“No. This won’t amount to much.”
“Ten minutes.”
She finished her champagne then went forward to her stateroom where she changed into an old pair of blue jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt she wore when she worked out in the fitness room. Barefoot, she went back to the salon, and was just finishing another glass of champagne when Ramirez showed up with a wary engineer’s mate.
“Good evening, Mr. Glass,” she said.
“Ma’am,” the man said. He was of medium build with a solid square face, thinning light hair, and just a hint of worry at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes.
“Actually your name is Dieter Schey, you once worked for the Stasi, and now work for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. What are you doing aboard my ship?”
Schey hesitated for just a second, but then he shrugged. “Investigating your business practices. It’s believed that you may have broken some German financial laws. I was asked to gather evidence.”
“Have you?” Anne Marie asked. “Gathered evidence.”
“Not yet.”
“Have you ever heard the name Gunther Wolfhardt?” she asked, watching the investigator’s eyes.
He shook his head. “No.”
So far as she could tell he’d told the truth. “Let’s go out to the after deck,” she told Ramirez.
“What are you going to do?”
“What we do with all of our trash. We throw it overboard.”
Schey started to back away, but Ramirez pulled his Glock 17. “Outside,” he said.
They went out the sliding doors from the salon and all the way to the aftermost deck from where swimmers could reach the water down a half-dozen broad stairs to the rear platform at the water’s edge.
“Take off your clothes,” Anne Marie said dispassionately. She was not in a hurry, nor did she have much of any emotion for what was about to be done to the spy. It was simply a job that needed attending to.
“The water is damned cold,” Schey protested. “And no matter what happens, as soon as my body is found it will get back to you.”
“Do as you’re told,” Ramirez said.
It was bitterly cold, a sharp wind blowing across the deck as Schey slowly removed his clothes. His body was solid with very little fat. A long scar on his right leg just above his knee looked old, as did what was probably a bullet wound in his left shoulder.
“Now you want me to jump?” Schey asked.
Anne Marie took the pistol from her bodyguard. “No,” she said. “I want you to die.”
She fired one shot into the middle of the man’s face, killing him instantly, and driving his body backward against the rail, a spray of blood going overboard and lost in the wind.
“Hold him up,” Anne Marie told Ramirez. “Head above the top of the rail. I don’t want to damage the deck.”
Ramirez did as he was told, and Anne Marie methodically fired several more shots at close range into the man’s face, destroying his features and his dental work.
“Fingertips?” Ramirez asked. This was the kind of work he understood, and he wasn’t squeamish about it. He’d never been squeamish about anything he’d been asked to do.
He eased the body on to the deck and using the kitchen shears snipped off the ends of Schey’s fingers and thumbs and tossed them overboard, making it nearly impossible for a quick identification if and when the body was ever found.
When Ramierz was finished, he lifted the body up over the rail and let it fall into the sea. “He’ll be missed by morning.”
“Have the ship searched. You saw him drunk on deck around three in the morning, and the dumb bastard probably fell overboard.”
“Very well.”
“Get rid of his clothes, and clean the blood off the deck, please,” Anne Marie said, and she went back into the salon where she poured another glass of Krug. She was no longer bored.
In the morning she would call Lt. Col. Mustapha Amrusi, chief of Libya’s External Security Organization and ask if she would be welcome in Tripoli first thing in the morning, merely in transit for a flight to Dubai, which considering the amount of money Amrusi and others had made from the MG, would not pose a problem. She would call for her private jet to pick her up and the ship would return to Monaco. For the moment she felt that it would be best to stay away from Europe.
But then her mood darkened as her thoughts turned to Wolfhardt. She would miss him.
PART THREE
The Following Weeks
FORTY-ONE
Three days after Oslo, Eve went back to her office at Princeton to make the final preparations for moving out to Vanessa Explorer, and McGarvey cabbed from Dulles to his apartment in Georgetown.
None of Schlagel’s crowd had been there at the airport, which had not been a surprise to McGarvey after the assassination attempt, but it had been a momentary relief for Eve.
“How’s Mr. Jacobsen, have you heard anything?” she’d asked McGarvey at the airport.
“Tore up his right shoulder pretty badly, but he’s a hero for saving your life,” McGarvey told her.
“I’m glad. He’s a genuinely nice man.”
“What’s next?” he’d asked her before they parted.
“Depends on when the next shot will come.”
“I think you’ll be okay for now,” McGarvey told her, and yet he was having a hard time accepting that the situation was all that simple. The assassination attempt and the shooting of the two assassins had ended it all a little too neatly for him. He just wasn’t sure that it was over with yet. Some intuition, some voice, niggled at the back of his head.
She shrugged. “In any case Princeton first, then back here to Washington for a couple of days, and then out to my rig. The extra million-plus will be a big help, because Commerce doesn’t want to give me any funding, and NOAA’s strapped.” She’d smiled uncertainly. “What about you?”
“We’re still looking for the guy at Hutchinson Island, but we’re coming up empty-handed.” Which was a puzzlement to McGarvey, because Yablonski was damned good and Otto was even better. Whoever the contractor was, he’d left absolutely no track. Almost as if he were a street person, homeless with no background, no driver’s license, no passport, no traceable bank accounts, no criminal record, nor any record tying him to any military service in the world, including the South African Defense Force.
Eve got serious. They were standing outside in the queue for a cab, and the place was noisy. “Do you think he’ll be the next to come after me?”
“Not just you personally. He’ll want to sabotage the oil rig somewhere out in the middle of the Gulf. Send it to the bottom.”
“With me and everyone else aboard.”
“Whomever he’s working for definitely wants to see you fail.”
“InterOil gave me the rig.”
“To prove your project can’t work.”
Eve had turned away, a sudden look of anguish and incomprehension coming over her, as if after finally reaching this point, the Nobel Prize, the rig, the vindication of her science, she still had enemies who not only wanted to see her fail, but were willing to do horrible things to make that happen. “I always figured that I knew what rationality was. Rational thoughts, rational arguments, which would result in logical outcomes. But I’m not so sure anymore, you know?”
McGarvey felt sorry for her. “How rational are two professors fighting for the same tenured position?”
She looked startled, as if it were a new concept, but then she smiled and nodded. “You’re right, of course. You should see the fights. No holds barred. Common sense out the door. Pitiful, actually, because it’s all about professional jealousy. But this isn’t the same, is it? It’s not that simple.”
“No,” McGarvey admitted. “But what they’re doing is rational from their perspective because they’re protecting what amounts to several trillions of dollars over the next fifty to one hundred years. And all that’s not just for the rich guys. It includes the oil field workers from the geologists
all the way down to the grunts, most of them with families to support, mortgages, braces for their kids’ teeth, college funds, eventually retirement, and you’re the one who wants take all that away from them. And Schlagel is an opportunist, and from his pulpit what he is doing is rational. He wants to be president, he needs a cause, and you’re it. Do you think any of them would hesitate to pull the trigger if they thought it would make their lives a little better, a little safer?”
Eve’s lips compressed, but she nodded. “I see your point,” she said. Her cab came and she kissed McGarvey on the cheek. “Dinner in town when I get back?”
“Sure thing,” McGarvey said.
* * *
After he’d shaved, taken a shower, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a white shirt, and a dark blue blazer he found the note from Gail on the kitchen counter, welcoming him home. The Air France flight had landed around one, and now it was a little past three, and she’d written that she would be at the office when he got back. He found the note slightly disconcerting. It was the message from a wife to her husband, possessive, expectant, confining just now.
Staying in his apartment, cooking, making love, was giving her a sense of ownership. It was a natural feminine emotion to make sure that the nest was safe from predators that his wife Katy had found early on didn’t work with McGarvey. Couldn’t work. Same as his career with the Company. They wanted ownership. Some years ago a deputy director of operations had called him an anachronism, a throwback to the Wild West, a cowboy. And the man had argued that the CIA no longer had need of his kind. Yet they’d kept calling him back to figure out the mess of the day that couldn’t be addressed by any governmental agency on any sort of an official basis.
Sitting in the backseat of a cab heading out to Tysons Corner, he wondered, as he had wondered before — often — if it wasn’t finally time to get out. But it was a meaningless question, especially now that he had the bit in his teeth.
Otto called on his sat phone. “Oh, wow, Mac, she really looked good on stage. Especially the freedom of speech thing. Have you watched CNN’s take on the assassination attempt?”
“No, what’s happening?”
“Oslo took the wind out of Schlagel’s sails, and he’s backed way off.”
“Just for now,” McGarvey said. He was beginning to have a grudging respect for the reverend, who was no tent revival preacher, no simple circus performer. The man knew when to strike, and when to lay back. His timing was that of a national level politician, of a serious presidential contender. Though he would never directly attack Eve, he was capable of inciting it — that was already proven — and he had the motivation.
“That’s for sure, but it gives you some breathing room.”
“Anything new on our contractor?”
“Nada, but I have a couple of ideas that we can talk about over dinner tonight. Bring Gail with you, because she’s part of this thing, too.”
McGarvey was feeling cornered again, the same anger he’d carried around for more than a year still simmering just beneath the surface, but Otto was an old friend — his only friend. “Don’t play matchmaker,” he warned.
“I’m not, honest injun. But you haven’t seen Audie for a long time.”
“Not tonight.”
“Why not?” Otto insisted, and it was unlike him. His wife, Louise, had probably made the suggestion. Strongly.
“Because I’m not ready to expose my granddaughter to another woman. Another relationship.”
Otto hesitated for a long time, and when he spoke he sounded resigned. “It’ll have to happen sooner or later, kemo sabe, and maybe everybody knows it except for you.”
McGarvey was on the verge of lashing back, but a wave of sadness nearly overpowered him. “Later,” he said quietly.
“La Traviatta around the corner from your apartment. We’ll get a babysitter. Eight?”
“Eight,” McGarvey said and he broke the connection.
When he looked up a minute or two later he realized they were just getting on the Beltway outside Falls Church, less than ten minutes from the office, and he also realized that he had nothing to say to Admiral French that made any sense at this point. He told the cabbie that he’d changed his mind and to turn around and take him back to Georgetown.
* * *
Gail hadn’t tried to call the apartment to find out what was keeping him, which McGarvey appreciated. It gave him a little time alone to get his thoughts and emotions in order, and to get back into focus. Sitting by the bow windows that looked over at Rock Creek Park, an oasis of calmness and serenity in a city that had always kept a frenetic pace, he tried to balance his need to work alone with the realities of the situation they would be faced with out in the Gulf. The Coast Guard could escort them all the way to Florida’s east coast. A SEAL team could be stationed aboard the rig, or stand off in a submarine that would shadow the platform. Short of that, the rig could be put under constant satellite surveillance and at the first hint of trouble a rapid response team could be deployed from McDill Air Force Base in Tampa or, when the rig was farther south, from Homestead Air Force Base in Miami.
But all of that would do nothing more than delay the attack on the rig, which might not even take place until after it was anchored, and the Pax impellers installed. If a cable on one of the huge water augers were to part, serious damage would be done to the platform, and certainly there would be casualties, including deaths.
When the attack did come, McGarvey preferred that it would be out in the Gulf, where he had a better chance of dealing with it. In tight quarters aboard the rig he figured that he could more easily handle a strike force that probably wouldn’t involve more than a half-dozen men. Professionals, which would be their one exploitable weakness: pros were predictable. It was their training.
McGarvey looked up suddenly as someone came to the door, and he reached for his pistol and glanced at the wall clock at the same time Gail walked in. It was a few minutes after seven already, and he hadn’t noticed the fading light outside until just now.
She started to smile when she saw him by the window, but then spotted the pistol in his hand, and her expression dropped. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” He’d been lost in operational details, and reaching for the gun was merely a reflex move. Like most professionals he too was predictable, something the contractor who had done Hutchinson Island had not been. It was the one troubling aspect left to consider.
She came across and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I watched her acceptance speech. Bright lady. But she doesn’t look like the type who suffers fools gladly.”
“I think she’s a little overwhelmed,” McGarvey said, and he didn’t catch the odd set to Gail’s lips, because she’d turned away to put her coat over the back of the couch.
“And the shooting afterwards was nothing less than stunning. How is she doing?”
“She’s tough. But I don’t really know what she’s thinking. She holds in just about everything.”
“I figured you’d come out to the office this afternoon. The admiral wants an update.”
“It was a long trip, and I had some stuff to figure out.”
“If you’re tired I can fix us something to eat here.”
“I’m meeting Otto and his wife at La Traviatta around the block at eight,” McGarvey said. “And I want you to come with me because this concerns the operation.”
“Has he come up with something?” Gail asked, suddenly bright.
“He has some ideas he wanted to talk about, and so do I because I want you with me on the oil rig, just you and I.”
Gail saw the logic. “A Coast Guard escort would scare them off, and you want them to attack. Risky, isn’t it? They could drop a couple dozen men on top of us before anyone knew what was happening.”
“Not if it’s the same guy from Hutchinson Island. He’ll have help, but it won’t be squad size.”
“Why not?” Gail asked.
“Because he’s too arrogant, too sure of himsel
f,” McGarvey said. “Anyway it’s a moot point. We’re getting no help because no one believes Eve is in any danger now. The bad guys were taken out in Oslo. And it would be politically incorrect to interfere in a civilian operation.”
After a moment she nodded. “I’m in,” she said.
* * *
It was a Sunday evening and the Italian restaurant was only half full. Otto and Louise were sitting at a booth near the rear of the dining room, and when McGarvey and Gail walked in Otto waved them back. He jumped up. “Oh, wow, you’re Gail, and you’re prettier than Mac said you were, honest injun.”
Gail smiled. “Thanks.” She and Otto shook hands, and Otto introduced his wife, Louise.
“Welcome to the club,” she said, her smile warm, as she and Gail shook hands.
They all sat down, and for the first minutes busied themselves with Chianti and breadsticks and ordering their food. And McGarvey watched the naturalness between Otto and Louise and Gail, which compounded his feelings of being painted into a corner. But it was warm, and despite the bit of resentment nagging at the back of his head, he relaxed and went with the flow, because they were no nearer to any answers that made sense than they had been from the beginning and he was with friends.
“I think the assassination attempt on our lady scientist is a dead end now — no pun intended — but Kirk told me that you might have some ideas about our contractor,” Gail said. “Eric didn’t say anything to me, but have you guys worked out something?”
Otto shrugged. His usually out-of-control frizzy red hair was brushed back and tied into a ponytail, and although he had no tie, his shirt was clean and his dove gray sport coat was new, all due to Louise. “We’re getting nowhere trying to trace his background by any conventional routes. He’s a total blank, as if he doesn’t exist.”
“But he does,” Gail said, and McGarvey just listened.
“We saw the back of his head in the video, we have the record of his renting the car, and we have the murder of a gay schoolteacher in San Francisco. But he left no physical evidence behind, not at Hutchinson Island or anywhere else. He even wiped down the hard hat and visitor pass he used on the tour.”
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