twenty years.
“Can we get you anything else before we pick up where we left off. The North Korean intelligence officer come for a chat with you.”
“No,” McGarvey said, getting up. “We’re done for the night. I’m tired.”
“The hell we are,” Green said. “You have a lot to answer for.”
“Yes, I do,” McGarvey said and he turned to leave when Green started to step in front of him.
“Leave it, Dan,” Pete cautioned. “We’re all tired.”
Green stepped aside but said nothing.
“You’ll continue to cooperate this evening, Mr. Director?” she asked. “Can we have your word on it?”
“Yes, for tonight,” McGarvey said.
“What about tomorrow?”
“That’ll depend.”
“You’re charged with treason,” Green said angrily, and McGarvey got the impression that the man’s anger wasn’t real, it was a part of his and Pete’s dog and pony show.
“If that were the case, they would have put me someplace a hell of a lot more secure than here, don’t you think?” he said.
He walked out into the stair hall and Pete came to the door. “How did Sandberger react when you showed up?” she asked.
“He wasn’t happy,” McGarvey said.
“I would have given anything to have been a little bird in the corner,” Pete admitted. “We’ll be with you tomorrow.”
“Who else?”
“Federal marshals in the car with you and nearby. Just in case Todd’s assassination wasn’t a random act.”
TWENTY-ONE
First thing in the morning Kangas and Mustapha parked their untraceable Buick LeSabre near the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, and walked a quarter of a mile back down the hill in the general direction of the South Gate, crossing Porter, Miles, and then Grant drives. A few people were out and about, but not many; a hush seemed to hang over the place.
Neither man had ever wanted to be buried here, even though they’d been career government employees, because neither of them saw themselves dying in service of their country. It was an old line from Patton, something like: Let the other son of a bitch die for his country. They considered themselves to be too professional to be killed because of stupidity.
“Nice day for a funeral,” Mustapha said.
“For someone else,” Kangas replied, and he laughed.
They reached a spot from where they had a decent line of sight to the driveway that opened to Southgate Road, that in turn led to Columbia Pike or South Joyce Street away from the cemetery. After the funeral, which would start in a few hours, the procession would pass through the gate, according to Remington’s intel, which had never been wrong before. The guy might be a prick, but he knew what he was doing.
Right on time a blue-and-white panel van without windows, marked Fairfax County Highway Department, pulled up about twenty feet down the driveway from the gate and parked in the middle of the road, almost on top of a storm sewer lid. Two men, dressed in blue coveralls and wearing hardhats, got out of the truck and placed a few traffic cones blocking the lane that led out of the cemetery. No one from the gate came down to ask what was going on.
“Considering what’s been happening, and who’s going to be here soon, you’d think security would be tighter,” Kangas said.
“Makes you wonder about the Bureau,” Mustapha agreed. “And Homeland Security.”
“And the Company. The Van Buren kid was one of theirs.”
The men were Islamic jihadists from the Ramila Mosque, Abu al-Amush who’d been born and raised in Baghdad, and Richard Hamadi, who’d come over to Detroit with his parents when he was a child. Al-Amush had been radicalized during the tail end of the Saddam Hussein regime and then in the war with the Americans, learning to hate whatever side was in power. And he had brought his message first to Detroit where he’d recruited workers from the auto assembly lines, and finally here two years ago, bringing Hamadi with him, when he’d been lured by the Ramila’s imam, to carry the message of hatred to the young men raising money for the cause.
And carry out the occasional assignment.
Mustapha had been the lead contact man with the mosque, which had been moved in secret from its storefront months ago, leaving behind only the shell that had been destroyed in the explosion after the deaths of Van Buren and Givens. And convincing the imam and his followers had been relatively easy; they were all fanatics whose attention was totally focused on only two things: hatred and money. Kangas was the influential American businessman with deep pockets who’d been taken