an outer layer of defense should McGarvey be foolish enough to come all this way.”
“Yes, sir,” Remington said.
After he hung up, he thought about his next moves. He would be out of here no later than midnight and on his way first to Atlanta aboard the company jet, as a diversion, and then off to Paris, commercial, and his new life. Long before his rose garden bloomed he would be eating clementine oranges from his own trees.
He telephoned Boberg at the office. “A change of plans, Cal. I have a new assignment for you.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
On the way back to the Renckes’ brownstone in Georgetown Louise was silent, almost as if she were afraid to ask the one question that had been on her lips the moment she’d seen him waiting by the side of Rock Creek Road.
And he was glad for it, because he felt battered, physically as well as emotionally. Admin had killed just about everyone he truly loved on the orders of the Friday Club. Robert Foster’s orders. S. Gordon Remington’s orders. Roland Sandberger’s orders.
But just before Louise pulled into the driveway back to the garage in what once upon a time had been a mews of carriage houses with apartments above, she glanced at him. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been better,” he said. He felt that a great weariness was falling on him because of what he knew, and because of what would have to happen next.
“Did you kill those two guys?”
“No need for it,” he told her. “I wanted information and they gave it to me. It was a part of the bargain, so I had them toss their weapons and let them drive away.”
“Will they come back?”
“Maybe,” McGarvey said. “And if they do I’ll kill them.”
Louise said nothing, just shook her head and parked the car. They went inside together and Otto came to the head of the stairs. His operational headquarters, as he called one of the front bedrooms filled with computer equipment, was on the second floor. He’d spent most of his days and nights up there since Todd’s funeral and the explosion afterward.
“How’d it go,” he asked.
“He didn’t kill them,” Louise said. “Anybody hungry for breakfast?”
“Sure,” McGarvey said. “Then I’ll need to borrow your car.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Wherever Gordon Remington is holed up. Because if the two contractors at Rock Creek report in, he’ll go to ground. Might run anyway because of Baghdad, and I definitely want to catch him before he gets too far.”
Louise looked up at her husband. “You’d better tell him,” she said, and she went down the hall to the kitchen.
“Tell me what?” McGarvey asked, going upstairs.
Pete Boylan stood at the open door to Otto’s workroom. She was dressed in jeans and a light sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up, and even though her face was bruised, and she had a bandage on her left arm, she still looked fetching. “You’re a popular guy, Mr. Director,” she said. “You might think about hanging out here until after dark, less chance of you being spotted.”
“I walked right past the two Bureau agents at the airport.”
“Yeah, and they’re mad as hell,” Otto said, and he led McGarvey back to his workroom. Two long tables filled with large wide-screen computer monitors, keyboards, and several pieces of equipment that prevented electronic eavesdropping, prevented virus infections, and allowed an undetectable wireless connection through the system at a Starbucks half a block away had been set up in a long V shape.
“You need to take a look at something,” Pete said. She sat down at one of the keyboards and pulled up the FBI’s For-Internal-Use-Only Persons of Interest page. The first name on the list was McGarvey’s. Included was a lengthy file with photographs of him in various disguises and in various locals including Frankfurt, and most recently Baghdad—but none showing him at any crime scene.
“They know you were there,” Pete said. “But take a look at this.”
She brought up the rest of his file, including his bio and a fairly complete rendering of his CIA jacket from day one right up to the Mexico City and Pyongyang incidents.
“All classified top secret or above,” Pete said.
“I’ve been looking, Mac, but I have no idea how that stuff got to the Bureau,” Otto said. “No traces were left behind in any of the Company’s computer systems. So if someone hacked our mainframe they were better than me.”
“It was probably done the old-fashioned way,” Pete said.
And McGarvey saw it before Otto, who was too tied into his computer