The Cabal km-14

by David Hagberg

  “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.

  It made him the next best target. Exactly what he wanted.

  * * *

  All Saints Hospital was on a quiet side street not far from Georgetown University Hospital, in an undistinguished four-story brownstone with the emergency entrance at the rear. No sirens were ever used, and the brass plaque next to the gate in front read Private.

  Security in the main lobby was outwardly low key, one plain-looking man, who happened to be a weapons and martial arts expert, behind a desk. In the facility’s forty-plus years there’d never been any sort of an incident, nevertheless everyone — doctors, nurses, aides, security officers — were on their toes. Always.

  The two Cadillacs drove through the electrically operated gate to the back, where the security officers got out first to make sure the parking area and emergency entrance were secured before they allowed McGarvey and his wife to get out of the lead car and hustle them inside. They were met by one of the nurses, a no-nonsense, severe-looking woman.

  “Good morning, Mr. Director,” she said. “Would you like something for Mrs. McGarvey before we go up?”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “We want to see our daughter.”

  “Yes, sir. She’s on the fourth floor in the waiting room.
”

  McGarvey motioned for his security team to stay behind and he helped Katy back to the elevator and up to the fourth floor and the waiting room just across the corridor.

  A stricken Elizabeth, dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers sat on a couch, Rencke’s wife, Louise, holding her shoulders. She looked up when her parents appeared in the doorway, and for a moment it seemed to McGarvey that she didn’t recognize them. But then she got up, slowly, like a tired old woman and came to them.

  McGarvey folded her into his arms and held her, silently, for a long time.

  “Oh, Daddy,” Elizabeth said softly, her voice husky, all the way from the back of her throat. “He looks so bad.”

  “Where’s Audie?”

  It took Liz a few moments to answer. “At the Farm, this is no place for her.”

  Katy had come out of her trance, and she moved McGarvey aside. “Go see to him,” she said.

  “He was assassinated,” Liz said. “Was it something he was working on? Do you know, because he didn’t say anything to me? Otto said he called you. But he never left a note. I was out on a field exercise, but I could have come into town with him. Maybe if I’d been there it could have been different.”

  “It was something new, but he didn’t know anything about it until he got up here,” McGarvey said. “He was just coming up to see an old friend for lunch.”

  “Who?”

  “Josh Givens. They were friends in college.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to Liz, and she shook her head. “Is he in the business?”

  “He was an investigative reporter with the Post.”

  Liz caught the past tense and her eyes hardened. “Did they get him, too?”

  “Yeah,” McGarvey said, a sudden great weariness mixing with a deep rage that wanted to consume his sense of reason.

  Liz and Katy and Louise were all staring at him. “Get the bastards, Daddy,” Liz said, the corners of her mouth down turned; a very hard look in her eyes.

  “I willl,” he said. “In the meantime I want you to get back to the Farm. Audie needs you and you’ll be safe there.”