The Cabal

by David Hagberg

  “Anyone with him?”

  “No. And I woulda found out sooner, except he’s traveling under a work name—Donald Higgs—on a damned fine Canadian passport. First-class work. I was impressed, and I’m looking down a couple of tracks to see how he managed, ’cause there’s really a Don Higgs in Ottawa, a lawyer, same description, similar UK background.”

  “So it’s just Remington and Sandberger and two bodyguards.”

  “Right.”

  “One hour on the ground then call Whittaker,” McGarvey said, and he broke the connection and laid the phone on the seat next to him.

  He wasn’t going to shoot anyone this time, unless he was given no other choice, nor did he want to damage the four men. That would come later. He was counting on the eventual need for it. For now he just wanted to get their attention, and hopefully the attention of the German Federal Police. Make it official so it would be tough for his coming to Germany to be swept under the rug later.

  It was a starting point, an important one, because for once in his career he had absolutely no idea where this was headed. But no power on earth could turn him away from taking it to the finish.

  They touched down at Frankfurt and taxied over to the terminal routinely used for state visits by members of foreign governments, and McGarvey hesitated at the open hatch. The pilot and copilot were looking at him.

  “If you don’t hear from me within two hours, go back to Washington,” he told them.

  “We can wait here for as long as you want, Mr. Director,” the pilot said.

  “I appreciate that, Captain. But if I’m not back aboard by then, it’ll mean I’m probably in jail.”

  “Does this have anything to do with your son-in-law?”

  “Everything to do with it.”

  “Then good hunting, sir,” Debbie said.

  Two stern-faced customs officers in uniform were waiting for him just inside the terminal, that just now was empty, and they scrutinized his diplomatic passport that identified him by his actual name. “Can you tell us the nature of your visit, Mr. McGarvey?” the older of the two asked.

  “It’s routine State Department,” McGarvey said. “I’ve come over to have a word with the president of an American contractor firm doing business in Baghdad. Administrative Solutions. Guy’s name is Roland Sandberger.”

  Both customs officers stiffened, their change in attitude barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. “Do you expect any difficulty?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Where and when will this meeting take place?”

  “At the Steigenberger as soon as I can get a cab over,” McGarvey said.

  “The shuttle will take you. Will you be staying the night?”

  McGarvey had left his overnight bag aboard the aircraft. “No. Just an hour, perhaps less.”

  It was perfectly clear that the customs officers were nervous, especially the older one, who probably had more field experience than his partner, and perhaps because he knew McGarvey by reputation. The one action they could not take, because of his diplomatic immunity, was search him for a weapon.

  His passport was returned to him, and the officers stepped aside. “The shuttle is just in front. We hope your visit is as productive as it is dull.”

  “Me too,” McGarvey said, and he went outside and got into the Steigenberger van, which headed immediately for the hotel.

  On the short ride over from the VIP terminal he’d made a conscious effort to get out of his head the image of Todd’s shot-to-hell body lying on the gurney in All Saints. He wanted to go into this meeting with clear eyes, and steady nerves, or else it would be next to impossible for him not to take someone apart.

  The lobby was not particularly large, though well appointed, and not very busy at this hour. The front desk and concierge services were to the left, and pausing for just a moment, he spotted Sandberger and another man he took to be Remington seated across a broad coffee table from each other. Sandberger’s muscle were seated a short distance away, left and right, in positions to cover the front desk and elevators from one direction, and the main doors to the portico from the other.

  The one facing the doors said something, and Sandberger looked up, startled for just a moment, but then his expression and manner turned wary, but curious, as McGarvey walked over. Remington looked as if he were a deer caught in headlights, but for just a brief instant, recovering nearly as fast as his boss had. He, too, was guarded.

  One of the bodyguards started to rise, but Sandberger motioned him back.

  “Good afternoon,” McGarvey said.

  “You come as something of a surprise, Mr. Director,” Sandberger said pleasantly, but cautiously. “No coincidence, I suspect.”

  By now the customs officers had contacted their superiors, who would be querying the Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, as to what the former director of the CIA was doing in the country on a diplomatic passport. And what information did they have on the American contractor company Administrative Solutions, and what one or more of its officers were doing here.

  “No,” McGarvey said. He sat down in one of the easy chairs facing the two men, as well as the front entrance. He was wearing a kahki sport coat and he made a show of unbuttoning it, in part to convey the message that he was armed and ready to use his weapon, and in part to distract himself for a second so that he didn’t just jump up and take all four of them apart.

  “What are you doing here, then?”

  “I want to know who killed my son-in-law.”

  Sandberger and Remington exchanged a quizzical look and Sandberger spread his hands. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if you’ve lost someone in your family, I’m sorry. Was he in the business?”

  “A Washington Post investigative reporter and his family were also murdered, after he’d spoken to my son-in-law.”

  Sandberger did not respond.

  “It had to do with an investigation of the Friday Club. I’d like to know what connection you and your company has with Robert Foster.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re a liar, of course,” McGarvey said, letting a sharp edge into his tone. “And a murderer.”

  Sandberger had been drinking coffee. He leaned forward, picked up his cup with a steady hand, and eyed McGarvey as he took a sip. “You’re retired, aren’t you? A little old to be running around accusing people of things. One of these days your reflexes will go bad, be a little off, and something will jump up and bite you in the ass.”

  “How about Alexander Turov? That name ring a bell?”

  Sandberger said nothing, and Remington was holding himself in check.

  “He knew your name,” McGarvey said. “I took it from his laptop after I killed him in Tokyo.”

  Sandberger just shook his head, but it was obvious to McGarvey that Turov’s name was familiar to him.

  “The Russian was an interesting man. He was an expediter, nothing more, while your firm fields some of the shooters.” McGarvey looked pointedly at the bodyguards. “I killed him because it was my job, nothing more than that. But when I find out who assassinated my son-in-law, it’ll be more than a job.”

  Remington started to say something but Sandberger held him off with a gesture.

  “Thanks for the warning, if that’s what it was. But I had nothing to do with your son-in-law’s tragic death.”

  A pair of husky, Teutonic-looking men, square, solidly chiseled features, one of them completely bald, both of them wearing suits cut a little large in the middle to conceal the bulges made by weapons carried in shoulder holsters, came in from the portico. They were obviously federal cops.

  “Watch your backs, gentlemen,” McGarvey said. “Every time you look over your shoulders I’ll be there, until one of you fucks up and then I’ll kill you.”

  As the BND officers started over, McGarvey took out his sat phone, snapped photographs of Sandberger, Remington, and Sandberger’s muscle, then h
it speed dial for Rencke’s number.

  The cops were five feet away when the connection was made and McGarvey transmitted the photos. “Call Dave,” he said, and he laid the phone on the coffee table, stood up and spread his arms and legs, all the while smiling at Sandberger.

  FIFTEEN

  “That won’t be necessary, Herr McGarvey,” the bald officer said, his English accented but good. He offered his ID booklet, which identified him as Hans Mueller, Bundesnachrichtendienst embossed around a stylized eagle.

  He was a desk jockey and not an actual spy, or shooter, and McGarvey relaxed. “What can I do for you?”

  “Just a few questions,” Mueller said. He glanced at Sandberger and the others. “I assume that none of you have carried weapons into Germany.”

  Sandberger shook his head.

  “I’m armed,” McGarvey said, and the cops zeroed in on him. He had their attention.

  “Will you surrender your weapon at this time?”

  “Of course,” McGarvey said pleasantly. He took his Wilson from its holster at the small of his back, ejected the magazine and carefully levered the one round out of the firing chamber, and handed the pistol over handle-first, then the magazine and bullet.

  Mueller glanced at the weapon. “You know that you have broken German law by bringing this here.”

  “You might want these, too,” McGarvey said, glancing at Sandberger, as he took the spare magazine and suppressor out of his jacket pocket and handed them over along with his sat phone.

  Mueller wasn’t happy, but the other cop acted as if he were confused, and neither one of them seemed to know what to do with the pistol and especially not the silencer.

  For a seeming eternity no one moved, and McGarvey kept asking himself why these idiots weren’t taking the next step, and frisking Sandberger and Remington and especially Sandberger’s bodyguards. The fact that Sandberger’s muscle were shooters stood out like a neon sign. Stupid lapses like that could get a field man killed in a hurry; it was why they were desk jockeys. Most BND officers McGarvey had met were damned good.

  He glanced over at Sandberger and the others and he could see that they were thinking the same thing.

  But the moment ended when Mueller handed his partner the pistol, ammunition, and silencer. “You’ll have to come with us now. Your diplomatic passport does not cover this.”

  “No, I suppose not,” McGarvey said.

  “You’re not going to cause trouble, sir?” Mueller said.

  “You have my gun,” McGarvey said, and he turned again to Sandberger. “As I said, watch your backs, because I’ll be there.”

  McGarvey rode in the backseat of a slate gray Mercedes C350, the younger BND officer driving, traffic heavy as they skirted downtown and headed up to the north side of the city.

  Mueller turned and looked back. “What is your relationship with those four men in the hotel lobby, Herr McGarvey?”

  “I came over to ask them a few questions.”

  “Concerning what?”

  “The assassination of my son-in-law, who was a CIA officer. He and my daughter ran the CIA’s training center.”

  Mueller’s eyebrows rose. “The Farm. Yes, I know of this place in Virginia. And we know that he was shot to death outside Washington. And you came to Germany because you think Herr Sandberger’s company had something to do with it?”

  McGarvey’s opinion of the BND desk jockeys went up a notch. They might not have been field officers, but they had done their homework before coming over to the Steigenberger to find out why the former chief of the CIA had come to Germany on what was likely a fake diplomatic passport.

  “It’s possible they might have information I need.”

  The cop digested this for a moment. “And what exactly was meant by your comment for those men to watch their backs, you’ll be there.”

  McGarvey looked out the window. They’d left the skyscrapers behind and had turned off the busy autobahn into a pleasant area of apartment buildings, some new and some old probably dating back to before the war. “Did you know that two of his men were probably armed?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  McGarvey turned back. “So did I, and that’ll be ‘sir’ to you.” They were leaning and he was leaning back. He had wanted to make two points here: one was putting Sandberger on notice, and the second was to place his suspicions into the record of at least one government’s law enforcement or intelligence apparatus so that when he came into the CIA’s spotlight, dealing with him would no longer be a simple matter of the dismissal of a grief-stricken father-in-law.

  A bleak expression came into Mueller’s eyes, as if his hopes of an easy assignment had just been dashed, and he turned around to face forward.

  They finally turned down Homberger Landstrasse, another reasonably pleasant tree-lined street of some apartment buildings, and what might have been small government installations or military barracks, called Kaserne, but of the old-fashioned sort, and McGarvey suddenly knew where they were taking him.

  “I didn’t know the BND was using the Drake Kaserne,” he said. The series of mostly low buildings behind a tall iron fence had first been occupied in 1930 by the German army. After the war, from 1956 to 1992, the U.S. Third Armored Division had headquartered here, until the German government took it back using it to house various agencies, including the customs unit of the Federal Border Police.

  He’d been here once, before the Germanys were reunited, when he had stalked a Russian KGB general hiding out in East Berlin. It was a bad period, which he didn’t care to remember, except that it had stuck in his mind then as now that Germans, at least at the governmental level, were still trying to live down the Nazi era, and never knew quite how.

  “Yes, you were here, I saw that in your record,” Mueller said. “So, you have a very good memory, which will be excellent for our purposes.”

  They pulled up to a gate at the Kaserne, which was opened by a uniformed civilian guard with a sidearm under the watchful eye of another guard just at the doorway to the security office.

  “May I call my consulate here in Frankfurt?”

  “I’m sure that whoever you sent those photographs to will have already notified your people,” Mueller said. “And we’ll find out who you called.”

  McGarvey couldn’t help himself, and he smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  “We have some pretty good people on this side of the pond, too, you know, you arrogant bastard.”

  Another little bit of the puzzle dropped in place for McGarvey. “What exactly is it that Administrative Solutions does for the German government? Can you at least give me a hint?”

  But Mueller said nothing, until they stopped at a nondescript, one-story building near the rear of the installation, and he and his partner got out and Mueller opened the rear door.

  McGarvey got out and went into the building, which looked very much like a military interrogation and holding center, and was led down the corridor to a small room furnished only with a metal table and two chairs. The walls were bare concrete, the floor plainly tiled, with a single dim lightbulb set into the ceiling and covered with wire mesh.

  He sat down at the table and Mueller sat across from him; his partner leaned against the wall beside the door.

  “Shall we begin with why you came to Germany under a false passport, but aboard a CIA aircraft?” Mueller said.

  “To talk to Roland Sandberger, as I’ve told you.”

  “Why did you bring a pistol?”

  “I always travel armed. Have for years.”

  “And what about the silencer?” Mueller asked. “Were you planning on killing Herr Sandberger?”

  McGarvey shrugged. “Only if I felt that it was necessary.”

  “What would have constituted a necessity?”

  McGarvey took a moment to answer. “I had a reasonable expectation that either he or his bodyguards would have tried to assassinate me.”

  Mueller glanced over his shoulder at his partner then tu
rned back. “I see. And now what are your expectations, Herr McGarvey?”

  “That you’ve just run out of questions. That you’ll be reporting this to your superiors in Pullach. That you will not interfere with the movements of Sandberger or his employees. That this incident has been reported to the consul general here in Frankfurt, and most likely via some old-boy connection to Langley. And that sometime tomorrow someone will show up to fetch me.”

  Mueller was not happy.

  “Have I left something out?”

  “Fuck you,” Mueller said, and he and his partner left the interrogation cell.

  “And the horse you rode in on,” McGarvey added.

  SIXTEEN

  It was around two the next afternoon when David Whittaker, the deputy director of the CIA, showed up at the Drake Kaserne and McGarvey was fetched from his VIP guest suite.

  Since he’d not brought an overnight kit, he’d been supplied with pajamas and toiletries, had been fed a good wiener schnitzel with boiled potatoes and several bottles of dark Lowenbrau for dinner, and an equally good breakfast and lunch. Other than that he’d been left alone, though the morning English edition of the International Herald-Tribune had shown up at his door, and he’d had a television to watch, but no telephone.

  Whittaker was dressed, as usual, in an old-fashioned three-piece suit, bow tie, and wingtips; his eyes wide behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He was the most moral man McGarvey had ever known, and stern because of it. His was just about the last of the old-school East Coast Presbyterians, the kind who had ruled the roost since the OSS days of World War II.

  “You’ve become something of a problem,” he said when McGarvey was brought to the dayroom, and they shook hands.

  “I always have been,” McGarvey said. When Mac was the DCI, Whittaker ran the Directorate of Operations, and had done a fine job. Now he had risen to his highest level in the Company; it wasn’t likely that he would ever become the DCI, because he was too low key, not political enough. The U.S. was one of the few countries in which the top spy wasn’t a professional intelligence officer, only an appointed, well-connected amateur, and for a long time morale at the CIA had been low. Especially these days when more than fifty percent of the Agency’s employees had less than five years’ experience.