“Let’s hope it’s good news for a change.”
THIRTY-FOUR
McGarvey had to go through a major rigmarole to get Schermerhorn past the main gate and then badged so he could be taken upstairs to the seventh floor.
“So this is our Alpha Seven operator,” Page said when they walked in.
“What time are you expecting your secretary?” McGarvey asked.
“Why?”
“She might be the one.”
“I don’t think so. She’s been with me for my entire tenure. Damned fine worker, bright, loyal.”
“Sounds like Alex,” Schermerhorn said. “I just want to take a look at her, and then we’ll check the others.”
Page looked at him as if he were a disagreeable insect. “I sent her to the Watch for an update on the overnights.”
“I’ll check to see if she left her purse behind,” Pete said.
“If it’s her, she wouldn’t carry anything incriminating,” McGarvey said. “Just close the door, please.”
“I don’t like this, Mac,” Page said. “I’ve built a damned fine staff loyal to me because I trust them.”
“We’re not going to ask her any questions,” McGarvey said. “When she gets back from the Watch, ask her to bring you the overnights. Schermerhorn will take a look at her, and when she leaves, it’ll be up to him for the identification, and you for the next move. But you did ask for my help.”
Page had been standing behind his desk. He nodded and sat down. “Nothing like this has ever happened here. The few people who have any idea what’s been going on are frightened out of their minds, and the rest on campus don’t know what to make of the tightened security. They know something’s up. But not what, and it’s got them on edge.”
They all sat down across from him.
“How’s the situation between Pakistan and India coming along?” Schermerhorn asked unexpectedly.
Page was taken by surprise. “What?”
“Nuclear disarmament. It’s important out there. Christ, we don’t need a nuclear war, because no matter how local it is, once the genie’s out of the jar, it’ll spread.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Page asked.
Pete gave McGarvey a questioning look, but he motioned no. He suspected Schermerhorn was trying to tell them something in his oblique way. NOCs, even when they were telling the truth, never told it straight on. They tested the waters first. Always.
“I read the newspapers and the blogs—between the lines. Every now and then even al-Qaeda hits it on the head. Bin Laden kicked the Russians out of Afghanistan. Didn’t make him stupid afterward, just rabid.”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Schermerhorn shook his head. “Goddamn bureaucrats. Linear thinkers.”
“Enough of this.”
“Be careful where you tread, Mr. Director. One of these days something just may rise up out of the dust and bite you squarely on the ass.”
Page’s intercom buzzed. It was his secretary.
“Mr. Whiteside has an update on the situation in New Delhi. May I bring it in?”
Page hesitated, but McGarvey motioned yes.
“Please do,” the DCI said.
Alex walked in, nodded to the others, her expression neutral, and handed the file folder to Page. “Mr. Whiteside said if anything new comes up before one thirty, they’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Dotty.”
Alex walked out, closing the door softly behind her.
* * *
She reached her desk, picked up her phone, and hit 70# in time to hear Page say: “Well?”
Schermerhorn was there; she’d recognized him the moment their eyes had met.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”
“Be sure,” McGarvey said. “Otherwise, we’re talking about an innocent woman.”
It was a fabrication. She’d heard it in Roy’s voice. He was lying for her benefit because somehow they knew she was listening in.
She pulled her Glock 29 pistol and silencer from its elastic holster attached to the underside of the bottom drawer, stuffed it into her purse, and slipped out the door.
A few people had started to show up, and she smiled and nodded as she made her way down the corridor and around the corner, stopping only long enough to make sure no one was coming after her.
Taking the stairs down two at a time, she reached the second floor before an alarm sounded.
“Attention, Security, OHB is currently under lockdown. This is just a drill. Repeat, the OHB is currently under lockdown. This is just a drill.”
She sprinted the rest of the way down to the parking garage. The stairwell doors were only locked from the outside. No security procedures were required to exit; nevertheless, she pulled out her pistol, shifted her bag to her left shoulder, and held the pistol at her side.
A lot would depend on the next sixty seconds. If the lockdown included the garage, the security barriers would be raised from the floor at the driveway out and she would be stuck here.
She pulled open the door and stepped out just as a security officer she only vaguely recognized came around the corner at the elevator door, twenty feet away. His sidearm was holstered.
He turned to her. “Sorry, ma’am, we’re under lockdown. You’ll have to go back up.”
Alex walked directly toward him, her eyes on his.
“Didn’t you hear?” the officer asked. His name tag read: SOLDIER.
Alex raised her pistol and pointed it at him. “Lay your weapon and your radio on the floor along with your security badge, and then step back.”
The man reached for his gun.
She changed aim to his head. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will. Do as I told you, immediately.”
The officer unholstered his pistol and laid it on the concrete floor, then took his radio from its holster on the opposite hip, unclipped the shoulder mic, and laid them on the floor.
“Your security badge.”
He took it off and laid it down.
“Turn around and walk away. If you shout for help, I will shoot you, and trust me, Soldier, I’m an expert marksman.”
“No way in hell are you getting out of here.”
“You’re probably right, and you can take credit for slowing me down. Go, and don’t look back.”
The officer hesitated for just a moment, but then turned around and headed toward the opposite side of the long garage.
Alex picked up his radio and badge, and then followed him just to where her car was parked. Making sure he wasn’t turning around, she got behind the wheel, started the car, and headed for the up ramp.
At that moment a klaxon blared.
She raced the rest of the way up to the exit just as the security barriers began rising from the floor.
A security officer stepped into view in the middle of the driveway.
Without slowing down, she aimed directly for him.
At the last moment he leaped aside, and she passed over the barriers, one of them ripping out her catalytic converter and muffler, and she was outside and free.
She had worked out this scenario before, and in fact, three years ago she had taken a drive around the campus, figuring out ways to get to the rear of the campus, via Colonial Farm Road, which connected through to an automatic gate that then led to Highway 193.
The gate would be locked down for her badge, of course, but she had Soldier’s.
THIRTY-FIVE
Page was on the phone with Bob Blankenship, the CIA’s chief of security. He put a hand over the mouthpiece. “She just made it out of the garage,” he told McGarvey. “We’ll have her at the main gate.”
“Give those guys the heads-up that she’s armed,” Pete said, coming in from the outer office.
“Stand by.”
“She had a pistol of some kind attached to the bottom of one of the drawers in her desk. She must have heard what we were saying, because she was in a big h
urry. She got her gun but didn’t close the drawer.”
“No,” Schermerhorn said. “She wants us to know she’s carrying. She’s thumbing her nose at us because she has a plan.”
“Excuse me,” McGarvey said, and took the phone from Page. “Bob, Kirk McGarvey. She’s armed, but she won’t try for the main gate. Did any of your officers have a one-on-one encounter with her?”
“Tom Soldier in the parking garage just a minute or so ago. She disarmed him, but she didn’t shoot him.”
“Did she take his security badge?”
“Yeah, and his radio, but she left his sidearm on the floor.”
“No one got hurt?”
“No.”
“Stay off the radio. She’s going to try for the back gate, using your security officer’s badge, which I assume hasn’t been locked out.”
“Shit,” Blankenship said. “I have two people back there.”
“Tell them not to approach her, or she will shoot.”
“Can’t use the radio, so what do you want me to do? Write them a letter?”
“Radio them. But have the Virginia state police a block off one ninety-three and one twenty-three a couple of miles either side of the gate. If she gets out, she’ll try to commandeer a car or truck.”
“I’m on it,” Blankenship said. “But she’s just the DCI’s secretary, for Christ’s sake.”
“She was an NOC and a damned good one, from what I’m told. How soon can we get a couple of choppers in the air in case she abandons her car and tries to make it through the fence on foot?”
“At least fifteen minutes.”
“Too late. Tell your people to watch themselves.”
“This is unbelievable,” Page said. “Are you sure she’s the right one?”
“No. But she did take off with a gun she’d hidden in her desk, and she disarmed a security officer.”
“She didn’t kill him, did she?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Page asked.
“I’m going to ask her when I pick her up,” McGarvey said. “Roy’s coming with me.”
“Do I get a gun again?”
“Not this time.”
“What about me?” Pete asked.
“I want you to organize someplace secure here on campus for an interrogation. And I do mean secure. At least four people for muscle, and I want it done within the next half hour or less.”
“If she’s as tough as Roy thinks she is, it may take a while to get through to her.”
“Stock the cupboard,” McGarvey said.
Out in the corridor, he and Schermerhorn raced down to the stairwell. Several people out in the hallway moved aside as they passed. None of them knew exactly what was going on, but several of them recognized McGarvey and figured that if the former DCI was in such a hurry, whatever was happening to cause the lockdown had to be big.
* * *
“Unit two, copy?”
The radio on the passenger seat next to Alex had fallen silent—until now.
“Two, copy.”
“It’s possible she’s going to try to talk her way through the main gate. I want you to get over there ASAP. Take up position down on the Parkway in case she does manage to get through.”
“We’ll have to take the long way.”
“Hustle.”
Alex pulled off the road a hundred yards from the back gate, just as two men got into a Company SUV and drove off. It didn’t smell right to her. First there’d been a lot of radio chatter, then nothing, and finally the last exchange. It was a setup, of course. By now they would have notified the Virginia state police to block off 193 and 123 on either side of the gate. And it was also possible, though she wasn’t sure of the technical requirements, that the rear gate had been locked down even for security personnel.
“If you start to get sentimental, you might just as well write your will,” Bertie Russell had told them before they’d headed to Iraq. “Let it take over, and you’ll end up dead meat.”
Alex could not remember ever hearing any remark of his that could have been the least positive. But he’d always been right. And he’d been the only man in her life she hadn’t been able to seduce.
Just before Germany she’d gone to his quarters on the Farm, carrying two glasses and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, an inexpensive but decent champagne. It was after midnight, but he had been awake, and he answered almost as if he had been expecting her.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He was in a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. She was in sweats, nothing on underneath, and it was obvious.
He laughed a little. “I prefer Dom Pérignon, actually.”
“Not on my salary,” she said. And remembering the incident now, even in the middle of everything from last night and this morning, she’d been embarrassed at that moment. She’d felt shabby. Even cheap.
He’d shrugged. “Go back to your quarters, Alex. Get some sleep. We’re shipping out in the morning right after our final briefing.”
“I can sleep just as easily in your bed as in mine.”
“Go home.”
“What? Are you a eunuch?”
“No, just discriminating,” he’d said.
He was the only man who’d ever turned her down who she hadn’t wanted to kill. And she’d thought about him almost every day, wanting to try again, except he was dead. Only bits and pieces of him—nothing much identifiable as human—had ever been brought back for burial or cremation or whatever had happened in the end.
She powered the window down and searched the sky. They would have choppers up before long, looking for her on foot. Blankenship would know by now that she would try to make her way out the back gate. It was the obvious reason he’d broken radio silence.
She put the BMW in gear and slowly made her way down the shallow drainage ditch and into the woods. This part of the campus bordered on Langley Fork Park, which was for the most part heavily wooded. There were hiking trails through the northern portion of the sprawling park, but nearer the highway were baseball, soccer, football, and other sports fields. On weekends and throughout the summer, the place was busy. But this morning she figured it would be empty or practically so.
She pulled up about thirty yards from the tall razor-wire–topped chain-link fence that marked the edge of the CIA’s property. On the other side, no trespassing notices had been posted, marking it a restricted government area. Federal parks and roads property, a fiction no one had believed for a long time.
Stomping down on the gas, she headed straight for the fence, smashing halfway through but destroying the front end of the car. The engine bucked and heaved, then stopped.
She got out, stood beside the ruined car for a moment or two, but then retrieved her bag, her pistol, and the radio. She headed back the way she had come, but staying in the woods and out of sight of anyone passing on the road.
THIRTY-SIX
McGarvey pulled up just off Colonial Farm Road, where tire tracks led off into the woods to the west, took out his pistol, and got out of the car. The morning was bright and sunny.
In the distance to the south he could hear at least two sirens, possibly more, probably the Virginia state police setting up roadblocks.
“God damn it, I want a gun,” Schermerhorn said.
“In the glove compartment,” McGarvey told him. “But if you shoot at her for anything other than self-defense, I’ll shoot you myself.”
McGarvey started along the tire tracks, not believing for one minute she would try to kill him. She had had the chance, once she was armed, to walk back into Page’s office and kill them all, because she knew they hadn’t been allowed to pass through security while carrying their firearms.
She’d also had the chance, and the cause, to kill the security officer who’d confronted her in the parking garage. But she had merely disarmed him and let him walk away, knowing he would report the contact once he reached a phone.
Schermerhorn came after him, the Beretta 92F in his left h
and.
McGarvey looked at him. “Are you ambidextrous?”
“No, always been a lefty.”
“What about Alex and George?”
“George is right-handed. Alex is a lefty just like me,” Schermerhorn said. “We were the only two.” He suddenly caught on. “The killer is right-handed?”
“The autopsies on the three killed here on campus showed they were murdered by someone right-handed. The CSI people confirmed it.”
“Lets me off the hook,” Schermerhorn said. “And Alex.”
“Leaves only George,” McGarvey said.
Schermerhorn stopped and scanned the woods ahead and to the left and right. “Then why the hell did she run?”
“Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”
“Great,” Schermerhorn said. “I will defend myself.”
They followed the tire marks another fifty yards or so through the woods until they came to the clearing, across which the green BMW convertible was crashed halfway through the fence. On the other side was a matching clearing that bordered the thick woods. Highway 193 was a mile or so off to the left, on the other side of the playing fields.
McGarvey walked to the car and looked inside. No blood, no purse.
In order to make it past the car to the other side of the fence, Alex would have needed to have gotten up on the hood and slid across. The car didn’t look as if it had been washed in the past week or so, and was a little dusty. But there were no marks on the hood.
He looked in the car again, but the radio was not there. She hadn’t left it on the passenger seat, or tossed it onto the floor or in the back. But once off campus, it would be out of range, so there was no reason for her to have taken it.
“She’s on foot. Shouldn’t be hard for the cops to round her up,” Schermerhorn said. “But they should be given the heads-up that she’s armed and she knows how to use a gun.”
McGarvey holstered his pistol and headed back to where he’d left his car. He phoned Pete.
“Did you get her?” she asked.
“We found where she crashed her car through the fence and then abandoned it. But she didn’t try for the highway. She’s still somewhere on campus.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
End Game Page 16
