End Game

by David Hagberg

His cell phone chirped; it was the OD at the main gate.

  “They just passed.”

  “Thanks,” McGarvey said. He called Pete. “They’re out.”

  “Blankenship isn’t happy, but he’s sending two of his people up here. He wants to know why we can’t go after his man.”

  “Tell him I’m on it,” McGarvey said. He phoned Otto and told him the situation.

  “We caught a break. We’re at the extreme end of a pass. I can task the satellite, but it’ll take a minute or so, and the angle will be very low.”

  “How’s the decryption going?”

  “Close,” Otto said. “Hang on.”

  A couple of minutes later McGarvey drove past the main gate and down the hill toward the interchange with the George Washington Parkway, which to the right headed downriver toward Washington and, to the left, upriver, where it ended in a couple of miles at I-495.

  Traffic was all but nonexistent at this time of the night, and when McGarvey got within a hundred yards or so from the interchange, he slowed to a crawl.

  “They turned left,” Otto came back. “But that’s all I can give you for another eighteen minutes until a new bird comes up over the horizon.”

  “How far behind am I?” McGarvey said, speeding up.

  “About three minutes, but if she spots you, it’s game over unless all you want to do is get her back. And that could end up in a hostage situation gone bad, though I don’t think she’d take it that far .”

  “Get back to the decryption. I want it as fast as possible,” McGarvey said, and hung up.

  He swung left along the long curving entrance that merged with the Parkway, and tucked in behind a Safeway eighteen-wheeler that, the way it was driving, looked as if it were heading unloaded back to a distribution center somewhere just outside of the city.

  The truck was speeding, about fifteen miles per hour over the limit, and he figured Alex wouldn’t be doing anything to attract any attention, so she would probably have the security officer drive only five or ten miles per hour over the speed limit.

  Before long he would catch up with her.

  At the last moment he caught a glimpse of the Escalade turning off the highway and disappearing into the woods toward the river. The brown National Park Service sign announced it was the entrance to Turkey Run Park.

  Standing on the brakes, McGarvey managed to pull over about fifty yards past the entrance, the Escalade well out of sight. A car coming up in the distance seemed to take forever before it reached him and passed.

  He slammed the Porsche in reverse and headed back to the park entrance, worried he’d read her wrong and she was capable of killing an agency security officer in cold blood. She could leave his body somewhere in the park, and by the time it was discovered in the morning, she would be long gone.

  As he pulled into the park, he saw that the entry road paralleled the highway for a little ways before it passed the upriver exit road. He switched off his headlights and slowed down. In the distance a narrow blacktopped road turned right, while the main entry road continued to parallel the Parkway before crossing over to connect with the downriver-bound highway.

  The park’s gate would be closed, but most of the park was heavily wooded, with hundreds of places to pull off and hide a body.

  McGarvey took the road right into the park, slowing to a crawl. Less than one hundred yards in, he caught a glimpse of the Caddy ahead, and he got off the road. He jumped out of his car and ran through the woods, pistol in hand.

  It was more than possible he had underestimated the woman and would be in time to see her gun down the security officer.

  The road here was very narrow, trees close in, making it next to impossible for her to turn around. When McGarvey got to where the Caddy was stopped, the security officer was standing next to the car, his hands above his head, Alex ten feet away from him. McGarvey couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the officer shook his head, lowered his hands, and walked away down the road, deeper into the park toward the river.

  Alex watched him until he was just about out of sight, and then she stuffed the pistol she’d been holding into the pocket of her coveralls.

  McGarvey turned and raced as fast as he could to where he’d parked his Porsche, managed to get it turned around, and headed back to the access road, where he got lucky with a spot to pull through some brush and into a stand of trees.

  Less than a minute later, Alex at the wheel, the Escalade passed and sped off to the upriver access to the Parkway, toward I-495, where she would either turn north up to I-270 into the Maryland countryside of small quaint towns, or south on I-495 and on to Dulles.

  He got his car back up on the highway, headlights still out, and stayed well behind until he merged with the Parkway and spotted her taillights three-quarters of a mile away.

  The highway crested a hill, and he lost her for a half a minute. He switched on his headlights and paced her, turning with her south onto I-495, where, within a couple of miles, traffic started to pick up and tailing her became much easier.

  He called Otto. “She’s heading south on four ninety-five. Call Blankenship and tell him his officer is in Turkey Run Park, unharmed.”

  “If she’s going to Dulles, we’ll have to get a team out there to look for her. I don’t know what ID she’d be traveling under.”

  “How soon will you have a satellite in position?”

  “Seven minutes. Do you want me to alert Dulles security?”

  “If she knows we’re on her tail, she’ll break off and go deep. I want to know where she’s heading.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Alex took the battery out of the security officer’s radio and tossed it out the window just before she reached the Dulles Access Road and continued straight. It was possible that the unit had a built-in GPS, though she hadn’t heard of that being the case, but she wanted to minimize her risks while it was still possible to do so.

  She’d taken a lot of care with her tradecraft. Slowing down, speeding up, switching lanes so suddenly, the drivers she cut off blew their horns, all the while checking her rearview mirrors. But nothing stood out.

  It was possible they thought she might still be on campus, though the officers on the main gate had to have seen the Caddy passing by. But unless they suspected trouble, there would have been no reason to report it. The only issue she could see was that McGarvey or someone had by now discovered that the officer and his car were missing. She’d left the radio on to make sure he wasn’t supposed to make regular radio checks, but there’d been no queries.

  In fact, she was just slightly disappointed McGarvey wasn’t on her tail. She’d figured it was a strong possibility he’d come after her. But then Pete Boylan was in love with him, and maybe she was making it obvious to him this morning.

  She got off at Tysons Corner a few minutes after four and drove in a very roundabout way to the self-storage unit, using the keypad to gain entry. Her small locker was at the rear of the big facility, well out of sight of Leesburg Pike.

  The only noise back here was from the light traffic on the highway. Washington was like New York City in that it almost never completely shut down. And there always seemed to be traffic on the Beltway.

  Her unit was filled with cardboard boxes, mostly of old clothes, dishes, pots and pans, curtains, sheets, blankets, and pillows.

  Making certain no one was coming, she crawled up on top of the pile and, near the back, moved several cartons, finding a large one that contained several layers of old shoes. Near the bottom she pulled out an attaché case, under the leather cover and linings of which were hidden several passports—two of them Canadian, one British, and two American—plus credit cards, driver’s licenses, international permits, and other forms of ID to match each identity. All the passports were well used and well within their expiration dates.

  The cover and linings were formed into patterns that allowed X-ray machines to see through to the inside, but because of the patterns, the existence of the passports a
nd other documents did not show up; instead they blended in.

  One separate envelope contained a thousand dollars in cash, most of it American. In addition, a half dozen contracts for travel magazine pieces were contained in a file folder. Several travel guides for Europe and the Middle East, along with a compact Nikon digital camera and several copies of the magazines Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler filled the case.

  From another carton she took out a small roll-about suitcase that contained enough clothes and personal toiletries to last her for at least two weeks of travel. They were a little musty, though she changed the items every month or so.

  She took the attaché case and roll-about to the Caddy, then came back and put the cartons in place in the pile so it would take someone searching the locker hours to discover something might be missing.

  All that had taken less than twenty minutes before she was driving out the gate and back onto the Pike.

  Traffic had picked up a little, a lot of it garbage trucks, delivery vans from bakeries, and fresh produce suppliers for restaurant prep chefs. By six or six thirty every road from the Beltway into the city would be jam-packed. White noise.

  Again taking care with her tradecraft, she drove back to her apartment in an erratic route, again pretty sure she hadn’t picked up a tail, though every hour that passed, the likelihood that the security officer had managed to call in to report his situation grew exponentially.

  No suspicious cars or vans were parked anywhere near, nor had the Impala she’d parked next door been disturbed so far as she could tell by merely driving by.

  She made two more passes before she parked the Caddy on a side street a block away, and walked back to the Chevy, where she put the attaché case and roll-about into the trunk. Before she drove off, she quickly checked the trunk, under the seats, in the glove compartment, and under the dash for any bugs or homing devices. So far as she could tell, the car was clean.

  Three blocks later she pulled into a service station and filled up the tank. The sign in front advertised that a mechanic was on duty twenty-four hours every day. One of the service doors was open, the bay empty.

  She walked in and the mechanic came over. “Good morning. You have a problem?”

  “Might be leaking a little oil. Wonder if you could put it on the lift and check it out.”

  “That’s a Hertz rental. Have them come out and switch cars.”

  “I don’t have time to screw around with them this morning unless there’s problem. I’m driving up to New York.”

  “Sure, bring it in,” the mechanic said.

  She drove slowly into the bay, and the mechanic raised it on the lift. She started her own inspection of the undercarriage and wheel wells from the rear as he checked under the engine for leaks.

  “Technically, you’re not supposed to be in here. Insurance.”

  “How does it look?” Alex asked, moving forward.

  “I don’t see anything wrong. What makes you think there’s an oil leak?”

  “Just a feeling. My dad was a wrench, and he checked our cars every time we took a trip. Guess it just rubbed off.”

  The mechanic stepped aside as she checked under the engine and in the front wheel wells, again finding nothing suspicious.

  She gave him a smile. “The brakes look good too. What do I owe you?”

  “Make it a twenty and we’re even.”

  When the car was down, she paid him and drove off. The inspection only proved that the Company wasn’t using obvious bugs. The ones the size of a book of matches. But with the right satellite overhead, something as small as the end of a pencil would work, and no casual inspection would have found it.

  Still, she didn’t think the car had been traced to her.

  Instead of driving back to I-495, she took the Leesburg Pike a couple of miles north, where it connected with the Dulles Access Road, traffic definitely picking up as people headed to the airport for their early morning flights.

  She continued to watch her tradecraft, but with the increased traffic she had no need for such drastic action as before. But each time she changed lanes to pass, she watched behind her to make sure the same car behind her wasn’t doing the same thing.

  If someone was following her, she decided they were a lot better than she was.

  * * *

  It was just six when she pulled into the Hertz return lanes, and a man with a clipboard came out, checked the car over, entered the odometer and date and time into a handheld unit, and printed the receipt for her.

  She got her bags from the trunk as another car drove up, and the attendant went to check it in. While no one was paying attention to her, she opened the attaché case and pulled out a passport, Gold Amex card, a few hundred in American dollars, and other items of identification under the name Lois Wheeler, and stashed her Unroth and Alice Walker papers inside.

  The airport was the weakest link in her flight plan. Once they knew she was gone, they would expect her to run. But Dulles and Reagan National were obvious, especially since very few flights to Europe took off until later in the afternoon—most of them between four thirty and seven. It would leave her exposed her at the airport for nearly twelve hours, during which an even casual sweep would pick her up.

  Except for Air France flight 9039 if she could book a last-minute seat.

  She went into the main terminal, where she found a seat by a window and connected on her cell phone with the Air France website. Picking up reservations, she went to 9039 for this morning’s 11:45 A.M. flight to Paris. All but four seats were filled, one of them in tourist and the other three in first class. She booked a first-class flight, paying for it with her American Express card.

  Next she called the Hotel InterContinental and booked a suite for five days, beginning this evening, so that when she arrived, she would have a room.

  It was a bit of irony. The InterContinental was the hotel McGarvey often stayed at.

  FORTY-THREE

  At Dulles, McGarvey watched as Alex passed through security into the international terminal and disappeared down the long walkway into the concourse. So far as he had been able to determine, she had not spotted him behind her from Turkey Run Park down to the Tysons Corner storage facility, over to the apartment building where she’d left the Caddy and had picked up the Impala, or out here to the airport.

  But a couple of times it had been close. She was a damned good field operator, and paranoid as hell now. Rightly so.

  A forensics team had been dispatched to the storage facility and to the Caddy, but those moves were only a moot point designed to appease Blankenship, who was beside himself with anger.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Director, but if you had allowed me to leave four of my people there in the first place, none of this would have happened. As it was, Lloyd could have been shot to death. There’s no telling what this woman is capable of.”

  “She is not the serial killer,” McGarvey had said, trying to calm him down.

  “You bet the life of one of my people on that opinion, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  He phoned Pete next and brought her up to speed. “She made a couple of phone calls in the main terminal here at Dulles, and ten minutes later went to the Air France ticketing counter, where she got her boarding pass. She just now went across to the international terminal.”

  “She’s getting out of Dodge. Paris?”

  “Possibly, but most of those flights don’t leave until later in the afternoon or even early evening.”

  “She won’t want to hang around there that long,” Pete said. “Maybe she’s leading you on a merry chase and plans on going out the back door.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Just a hunch?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then my question stands: What about Schermerhorn? Do we cut him loose, let him walk away?”

  “Hold him until I find out where Alex is off to. We still might need his help.”

  “Are you going after
her?”

  “Don’t have any choice,” McGarvey said.

  He phoned Otto, who sounded excited. “Oh wow, Mac, the decryption is really close. I got Berlin, but it’s just a key, not the real part of Schermerhorn’s message.”

  McGarvey explained where he was and what Alex had done.

  “Give me a sec,” Otto said. He was back in less than fifteen seconds. “Air France flight 9039 leaves for de Gaulle at quarter to twelve this morning. Gets to Paris at noon.”

  “It’d be a last-minute booking, within the past fifteen minutes.”

  Otto was back again in under fifteen seconds. “Lois Wheeler, first-class, five A. Hang on.” Ten seconds later he came back. “I ran the passport number she used—it’s valid—and her Gold Amex just came up also as valid.”

  “Arrange a jet for me at Andrews. I want to be waiting for her.”

  “What about clothes, your passport?”

  “I’ll stop at my apartment on the way.”

  “That’ll take too long with traffic on the Beltway. I’ll send someone over to pack your things and meet you at the plane.”

  “You’ll want to know my fail-safes.”

  Otto chuckled. “This is me you’re talking to, kemo sabe.”

  “Right,” McGarvey said, and started back to where he’d parked his car a few rows from the Hertz return lanes.

  “I know it’s redundant to say, but watch yourself, Mac. If she joins up with George, there’s no telling what they’d be capable of doing. To you or anyone who gets in their way.”

  * * *

  Morning rush-hour traffic was in full swing when McGarvey got back on the Beltway. Joint Base Andrews was just over forty miles away, skirting to the south of Alexandria and across the river. Near Annandale an eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed and crashed on its side, blocking all but one of the eastbound lanes. Traffic slowed to a crawl for nearly forty-five minutes.

  Otto called him. “Are you caught in that mess?”

  “Right in the middle of it.”

  “I have a Gulfstream standing by with its crew, and your things are already on board. Do you want to get off the highway somewhere? I can send a chopper for you.”