End Game

by David Hagberg

  Nor was it for the ears of their taxi driver on the way to the Athens Hilton near the U.S. embassy. And it wasn’t until they’d checked in, three separate suites on the eighth floor that looked down across the city toward Syntagma Square, and agreed to meet at the Galaxy, the hotel’s rooftop bar, that he shared his plan.

  “I’m betting Larry Coffin has a setup here in Athens. If we can find him and prove he went to the U.S. in the past few days or week, then he’ll become a likely suspect.”

  “We need a motive,” Pete said, but Otto held her off.

  “What if he’s here and never left?”

  “The connection between Wager, Fabry, Carnes, and Coffin was Alpha Seven. And I’m guessing something happened in the mountains above Kirkuk that not only bound those guys together but is the reason three of them were killed.”

  “You’re saying Carnes didn’t die in a traffic accident?” Pete asked.

  “He died, but it probably wasn’t an accident. The question in my mind is why now? Why go through the trouble and risk of penetrating campus security to kill two of the team?”

  “Doesn’t have to be a reason that’d make sense to us,” Pete said. “The killer is obviously a psychopath.”

  “That’s too easy,” McGarvey said. “We need a trigger. Something recent.”

  “What’s going on in the region that has a bearing?” Pete asked. “Iran’s nuclear program for one. Their ballistic missile tests for another ISIS.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that pat. I mean, I don’t think we’re looking for a threat to the U.S. It has to be something that benefited the team.”

  “Not another treasure hunt.”

  “No.”

  “What then?” Pete asked. “You’re not making any sense, Mac. Anyway, we’re back to a motive, because if we can’t come up with that, then the killings, and the way they happened, make no sense.”

  “First we need to find Larry Coffin,” McGarvey said.

  “Maybe not so easy,” Otto said. “If this guy was as good an NOC as his reputation had him, he won’t be found if he doesn’t want to be found.”

  “He’s either the killer or if he isn’t, he’s heard about the funerals, and he’ll want to know what’s happening.”

  “You’re betting the latter.”

  “Because it’s going to be the easiest,” McGarvey said.

  “If you’re right, he’ll have to guess someone has made the Alpha Seven connection and will be coming after him,” Pete said. “Either the killer or someone from the Company.”

  On the way up from Serifos, McGarvey had thought about the easiest, most direct approach. Something to dig the guy out of hiding. Coffin had been an NOC, which meant in order to survive as long as he had, not only in the field but in hiding from his own people, he had to maintain at least minimal contact with the Company. It didn’t have to be a personal contact. Someone on the inside but maybe an electronic contact.

  “The CIA retirees’ newsletter is online these days, right?”

  Otto nodded. He was grinning. “Why sneak in the back way when you can ring the front doorbell?” he said. “How do you want it to read?”

  “Alpha Seven reunion. Give him your e-mail address.”

  Pete got it. “He’d be a fool to answer.”

  “Either that, or he thinks he’s smarter than we are,” Otto said.

  “Or desperate,” Pete said.

  “Smarter,” McGarvey said. “But curious.”

  * * *

  Otto posted the announcement online and took the CIA’s Gulfstream home. But Pete had refused to go with him. “At the very least, Coffin is a psycho himself—a very smart and successful psycho. I’m going to stick around to watch your back.”

  “You’d better move in here with me so I can watch yours,” McGarvey said reluctantly. He didn’t want any sort of entanglement, especially not just now. Whoever this guy was who’d killed Wager and Fabry and then had chewed off their faces was crazy, but he was also a professional field officer, which made him doubly dangerous.

  Pete moved her things over, then went downstairs and checked out of her room and into his. She was back for just a minute when someone knocked at the door, and McGarvey went to answer it.

  An older man with a very thick shock of white hair who was dressed in a ratty old sports coat and slacks that hadn’t seen an iron in a month held out his Athens metro police badge. “Spiros Moshonas,” he said. “Mr. McGarvey, I presume?”

  McGarvey let him in. “What can I do for you?”

  Pete came to the bedroom door, and the detective smiled and nodded. “I followed you up,” he apologized. “The hotel won’t reveal anything about their guests, not even to the police.”

  They had checked in under their real names—no reason at this point for them to have used work names and false papers.

  “Actually, the NIS asked my department to send someone over to have a little chat,” Moshonas said. The NIS was the Greek intelligence service headquartered here in Athens.

  “Good,” McGarvey said. “Maybe you can help us.” He got the tablet Otto had left with them and pulled up Coffin’s dossier, which included a half dozen photos, and showed them to the cop.

  “You’re looking for this man?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?” Moshonas smiled. “What I mean to say is that it’s highly unusual for a former director of the CIA to come here so openly, and then apparently in pursuit of someone. Is this business for you?”

  “We want to have a little chat with him,” McGarvey said.

  “May I know what you wish to discuss with him?”

  “He used to work for us, and something has come up we’d like to ask him about.”

  “The service would want a more detailed answer.”

  Pete came the rest of the way into the sitting room. “Do you know where this man is?”

  “Of course. I was the one responsible for putting him there,” Moshonas said. “If you’ll give me something I can report, any little thing, I’ll take you to him.”

  “He’s wanted for questioning in the murders of two CIA employees a few days ago.”

  “That would be impossible,” Moshonas said. “Mr. Cooke was convicted of trafficking in stolen artifacts last year. At the moment he’s serving time at Korydallos prison in Piraeus.”

  For just a moment McGarvey allowed himself to be surprised, until he realized what was wrong. Coffin would never have allowed himself to be caught doing something so simple. “Did he plead guilty?”

  Moshonas’s eyes narrowed. “In fact, he did.”

  “Was he offered a plea bargain, maybe if he named his sources?”

  “He turned it down.”

  “Maybe a fine instead of a prison sentence?”

  “He turned that down as well, though he was living in a very expensive home, without a mortgage. He wanted to go to prison, which none of us understood.”

  “Let’s go talk to him, and I’ll tell you what I can on the way down.”

  “Would you like to see his house?”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “There’d be nothing there of any interest to us.”

  Moshonas nodded. “I’ll bring you to him, but I want to sit in on the interview, and there are a few questions I’ll have to ask you afterward.”

  TEN

  Coffin, wearing gray scrubs of the sort used by doctors in hospitals, walked down the corridor of the maximum-security section for men, his eyes lowered, a slight scowl on his face. No guard accompanied him; he was treated more or less as a special guest because of his generous contributions to the warden’s pension fund, and funds for the families of guards who were out of work because of injuries or illness. He was well liked here and practically had the run of the place.

  He’d been convicted and sentenced as an antiquities thief, but he’d presented himself, complete with diplomas, as a clinical psychiatrist specializing in the mental disorders of habitual offenders—especially females, of which there were
still a few in Korydallos.

  The prison, which was infamous with Amnesty International for its horrible conditions, maintained a vastly out-of-date and underequipped hospital and mental clinic. Always short of money and personnel, the medical director was initially overjoyed to have Coffin’s help. And no one ever bothered to question his credentials, even though some of the staff had their suspicions.

  At the end of the long corridor, he was admitted through a steel door into the medical section that divided the women’s cellblock from the rest of the complex.

  “Good morning, Doc,” the guard said in Greek, a language Coffin had managed to become reasonably proficient in over the past couple of years.

  “How is your child?”

  “It was very close. Without your help, his appendix would have burst and he would have died.”

  “Is he out of hospital?”

  “Two days ago, and he’ll start back to school on Monday.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Coffin said, patting the man on the arm.

  Dr. Vasilis Lampros, the prison’s medical director, was waiting at Coffin’s office door when he came into the clinic. He was a stern, rough-looking old man who’d worked in Greek prisons all his medical career. He looked more like a rock cutter in a marble quarry than a doctor, and he trusted no one.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor,” Coffin said pleasantly. He’d been expecting bad news for the past several days, but he wasn’t going to let his mood show here and now. The old bastard would jump on it and suspect the worst—whatever that might be in his mind.

  “Your examination with Ms. Pappas will not be necessary,” Lampros said.

  “Is she being transferred?”

  “She hung herself last night. Told everyone at dinner you tried to rape her at your most recent session.”

  Coffin laughed. “That’s ridiculous, and you know it. The woman was delusional, lived in a fantasy world her entire adult life. It’s a fact that in the three months I treated her, she was completely unable to distinguish truth from lies.”

  “It’s a common condition here, as you well know.”

  Something in the tone of the man’s voice was bothersome. “Is there a problem, Doctor?”

  “You’re a prisoner.”

  “Indeed I am. And you’re understaffed. Perhaps I could underwrite the salaries of a couple of nurses. They would help lighten your load.”

  “Go back to your cell, Cooke,” Lampros said. “You’re no longer needed here.”

  “As you wish,” Coffin said. He shrugged indifferently and turned to walk away.

  “No one at Harvard has heard of you. There are no records.”

  Coffin turned back. “That’s not surprising. May we go into your office so I can explain?”

  “Nothing I want to hear.”

  “But I think you will want to hear this,” Coffin said, smiling.

  No one else was in the clinic evaluation room at the moment. Coffin took the doctor’s arm, and they went into the office and closed the door.

  “You’re a fraud,” Lampros said.

  “Of course I am,” Coffin said. He shoved the doctor back against the desk and clamped his fingers around the older man’s neck with enough pressure to the carotid artery to cut off blood flow to the man’s brain but not enough to cause a bruise.

  Lampros tried to pull away, but Coffin was much stronger and trained in hand-to-hand combat. In a surprisingly short time, Lampros went unconscious and slumped to the floor.

  Coffin followed him down, keeping pressure on the man’s neck until the heartbeat became thready and finally stopped.

  He threw open the door. “Someone get me the crash cart!” he shouted. He went back to the doctor’s body, ripped open Lampros’s shirt, and pulled up his T-shirt. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted, and started CPR.

  One of the nurses came in with the defibrillator at the same time Coffin felt a very slight pulse, and he stopped the chest compressions until the machine came to full power.

  One of the orderlies came in as Coffin applied the paddles to the doctor’s chest. “Clear!” he shouted. But nothing happened. The machine was broken and had been for some months.

  He listened at the doctor’s chest and then felt the artery in the man’s neck. But the pulse had stopped. He sat back on his heels and shook his head. “It’s no use. Dr. Lampros is dead.”

  One of the nurses said something Coffin didn’t catch.

  He looked up.

  “Dr. Lampros turned down a request for a new defibrillator,” the other nurse said. “He didn’t think the prisoners were worth it.”

  Coffin got up. “Perhaps it’s best if I went back to my cell. But call the warden and let him know you tried to save his life, but his heart gave out.”

  “Yes, sir,” the one nurse said.

  Coffin walked out, though what he wanted was to kick everyone out of the office and look at the good doctor’s computer to erase whatever e-mails he’d received from Harvard. But he’d already come to the conclusion several days ago, especially since learning about the deaths of Wager and Fabry, that he would have to go very deep and very soon.

  The wolves were gathering, and it was time to remove the scent from the pack.

  Back in his cell, he powered up his tablet and launched a search program he’d designed with the CIA’s clandestine services as a major target. It was the program that had picked up the two deaths. This time a starred story keyed on the CIA retirees’ newsletter. A reunion of the Alpha Seven operators from Iraq was announced. But there were only five others, including him, plus one now.

  He sat back in his chair. A call to arms, since two of their own had been murdered? A call to safety? Or a dragnet for the suspected killer?

  Shutting down, he stuffed the tablet into his shoulder bag and phoned his substitute.

  “I need you again for this evening.”

  “I can be there by eight,” the American expat he’d paid more than one hundred thousand euros over the past several months promised.

  “I need you now. How soon can you be here?”

  “As it turns out, I’m in Piraeus. I can get to you in fifteen minutes. Another overnight?”

  “Might be several days.”

  “That place is a shit hole. It’ll cost extra.”

  “Twenty-five thousand.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Coffin said, and he hung up. In addition to what he’d paid the warden, he’d also paid more than one hundred thousand euros to the prison’s administrator of the guard force, depositing the money into a personal bank account Coffin had arranged.

  He changed into a pair of khaki slacks, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, loafers, a baseball cap, and sunglasses, and, shouldering his small bag, looked around his cell for the last time.

  This place had been a safe house for him. The last place anyone would think to look for him. But as was almost always the case, good things came to an end. He was on the run now until he figured out who was coming after him and how serious the threat was.

  If the last piece of the Kryptos puzzle—the one sculpture still unknown—had been solved, he would have to fight back if for no other reason than to save his life.

  ELEVEN

  A slightly built man in khaki slacks and white shirt was getting into a cab in front of the prison’s main gate, another similarly built man getting out, when McGarvey, riding shotgun, and Pete, sitting in the backseat, arrived in Detective Moshonas’s battered old Volvo station wagon.

  They were met at the gate by a man introducing himself as Hristos Apostoulos, who was a representative of Nikos Hondros, the chief of prison security, who apologized that neither his boss nor Warden Kostas could have met them in person.

  “We’ve had something of a tragic afternoon,” Apostoulos said. “Our chief medical officer had a heart attack in his office less than an hour ago, and his wife and sons are here already. Tragic.”

  “In English please,” Moshonas said. “We�
�re here to interview one of your prisoners.”

  “Yes, Livermore Cooke, a British citizen. We’ve set up a room where lawyers usually meet their clients.”

  They headed on foot through the gate and then across to the main administration building, where they were searched, and Moshonas had to give up his weapon. McGarvey and Pete had left theirs at the hotel.

  “It’s doubly difficult for us,” the aide said on the way down a long corridor.

  “How’s that?” Moshonas asked.

  “With Dr. Lampros gone, it leaves us very shorthanded. Except for Dr. Cooke, who’s been a real help, we’d have to send our serious cases up to Athens.”

  “I didn’t know he was a medical doctor,” McGarvey said.

  The aide gave him a sharp look. “A psychiatrist, but he’s had medical training. A great man. We’ll miss him when he’s served his time.”

  “Because of his medical help?”

  “Yes, and he’s a generous man.”

  The prison was noisy, someone was shouting in one of the cellblocks, and the place stank badly of human waste and of diesel fumes. But they encountered no one. Except for the noise and odors, the prison could have been deserted.

  Moshonas asked about it.

  “We’re in temporary lockdown.”

  “Because of your doctor?”

  “No, one of our inmates hung herself last night, but there may be some evidence that she was murdered.” They came to the interview room, and the aide gave them a hard look. “This is a placed filled with very bad people. And until now, Dr. Cooke’s presence has had an almost calming effect. Don’t ask me how, but the past five months have been easy for us.”

  He opened the door for them. The room was small and contained only a table and two chairs.

  “Unless you need my presence, I have other duties to attend to. I’ll have Dr. Cooke sent over.”

  “Dr. Cooke and a guard?” Moshonas asked.

  The aide smiled slightly. “He has respect here. There’s no need for him to walk through the prison with protection.”

  Moshonas started to say something, but McGarvey interrupted.

  “That’s good to know. Thanks.”