The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  EIGHTEEN

  McGarvey telephoned Otto Rencke at his office in the OHB, the Old Headquarters Building at Langley. His official title was Director of Special Projects, the only one anyone could think to give the computer and mathematics genius, who most of the time was in a cyberworld of his own.

  His slight frame topped with an overlarge head and long, out-of-control, frizzy red hair marked him as an odd duck, and his generally sloppy appearance—unlaced sneakers, torn jeans, and dirty T-shirts— convinced most people who met him for the first time that he was probably a street person rather than one of the most powerful and feared men inside the Company.

  Fact was that the entire national intelligence computer system, from the CIA and NSA to the Defense Intelligence Agency and FBI’s mainframe, was by and large Rencke’s creation. He was the only man on the planet who completely understood how the vastly complicated networks actually functioned, and how with a few strokes on his keyboard he could bring the entire system to a screeching halt.

  “Oh wow, Mac, did Liz call you this morning?” Rencke gushed.

  “About a half hour ago,” McGarvey said. “She wanted to know if we’d talked about what’s going on. Sounds like panic on the seventh floor.”

  The DCI’s office was on the top floor of the OHB just down the hall from the Watch, where five analysts plus a watch commander kept tabs on everything happening in the world in real time, 24/7. All the doors were kept open up there because Dick Adkins and most of the directors before him wanted to know what was happening at all times. Adkins was in the habit of wandering up and down the hall, peering into the various offices and centers, especially the Watch.

  If there were any hint of trouble up there, everyone would feel it.

  “No one knows what’s going on. Bob Snow says he’s working the problem, but so far his people are coming up empty-handed and the prez is making noises.” Snow was the Deputy Director of Intelligence, the directorate that was supposed to figure things out.

  “I’m coming up to Washington this afternoon, I want you to set up a meeting with Dick, and with Carleton Patterson and Howard McCann.” Patterson was the CIA’s general counsel and McCann was the Deputy Director of Operations.

  “You know something, kemo sabe?”

  “I’m not sure,” McGarvey said. He glanced up as Katy came to the door, but she didn’t say anything. “I want you to track down a Russian, ex-KGB supposedly working out of Tokyo. All I have is the name Alexandar and a dead e-mail address. He may have hired a husband-wife team of shooters—former NIS—who did the hit. Apparently he’s got money, which means he’s probably a player.”

  “Holy shit,” Rencke said quietly. “You got their names?”

  “Huk. Soon and Kim.”

  “A little bird’s been whispering secrets in your ear?”

  Katy turned and disappeared around the corner.

  “I’ll explain when I get up there,” McGarvey said. “I don’t think that you’d believe me if I told you over the phone. In the meantime see what you can come up with.”

  “Most of my programs have been pretty quiet lately,” Rencke said. “Which direction do you want me to go?”

  “The shooters are freelance, so maybe they’ve taken other jobs,” McGarvey said. He was thinking on the run, but the moment Pak had denied North Korea’s involvement, he’d had the odd thought that somebody might be taking a run at Kim Jong Il’s regime from the outside, though he couldn’t think why.

  “I’m on it.”

  “Look for a pattern.”

  Rencke was silent for just a moment. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I can think of a couple of possibilities right from the get-go if the idea is to completely isolate the bastards, if that’s what you had in mind.”

  “Exactly,” McGarvey said.

  “Bad stuff, Mac,” Rencke said. “They might actually bring the Dear Leader down, but it’d be the biggest mess since the Nazis invaded Poland. All of us would be in it.”

  “Yeah,” McGarvey said. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  “Can you get up to Sarasota within the hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll book you on the flight leaving at quarter after eleven. You’ll have your e-ticket on your cell phone by the time you get there.”

  Upstairs in the bedroom Katy had pulled out his hanging bag and was packing. She was brittle. “How long will you be gone this time? I need to know so I can pack for you.”

  “A day or two,” McGarvey said.

  There’d been plenty of other moments just like this one. In fact early in their marriage she’d given him an ultimatum—her or the CIA. He’d chosen neither and instead had run to Switzerland where he’d hid from everyone, including himself, while their daughter had grown up without a father because he’d been too stupid to know when to shut his mouth, when to bend with the wind, and when not to overreact.

  “Right,” Katy said. “Warm or cold climes?”

  “For now, just Washington.”

  She looked up, her lips compressed, a flinty expression in her normally soft eyes. “Is it the thing between China and North Korea?”

  McGarvey nodded.

  She glanced toward the door to the stair hall. “He didn’t stay long. Was he one of ours asking for your help?”

  The other thing he’d learned the hard way with Katy was not to try to protect her by lying. Her life had been in jeopardy more than once because of what and who he was. She deserved to know what might be coming her way.

  “He was a North Korean intelligence officer. They want me to prove they didn’t order the assassination.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You’re joking,” she said. But then she shook her head. “But you never joke about things like that.”

  She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, he could read it in her tone of voice and her body language.

  “I wish I was.”

  “Kirk, you can’t seriously believe those people. Kim Jong Il is nuts and his finger is on the actual nuclear trigger.”

  “I don’t know what to believe yet, sweetheart, that’s why I’m going up to Washington to talk it over with Dick.” He went across the room and took her in his arms. She was shivering. “And that’s all I’m going to do.”

  “For now,” she said, parting. “But whatever happens take care of yourself and come back to me. I don’t look good in black and I’m too young to be a widow and anyway there’s only ever been you.”

  Washington

  NINETEEN

  McGarvey’s flight was late getting into Dulles, and it was a few minutes after six by the time he got out to CIA headquarters, after-work traffic terrible on the Beltway. Rencke had left word for him at the visitor’s gate, and although he didn’t recognize any of the uniformed officers, they were expecting him and he was given an unrestricted pass.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Director,” one of them said.

  “Just for a visit,” McGarvey said. He put his visitor’s pass on the rental car’s dash and drove the rest of the way up, parking in front of the OHB.

  Rencke was waiting inside the main arrivals hall, his red frizzy hair flying all over the place. When he was excited he tended to hop from one foot to the other, which he was doing now. But none of the security officers or the departing employees streaming past paid him the slightest attention. They were used to him.

  He gave McGarvey a big hug. “They’re waiting for you upstairs,” he gushed. “We can talk on the way.”

  “You came up with something?” McGarvey asked, falling in beside Rencke.

  “Yeah, but it makes no sense unless you’re going to tell me that someone from North Korea paid you a little visit.”

  McGarvey was startled. This was over the top even for Rencke. “How the hell did you come up with that?”

  Rencke grinned. “You called me with some stuff you couldn’t have known any other way.” He laughed. “Who was it?”

  “Colonel Pak Hae, State Security.”

  “He�
�s claiming Pyongyang is being framed and they want you to prove it because last year you saved Beijing a big embarrassment, and you’ve got pull,” Rencke said. “Is that right?”

  McGarvey nodded. Traffic in the first-floor corridor, which also served as the CIA’s museum, was beginning to thin out.

  Rencke was delighted. “Am I good, or what?”

  “What do you have for me?”

  “First of all your Russian is probably Alexandar Turov, once upon a time a general in the KGB. His specialty was arranging wet work, mokrie dela. He was one of the heavy hitters, you know. Never actually played the violin, but he was a damned good conductor.”

  The name was vaguely familiar to McGarvey. “I don’t think our paths ever crossed, even indirectly.”

  “They wouldn’t have. So far as I can tell he’s just about always been a behind-the-scenes guy. But he’s a dealmaker. Made a ton of money during and just after perestroika, but for some reason he disappeared from Moscow about eight years ago and maybe set himself up in Tokyo. There’re few hints that the FSB sent people after him, to try to get back some of the money he stole, but they disappeared.”

  “Is he on any of our lists?”

  “Nope. He’s just another Russian security officer who turned entrepreneur,” Rencke said. “They’re a dime a dozen. And that’s the good news. The bad is that there’s actually nothing solid that puts him in Tokyo or anywhere else for that matter. He’s apparently gone deep, and he’s damn good. But I’ll keep on it, and I’ll bag him sooner or later.”

  “What else?”

  “The two ex-NIS shooters aren’t on anyone’s list. As far as South Korean LE knows they’re clean.”

  “Did you get an address?”

  “Yeah, but there’s no telling if it’s legitimate. No phone or computer records in their names, but I’m still working on it.”

  “Could mean they’re hiding something,” McGarvey said. “What else?”

  “There might be a connection that I’ve got my darlings chewing on, but there’s no color yet,” Rencke said. His little darlings were his computers and from time to time their monitors changed color, sometimes going to lavender, which meant that one of the programs that was digesting data came up with a threat to U.S. interests. The deeper the color, the more serious the threat.

  “With the shooters?”

  “Six months ago Japanese Senator Hirobumi Tokugawa was gunned down on the way to his mistress’s apartment in Tokyo. Possibly a pair of shooters, but no arrests have been made. Then three months ago South Korea’s deputy ambassador to China, Roh Tae-Hung, was shot to death along with a call girl in Paris. Possibly two shooters, one of whom might have impersonated the call girl to get into the man’s room. No suspects, no arrests.”

  “Where’s the connection?”

  “Besides the possible husband and wife team, both men were soft on North Korea’s nuclear program,” Rencke said. “Lots of anti-American sentiment out there. Some folks would like to see the country put back together. Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and rockets combined with South Korea’s money and manufacturing capabilities would make it a powerful force in the region.”

  “Someone doesn’t want to see that happen,” McGarvey said. “But what about General Ho?”

  “He may not have gone to Pyongyang to talk the North Koreans out of their nuclear program,” Rencke said. “The Chinese aren’t saying. He could have been there to offer Kim Jong Il China’s support.”

  They stopped at the elevators. “What’s the Russian’s motive?” McGarvey asked. “Can’t be money if he’s as rich as you say he is. And if he manages to start a war, Tokyo will be on the hit list.”

  Rencke shrugged. “Maybe it’s his ego. Maybe he’s in the game because it amuses him. And if he still has some solid connections with the FSB he’d have plenty of warning to get out of Dodge before Dear Leader sent a nuke across the pond.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “There always is,” Rencke said, a momentary look of weariness crossing his features. “I’ll see what else I can come up with.”

  They took the elevator up to the third floor, where Rencke got off. “When are you going over there?”

  “I don’t know,” McGarvey said. He handed the manila envelope to Rencke. “This is what Colonel Pak brought out for me.”

  Rencke’s eyes widened. “He actually came to Casey Key, to your house?”

  “Yup,” McGarvey said. “I’ll come down to see you when I’m finished upstairs.”

  TWENTY

  The DCI’s secretary, Dhalia Swanfeld, a pleasant-looking but formal older woman, looked up with a little smile as Kirk McGarvey entered Adkins’s outer office. She’d been McGarvey’s secretary when he was the director of operations, and had advanced with him during his short tenure as director of the CIA.

  “Good evening, Mr. Director,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “How are you?” McGarvey asked.

  “Just fine, sir. They’re waiting for you inside.”

  McGarvey glanced at the door. “What’s their mood?”

  “Curious why you’re here now of all times,” she said. “But a little relieved, I think.” She picked up the phone and announced him.

  Dick Adkins, reading glasses perched on the end of his narrow nose, was seated at his desk, facing the DDO Howard McCann and Carleton Patterson, the former New York corporate attorney who’d been the CIA’s general counsel on a temporary basis for ten years.

  They all looked up when McGarvey walked in.

  “Good to see you, Kirk,” Adkins said, rising. He was a slightly built man a few years older than McGarvey with a pale complexion and light blue eyes that showed he was under a lot of tension.

  McGarvey waved him back. “I’m not so sure you’re going to be so glad after I tell you why I’m here.” He sat down. “Carleton.”

  Patterson nodded. “How’re you enjoying retirement? Bored yet?”

  “Sometimes,” McGarvey admitted.

  “You picked a hell of a time to show up,” McCann said, glaring. He counted himself a modern spymaster, and he’d never liked McGarvey or any man of action. Finesse was the new motto of the directorate, which had even been renamed the National Clandestine Service.

  “Why’s that, Howard?” McGarvey asked. “Because of the North Korean thing, or have you gotten yourself worked up about something else?” He didn’t much care for McCann either.

  “Christ,” McCann swore. “You’re out. Go home.”

  Adkins held up a hand. “Wait a minute, Howard,” he said. “Okay, Kirk, what did you bring for us?”

  “I assume that the president is talking to the Chinese in greater depth than we’re hearing on the news.”

  Adkins nodded. “He’s buying some time for us to figure out what the hell Kim Jong Il is playing at. We know the guy’s stark raving mad, but this makes no sense.”

  “It doesn’t to them either,” McGarvey said. “North Korean intelligence contacted me this morning. Said they didn’t order the assassination. It was done by a pair of South Korean ex-NIS shooters working for us.”

  McCann was furious. “Goddamnit, Dick, I told you the shit would start raining down around our heads unless you convinced the president that we need to take the son of a bitch down before the region goes nuclear.”

  “It wasn’t us,” Adkins told McGarvey. “But if Kim Jong Il’s people believe it, why’d they come to you?”

  “They want me to come over to Pyongyang and prove they didn’t do it.”

  McCann was struck speechless for the moment.

  “Moderates?” Patterson asked.

  McGarvey nodded. “They don’t like Kim Jong Il either. And they’re desperate to somehow convince Beijing that someone else was behind the kill. They think I’m the one for the job.”

  “That’s quite impossible, of course,” Patterson said. “You do understand that if you tried to help them it would be construed as an act of treason against our gove
rnment. Even if they’re telling the truth, and Kim Jong Il wasn’t behind it, you couldn’t get yourself involved.”

  “He’s already involved,” McCann said sharply. “He’s listened to the bastards, and he’s come here to convince us . . . of what?”

  “The shooters were hired by an ex-KGB general, Alexandar Turov, who’s living in Tokyo.”

  “The Russians?” Adkins asked. He too was incredulous.

  “No,” McGarvey said. “Apparently he’s just an expediter working for somebody else.”

  “Who?” Adkins asked

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you believed your bosom buddy, is that it?” McCann demanded. “Is that why you didn’t report this to the Bureau’s counterespionage people—you’ve got pals over there too—and let them take it from here?”

  “Because I believed him,” McGarvey said.

  “No,” Adkins said. “I agree with Carleton 100 percent. I’ll get you together with Bob Everhardt and someone from the Korean desk to debrief you and afterward we’ll see where we’re at.” Everhardt was chief of the DO’s counterintelligence staff, and one of the people McGarvey had hired as DDO.

  “In the meantime we’re faced with a situation that go could nuclear at anytime.”

  “That’s for the politicians to work out,” Adkins countered.

  “Which is only possible if they have good intel,” McGarvey shot back. This was about the reaction he thought he’d get. But he had to make the try.

  McCann took out his cell phone. “I’ll get security up here to arrest him until we can straighten this shit out.”

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” McGarvey said mildly, getting up.

  McCann glared up at him. “You won’t get out of the building.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Howard, leave it,” Adkins said. He turned back to McGarvey. “Ball’s in your court, Kirk. You know what’s at stake, professionally as well as personally.”

  “I’ve always known,” McGarvey said, and he walked out.