Gambit

by David Hagberg

  She reached over with her foot and nudged his leg. “Would it scare you if I said yes?”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “But I won’t change my last name, at least for the screen.”

  “Fair enough,” Hammond said, and he raised his glass. “To us.”

  She raised hers to his. “Matrimony, holy shit.”

  When they sipped the wine, her smile faded. “Back to square one,” she said.

  “I want to finish the game.”

  “Okay. So tell me how.”

  “Our only real shot at this is to hire an overwhelming force to finish the thing,” Hammond said.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The woman in the gazebo whom Pete had shot and wounded had been flown up to Washington, where she’d been taken to All Saints Hospital for care by Dr. Franklin and his staff.

  She’d been hit in her gallbladder, which had to be removed, and in her hip, less than an inch from her spine.

  It was eight in the morning when Franklin, his mask off, came from the third-floor operating room to where McGarvey and Pete were standing by in the waiting room down the hall.

  “She’ll live, no problem at all, without her gallbladder,” Franklin said. “But it’s the wound in her hip that’ll cause her difficulties for the rest of her life, I’m afraid.”

  “She and her husband were professionals,” McGarvey said. “They were here to assassinate both of us.”

  “I know, and they failed. My job is to save lives, even hers.”

  “When can we talk to her?” Pete asked.

  “She’ll stay in recovery for an hour or so, then she’ll be moved down to the second floor. You can have at her then,” Franklin said. “Now I’m going home.”

  When Franklin was gone, McGarvey phoned Otto, who was already on campus. “What have you come up with?”

  “She and her husband rented the Jet Skis from Sporty’s in Venice under the names George and Carolyn Schilling and paid with an Amex card. Their creds checked out legitimate, but Mary walked them over to Ed Banes, who’s taking a close look.”

  Banes was chief of Special Projects in the Science and Technology Directorate, whose job—among other things—was building paper, plastic, and online credentials for the CIA’s field agents. He was the best man on campus for spotting fakes.

  “What else?”

  “Other than the total LE and media shitstorm going on down there, I did find out that the car parked at the marina was rented at the airport in Schilling’s name, and they bought the AR-15 at a gun shop in Bradenton under the same driver’s license.”

  “How about fingerprints and DNA?”

  “No match in any database Lou has found for the prints, and the lab should have an answer on DNA later today. But don’t count on much. These people were professionals, and right now, we’re thinking they’re Asian, maybe Chinese. Dental work, pubic hairs, and a couple of markers that seem to show they’ve had some good plastic surgery, making them look Western. And their skin had been lightened recently.”

  “The PLA’s special operations brigades?”

  “If these two follow the same background path as the Canadian and South African who came at you, then I’d say it’s a good bet.”

  “Keep us in the loop,” McGarvey said.

  “We will, but don’t get your hopes up. To this point, it looks as if these guys were at the top of their game,” Otto said. “In the meantime, the Bureau wants to debrief you, the Sarasota County Mounties want to have a moment of your time, and television newspeople from every network, including a half dozen from overseas, along with The New York Times, Washington Post, AP, and a host of others, are demanding interviews.”

  “What about Taft?”

  “He’s asked that you stop by.”

  “Anything from the White House or Pentagon?” McGarvey asked.

  “Nothing yet. But you and Pete—especially you, Mr. Director—are at the top of the news heap.”

  “It’ll pass.”

  “Yeah, but not unless something bigger comes along—like maybe Russia declaring war on us.”

  * * *

  Hammond called Tarasov’s number on the encrypted phone—the only number on that phone—at two in the morning, and the Russian answered on the first ring as if he had been expecting the call. And he almost sounded amused.

  “I take it that you’ve heard the news. Not unexpected to you, I trust.”

  “You promised me that they were the best.”

  “They were, but McGarvey is better,” Tarasov said. “And frankly, Thomas, I suggest that you hope they were shot dead before they had a chance to mention your name. If you have that man on your trail, you will be—as the Americans are fond of saying—shit out of luck.”

  “I’m not giving this up until the bastard is dead.”

  “You’ll have to kill his wife as well.”

  “That’s my intention. But I’ll need your help again.”

  “Certainly. But don’t forget our pipeline deal. Germany is still under fire for dealing with us, and as Germany goes, so does the rest of Europe. Weaver, on his second term, has made it his mission to stay friends with Mr. Putin while at the same time rein him in. A complicated, unpredictable man, your president.”

  “I want this over with so I can get back to my life.”

  “What can I do this time?”

  “I’m thinking about a team effort. Maybe ex-Spetsnaz shooters. If you can round up a half a dozen men to hit him all at once, he couldn’t possibly survive.”

  “That’s an intriguing thought. But the question is where would this have to happen? Not in the Washington area—way too sensitive. And Florida is out because McGarvey isn’t likely to stay there either.”

  “Why not?” Hammond asked.

  “Too much media attention, for one. And by now, he’s rock-solid certain that someone is determined to see him go down and probably won’t stop until the job is done.”

  “Should we wait until he settles down?”

  “No. But he’s his own worst enemy right now. He won’t stay in Florida or Washington for the simple reason he knows another attack is coming, and he’ll want it to be on a ground of his choosing, and someplace where the chance of collateral damage is at a comparative minimum.”

  “Where?” Hammond asked.

  “I have a couple of ideas, but don’t worry, he’ll let us know.”

  * * *

  Li woke slowly from the effects of the anesthesia, and as she did, her entire body seemed like it was on fire, especially her left side below her ribs and her right hip.

  She became aware that she was in a hospital room and that she had been operated on to repair the bullet wounds she’d received at the McGarveys’ property.

  Taio was dead, she was certain of it. Before she’d gone down, she’d heard a lot of shooting from the south side of the house, some of it rapid fire from the AR-15 down by the water, but then it had stopped. And McGarvey had shouted something, his wife replying.

  She and Taio had finally lost, and the more awake she became, the more resigned she felt. Without her husband, without the beautiful retirement they’d talked about, life for her was not worth living. Especially not if it resulted in a jail cell.

  Sooner or later, someone would be coming to interrogate her. It would be simple at first, but even wounded, she was strong. The one thing she could not stand up to would be drugs.

  She pushed the sheet covering her aside, and with an extreme effort to get beyond the pain, managed to sit up and get her legs over the side of the bed.

  A wave of nausea washed over her, causing a cold sweat to break out all over her tiny body.

  She pushed through that as well and got her feet onto the cool tile floor and stood up, falling back immediately, the pain in her hip threatening to blow the top of her skull away.

  Again she stood up and this time managed to stay on her feet. Pulling the IV tube from her arm and wires attached to monitors, she went around th
e bed to a chair and somehow dragged it into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Someone would be coming to find out why the monitors had gone blank.

  She jammed the metal frame at the top of the chair’s seat back under the door handle. They’d get past that fairly quickly, even if they had to remove the hinges, so she had to hurry.

  Turning to the mirror over the sink, she doubled up a first and struck it with every gram of her strength. But nothing happened. The mirror didn’t break.

  People were at the door, a woman shouting something that Li couldn’t make out, because now she was thinking in Mandarin.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. She wanted Taio to be with her. She was lost without him. She would be lost for the rest of her life.

  A man was at the door shouting something incomprehensible to her.

  “Taio,” Li whispered to her image, and she bit her tongue with all of her strength, blood immediately filling her mouth and the back of her throat.

  She sank to the floor and laid her head back on the toilet seat, gushing blood making it impossible to breathe.

  FIFTY-TWO

  First thing in the morning, Taft’s small conference room on the seventh floor of the OHB adjacent to his office was crowded. McGarvey and Pete along with Carleton Patterson sat at one end of the table, facing the DCI, while Thomas Waksberg, the Company’s deputy director of clandestine services, sat to their right. Harold Kallek, the director of the FBI, and a whip-thin, stern-looking Clarke Bender, who headed the Bureau’s Directorate of Intelligence, sat to their left.

  No one was smiling, and Patterson had warned McGarvey that this incident teetered on the edge of criminal prosecution for needlessly endangering the lives of innocent civilians. They had gone over in detail all three attacks—the two in Georgetown and the one in Florida.

  “The fact of the matter is you were aware that you and your wife were targets for assassination, and yet you refused to surrender to protective custody,” Bender said. He was a Harvard lawyer, and he acted like one. Either Harvard or Yale or you were a blue collar. “Why?”

  “I wasn’t going to jail for something I didn’t do,” McGarvey shot back. “And even if I had—even if my wife and I had—how long would it have been for?”

  “As long as it took to find who were your attackers and arrest them.”

  “The Bureau has been on this for a couple of weeks since the first attack. How close are you guys to finding out who they were?”

  Bender started to say something, but Kallek held him off.

  “Not close at all, mostly because you haven’t cooperated with us. Perhaps if you let us help.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Kallek, your people are very good, just as Mr. Taft’s people are, but whoever is directing the players coming after us are better.”

  “You arrogant son of a bitch,” Bender said. “Are you saying that you’re better than all of us combined?”

  This time, Patterson held McGarvey off.

  “Yes, and he’s proven it on numerous occasions, evident even if you’ve only glanced at his redacted file. The issue on the table here is not to penalize Mr. McGarvey for merely protecting his own life as well as that of his wife’s but to help him as best we can.”

  “By letting him run around shooting up neighborhoods and terrorizing the locals?”

  “Not of his doing,” Taft said. Everyone at the table turned to him. It was the first he’d spoken. “Mr. McGarvey was attacked at his apartment in Georgetown. When he went to All Saints, he was attacked there. When he and his wife went to their home in Florida, they were attacked there. Someone is tracking his movements. I think that we all should be finding out who and why.”

  “We can start with the woman brought up from Florida,” Bender said. “I believe she’s at your hospital. I’ll send a team over to question her.”

  “It won’t work,” Pete said.

  Bender smiled condescendingly. “My people are quite good, Mrs. McGarvey. I can assure you they will get results.”

  “She killed herself last night.”

  “Wasn’t there security?”

  “She went into the bathroom, blocked the door, and killed herself before we could get in.”

  “Where did she get the weapon?”

  “She bit her tongue in two and drowned in her own blood,” Pete said. She sat forward. “You have no idea how dedicated to the mission these people are. You put your agents between us and them, and your people will lose.”

  “Spare me,” Bender said.

  “She’s right,” McGarvey said. He motioned to Pete, and they got up. “Thank you, gentlemen, but we’re out of here.”

  “Where to?” Taft asked.

  “Do you really want me to tell you?” McGarvey asked.

  “Why not?”

  “The leak could be in this room.”

  “Christ,” Bender said. “I’m going to get a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Don’t try it,” McGarvey said. He turned back to Taft. “I have a lighthouse in the hills on Serifos. We’re going there.” He looked again at Bender. “That’s a Greek island in the Aegean.”

  * * *

  McGarvey and Pete took the elevator down to the third floor and headed to Otto’s office. “Do you think Bender will try to arrest us?” she asked.

  “He might try, but Kallek is no fool; he’ll put a stop to it, especially if Taft doesn’t want it to happen.”

  “But they’re not going to sit on their thumbs.”

  “No, and that’s what worries me almost as much as the next attack. I think they’ll send some people out to the island, maybe put up a drone or two, and some of the good guys will most likely get hurt.”

  “Then why did you tell them where we’re going?” Pete asked.

  “Testing the waters for a leak,” McGarvey said.

  Pete looked at him. “My God, you are a cynic, aren’t you?”

  “Is there any other way in this business?”

  * * *

  Lou let them in, and they walked back to the rear office in the three-room suite, where Otto, his eyes closed, his feet up on the desk, was listening to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major. His darlings were displaying a rapidly shifting series of alphanumeric codes above him on one of the eight wide-screen monitors on the walls. The background was lavender, which meant trouble.

  “The two shooters were freelancers,” Otto said. “Ex–Chinese special ops. Chan Taio and Zhang Li. Married, but they didn’t change their surnames, which is sometimes the Chinese custom. We got it from their DNA but through a back door.”

  Pete perched on the edge of an adjacent desk. “Back door?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Banes came up with the name of a forger in Geneva by the name of Wolfhardt Buerger, who he figured did the Schilling passports and driver’s licenses,” Otto said. “He was about the best in the world, and he knew it and wanted to brag. He left behind a flaw in just about every document he ever made. The number six in the sixth position.”

  “Is someone on the way to talk to Buerger?” Pete asked.

  But McGarvey knew what the answer would be. “No need. He was murdered.”

  “Broke his neck,” Otto said. “But the thing is, the good doctor kept records on all of his clients. I have a friend in the NBD—the Swiss intel service—who promised me a copy. Anyway, your Chinese friends were on the list.”

  “How about bank account numbers?” McGarvey asked.

  Otto opened his eyes and grinned. “They didn’t pay him this time, but they did for their previous passports and several other IDs. A draft on the International Bank of Geneva. It’s a numbered account with a very good encryption algorithm that Lou has been working on for a couple of hours now.” He looked up. “Any luck yet, sweetheart?”

  “I may be getting close, but I have found something else that probably has no bearing but might be of interest.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “Mac has had a previous relationship with the billionaire Thomas Ham
mond. Mr. Hammond maintains bank accounts all over the world, but recently, he may have had a transaction, in gold at that bank, to a blind account. Plus, Mr. Hammond owns a villa on Lake Geneva.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  The dacha in the Zvenigorod district, just northwest of Moscow, was a refurbished summer palace of some prince in the last days of the czars. Set in the middle of a birch forest, the fifty-acre property was bounded by a wide creek and was only accessible by a narrow, blacktopped road ten miles off the M10 or by helicopter.

  It was owned by Lieutenant General Oleg Kanayev, who was the main directorate general staff officer in charge of Russia’s Special Forces that was also known as the Spetsnaz.

  Tarasov arrived shortly after six in the evening aboard his Sikorsky S-92 helicopter and was met by a junior lieutenant driving an old Gazik—the Russian jeep. “The general is expecting you in the kitchen, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  Kanayev, in civilian clothes, was a surprisingly young-looking man in his early sixties, with thick pitch-black hair, a curving walrus mustache, and a broad Russian peasant’s face with a stocky frame to match. He was seated at a long wooden table, eating pickles, slices of frozen raw bacon, and drinking vodka.

  He looked up when Tarasov came in and waved him to sit down. “Close the door when you leave, Sergei, and see that we are not disturbed,” he told the lieutenant.

  When they were alone, Kanayev gave Tarasov a searching look. “Care for something to eat?”

  “Not that,” Tarasov said. In his estimation, the general was a pig, scarcely one step above an ignorant muzhik—a Russian peasant. But the man ruled the Special Forces not only with an iron fist but with great imagination.

  “Why has Putin’s favorite oligarch come out to see an ignorant old soldier? Or did the president himself send you?”

  “I came to ask for a favor, but no, I’m not here on the president’s behalf. This is personal.”

  Kanayev poured another vodka and sat back. “Intriguing. Something your billions can’t buy you on the open market, so here you are. But before we get started, what’s in it for me?”