Gambit

by David Hagberg

  “I don’t know,” he told them.

  * * *

  Upstairs on the seventh floor, they were shown into the director’s office, where Harold Taft, the DCI, and his deputy director of operations, formerly known as the CIA’s Clandestine Service, Thomas Waksberg, were waiting for them.

  “I’m not sure if it’s a good thing seeing you again,” Taft said, “but I understand that you were in a spot of trouble again yesterday.”

  He was a short, slender man with the military bearing of the navy four-star he’d been until President Weaver had tapped him to head the CIA. In everyone’s estimation, including McGarvey’s, he was one of the better DCIs in a long time, because he was not only a no-nonsense man, he had experience. During his tenure in the navy, he had revamped all five military intelligence operations, including those of the Coast Guard, plus the DoD’s Central Security Service.

  Waksberg, on the other hand, was an obese civilian who’d been a chief of police in a medium-size Texas city, had worked as a district attorney in Dallas–Fort Worth, and moved to Washington during the Weaver campaign to work as the new president’s legal consul. He had no intel background, but he was a bright man, and not so prejudiced as his predecessor, Marty Bambridge, who’d in the end turned out to be a traitor.

  They all sat down, and Taft nodded to McGarvey. “Ball’s in your court, but I understand there was one casualty.”

  “Yes,” Otto answered. “We identified him as a former South African Special Forces operator who evidently turned freelance. He was paid $250,000, probably as a down payment, to assassinate Mac.”

  Taft turned to his DDO. “Do you have anything?”

  “He was in our files as someone of minimal interest.”

  Taft waited.

  “As far as we know, he’s never operated on U.S. soil until now.”

  “Do you have any beef with South Africa?” Taft asked McGarvey.

  “No.”

  The DCI almost smiled. “At least there’s one nation’s intelligence service you haven’t crossed swords with at one time or another. So why was this guy after you? Or who hired him?”

  “I don’t think it was anything personal, but at this point, I don’t know who hired him, though, as you understand, I have crossed swords with any number of people.”

  “We can rule out the usuals,” Otto said. “Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Turkey, Chile. My guess is that no government is gunning for him.”

  “Which leaves us what?” Taft asked. “Or who?”

  “Otto missed one country,” Pete said.

  McGarvey reached over and touched her hand, but she ignored him.

  Taft caught the gesture, and his mouth tightened. “Who?”

  “Us.”

  The word hung there for a longish moment. “Us?” Taft asked. “As in the United States?”

  Pete nodded.

  “But not the government,” Otto said. “Not even the White House.”

  “Christ,” Taft said half under his breath. “Where does this leave us?” he asked.

  “Unknown at this point,” McGarvey said.

  “Which means?”

  “Someone is hunting me, which means I’m going to hunt back.”

  TEN

  Villa Larius Lacus, overlooking Italy’s Lake Como, had been built in the early 1700s on twenty acres of prime property next door to the famous Villa Carlotta, by a Milanese marquis. Only Lacus, which simply meant lake in Latin, had been purchased and completely renovated four years ago by the American multibillionaire Thomas Hammond, who’d made his fortune the old-fashioned way—by screwing people out of their money.

  The afternoon was soft as Hammond sat drinking champagne on his grand veranda overlooking the corniche road as Susan Patterson’s soft gray Bentley GTC Continental convertible, the top down, glided as if on the wings of angels in a romantic movie, and he had to smile.

  Actress that she’d always been, she wanted to make a grand entrance wherever she could. At forty-eight, she still had the stunning body and good looks of a beauty half that age, unless you looked closely.

  Where Hammond, who’d been one of the California dot-com boy geniuses, was worth in the neighborhood of $30 billion, give or take, Susan, who’d parlayed most of her early acting money into producing movies of her own, and then buying every movie theater she could get her hands on, plus a movie-only television pay-per-view network, was worth only a third of that.

  But they were both players in every sense of the word. Cannes for the movie festival and Monaco for the Grand Prix race, Davos for the economic summit where the superrich mingled with governmental finance ministers, art and music festivals and the yacht run.

  They’d both been guests at the White House, and she almost always dressed to the nines, her hair and makeup perfection. He, on the other hand, favored tattered jeans, black T-shirts, and boat shoes, his short, blond hair mussed, though he did look presentable in a French-tailored tuxedo.

  Susan’s car disappeared below as she turned onto the driveway up to the wrought iron gates, and moments later, Peter, the houseman who’d been one of the Queen’s guards from the Scots Guards Regiments at Buckingham Palace, came to the french doors.

  “Pardon, sir, but Ms. Patterson has arrived. Shall I show her up?”

  “Yes, and we’ll need another bottle of wine, and a glass; she’ll want to celebrate,” Hammond said.

  Where’d he’d always been satisfied to drink a common Dom Pérignon, Susan was a snob and wanted a Krug—especially the ’95 Clos du Mesnil Blanc de Blancs—if she was feeling good.

  “Of course,” Peter said, withdrawing.

  A minute later, even before Susan had parked her car and come up, Clarice, the house sommelier, came with the Krug, her assistant a young man from right here in Lombardy carrying two flutes and an ice bucket. She presented the bottle, Hammond nodded, and as soon as they set it up, they withdrew.

  Hammond was opening the bottle when Susan breezed in, her high cheekbones slightly red and puffy and her Botoxed lips tight. She gave him an almost chaste kiss on the cheek and plopped down across the table from him.

  She was tired and frustrated. “That might be a bit premature,” she said. “But I could use a decent drink.”

  Hammond poured for her. At the best of times, she tended to be histrionic, but this afternoon, she wasn’t herself, and considering what they had put in play last month, he was concerned.

  “How was Athens?”

  She drained her glass and held it out. He refilled it.

  “Closure,” she said.

  Hammond was vexed. “Don’t be cryptic. What happened?”

  “A fucking cock-up, that’s what. I took the bastard up into the hills and put a bullet into his fucking moronic brain. End of story.”

  “Except for McGarvey, I’m assuming.”

  She looked away. “I don’t know, Tom. According to Bell, it was a done deal. McGarvey and his broad somehow figured out what was going down, and they both went into the building.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing. Bell assured me that with Slatkin’s firepower and the fact he held the high ground, he couldn’t have missed.”

  “Reasonable—” Hammond said, but Susan cut him off.

  “Are you fucking nuts?” she screeched. “The former director of the CIA is gunned down across the street from his apartment in Georgetown and it didn’t hit the news?”

  Hammond poured himself a glass of the Krug and smiled. It was good. “About what we expected, no?”

  “We’ve gone up against this son of a bitch before and lost.”

  “We didn’t lose; we just didn’t win,” Hammond corrected. “But Slatkin was just the opening shot. I didn’t expect him to kill McGarvey. And if he had, I would have been disappointed.” He shook his head. “No, sweetheart, this is just the beginning.”

  Susan looked away for a moment, the flute raised to her mouth, but she didn’t drink. “Where’s the profit in it, Tom?” she asked absently.
“We lost an opportunity with the bitcoin deal he offered us. But so what?”

  “I don’t like losing.”

  She looked at him. “I like adventure as well as the next girl, but I don’t like losing either. Especially not my life.”

  “Whatever the South African accomplished or didn’t, you took care of it.”

  Her eyes widened a little, and she sipped the wine. “Actually, that part was pretty good.”

  “Better than acting on a sound set?”

  She smiled. “Oh yeah.”

  “Then we’re ahead of the game.”

  “A quarter million short.”

  “But not a half million.”

  They were silent for a while. Out on the lake, a speedboat towing a skier made brutally tight figure eights to the east, and farther up the lake, a pair of sailboats were apparently in a race. All life was a competition, Hammond thought. And he loved it. At this moment, he felt as if he were Sherlock Holmes in reverse; he knew the ending, just not the details of getting there. “The game’s afoot,” he said.

  She was watching him. “It’s just a game to you?”

  “Why not?”

  She put down her glass. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tom, wake up and smell the roses or something. This game, as you want to call it, could end up costing some serious money. And if we fuck up, we could become the game. Have you considered that possibility?”

  “Yes, and that’s the entire point. You had a good time in Athens.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Hammond made no reply, and after a moment, Susan cracked a narrow smile and nodded.

  “It was real,” she said. “But there could have been witnesses. I could have ended up in jail for the rest of my life, a prospect I don’t relish.” She held out her glass, and Hammond filled it.

  “The Most Dangerous Game,” he said. “Ring a bell?”

  “Sure, back in the early thirties. Joel McCrea, a big-game hunter, falls off a ship and ends up on an island with another big-game hunter—Leslie Banks, I think—who wants to hunt McCrea. A man hunting a man. The ultimate sport.” It suddenly struck her. “Son of a bitch, is this what we’re up to?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re not talking about a movie here. Revenge I understand. Or maybe there’s something else going on—something you haven’t told me about—maybe getting back in the bitcoin game. But this isn’t a fucking movie.”

  “No.”

  “McGarvey’s a CIA-trained assassin with a whole hell of a lot more experience than the guy we hired to take him out. He finds out that we hired Slatkin, he could come after us.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “What point? Are you out of your mind?”

  “He’s being hunted, and if he hasn’t figured it out yet, he will. And when he does, he’ll hunt back. The game’s afoot.”

  Susan shook her head, but her breath quickened a little, and some color came to her cheeks.

  Hammond sat forward. “For all practical purposes, between us, we have unlimited resources. Just about all the money in the world. More than we could possibly spend in ten lifetimes. How many yachts, how many airplanes, or cars or houses, can we buy?”

  “Boring sometimes.”

  “Boring almost all the time lately. But my question stands: Can one man, no matter how good, stand up to unlimited resources against him?”

  ELEVEN

  Dr. Stephen Held, the CIA’s justice of the peace, came out to the McLean house to perform the ceremony at eight in the morning. Mary had originally wanted to use the chapel on campus and invite some of their friends and coworkers, but under the present circumstances, she’d made the unilateral decision that it would be better if they circled the wagons.

  “We need a plan of action,” she said, and no one argued with her.

  This morning, Otto wore boat shoes, starched and pressed jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a European-cut blue blazer Mary had bought for him. His hair was brushed, the ponytail that just reached his collar tied neatly.

  Mary wore a knee-length white dress with a modern art slash of red from bodice to hip as if she were a painting. She’d done her hair with Pete’s help and was even wearing makeup, something she seldom did.

  Mac and Pete remained standing behind them in the lanai all through the service, and when Held said, “You may kiss the bride,” Otto took Mary in his arms, enveloping her much smaller body, and they kissed for a very long time.

  When they parted, she was grinning ear to ear. “Wow, that’s the best one ever,” she gushed.

  “Champagne,” McGarvey said.

  Mary laughed. “It’s first thing in the morning and we have work to do?”

  “That’s why we got the Cristal, same brew we had when we got married,” Pete told her.

  McGarvey opened the bottle and poured five glasses for the toast.

  “Live long and prosper,” Held said, grinning.

  “That’s Star Trek,” Mary said.

  “The ten-to-one consensus on campus among everyone who knows you two thought it would be the most appropriate blessing,” the minister said, finishing his drink. He put his glass down. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get out to Arlington.”

  * * *

  “Honeymoon?” Pete asked after Held had left.

  “Later,” Mary said. “Right now, we have work to do—finding out who’s gunning for Mac and why.”

  “And making sure they don’t succeed,” Pete said.

  McGarvey had been trying to work out some of the details from the moment he and Slatkin had shot it out on the third-floor landing, and the only decent clue they had for now. The shooter had said that his contact had made a mistake about the expediter, who was a woman and who was rich.

  The problem he was running into was that the profiles of assassins and their handlers were almost always men.

  “If he was telling the truth, the list of people we’re looking for is a hell of a lot smaller than it could be,” Otto suggested. “Our advantage.”

  They were sitting on the lanai off the kitchen, drinking the last of the champagne.

  “So where do we start?” Mary asked.

  “Female staffers at the White House, and ladybirds up at the Pentagon,” McGarvey said, though the niggling at the back of his head was telling him that it wouldn’t be so simple.

  Otto read something of that from his expression. “But what? Talk to me.”

  “We need the why of it first.”

  “Lou,” Otto said.

  “Yes, dear. And congratulations to you and Mary.”

  “Thank you. Have you been listening to our conversation?”

  “Of course.”

  “Crossmatch all the current White House and Pentagon females who have had any connection, however slight, with Mac.”

  “Do we have a time frame?”

  “No, simply among the current personnel roster.”

  Lou was back almost immediately. “Seven at the White House, including the deputy press officer, Deborah Cass, who is a personal friend of President Weaver’s oldest daughter. And fourteen at the Pentagon, the highest rank being navy two-star Grace Metal, assistant to the Joint Chiefs on deployments.”

  “Do you know who she’s talking about?” Mary asked.

  “Only vaguely,” McGarvey said. “But neither of them would want me dead, and I doubt that either of them have the kind of money Slatkin was talking about.”

  “Maybe he was wrong,” Mary suggested.

  “I don’t think so. He was dying and he knew it, so he had nothing else to lose.”

  “Any of those women ever fall in love with you?”

  “Not that I know of,” McGarvey said. And he caught the humor of it. “But I suppose I could ask.”

  “That’s not the point,” Otto said. “Access their personnel records, especially their security clearances, and crossmatch with all of Mac’s operations going back to his tenure as DCI.”

  This time, it took Lou almost
forty seconds before she responded, “I have three hundred twenty-five matches. How would you like me to sort them?”

  “Ranked by the level of adversarial contacts.”

  “Three. Ms. Cass, whose profile suggests that she is in love with the president and could hold a grudge against Mac for his less-than-cordial relationship with POTUS. Admiral Metal because she’d openly considered it a gross misallocation of naval resources on the fruitless search for Mac in the Black Sea two years ago. And army colonel Dorothy Burroughs, whose assignment three years ago was with INSCOM. Her boss was Brigadier General Morton Hollis.” INSCOM was the army’s Intelligence and Security Command.

  McGarvey knew the man’s name. “He was one of the generals who said they would never follow Weaver’s command if he were elected president.”

  “The same group of mid-level intel people who came up against you,” Pete said.

  “Her boss, not her.”

  “What’s Colonel Burroughs’s present billet?” Otto asked.

  “She’s a procurement officer for special aerospace projects.”

  “Practically unlimited money if she knows her business,” Mary said.

  “Any hint of impropriety in her file?” Otto asked. “Any inquiries?”

  “Several,” Lou replied. “Shall I sort them by date?”

  “No,” McGarvey broke in. “Are there any current inquiries into the files of other Pentagon procurement officers?”

  “Yes. The issue is very common.”

  “Comes with the territory?” Pete asked.

  “Indeed,” Lou replied.

  Otto spread his hands. “Doesn’t mean she or any one of the others isn’t guilty. But there’s no smoking gun here.”

  No one said anything for a moment or two, until Pete broke the silence. “What’s our next step?”

  “On the assumption that Slatkin wasn’t just a one-off, and that whoever wanted me gone will try again, let’s make whoever his expediter was think that we have him alive. And he might talk.”

  “There’s been no mention in the media about the shoot-out,” Otto said. “The building was empty at the time, and Housekeeping did a good job sanitizing the place.”