The Cabal

by David Hagberg

  “The Bureau’s seeing it as a professional hit.”

  “Witnesses? I-Ninety-five is a busy highway that time of day.”

  “None have come forward so far,” Rencke said. “But maybe later when we go public someone will make the call.”

  McGarvey was starting to settle down a little, his experience kicking in. Someone had assassinated his son-in-law for so far an unknown reason or reasons that most likely had something to do with Howard McCann’s connection to Robert Foster and the Friday Club and whatever it was Givens had uncovered. “What’s on the disk?”

  “Nothing believable, Mac,” Rencke said. “Honest injun. It’s like the ravings of a maniac, or someone on a bad acid trip. The Friday Club has supposedly come up with a plan to overthrow the government by force, arresting the president and his cabinet and putting them on trial for treason.”

  “When?” McGarvey asked, for want of anything else to say. Rencke was right, it was crazy beyond belief, but then so had crashing airliners into tall buildings.

  “That part doesn’t matter. The guy leading the army is Howard McCann in hiding somewhere nearby, gathering an elite strike force of disaffected SEALs, Delta Force, and Bureau and Company field officers.”

  “McCann is dead.”

  “Yeah. Which makes the disk worthless.”

  “Somebody must have thought differently,” McGarvey said.

  “His cell phone was missing too, and if they can crack the encryption algorithms they’ll have his phone book. Lots of important numbers.”

  “My number will come up,” McGarvey said. “Todd called just before it happened.” Christ, he didn’t know how he was going to tell Katy. He didn’t know about his daughter. Hell, he didn’t even know about himself, what he would do once he caught up with Todd’s killers. But he was sure they wouldn’t live to see a court of law let alone the inside of a jail.

  “One of our Gulfstreams is on the way down for you. Should be at SRQ within the hour.”

  “Get Liz to All Saints. She’ll need someone with her. Maybe Louise.” All Saints was the hospital in Georgetown that the CIA and most of the other intelligence agencies in the area used. Everyone on the staff had secret or better clearances and there’d never been a leak from the place, no matter the circumstances nor how high the patient’s profile might have been. “I assume Todd was taken there.”

  “Yeah,” Rencke said. “And you’ll have some muscle.”

  “For the time being,” McGarvey replied, a little distantly now that he was ramping up to go back into the field. “Send somebody over to pick up Givens. Give it to the Bureau for now, but I want him brought out to the Campus and secured.” The Campus was the cluster of buildings, above- and belowground, at the Agency’s Langley headquarters.

  “Pushing a Washington Post reporter around could get a little dicey, kemo sabe.”

  “Do it,” McGarvey said. “We’ll see you at the hospital.”

  “Right,” Rencke said and broke the connection.

  McGarvey looked out the window but Katy was gone, and when he turned around she was standing in the doorway a stricken look on her features.

  “Who’s going to All Saints?” she asked.

  “Liz,” McGarvey said and he started toward his wife, but she held up a hand.

  “How bad is she?”

  “It’s not her.”

  Katy’s eyes narrowed. “Not Audie. Is it Todd? Has there been an accident?”

  He had dreaded this moment for his entire career, but it was the nature of the business that casualties would occur. It was war, us against them. Only when the star that would be put up in the lobby of the Old Headquarters Building, anonymous, no name, representing a fallen agent you were close to, was the burden next to unbearable.

  “Todd was shot to death this afternoon.”

  Katy went pale. “Dear God in heaven,” she said softly, and she looked deeply into her husband’s eyes. “Assassinated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has Elizabeth been told yet?”

  “Otto and Louise are driving down to the Farm right now. He called me from the car. They’ll be there for her, and they’ll chopper up to the hospital. Todd’s body is there.”

  “Why?” Katy asked, her voice plaintive, pleading.

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.”

  Katy hesitated for just a beat. “I’ll pack if you’ll clear the table,” she said, and she turned and left.

  And so it begins, McGarvey thought, rage already building up inside of him.

  FIVE

  Givens’s town house was in Berwyn Heights, northeast, just within the Beltway, in a pleasant brick and redwood complex, with a pool, clubhouse, and playground for the kids. Thousand Oaks was home to mostly young, upwardly mobile couples, near to a good private prep school, shopping malls, and a couple of decent restaurants. His town house was a three-bedroom—one for him and his wife, one for their only child, Larry, four, and one for an office where he was trying to work on a novel.

  The dark blue Toyota SUV backed into a parking spot just at eight, and Kangas doused the headlights and shut off the engine. They would have made the hit earlier, on the road as they had with Van Buren, but their instructions had been to contain the situation. It meant they needed access to the newspaperman’s personal computer, so they’d waited until Givens had left the Post and had driven home.

  They watched as he went up the walk and entered his apartment.

  It was a matter of timing. It was unlikely that the CIA would have allowed news of the assassination of one of its officers to go public, at least until it was known why the kill had been made. That meant Givens would not know that the man he’d met for lunch was dead, and that he was likely to be next.

  But sooner or later the Company, probably through the FBI, would be sending someone over here to have a word with the Post reporter, even though approaching someone in the media in that fashion was considered extremely risky.

  “Let’s do it,” Kangas said.

  He and Mustapha, dressed in jeans and dark Windbreakers, got out of the SUV, crossed the parking area, careful to stay out of the direct spill of the streetlight, and went directly to Givens’s town house. No one else was around, though traffic on University Boulevard/Highway 193, below, was steady. Nor did it appear that anyone was sitting on one of the balconies, or looking out a window.

  At the door, Mustapha pulled on latex gloves, drew his silenced 9mm Austrian-made Steyr GB, and stepped aside as Kangas put on his gloves then rang the doorbell.

  A few seconds later Givens answered the intercom. “Yes?”

  Kangas held a CIA identification card in a leather wallet directly in front of the peephole. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but Mr. Van Buren sent me. It’s about your meeting this noon, and the disk. He has a question.”

  “I told him to phone.”

  “Yes, sir. But considering the nature of the information, he thought it might be safer this way.”

  “Oh, all right,” Givens said, and a shadow moved away from the peephole. Moments later the deadbolt snapped back and the door started to open.

  Kangas pushed hard, bulling his way into the town house, shoving Givens back against the hall closet door, and charging the rest of the way into the apartment.

  “What the fuck—” Givens shouted.

  Mustapha stepped into the apartment, closed the door behind him, and fired one shot into the middle of Givens’s forehead at point-blank range.

  A young, attractive woman in shorts and a T-shirt, her feet bare, was at the kitchen counter when Kangas, a pistol in his hand, appeared in the doorway. She was looking up, surprise and fear in her eyes, her mouth pursed, as he fired one shot, catching her in the bridge of her nose, driving her back against the stove, where she crumpled to the floor.

  A small, slightly built boy with tousled brown hair came around the corner, and before he could comprehend what was happening Kangas shot him in the head, killing him instantly and driving his body back
out of the kitchen, blood splattering on the wall.

  Mustapha came in from the living room and glanced indifferently at the bodies of the woman and boy. “I have his BlackBerry. I’ll take the study,” he said.

  Kangas nodded. Mustapha was the computer expert, and the clock was clicking. Time was precious.

  Careful not to step in the blood, Kangas went down the corridor to the master bedroom furnished nicely in Danish modern, and quickly searched the closet, where he found an old military .45 autoloader, but nothing in any of the clothing; then he checked the chest of drawers, rifling through the shirts and shorts and a small box with a few pieces of cheap jewelry, the armoire, again checking pockets and finally the two nightstands and the drawers beneath the bed, which contained only extra blankets, pillows, and sheets.

  The framed pictures on the walls looked like family photos, and quickly taking them apart revealed nothing hidden. Nor did his search of the master bathroom, or of the child’s messy bedroom at the back of the town house, turn up anything useful.

  Mustapha was buttoning up a laptop computer when Kangas came back. He looked up. “Anything?”

  “No. You?”

  “Everything’s in his computer,” Mustapha said. “Names, dates, places, transcripts of interviews, and lots of photographs.”

  The study had been taken apart, books down from the shelves, drawers opened and emptied, framed photographs and certificates taken apart. It looked as if the place had been randomly searched, which was their intention.

  “Nothing else?” Kangas asked.

  Mustapha shook his head.

  Kangas took out a plastic envelope that held a dozen strips of sticky tape each holding a fingerprint or partial print and transferred the prints around the apartment—doorknobs, countertops, and the woman’s purse and Givens’s wallet, which were first emptied of money and credit cards.

  The entire operation had taken them less than seven minutes before they cracked the door to make sure that nothing moved in the parking lot, and then calmly walked back to the SUV and drove off, Mustapha behind the wheel this time as Kangas got on the cell phone.

  Remington answered on the first ring. “Yes.”

  “The problem has been taken care of.”

  “Both problems?”

  The question was more than rude, putting in doubt his ability and judgment, and Kangas bridled, but he held back a sharp answer. Remington might not have proper manners, he was a Brit after all, but he did know what he was doing, and the pay was good. The problem was Kangas had never much cared for taking orders. And he certainly never liked smug bastards who didn’t show proper respect. It was one of the reasons he’d left the Company, which was about little more than suits giving orders, many of which never made any sense because the bastards giving them either didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, or they’d had their noses so far up someone’s ass they couldn’t come up for air.

  “Yes, sir, both problems,” he said after a brief hesitation.

  They were back out on University heading toward the Beltway, traffic very light, when a pair of unmarked cars moving very fast passed them and pulled into the driveway of the apartment complex.

  FBI, Kangas figured, and he glanced at Mustapha. They had cut it close this time.

  “Do you have a delivery?” Remington asked.

  “Yes,” Kangas said. “When?”

  “Morning. Seven o’clock.”

  Kangas wanted to ask why the delay if the operation had been important, but again he held back from the question. “As you wish,” he said.

  “Make damn sure you come in clean,” Remington ordered brusquely. “No fuckups.”

  The day would come, Kangas promised himself, when Remington would apologize for his incredible rudeness and lack of respect. It would be the last thing he did before he died.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  SIX

  It was four a.m. in Washington when the CIA’s executive Gulfstream touched down at Andrews Air Force Base and quickly taxied over to a hangar well away from operations, and then inside, where its engines spooled down.

  Katy had taken a light sedative just after they’d left Sarasota, but she hadn’t managed to get much sleep, and now she looked like hell, her hair a mess, her makeup smeared, and her eyes red and puffy. But she didn’t seem to care about her appearance or anything else, and McGarvey was worried about her.

  “We’re here, sweetheart,” he said; she looked up at him but didn’t say anything.

  A half-dozen Company security officers in dark blue Windbreakers were waiting with a pair of Cadillac Escalade SUVs inside the hangar. One of them was speaking into his lapel mike when the flight attendant opened the hatch, and McGarvey helped Katy to the steps.

  “Thank you,” he told the young woman, who’d been solicitous but not intrusive on the flight.

  A ground crewman opened the cargo bay hatch and took out the McGarveys’ hanging bag and overnight case, which one of the security officers took and placed in the back of the lead car.

  It had been fifteen years ago, maybe twenty, when McGarvey had returned from an assignment that had gone bad in Chile, when Katy had given him her ultimatum: either me or the CIA. It hadn’t mattered that he had assassinated a woman—the wife of a general—who he’d thought was innocent, that he had blood on his hands, that he was battered physically and emotionally; he hadn’t been given the time to explain and ask for help. So he’d walked out and had run to Switzerland, throwing away his marriage and young daughter. Because he had been too proud, and because he’d had nothing to give at that moment.

  But now it was his turn. Katy was battered beyond anything he’d ever endured in his life, and she needed him more than he’d ever imagined anyone could need someone.

  “Easy now,” he said, taking her arm and helping her down the boarding stairs.

  One of the security officers came over, while the others, their heads on swivels, stood in a half-circle between the aircraft and the hangar’s open doors.

  “Karl Tomlinson, Mr. Director, we’re here to get you to All Saints.”

  “Is my daughter there yet?” McGarvey asked.

  “Yes, sir, along with Mr. and Mrs. Rencke.”

  They crossed to the lead SUV and McGarvey helped Katy step up and into the backseat. She was like a zombie, moving only when he helped her to move.

  As soon as they were strapped in, the driver, with Tomlinson riding shotgun, took off and headed at a high rate of speed across the ramp to the main gate, where they were waved through, then directly up to Suitland Parkway and into Washington proper. At this time of the morning traffic was very light, and the driver only slowed for red lights, the chase car right on their tail.

  “Anything new as of the last few hours?” McGarvey asked. Katy was staring out the window, apparently with little awareness of what was going on around her, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked the question.

  Tomlinson looked over his shoulder, a hard expression on his square, solid face. “It was no drive-by shooting, sir. They were professionals.”

  “They?”

  “Someone called in, said they saw a man come around from Mr. Van Buren’s BMW and get into the passenger seat of a dark-colored SUV—possibly a Toyota or Nissan—a second man was behind the wheel.” Tomlinson glanced at Katy for a reaction, but she didn’t look up. “No descriptions or tag number, but it was a professional hit. Todd had apparently reached for his pistol, but never managed to draw it.”

  Knives were stabbing into McGarvey’s skull; he kept seeing images of Todd and Liz and the baby, and of Todd in action. The kid had been damned good. Steady, reliable, and the hell of it was that he hadn’t needed the job. His parents had been wealthy and he’d inherited a lot of money and a big house. He’d come to work for the CIA out of ordinary patriotism, something that was a lot less rare, even in these times, than the average American realized.

  “Did the Bureau pick up Josh Givens, the Post reporter?”

 
“He and his wife and child were shot to death in their apartment, a few minutes after eight last night,” Tomlinson said. His accent was East Coast, maybe Connecticut or New Hampshire, and crisp. He was a professional in the middle of an assignment he found distasteful. “It was meant to look like a robbery. Money and credit cards missing.”

  “Not likely,” McGarvey said, trying to see a reason. The stuff on the disk that Givens had handed over to Todd made absolutely no sense, and yet Todd and Givens had both been assassinated. The only common thread was the disk.

  “We’re cooperating with the Bureau. They’ve agreed to keep a lid on it, and Mr. Adkins has agreed.”

  Dick Adkins had been the deputy director of the CIA when McGarvey had been the DCI, and now he ran the show. He was a good administrator but not much of a spy.

  Another thought suddenly struck McGarvey. “Was there a computer in the apartment?” he asked. “Maybe a laptop?”

  “It wasn’t mentioned, sir,” Tomlinson said.

  “Find out.”

  Tomlinson turned away and said something into his lapel mike. It took a couple of minutes for the reply before he turned back. “No computer.”

  “The disk in Todd’s car was not the one Givens handed him in the restaurant,” McGarvey said, at least one part of the assassination of his son-in-law and the reporter clear. “It was a fake. It’s why they had to get the computer.”

  “I’ll pass that to the Bureau—”

  “Not yet,” McGarvey said, his mind still spinning. If the disk was a fake, it meant the assassins may have been at the restaurant and witnessed the hand over. But it also meant that whoever had directed the hit had to know what Givens had been working on; had to know enough to manufacture the bogus disk so that it could be planted in Todd’s car after he’d been murdered.

  Not only did they have the original disk and Givens’s computer that contained whatever it was the reporter had gathered about the Friday Club, but they had Todd’s cell phone from which they would have found out that his last call just before the murder had been to his father-in-law.