The Cabal

by David Hagberg

  “Johnny left around four, I don’t know who the hell this guy was,” Weiss said.

  That was it, McGarvey was with him. “Okay, I want you to get back here as fast as you can. I think McGarvey’s probably going to back off for now, but I want to talk to you.” He motioned Alphonse and Hanson over.

  “I think you’re right. He might even be trying to catch up with Tim and Ronni.”

  “I’ll be in my suite,” Sandberger said. “Come right up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Weiss said and the connection was broken.

  Alphonse and Hanson slid in the booth across the table from him. “I just got off the phone with Harry. I think McGarvey got the drop on him and they’re on their way over. Alert our people outside—Harry’s driving a dark blue Mercedes C class—I want them both taken out. Then get upstairs and wire the east door. I’ll be in the suite with a little surprise.”

  His two bodyguards got up and left the bar.

  Sandberger finished his beer, laid a couple of twenties on the table, and went out to the elevators just off the lobby. He’d always been of the opinion that second-rate personnel were not capable of handling first-rate problems. Sometimes the only way to make sure that a job was done right, was to do it yourself.

  The McGarvey problem would end tonight.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  They crossed the Tigris above the section known as Babil, and Weiss kept nervously glancing over at McGarvey. The Ritz-Carlton tower rose above most of the other buildings in the Green Zone and traffic here had dramatically increased. Baghdad wasn’t back to normal yet, but the city’s people seemed to want to head that way, and McGarvey hoped the lives we had given up to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime were worth the results.

  “Look, you know you won’t get within a hundred yards of Mr. Sandberger,” Weiss said. “He knows you’re coming.”

  “Your little play with the hotel guard’s name was obvious,” McGarvey said.

  “I meant that Tim and Ronni must have called him by now.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “I think they went back to their room in the new airport hotel, and they’ll be on the first United flight back to the States. Theirs was supposed to be an independent operation. With the deals on the table for Admin from State, your boss doesn’t want to take any chances of a shoot-out except in self-defense.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the Friday Club, and I’m here for the answers. But I don’t think your boss is going to be very happy how I ask.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Certifiable,” McGarvey said, his anger in check, his level of awareness tuned to everything around him, inside and outside the car. He was going to have one chance to get Sandberger alone long enough to find out who had killed his son-in-law and Katy and Liz. To do that he figured he was going to have to either take down whatever assets Sandberger had put in place, or sidestep them if possible. Probably shooters in front of the hotel, on either side of the driveway. Maybe a spotter in the lobby. And certainly men in the eighth-floor corridor, at the stairwells and elevators, because he was pretty sure that Sandberger would have retreated to his suite where it would be much easier to defend himself than out in the open. The man would be treating this affair like a military operation. But all battles had losers as well as winners.

  A block from the hotel McGarvey had Weiss pull over and stop at the curb. This close inside the zone traffic, most of it civilian, was heavy. “You have a choice,” he said. “I’m getting out of the car and you’re free to go. But if you want to try something stupid I will take you out.”

  Weiss licked his lips but said nothing.

  “If you do drive over to the hotel, I’d advise that you keep your head down, because I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. My only interest this evening is Sandberger. Clear?”

  Weiss nodded, but held his silence.

  McGarvey opened the door and started to get out of the car when he felt Weiss make a sudden lunge. Dumb, but not unexpected. Sandberger’s orders would be for his people to take whatever opportunity came along.

  “Bastard,” Weiss grunted.

  McGarvey slipped out of the car and slid half a step to the right as he turned and brought his pistol to bear. Weiss had grabbed a spare pistol, another Beretta 9mm, from probably under the seat, and was raising it when McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the middle of his forehead and slamming him back against the driver-side door.

  The noise, partially contained inside the car and muffled by the sounds of traffic, went unnoticed. None of the cars or trucks passing slowed down.

  Slipping his pistol into the holster beneath his jacket McGarvey closed the car door, and headed down the street to the Ritz. Other people were on foot, some of them in western dress so he figured he wasn’t terribly obvious.

  About fifty yards from the hotel’s sweeping driveway that led up to the entrance portico he pulled up and slipped into the shadows of a line of small shops, shuttered now, in the lee of what was probably a building containing some Iraqi government function. Such places were scattered all across the Green Zone.

  He watched for a full five minutes as cars and cabs came and went, spotting a pair of men stationed in the driveway leading to the hotel’s entrance, and another pair on the opposite side for vehicles leaving. Dressed in the near standard contractor’s uniform of jeans, dark shirts, and Kevlar vests with a lot of pockets, they were waiting for Weiss to show up, presumably with his passenger, and their orders were to take out both of them.

  It was a little risky to stage a shoot-out these days, but before the cops showed up they would probably plant some explosives in the car. They were simply doing their jobs, protecting the hotel from suicide bombers.

  McGarvey moved back until he was clear, then ran down the street, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, until he found a service driveway that led to the rear of the hotel.

  When he was out of sight of anyone on the road, he took out his pistol and screwed the silencer onto the end of the barrel.

  Sandberger eased the door open and looked out into the corridor. Alphonse leaned against the wall a few feet from the elevator, which meant that Hanson was just around the corner from the east stairway door.

  “Keep on your toes,” he told his bodyguards. “If McGarvey’s going to show tonight, it’ll be within the next half hour, or less.”

  Alphonse nodded, and Sandberger closed his door, keeping it slightly ajar with a book of paper matches. He went across to the sliding door that led onto the small balcony and opened it. The cool evening air with the sounds of traffic and the smells unique to Baghdad—rotting garbage, diesel fumes, and a hint of cordite—were immediately there.

  Before he switched off the lights he removed the silenced Sterling submachine gun’s thirty-four-round box magazine, checked one last time that it was full, and slammed it back home. The unique weapon, which used nonsubsonic 9×19 mm Parabellum ammunition, had been used by British special forces, including the SAS. It had been one of Remington’s suggestions that Admin’s people might find the weapon handy in special circumstances.

  Like now, Sandberger thought as he waited half inside and half outside the slider.

  McGarvey was good, if even half of what he’d heard was true. He had gotten past Kangas and Mustapha, and had somehow gotten the drop on Weiss. However unlikely it might be, it was possible he would get past the four men watching the driveway, and perhaps even Alphonse and Hanson up here.

  But anyone coming through the door would take the full thirty-four rounds. Survival this up close and personal would be impossible.

  A delivery van was backed up to the loading dock and an older man in Arab dress was pulling out plastic flats filled with bundles of cut flowers and carrying them inside through the open roll-up door.

  McGarvey waited until the florist went inside, then ran around to the end of the loading dock and ducked down in the shadows in the corner. Five minutes later the man
came out, closed the delivery van’s doors, and left.

  As soon as the van was out of sight, McGarvey jumped up on the delivery dock and peered around the corner into the receiving area, where all the supplies for the hotel were received and processed. Two men were directly across a fairly large space where they were loading the flats onto a pair of hand trucks. When they were finished they pushed the carts off to the left where they boarded a service elevator.

  When the doors had closed McGarvey hurried after them, and waited, until the car stopped at the lobby level. Sandberger’s suite was on the eighth floor. He would have people watching the stairwell doors and the guest elevators. But he might have overlooked the service elevators, which the maids, room service people, and maintenance crew used.

  McGarvey brought the elevator down then hit the button for the eighth floor. He suspected that the doors would open not onto the main corridor but onto a service corridor, and when the car reached the eighth floor he was proven right. This corridor, which ran the length of the hotel along the rear walls of the rooms, was unpainted concrete walls and floors, with minimal lighting from basic ceiling fixtures.

  Several doors opened onto the main guest corridor, one at each end opposite the emergency exits, and one at the vending machine alcove.

  McGarvey went to the west emergency door and examined the hinges. It was wired, a small grey mass of Semtex molded into the jamb about chest high. It came to him that only the two bodyguards from Frankfurt would be up here, one on the elevators and the other on the stairwell door.

  He turned and hurried back the way he’d come, past the service elevator, which had been recalled to the kitchen level, to the door opposite the east emergency exit.

  Opening the door just a crack he saw a man in a contractor’s uniform leaning against the wall less than ten feet away. The man spotted the open door immediately and he reached for his pistol holstered high on his right hip.

  McGarvey pulled the door all the way open and raised his pistol. “I’ll kill you right now,” he said in a low voice.

  The contractor’s hand stopped just above the butt of his pistol. He was weighing his options, and it was obvious in his eyes.

  “Who else is up here with you?”

  “I’m alone,” Hanson said.

  “You had a partner when I saw you in Frankfurt,” McGarvey said. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “As you wish,” McGarvey said, and slipped out of the service corridor to where the contractor stood, batted the man’s hand away from his gun, and pulled it out of its holster. It was a 9mm SIG-Sauer. McGarvey dropped it to the carpeted floor and kicked it away.

  “Now what?” Hanson asked, tensing his muscles, getting ready to spring.

  “We’re going for a walk,” McGarvey said, roughly hauling the man around, and shoving him from behind.

  “Bloody hell,” Hanson said, but McGarvey jammed the muzzle of the big silencer hard against the base of the man’s head, and they headed slowly to where the corridor turned right.

  At the corner, McGarvey suddenly shoved Hanson away and stepped to one side as Sandberger’s other bodyguard stationed at the elevator realized that something unexpected was happening, and he grabbed for his pistol.

  McGarvey fired two shots, both hitting Alphonse in the head, knocking him backward against the wall where he collapsed to the floor, leaving a bloody streak as he fell.

  Hanson spun on his heel and started to charge, when McGarvey turned and pointed the gun at the man’s head, and the contractor pulled up short.

  “Lie to me again and you’re dead.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” Hanson said.

  “No need for it, unless you were personally involved in the murders of my son-in-law, wife, and daughter.”

  “No,” Hanson said, and McGarvey believed him.

  “Your boss has the answers. So what we’re going to do, is knock on his door and you’ll tell him whatever you need to say to get him to open up. Then you can go.”

  “Right.”

  “I have no beef with you. Unless you do something stupid you can walk away from this thing. But time is short, so make your decision.”

  “No choice, do I?”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  “You can’t be lucky every time, you bastard,” Hanson said, but he headed down the corridor, past Alphonse’s body lying in a heap, to Sandberger’s suite. He started to knock on the door, but then backed off.

  McGarvey saw that the door was open and he pulled Hanson back. “Tell him I’m down.”

  Hanson was clearly nervous now. But he turned back to the door. “Mr. Sandberger, it’s me, Brody. We got him.”

  No one answered. Hanson started to turn back but McGarvey bodily shoved the contractor into the suite, and stepped aside out of what he expected would be the line of fire. And he was right.

  Something that sounded like a silenced, heavy-caliber automatic weapon opened up, the bullets slamming into Hanson’s bulletproof vest, but at least one hitting the contractor in the leg and another in the face just above and to the right of the bridge of his nose.

  The firing stopped, and McGarvey stepped over Hanson’s body and entered the room. Sandberger at the open slider was trying to reload, but McGarvey, still moving forward, fired one shot, hitting the man in the right thigh, dropping him to the floor.

  “There’ll be people all over the place up here, because someone must have heard something,” McGarvey said. “So I don’t have much time. Does Admin have a contract with the Friday Club.”

  “Fuck you,” Sandberger said.

  McGarvey fired a second shot, this one destroying the man’s kneecap, and Sandberger cried out.

  “Who killed my family?”

  “You’re a dead man.”

  McGarvey stepped closer and placed the muzzle of the silencer on Sandberger’s forehead. “Your people did it to cover up whatever the Washington Post reporter found out about Foster and his group. Is that worth dying for?”

  “You’ll never take me back to Washington, and even if you did it wouldn’t do you any good. I have friends—”

  “You’re right,” McGarvey said, and he fired one shot.

  Sirens were approaching from the north by the time McGarvey made it down to the service floor and out onto the street. Before the police arrived at the hotel Hadid pulled up with the Range Rover, and McGarvey jumped in.

  “Time to leave?” Hadid asked.

  McGarvey nodded. “Time to leave.”

  FORTY-NINE

  It was one in the afternoon in Washington when Remington and his wife, Colleen, met for lunch at the George Hotel just down from Union Station. She’d remarked that it was an odd choice, but he hadn’t explained that he wanted to come here to satisfy a perverse curiosity to see where the Washington Post reporter had met with McGarvey’s son-in-law. The dining room/bar area was faintly art deco and nice, though not grand. Not up to Colleen’s usual standards.

  But she hadn’t complained, and in fact had stopped all her complaining after the dinner party at Foster’s home. She’d been impressed with her husband, and he’d even cut back on his drinking—because of the crisis mode Admin was in—which impressed her all the more.

  “What made you think of this place?” she asked when their martinis came.

  The dining room was nearly full, but the service was good.

  Remington shrugged. “Someone mentioned the place. Thought we should give it a try.”

  She looked around, and smiled. “I approve. Anyway, Gordo, I’m famished.”

  Remington’s sat phone vibrated in his pocket and he hesitated whether to ignore the call, but with everything happening here in Washington and in Baghdad, he answered it. “Remington.”

  Colleen shot him a disapproving look.

  “We’re in deep shit over here, sir.” It was Peter Townsend, Sandberger’s administrative assistant, who’d done all of the nuts-and-bolts negotiations with the State Department r
eps in Baghdad. A lawyer by training, he’d served one term as a junior congressman from the Russian River area of California. He sounded shook up.

  “What is it?”

  “Mr. Sandberger was shot to death in his suite about an hour ago.”

  Remington was struck dumb for just a moment, and it must have showed on his face because Colleen put down her drink and gave him a concerned, questioning look. “What about Hanson and Alphonse?”

  “They were taken out, too, but it looks as if Mr. Sandberger killed Brody. It’s not making any sense to me, because Harry Weiss was found shot to death in his car a block from the hotel. What the hell is going on? I wasn’t told that we were facing any sort of a threat of this magnitude.”

  It was McGarvey, of course. Couldn’t be anyone else, but for now they needed to do some serious damage control. “Okay, listen up. I’ll come there as quickly as possible, but it probably won’t be until tomorrow. In the meantime you’re the on-site supervisor as of this moment. I want the mess cleaned up before I get there. Get in touch with Captain Kabbani, he’s been of some help in the past.”

  “His body was found in an alley a block from the hotel. He’d been shot to death at close range. You have to tell me what the hell is going on if you expect me to take care of this shit, because I have no idea what’s coming next. And what do I tell our guys that’ll make any sense?”

  Remington didn’t have a clue, but Townsend was waiting. All of Admin was waiting because he’d just become president of the company. The easy way, he couldn’t help but think, and he smiled for just a moment, and his wife’s right eyebrow shot up.

  “Goddamnit, I’m in the hot seat. I’m not a contractor, I’m a negotiator, a lawyer.”

  “Do you know Stuart Marston?” Remington asked.

  “Yes, of course I do. He’s been our point man at State. Helped put the deal through for us.”