The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  They shook hands and McGarvey gave him a visitor’s pass. “Let’s make this quick.”

  He took the colonel down to the pathology labs and the morgue in the basement. One of the technicians opened the refrigerated compartment where Kim’s body had been placed, slid it out, and then left them.

  “Her name is Huk Kim,” McGarvey said. “She and her husband Soon were South Korean snipers, but they quit the service several years ago and have been working freelance ever since. They were the shooters in Pyongyang.”

  Ma glanced at Kim’s body. “Yes, we received word from Major Chen that you were given assistance in Pyongyang getting this woman here to Washington so that you could prove North Korea’s innocence. It appears you failed.”

  “Only in keeping her alive, for that I’m sorry. But the fact that we were attacked proves she was involved.”

  Ma shrugged. “It proves nothing, Mr. Director, although the fact that you are working for the North Korean regime has come as something of a surprise. I’m here out of curiosity. Nothing more.”

  “She and her husband were hired by an expediter living in Japan. An ex-KGB killer. It was his people who came here last night.”

  Ma was unimpressed. “The Russians have no reason to see the region engaged in a nuclear exchange.”

  “He was an expediter only. He worked for someone else.”

  “Who?” the colonel asked.

  McGarvey was walking on shaky ground now. “I don’t know,” he said, and Ma started to turn away. “But I’m going to ask the Russian. It’s a question of money.”

  “And motivation.”

  “Yes. I’ll ask him that too.”

  Ma chose his words with obvious care. “From where we sit, Mr. Director, only one country would benefit from creating trouble for us with North Korea—other than the insanity of Kim Jong Il.”

  “That would seem to be the case,” McGarvey said. He opened the drawer next to Kim’s and unzipped the top part of the bag to reveal McCann’s face. “He hired the Russian, and he was one of the raiding party last night who tried to kill Kim to keep her from talking.”

  Ma was impressed, and then angry. “I know this man,” he said. “And if what you are telling me is true my government will have to immediately reevaluate who its real enemy is.”

  “You may take the woman’s body with you, but his stays here,” McGavey said. He rezipped the bag and closed the drawer. “I only showed you because I want you to believe that I’m telling the truth. Like the Russian he was only a middleman. He was getting money from someone other than us.”

  “Convenient for you to say so—”

  “Bullshit, Colonel. I wouldn’t have brought you here to blow smoke up your ass. My government did not engineer the assassination. We may have done some stupid things, but this wasn’t one of them.”

  Ma took his time replying. “It’s only your reputation that compels me to listen to you, Mr. Director. What do you want?”

  “Time.”

  “To do what?”

  “Prove that neither Pyongyang nor my government was behind the assassination.”

  “How much time?” Ma asked.

  “As much as you can give me.”

  Ma nodded after a beat. “Forty-eight hours,” he said. “I think that I can convince my superiors of that much.” He shook his head. “Beyond that I don’t know.”

  “Do you want the woman’s body?”

  “No,” Ma said, and he glanced at the other drawer. “But I would take that one.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “I’ll call you direct when I have something.”

  “Yes, do that.”

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Todd was waiting in the Hummer just outside the ambulance entrance when McGarvey emerged from the meeting with the Chinese intelligence chief of station, tossed his bag in the backseat, and got in.

  “How’s Liz?”

  “Tired, but she’s okay. How’s Otto?”

  “We brought him some Twinkies.”

  Todd laughed, but then he got serious. “I brought everything we’ll need for Tokyo. What’s the drill?”

  “I’ve got one of our Lears and a crew, who’ll fly us over to Okinawa and from there the Navy will get us to Yokosuka. But it’s not going to be easy getting to Turov.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  McGarvey nodded. “You’re going to provide a diversion and I’m going over the wall. Not very elegant, but we don’t have much time for anything more sophisticated, and we certainly couldn’t show up in Tokyo with a big crew. The Japanese authorities would be all over us before we took two steps.”

  “Well, first we’ve got another problem right here,” Todd said. “Dick called and asked me to bring you in. He wants to talk.”

  McGarvey had been hoping to avoid Adkins until after Tokyo. But no doubt the housekeeping team leader from last night had filed his report to cover his own ass. He had stuck his neck out taking orders from a retired DCI.

  “Did he mention anything about McCann?”

  They were in traffic on Wisconsin Avenue heading toward the Key Bridge across the river. Todd glanced at him and shook his head. “And I didn’t mention it.”

  “Thanks, Todd, but you’re going to have to start watching your ass if you want to stay in the business.”

  Todd hesitated a moment. “Liz and I were going to talk to you about that,” he said. “We’re thinking about pulling the pin. Starting up our own security consulting firm. We’d make ten times the money, and maybe we’d get into a position where people stopped shooting at us.”

  “You might give it a second thought, son. They need people like you and Liz. Badly.”

  Todd smiled wanly. “She predicted you’d say something like that.”

  “Okay, let’s go pay Dick a visit.”

  Adkins was waiting for them in his seventh-floor office in the Old Headquarters Building, along with the Deputy DCI David Whittaker and the Agency’s general counsel Carlton Patterson. None of them looked particularly happy, especially not Adkins.

  “I understand that Howard McCann was shot to death last night at the Cabin John safe house,” Adkins said, getting right to it. His eyes were tired, his narrow face lined and sallow as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “That’s right. Houseeeping took his body to All Saints,” McGarvey said.

  “You were there too?” Adkins asked Todd.

  “Yes, sir. Along with my wife, and Otto.”

  “Both of them wounded, Rencke seriously.”

  “Well, Jesus H. Christ, Mac, would you mind explaining what the fuck is going on?” Whittaker demanded. He was a tall, lean man, who had served under McGarvey as assistant deputy director of operations, and again under McGarvey in the same number two position he held now. McGarvey had never known him to have such a short temper.

  “Howard was the traitor here who directed and paid the Russian in Tokyo to expedite the hit in Pyongyang and at least two others, probably more.”

  All the animation seemed to leave Adkins’s face and he was struck dumb for the moment, as was Whittaker.

  “Do you have proof of this?” Patterson asked.

  “I suspected someone within the Company was calling the shots with this Russian. Otto discovered that Howard’s duty stations corresponded—same cities, same dates—and when he found out that I had brought one of the South Korean shooters back with me from Pyongang I knew whoever it was would come out and try to eliminate her.”

  “The duty stations could have been coincidences,” Patterson said. “And him coming out to the safe house could have been a gesture of goodwill. He came to offer his help.”

  “He confessed.”

  “Do you have that on tape, or in his own handwriting, maybe his signature?”

  “Just my word, Carleton.”

  Patterson started to object, the lawyer in him wanting to argue the point, but Adkins held him off.

  “What next, Mac?” he asked. “What do we tell his wife?”

 
; “Killed in the line of duty. Give him his star downstairs, and his pension. Ballinger and his people can work up something that’ll satisfy the press corps.” Logan Ballinger was the Agency’s chief press officer.

  Whittaker was incredulous. “We’re making him a hero?” he demanded.

  “The country needs a hero right now, and so does the Company.”

  “What about us?” Adkins asked. “What next?”

  “You’ll need a new DDO,” McGarvey said.

  “I meant the situation.”

  “I have one more thing to take care of.”

  No one said a thing for a beat.

  McGarvey got out of his chair across from Adkins and glanced out the window at the rolling hills and woods, pretty at this time of the year. “Hang onto your ass, Dick, because if I don’t make it and the shit hits the fan, you’re going to take a lot of the heat.”

  “Will you come in for a debriefing?” Patterson asked. “We can’t just sweep what happened out at Cabin John under the rug.”

  McGarvey nodded. “But that might be what you’ll have to do in the end.”

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Turov’s Gulfstream touched down at Tokyo’s Narita Airport just before dawn and taxied over to the Russian’s personal hanger beyond the VIP terminal. As the engines spooled down Minoru thanked the pretty attendant and the pilot and copilot.

  Out front he got into a cab and ordered the driver to take him up to Ueno, and he sat back with his thoughts. He considered himself lucky to have walked away from the Cabin John operation in one piece. Rather than cower in the house after the attack had begun, McGarvey had counterattacked. It was the last thing any of them had expected to happen.

  All but one of the mision’s goals had been accomplished. The woman was dead as was Daniel, leaving the American authorities with no proof.

  He hoped it was enough to satisfy the colonel, but he had his doubts.

  Turov, dressed in a deep scarlet kimono, waited on the teak deck overlooking the garden, a samauri short sword lying at his side, his expression one of Bushido serenity. The morning was absolutely flawless, the sky cloudless, the sounds of the city very distant, muted by the compound’s high walls and the parkland’s woods on the low side of the road, the tinkling water in the fountain soothing, and the occasional splash of a golden carp in the pond gentling.

  He didn’t look up when Minoru came to the doorway, but his posture stiffened slightly. “Welcome home,” he said softly.

  Minoru remained where he stood, not moving a muscle. The colonel was in his transition state—a zen time between deep contemplation and total wakefulness—which was extremely dangerous. His actions could be unpredictably dangerous if he were disturbed. Minoru had personally witnessed the decaptitation of a yakuza foot soldier who walked up behind the colonel at just a time as this.

  Finally Turov turned and looked over his shoulder. “Come, sit with me and tell me everything.”

  Minoru went and sat down cross-legged and listened to the sounds of the flowing water for a few sconds before he began to speak, going over in detail everything that had happened from the moment he’d left the compound and flown to Washington aboard the Gulfstream.

  “He will come here to finish this business,” Turov said.

  “But why? Your death will serve no purpose toward stopping China from making its attack.”

  “He is of a different opinion, and we must respect him for it. I’ve set someone to keep watch for him at Dulles and let us know the moment he departs, and someone at Narita to watch for his arrival.”

  “He could be eliminated in the crowds at the airport, or on the highway,” Minoru suggested. “An accident.”

  “We don’t have the time or manpower. It’ll have to be done here.”

  “Hai, Colonel.”

  “When it’s over we’ll destroy his body in the usual manner and scatter his ashes in Tokyo Bay before we leave for Melbourne. It will be a just ending for a fitting adversary.”

  EIGHTY-NINE

  The dawn was beginning to brighten the horizon behind them as the CIA’s Learjet en route to Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base began to lose altitude. McGarvey had awakened forty-five minutes ago after a reasonable night’s sleep in one of the soft leather reclining seats. He was having coffee that their flight attendant had laid out when Todd woke up and looked out the windows.

  “We’re on the way down. How far out are we?”

  “About an hour, I expect. From there the Navy is giving us a lift up to Yokosuka. The George H.W. Bush is in port so they’re landing us aboard. Less questions that way.” The Bush was the CVN-77, the latest Nimitz-class carrier, and it had been deployed to Yokosuka a couple of months ago.

  Todd poured a cup of coffee. “Do you think they’ll go along with us?”

  “They won’t have much choice.”

  “Anything else come in during the night?”

  “The Chinese have apparently backed off their rhetoric for now,” McGarvey said. “And CNN is reporting that the White House postponed recalling our ambassador.”

  “Dick must have said something at the briefing to make Haynes change his mind.”

  “I’m sure he did,” McGarvey said. “He bought us some time.”

  “It’s a start,” Todd replied. “You said last night that we were going in with one slight advantage. What’d you mean?”

  “He thinks that I’m coming to arrest him and turn him over to the Chinese.”

  “But we’re not.”

  “No.”

  They were served a decent breakfast of steak, hash browns, and eggs from the aircraft’s tiny galley by a taciturn ex-Air Force staff sergeant who was used to flying with anyone from an Agency VIP visiting a foreign station to field officers either going into or coming out of some dangerous assignment somewhere. No one appreciated questions.

  They landed at Kadena in the southern part of the long, narrow island a few minutes past seven, and taxied across the field to where a Navy C-2A(R) Grumman Greyhound Carrier Onboard Delivery twin-engine turboprop aircraft was parked, its propellers turning.

  Their pilot, John Tillotson, turned in his seat as the attendant opened the cabin door and lowered the stairs. “Do you want us to wait here for you, Mr. Director? My instructions were to follow your orders unless we were recalled to Washington.”

  “If we’re not back in twenty-four hours you can get out of here,” McGarvey told him.

  “Good luck, sir,” the pilot said. “And we’ll be expecting you back first thing in the morning. The champagne will be on ice.”

  “Good man,” McGarvey said.

  He and Todd hefted their heavy duffle bags and went down the stairs, the morning bright and breezy. They were met at the bottom by an Air Force chief master sergeant who was driving a Humvee. His name tag read Johnson.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Anything else of yours we need to transfer?”

  “This is it,” McGarvey said.

  “Then if you’ll climb aboard I’ll turn you over to the Navy.”

  The inside of the Grumman was starkly bare and utilitarian after the Lear. Once their gear was stowed, and the aircraft taxied out to the runway a chief petty officer in a flight helmet helped them don inflatable life vests before he made sure that they were properly strapped in. He gave them helmets and showed them where to plug in so that they could communicate.

  “The name’s Decker, sir,” the crewman said. “Have either of you landed aboard a carrier in one of these buckets?”

  “A couple of times,” McGarvey said.

  “Yes, sir. Then you’ll know to tighten down your harness when we go in. It gets a little bumpy right there at the end.”

  “That it does,” McGarvey said.

  “It’s three hours to the Big G. If you need anything give me a shout, I’ll be forward,” Decker said. He nodded toward a pocket on the seat backs. “Burp bags.”

  “How far out is she?”

  “About twenty miles by the time we get
up there. The old man’s looking forward to having you aboard, sir.”

  McGarvey had to smile. “I’ll bet he is.”

  The flight up was noisy, but much smoother than the last flight McGarvey had taken aboard one of these things. Tokyo Bay appeared on the horizon, framing the George H.W. Bush that had been turned into the wind. On deck the Nimitz-class carrier was huge, more than one thousand feet long, but coming in for a landing it seemed impossibly small.

  The Greyhound pilot searched for the groove, right and left, the slewing motion sickening, but suddenly they were down, very hard, and moments later the arresting wires snagged and they came to a bone-jarring halt.

  Decker came aft and opened the cargo hatch as McGarvey and Todd unstrapped and took off their helmets. “Not so bad, huh?” he shouted over the noise of the Greyhound’s still-turning engines.

  “Piece of cake, chief,” McGarvey told him. “Thank the pilots for us, if you would.”

  “Will do.”

  Chief of Fleet Intelligence Commander Leonard Stiles met them on deck and introduced himself. “Good morning, Mr. Director. How was your flight up from Kadena?”

  “Long,” McGarvey said.

  “The captain would like to have a word with you before we get squared away.” The giant aircraft carrier was turning to starboard, her deck obviously canted. It was impressive.

  McGarvey and Todd followed the officer across to the island then down a labyrinth of corridors to the captain’s quarters.

  “We’ll be docking in a couple of hours so he’s got only a few minutes to spare for you.”

  “Have you been briefed on what we’re doing out here?” McGarvey asked.

  “Only that we’re to give you just about anything you need, and not to ask too many questions.”

  “This could be ground zero,” Todd said. “I’m surprised that you guys aren’t beating feet for the open ocean.”

  “It’s supposedly a show of confidence for the Japanese that we don’t think this situation will go nuclear,” Stiles told them though it was obvious he had a different opinion. “The president ordered us to return to port.”