and Pyongyang operations.”

“But not the reasons?”

Otto shook his head. “Nor Foster’s ultimate aim.”

“There has to be more than that, goddamnit,” McGarvey said, struggling with his anger. “How about other payouts? Can we match who the money went to and then work from there to see what happened?”

“I’m on it,” Otto said. “But simply matching McCann to the money he got from the club wouldn’t have pointed toward either Mexico City or Pyongyang. We got those leads from Turov’s computer that you liberated in Tokyo.”

McGarvey turned away for a moment. “Nothing else on the drive?”

“No. Means Remington didn’t know what Foster was really aiming at, and Sandberger probably didn’t either.”

“But Admin was on the payroll.”

“Right.”

McGarvey turned back. “To do what?” he asked. “What did Foster hire Admin to do?”

“It’s not on the flash drive.”

“My name didn’t show up?”

“That’s one of the first things I looked for,” Otto said. “If we could have connected Foster with orders to have you assassinated it would have been something solid to use against him. As it stands now he can claim he was a lobbyist just doing his job. A lot of the guys in the club would take a fall, there’d be a lot of dirt stirred up, and there would be a congressional investigation, the attorney general would probably get into it, but in the end we’d be no nearer to learning what he’s really been up to than we are right now.”

“If Remington knew what was going on he would have put it on his flash drive. He was buying himself some insurance in case he got himself into a corner. But Sandberger knew.”

“It would have to be something big for the man to risk getting shot to death.”

“He thought I was going to take him back to the States, and let the Bureau or the CIA or somebody interrogate him. He knew that once he got back here he’d be safe. Foster’s group would have protected him.”

“It’s big,” Otto said. “We already figured that out. Otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the risk to assassinate a newspaper reporter and a CIA officer, especially not your son-in-law.”

“They made a mistake,” McGarvey said.

“Yes, they did,” Otto agreed.

“And we’re going to capitalize on it. Tonight.”

SIXTY-THREE

Boberg passed through the town of Mount Vernon on the Potomac’s north shore a few minutes before ten in the evening. Traffic on the GW Memorial Parkway at this hour was practically nonexistent, and the moonless night was just as dark as his mood.

On the way down from Alexandria he’d tried twice to reach Remington without luck. And just across a creek that fed into the river, he pulled up short of the driveway to Foster’s estate and parked at the side of the highway, shutting off the lights and engine.

He was starting to get a seriously bad feeling that things were beginning to fall apart for Admin. The center could no longer hold with Sandberger down and especially not if Remington had taken a runner. Or if McGarvey had gotten to him.

He tried the phone one more time, and it was answered on the third ring by a man’s voice he didn’t recognize.

“Who’s calling?”

Boberg could hear something going on in the background, footsteps, other voices. Official-sounding voices. The cops, he realized, which meant McGarvey had been there.

He broke the connection and sat thinking. All of Admin’s phones, including everyone’s personal cell phone and the encrypted sat phones they used in the field, were untraceable, so he had no worry that his name would pop up on some computer screen. But with Remington out of the picture, if he were, the company had no future. No leadership. No contacts.

But the company was small, much smaller than most of the other contractor services, some of which had upwards of two thousand employes. Admin had eighty-eight on the payroll until Baghdad, and now probably four or possibly five or six less than that. And although the company no longer had the State Department Baghdad contract, it still had the Friday Club.

“Lean and mean, Cal,” Remington had preached when he offered him the job. “We can do things the bigger services can’t handle.”

“Mobility,” Boberg remembered saying.

“Spot on. First in, first to get the job done.”

In that respect nothing had changed except for the company’s leadership. And since he was senior now, the job of keeping Admin up and running had fallen on his shoulders. He let a small smile curl his lips. Lean and mean it was.

He wrote a note that he had car trouble and had gone for help, stuck it under the windshield wiper, and hefting the small shoulder-bag of extra ammuniton, a red-lensed flashlight, Steiner mil specs binoculars, and a few other things, headed through the woods up the hill parallel to the driveway and about ten yards away.

Before driving out he’d studied the sketch diagrams of the property’s security arrangements that Sandberger had entered in Admin’s files just after they’d signed on with Foster. What had surprised him was the relative lack of surveillance and warning systems. There were no razor wire — topped electric fences, no gate guards, no dogs patrolling the estate, just the long driveway with pressure pads that reacted when a vehicle drove over them, motion sensitive lights around the house and the helipad fifty yards to the east, and a few closed-circuit cameras.

Someone approaching on foot wouldn’t run into trouble until the last thirty yards across the clearing in which the house stood. And even then, darting from tree to tree, and keeping to the shadows of the Greek and Roman statues that dotted the lawn, it would be possible to get right up to the house without being spotted.

It was something that McGarvey was good at. Which was why Remington wanted someone out here just in case it happened.

“Why the hell haven’t we insisted on tighter security?” Boberg had asked a couple of months ago. “I mean, it’s our arses on the line if something goes down.”

“He doesn’t think something like that will ever happen,” Remington had told him.

“What, his connections, money, and reputation are going to protect him? Is that what he thinks?”

“That’s exactly what he thinks.”

“Christ,” Boberg had muttered, and here he was at the edge of the clearing, with a path up to the house through the shadows so easy that even an amateur second-story man would have no trouble.

As he settled down to wait to see what might happen, he studied the house, which was lit up as if a party was going on. But the driveway was empty, so if Foster were entertaining tonight, it was only himself and his staff, unless his guests’ cars were parked out of sight in the back.

In his early days as an SAS leftenant he and his surveillance unit of four men had been sent to the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan to be on the lookout for Osama bin Laden. They and other British surveillance teams had worked in conjunction with the CIA on the top-secret mission, with orders to take the al-Quaida leader down, no questions asked, and no need for permission to go hot. They had never spotted bin Laden in the three months they’d been in the field, but they had learned patience.

Surveillance was something Boberg neither liked nor disliked. It was nothing more than a simple job. And all jobs came to an end sooner or later.

Waiting, he began to assess his feelings about losing Sandberger and Remington, and he found that he didn’t care. Just like his attitude toward surveillance, he was totally indifferent. It was the main reason his wife of three years had left him. According to her he’d been the coldest most distant man she’d ever met. Not cruel, not mean; he’d not been a wife beater, he’d just never been there in spirit for her. No flowers, no presents, no caresses, yet he’d been there for her financially. A Rock of Gibraltar. But as she’d told him: “Who wants to love a bloody rock?”

And when she’d left him, he’d been nearly indifferent. He was what he was.

A noise came to him from somewhere to the northwest. Faint at first, on the slight breeze, but then louder, and he recognized it as an incoming helicopter. A light machine, definitely not military. He pushed away from the tree, all of his senses alert. He’d not expected this.

A minute later he picked out the navigation lights and strobe of the chopper as it descended toward the helipad, which suddenly lit up. A moment later the lights around the exterior of the house came on. Any approach on foot now was next to impossible.

It was a safe bet McGarvey wasn’t aboard, so it had to be Foster’s friend or friends coming out here in reaction to what had happened in Baghdad, or most likely what had probably happened to Remington within the past couple of hours.

Very possibly whoever was coming to see Foster could affect Admin’s future position. And like many men in Boberg’s profession, he’d set aside enough money in offshore accounts, plus an emergency traveling kit of a few thousand dollars in cash along with three extra passports and other IDs, so that if the need ever arose he could drop everything and disappear immediately.

The helicopter finally came into full view as it flared over the landing pad, and Boberg recognized it as an Italian-built AgustaWestland AW-139 VIP machine. The CIA had recently purchased three of them.

He pulled the binoculars from his bag, and when the chopper came to rest on the pad he trained them on the hatch as it opened.

A tall man wearing a dark Windbreaker and plain dark baseball cap got out, and hunching over moved away from the slowly rotating main blades.

A golf cart came from behind the house and headed to the helipad at the same moment the man turned so that Boberg could see his face. It was David Whittaker, the interim director of the CIA.

No real surprise there, except that McGarvey had seriously stirred the pot at the highest level, as he’d done before. And Boberg settled back to see how the evening turned out. At the very least it would be interesting, he thought.

SIXTY-FOUR

David Whittaker had been running on pure adrenaline ever since Admin’s shooter had taken Todd Van Buren and the Washington Post reporter down. He’d warned Foster that if McGarvey got involved, and he certainly would, the dynamics would change and there’d be no way to predict the outcome.

Foster’s bodyguard, Sergeant Schilling, had driven out to the helipad with a golf cart and brought Whittaker over to the house, where Foster waited drinking a cognac in the living room.

“Your visit is not totally unexpected this evening. Have you brought news? Good, I hope.”

“Not good,” Whittaker said. “And remember, I warned you that the situation could get out of hand.”

Foster shrugged. “Nothing that can’t be dealt with. Would you care for a drink?”

“I don’t believe I’ll be having anything to drink until this business is resolved and we can get back on schedule. McGarvey has been a thorn in our side ever since Mexico City.”

“We all agree, just as we all agree that he is to be dealt with, which is exactly what Administrative Solutions is doing for us at this moment.”

“Evidently you’ve not heard the latest.”

“Roland and some of his people were shot to death in Baghdad. Yes, I have. And the FBI has a warrant for McGarvey’s arrest. But Gordon assures me that he would not live to be taken in.”

“Remington was shot to death in front of his house, not two hours ago,” Whittaker said, and he was satisfied to see that he’d finally gotten to Foster, whose lips tightened. “McGarvey was almost certainly involved but it’s not entirely clear how it all played out.”

“Meaning what?” Foster asked.

“Remington may have been gunned down by two of his own people, who were in turn shot to death on the street. His bodyguard was found shot to death inside the house.”

Foster turned stiffly and poured another cognac. “Are you sure you won’t join me? It’s Black Pearl, brand new from Rémy Martin. Frightfully expensive, but definitely better than Rémy’s Louis XIII.”

“Goddamnit, Bob, you’re not listening to me,” Whittaker shouted. “This has the potential to ruin everything we’ve worked for.”

“Don’t raise your voice, David,” Foster warned. “Nothing will be ruined. We had Mexico City and Pyongyang, despite Mr. McGarvey’s interference. And our last step, the Taiwan initiative, will go as planned. China will take the fall. The United States will not be brought down by a nation of rice-eating peasants who are merely clever at flooding the market with cheap products.”

Whittaker had heard all of this many times before; it had been Foster’s mantra from the very beginning eight years ago when the Friday Club first came into prominence. The United States had only two enemies: the old Soviet Union, which lost the economic race because of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, and now China, which seemed to be winning. Something had to be done before being American became synonymous with being a second-class citizen. Spain, Portugal, Great Britain all had their empires, and now it was America’s rightful time in history.

We had the nuclear weapons, the missiles, the submarines, the aircraft carriers — more aircraft carriers in our fleet than every other nation combined. But even more than that, Foster argued, the U.S. had the industrial might, the resources, the facilities, and the most highly skilled workers in the world. It was something the Japanese hadn’t fully understood in 1941 when they attacked Pearl Harbor. The sleeping giant had indeed been awakened.

And it would happen again. Given the right conditions, the right push in the right direction, China would fall by the wayside as the last real enemy of the United States.

But after eight years, Whittaker wasn’t so sure that he believed in the message as strongly as he had at the beginning. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to help with the business of empire building. That tack had nearly embroiled the country in a global thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union, in part because of Kennedy’s stand over the Cuban missile business.

And now China had an even more potent weapon to use against us: money. Beijing didn’t need bombs and rockets because it practically owned us. Besides the growing trade deficit, we were nearly one trillion dollars in debt to China. That was more than four times the money we owed all the oil exporters in the world.

What China held were mostly Treasury securities, which they could call due or simply dump. Either way the U.S. economy would take the biggest hit it had ever taken — much bigger than the Great Depression — and it would literally bring us to our knees. Factory closings; bankruptcies, for which there would be no money available for help; unemployment lines, for which there were no jobs and no unemployment checks.

“Worst-case scenario,” Foster had pounded home his point. “Social Security and Medicare would fail. That cannot be allowed to happen. At all costs.”

All true, Whittaker agreed. Especially now when the U.S. was in the midst of the biggest bailout in history. Something had to be done.

“McGarvey could stop us,” he said, but Foster shook his head.

“One man, David.”

“Look what he’s done to us already.”

Sergeant Schilling came to the door. “Admin’s man has shown up, sir,” he said.

“Where is he at this moment?”

“Just within the woods about ten meters west of the driveway.”

“What is he doing?”

“Surveillance, I would imagine, sir. Waiting. I have his cell phone number, shall I make contact?”

“Yes, tell him we know he’s here,” Foster said. “It’s possible that Mr. McGarvey may show up tonight. Mr. Boberg can watch from outside, and you can monitor the situation from inside. Shouldn’t be too difficult to catch him in a cross fire.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I prepare your safe room?”

“Not necessary,” Foster said, and the sergeant left.

“A safe room wouldn’t do you any good, because if McGarvey somehow gets his hands on the proof of what we’ve been doing, even a shred of proof, all of us will take the fall.”

“But there’s no proof to be had, David. It simply doesn’t exist. We don’t have a manifesto, nothing has been written. All we have is an agreement among gentlemen that something needs to be done to save America. What fault can be found with that?”

“No manifesto, I agree,” Whittaker said. “But what if he actually manages to get to you, and holds a pistol to your head, will you take a bullet to defend your idealism?”

“It won’t come to that.”

“It’s why I flew down here tonight. I have a CIA jet standing by at Andrews to fly you to a safe house on La Croix in the U.S. Virgins. And you’ll have plenty of people down there to take care of you until McGarvey is resolved.”

Foster looked amused. “While I’m scurrying off to the tropics, where will you be?”

“At home tonight, and in my office first thing in the morning as usual. He has no reason to suspect that I’m involved in any of this. We’ll let the FBI and the U.S. Marshal Service take care of him.”

Foster sipped his cognac. “Are you carrying a pistol tonight?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good. Then stay with me. If McGarvey does get this far, you can shoot him dead. You’ll be a national hero. I’ll see to it, personally.”

Whittaker shook his head. “I’m not getting into a shooting match with that man. You have no idea what he’s capable of doing.”

But Foster merely smiled. “You have no choice, David. Call your helicopter pilot and tell him to leave.”

“I’ll tell him to stand by.”

SIXTY-FIVE

McGarvey and Louise stood looking over Otto’s shoulder as he hacked into the CIA’s feed from the latest generation of Keyhole surveillance satellite systems, this one the KH-15, designated Romulus, with a full range of optical abilities from infrared to near ultraviolet with a resolution under good conditions of less than 0.04 meters, in the range of less than one hundredth of an inch, about the thickness of a piece of paper.

“I have the bird, receive only,” he said.

“Right,” Louise said, and she sat down at another keyboard and in a few keystrokes brought up the logo for the National Reconnaissance Office. As chief of the NRO’s imagery analysis section she had her own set of passwords that not only allowed her to tap into the product any surveillance satellite in orbit was producing, she could also, supposedly if she had with proper orders, reposition any satellite and change its values and modes.

She brought up the North American KH-15 that Otto had captured and then looked up at McGarvey.

“Your call, Louise,” he told her. “Could mean your job, maybe even jail time.”

“But we need this, right? To rescue the fair maiden and save the planet?”

McGarvey had to smile. “It’d help.”

“What the hell,” she said, and she entered a series of passwords, which brought her past a number of security messages against unauthorized use, each warning of harsh penalties including fines and imprisonment.

The KH-15 technical page logo came up followed by a split screen, one half showing what the bird was looking at and the other a control panel. At present the satellite was looking at an inbound ship off the U.S. East Coast about two hundred miles southeast of New York City.

“Just need to borrow you for a minute or two,” Louise muttered. She touched the command and control tab on the screen, and a drop-down box appeared asking for a password, which she entered.

“Okay, you’re in,” Otto said.

“And we’re near enough so I don’t have to reposition, just change the angle.”

On the current setting the satellite was showing a swatch of Earth less than five hundred meters on a side. She increased the view to fifty kilometers then touched another tab that lit up a small icon in the middle of the map, which she dragged with her finger toward the northwest, picking up the coast just south of Atlantic City, lit up like a sparkling diamond in a sea of jewels. Farther southwest she picked up the upper Chesapeake, then straight across the Maryland peninsula to the Potomac.

“Alexandria,” Otto said.

Louise reduced the area to a five-kilometer square and now they could pick out lights on I-495 and other highways as she followed the river south. At the town of Fort Hunt she reduced the area to one kilometer and followed the GW Memorial Parkway west, about a mile.

“That’s his place,” Otto said.

They were looking at Foster’s house all lit up in the middle of a lot of darkness. Louise started to move the icon away from the road, but McGarvey stopped her.

“Stay on the driveway and tighten up.”

She brought the area down to one hundred meters, then fifty then forty. A car was parked on the side of the road just to the west of the driveway.

“Get the tag number, I’ll run it,” Otto said.

Louise tightened up the image so that only the front end of the car was showing. She adjusted the lo lux levels, adjusted the focus, and the license plate number became clear.

“Virginia,” Louise said, and she read off the numbers for her husband.

“Half a mo,” Otto said.

“Anybody in the car or nearby?” McGarvey asked.

Louise pulled the image back a little so they were looking at the entire car, and adjusted the light values again. “No,” she said. She touched another tab and the hood of the car came up a soft red. “Hasn’t been there long. Engine’s still warm.”

“Calvin Boberg,” Otto said. “And take a wild-ass guess who he works for.”

“Administrative Solutions,” McGarvey said.

Louise made another adjustment to the satellite’s infrared capabilities. “Here we go,” she said excitedly. “See the faint red smudges leading way from the car and into the woods.”

“Footprints?” McGarvey asked.

“Heat signatures,” Louise said, absently, and she moved the icon to follow the trail, finally coming to the edge of the woods just before the clearing up to the house, and Boberg’s heat output stood out brightly against the cooler trees and ground.

“Waiting for you?” Otto asked.

“Be my guess,” McGarvey said. “Pan out wider.”

Louise did, and started the icon toward the house, but something at the edge of the screen caught her eye. “Hold on,” she said, and she moved to the right, to the helicopter pad.

“That’s one of our choppers,” Otto said.

“Whittaker?”

“Yeah. But what’s he doing? He’s gotta know you’re on the way.”

McGarvey stared at the machine on the pad for a moment. Its rotors were not moving. “Tighten up, I want to see if the pilot is still aboard.”

She did; the pilot was in the left seat and the door was open. He was smoking a cigarette.

“He’s waiting for Whittaker to come back,” Louise said.

“Check the status of our VIP jets at Andrews,” McGarvey said.

“I’m on it,” Otto said. “But if he runs, especially with you still on the loose, it’ll look damned suspicious.”

“Not him,” McGarvey said. “He’s come to convince Foster to get out of town.”

“St. Croix,” Otto said after a few seconds. “One of our Gulfstreams manned and standing by in the ready hangar. Two passengers on the manifest. Robert Foster and David Whittaker.”

“Take a look at the house.”

Louise panned left, brought the area out to forty meters and toned down the light input because of the outside floods. “Looks like they’re expecting company.”

“They have Admin’s guy out front, and Schilling inside.” He said, “Foster’s probably not a shooter, but David is.”

“He started out as a field officer. Expert marksman on the pistol range,” McGarvey said. He remembered telling his staff, when Whittaker was promoted to deputy director of operations, that David was one of the few men in that position to really know what it was like to pull out a pistol and actually fire it with some expectation of hitting the target. “I’m going out there.”

“I have to switch the bird back out to the ship,” Louise said, “in case some supervisor notices it’s off target.”

“Can you get back to Foster’s from time to time?”

“Every five minutes or so,” Louise said.

“Good enough, but keep in touch if anything changes.”

“I’ll go with you—” Louise said, but McGarvey cut her off.

“I need you here to keep tabs on the house and grounds.”

A nightlight plugged into a socket across the room suddenly started to blink. “Someone’s at the door,” Otto said and he doused the room lights, and pulled up the camera concealed in the eaves.

Pete looked up, grinned at the camera and waved.

“She was wounded,” Louise said.

“That she was,” McGarvey said, putting his gun back in its holster. “Let her in.”

Otto buzzed the lock. “We’re upstairs,” he told her on the intercom. He flipped on the room lights.

Pete came up, in fresh jeans and a dark pullover and dark jacket, CIA stenciled on the back. She’d cleaned up and brushed her hair, and she was still grinning.

“How did you get past Franklin?” McGarvey demanded.

“I have a gun and he didn’t,” Pete said. “No bone chips, no major arteries. Just a heavy graze. He sewed me up and pumped a pint of O-positive into me, nothing but a local anesthetic and a butterfly bandage.”

“What are you doing here?” McGarvey demanded.

“I expect that you’re going after whoever’s name came up on Remington’s flash drive. Probably Foster, and I’m coming with you.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Give me one good reason.”

“You’re wounded.”

“It stings, nothing more.”

“No,” McGarvey said.

“Sorry, Mr. Director, but if you rightly remember you are my prisoner.”

Louise shook her head. “You’re nuts, do you know that? All of you are certifiable.”

SIXTY-SIX

They took Louise’s Toyota SUV, Pete behind the wheel after assuring McGarvey three times that she was okay to drive. “Like I said, Mac, it just stings a little, and I’ll have a major bruise on my ass by morning. But Franklin’s a good doc.”

“He’s patched me up more than once,” McGarvey said, his thoughts back to Katy and Liz and Todd. He’d never be able to think of All Saints without seeing the look of devastation on his daughter’s face when he and Katy had shown up the morning after Todd had been shot to death. It was an image that, along with the one of the limo, bearing Katy and Liz exploding, would stay with him for the rest of his life.

They took the Key Bridge across the river and headed east, where they picked up U.S. 1 that led south, eventually to Fort Hill Road and the town of Fort Hunt.

“Where do you think this is heading?” Pete asked.

“I’m not sure, but it started in Mexico City a little over a year ago, and then Pyongyang was a part of it somehow,” McGarvey told her. He briefly went over his actions in both operations. “The only connection other than the Friday Club is China.”

“Okay, so whatever they’re up to involves the Chinese. And they’re not done, which is why you have to be eliminated at all costs. So it’s big. But what?”

“That’s what I want to ask him and Whittaker tonight.”

Pete shot him a double take. “The DCI?”

“His name was on Remington’s flash drive,” McGarvey said and he gave her some of the other names.

“Jesus,” she said softly. “You’re on the hit list of a bunch of important people.”

“Yeah. And by tagging along with me tonight you just painted a big target on your back.”

“Then we’d best do it right,” she said.

“I’m back to Foster’s house,” Louise said in McGarvey’s ear. “Nothing’s changed.”

“How about the chopper pilot?”

She came back a few seconds later. “He’s a chain smoker.”

“Stick with it.”

“Will do.”

McGarvey telephoned Dick Adkins’s home phone. The former DCI answered after three rings. “Yes.”

“Do you still have your encrypted phone?”

It took a moment for him to reply, and when he did he sounded cautious. “Yes.”

“Turn it on, I’ll call you in five minutes.”

Adkins broke the connection.

“Who did you just call?” Pete asked.

“Adkins.”

Pete shook her head. “All this should be taking my breath away, but I read most of your jacket and I was warned.” She concentrated on her driving for a bit. “Whittaker’s on the list, but there’s no chance of him being in his office tonight, and Dick’s passes might still be valid.”

“You’d make a good field agent,” McGarvey said, but Pete shook her head.

“Louise was right. You guys are nuts. It’s just that I’m not quite that crazy.”

McGarvey called Adkins at the encrypted number.

“I didn’t expect you to call me.”

“You stuck out your neck for me with the president, so I figured I owed you one,” McGarvey said.

“Don’t do me any favors,” Adkins replied. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where you are, or what part you played in a shooting this evening on embassy row. D.C. Metro is apparently having a fit.”

“I took out one of the shooters who killed Remington, and right now I’m headed to Robert Foster’s estate down around Mount Vernon. I need your help.”

“I thought you might say something like that,” Adkins said. “But first do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

“I found a bridge between Mexico City and Pyongyang.”

“Yeah, China.”

“Foster’s Friday Club financed both operations through Howard McCann.”

“That’s too far-fetched,” Adkins objected.

“Something else is in the works, and whatever it is will be big,” McGarvey said.

“We’ve already gone over this, Mac. All of it was on the disk we found in Todd’s car. Utter nonsense.”

“It was a fake. But I have a flash drive we got from Remington with a list of card-carrying members of the Friday Club. McCann had help inside the Company. Someone who had complete access to my files, someone who could track my movements.”

Adkins was very quiet.

“David’s a member,” McGarvey said. “From the looks of it he was in from the beginning. Eight years ago.”

Adkins was silent for a long time, and when he came back was subdued. “Who else?”

“Foster’s got guys just about everywhere, DoD, State, the Bureau, and even the White House. All of them were in on Mexico City and Pyongyang.”

“Maybe Todd’s disk wasn’t so far-fetched after all if what you’re telling me is true,” Adkins said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do you still have your building passes?”

“I haven’t turned them in, if that’s what you mean. But I suspect they’ve all been deactivated by now. David would have been a fool not to.”

“He’s been distracted lately.”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to go out there tonight, right now. If you get in talk to the guys on the Watch and find out if they’re seeing anything developing in China, or Hong Kong, maybe Taiwan or the Strait. Chinese naval maneuvers, missile readiness drills. Anything involving Beijing, and especially their intelligence services, military and civilian.”

“Where are you going with this, Mac?”

“Right now I’m just fishing. But Foster has people inside the Pentagon. See if we’re planning anything in the region. Something that only the Watch might have been warned about.”

“Right,” Adkins said. “I’ll try to find out where David is. If he’s off campus I’ll try to get into his office. Maybe he hasn’t changed his passwords.” Adkins chuckled. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, or maybe someone will send for security and they’ll shoot me.”

“David’s at Foster’s right now,” McGarvey said. “He showed up a half hour ago in a Company helicopter, and he’s got one of your Gulfstreams standing by at Andrews to take them down to St. Croix.”

“It’s going to happen tonight?”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey said. “But I have a feeling that I’ve forced their hand and ready or not they’re going to launch.”

“Launch what?”

“I’m going to ask Foster and David just that.”

“Seriously, watch your back,” Adkins warned. “The Bureau and the U.S. Marshals are gunning for you. And I mean that literally. Comes from Justice through the White House. Langdon has developed a personal interest in you, and he wants you stopped no matter how they do it. The body count is just way too high.”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said. “Todd, Katy, and Liz. Way too high.”

“I’m sorry, Mac.”

“If you get into Whittaker’s office forget his main computer, but if his laptop is there, and you can get online, send a message to Otto, and just walk away, but leave the computer on.” McGarvey gave him Otto’s untraceable e-mail address.

“What if his laptop is password protected, which I’m sure it will be?”

“Call Otto,” McGarvey said. And he gave the phone number.

“I’ll try,” Adkins said.

SIXTY-SEVEN

Two cars had passed in the last hour. Boberg had seen the flash of the headlights through the woods below, and watched as they moved away. The night was still, except for the cry of a distant night bird, and at regular intervals he spotted the glow of a cigarette from inside the parked helicopter. Typical government service, he thought. Just like the military: hurry up and wait.

He looked over his shoulder as another set of headlights approached, these from the east, but instead of passing, the lights slowed and suddenly went out. It had to be McGarvey. According to Foster’s sergeant, no one else was expected out here tonight.

Taking care to make absolutely no noise, Boberg moved to a position from where he was still concealed and yet had a decent view of the driveway, the open field up to the house, and the edge of the woods leading around to the helicopter on the pad.

He called the house and Sergeant Schilling answered on the first ring. “What is it?”

“Someone pulled up and parked just below on the highway. It’s probably McGarvey.”

“Do you have decent sight lines on the possible approaches?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Take him out if you have a chance.”

Boberg was about to say that was the idea, but the sergeant had already rung off. “Prick,” he said under his breath.

It would be tough to keep Admin together with both Sandberger and Remington gone. There would be no problem organizationally, it had been his job from the beginning to attend to the day-to-day details of the firm. Nor was Admin so large that it couldn’t be handled by one man and a dedicated office staff. The trouble would come from the field commanders who might not be willing to put their loyalty on the line for a new headman. It was possible that Admin would fall apart because several of the field guys might feel that they were more qualified to run the company, and an internal fight might take place.

If that were the case, Boberg decided, he would take what money he could grab and bail out. His loyalty was to himself, as it always had been and always would be.

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, at the edge of the woods at least one hundred yards to the east. He grabbed his binoculars and trained them on the field, picking up a pair of figures coming up behind the helicopter. Unless the pilot leaned out of the cockpit to look toward his six he wouldn’t have a clue someone was back there.

One of them was much larger than the other, and he got the impression that the shorter, slighter of the two might be a woman, though he couldn’t be sure who either of them were.

For a moment he debated calling the house, but decided against it until he had his shot. Keeping out of sight just within the woods he hurried over to the driveway and across and into the woods on the other side.

If the chopper pilot could keep them engaged for just a few minutes, Boberg figured he could come up behind them and take the two easy shots. If one of them were McGarvey, and he manged to take the guy down, taking over Admin would be a pice of cake, because he would have Foster’s blessing.

SIXTY-EIGHT

The twin-engine helicopter was modern and sleek. The helipad lights had been switched off but the strong floods spilling across the lawn from the house reflected off the bright paintwork.

From twenty feet away they could smell cigarette smoke, and as they got closer McGarvey could see that the instrument panel lights were switched off. It would take several minutes for the machine to be started and readied for takeoff, which was the break he’d hoped for. If Boberg had spotted them they would need a diversion to get over to the house.

“I think he’s coming through the woods behind us,” Pete whispered.

“What’s Boberg doing?” McGarvey spoke softly.

“Two seconds,” Louise’s voice came back. “I’m moving from the ship.”

“He won’t try a shot now for fear of hitting the helicopter,” McGarvey told Pete.

Louise was back. “Okay, if that’s you and Pete just behind the chopper, he’s about twenty yards almost directly behind you in the woods.”

“Go back to the ship,” McGarvey said. “He’s twenty yards behind us,” he told Pete.

He pulled out his pistol. Holding it in his left hand out of sight at his side, he moved forward, his right hand trailing on the fuselage.

The pilot looked up, startled, and then he reared back, his eyes wide. “Son of a bitch, you scared the shit out of me, Mr. Director.” His plastic name tag was readable in the bright lights from the house.

“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but what the hell are you doing out here, Cardillo?”

The pilot shook his head. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble, Mr. McGarvey, but as far as I was told just about every LE officer in the area is looking for you.”

“That’s what you were supposed to be told. It’s a cover. Now what the hell are you doing out here?”

The pilot was skeptical. “I flew Mr. Whittaker down from the Campus.”

McGarvey turned to Pete. “Another comms screwup,” he said, and she nodded.

“You have to get out of here right now,” she told the pilot.

“What about Mr. Whittaker?”

“We’ll have to take care of him,” McGarvey said. “But you guys stumbled into the middle of a Bureau-Company ops we’re running on one of Robert Foster’s people. I’m surprised that Dave didn’t get the word. Damned sloppy, because this whole thing was his call from the beginning.”

“I’d better call him,” Cardillo said, reaching for a phone.

“And warn the house?” McGarvey demanded. “Hell no, I just want you out of here as quickly as you can get this thing running.”

The pilot was confused. “That’s going to take a few minutes.”

McGarvey motioned him to get on with it. “Our people are moving in right now, and we don’t have time to screw around.” He held out his hand. “I’ll take the cell phone.”

The pilot hesitated for a moment, still extremely skeptical, but he handed over the phone.

“Go,” McGarvey said.

The pilot began flipping switches and the helicopter’s lights began coming on, first on the control panel and then the nav lights on the fuselage and tail section.

“Stand clear,” he shouted, and he closed the door and the engines began to spool up.

McGarvey and Pete hurried around to the front of the chopper, ducking low as the main rotor began turning. “Louise, we’re going to try for the house, and I want to keep the chopper between us and Boberg. Give me bearing.”

“Stand by,” Louise said.

The main rotor was building up speed, and McGarvey had to cup a hand over his earpiece.

“You’re good to go on a straight line from the nose of the chopper to the east side of the house,” Louise’s voice was faint over the noise. “Is the chopper getting set to take off?”

“Any minute.”

“Then get the hell out of there right now.”

McGarvey glanced over his shoulder. The pilot was looking at them, and he was shaking his head. He made a slashing gesture at his throat and the engines began to spool down. McGarvey turned and pointed his pistol at the man’s face.

For a second nothing happened, but then the engines roared back to life and the main blades began to spin up.

“I think he got the message,” Pete shouted.

“Stay low and move fast,” McGarvey told her. “Boberg’s right behind us.”

He turned and sprinted toward the house, Pete right behind him.

SIXTY-NINE

Adkins had never wanted to be a spy, but he was a damned good administrator because he knew how to manage people while at the same time balancing the complex relationships between the Company, the White House, the director of National Intelligence, and, in some ways most important, Congress.

Pulling up at the CIA’s main gate was the first test of how good a spy he actually was, because if he were stopped here the mission would be a bust, and McGarvey, a man for whom he had an immense amount of respect, would most likely end up dead or in jail.

One of the guards came out of the building and over to Adkins’s car. “Good evening, Mr. Director, back again so soon?” He could have been a Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker; he had the size and the look.

“I have a couple of things to take care of. Couldn’t wait.”

The guard hesitated, but then nodded. “I’ll have to make note of your entry, sir.”

“Of course,” Adkins said, and the guard stepped back.

Driving up toward the OHB, Adkins kept glancing in his rearview mirror expecting to see flashing lights, but nobody was behind him and the guard had gone back inside the reception building.

It was nothing short of amazing that Whittaker hadn’t yanked his credentials. It was a stupid lapse of security procedures that even the gate guard had recognized.

The parking area in the front of the building was practically deserted, and so was the VIP parking garage where his entry pass worked, as it did in the elevator. He had debated arming himself, but decided against it, because there was no way he was going to get into a shoot-out with security. If he was busted he could make the argument that his clearances were still intact, and he’d merely come back one last time out of simple nostalgia. No one would believe him, but they wouldn’t be able to prove anything different.

Unless he was caught in Whittaker’s office.

The seventh-floor corridor was deserted, all the doors closed, unlike when he had been the DCI, and McGarvey before him. Under Whittaker, morale at the Company had already dropped, and the word was that everybody was busier watching their own backs than actually doing any real or creative work.

Halfway down the corridor he stopped at the DCI’s door, swiped his pass, and entered the old four-digit code he’d used before the president had fired him. The lock clicked softly and he was in. Whittaker was a fool. And if what McGarvey had told him was true, David was also so arrogant that he’d felt no need to take ordinary precautions.

He passed through the outer office, the only illumination from the tiny green indicator on the emergency light in one corner up near the ceiling, and into the DCI’s office. The blinds were open and before Adkins turned on the desk lamp he closed them against the faint possibility that someone outside might know that Whittaker was not in the building and wonder why a light had just come on in his office.

The main computer on the desk was in standby mode, but Whittaker’s Toshiba laptop on the credenza was closed. Adkins sat down, opened the laptop, and powered it up. As he’d suspected it was password protected. Whittaker wasn’t a complete idiot.

Using his cell phone he called the number McGarvey had given him, and Otto answered after the second ring.

“Oh, wow, I know where David is right now, so this has gotta be Dick Adkins calling from the DCI’s office.”

The man was a genius, but he was spooky. “Mac told me to call if I ran into trouble getting into David’s laptop.”

“Did it boot up?”

“No. All that’s on the screen are two boxes: User ID and password.”

“It’s a Toshiba, right?”

“Yes.”

“Look on the bottom and give me all the numbers you see.”

Adkins turned the laptop over. “There’s a bunch of them.”

“Find the Toshiba pin number. It’ll be printed right under a bar code.”

“Got it,” Adkins said and he read it.

Otto laughed. “I built that machine. Okay now find any label that says service.”

“There’s only one. Two sets of numbers.”

Otto laughed even harder. “Dumb,” he said, and he read off both set of numbers.

“That’s it,” Adkins said.

“My service numbers. He hasn’t changed a thing.”

“Mac said he’s been distracted.”

“He’s going to get even more distracted any minute now,” Otto said. “User ID, whittakercia. Password: tk%//7834ps.”

Adkins entered both, and the computer booted up. “Okay, it worked.”

“Of course,” Otto said. “If Mac gave you this number he must have given you my e-mail address. Get online, type in my address, and hit send, and then get out of there. But leave the machine turned on.”

“First thing in the morning somebody — his secretary at least — will come in here and find out someone hacked his computer.”

“It’ll be all over by then, Mr. Director, and you’ll have a bunch of work to do, ’cause the president is going to reinstate you. Honest injun.”

“Jesus,” Adkins muttered, but he did as Otto had asked.

“Good work. I’m in. Now beat feet.”

By the time Adkins shut off the desk lamp and opened the curtains every file on Whittaker’s laptop was being downloaded at lightning speed.

He let himself out into the still-deserted corridor, and hesitated for just a second before he headed down the hall to the Watch, which was housed in a long room, one end of it glassed in for added security. Manned 24/7 by a watch commander and five people, including a National Geospatial Analyst, anything that was happening anywhere in the world that had any effect or even the possibility of an effect on U.S. interests was monitored here. With direct links to the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and just about every other surveillance system, the people who worked here considered themselves to be information junkies. They had an almost compulsive need to know what was happening on a real-time basis everywhere.

And like air traffic controllers who never saw the light of day during their long shifts, and who had the indoor palor and thousand-yard stare of people who’d worked too long and too hard at something that was nearly impossible to comprehend, analysts in the Watch always looked as if they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and loving it.

Adkins swiped his pass on the reader, entered his code, and the lock clicked softly. Everyone looked up from what they were doing, and all the wide-screen monitors on the walls above each position went blank, and a red light on the ceiling began flashing.

Ron Loring, the watch commander had been leaning against his desk, his jacket off, his tie loose, and he immediately came over before Adkins could take more than two steps into the room. “What are you doing here, Mr. Director,” he said softly, but urgently. “You have to leave, immediately.”

“McGarvey sent me to talk to you. It’s important.”

Loring shook his head and stepped back. “I’ve got to call security. You know the drill, sir.”

“Something big is about to go down. Maybe even tonight. And it has something to do with the Chinese.”

A flicker of interest crossed Loring’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know for sure, but Mac has made a connection between what happened last year in Mexico City, and a few months ago in Pyongyang, with China. And with the Friday Club here in Washington.”

Loring turned away for a second. All his analysts were looking at him and Adkins. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Director. But I’ll give you a head start before I call security.”

“You know damned well what I’m talking about. Goddamnit, I can see it all over your face. What is it? What’s happening over there?”

Again Loring shook his head, trying to come to a decision. “You never heard this from me. But we’re getting set to send a courier over to the White House.”

“Why?”

“China has been warming up its short-range missiles since about sixteen hundred zulu.” Loring looked up at one of the wall clocks. “Almost two hours ago. Then, at about seventeen thirty, Taiwan started doing the same thing with their missiles, and placed their armed forces at Defcon two.”

“They’re seriously expecting that China is going to attack them?”

“It’s a possibility. We’re starting to get inputs from the Pentagon and State and we’re putting the package together for the president.”

“What’s Dave Whittaker’s input?”

“We haven’t reached him yet. Apparently he’s not at home, and his cell doesn’t pick up.”

“Christ.”

“Now get the hell out of here, please,” Loring said. “We need to get back to work.”

“Right,” Adkins said, and he felt a little sick to his stomach.

“Tell Mac good luck,” Loring said.

“Security wants to know what’s going on up here,” one of the analysts called out across the room.

“Use the VIP elevator, I’ll stall them for as long as I can,” Loring told Adkins.

SEVENTY

Sergant Schilling came to the living room door at the same moment Whittaker was trying to reach his pilot by cell phone. It had to have been McGarvey’s doing, sending the helicopter away. But Cardillo was one of them, ferrying members of the Friday Club with no questions asked.

“The two cameras in front went down, and the lights are going out one at a time,” Schilling said.

“Something wrong with the power?” Foster asked.

Cardillo’s cell phone rang.

“I believe Mr. McGarvey shot out the cameras and is doing the same with the lights.”

“He’s right outside the house, then.”

“Yes, sir. But the only way in is through the front door, which I’ll cover.”

Cardillo’s cell phone rang a second time.

“Let Boberg know what’s going on.”

Cardillo’s phone was answered on the third ring. “Yes.”

“Why the hell did you leave?” Whittaker shouted, but all of a sudden he realized that he wasn’t hearing the helicopter’s cabin noises.

“Because I didn’t want you to get away before I had a chance to talk to you and Foster,” McGarvey said.

Whittaker was shaken, but not surprised. “The FBI is on its way out here in force,” he said. Foster and Schilling were staring at him.

“Not yet, David,” McGarvey said after a slight delay. “We’re monitoring calls from the house, including your cell phone.”

Whittaker held his hand over the cell phone microphone. “It’s McGarvey on my pilot’s cell phone. Can he get inside the house?”

“Only with explosives,” Schilling said.

“Unless you brought some Semtex you’re not getting in here.”

“I saw the bars on the window,” McGarvey said. “Makes you wonder what Foster is trying to protect. But I don’t need to blow my way inside, because you and Foster are going to let me in.”

“The hell you say.”

“We deciphered a flash drive that Remington gave to us before he was gunned down by his own people. It’s a Friday Club membership list. Impressive.”

“You’ve got nothing, you son of a bitch. You’re a traitor to your country.”

“We have the information on your laptop. Stupid to leave it in your office for just about anyone to grab. Otto told me that he built the machine, and he knew your user ID and password. Whittakercia? Come on, David.”

Schilling had stepped out into the stair hall, and he came back. “Boberg is on the way. Keep McGarvey talking.”

“All you have are the names of a number of American patriots who love their country enough to form a club, just like Kiwanis or Rotary.”

“Except Rotary wasn’t involved in Mexico last year or in Pyongyang a few months ago. Rotary hasn’t involved the Chinese in some kind of plot.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Whittaker practically shouted, but he was rocked to the core. He knew what McGarvey was capable of. He had tried to warn Foster and the others, but none of them would listen, and now it was too late, unless McGarvey could be killed.

“There never was any polonium in Mexico, and none ever came across the border in Arizona. And we know that the shooters who took out the Chinese general in Pyongyang were South Koreans working for a Russian expediter in Tokyo who’d been hired by Howard McCann. And Howard was getting money from your club of patriots.”

Schilling switched off the living room lights and those in the stair hall. He was armed with a Franchi SPAS-12 automatic shotgun capable of firing four rounds per second. It was a devastating weapon at close range. “Stay in this room,” he said, and he disappeared into the darkness in the stair hall.

“Even if what you’re telling me was only partially true, it still proves nothing. How do we know this flash drive you mentioned was Remington’s?”

“I think Otto could make a case for it,” McGarvey said. “The only thing we haven’t figured out yet is what you people are really up to. Whatever it is involves the Chinese, of course. But to what purpose?”

Whittaker said nothing.

“So here’s what we’re going to do. If Mr. Boberg manages to kill me in the next few minutes, you will have won. But if I survive, I’m coming inside and you and I and Foster will have our little chat. Fair enough?”

Whittaker broke the connection. “He wants us to let him in so he can ask us about China.”

Foster was unfazed. “Fine.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Whittaker said, and he speed-dialed the CIA’s on-duty security officer, and he didn’t give a damn if McGarvey’s freak friend Otto Rencke was somehow monitoring his call.

The number didn’t answer until the fourth ring. “Security, Donald Briggs.”

“This is David Whittaker. I want someone to go up to my office right now, and check my computers.”

“Somone’s already on the way up, sir.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure, Mr. Director. But one of the watch officers called and said there might be a security issue.”

“What sort of an issue?”

“Unknown.”

“I’ll hold,” Whittaker said, but then he knew what the issue was, and he knew that it had been his own sloppiness that made it possible. “Have there been any visitors to the building tonight. Within the past half hour or so?”

“Other than Mr. Adkins, I don’t know. But his passes were all still valid. I’ll have to check the log at the Reception Center.”

“Is Adkins still in the building?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, find out, you idiot! And if he’s still there, arrest him!”

“I’m on it, sir.”

Whittaker broke the connection. “Dick Adkins was in my office and it’s unlikely, but possible, he managed to get into my private laptop.”

Foster nodded. “Anything that would hurt us?”

“Names, dates.”

“No manifesto, I would hope, David.”

“No.”

“Well then, I think it’s time we telephone our friends at the FBI and the Marshal’s office,” Foster said. “Let them know that Mr. McGarvey is here to assassinate me, and that you came to warn me, and protect me. With your life, if need be.”

SEVENTY-ONE

McGarvey was crouched in the shadows on the west side of the house from where he had a good sight line all the way along the front wall, and down the hill toward the woods.

“Did you get any of that?” he said into his comms unit.

“Yeah, I managed to tap into the cell phone you took from the chopper pilot,” Otto replied. “It’s one of ours, standard issue for housekeeping and security. But Whittaker also called Campus security and he knows about Dick.”

“Has he made it out of there?”

“He hasn’t called me back so I don’t know. But I’ve got everything from David’s laptop.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Pretty much the same info from Remington’s flash drive. A few more names, some dates, and banking stuff. We can use it.”

“Mac,” Louise broke in. “I can’t see your heat signature. Where are you?”

“On the east side of the house, right up against the wall.”

“Is Pete with you?” Louise asked. She sounded strained.

“No, she’s on the other side of the house,” McGarvey said. “Where’s Boberg?”

“I had to switch back to the ship for a minute or two, and when I got back just now he was gone. The only place he could be is somewhere inside the heat signature of the building. But I’m painting the remnant heat of his footprints leading up to the house. To the west side of the house.”

Pete didn’t have a comms unit so there was no way for Louise to contact her.

McGarvey turned and sprinted toward the rear of the house. “I’m on my way,” he whispered.

“I have to get back to the ship,” Louise said.

“Do it, and then get out of the program. Security’s been alerted and the Campus will probably go into lockdown. Every system out there is going to come under scrutiny any minute now.”

“I can slow it down,” Otto said.

McGarvey held up at the back wall and took a quick peek. The rear of the house was lit up, but no one was in sight, so he eased around the corner and, keeping below the level of the windows, hurried toward the west side of the building.

“Too dangerous,” he whispered. “It could interfere with ongoing operations.”

“Let’s hope Dick managed to get out of there,” Otto said, but McGarvey had reached the west side of the house and he didn’t reply.

Pete had shot out the cameras and lights on this side of the house, so it took a full minute for McGarvey’s eyes to adjust to the darkness before he saw her shoved up against the wall near the front veranda. Boberg was in front of her, his pistol less than two feet from her face.

McGarvey switched his pistol to his left hand, and pulled a spare magazine out of his pocket with his right. Hiding the pistol behind the back of his leg, he stepped around the corner. “I think it’s me you want,” he said.

Boberg turned and looked at McGarvey, his pistol never wavering from Pete’s head. “You’re damn right I do. Throw your gun down.”

McGarvey tossed the magazine to the ground. It was dark and the distance was great enough that the Admin contractor could not have gotten a very good look.

“I said throw your gun away.”

“I just did, you stupid bastard,” McGarvey said. “Do you want me to pick it up and bring it to you?”

Boberg glanced at Pete and then back. “Come closer, I don’t want to miss.”

“Sure,” McGarvey said, starting toward the two of them. Pete was looking at him, trying to signal something. “But you should know something before you decide to shoot either of us.”

“I’ve already decided.”

“We have your name. We know everything about you and Administrative Solutions. About your work in Iraq, but mostly about the company’s assignments for the Friday Club. Payoffs. Bribery. Assassinations. The jobs are pretty impressive, and so are the names. Sandberger is at the top of the list, next is Remington, and third is Calvin Boberg. What are you, the company’s operations manager? Or should I have said were?”

“Bullshit,” Boberg said, but it was obvious even in the dark from fifteen feet away that he was agitated. He kept glancing at Pete.

“We have a KH-fifteen satellite watching us in real time. We saw where you parked your car just to the west of the driveway. Infrared sensors picked up your footprints through the woods where you stopped just before the clearing. We watched you coming up behind us as we sent the chopper away. The satellite caught everything. Kill us now and you’re screwed.”

Boberg was smart enough to know or at least guess that the NRO had put up a new version of the Key Hole system.

“Lower your weapon, turn around, and get out of here,” McGarvey said, and he stopped about ten feet away.

“How do I know you won’t shoot me in the back?”

“No need. It was Tim Kangas and Ronni Mustapha who killed my son-in-law and my wife and daughter. Not you.”

“They’re dead.”

“A lot of people are dead, Cal. And now I’m going to take Foster and his Friday Club down. If you want to take the fall with them, stick around. I don’t give a damn one way or the other.”

“You’re lying,” Boberg said, his gun hand shaking. He looked at Pete.

McGarvey winked at her and raised his pistol as Boberg was starting to turn back. She jerked her head a few inches to the left, and McGarvey fired one shot, catching the Admin contractor in the temple. Boberg’s pistol discharged as he was shoved sideways, the shot smacking harmlessly into the clapboard siding.

“You’re right, I lied,” McGarvey said.

Pete kicked the pistol away from Boberg’s reach, but the man was dead.

“Your timing was perfect,” she said, her chest heaving. “I never heard him.”

“We’re good here,” McGarvey said softly. “Boberg is down and Pete’s good to go.”

“You’ve about run out of time, Mac,” Otto said. “Foster called his friends at the Bureau and the Marshal’s Service. Both of their names are on Remington’s list. They’ll have SWAT teams heading your way by chopper within a few minutes.”

“I’m sending Pete back to you, and then I’m going inside to finish this once and for all.”

“I’m staying with you,” Pete objected.

“I’m going to get arrested tonight by Foster’s people, so I’m going to need you with Otto for backup. This is going to get ugly real fast.”

“Shit.”

“No matter what happens, no matter what you have to do, get back to Otto’s.”

“Tell her to call me on her cell phone,” Otto said into his ear. “Louise is still on the KH-fifteen, and we can relay a safe route for her if need be.”

McGarvey told her that, and she shook her head again, but she got her pistol from Boberg’s jacket pocket, and walked over to McGarvey and kissed him on the cheek.

“That’s twice tonight you’ve saved my butt.”

McGarvey smiled. “And a nice butt it is.”

“Sexist,” Louise said in his ear.

“Go now,” McGarvey said, and Pete turned and sprinted back to the woods.

SEVENTY-TWO

Adkins reached the main gate down the long driveway from the OHB, his hands shaking on the steering wheel. Administration was his thing, not running around stealing secrets, telling lies. And yet he felt just a little sense of exhilaration for pulling it off, and dread about what was happening between China and Taiwan.

The possibility that somehow Foster, who had never been anything more than a well-connected, high-priced lobbyist, and his group could have fomented trouble over there was unbelievable, even monstrous.

If the missiles started to fly a lot of people would die. And for what?

The same linebacker security guard who’d signed him in, came out of the Reception Center and ran into the road, frantically waving his hands for Adkins to stop.

Evidentally Loring hadn’t been able to stall whoever had come up to the seventh floor to see what was going on, and word had been sent down here.

Adkins swerved sharply to avoid hitting the man and jammed his foot to the floor, his E class Mercedes taking off like a rocket. He glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see the guard race back inside. It would only be a matter a minutes now before the highway patrol had a description of the car and its tag numbers.

At the bottom of the hill, Adkins slowed down and drifted through the stop sign then headed to the Parkway south, merging with the fairly light evening traffic.

He took out his cell phone and called Otto. “I’m on the Parkway, but they knew I was up on the seventh floor, because they sent someone up. And one of the Reception Center security guys tried to stop me from leaving.”

“They’ll be calling the highway patrol about now, so you’re going to have to come here.”

“I can’t outrun a cop. I mean my car is capable of it, but I’m not.”

“I want you to cross the median as quickly as possible and head the other way.”

“Back toward the Company?”

“Nobody will expect it, and by the time they realize they’ve been outsmarted you’ll be across the river at Turkey Run Park.”

“Hold on,” Adkins said, and he put the phone down. A maintenance road crossed the median, and making sure that traffic was clear and no flashing lights were approaching from either direction, he slammed on his brakes, crossed over to the other side of the Parkway, and accelerated.

He picked up the phone. “Okay, I’m heading north.”

“Did you find anything else in Whittaker’s office?”

“I didn’t check his desk or try the safe. I didn’t think he’d keep anything incriminating on paper, but I went down to Watch and talked to Ron Loring. Something is apparently starting between Mainland China and Taiwan. The Pentagon is in on it, and so is State. Ron said they were sending a courier over to the president tonight.”

“Did he tell you what it was?” Otto asked. He sounded excited.

“He didn’t want to say anything at first. Not until I told him that Mac had connected Mexico City and Pyongyang with the Friday Club, and it involved the Chinese government.”

“Are you telling me that China is going to attack Taiwan?”

“Two hours ago the Chinese started warming up their short-range missiles, and shortly after that Taiwan began spinning up their missiles. Their military was placed at Defcon two.”

“China wouldn’t gain a thing,” Otto said.

“No, and Beijing knows it,” Adkins agreed. “Something else has to be going on over there. A trigger of some sort.”

At least a half-dozen police cruisers, lights flashing, had pulled up at the access road into the CIA, and as Adkins passed on the opposite side of the Parkway, two of the cruisers headed south at a high rate of speed.

“Cops are all over the place,” he told Otto. “That was really fast.”

“You’re only a couple of miles from the bridge. Anyone taking an interest in the north-bound lanes?”

Adkins checked his rearview mirror. “Not yet.”

“Won’t take them long,” Otto said. “Once you get across I want you to head up to State Road One-ninety, it’s just a little past the Cabin John Parkway. Turn east toward Somerset and the highway changes to River Road.”

“Is that where you are?”

“No, we’re in Georgetown. But I want you to come here clean, so I’m going to keep track of what the cops are doing. If anyone gets close I’ll redirect you to another route. So keep your phone on.”

“I don’t know about this, Otto.”

“Piece of cake, Mr. Director, you’re doing just fine.”

“Are you going to work the China thing?”

“I’m already on it,” Otto said.

“Keep me posted.”

SEVENTY-THREE

McGarvey held up at the side of the house until Pete disappeared into the woods. She’d been limping, and he figured that her wound had to hurt like hell. But she was dedicated; she believed in the mission in a way McGarvey wasn’t so sure still existed for a lot of people in the Agency.

“Pete’s on her way back to you,” he said. “Anything from Dick?”

“He got out with Security right on his tail,” Otto said. “But he’s clear and I’m talking him in.”

“I’m going to talk to Foster now and try to see what’s going on. But I won’t have a lot of time, because as soon as the Bureau and Marshals get out here they’re going to arrest me, and I’m not going to run or resist. We need the situation to come to a head.”

“It is, Mac,” Otto said. “Dick talked to Ron Loring who’s the Watch commander tonight. They’re monitoring a situation between Mainland China and Taiwan. All the missiles out there are being spun up, and everybody’s at Defcon two. Could get real hot any minute.”

“We knew it was going to involve China again, but there’d have to be a trigger before anyone would actually launch. Beijing’s not going to risk attacking Taiwan unless it had a good reason to do so. They’d end up the pariahs of the world. Probably slam their economy back fifty years. We’d certainly stop trading with them.”

“Maybe it’s just that simple. Maybe that’s exactly what Foster wants to happen.”

“Still wants for a trigger,” McGarvey said. “Go back to Remington’s list, and whatever you downloaded from David’s computer, and run all the names from the State Department and especially the Pentagon, see what those guys have been up to.”

“I’m on it,” Otto said, and McGarvey could hear the strain in his friend’s voice.

“We’ve come this far, we’re not backing down now.”

“Watch your back, kemo sabe, I shit you not.”

“Keep me posted,” McGarvey said and he called Whittaker’s cell phone.

“I’m listening.”

“Boberg is down, and my partner has left. It’s just me now.”

“Turn around and walk away, Mac, and you just might live to see the morning,” Whittaker said. “There’s nothing here for you now.”

“I know that the Chinese and Taiwan militaries have gone to Defcon two. Their missiles are being warmed up right now.”

Whittaker didn’t reply.

McGarvey stepped around the corner and walked to the steps leading to the veranda, his pistol in plain sight. “I’m coming to the front door. If someone is watching from inside, you’ll see that I’m tossing my pistol onto the ground.”

“Do it,” Whittaker said.

McGarvey ejected the magazine, tossed it off the porch, then ejected the single shell and tossed it and the gun away. “If you shoot an unarmed man you’ll have a tough time explaining it, no matter how many friends you think you have in high places. I just want to talk to Foster before I’m arrested.” He turned away as he pocketed the still connected cell phone.

The night was very quiet, no wind, no traffic noises, no boat horns in the river. Katy had always liked this time of the evening, just before bed. She said she’d never been afraid of the dark; in fact, she’d always felt cocooned, protected, safe, ready to dream.

It would take everything within his power not to kill them all, starting with Foster. Vengeance never solved anything, Louise had told him, but he didn’t know if he could believe it, or if he had ever believed it.

The door opened inward to a dark stair hall. “Keep your hands in plain sight and come in,” Whittaker said.

“First turn on the lights.”

“No.”

“Then you’ll just have to shoot me,” McGarvey said. “You’re a good shot, and I’m sure Sergeant Schilling is an expert marksman. The advantage is yours. And you’ll even get credit for stopping me. I just want to talk.”

A moment later the lights in the living room came on and spilled into the stair hall. Whittaker stood back from the open door, a standard military-issue 9mm Beretta in his hand, no silencer to degrade its accuracy.

There was no sign of Foster or of Sergeant Schilling.

“You wanted to talk to Mr. Foster, and he agreed,” Whittaker said. “Come in, Mac.”

“Only my friends call me that,” McGarvey said, and he walked into the stair hall and stopped just a couple of feet from Whittaker, whose gun hand was rock solid.

Foster stood just within the living room to the right, a disdainful but curious expression on his round, almost bulldog face. He had no intention of talking, and it was obvious by the way he held himself: tense, his eyes narrowed.

Sergeant Schilling stood just beyond the living room entry, in the lee of the grand staircase. He was pointing the Italian-made Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun in McGarvey’s direction. Even in the hands of an amateur the weapon was lethal out to a range of more than forty yards, and Schilling looked like anything but.

McGarvey took a step forward and to his right putting Whittaker between him and Schilling.

“You should have left when you had the chance,” Whittaker said.

“You knew I couldn’t leave it.”

“The hell of it is that I always liked you. All of us did when you were the DCI.”

“But why Arlington, David? Can you just tell me that much?”

“We never meant to hurt Kathleen or Elizabeth. The IED was meant for you.”

McGarvey nodded, because he knew that Whittaker was telling the truth. “What about China?”

“Enough,” Foster said.

Whittaker raised his pistol so that it was pointed directly at McGarvey’s face.

“I’m wearing a wire,” McGarvey said softly. “Otto’s recorded everything including our telephone conversations, and the two calls made from the house phone to the Bureau and the Marshals. Maybe you want to make a deal before it’s too late.”

“He’s lying,” Foster said.

Whittaker shook his head, a sick look on his face. “No, he’s not.”

“Anything new?” McGarvey said.

“One of our B-525 made an emergency landing at Hsinchu Air Base about six hours ago,” Otto came back.

“Who’s he talking to?” Foster demanded.

“Hsinchu Air Base, Taiwan,” McGarvey said. “Ring a bell?”

Whittaker went visibly pale. “Christ.”

“The crew off-loaded something into one of the 499th Tactical Fighter wing’s hangars,” Otto said. “Could have been missiles.”

“Is it possible that Chinese intelligence saw what was going on?” McGarvey asked.

“That’d be as close to a hundred percent as you could get.”

“Otto has found out about the B-525 emergency landing out there. Whatever the crew off-loaded could have been nuclear missiles, or at least that’s what Beijing probably believes.”

“Enough,” Foster roared. “Get that thing from him!”

Whittaker stepped forward and Schilling shouted something, but McGarvey moved left, away from the Beretta’s muzzle and snatched the pistol from the acting DCI’s hand.

Schilling fired three shots, the lead pellets shredding Whittaker’s back, destroying most of his spine, and violently shoving him forward.

McGarvey fell back, using Whittaker’s body as a shield, as Schilling fired at least six more times; a few of the pellets hit McGarvey’s left shoulder and arm before he managed to fire two snap shots, one going wide, the other hitting the sergeant in center mass.

SEVENTY-FOUR

Pete had just about reached the highway where she’d parked Louise’s SUV when she heard the gunshots, including what sounded like an automatic shotgun, and she pulled up short and looked back.

The night was suddenly very silent, and she swayed on her feet trying to come to a decision. Mac could be down; in an unknown situation inside the house the odds stacked against him. And leaving him like this wasn’t an option. She’d lost one partner she didn’t want to lose this one.

She took two steps back the way she had come, but stopped.

“Goddamnit,” she muttered. This was bad, had been from the get-go. The man had lost his entire family; saw them murdered right in front of his eyes. And now she was supposed to turn her back on him?

She turned around again and ran the rest of the way through the woods to the Toyota, where she got her cell phone from her purse and called Otto.

“He made me leave, but there was gunfire,” she blurted.

“Mac’s okay for now,” Otto said. “He took out Foster’s bodyguard, and Whittaker is down. No one else is at the house.”

“Does he need help?”

“No. But the Bureau and Marshals are on their way, so you’ve got to beat feet right now. Please tell me that you’re in the car, or close to it, and not still up at the house. We don’t know where you are. Louise had to switch the satellite back to the ship, someone was getting snoopy.”

“I’m in the car,” Pete said.

“Then get back here as fast as you can.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Otto said. “Some really bad shit is just about ready to happen. Maybe a shooting war between China and Taiwan.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

McGarvey disentangled himself from Whittaker’s ravaged body, got to his feet, and, throwing Foster a quick glance to make sure the man wasn’t armed, cautiously approached Schilling’s inert form, and kicked the shotgun away.

“He’s dead,” Foster said. “Both of them are.”

McGarvey safetied the Beretta and laid it on the hall table. “You must have expected casualties, otherwise why did you hire Administrative Solutions?”

“I underestimated you, Mr. McGarvey. We all did, except for poor David. But he was in over his head, and I think he was probably getting cold feet at the last minute.”

The front door was still half open and in the far distance McGarvey heard sirens, and perhaps the rhythmic thump of helicopter rotors.

“China,” McGarvey said.

“It’s too late to be stopped, you know,” Foster said. “Has been since before Mexico City.” He was dressed in a natty blue blazer, khaki slacks, and an open-neck white silk shirt. He’d been drinking, his square-jawed face flushed. “In any event, what’s about to happen has been inevitable, actually, for a number of years. When the Soviet Union disintegrated under the weight of historical pressure, China was next. Always had been next.”

“Why? To what point do you risk innocent people, perhaps millions, or tens of millions?”

“There are no innocents.”

McGarvey had to wonder about Foster and his type, because Osama bin Laden had told him the very same thing shortly before 9/11. What did they believe in? Certainly not religion, leastways not in bin Laden’s case. Was Foster’s god, money?

“You’ve come this far and you still don’t understand, do you?” Foster said. “I can see it written all over your face. You’re confused. You of all people… you’ve spent just about all of your adult life fighting for the same things I’m fighting for. And you’ve sacrificed more than any man should be able to bear. You’ve defied your superiors time and again because you knew you were right and they were wrong. You felt it in your gut because you have an extremely strong sense of fair play. You’ve even gone against the direct orders of the president. Why? Just answer that.”

The sirens were much closer now, and the helicopters — he could make out two of them — were coming in for a landing.

“If China actually attacks Taiwan this evening, what advantage will it bring you?”

“Not me, Mr. McGarvey. The United States.”

“China is no military threat to us.”

“No, but they are on the verge of buying us. Purchasing the resources of a nation teetering on bankruptcy. They’ve already started. And for pennies on the dollar, a fact that most Americans are not aware of. How many people in Iowa or New Mexico or New York, for that matter, can name China’s top ten cities and where they’re located? How many of our citizens are totally ignorant of China’s long, rich history? How many know the threat they pose to our oil supplies? Or to a host of other natural resources we cannot do without?”

“You don’t want to work it out in the marketplace,” McGarvey said. The helicopters were on the ground now, and he could hear people just outside. “You never did. Mexico City, Pyongyang, and now this incident with the B-525 unloading something in Taiwan for the benefit of Mainland China’s intelligence apparatus was meant to shove Beijing so hard it had no other choice but to react. Stupidly, blindly, but it had to do something.”

“And it’s working,” Foster said, triumph in his eyes.

“But we know about it.” he said.

“You’re the only man who could have stopped us, and now it’s too late for you. Far too late.”

McGarvey turned toward the front door as FBI agents in SWAT team dark camos, automatic weapons at the ready, poured inside.

Steve Ansel and Doug Mellinger, the two U.S. Marshals he’d taken down at Arlington after the explosion, came in, their pistols drawn. Mellinger was wearing a knee brace and he walked with a heavy limp. They both wore dark blue Windbreakers with U.S. Marshals Service in yellow on the back.

Mellinger came right up to McGarvey. “Innocent until proved guilty, that was your line after we picked you up at Andrews.”

McGarvey just looked him in the eye, but said nothing.

“Turns out we didn’t have to prove anything,” Mellinger said, nearly shaking with anger. “You did it for us.” He smashed the butt of his pistol into McGarvey’s jaw.

“Doug, for Christ’s sake,” Ansel said, and he grabbed Mellinger’s arm and pulled him away.

McGarvey had expected the blow, and he had rolled with it as best he could, but he saw stars in his eyes, and tasted blood in his mouth.

“No need for any of that,” Foster told them. “Who’s in charge here?”

“We are,” Ansel said. “Are you all right, sir?”

“A little shaken, but as you can see my bodyguard has been shot to death, along with Mr. Whittaker, and you’ll find another body outside somewhere, Calvin Boberg who was employed by Administrative Solutions to provide me with security.”

“The Bureau’s forensics people are en route, and we’re going to keep this as a federal crime scene. No locals.”

“Very well. They will have my complete cooperation.”

“Ask him why I’m here,” McGarvey said.

“The man is wearing a wire, though I’m not quite sure who is monitoring it,” Foster said.

“In my left ear,” McGarvey said, and Mellinger yanked it out, pulling the wires from the control pack behind his ear.

“He came here to assassinate me, because for some reason he got the notion that the unfortunate terrorist attack at Arlington Cemetery in which his wife and daughter were killed was ordered by me personally.” Foster shook his head. “The man is obviously deranged.”

“Yeah,” Mellinger said. He holstered his weapon and cuffed McGarvey. “I told you before that I didn’t like traitors,” he said. “I like them even less now. Especially guys like you who had it all.”

“And you might search the grounds for a second gunman. I think he indicated that he had help.”

“Who came with you?” Mellinger asked.

“Aren’t you going to read me my rights?” McGarvey said. “You’re just doing your job. And if it’s any consolation, I’m sorry about your leg, but I wasn’t thinking very straight just then.” He turned and looked at Foster. “It’s almost over for you and your Friday Club. We have most of the names and we know what you’re trying to do.” He smiled. “It won’t work.”

“I don’t like traitors who hate their country either,” Foster said. “Kindly remove this piece of garbage from my house.”

Ansel took him from beneath the elbow and they walked out of the house, and across the lawn to the helicopter pad where two machines — one the FBI’s the other the U.S. Marshals’—were idling. He only hoped that Pete was able to get clear and that she and Adkins would make it to Otto’s. Everything was riding on them now.

SEVENTY-SIX

It was late when Pete finally showed up at the brownstone, and Otto buzzed her in after she parked the Toyota in the back, out of sight from the street. Adkins had already arrived and was hunched over Otto’s shoulder studying something on the monitor, and Louise was seated at one of the other monitors.

They all looked up when she walked in.

“Is he okay?” she asked. She was dead tired, and her hip and leg were on fire.

“The Marshals took him, presumably to a holding cell somewhere in D.C., but he’s not showing up on any of my search engines,” Otto said. “He sounded good before they took his comms unit and found the cell phone in his pocket.”

“Did he actually get to talk to Foster?”

Otto nodded. “Yeah, and the guy comes across as a wacko, but he has so many friends that no one has been willing to challenge him.”

“He’s sending the message that people want to hear,” Adkins said. “No one trusts their government any longer, and that’s not just the president’s approval rating, it especially includes Congress. Most people think they’re a bunch of crooks.”

“And in a lot of instances, that’s true,” Louise said. “You read about it in the newspapers and see it on television practically every day.”

Pete was havng trouble keeping on track. “So he’s got the message. What are we doing to find Mac?”

“He’s okay for now,” Otto said. “He’s in federal custody, no one is going to hurt him.”

“Come on, you said yourself you can’t find him. If Foster is as crazy as you say he is, why wouldn’t he order his people to shoot Mac in the back of the head while trying to escape? Problem solved.”

“Too many witnesses who are not in the Friday Club,” Otto said. “There’s only about three dozen of them and they’re spread out. So take it easy.”

“Who were the arresting officers?”

“As far as I can tell Douglas Mellinger and Steven Ansel. Mellinger’s on the list we got from David’s computer and Remington’s flash drive.”

“They’ll kill him,” Pete said.

“No,” Otto said. “Ansel’s clean, and he’s just doing his job because so far as he knows Mac will be indicted for treason, and there was a warrant for his arrest. Same with the FBI guys who made the bust.”

“Shit,” Pete said, turning away for a moment. She felt overwhelmed. It had become a nightmare at Arlington when her partner had been killed in the blast and McGarvey had gone on the run. Bodies had piled up all over the place, and now with a possible shooting war between China and Taiwan, which made absolutely no sense, the numbers could rise astronomically.

“He knew that he was going to get arrested,” Otto said, and Pete turned back to them. “By walking in there and confronting Foster he gave us the last pieces of the puzzle.”

“He solved it for us,” Adkins said.

She shook her head. “I don’t see any of it,” said. “Solved what?”

“What Foster was trying to do,” Adkins said.

“Push China into starting a war, but how’s knowing that going to help Mac?”

“There’s going to be no war,” Louise said. “Never was.”

Pete’s head was buzzing. “You’re making no sense.”

“Mac saw it before I did,” Otto said, smiling. “Think about who Foster is. What he is. What he’s always been.”

Pete spread her hands. “I don’t know. A lobbyist?”

“Right,” Otto said. “So instead of trying to find out how he was trying to spark a war, I looked for how he was making his money. Starting with the polonium thing. A Chinese intelligence officer, supposedly under orders from Beijing, used Mexico as a staging ground for what looked like a series of terrorist attacks against the United States. Made Mexico look as if Beijing had played it for the fool.”

“Foster’s a lobbyist for Mexico?” Pete asked.

“Definitely not,” Otto said. “Pemex, which is the Mexican government — owned oil and gas monopoly, was on the verge of signing a trillion-dollar oil deal with the Chinese. Oil that we needed. But Foster had enough of his people in the White House and Congress and State — all over Washington — so he could pull this off for the Department of Energy and a few key congresmen who didn’t want to see Mexico sell its oil to China.”

“We never found that any polonium crossed the border,” Adkins said. “It was his first major scam. And except for the people who lost their lives over it, the U.S. came out on top. Pemex canceled its contract with China and the oil came to us instead.”

“The guy really is nuts,” Pete said. “So who paid him?”

“I don’t know that part yet,” Otto said. “But it was someone on this side of the border.”

“What about Pyongyang? How did he make money by nearly starting a nuclear war between China and North Korea?”

“Think of who would have had the most to gain by getting rid of Kim Jong Il, and possibly even reunifying the Koreas.”

“Us, I suppose,” Pete said. “Certainly would have helped reduce tensions over there if the nuclear issue had been solved.”

“There wouldn’t have been a war,” Louise said. “Nobody, not even Kim Jong Il, and especially not the Chinese, are that crazy. That never was the real issue. But by driving a wedge between North Korea’s only ally it strengthened South Korea’s bargaining position to build automobile factories in the north, something the Chinese wanted to do.”

“Beijing is rushing full tilt into the twentieth-first century, and the only way they can keep up the pace is to find new markets for their products,” Adkins said. “They’re approaching saturation level here, and each time we have an economic downturn the U.S. debt China holds looks less and less promising. So they create new markets in places where workers earn enough income to afford the cars and televisions and stereos.”

“North Korea is poor,” Pete said.

“Build factories for them and the workers will earn the money to buy Chinese products,” Adkins said. “Simple economics.”

“China was stopped again, so who paid Foster?”

“At this point it looks like a consortium of South Korean car makers to the tune of fifty million dollars,” Otto said.

“They were willing to risk nuclear war for the sake of money?” Pete asked. “Or am I being too naïve?”

Louise smiled. “Naïve, and that’s not such a bad thing.”

“And Taiwan?”

“Haven’t got that one totally figured out yet,” Otto said. “Except that the B-252 didn’t have an actual emergency landing, they were on a training mission to deliver spare parts, not missiles — although a Chinese sleeper agent was fed that info, and China began rattling its sabers. Something it’s been doing for a long time.”

“Who paid Foster?”

“Probably a cabal in Taiwan very similar to the one Foster ran here: Taiwan for the Taiwanese. It’s too dangerous to go head-to-head with Beijing on a political level, so Foster was able to engineer something like this to give China another black eye.”

Pete was amazed. “People died for this nonsense. Money. Position. And if things had gotten out of hand in Mexico City, or Pyongyang or Taipei, we might have gotten embroiled in some sort of a nuclear exchange.”

“Wars have started for less,” Adkins said.

“Still leaves Mac in jail, and Foster’s people on the loose to figure out their next scam,” Pete said. “What can we do about it?”

Otto and Adkins exchanged a glance, and Otto touched a finger to the send box in the header of what looked like an e-mail message. “Just did it.”

“Did what?”

“We wrote an e-mail detailing everything we just told you, and sent it to every name from Remington’s flash drive and Whittaker’s laptop.”

“Don’t you think they’ll fight back?”

“With what?” Otto asked. “We have the proof, and Mac got it for us.”

“Now we wait,” Adkins said.