up as Harry Weiss came into the barroom of the new Ritz-Carlton Baghdad in what had been the Green Zone. It was around ten in the evening and he’d been expecting his point man on the McGarvey issue about now, but he didn’t much care for the look on Weiss’s face.
“Sorry, gentlemen, but business calls,” he said. He finished his martini and got up.
Jerry London, DI’s CEO grinned. “Trouble, I hope,” he said, and his exec, Ken Brody, glanced over at Weiss standing at the bar and raised his glass.
“Bloody well hope old Harry has brought you shit news, you son of a bitch,” he said, laughing.
“I hope you get syphilis and your dick rots off,” Sandberger replied and the two men laughed.
“The game starts in my suite at midnight,” London said. The CEO and execs of most of the contractors usually got together at least once a week for high-stakes poker, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Sandberger said and he walked over to where Weiss was waiting, and the two of them left the bar, crossed the lobby, and took the first elevator up to the eighth floor.
Neither man spoke until they were safely inside Sandberger’s suite. Contractor firms were under fire again in Washington, and the CIA sill maintained a strong presence in Iraq, and especially here in Baghdad. No public spaces—barrooms, dining rooms, elevators, and even corridors—were ever completely safe from electronic surveillance. Only individual rooms and suites that were swept on a regular basis, as was Sandberger’s, could be considered private.
“They’re here,” Weiss said. “Drunk, as you figured they might be.”
“I don’t care unless they get themselves in trouble tonight,” Sandberger said, but in fact he did care. McGarvey was no one to screw around with. Captain Kabbani had been so self-assured that it had been obvious he had no real idea what the former CIA director was capable of. And there was a very real possibility that his people would have failed tonight, and McGarvey would actually be showing up here sometime in the morning.
“They’re a couple of loose cannons, but I think they understand who they’re up against. They oughta be sober and rested by morning, unless they’re complete idiots.”
“They know their tradecraft, and neither of them has ever been afraid to pull the trigger.”
“Do you think McGarvey will make it this far?” Weiss asked.
“I think it’s a possibility that we have to consider,” Sandberger said.
“What can I do?”
Weiss was Admin’s on-the-ground CO here in Baghdad, and to date he’d done a credible job. Such a good job in fact that Sandberger was torn between bringing him back to Washington to take overall command of operations or leaving him here. He would decide after the McGarvey business was settled and Foster finally got off his back. But Weiss would have to name his own successor, and it would have to be someone good.
“He has reservations at the Baghdad Hotel. Go over there and keep your eyes open. I want to know not only if he shows up, but if he’s alone.”
“If I have the chance I’d like to take him out myself,” Weiss said.
“No,” Sandberger shot back. “Kangas and Mustapha are expendable, you’re not.”
It was a little past two-thirty in the afternoon in Washington when Sandberger used his encrypted sat phone to reach Remington at his home, and he was more than a little angry that his partner wasn’t in the office, and he said so.
“I’ve never punched a clock, and I don’t intend to begin now, old man,” Remington replied. “Is there anything that I’ve mishandled to this point for the company?”
The man’s British sarcasm rankled, but Sandberger held his temper in check. Remington had been a steady if unimaginative hand from the beginning. “Your people are here, and drunk.”
“Not surprising. But they have a twelve-hour head start. And I think they’re smart enough to sober up in the meantime.”
“Don’t you think first class was a little excessive?”
Remington chuckled, his English superiority showing again. “Last banquet for the condemned men,” he said. “They haven’t strayed from their quartermaster have they?”
“Not yet. But I’ve put someone else on the job. Could be McGarvey will never reach Baghdad.”
“That might not have been the best call, Roland,” Remington cautioned. “It’s not our people, I hope.”
“Captain Kabbani is handling it for us.”
“The man’s a buffoon.”
“Yes, and just as expendable as Kangas and Mustapha, and a hell of a lot less expensive. We’re not running a goddamned charity.”
“Don’t lecture me,” Remington shot back. “You’re gone and I