End Game

by David Hagberg

  “No pencil, no pen,” Otto said. Though he’d played around with superthin tablets that could be rolled up or folded and still record sounds and video, this was only plain paper.

  “The last I heard, it had been moved, and only a handful of people on the ground knew where it was, and just about everyone was frantic to find out.” She took a drink, her hand steady. “But that was more than ten years ago.”

  She knocked back her drink and looked for the waiter.

  “Why don’t we have some dinner first?” Otto said.

  “Fuck you,” she said, but not harshly.

  Pete had warned that sometimes an interrogation would come to a dead end, and then you’d have to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

  “What if there’s no rabbit?” Otto had asked.

  “There’s usually at least one right under your nose.”

  “Have you ever heard of the sculpture Kryptos, over at the CIA?”

  She nodded. “I went over one time with Bob, and we were given a tour. It’s in one of the courtyards, as I remember, some sort of a coded message chiseled into the plates.”

  “Four plates, actually, three of which have been decrypted, but the fourth has stumped all the code breakers until a few days ago.”

  The woman just looked at him.

  “We think it has something to do with what was hidden in the hills above Kirkuk.”

  “That’s not possible. I remember we were told that the sculpture was dedicated in the early nineties.”

  “The message on the fourth panel was changed in the past five years or so,” Otto said. “Would you like to know what it says?”

  “This is bullshit,” the woman said. But she nodded.

  Otto read from the paper. “‘And God said let there be light, and there was light, and the light was visible from horizon to horizon. All was changed, all was never the same. And God said let there be progress.’”

  The waiter came and asked if Ms. Fegan would like another drink, but she declined and he left.

  “The last line was: ‘And there was peace.’” Otto looked up at her. “About what you guys were working for, wasn’t it? A reason to take Saddam out, so Iraq could be rebuilt?”

  “But it didn’t work out that way, did it? In more ways than one. And now we’re stuck with one hell of a big problem no one knows how to fix.”

  “What’s buried out there?”

  “Figure it out for yourself,” the woman said as she got her purse and started to rise.

  “Someone thinks they know, and is willing to kill for it. So far at least eight people are dead.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “I think I know who moved it and why, but at least tell me who buried it in the first place.”

  She was frightened, and she started to move away, but Otto jumped up and caught her arm.

  “Why did you agree to talk to me in the first place if you weren’t willing to tell me something I already didn’t know?”

  “Leave me alone,” she said. She pulled her arm away and scurried downstairs.

  Otto left a fifty-dollar bill on the table and followed her just as she was leaving through the front door.

  She turned and spotted him, then darted out into traffic at the same time a black Range Rover accelerated down 15 E Street NW, hitting her full on, tossing her body in front of a taxi coming in the opposite direction.

  The SUV continued up toward Union Station, its license plate light out.

  FIFTY-SIX

  It was seven in the evening local when their Gulfstream landed at Ben Gurion and taxied to an Israeli Air Force hangar. As soon as the engines spooled down, the wheels chocked by two ground crewmen, the hatch was opened and the stairs lowered.

  “We’ve been instructed to remain aboard,” Roper called back from the cockpit.

  “As soon as possible, refuel and work out a flight plan for Ramstein,” McGarvey said. “If we’re not back in twenty-four hours, leave without us.”

  A dark-green Mercedes C-Class pulled up, and a short slightly built man wearing khaki slacks and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, got out from the driver’s side and came aboard.

  “Mr. Director, welcome to Tel Aviv. My name is Lev Sharon, and we met once a few years ago just before you moved off the seventh floor.”

  They shook hands. “You’re Ariel’s son?” McGarvey asked.

  “Nephew, actually,” he glanced briefly at Alex. “The fuel truck should be here in the next five or ten minutes, so we should be able to get you turned around and out of here well within the hour. But we’re curious as to why you came, unannounced.”

  “We called ahead for permission to land, and were given it.”

  “Yes, of course. But this is an unscheduled visit, and you certainly didn’t come as tourists. So we’d like to know why you’re here.”

  “Are you still working for the Mossad?”

  Sharon was young, but his shoulders were already sloped, his face filled with lines as if he were a man in his sixties, and not in his late thirties. “I can tell you this, of course. We’re all friends here. Yes, I am.”

  “Then you have heard about the problems we’ve had at Langley.”

  “We heard some back-burner rumors, that there may have been a murder on your campus.”

  “Four.”

  Again Sharon glanced at Alex, who stared back. “What does this have to do with Israel?”

  “We’ve traced a former CIA NOC to a Turkish Airlines flight from Paris scheduled to land in about an hour,” Alex said. “She’s traveling under the work name Lois Wheeler.”

  Sharon’s expression of mild interest did not change. “Yes?”

  “She sent a message through VIP World Travel on the Champs-Élysées to a man she only indentified as George, who she wanted to meet. He replied she should come.”

  “What does this have to do with us?”

  “The travel agency is a tool of the Mossad—has been for years, since the Eichmann business—and there was a pro phrase she had been instructed to use if she wanted to initiate contact.” A pro word or phrase was a code of the sort Alex had used.

  “Does the CIA have any idea who this George might be?” Sharon asked McGarvey.

  “We think he works, or may have at one time worked, for the Mossad. We’re simply following a lead to see where it takes us.”

  “And here you are. And what do you expect will happen?”

  “We’d like to meet the flight without her knowing we’re here, and find out who she meets and where she goes.”

  Sharon, who’d been leaning over the back of one of the seats, abruptly turned around and got off the airplane.

  “That didn’t go so well,” Alex said, but McGarvey held up a hand for her to keep still.

  From where he sat, he could see Sharon standing next to his car. The Israeli was talking to someone on a cell phone.

  At one point Sharon looked up and spotted McGarvey in the window. He turned away.

  “He doesn’t know what to do with us,” McGarvey said. “He’s called for orders.”

  “What do you think?” Alex asked.

  “He’ll either let us in, or he’ll order us to leave.”

  “If the latter?”

  “We’ll give Pete the heads-up, and have the chief of station here meet the plane.”

  “Then we lose.”

  “We’ll have gotten their attention,” McGarvey said noncommittally. He was more interested in her reaction than in Sharon’s or the Mossad’s. But her expression was neutral.

  Sharon got off the phone and came back aboard. “We’ll see if someone meets the plane and pulls your NOC aside when she presents herself at immigration.”

  “George?” Alex asked.

  “It won’t be one of us. No one knows who George is. Nor was any message received from the travel agency. We’re just as mystified as you are.”

  “We’d like to be there,” McGarvey said.

  “Are you armed?”

  “Yes.”
/>   “Your weapons stay here,” Sharon said. “I want your word on it.”

  McGarvey took out his Walther PPK and laid it on the seat table.

  Sharon smiled. “We wondered if you still carried the Walther.”

  “An old friend.”

  * * *

  The Turkish Airlines flight arrived at the gate in Terminal 3 exactly on time, eight minutes later. McGarvey and Alex watched an overhead monitor one level up from the immigration hall as the first-class and business passengers began emerging from the arrivals gate.

  Sharon and a female introduced as Sheila, in jeans and a khaki military shirt, the sleeves rolled up and buttoned above the elbows, waited with them.

  When those passengers were off and the tourist class began unloading, Sheila stepped up. “Maybe she’s not on the flight.”

  “She’s a professional; she’s biding her time,” Sharon said.

  “She got a reply from George, so she’s expecting someone will be meeting her,” Alex said. “Could be she thinks she’ll be assassinated.”

  Sharon was surprised. “Here, in the airport?” he asked.

  “No, wherever George is waiting for her.”

  “There may be no George,” Sharon said.

  “Then who answered her message at the travel agency?”

  “I have no idea,” Sharon said. He turned to McGarvey. “And neither do my signals people who monitor such traffic. Which either means she was lying, or your information is unreliable, or the reply came from Paris.”

  “Either that or your signals people are unreliable or you’re lying,” Alex shot back.

  “Lev?” Sheila said.

  “I thought your people were more efficient than that,” Alex said.

  Pete came from the gate area.

  “It’s her,” McGarvey said.

  She was tucked in behind a knot of a dozen tourist passengers, and she glanced up at the ceiling camera and winked.

  “Resourceful woman,” Sharon said. “She knows someone is watching her.”

  “George,” Alex said. “How long before she’s through with immigration and your people grab her?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes. Depending on how fast her luggage is delivered.”

  “She only has a purse and a carry-on.”

  “Ten minutes,” Sharon said.

  “Good, because I need to take a pee,” Alex said. “Would you like to come and watch?” she asked Sheila.

  “I’d be delighted,” the Mossad operative said.

  “Not such a good idea,” McGarvey said.

  “Go with her,” Sharon told the woman. “I’m not having anyone wander around the airport unescorted this morning. Especially no one from the CIA.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Cameras were everywhere in the terminal, and as Pete approached the passport lane, she was certain Mac and Alex were watching a monitor somewhere near. The issue was who else was here, waiting for her.

  She got in line, and when it was her turn, the uniformed officer merely glanced at her passport, stamped it, and handed it back. He hadn’t paid any attention to her photograph, nor did he ask her the purpose of her trip.

  On the other side, she joined the line for one of the customs agents to check her bag and purse. An older man in civilian clothes emerged from an office to the left and came to her.

  “Ms. Lois Wheeler?” he asked politely.

  “Yes, are you George?” Pete asked. He was about the right age, but he didn’t seem to have the kind of fire in his eyes she figured George would. Especially if he were the killer, or the man who had directed the killer—or killers.

  “No,” the man said. “If you would just come with me, I have some questions for you.”

  A few of the other people in line were curious, but most of the passengers looked away. What was happening was none of their business.

  “May I see some identification?”

  The man pulled out an identification wallet and showed his badge. He was airport security, but she didn’t quite catch his name before he pocketed the wallet. “Ms. Wheeler?”

  Pete glanced up at one of the cameras in the ceiling and followed the man across the hall to the windowless office that was furnished only with a plain metal desk and a couple of chairs.

  The security officer took her bag and purse and quickly searched them before he motioned to one of the chairs and sat down across from her. “May I see your passport, please?”

  Pete handed it to him, and he studied it, comparing the photograph to her face.

  “This is not yours.”

  “No, it was last-minute in Paris, and the amateur who’d come highly recommended did a botched job.”

  “What is your real name?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I assume you’re here representing George, which of course isn’t his real name.”

  “Give me a name that will be of some use.”

  “Alex. George and I knew each other some years ago.”

  “Yet you thought I was George.”

  “No, I was merely testing the waters. I wanted to see what your reaction might be.”

  The security officer stared at her. “Why did you come here?”

  “I sent a message to George and he replied: Come.”

  “Yes, but why do you want to see him? What is so urgent to you now, after all these years?”

  Pete suppressed a smile. There was a George after all, and he was somewhere here in Israel. Alex had been right. “There have been a series of incidents at Langley, and in Athens and yesterday in Paris. I need some answers.”

  Again, the man playing the role of an airport security officer hesitated. “Give me your work name.”

  “Alex Unroth. What do I call you?”

  “Mr. Smith will do for now.”

  He took a small tablet from his jacket pocket, brought up an e-mail address, and entered the Unroth name. A minute later he glanced up. “You were a member of the CIA’s Alpha Seven team in Iraq.”

  “That’s right. I’m the last one.”

  “Last one?”

  “The others are dead. Murdered. It’s something George knows about.”

  “And you think he is somehow responsible?”

  “I do.”

  Smith nodded, a little sadness in the gesture. “That said, you came here, which means you are a very brave woman or a stupid one. And I only say that because if you truly understood the importance of what happened in Iraq, you would have disappeared. With your skills, you could have gone very deep. But then you’re not really Alex Unroth. In fact, your real name is Pete Boylan, and I expect Alex directed you in what to say and how to act. Perhaps it was even you who sent the message from Paris.”

  “Will you take me to him?”

  “Of course, if that’s what you really want. But I think you will be disappointed, because you will not find the answers you came looking for. But you might find some you don’t want to hear.”

  As Smith got to his feet, the door opened.

  Pete looked over her shoulder. A man in civilian clothes who she had never seen before was there, McGarvey right behind him. Mac winked and she grinned, but the man in the doorway did not seem happy.

  Smith said something in Hebrew. He, too, was angry.

  The man in the doorway stepped aside, and Smith followed him out of the office. Mac came in and closed the door.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “So far so good, but I’m glad to see you. Where’s Alex?”

  “She took off. Mossad’s looking for her. What’d you tell this guy?”

  “That I was looking for George. He checked with someone online, and he knew my real name. But he said he would take me to George if that’s what I really wanted. Said I would be disappointed. But how’d Alex give you the slip?”

  “We worked it out ahead of time. Soon as we saw you wink at the camera, you had to know we were watching. She went to the bathroom with her female minder, and got away.”

  “
She didn’t hurt the woman?”

  “Not seriously except for her pride. She left her half-unconscious in one of the stalls.”

  “But why?”

  “I think this guy who pulled you out of the line might take you to George, or someone claiming to be George, but they’re going to want more out of you, and us, than they’re willing to give. Alex will try to make her own contact.”

  “You trust her?”

  “No other game in town,” McGarvey said. “She’s the only one who can ID George.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then bent down and kissed Pete on her cheek just beside her right ear.

  She looked up, surprised.

  “These guys are scared shitless; it’s the only reason I let Alex go. Whatever song and dance they give us, we’re going along with it. I think our lives could depend on it.”

  Lev Sharon came back with Smith.

  “I think we have it straight now,” Sharon said. “You’ll be taken to see General Yarviv. He played the role as an adviser for Aman during the Iraq war.” Aman was the Israeli military intelligence directorate.

  “Be careful with what questions you ask, Mr. Director,” Smith said. “If you step over the line, you could be subject to immediate arrest and prosecution under the Israel Secrets Act.”

  “Don’t threaten me and my people,” McGarvey shot back. “We’re dealing with a serial killer on campus. Some kind of a psychopath, and at this point everything has led us here to George—if indeed General Yarviv is the guy who came to Alpha Seven in the hills above Kirkuk.”

  “This isn’t the United States, you son of a bitch,” Smith said, his temper at the edge.

  “Do you want to know how the four guys at Langley were killed?”

  “I don’t care—”

  “The same way George killed his victims on the oil installations outside of Kirkuk. He ripped out their carotid arteries, and as they were bleeding to death, he chewed off their faces like some animal.”

  “You have no proof linking the general to those acts.”

  “If I find it, and the reasons, you won’t dare bring this to a court of law. The Iraqis were soldiers, but it was before any declaration of war had been given. And there was no reason to kill the Alpha Seven team just to keep them quiet. They’d kept their part of the bargain. They were simply trying to forget and to survive.”