“Audie?”
“They sent her back to the Farm.”
Audie was McGarvey’s granddaughter; Otto and his wife Louise had adopted her after Mac’s daughter and son-in-law were assassinated. It had been a staggeringly horrible time in his life, and in the lives of Otto and Louise; as a result, everyone doted on the girl, who still wasn’t old enough to start kindergarten. Her go-to place when the bad guys were out and about was the Farm, which was the CIA’s training facility on the York River, south of Washington.
They went outside to where Pete had parked her Nissan Altima in the arrivals area, a metro police card on the dash. On the way out to Otto’s safe house in McLean, McGarvey adjusted his door mirror so that he could watch for a tail. But if anyone was back there he couldn’t make them out.
“Otto said that you ran into a little trouble in Berlin.”
“The Pakistanis are definitely involved. But whether it’s an independent group working with Schlueter or an ISI-sanctioned operation I don’t know yet.”
“But your guess is ISI.”
“At arm’s length. Plausible deniability and all that.”
“So if we catch the bastards with their hands in the cookie jar, it won’t go any further.”
“Something like that.”
Pete glanced at him. “Doesn’t matter to you either way.”
“Twenty-two guys are still on the line. They’ve done their part; now it’s time for us to do ours.”
EIGHTEEN
Louise, tall, all arms and skinny legs, had a good cognac waiting for Mac at the McLean house, and they all sat around the kitchen table looking out over the backyard filled with a swing set and slide and other kid’s toys. They’d tried to spoil Audie, but she never changed. She was a combination of her mother and grandmother—sweet and gentle most of the time, unless she was putting her foot down because she thought she was being treated like a baby.
“The guy you followed to the parking garage was Pakistani—you’re sure of it?” Otto asked.
“His accent was right, and as far as I can see, the Pakistanis are the only ones with a vested interest in taking out the SEAL Team Six assaulters.”
“What about the Schlueter woman?” Otto asked.
“Probably financial, but she has her own ax to grind,” Mac said. He handed Otto the disk from Wolf. “The Germans know that she was married to an American naval officer stationed as a military liaison to the BND in Munich. Apparently they don’t know the details, except that it turned out badly for her, and she could be looking to settle old scores.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Louise said. “Is this guy still around. Do we know who he is?”
“Dick Cole. He’s acting chief of staff for DEVGRU down in Oceana, Virginia.”
Louise made a sour face. “DEVGRU is SEAL Team Six, and I don’t think I’m liking this very much. Are you suggesting this guy is helping his ex in some way?”
“The BND doesn’t think so. I went through the stuff on the disk at an Air France biz center at Tegel, and it looked to me like the connection with Schlueter and her ex was nothing more than a motivator. Evidently, she not only hates her ex, but she hates Americans in general. The SEAL Team Six thing is just her way of earning a big payday from the Pakistanis.”
“You don’t think it’s coincidental, her going after the SEAL Team Six guys with or without the ISI’s help and her ex’s connection?”
“I don’t know, but it’s something I’m going to ask her the first time I get the chance. As far as I’m concerned, the connection stinks, but to believe that her ex is somehow working with her is a stretch.”
“Maybe you should ask him,” Pete suggested. “At the very least he might be able to tell us something about her that we can use.”
“If he’ll talk to me,” McGarvey said. “But someone higher up the food chain may have put a muzzle on him and everyone else having anything to do with the team.”
“Well, it is about money,” Otto said. “I’ve found that much out. Schlueter has collected two million euros over the past several months, paid into half a dozen accounts in places as far away from Germany as the Caymans and as close as Warsaw. The problem so far is the source. I’m coming up with blanks, which tells me that the encryption and remote remailers her paymasters are using are damned good.”
“Government grade good?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, but new. Could be one of those hackers from Amsterdam. Some of those kids were pretty good. State-of-the-art shit.”
“The ones who hacked into our power grid?”
“Could be. But I’ll find them, and if there’s a connection back to Islamabad I’ll nail it too.”
“If we can cut off the lady’s funds, maybe she’ll back off,” Pete said.
“Don’t count on it,” Louise said.
“In the meantime I’m going over to see Walt, and get his take,” McGarvey said. “If someone is putting on the brakes, he’ll at least tell me who it is.”
“Do you want me to tag along?” Otto asked.
“For now I want you to stick with the money trail. But see what else you can dig up on Captain Cole. Check his financials.”
“Tread lightly, Mac,” Pete said. “He might have been a son of a bitch and a wife beater, but it doesn’t mean he’s a traitor.”
* * *
Walter Page, the DCI, had a young guy in a white polo shirt and jeans waiting for McGarvey in the lobby of the OHB to escort him up to the seventh floor. He introduced himself as Dr. Steve Ellerin who’d been brought over from Harvard to help work out a political and intelligence scenario that made any sense for our future with Saudi Arabia.
“I’ve been given an office and a staff—better than mine at Harvard—and the run of the place, but for some reason they won’t trust me with a gun,” he said grinning.
“Welcome to the club. They don’t trust anyone else around here with guns, except for the security people.”
They were alone on the elevator up and Ellerin kept looking at McGarvey. “I’ve heard about you,” he said, just before they reached the seventh.
“Any of it good?”
Ellerin chuckled. “All of it interesting. You ever think about writing a book?”
“Not about this,” McGarvey said as the doors opened.
They went down to the DCI’s suite where the Harvard doc left him. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Page’s secretary announced him and he went in. Page sat behind his big desk. Carleton Patterson, the CIA’s general counsel who’d been with the company for as long as anyone could remember, sat across from him.
“I take it that you’ve already heard about the second killing,” Page said. “Police have it down as a robbery gone bad.”
“Bullshit,” McGarvey said, and he sat down next to Patterson.
“It would seem so, after the Florida incident,” the lawyer said dryly.
Page was angry. “I understand that you went to Germany to meet with an officer in the BND, and that there was an incident in which two men were killed. Were you involved?”
“Yes. It was a setup—four of them sent to take me down. Turks with connections to the drug trade.”
“And you let two live?” Patterson asked.
“I wanted them to take a message back to the people who hired them.”
“The bureau wants your passport,” Page said.
“Which one, Walt?”
Page sat back. He was clearly frustrated. “Why did you come to see me? What do you want?”
“Two of the twenty-four SEALs who took part in the raid on bin Laden are dead, along with their families. The one in Florida was murdered by a German who most likely works with a group of professional assassins for hire. The second one had nothing to do with a robbery.”
“Is this what the BND believes to be true?”
“Officially no. But they did send one of their officers to follow the Florida shooter. And we’ve learned that in the past several months two million eu
ros have been paid into bank accounts belonging to the leader of this group.”
“It’s up to the Germans to arrest her.”
“Not without proof. And possibly for the same reason that Marty ordered Pete Boylan to back away from the investigation.”
“What reason is that?” Page asked.
“The two million came from the ISI.”
Page held up a hand. “This stops now, Mac, and I mean it. No more of your running around on your own shooting anyone who gets in your way.”
“Who ordered you to leave Pakistan out of it?”
“This conversation ends now,” Page said. “Someone from the bureau will want to interview you, and I suggest that you cooperate this time.” He got to his feet, but McGarvey remained seated.
“Can you tell me what the navy is doing? Has the ONI at least given the other guys the heads up?”
“The Office of Naval Intelligence is not this agency’s business.”
“Christ, what if I’m right? How many other assassinations are going to have to happen before you get your head out of your ass?”
“Get out of here.”
McGarvey got to his feet. “Have I ever steered you or this agency wrong?”
“A piece of advice?” Patterson asked.
“Sure,” Mac said. He hadn’t thought that he would get very far this morning, but he was glad he’d come; the company was on notice.
“Whatever you do, stay as far away as possible from the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence.”
“Anyone in particular?” McGarvey asked. There were fifteen members on the committee.
“I think you know the two or three I’m talking about.”
McGarvey nodded. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Director,” he said to Page, and walked out.
NINETEEN
At the Alt-Collner Schankstuben restaurant Pam Schlueter took one of the small tables on the sidewalk and ordered a Martini & Rossi red vermouth with an orange peel. It was the signal that she’d come in clear, which just now was a great puzzle to her. One of several she was faced with.
About a month ago she’d noticed that someone was following her, and it didn’t take long to figure out that her minders—there were three on single shifts—were almost certainly BND officers. It was a BND officer who’d followed Dieter to Florida and gunned him down on the beach outside the UDT/SEAL museum. And Friedrich Heiser had had to lose another BND officer before he made the hit on the Ridder SEAL and his family.
And as of yesterday she was still being followed. But all of a sudden this afternoon, when she’d taken a test run to the Marx-Engels Plaza in preparation for tonight’s meeting, she realized that her minders were gone.
For a couple of hours she wandered all over the city, sometimes on foot, sometimes by bus or taxi but no one was behind her. She’d even become so obvious as to suddenly stop and reverse direction or walk into a shop and go out the back way. But still nothing. Nor had there been anyone in front of the apartment she was using for the past several weeks or anyone to follow her here tonight.
Only a few diners were in the pub, and the small table next to hers had a reserved sign on it. Naisir came around the corner and sat down at the reserved table. “You had no trouble this evening?” he asked conversationally.
“No. But what the hell are you doing here?” Pam demanded, keeping her voice low. His calling her for this meeting was another of the puzzles.
A waiter came out and Naisir ordered a grilled ham sandwich and a beer.
“I can’t eat like this in Islamabad,” the ISI officer said. “I’ve come to warn you that I arranged to have Mr. McGarvey taken out but the idiots who were to have done the job failed. In fact, McGarvey actually killed two of them.”
Pam had seen the back-page newspaper article about a disturbance in a parking garage just off the Ku’damm. The police had called it a robbery attempt, which was common these days. “I had the contract, I was waiting for you to tell me where he could be found, and now you’re saying that he was here in Berlin?”
“Yes. It was thought to save you the trouble so that you could concentrate on your primary assignment. How are you progressing?”
“I still have Heiser and four other operators in the States, all of them in the Norfolk area.”
Naisir frowned. “If they’re working together, they’re bound to be noticed.”
“For now none of them knows of the existence of the others. They’re each working independently. In fact, one of the DEVGRU operators and his family have already been eliminated.”
“Yes, I’d assumed that was your work. What about the others? There’s been nothing in the news over the past twenty-four hours. You’ve not run into any trouble you’re not telling me about?”
When Pam had realized that she was no longer being tailed by the BND she had debated keeping Naisir in the dark. But she depended upon him for up-to-the-minute intelligence, and of course for the money—one million euros up front, plus five hundred thousand for each SEAL assaulter taken down, plus an additional bonus if all twenty-four of them were eliminated.
“The BND is no longer following me,” she said.
“They’re very good. You can’t be certain.”
“But I am,” she said, and she told him about her activities this afternoon and evening.
Naisir’s sandwich and beer came, and Pam ordered another vermouth. When her drink came and the waiter left, Naisir was actually smiling.
“Perhaps it’s better that we let Mr. McGarvey return home unharmed after all,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you see, my dear, the man has actually helped us—you in particular.”
“No, I don’t see.”
“Why he became involved no longer matters. But he is, and his first step was to come here to talk to the BND officer who took your Herr Zimmer out. But the meeting took place at the private residence of Weisse’s control officer, not at headquarters. Afterwards, the team tailing you was ordered to stand down. The same thing is happening at this moment in the United States. Only the local police are involved in the murders, but not the FBI or the CIA.”
“I’m still not following you,” Pam said.
“Mr. McGarvey has convinced the German intelligence service as well as his own CIA that the attacks on the SEAL Team Six assaulters is being orchestrated by us. By the government of Pakistan. To exact retribution.”
“Which is the truth.”
“Of course it is. But neither Berlin nor Washington could ever admit to something so monstrous. We provide the United States, and to a lesser extent the coalition forces, including Germany, with the right to do battle with the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership. Of course we condemn the attacks publically, but we allow them.”
“Including the raid on bin Laden’s compound?”
“Especially that one,” Naisir said. “And in return we are given money to help fund and equip our military.”
Pam understood perfectly. “India is a friend of the United States. So we’re talking about a delicate balance.”
“An extremely delicate balance, one that neither Washington nor Berlin wishes to upset.”
“Stupid that they would allow their war heroes to be assassinated.”
“The actual reason for the balance is to prevent a nuclear war between us and India—a war that would almost certainly spread, perhaps to something totally out of control.”
“It’s still stupid,” Pam said. Even through her deep hatred she could see it—a country not protecting the soldiers who served it.
“I agree. But they have McGarvey. He won’t get any official help, but he’s bound to come after your assassins and eventually you.”
“I thought you said that he’s helped us.”
“Yes, he has. But just remember he will come after you, and when he does, you’d best be prepared to deal with him.”
“Unlike your clumsy effort.”
“I agree,” Naisir said. “Even I underesti
mated the man. Don’t you make the same mistake.”
“When the time comes he will be eliminated for an additional fee.”
“Yes, one million.”
“Two million.”
“Agreed,” Naisir said without hesitation.
“Then the next step is to kill the remaining twenty-two SEALS.”
TWENTY
A young ensign in desert tan Crye Precision battle dress was waiting for McGarvey at the front gate of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group—DEVGRU—at Virginia Beach. He wore no name tag, only his insignia of rank and the SEAL Team Six patch. Slight of build, with long hair tied in a ponytail, he had the thousand-yard stare of the warrior who has seen close-quarters battle.
“Mr. Director, welcome to DEVGRU, I’m Ensign Mader. Captain Cole asked that I bring you up to his office.”
McGarvey parked his car in the visitor’s lot outside the main gate and then got into a navy Hummer, with Mader at the wheel.
On the way up, the windows were down. Mac heard two sharp explosions and then a lot of small-arms fire in the distance through the woods, “Busy day.”
“Yes, sir.”
They stopped at an intersection to allow a pair of armored personnel carriers to pass. Seconds later a Black Hawk helicopter roared low overhead and disappeared toward the sound of the shooting to the east.
A few blocks later they passed the post exchange and the cluster of buildings normally associated with a military installation, finally pulling up and parking in front of a three-story building with a small signboard and an American flag in a grassy area.
“I’m surprised that your flag isn’t at half mast because of the two operators you lost,” McGarvey said.
“That takes a presidential directive and we’ve received none,” Mader said sharply.
Inside they bypassed the elevator and took the stairs up to an office on the third floor, where a young clerk, also dressed in Cryes, picked up the phone. “The gentleman from Washington is here, sir.” He hung up. “Captain Cole will see you now, sir,” he said.
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