The Expediter (39 page)

Minoru shook his head. “All but one.”

“What’s that?”

“Whatever it is that might go wrong and turn the advantage to McGarvey. If there’s a way out of his predicament, he’s probably thought of it.”

“We’ll have to be careful.”

“Yes, and lucky.”

At the safe house Todd came in the front door after making a quick look around the grounds. It was just after dark and he was dressed in black camos.

McGarvey came out of the study from where he’d been watching the road. “Any sign of the opposition?”

“Not yet,” Todd said. “Maybe they’ll wait until morning.”

“If they’re coming it’ll be before midnight. It’s when I’d make my move.”

Todd saw the logic. “Nobody would miss us until tomorrow. Give them plenty of time to clear out of Dodge. But do you still think whoever it is in the Company will come out here?”

“I think so,” McGarvey said. “He knows I have the woman with me, and he’s got to be worried that sooner or later I’ll figure out that
it’s someone inside who hired Turov. He’ll want to find out if I’m suspicious.”

“Liz and I are going to come as a nasty surprise. But won’t he be running the risk of getting in the middle of an attack?”

“He won’t think so,” McGarvey said. “But that’s exactly what’s going to happen, because now that it’s gone this far Turov will want him eliminated.”

Elizabeth appeared at the head of the stairs and came down to them. “He’d be stupid to come out here.”

“Only if he thinks I suspect something,” McGarvey said. He glanced toward the head of the stairs. Kim had gone up to one of the bedrooms after dinner to get some rest. She was mentally and physically exhausted from the events of the past several days. “What about her?”

“Still asleep,” Elizabeth said. She was angry again. “Why don’t we take the bitch downtown and drop her in front of the Chinese Embassy? We could pin a note to her chest. Why risk our lives protecting her?”

“I don’t care about her,” McGarvey said, though in a way he actually did. From what he’d learned listening to her and seeing the material Otto had found in the laptop he’d come to the conclusion that everything she’d done was out of love for her husband. It didn’t make her any the less guilty, it just made her situation tragic.

“We’ll turn her over to the Chinese tomorrow and let them deal with her,” McGarvey said.

“What about my husband?” Kim demanded from the head of the stairs, her voice shrill. She’d been listening.

“He’ll be sent to Beijing,” McGarvey told her. “What’d you expect?”

“I don’t have to take this shit,” she said, coming down the stairs.

“There’s the door,” McGarvey told her. “If you want to get out of here before your pals show up, be my guest.”

“I made my way to Pyongyang without your help, and I can make my way back again.”

“If Alexandar and his people don’t kill you, and you actually do make it back to North Korea, which from what I’ve learned about you
is possible, you’ll still end up in Beijing,” Elizabeth said. “You assassinated a Chinese general, what makes you think you and your husband shouldn’t be turned over?”

“Someone in the CIA hired Alexandar to hire us, but you’re not going to turn him over to the Chinese,” she said defiantly.

She had a point. “What do you suggest?” McGarvey asked.

“You can stop the war, and for that Kim Jong Il will send Soon here to the States, where the two of us can go on trial with your CIA traitor and with Alexandar.”

“Daddy?” Liz questioned.

“Let’s get through tonight first,” McGarvey said. “But the Chinese are going to want something.”

“Alexandar,” she said.

Turov’s Nokia encrypted telephone rang and he answered it. The caller was Daniel. It was a little after eleven in the morning in Tokyo and 9
P.M.
in Washington, fully dark, which meant that Minoru and the others would soon be on their way out to the Cabin John house.

“I have a solution to our mutual problem that’s not nearly as blunt as yours, and certainly a whole hell of a lot neater and more elegant.”

“Oh, yes?” Turov said, smiling. He was seated on the deck overlooking the garden, the sound of splashing water soothing.

“I’m going out to the Cabin John house and doing McGarvey myself. We know each other very well, and he won’t expect something like this coming from me.”

It was exactly what Turov had expected. “Where are you at this moment?”

“In my car. I’m on my way out there now.”

“How far away are you, specifically?”

“Why does that matter?” Daniel asked, a sudden note of suspicion in his voice. “Were your people planning on attacking this early?”

“Not until just before dawn.”

“Good thinking. They wouldn’t have been at their sharpest then. At any rate I’ll phone you when I’ve finished, and you can call off your people.”

Turov looked up, the sound of splashing water in the pool soothing his nerves that had taken a spike. “What exactly is your plan? Tell me the details.”

“Are you questioning my tradecraft again?” Daniel demanded angrily.

“Not at all. I’m merely trying to help.”

“Remember it was I who contacted you, it’s my money that’s lining your pockets. Don’t ever forget it, that is if you want to continue being my expediter.”

“I won’t forget it. But I want you to remember that we have had a long history together. One that has benefited you as well as me. You wouldn’t be in your present position without the product I made sure got into your hands.”

“It was never spectacular,” Daniel said.

“No, but it was steady and most of all reliable. If you had brought back the sun and the moon both of us would have come under suspicion. As it is we have become rich men. I want to keep it that way.”

“Very good,” Daniel said, somewhat mollified. “I expect there’ll be more work for you to do, but first I have to take care of this unfortunate turn of events.”

“Yes, see to it,” Turov said. “But will you tell me your plan?”

“He might be surprised to see me, but it won’t worry him, nor will he suspect that when his back is turned I will put a bullet in his head.
Afterward I’ll kill the woman with his pistol, and putting my untraceable gun in her hands I’ll fire another shot so that she’ll have powder residue, and do the same with his body. She snuck up on him and fired a couple of shots, one of them mortally wounding the ex-director, and with his dying breath he managed to get off one shot which killed her.”

“It’s a brilliant plan. You’ll be killing two birds with one stone, and no one will have any reason to suspect a thing.”

“I knew that you’d see it my way,” Daniel said. “Call off your people, they’re no longer needed.”

“I’ll see to it immediately,” Turov said. “Good luck.”

Daniel chuckled. “Luck will play no part whatsoever.”

After the connection was broken, Turov stood for a long minute, listening to the sounds of the water, the occasional splash of one of the golden carps, and a lark somewhere behind the house. His time with Daniel had been coming to a close; the relationship had become too dangerous. Time to end it once and for all. Perhaps even take the retirement he’d always planned on taking.

He speed dialed Minoru’s number, which was answered on the first ring. “Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re en route. About fifteen minutes out.”

“There’s been a slight change in plans,” Turov said, and he told his chief of staff what Daniel had planned. “Hold up until he goes in. Once the shooting starts it’ll provide the perfect distraction for you.

“He might be successful,” Minoru said. “Crazier things have happened. How do you want me to handle it?”

“I want everyone in that house dead before the night is out.”

“Including Daniel?”

“Especially Daniel,” Turov said, and broke the connection. It was time for a bottle of Krug and within a few days he would be enjoying the opera season in Sydney.

They took turns watching from the upstairs windows, scuttling back and forth between the front and the back. At nine it was Liz’s turn. McGarvey was with Todd having coffee in the kitchen. The only light on in the house was from a small television Kim was watching in the breakfast nook.

“Somone’s coming,” Liz called from the upstairs hall.

“Shut off the TV,” McGarvey told Kim. He grabbed his pistol and hurried down the corridor to the front stair hall.

“It’s a car from the highway,” Liz said.

“Watch the back,” McGarvey called up to her as headlights flashed from across the clearing. He unlocked the front door, opened it, and stepped back out of the line of fire.

Todd had gone into the living room where he was watching from one of the windows. “Shit,” he said. “It’s Otto.”

Otto’s battered gray Mercedes diesel came down the gravel driveway and pulled up in front, and the Company’s Director of Special Projects, his frizzy red hair flying all over the place, jumped out and hurried up to the porch.

McGarvey would have bet his life that the traitor inside the Company wasn’t Otto, but he hesitated for just a second before he holstered his pistol at the small of his back. A long time ago John Lyman Trotter, Jr., an old and trusted friend of his, had betrayed the Agency and had sold out to the Russians. It had nearly cost McGarvey his life. But not Otto, he could not believe it.

Rencke came up the two steps to the porch and stopped a few feet from the open door. “Mac?” he called softly, the frightened look on his face clear even in the dim starlight.

McGarvey hesitated just a moment longer. Todd was at the open French doors just across the stair hall, his pistol in hand.

“In here,” McGarvey said, and he stepped around the corner to the doorway.

“You scared the hell out of me, I shit you not,” Rencke said. “I thought I was too late and they’d already taken you down.”

“We’re expecting company at any moment, so get in here,” McGarvey said. “And give your car keys to Todd. He’ll put the car in the garage.”

Rencke saw Todd holster his pistol, and realized at once what it meant. “You’re expecting our resident bad guy to show up tonight, aren’t you?” He watched Todd’s eyes as he handed over his keys. “And you thought it was me. Cool.”

Todd had to smile “You’re not going to think it’s so cool when we come under fire and you’re in the middle of it.” He went out to put Rencke’s car under cover and McGarvey closed the door.

“Hi, Otto,” Elizabeth called softly from the head of the stairs.

“Keeping watch for the bad guys?”

“Yup.”

“What are you doing out here?” McGarvey asked.

“I know who our traitor is, and I’m a little surprised but not so unhappy, ya know,” Rencke said. “I had to come out here in person to tell you, ’cause I didn’t know how wired this place might be.”

“Todd and Liz checked for bugs first thing. We’re clean. But I’m sorry you’re here, because now it’d be to risky for you to try to leave.”

Rencke hopped from one foot to the other, something he did when he was excited or distracted. “I set one of my programs to look down Boyko’s track while he was in the KGB and FSB, mostly his foreign embassy assignments, but also the periods he spent in Moscow. Then I started matching those dates and places with those of our own field people.”