in the dark. He could almost expect to hear her voice telling him to stop brooding and come to bed.
Taking a small, red-lensed pen light from the dresser drawer on his side of the bed, he was about to turn and get his things from the secret floor safe in the walk-in closet when the small, framed photograph of him and Katy on the top deck of the Eiffel Tower, taken when they were very young, before Liz was born, caught his eye. Another tourist had agreed to take it, and looking at the image now McGarvey was brought back to that simpler, happier time. Nothing had ever been the same again.
He pocketed the photograph and went into his closet where he switched on the pen light. The floor safe was open and empty.
Rearing back he switched off the light, and went to the windows that looked down on the pool, the gazebo, and the dock. They had expected him to come here to retrieve his things; money in different currencies, passports and ID sets under four different work names.
But they’d gotten sloppy, waiting.
He hurried downstairs, mindful of the corners, expecting an armed man to materialize out of the darkness, yet he didn’t pull his gun. These were Bureau agents. He wasn’t going to be placed under arrest, nor was he going to hurt anyone beyond what was necessary.
Outside, he hurried across the yard to the next-door neighbor’, keeping in the deeper shadows as much as possible and well away from the gazebo.
A few minutes later he was aboard the boat, had untied the dock lines, and using the emergency oar poled himself on an angle to the north out to the ICW before he switched on the engine, and idled a half-mile farther, before he switched on the nav lights and increased his speed.
No one else was out here on the water this early in the morning, and most of the houses along the shore were in darkness, but it wasn’t until he reached the dock on Siesta Key, had replaced the boat on to lift and had re-covered it, and was in his car heading off the island did he take a deep breath.
When he reached I-75 on the mainland he turned south and merged with the very light traffic before he called Rencke.
“I’m away,” he said.
“Nobody got hurt?”
“No. But they knew I was coming. They searched the house and cleaned out my safe. I don’t have anything now except for what you got for me.”
“You’re heading south,” Rencke said. “Good. I want you to go to Miami. I’ll book you a room in the Park Central under your Taylor work name; it’s still safe and so’s the car.”
“I didn’t want this.”
“None of us did, Mac. But it landed in our laps and now we’ll deal with it,” Rencke said. “Do you remember Raul Martinez?”
“Your contact in Little Havana. He arranged for me to see General Marti last year.”
“Right. He’ll be showing up at your hotel within the next thirty-six hours. Just sit tight until then.”
THIRTY-TWO
Robert Foster’s sprawling eighteenth-century home on a sloping hill above the Potomac River between Fort Hunt and Mount Vernon, about fifteen miles south of the White House, was aglow the next evening as S. Gordon Remington and his wife, Colleen, arrived in their Bentley.
Remington had preferred to drive himself, rather than be chauffeured. Some outings were better left away from prying eyes, even sympathetic ones. And he had remained sober all day, a fact Colleen had noted and appreciated, because she, too, was aware of just how much actual power Foster and his Friday Club wielded in Washington. This was no group to be trifled with. And the fact that she and her husband had been invited for cocktails and dinner topped even the A list, the only invitation better was to the White House.
They were admitted by a large, stern-looking man in a broadly cut suit, which Remington figured concealed a pistol in a shoulder holster, and were directed to the pool area in the backyard. Soft jazz was piped from several speakers as a dozen well-dressed couples circulated between a self-service bar and a table laden with hors d’oeuvres centered by an elaborate ice sculpture. Notably missing were the musicians, a bartender, and servers.
“He likes his parties lean and mean,” Colleen said as they headed to the bar.
“I would have been disappointed if his house staff had been on hand tonight.”
Colleen gave her husband a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to