End Game

by David Hagberg

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

  “So what do you want to do?”

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

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

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

  “What about you and Schermerhorn?”

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  THIRTY-SEVEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You changed the code.”

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

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

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

  “No one meaning who?” McGarvey asked.

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

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

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

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

  “Pete Boylan is with me.”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Leave your pistol behind.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “No firing pin,” McGarvey said.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Leave us now,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be just outside.”

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

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

  “I still am.”

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

  “Even a partial something,” McGarvey said.

  * * *

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

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

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

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

  “But this is where Fabry was murdered.”

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

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

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

  “For the better?”

  “Just changed,” Alex said.

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

  “Damn right.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “What are you talking about?”

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

  “I’m listening.”

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

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

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

  THIRTY-EIGHT

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

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

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

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

  “Then you think he’s gone?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Stop him from doing what?” Schermerhorn asked.

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

  “And?”

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

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

  Alex looked away. She was shivering.

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

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

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

  “Including you?” McGarvey asked.

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

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

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

  “George,” he prompted.

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

  “I didn’t,” Schermerhorn said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why didn’t Bertie come with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

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

  “Larry was.”

  “The Chameleon,” McGarvey said.

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

  “The Iraqis must have reacted.”

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

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

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

  “Muhammad.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “He was,” Alex said.