dare try to hire another service to take us down? We have safeguards, and he knows it. Something happens to Admin and the backlash would end up in his lap.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Admin, Roland. I was thinking about you personally.”
Sandberger fell silent for a few seconds. “You’re even more of a devious son of a bitch than I thought, and I like it. What do you have in mind?”
“One other consideration. Back to Foster and why he hired us in the first place. I don’t really care what sort of a deal you signed up for, what I’m more interested in is what Foster did before he came to us. Before he felt the need to come to us. Do you see what I’m driving at?”
“Perfectly. But the only deal, as you put it, was simply that he felt someone in the media might be putting together a hatchet job on him and his pals and that might make it to the Bureau, and he wanted us to find out what was going on, and if the rumors were true nip it in the bud. But none of us thought it would involve the CIA.”
“There was McCann, and I think it’s a safe bet that he wasn’t killed in the line of duty, but because of his affiliation with Turov. Another safe bet would be that McGarvey was somehow involved, and when it was over he handed it to someone inside the Company and walked away.”
“You’re probably right again. So taking out his son-in-law might not have been the right thing to do. But I don’t see that we had any other choice.”
“Neither do I. But now he’s become our problem, and we have to deal with him. But not here in Washington. Maybe if he turns up back in Florida, or somewhere out of the country.”
Sandberger laughed. “Maybe he’ll come here,” he said. “It would be the perfect solution.”
“You’d want that?” Remington asked, smiling. Maneuvering Sandberger was getting easier with each try.
“Absolutely.”
“How much longer will you be in Baghdad?”
“A few days, maybe a week.”
“Let me see what I can put together. I’ll give you the heads up.”
“Yes, do that,” Sandberger said.
TWENTY-NINE
At the brownstone in Georgetown McGarvey paced up and down in the kitchen, stopping from time to time to look out the window at the little garden in back that Louise had planted. But he wasn’t actually seeing anything except for Katy’s face in the back of the funeral car, looking up at him with trust and love, and then the terrible flash. And it was over.
Louise came over to him, her eyes still wet. “Can I fix you something to eat? Maybe a drink?”
He looked up at her. “I’ll have to do something for Audie.”
Louise’s voice caught in her throat. She was a tall, slender woman, whose hair was normally just as out of control as her husband’s. And though she wasn’t as smart as Otto, she was a genius in her own right. And sweet, kind, thoughtful, considerate, and Otto and everyone else who’d ever come in contact with her, including McGarvey, thought the world of her. Katy and Liz had loved her.
Otto had come in from parking the Toyota in the back. “We’re taking her,” he said. “Louise and I can’t have children of our own, so we’ll adopt her, if it’s okay with you.”
A look of wonderment and pure joy came into Louise’s round face, and her eyebrows shot up, as she looked from her husband back to McGarvey. “Is it possible, Kirk?” she asked. “I mean, Otto and I haven’t discussed it or anything—there was no need for it—but I think it’s a fabulous idea. I know it’s way too soon—”
McGarvey had seen the logic and the love in Otto’s offer the moment the words came out of his friend’s mouth. And he could see that Louise was so happy she was frightened. They wanted children.
He nodded. “Liz would have liked that,” he said, a tremendous burden, one of many on his shoulders, lifted. “So would have Todd.”
“She’ll stay at the Farm for now,” Otto said. He’d poured McGarvey a snifter of cognac and brought it over. “Sit down now and drink this. We have a lot to talk about. Somebody wants you dead, because sure as hell that was no accident, nor were Mrs. M. and Elizabeth the targets. You were. Which means someone was shitting enough Twinkies they thought they could get away with assassinating not only a CIA officer and