both taken out. Then get upstairs and wire the east door. I’ll be in the suite with a little surprise.”
His two bodyguards got up and left the bar.
Sandberger finished his beer, laid a couple of twenties on the table, and went out to the elevators just off the lobby. He’d always been of the opinion that second-rate personnel were not capable of handling first-rate problems. Sometimes the only way to make sure that a job was done right, was to do it yourself.
The McGarvey problem would end tonight.
FORTY-EIGHT
They crossed the Tigris above the section known as Babil, and Weiss kept nervously glancing over at McGarvey. The Ritz-Carlton tower rose above most of the other buildings in the Green Zone and traffic here had dramatically increased. Baghdad wasn’t back to normal yet, but the city’s people seemed to want to head that way, and McGarvey hoped the lives we had given up to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime were worth the results.
“Look, you know you won’t get within a hundred yards of Mr. Sandberger,” Weiss said. “He knows you’re coming.”
“Your little play with the hotel guard’s name was obvious,” McGarvey said.
“I meant that Tim and Ronni must have called him by now.”
McGarvey shook his head. “I think they went back to their room in the new airport hotel, and they’ll be on the first United flight back to the States. Theirs was supposed to be an independent operation. With the deals on the table for Admin from State, your boss doesn’t want to take any chances of a shoot-out except in self-defense.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the Friday Club, and I’m here for the answers. But I don’t think your boss is going to be very happy how I ask.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Certifiable,” McGarvey said, his anger in check, his level of awareness tuned to everything around him, inside and outside the car. He was going to have one chance to get Sandberger alone long enough to find out who had killed his son-in-law and Katy and Liz. To do that he figured he was going to have to either take down whatever assets Sandberger had put in place, or sidestep them if possible. Probably shooters in front of the hotel, on either side of the driveway. Maybe a spotter in the lobby. And certainly men in the eighth-floor corridor, at the stairwells and elevators, because he was pretty sure that Sandberger would have retreated to his suite where it would be much easier to defend himself than out in the open. The man would be treating this affair like a military operation. But all battles had losers as well as winners.
A block from the hotel McGarvey had Weiss pull over and stop at the curb. This close inside the zone traffic, most of it civilian, was heavy. “You have a choice,” he said. “I’m getting out of the car and you’re free to go. But if you want to try something stupid I will take you out.”
Weiss licked his lips but said nothing.
“If you do drive over to the hotel, I’d advise that you keep your head down, because I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. My only interest this evening is Sandberger. Clear?”
Weiss nodded, but held his silence.
McGarvey opened the door and started to get out of the car when he felt Weiss make a sudden lunge. Dumb, but not unexpected. Sandberger’s orders would be for his people to take whatever opportunity came along.
“Bastard,” Weiss grunted.
McGarvey slipped out of the car and slid half a step to the right as he turned and brought his pistol to bear. Weiss had grabbed a spare pistol, another Beretta 9mm, from probably under the seat, and was raising it when McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the middle of his forehead and slamming him back against the driver-side door.
The noise, partially contained inside the car and muffled by the sounds of traffic, went unnoticed. None of the cars or trucks passing slowed down.
Slipping his pistol into the holster beneath his jacket McGarvey closed the car door, and headed down the street to the Ritz. Other people were on foot, some of them in western dress so he figured he wasn’t terribly obvious.
About fifty yards from the hotel’s sweeping driveway that led up to the entrance portico he pulled up and slipped into the shadows of a line of small shops, shuttered now, in the lee of what was probably a building containing some Iraqi government function. Such places