Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  “Ultimately yes,” McGarvey said. “The DOE has asked me to help find out who was behind the attack.”

  A look of satisfaction passed between Page and Bambridge. “The president ordered me to do exactly the same thing, and I promised that I would have someone in the field who’d be our point man.”

  “Me?”

  “Sounds as if you’re already in the middle of it,” Bambridge said. “I’m assuming that you’ll share product with us?”

  “Through Rencke.”

  Bambridge wanted to object but Page held him off. “Fair enough,” the DCI said. “But you asked for this meeting. What do you have on your mind?”

  “What was Lorraine Fritch working on in Caracas that got her killed?”

  “She was investigating a connection between Miguel Octavio and a derivative fund manager in Dubai.”

  “The Marinaccio Group.”

  Page showed no surprise. “Yes.”

  “Not enough motivation for her assassination,” McGarvey said. “There had to be something else.”

  Bambridge spread his hands. “She was on her way up with something she told me was too important to trust even through encrypted channels. Had to be done in person.”

  “Hutchinson Island,” McGarvey said, dropping the bombshell, and he saw by a quickening expression on Page’s face that he had hit the mark. “You had the same thought?”

  “The timing was coincidental,” the DCI said. “She’d been working on this connection between Octavio and Marinaccio for some time, but within hours after she’d gotten word through the usual channels about the attack, she called and said she was on her way here.”

  “My dear boy, what makes you think a connection exists?” Patterson asked.

  “Too many leads go back to Marinaccio, including the Reverend Schlagel, who’s using the attack to lash out at nuclear power plants.”

  “He’s looking for a campaign issue,” Patterson said.

  “That’s right,” McGarvey said. “But doesn’t it strike you that Marinaccio’s prime interest is in oil derivatives?”

  “If that’s his motivation then he’ll be against a hell of a lot more than just nukes,” Bambridge said.

  “Something like that,” McGarvey said. “I think that Hutchinson Island was just the opening move. There’s more to come. Coal-fired plants — and we have some big ones — for a start. Schlagel could just as well go on his soapbox about carbon dioxide emissions killing us.”

  “But oil — diesel, gasoline, or jet fuel — is bad too,” Bambridge pointed out.

  “People will give up nuclear and coal-produced electricity, but not their cars,” Patterson suggested.

  “If you’re right, and I think you are, they’ll go after whatever would hurt us the most,” Page said. “Coal, because it won’t be wind farms or solar centers. At least not yet.”

  McGarvey had come to the same conclusion. A big coal-fired plant would be a likely target. A lot of environmental damage could be done depending on how sophisticated the attack was. But he’d been thinking about something else. “I expect that you’ve all heard of Eve Larsen. If what she’s trying to do actually works she could be a prime target.”

  “Some people in Oslo think she’s on the right track,” Patterson said. “And her laboratory in Princeton was vandalized last night. Did you hear about it?”

  “Yes.”

  Page sat back, a sudden thoughtful expression on his face, and he and Bambridge exchanged a look. “Do you know the woman?”

  “She was at Hutchinson Island when the plant was evacuated. I helped get her out.”

  “Erling Hansen telephoned me yesterday afternoon,” Page said. Hansen was the director of the Norwegian Intelligence Service. “Asked for a back-channel favor.”

  “The Nobel ceremony?”

  “The NIS got an anonymous tip that something might happen to her either on the way to Norway or sometime shortly after she arrives in Oslo.”

  “Anything specific?” McGarvey asked.

  “No,” Page replied. “But he said the way the warning was stated struck one of their analysts as religious in nature.”

  “Schlagel,” McGarvey said.

  “Since you brought it up, yes, the thought has crossed my mind.”

  “What’d you tell Hansen?”

  “That we’d look into it. But I don’t think it would be politically wise to send someone over with her. She can hire her own bodyguards if she — or you — think it’s necessary.”

  “I’ll ask her,” McGarvey said.

  * * *

  Bambridge called down to Rencke’s office for McGarvey, but a recorded message merely stated that he was out of the building for a couple of hours.

  “He doesn’t punch a time clock,” Bambridge said. “But he spends a lot of nights here when he’s on to something.”

  “Has that been happening lately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before Hutchinson Island?”

  Bambridge hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know what he’s been working on. Nobody here does. But he’s been at it for a couple of months now. Just before Hutchinson Island one of his computers showed a lavender background, which I’m told means some sort of trouble is coming our way. But he wouldn’t talk about it.”

  It had struck McGarvey as odd at the time that Otto had not confided in him, and again he felt slightly depressed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DeCamp carried no photographs of Martine in his wallet, relying instead on his almost photographic memory to see her. But pulling on his jacket and getting set to leave his tiny apartment in the working-class Twentieth Arrondissement in the late afternoon, he stopped for a moment to remember her face in his mind’s eye, and he couldn’t. As often was the case when he was on assignment, his concentration was elsewhere.

  “It’s not the stray bullet that kills you or your lads,” his sergeant instructor had taught in his officers combat training course. “It’s the stray thought. Keep your heads out of your arses, gentlemen.”

  The early afternoon was mellow as he headed downstairs and south through the Menilmontant neighborhood with its nightclubs, strip joints, and occasional whorehouse, not yet alive for the evening, and before he got ten meters he’d already forgotten about his vexation over Martine. Thinking about her would come later, because he’d made the decision that when he went to ground — very soon — he would take her with him.

  She would understand the necessity. He would make her understand.

  He carried a dark blue ripstop nylon duffle bag over his shoulder, his head up, his step confident; to do otherwise was to invite attack. This was a tough neighborhood where the strong preyed on the weak. Even the Paris metro police presence here was minimal; it had always been a perfect place for DeCamp’s needs.

  The streets were heavy with traffic, as were the mostly narrow sidewalks, and although he was noticed he remained anonymous. The trouble was that although he operated best on his own, he never fancied himself a loner — at least not in his heart of hearts. When his father had been killed and his mother had abandoned him he’d felt an almost overwhelming crushing sense not only of loneliness, but of defeat. To this day, this moment, he remembered his feelings very clearly, and they were just about akin to what he was feeling now.

  But first things first, he told himself, allowing a slight smile to show at the corners of his mouth. And for a moment he could see Martine clearly in his mind’s eye, before he clamped off that line of thought. Business.

  The Père-Lachaise Cemetery, a couple of blocks down the hill from his apartment, established by Napoleon in 1804, was actually the largest cemetery in all of Paris. Other than the nightclubs and strip joints, it was the most popular tourist attraction in the arrondissement. Chopin was buried here, as were Sarah Bernhardt, Edith Piaf, Bizet, Proust, Balzac, and most curiously, to DeCamp, the American rock star Jim Morrison of The Doors.

  DeCamp entered through the gate in the tall white stone wall and made his way slowly u
p a series of winding paths and lanes to the upper end of the cemetery near Oscar Wilde’s grave. At this hour, just before early cocktails, the place was nowhere near as busy as it was in the early morning openings just after nine on Sundays and holidays. But still it was anonymous; he was just one visitor among many.

  He stopped at the grave of some Frenchman and waited a minute or so until a party of middle-aged men passed him. He stepped off the path and made his way to a small mausoleum a few meters away with a centopath of a winged warrior outside an ornate bronze door.

  Bowing his head for a second, and looking back to make sure he was not being observed, DeCamp opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it after him.

  He had a clear line of sight through the filigreed panel at eye height, and so far as he could tell no one had taken notice.

  The chamber was divided into two sections: the first was a small chapel designed for six or eight people to kneel and pray at one time, and the second was a smaller, innerchamber that held niches for the cremated remains of the French-Catholic family, beginning in 1898, with two niches remaining.

  Putting his nylon bag down, DeCamp went to the small altar at the front of the chapel and muscled the one-meter-long stone countertop aside to reveal a dusty space a half-meter square by one-and-a-half meters deep. It contained two canvas rucksacks that he pulled out. From the first he removed a plastic-wrapped package that held an Austrian-made 9 mm Steyr GB semiautomatic pistol with two eighteen-round box magazines, a suppressor, and a cleaning kit.

  Next he took out a package containing several passports, from which he selected one of Canadian and one of U.S. issue, with matching American Express platinum credit cards and supporting credentials including valid driver’s licenses, social security and national IDs, health insurance cards and photos of wives and families, along with several thousand in euros and Canadian dollars.

  He’d decided that importing a long rifle and associated equipment to Norway was not worth the risk. Whichever scenario he selected in the end — a hit in the hotel, a hit while Eve was taking a buggy tour of the old city, or a hit just before or just after the Nobel ceremony — the Steyr, which was a favorite of his, would be adequate.

  He loaded his choices into his nylon bag, replaced the two rucksacks into the space beneath the altar top, and slid the stone back into place.

  He remained at the door for a full ten minutes before a family of four lingering at one of the graves across the lane finally moved off then slipped outside, and shouldering the nylon duffle bag reached the street and headed back to his apartment.

  He would remain in Paris for a few more days before shipping a parcel to himself at the Grand Hotel in Oslo and then flying there to arrive the day before the package arrived. The cargo-sniffing dogs would not detect the odor of gunpowder in the bullets because they would be packed in two containers of mentholated spirits — Vicks VapoRub.

  The TGV could get him to Nice in a few hours where he could rent a car and do a drive by on the corniche highway above his house. Just to see if all was well. To reassure himself that because Wolfhardt had found him nothing had happened.

  But not yet. There would be time later.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  In a cab on the way back into town, McGarvey left a message on Otto’s cell to call him, and then phoned Gail who had been working with Yablonski all morning, but she had no news for him. Everyone was coming up short, and they were all frustrated. It was like knowing the sword of Damocles was about to fall but not when it would happen or from what direction it would be falling, except that the thread holding it above their heads was getting thinner by the minute.

  There’d been no arrests yet over the Princeton attack, and one of Eve’s techies who was the only witness hadn’t been of much help except to describe their approximate build and the clothing they wore — including the balaclavas.

  “Are you coming into the office?” Gail asked.

  “No,” McGarvey told her. “But if something turns up, anything, call me.”

  “Okay,” Gail said, and she sounded a little hurt. “I’ll see you back at your apartment this evening. Maybe we’ll go someplace for a bite to eat.”

  “Maybe,” McGarvey said, and he broke the connection and telephoned Eve Larsen’s cell, and she answered after three rings.

  “Speaking of déjà vu all over again,” she said. “I was just thinking about calling you. Are you here in town?”

  “If you mean Washington, yes, I am.”

  “How about dinner tonight after the show,” she said. “I could use an escort. Someone who knows his way around.”

  “Sorry, Doc, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” McGarvey said. “What show?”

  “I thought you knew. Fox News is doing a special on my energy program tonight at seven. They did some of the taping last year aboard the ship I was using for the first in-water experiment, and more aboard the oil rig and up at GE’s Stamford facility where they’re building my impeller-generator sets. Anyway they want me live at their studio on North Capitol Street. I’ll be out of there by seven thirty.”

  Then he knew what she was talking about, and he could hear a little bit of concern in her voice. “Are you expecting trouble?”

  “After last night, sure. But you should watch TV sometime,” she said. “Reverend Schlagel and his bunch are planning a demonstration in front of the studio. I’m told that the police will be there, and the network’s own security people won’t let any of them into the building.” She hesitated.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I have a small apartment at Watergate East.”

  “I’ll pick you up at six.”

  And he could hear her relief now. “Thanks. I’ll be waiting in the lobby. And if we’re going to dinner tonight, you’d better start calling me Eve. My friends do.”

  * * *

  McGarvey was back at his apartment around noon where he had a quick sandwich and bottle of beer before he changed into sweats and Nikes and headed across the street into the park for his run.

  Five miles used to be his daily routine, and when he was in Florida on the beach, he would swim that far in the Gulf. But since Katy’s death and the deaths of his daughter and son-in-law he’d slacked off a little. Training NNSA field officers hadn’t been much of a strain.

  But running now, alternating his pace from easy to occasionally flat out, he felt as if he needed to get in good shape as quickly as possible. And after the first couple of miles, his shirt soaked, he was gratified that he hadn’t lost as much of his edge as he thought he had, and getting past the first burn when his body finally started to process the energy demands being placed on it, he felt good. At least physically good.

  He’d lost a good man at Hutchinson Island, and at Lundgren’s funeral he’d met his wife who’d wanted assurance that Alan’s death hadn’t been in vain. What he gave his life for was worth something. Her two teenaged sons, who were totally devastated by their father’s death, hung on every word.

  “What he did down there saved a lot of lives,” McGarvey told them. “And he wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

  “Other people were killed trying to help out. Did they know my husband?”

  “One of them did. Her name was Marsha Littlejohn and she was sitting next to him trying to defuse the explosives the same as he was.”

  Lundgren’s wife was a sturdy, no-nonsense woman from somewhere in the Midwest, and she looked up into McGarvey’s eyes. “No lies?”

  “No,” McGarvey told her.

  Before she walked away, she touched McGarvey’s arm, and managed a tiny smile. “Thank you,” she said. “Alan said that you were the best man he’d ever worked with.”

  The boys shook his hand, and mumbled their thanks, and went with their mother back to the limousine.

  And it was Arlington and the same kind of limo that Katy and Liz had driven away in, and running now along Rock Creek he’d remembered that he’d almost lost it at that point
. But he’d taken a deep breath and sucked it up as he’d been told to do when he was training at the Farm.

  The afternoon was pleasantly cool, and a lot of people were out jogging or biking, and though lost in thought McGarvey was completely aware of his surroundings, of the people on both sides of the narrow, winding creek, others seated at park benches or picnic tables, cars and the occasional taxi passing on the road, the rooflines of the buildings in the distance, even the woods where a lone man with a silenced sniper rifle could be concealed. That too was a part of who he was.

  A call to arms, he thought. At last. And he welcomed it.

  * * *

  Most of the time when McGarvey was in Washington in the past year and a half he’d found no need to drive his own car, but this evening was different. If there was trouble, he didn’t want to rely on getting out of there in a cab. He kept his metallic blue-gray Porsche Cayenne SUV in a concierge garage a block and a half from his apartment. It was always kept washed and gassed, and once a week the service took it up the GW Memorial Parkway past the CIA, and before turning back the driver looked for incipient problems that would immediately be tended to.

  At three he called to ask that the car be delivered and parked as close to the apartment as possible. The concierge rep, an older man in a dark blue blazer, showed up fifteen minutes later with the key, and had McGarvey sign for the car. “We managed to get you a spot right outside the front door.”

  “That’s lucky for this neighborhood.”

  “Yes, sir. Will you be needing your vehicle picked up later this evening?”

  “Not till first thing in the morning,” McGarvey said. “I’ll call first.”

  * * *

  Gail got back to the apartment shortly after five just as McGarvey finished cleaning and loading his pistol at the kitchen counter and she pulled up short, dropping her purse on the chair, a quizzical expression on her face.