Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “I need to see Ms. Boylan first.”

  “Franklin’s finished with her, and she came out just fine. It wasn’t a serious wound, but she’s resting.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Two-oh-four,” the nurse said.

  McGarvey recognized the nurse because of her flaming red hair, but in his present state he couldn’t dredge up her name.

  “You could use a few hours’ sleep yourself, Mr. Director,” she said. “Soon as you check on Pete, come back down here and let me take care of you, otherwise the doctor will have both of our butts in a sling.”

  The EMT on scene had given McGarvey a towel and an ice pack for his face. He tossed them in a waste can and took the stairs up two at a time.

  Pete was propped up in bed, her arm in a sling. Her face brightened when he appeared at the door, but then fell when she realized that his face had been cut up.

  The relief of having her here in one piece was immense. “I’m glad to see you.”

  “Just a flesh wound,” she said. “But I think one of my left-handers might have hit him in the ass.”

  “Could be he’s on his way back into town. Did they let you keep your gun?”

  Pete flipped her blanket aside. Her Glock29 Gen4 was lying at her left hip. “He shows up, I won’t be able to miss. Anyway, they put on some extra muscle downstairs. So take a deep breath and go get yourself cleaned up.”

  “You heard the girl,” the nurse said at the doorway.

  “I’ll be back,” McGarvey said.

  * * *

  The facial wounds were minor for the most part, and only two required stitches. The nurse replaced the butterfly bandages on the others. “You’re not going to win any beauty contests for the next week or so, but unless you run into another window you’ll be okay.”

  At the door he turned back. “Molly Harrington.”

  She grinned. “Thanks for remembering. Of course just about every time you’ve been here you’ve not been at your best.”

  “That’s why I show up.”

  “Don’t let it continue to be a habit, Mr. Director.”

  * * *

  Otto and Louise were upstairs with Pete when McGarvey returned. Louise looked stricken.

  “My God, are you okay?” she demanded.

  “It looks worse than it is,” McGarvey assured her. “What about al-Daran?” he asked Otto.

  “We found the Chevy parked in long-term at Dulles. Some blood on the front seat. Forensics took samples and I’ve put a rush on the DNA analysis. It’ll probably match what the DGSI picked up at Monaco last year which will nail his ID.”

  “Same guy, I’m a hundred percent,” Pete said.

  “So am I,” McGarvey agreed.

  “And one of his personas could be Paul O’Neal, a businessman who supposedly owns a small high-tech company called IFA in San Francisco. Innovative Financial Applications,” Otto said. “I asked the local Bureau office to check it out.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “I managed to get a three-minute retask of the NROL-52—that’s the National Reconnaissance’s newest spy bird over northern Mexico—and we found what looks like a training camp on the high desert north of Chihuahua,” Louise said.

  She brought up some images on her tablet and showed them to McGarvey.

  “Firing-range practice,” he said. “Looks like ten shooters plus what could be two instructors. Has the FA set up anything like that?” The FA was the Fuerzas Especiales, the Mexican army’s special forces.

  “No,” Otto said, “and I haven’t alerted them yet. Looks like ISIS to me. But the point is, Paul O’Neal was a guest at the Grand Hyatt in New York for three days, checking out the day after the pencil tower on Fifty-seventh came down.”

  “And?”

  “If it’s the same Paul O’Neal, and I’m betting he is, he stayed one night at the Sheraton Soberano in Chihuahua four days ago. From there he flew to Dallas Fort–Worth, where he stayed at the Fairmont. I think he came to Washington, but there are a half-dozen hotels that won’t give out registration details on American citizens unless they’re served with a court order.”

  “If it’s him, and he follows his same pattern, it’d be the Hay-Adams,” McGarvey said.

  “My guess too. Anyway, I’m checking on it. But I don’t think that it’d be a good idea either to storm the castle, or send a couple of our people or the Bureau’s over to snoop around. They could be running into a buzz saw.”

  “It stays with us,” McGarvey said after the briefest of pauses.

  Pete was the first to catch it. “Not a chance in hell,” she said, half rising from her bed.

  “He’d spot you a mile off,” Otto said. “I’ll crack their system. Could be some blowback, for which I’ll take some shit. Justice will probably come after Page, but fuck ’em.”

  “I’ll go,” Louise said.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “I’m a neutral. He wouldn’t be expecting me to show up.”

  “Jesus,” Otto said. “You’ll go room to room and knock on doors?”

  “I’ll rent a room and sit in the lobby sipping tea. If he’s registered he’ll have to show up sooner or later. And I’m very good at sipping tea.”

  “If he spots you he’ll kill you,” McGarvey said.

  “It’s you he wants, not me.”

  “You’re right, which is why it has to be me.”

  “I can get past Justice with no sweat,” Otto said.

  Pete was looking at McGarvey, and she shook her head. “Mac is the last person he’d expect to see. Especially so soon.”

  McGarvey nodded.

  “I’ll get dressed.”

  Louise looked at both of them. “Both of you are nuts. Do you guys have a death wish?”

  “He knows he only wounded me,” Pete said, never taking her eyes off Mac. “And he knows that Kirk is still alive.”

  “He’ll shoot first and ask questions later,” Louise said.

  “Not in such a public place,” Pete said. “He’ll do just about anything to avoid a confrontation unless it’s in a time and place of his own choosing.”

  “You’re saying he’ll run?”

  “Yup,” Pete said. “Once he spots me I’m betting he’ll run, and Kirk will be waiting.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  On the way back into the city from Dulles, Kamal took out the dead man’s wallet. His name was Richard Tepping. He had a valid Indiana driver’s license, which showed a home address in Indianapolis. But the Mercedes plate was for D.C. and the car was not a rental.

  Tepping had a couple of credit cards including an Amex Platinum, so whoever he had been he’d been well-to-do.

  A couple of photographs showed the man embracing another at what looked like a ceremony of some sort. Possibly even a wedding.

  Kamal had been raised in England, but he was born an Egyptian and he had no opinion whatsoever about homosexuality—or at least not the same opinion as most Westerners did.

  The main thing that bothered him was that sooner or later someone would miss Mr. Tepping and call the police. The search would begin at Dulles, where they would find the green Impala, and eventually Tepping’s body in the Mercedes. But that would take a couple of hours, perhaps longer, which gave Kamal time to go a little deeper. Unless the green Impala and Tepping’s murder were linked.

  Just before the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge he decided that he would have to act sooner than later. McGarvey was still alive and it was possible that he would make the connection.

  * * *

  He drove down to Reagan International, where he parked the car in long-term. With the suitcase in tow and the leather bag over his shoulder he went into the terminal and directly down to the baggage claim and ground transportation level, where he rented a car from Hertz using his O’Neal identity.

  Within a half hour he was in a Toyota Camry heading back into the city, working out his next moves as he drove.

  Killing McGarvey was a given, as far as Kamal was
concerned. In fact, nothing else really mattered. Not the rest of the money—though the attacks on the New Orleans dikes, the Golden Gate Bridge and Pastor Buddy’s church were set in motion now—and he would get paid for those acts.

  But McGarvey had become personal after Monaco and New York.

  He needed to go to ground for the short-term, right here in the area, but first he needed his things from the Hay-Adams.

  Something occurred to him all at once, and he nearly ran off the road.

  His Paul O’Neal identity. He had used it too often.

  McGarvey had been director of the CIA for a brief stint. He still had friends inside the Agency, including Rencke—and his wife Louise Horn, who had worked at the National Reconnaissance Office. Satellites.

  He was back at the training camp on the northern Mexican desert. Ayman Baz, the ISIS commander, had explained how they were able to defeat the American spy satellite because they knew when it would be overhead.

  Unless the timing had been changed by someone who had an inside track with the NRO.

  But it meant nothing except that he had used his Paul O’Neal papers at the hotel in Chihuahua and again in Dallas, and once again at the Hay-Adams. And the airport just now.

  He’d been sloppy.

  “It’s not always the best man who wins, or the luckiest,” the Sandhurst tactical instructor had told them. “But it’s the man who never for a moment allows himself to feel safe, to become besotted with his own abilities.”

  Kamal remembered the lecture.

  “Overconfidence could jump up and bite you on the arse.”

  Across the river back in the city, he took 14th Street SW up across Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street NW and around the block to 16th Street and, keeping up with traffic, passed the Hay-Adams.

  A limousine under the porte cochere was discharging a man and woman in evening dress. But there were no other cars parked in front of the hotel either in the driveway or on the street, and especially there were no police cars.

  Which actually meant nothing. If McGarvey and his woman had staked out the hotel they wouldn’t be in plain sight.

  Just past the hotel’s front entrance he waited for a break in traffic and turned into the service driveway, which dipped down, and left to a loading dock. The delivery service door was closed, and only a Ford Taurus and Honda Accord were parked next to a pair of Dumpsters.

  Kamal backed the Toyota to the raised loading platform, shut off the engine, took the keys and went up the stairs to the access door, which as he suspected was unlocked.

  Just inside he waited for a full minute to make sure that no one was around, before he went across to the service elevators.

  Two men were watching something on TV in an office blocked off by a wire mesh wall. Down a broad corridor to the right was what appeared to be a storage area of shelves filled with boxes and cans along one wall, and a heavy refrigerator and cold-storage doors to the left. Beyond them, down another corridor, he could make out what appeared to be big washing machines and dryers.

  No one noticed him until he reached the elevators, when one of the men behind the mesh looked over.

  Kamal waved as the elevator door opened and he got aboard. The man waved back.

  * * *

  The elevator opened to a fifth-floor service room, shelves filled with everything from bath towels to soaps and shampoos, toilet paper and ice buckets. It was early evening and except for emergencies almost all the maids were off duty until morning.

  He cracked the door to the empty corridor then stepped out and went down to his suite, where he listened at the door.

  He was unarmed, which wouldn’t make any difference except if he had to face McGarvey. And even then he figured that he could handle just about any situation except at a position beyond his lunging distance of five or ten feet.

  Using his key card he unlocked the door, then easing it open with the toe of his shoe he moved to one side and held his head back slightly so that he could sniff the air.

  But there were no smells other than the neutral hotel-room odors. No colognes, no perfumes, no cigarettes.

  “Bellman, Mr. O’Neal,” he called.

  There was no answer, nor could he hear any movement from within.

  Pushing the door the rest of the way open, he darted into the suite’s living room, pivoting on his heel, and swung left moving fast and silently on the balls of his feet.

  But the suite was empty.

  In the bedroom he retrieved one of his Glock pistols from his suitcase, made sure that it hadn’t been tampered with and was ready to fire, then made a quick search of the suite.

  But he was alone.

  Within five minutes he’d repacked his things and left with the one roll-about and Tepping’s carry-on bag.

  Downstairs on the service floor he went back to the loading dock door and let himself out, the two men in the office never taking their eyes off the television.

  In another two minutes he was pulling out of the service driveway and heading away on 16th Street, the White House in his rearview mirror.

  FIFTY-TWO

  McGarvey was parked in the BMW just down from the Hay-Adams, from where he had a good sight line to the front doors, and down 16th all the way to Lafayette Square, beyond which was the White House.

  A dark blue Camry came out from the hotel’s delivery entrance and passed McGarvey. At the end of the block it turned left on H Street and was gone.

  The windows were tinted and he’d not gotten a clear view of the driver, but the plate was D.C. Something didn’t register in McGarvey’s head. He phoned Pete, who was sitting in the hotel’s lobby. “Any sign of him?”

  “No.”

  “Stay where you are and keep your eyes open. I’m going to check on something. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.”

  “Check on what?” Pete demanded.

  McGarvey pulled away from the curb and headed toward the delivery ramp. “A blue Toyota just came from the back of the hotel. It was a D.C. plate but I didn’t catch a number.”

  “Al-Daran?”

  “Could have been an end run, which means he knew or suspected that we were here.”

  McGarvey went down the ramp and parked at the loading dock. He entered the hotel and went over to the office behind the steel mesh wall. Two hotel employees looked up, and one of them got to his feet.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I think I just saw a friend of mine drive off in a Camry? Did you see him?”

  The man, who was dressed in blue coveralls, shook his head. “I didn’t see anyone leaving, unless it was the guy who showed up about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Was he making a delivery?”

  “Probably something for upstairs.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “I don’t know. An ordinary business suit, I think.”

  “Not jeans and a long-sleeved shirt?”

  “No.”

  McGarvey got back on his phone and called Pete as he hurried out to his car. “If it was him, he came and went through the service entry.”

  “He knew we were here,” Pete said. “But how?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll be right with you.”

  * * *

  Pete was on her feet in the lobby when McGarvey parked at the front entrance and came in. Someone was playing a piano for a dozen people in evening dress having cocktails just up the half flight of stairs to the left.

  “Was it him? she asked, as they headed directly to the front desk.

  “I think so.”

  The man behind the desk looked up, a somber expression on his long face.

  “You have a guest registered under the name Paul O’Neal,” McGarvey said.

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “I’m sure he booked a suite, we need to see it.”

  “That’s not possible,” the man replied.

  McGarvey pulled out his pistol. “If I have to shoot you I will try not to kill you, but when I’m nervous
like now, I sometimes miss what I’ve aimed at. Paul O’Neal is wanted internationally for multiple counts of murder. He is a dangerous man who you don’t want as a guest.”

  “Good Lord,” the man whispered.

  “Give us his suite number, a universal key card, and we’ll be gone in less than ten minutes.”

  “I will inform the police, sir.”

  “Please do,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime the suite number and key.” He raised his pistol. His back was to the pair of uniformed doormen and no one else was in sight to see the gun.

  “Five-oh-four,” the desk man said. He produced a key card and laid it on the desk. “I will alert security for the safety of our guests, of course.”

  “Be sure to mention that my name is Kirk McGarvey,” Mac said, snatching up the key.

  Concealing the pistol at his side, he and Pete took one of the elevators up to the fourth floor.

  “He was on the phone even before we started up,” Pete said.

  “The cops won’t be a problem, but Security could be,” McGarvey said.

  They raced down the empty corridor to the emergency exit, and took the stairs two at a time up to five.

  Kamal had probably left in the Camry; nevertheless, McGarvey eased the fifth-floor door open an inch or so and checked the corridor before they went down to 504.

  “Get ready for company,” McGarvey said. “But keep your gun out of sight.”

  “What if Kamal is inside?”

  “Then it’ll get real interesting real fast,” McGarvey said.

  He unlocked the door and pushed it open, waited a moment, and then leading with his Walther stepped into the living room and slid immediately to the left, his aim traveling right to left as he moved.

  The suite was empty. Kamal had come and gone.

  Keeping his pistol at the ready McGarvey went into the bedroom. The closet door was open, and the bedcovers were mussed as if someone had placed a suitcase there.

  The bathroom was empty of anything personal.

  “We have company,” Pete called from the corridor.

  McGarvey went to the door and stepped into the corridor as two younger men in Hay-Adams’s blazers, white shirts and ties came from the elevators. Their weapons were drawn but held at their sides away from their legs.