The Cabal

by David Hagberg

  What China held were mostly Treasury securities, which they could call due or simply dump. Either way the U.S. economy would take the biggest hit it had ever taken—much bigger than the Great Depression—and it would literally bring us to our knees. Factory closings; bankruptcies, for which there would be no money available for help; unemployment lines, for which there were no jobs and no unemployment checks.

  “Worst-case scenario,” Foster had pounded home his point. “Social Security and Medicare would fail. That cannot be allowed to happen. At all costs.”

  All true, Whittaker agreed. Especially now when the U.S. was in the midst of the biggest bailout in history. Something had to be done.

  “McGarvey could stop us,” he said, but Foster shook his head.

  “One man, David.”

  “Look what he’s done to us already.”

  Sergeant Schilling came to the door. “Admin’s man has shown up, sir,” he said.

  “Where is he at this moment?”

  “Just within the woods about ten meters west of the driveway.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Surveillance, I would imagine, sir. Waiting. I have his cell phone number, shall I make contact?”

  “Yes, tell him we know he’s here,” Foster said. “It’s possible that Mr. McGarvey may show up tonight. Mr. Boberg can watch from outside, and you can monitor the situation from inside. Shouldn’t be too difficult to catch him in a cross fire.”

  “Yes, sir. Shall I prepare your safe room?”

  “Not necessary,” Foster said, and the sergeant left.

  “A safe room wouldn’t do you any good, because if McGarvey somehow gets his hands on the proof of what we’ve been doing, even a shred of proof, all of us will take the fall.”

  “But there’s no proof to be had, David. It simply doesn’t exist. We don’t have a manifesto, nothing has been written. All we have is an agreement among gentlemen that something needs to be done to save America. What fault can be found with that?”

  “No manifesto, I agree,” Whittaker said. “But what if he actually manages to get to you, and holds a pistol to your head, will you take a bullet to defend your idealism?”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  “It’s why I flew down here tonight. I have a CIA jet standing by at Andrews to fly you to a safe house on La Croix in the U.S. Virgins. And you’ll have plenty of people down there to take care of you until McGarvey is resolved.”

  Foster looked amused. “While I’m scurrying off to the tropics, where will you be?”

  “At home tonight, and in my office first thing in the morning as usual. He has no reason to suspect that I’m involved in any of this. We’ll let the FBI and the U.S. Marshal Service take care of him.”

  Foster sipped his cognac. “Are you carrying a pistol tonight?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good. Then stay with me. If McGarvey does get this far, you can shoot him dead. You’ll be a national hero. I’ll see to it, personally.”

  Whittaker shook his head. “I’m not getting into a shooting match with that man. You have no idea what he’s capable of doing.”

  But Foster merely smiled. “You have no choice, David. Call your helicopter pilot and tell him to leave.”

  “I’ll tell him to stand by.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  McGarvey and Louise stood looking over Otto’s shoulder as he hacked into the CIA’s feed from the latest generation of Keyhole surveillance satellite systems, this one the KH-15, designated Romulus, with a full range of optical abilities from infrared to near ultraviolet with a resolution under good conditions of less than 0.04 meters, in the range of less than one hundredth of an inch, about the thickness of a piece of paper.

  “I have the bird, receive only,” he said.

  “Right,” Louise said, and she sat down at another keyboard and in a few keystrokes brought up the logo for the National Reconnaissance Office. As chief of the NRO’s imagery analysis section she had her own set of passwords that not only allowed her to tap into the product any surveillance satellite in orbit was producing, she could also, supposedly if she had with proper orders, reposition any satellite and change its values and modes.

  She brought up the North American KH-15 that Otto had captured and then looked up at McGarvey.

  “Your call, Louise,” he told her. “Could mean your job, maybe even jail time.”

  “But we need this, right? To rescue the fair maiden and save the planet?”

  McGarvey had to smile. “It’d help.”

  “What the hell,” she said, and she entered a series of passwords, which brought her past a number of security messages against unauthorized use, each warning of harsh penalties including fines and imprisonment.

  The KH-15 technical page logo came up followed by a split screen, one half showing what the bird was looking at and the other a control panel. At present the satellite was looking at an inbound ship off the U.S. East Coast about two hundred miles southeast of New York City.

  “Just need to borrow you for a minute or two,” Louise muttered. She touched the command and control tab on the screen, and a drop-down box appeared asking for a password, which she entered.

  “Okay, you’re in,” Otto said.

  “And we’re near enough so I don’t have to reposition, just change the angle.”

  On the current setting the satellite was showing a swatch of Earth less than five hundred meters on a side. She increased the view to fifty kilometers then touched another tab that lit up a small icon in the middle of the map, which she dragged with her finger toward the northwest, picking up the coast just south of Atlantic City, lit up like a sparkling diamond in a sea of jewels. Farther southwest she picked up the upper Chesapeake, then straight across the Maryland peninsula to the Potomac.

  “Alexandria,” Otto said.

  Louise reduced the area to a five-kilometer square and now they could pick out lights on I-495 and other highways as she followed the river south. At the town of Fort Hunt she reduced the area to one kilometer and followed the GW Memorial Parkway west, about a mile.

  “That’s his place,” Otto said.

  They were looking at Foster’s house all lit up in the middle of a lot of darkness. Louise started to move the icon away from the road, but McGarvey stopped her.

  “Stay on the driveway and tighten up.”

  She brought the area down to one hundred meters, then fifty then forty. A car was parked on the side of the road just to the west of the driveway.

  “Get the tag number, I’ll run it,” Otto said.

  Louise tightened up the image so that only the front end of the car was showing. She adjusted the lo lux levels, adjusted the focus, and the license plate number became clear.

  “Virginia,” Louise said, and she read off the numbers for her husband.

  “Half a mo,” Otto said.

  “Anybody in the car or nearby?” McGarvey asked.

  Louise pulled the image back a little so they were looking at the entire car, and adjusted the light values again. “No,” she said. She touched another tab and the hood of the car came up a soft red. “Hasn’t been there long. Engine’s still warm.”

  “Calvin Boberg,” Otto said. “And take a wild-ass guess who he works for.”

  “Administrative Solutions,” McGarvey said.

  Louise made another adjustment to the satellite’s infrared capabilities. “Here we go,” she said excitedly. “See the faint red smudges leading way from the car and into the woods.”

  “Footprints?” McGarvey asked.

  “Heat signatures,” Louise said, absently, and she moved the icon to follow the trail, finally coming to the edge of the woods just before the clearing up to the house, and Boberg’s heat output stood out brightly against the cooler trees and ground.

  “Waiting for you?” Otto asked.

  “Be my guess,” McGarvey said. “Pan out wider.”

  Louise did, and started the icon toward the house, but something at
the edge of the screen caught her eye. “Hold on,” she said, and she moved to the right, to the helicopter pad.

  “That’s one of our choppers,” Otto said.

  “Whittaker?”

  “Yeah. But what’s he doing? He’s gotta know you’re on the way.”

  McGarvey stared at the machine on the pad for a moment. Its rotors were not moving. “Tighten up, I want to see if the pilot is still aboard.”

  She did; the pilot was in the left seat and the door was open. He was smoking a cigarette.

  “He’s waiting for Whittaker to come back,” Louise said.

  “Check the status of our VIP jets at Andrews,” McGarvey said.

  “I’m on it,” Otto said. “But if he runs, especially with you still on the loose, it’ll look damned suspicious.”

  “Not him,” McGarvey said. “He’s come to convince Foster to get out of town.”

  “St. Croix,” Otto said after a few seconds. “One of our Gulfstreams manned and standing by in the ready hangar. Two passengers on the manifest. Robert Foster and David Whittaker.”

  “Take a look at the house.”

  Louise panned left, brought the area out to forty meters and toned down the light input because of the outside floods. “Looks like they’re expecting company.”

  “They have Admin’s guy out front, and Schilling inside.” He said, “Foster’s probably not a shooter, but David is.”

  “He started out as a field officer. Expert marksman on the pistol range,” McGarvey said. He remembered telling his staff, when Whittaker was promoted to deputy director of operations, that David was one of the few men in that position to really know what it was like to pull out a pistol and actually fire it with some expectation of hitting the target. “I’m going out there.”

  “I have to switch the bird back out to the ship,” Louise said, “in case some supervisor notices it’s off target.”

  “Can you get back to Foster’s from time to time?”

  “Every five minutes or so,” Louise said.

  “Good enough, but keep in touch if anything changes.”

  “I’ll go with you—” Louise said, but McGarvey cut her off.

  “I need you here to keep tabs on the house and grounds.”

  A nightlight plugged into a socket across the room suddenly started to blink. “Someone’s at the door,” Otto said and he doused the room lights, and pulled up the camera concealed in the eaves.

  Pete looked up, grinned at the camera and waved.

  “She was wounded,” Louise said.

  “That she was,” McGarvey said, putting his gun back in its holster. “Let her in.”

  Otto buzzed the lock. “We’re upstairs,” he told her on the intercom. He flipped on the room lights.

  Pete came up, in fresh jeans and a dark pullover and dark jacket, CIA stenciled on the back. She’d cleaned up and brushed her hair, and she was still grinning.

  “How did you get past Franklin?” McGarvey demanded.

  “I have a gun and he didn’t,” Pete said. “No bone chips, no major arteries. Just a heavy graze. He sewed me up and pumped a pint of O-positive into me, nothing but a local anesthetic and a butterfly bandage.”

  “What are you doing here?” McGarvey demanded.

  “I expect that you’re going after whoever’s name came up on Remington’s flash drive. Probably Foster, and I’m coming with you.”

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “Give me one good reason.”

  “You’re wounded.”

  “It stings, nothing more.”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  “Sorry, Mr. Director, but if you rightly remember you are my prisoner.”

  Louise shook her head. “You’re nuts, do you know that? All of you are certifiable.”

  SIXTY-SIX

  They took Louise’s Toyota SUV, Pete behind the wheel after assuring McGarvey three times that she was okay to drive. “Like I said, Mac, it just stings a little, and I’ll have a major bruise on my ass by morning. But Franklin’s a good doc.”

  “He’s patched me up more than once,” McGarvey said, his thoughts back to Katy and Liz and Todd. He’d never be able to think of All Saints without seeing the look of devastation on his daughter’s face when he and Katy had shown up the morning after Todd had been shot to death. It was an image that, along with the one of the limo, bearing Katy and Liz exploding, would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  They took the Key Bridge across the river and headed east, where they picked up U.S. 1 that led south, eventually to Fort Hill Road and the town of Fort Hunt.

  “Where do you think this is heading?” Pete asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it started in Mexico City a little over a year ago, and then Pyongyang was a part of it somehow,” McGarvey told her. He briefly went over his actions in both operations. “The only connection other than the Friday Club is China.”

  “Okay, so whatever they’re up to involves the Chinese. And they’re not done, which is why you have to be eliminated at all costs. So it’s big. But what?”

  “That’s what I want to ask him and Whittaker tonight.”

  Pete shot him a double take. “The DCI?”

  “His name was on Remington’s flash drive,” McGarvey said and he gave her some of the other names.

  “Jesus,” she said softly. “You’re on the hit list of a bunch of important people.”

  “Yeah. And by tagging along with me tonight you just painted a big target on your back.”

  “Then we’d best do it right,” she said.

  “I’m back to Foster’s house,” Louise said in McGarvey’s ear. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “How about the chopper pilot?”

  She came back a few seconds later. “He’s a chain smoker.”

  “Stick with it.”

  “Will do.”

  McGarvey telephoned Dick Adkins’s home phone. The former DCI answered after three rings. “Yes.”

  “Do you still have your encrypted phone?”

  It took a moment for him to reply, and when he did he sounded cautious. “Yes.”

  “Turn it on, I’ll call you in five minutes.”

  Adkins broke the connection.

  “Who did you just call?” Pete asked.

  “Adkins.”

  Pete shook her head. “All this should be taking my breath away, but I read most of your jacket and I was warned.” She concentrated on her driving for a bit. “Whittaker’s on the list, but there’s no chance of him being in his office tonight, and Dick’s passes might still be valid.”

  “You’d make a good field agent,” McGarvey said, but Pete shook her head.

  “Louise was right. You guys are nuts. It’s just that I’m not quite that crazy.”

  McGarvey called Adkins at the encrypted number.

  “I didn’t expect you to call me.”

  “You stuck out your neck for me with the president, so I figured I owed you one,” McGarvey said.

  “Don’t do me any favors,” Adkins replied. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where you are, or what part you played in a shooting this evening on embassy row. D.C. Metro is apparently having a fit.”

  “I took out one of the shooters who killed Remington, and right now I’m headed to Robert Foster’s estate down around Mount Vernon. I need your help.”

  “I thought you might say something like that,” Adkins said. “But first do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

  “I found a bridge between Mexico City and Pyongyang.”

  “Yeah, China.”

  “Foster’s Friday Club financed both operations through Howard McCann.”

  “That’s too far-fetched,” Adkins objected.

  “Something else is in the works, and whatever it is will be big,” McGarvey said.

  “We’ve already gone over this, Mac. All of it was on the disk we found in Todd’s car. Utter nonsense.”

  “It was a fake. But I have a flash drive we got f
rom Remington with a list of card-carrying members of the Friday Club. McCann had help inside the Company. Someone who had complete access to my files, someone who could track my movements.”

  Adkins was very quiet.

  “David’s a member,” McGarvey said. “From the looks of it he was in from the beginning. Eight years ago.”

  Adkins was silent for a long time, and when he came back was subdued. “Who else?”

  “Foster’s got guys just about everywhere, DoD, State, the Bureau, and even the White House. All of them were in on Mexico City and Pyongyang.”

  “Maybe Todd’s disk wasn’t so far-fetched after all if what you’re telling me is true,” Adkins said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Do you still have your building passes?”

  “I haven’t turned them in, if that’s what you mean. But I suspect they’ve all been deactivated by now. David would have been a fool not to.”

  “He’s been distracted lately.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to go out there tonight, right now. If you get in talk to the guys on the Watch and find out if they’re seeing anything developing in China, or Hong Kong, maybe Taiwan or the Strait. Chinese naval maneuvers, missile readiness drills. Anything involving Beijing, and especially their intelligence services, military and civilian.”

  “Where are you going with this, Mac?”

  “Right now I’m just fishing. But Foster has people inside the Pentagon. See if we’re planning anything in the region. Something that only the Watch might have been warned about.”

  “Right,” Adkins said. “I’ll try to find out where David is. If he’s off campus I’ll try to get into his office. Maybe he hasn’t changed his passwords.” Adkins chuckled. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, or maybe someone will send for security and they’ll shoot me.”

  “David’s at Foster’s right now,” McGarvey said. “He showed up a half hour ago in a Company helicopter, and he’s got one of your Gulfstreams standing by at Andrews to take them down to St. Croix.”