Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “Plenty,” Estes said. He took a bottle of cheap Chianti with a screw top out of the bag. “Do you have a couple of glasses?”

  “No.”

  “Never found the need when I was in grad school.” He took the top off, tossed it in a wastebasket and perched on the edge of one of the desks, piled high with newspapers and magazines. “I think I got it figured out, or at least some of it.” He took a deep drink of the wine and held the bottle out. “Alcohol kills the germs.”

  Otto took a drink. The wine was terrible—not much more than vinegar—but he wasn’t a connoisseur. He straddled one of the chairs, took another deep draft and handed the bottle back. “I never found the need for grad school.”

  “So I’ve been told. Makes you and McGarvey quite the pair. The geek and the shooter.”

  “I’ve always preferred nerd.”

  “Okay, so I think we have two things going at the same time. Neither of them works with the other, except for the fact they want McGarvey out of the picture for whatever reason.”

  “Because in the end he’s the one who’ll figure it out and run the bad guys down.”

  “Makes you a target too—’cause you’re the one who’ll actually unravel the thing and set your friend in the right direction,” Estes said. He drank more wine and passed the bottle back to Otto, who was already feeling a slight buzz.

  “If you’re here coming with something new, you’d better start checking your own six,” Otto said. He took another drink. Louise was going to kill him.

  “Six?”

  “Like the hands on a clock. Your six—it’s your back.”

  “You’re right, maybe I should start watching my six.”

  “Either that or have housekeeping assign you some muscle.”

  “A bodyguard?”

  “Yes.”

  Estes laughed. He’d been drinking earlier and was already half-drunk. “Maybe I’ll need two—one for my six and the other for my twelve. You see, the problem is one team of bad guys is coming from your mid-level spooks, and those people are sincerely motivated.”

  “To do what?”

  “To discredit Weaver, what else?”

  “Okay, we already figured that part out. But discredit him how? This guy is like an angry duck—water slides right off his back. Has from the start.”

  “I don’t know that part yet. But I can think of a couple of scenarios that could work.”

  “Like?”

  “Like North Korea putting up a decent-sized satellite in low orbit.”

  “It’s already happened.”

  “Yeah, but then telling us they’ve finally weaponized one of the nukes, and have mated it to an ICBM,” Estes said. “No matter what Weaver does it’ll be wrong. Hell, no one in the Pentagon likes the guy. He’d come out looking like a jerk.”

  “Especially when we find out that the Koreans were lying.”

  “Disinformation.”

  “What else?” Otto asked.

  Estes took another drink and passed the bottle to Otto. “It leaks that Israeli forces are going to take Tehran completely out of the picture, because of our nuclear agreement.”

  “It’d have to be credible.”

  “Not as long as it was made public to the American people. The Jewish voters would applaud the plan, while the doves would hate it.”

  “And the indifferents wouldn’t give a damn. Another no-win situation for Weaver.”

  “China and Taiwan,” Estes said.

  “Pakistan and India.”

  “Russia and Syria, or Poland or Afghanistan again.”

  “Or maybe back to Cuba or even Mexico,” Otto said. He took another drink, and this time he was really feeling the buzz.

  “We’d have to react to something like that,” Estes said. “And something like that—especially so close to our border—could easily spin totally out of control.”

  “Only to the position where Weaver was discredited,” Otto said. “Point made, case closed. Except someone somewhere could make a mistake, leaving Weaver with his finger on the actual trigger.”

  “I didn’t much like the notion when I came up with it,” Estes said. “But that’s only half of the equation.”

  “You said one team of mid-level spooks. What about a second team?”

  Estes took a drink and handed the bottle back to Otto. “It finally came to me when I started to think in terms of Nixon and Watergate.”

  “He was afraid of the Democrats. They were the enemy, so he had to spy on them, find out what they were doing.”

  “Even Nixon had his loyalists—the true believers—who were willing to do anything for the boss,” Estes said. “Just like Weaver does. Anything.”

  The monitors were blank, but Otto’s darlings were picking up on everything, including Estes’s facial gestures and body language and even the stress levels in his voice. It was a unique situation, and Otto was curious to see how well his programs did separating the beginnings of inebriation from sober stress.

  “Just the opposite of what the people on Weaver’s team in the White House want to do,” Estes said. “They’re trying to build the reputation of their president. Do something—or somethings—to make him the hero.”

  “Like Obama giving the order to take out bin Laden,” Otto said. “But he never really got full credit for the decision.”

  “It was too late for him. The die in his case had already been cast. He had a reputation—deserved or not—and ordering the takedown of UBL was too little, too late to have the full effect.”

  “But Weaver is brand-new. The problem is, what does his team want him to do?”

  “Act presidential, of course,” said Estes.

  “An act of terrorism, designed by them, that Weaver will quash, making him a hero,” Otto said. “Like what?” he asked, though already several scenarios were running through his head.

  “Doesn’t matter, except that it’d have to be pretty big, and Weaver’s people would have to let law enforcement know what was about to go down in time to stop it,” Estes said. “Something like: ‘The White House has it from usually reliable sources that an attack is going to be made on such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time.’”

  “The Company would be in the loop, and it wouldn’t take us long to figure out it was another Watergate dirty trick, and blow the whistle.”

  “It’d be too late by then, so it wouldn’t matter. Weaver would come out the hero. The savior of his beloved people.”

  “Lots could go wrong.”

  “You’re telling me,” Estes said. “So what do we do about it?”

  “What’s your confidence level?”

  Estes laughed. “Are you kidding me? I’m just as big a nerd as you. I come up with this shit as an exercise in what-ifs. It’s up to you guys to figure out the possibilities.”

  * * *

  “Dr. Estes may be right,” the computer told Otto after the Harvard doc was gone.

  “Confidence level?”

  “Indeterminate with my present information.”

  “But?”

  “If LE is notified too late, or if they are slow to respond to the proposed attack, the event could occur.”

  “But?” Otto asked again.

  “It would depend on the abilities and determination of the person or persons hired to carry out the attack,” the computer said. “Or attacks.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  McGarvey sat behind the wheel of a BMW 5-series parked in front of the Watergate complex in a spot from where he could watch the entrances to the Next Whisky Bar as well as the building where Susan Fischer lived.

  For the moment, using the clutch in a car with a standard transmission was a little awkward for him, but relearning that skill was high on his list. Franklin had warned him about irritating the stump again, allowing it to completely heal first.

  Pete had taken the initiative and gotten him the Bimmer with an automatic, to replace the old Toyota SUV he’d driven earlier, and Otto had outfitted it with a homing beaco
n, an advanced GPS system that could not be back-traced and a voice-operated computer/phone system that was connected through Otto to the CIA’s mainframe.

  It was almost like the cars James Bond drove in the movies of the sixties and seventies.

  “You might as well take advantage of the technology,” Pete had told him when she’d picked him up from the hospital with the car.

  McGarvey had seen the utility of it, and the humor. “No machine guns or ejection seats?”

  Pete had seemed nervous, but she’d smiled at that question. “Otto’s working on it.”

  A smoked-silver XJS Jaguar passed where McGarvey was waiting, and drove to the entrance into the underground parking garage. The woman behind the wheel was Fischer. He recognized her from the photographs Otto had sent him.

  The barrier rose as she approached and she disappeared inside.

  McGarvey waited until she was just out of sight, and the barrier starting to come down, before he drove to the entrance.

  “Fischer just entered the parking garage at the Watergate,” he said. “I need access.”

  Even before the barrier was fully in place it rose again, and he drove down the ramp into the garage, his headlights out.

  Fischer turned left at the second level. McGarvey hung back until she pulled in to a slot almost directly across from two elevators, and he parked a half-dozen places away.

  She remained in her car, and for a minute McGarvey thought that she had spotted him.

  His phone chimed softly. It was Otto.

  “She’s talking on her encrypted phone.”

  “Any idea to whom?” McGarvey asked.

  “No, dammit, and I can’t even tell you if it’s a local call. Could be she’s talking to someone in Bangladesh.”

  “Or the Pentagon.”

  Otto was frustrated. “My darlings are working on it, but I designed the system too damned well,” he said. “Is she alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, watch yourself. Whatever team she’s on, if Estes is right, taking you out is still priority one.”

  Otto had phoned Mac with the bare bones of Estes’s take on the situation. One group wanted to discredit the president while another wanted to make a hero out of him. But both were playing a dangerous game that could spin totally out of control. And the fact that both wanted to assassinate a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency spoke volumes about their willingness to act.

  Fischer got out of her car and went to the elevators. She was of medium height, slight build, with short dark hair. She was dressed in jeans and a yellow top, the long sleeves pushed above her elbows. When she reached the elevators and pushed the button for her floor, she glanced over her shoulder, the way she had driven in.

  Her face was narrow and angular, but at this distance it was impossible for McGarvey to tell much else about her, except that she almost certainly was the woman in the photos Otto had given him.

  “She’s at the north elevator.”

  “I see it,” Otto said. “Soon as she starts up, take the south elevator. I’ll stop her between the fifth and sixth floors long enough for you to reach the eighth. Her place is eight-oh-two facing the river. How long will it take for you to crack the lock?”

  “Thirty seconds,” McGarvey said. “Unless she has it rigged.”

  “I’m seeing nothing in her apartment other than a normal intruder alarm system, which I’ve shut off.”

  “She’s aboard,” McGarvey said. He got out of the car and hurried to the elevators. “Can you shut down the phones in her apartment?”

  “Already done, but there’s nothing I can do about her cell phone. She’s a bright girl.”

  “And cautious.”

  McGarvey boarded the elevator and went up to the eighth floor. “I’m there,” he told Otto as he went across the corridor to 802.

  The lock was a standard Yale mortise body, no telltales that McGarvey could detect. He had it open in fifteen seconds flat with an old standby SouthOrd pocket pen pick set he hadn’t used in years.

  “I’m going in,” he told Otto. He pocketed the phone without shutting it off, and took out his pistol.

  “She’s on her way up,” Otto said, his voice muffled.

  Easing the door open he swept his pistol left to right, covering the short vestibule, expansive living room with tall windows, a corridor at the middle leading back probably to the bedroom or bedrooms, and to an open dining room and kitchen to the left.

  He closed the door behind him, letting it relock itself, and went across the room and into the kitchen, where he sat on a stool at the counter from where he had a clear sight line to the entry vestibule.

  “She’s on the eighth floor,” Otto said.

  McGarvey laid the pistol on the counter within easy reach.

  Moments later the door swung open and Susan Fischer entered her apartment. She didn’t spot McGarvey at the kitchen counter until she’d closed the door and come in from the vestibule.

  She stopped in midstride, a mixture of surprise and shock on her face that slowly turned to a look almost of resignation, her mouth downturned, her eyes narrowed.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, not much authority in her voice.

  “The question is, why do your buddies General Echo and Colonel Chambeau want me dead?”

  The woman said nothing, and her face fell farther.

  “The fact that I’m here has to tell you something,” McGarvey said. “At the very least you people—including the Saudis and a bunch of other mid-level intel and military officers—are playing a stupid game that could end up getting more people than just me killed.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  The woman stepped back. “This is bigger, more important, than you can possibly imagine.”

  “I don’t give a shit who you voted for, but trying to discredit a president of the United States is treason no matter how you slice it,” McGarvey said. “You don’t like the guy, run for the office yourself, or back someone you think will do a better job.”

  “He doesn’t belong in the White House. He’s a fool. A buffoon. Dangerous.”

  “And you and your pals know better than a few tens of millions of voters?”

  “He can’t be allowed to continue.”

  “Then assassinate him.”

  Fischer stepped back closer to the door. She shook her head. “What do you take us for?” she demanded, her voice suddenly stronger, surer, indignant.

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “It wasn’t us.”

  “Who, then?”

  “We don’t know,” Fischer said. She turned and fled the apartment.

  McGarvey got out into the corridor as the woman disappeared into the stairwell.

  But even before the door was fully shut, he heard the distinctive sound of a fired silenced automatic weapon.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  McGarvey pulled out the phone as he raced down the corridor. “She’s in the stairwell and someone’s shooting.”

  “Do you want the cops?” Otto asked.

  “Not yet. But get on the building’s surveillance system.”

  McGarvey held up at the stairwell door and peered through the glass window. Fischer was sprawled facedown just below the landing. Blood from a head wound was already pooling on the concrete steps.

  Shadows appeared to the right and above, and McGarvey ducked aside as a half-dozen shots starred the window.

  “At least two men at the switchback just above you. Looks like they’re armed with suppressed room brooms,” Otto said. The room broom was the German-made Heckler & Koch MP5K compact submachine gun.

  “Shut down the lights on this floor, then shut off the lights in the stairwell, wait one second, turn the stairwell lights back on and then off again. Now!”

  More bullets slammed into the glass, finally breaking through and smacking into the corridor wall several feet beyond where McGarvey stood.

  T
he lights in the corridor went off. A moment later they went off in the stairwell.

  McGarvey laid the phone on the floor then ducked below the window, his left hand on the door handle.

  The stairwell lights came on for one second then went out.

  McGarvey slammed the door open, reached around the corner with his pistol and fired seven shots up the stairs, the unsilenced rounds impossibly loud.

  Ejecting the spent magazine, he seated his only spare in the handle and charged the weapon as he waited for returning fire. But none came.

  McGarvey picked up the phone. “Stairwell lights.”

  The lights came back on.

  “They’re gone,” Otto said.

  “Find them.”

  “The system’s been shut down. I’ll restart it, but it’ll take a few seconds, so hold where you are. No telling where these bastards got themselves to.”

  “My six,” McGarvey said.

  He jumped up and raced toward the other end of the corridor as one of the apartment doors opened and a barefoot man, in jeans, no shirt, stuck his head out.

  McGarvey stopped and pointed his gun at the man, who held up a hand, his face white.

  “Get back inside.”

  The man immediately stepped back and closed the door.

  McGarvey ran the rest of the way to the opposite stairwell door. “Otto?”

  Otto was excited. “They’re in the north stairwell, right behind you!” he shouted.

  “I’m there.”

  “Do you want help?”

  “No. But delay the cops if you can.”

  “I’m on it.”

  McGarvey pocketed the phone and ducked to one side so that he would be behind the door when it opened.

  Someone was there. The handle came down slowly, and all of a sudden the steel door swung open and a man came halfway through.

  McGarvey shouldered the door back, catching the man in the chest and wedging him against the doorframe.

  A second man was right there, and shoved his partner forward.

  McGarvey put two shots into the side of the first man’s head. Immediately he stepped aside so that the door could fully open, and the dead man fell forward on his face.

  The other one still inside the stairwell started down. McGarvey could hear the man’s footfalls. He yanked the phone out of his pocket.