Blood Pact (McGarvey) (14 page)

“Grampyfather?” Audie said in a small voice.

McGarvey hunched down to her level a few feet away. “Do you remember me?”

“You brought me Piggy.” It was a small stuffed pig that McGarvey had got for her. Otto said she loved it.

“Yes.”

She smiled and came forward. “Did you bring me another present?”

“Next time,” McGarvey said.

“It’s okay, I forgive you,” she said seriously, and she gave him a kiss on the cheek and a hug before she went back to Otto.

McGarvey straightened up. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yes, she is,” Louise said, and she turned to Audie. “But now it’s time to pack your bag and get Piggy, before Uncle Brax and Aunty Terry come for you.”

Audie’s eyes lit up. “I’m going to the Farm?”

“Just for a few days,” Louise said.

The child bounced on her tiptoes. “It was so terrible good to see you again, Grampyfather,” she told McGarvey, and Louise led her up the stairs.

“She’s going to grow up just like her mother,” Otto said.

“And like you and Louise.”

They went back to the kitchen. “Have you had lunch yet?” Otto asked.

“A sandwich.”

Otto opened a couple of beers and they sat down at the counter. “What’d Bill Callahan have to say?”

“The Bureau’s not happy about the mess in Sarasota and next door to my house, but he’s agreed to give me a little time.”

“Marty stopped the cleanup crew, sorry,” Otto said.

“Can’t be helped,” McGarvey said. Marty Bambridge was the chief of clandestine services.

“Did Bill know the guys next door were CNI?”

“He guessed and I confirmed it. Has it reached Page?”

“He talked to Medina this morning, who admitted that some of his people might have been in Florida on vacation.” Eduardo Medina was the director of the Spanish intelligence service. “Page told him that apparently they’d caught burglars in the act and all three of them had been shot to death.”

“What was Medina’s reaction?”

“Nada. Just asked if their bodies could be returned.”

“There was a fourth operator. Any sign of him yet?”

“He’s probably out of the country by now, or is on the way out. Could be he made his report to his boss, which is why Medina had no reaction. Which brings us to why they were watching you, something they had to know was very stupid and dangerous. And don’t tell me they expected you to lead them to Cibola in New Mexico.”

“It’s why they killed Petain,” McGarvey said. “They knew that sooner or later he or someone like him would be coming to talk to me. And just like Petain they warned me that my life was in danger.”

“From who and why?” Otto asked. “It doesn’t make any sense. The treasure does not exist.”

“Petain thought it did.”

“Nor is there any such organization as the Voltaire Society. At least not the one the Frenchman claimed he represented.”

“The CNI operators killed him for some reason.”

“Nothing on their computer but you,” Otto said. “Christ, we’re all grabbing at straws. It’s nuts.”

The phone rang and Louise caught it upstairs.

Otto waited until she called down. “They’re around the block,” she said.

She came down with Audie and a small pink backpack, from which poked the stuffed pig’s head, just as a Cadillac Escalade with government plates pulled in behind McGarvey’s SUV.

Terry Sweeney, who was chief of security at the CIA’s training facility, came to the door. She was a small woman, with tiny hands and a ready smile.

Audie ran to her. “Aunty Terry.”

“Ready to come play for a few days?” Sweeney asked, and she spotted McGarvey and Otto, who’d come from the kitchen. “Everything okay, Mr. Director?” she asked.

“Things could start to get a little dicey around here,” McGarvey said. Lying to someone in Sweeney’s sensitive position was not done. The woman needed to know if something was coming her way, for the sake of the installation as well as the child. “Who’d you bring with you?”

“Braxton Ezell.” Ezell was the director of weapons training. He’d retired from the field as a NOC—which was a field officer under Non-Official Cover—when his left hand and most of his right were blown off in a firefight outside of Vientiane six years ago.

“Good man,” McGarvey said.

“Keep us informed,” Sweeney said, and she took Audie’s hand.

At the open door Audie turned back. “Good-bye Mommy and Daddy, and Grampyfather.”

When they were gone, Louise locked up and they went back into the kitchen. “I’m not cooking, so how does pizza for dinner grab you?”

“Fine,” McGarvey said. “You guys are doing a good job with her.”

“It’s easy,” Louise said. She opened them beers. “So what happened in Florida—or rather what’s the upshot? Otto’s told me some of what went down, but not all of it.”

“The Spanish treasure in New Mexico,” Otto said.

Her left eyebrow rose. “Are the Mexican drug cartels involved again?”

“They were stung last time, I don’t think they’ll buy into it again,” McGarvey said, and he went into some detail for her from the moment Giscarde Petain had shown up at New College.

“At least the Bureau is off my back for the moment.”

“That’s a good thing,” Otto said. “But I don’t think Marty wants to cut you any slack. He wants to talk to you.”

“Page should be able to run some interference.”

“Not likely. This is election year and no matter who wins, Page figures that he’s out. I look for him to resign within the next month or so, and he’s not going to want to leave the agency with something like this hanging over his head.”

“Politics,” Louise said with some distaste. “But I want to know more about the perfume in your apartment. Have you smelled it before? An old girlfriend?”

“I don’t know, but whoever she was, she was a pro. The perfume was the only thing she left behind.”

“A message?” Louise suggested.

“Could be.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

It was nearly five, a couple of hours since the man and woman had shown up in a Cadillac SUV and had taken a child away with them. In the meantime Dorestos had driven around the neighborhood, coming to the edge of a strip of woods that bordered the rear of the house. Several picnic tables were set up just within a small park with children’s swings and slides and monkey bars.

It was a weekday and the wrong time for parents with their kids to be here, and he’d parked and made his way through the trees to the edge of the property. But there’d been nothing to see, except for a large backyard, equipped with a lot of toys for the girl. A lucky child, he’d thought.

He’d stayed at the park for as long as he thought he wouldn’t stand out, and then drove back to the gas station where he parked in the rear, out of sight of the clerks inside.

It was late at night in Malta but the monsignor had promised that he was available no matter the hour. “It will be as if you were praying to God, he has answers for those who need Him, whenever they need Him.”

Msgr. Franelli answered on the first ring as he always did. “Was it the back gate to the CIA? I’d hoped to hear from you before now.”

“He didn’t go there. Instead he came to a house in McLean.”

“Is he still there?”

“Yes, but I can find no information on the address, it comes up a blank in all of my search engines.”

“Tell me what you have seen all afternoon. Every detail.”

Dorestos told him everything, including the little girl who’d been picked up by a man and woman driving a black Cadillac Escalade with government plates, and about the woman who’d met them at the door.

“Describe this woman.”

“Tall, thin, jeans, sweatshirt. The angle was fair, but I couldn’t make out much more than that. She never came fully outside of the house, nor did she look up.”

“Standard tradecraft, but I think you’re on to something. Unless I miss my guess the woman is Louise Horn, who used to work for the National Reconnaissance Office, which puts up and runs the American constellation of communications and spy satellites. Her husband is Otto Rencke, the CIA’s Special Projects director, and a close personal friend of McGarvey’s.”

“I’ll wait until McGarvey leaves, and then go in to question them. It could prove valuable if Rencke is such a good friend. McGarvey will have told him everything.”

“Rencke is a genius. Quite possibly the smartest man on the planet when it comes to encryption techniques and information retrieval and collection. He makes connections. If you went to him you would have to kill him and his wife. If that were to happen Signore McGarvey would hunt you down to the ends of the earth, and there would be nothing we could do to protect you. You will make no physical contact with Rencke or his wife.”

“Such dedication.”

“Yes,” Franelli said. “For now you will merely watch. And when McGarvey leaves you will follow him wherever he goes.”

Dorestos glanced in his rearview mirror as a dark gray Ford Taurus passed on the street and turned the corner toward the cul-de-sac. He got a very brief glimpse of someone behind the wheel, but no one in the passenger seat.

“Father?” Franelli prompted.

“One moment, please, Monsignor, there may be a development.”

“Tell me.”

“A car has just headed in the direction of Rencke’s house.”

“Government plates?”

“I couldn’t make them out.”

“Driver, passengers?”

“No passengers, but I think the driver might have been a woman. One moment, please.”

The GLONASS image on his iPad was directed tightly on the house. He pulled back to a slightly wider view and spotted the Taurus stop at the curb in front of a house a half a block before the entrance to the cul-de-sac.

Now the satellite’s angle was too high to read a license plate number, nor could he detect any reaction from the neighbors or anyone in Rencke’s house. He relayed this information to the monsignor.

“This woman has not gotten out of her car? She’s just sitting there?”

“Sí.”

“Does she have a sight line on Rencke’s house?”

“I don’t think so, but she’s in a position to intercept anyone leaving.”

“I want you to get the license number.”

“Sí, Monsignore,”
Dorestos said.

He switched his cell phone to the camera mode and headed down the street toward the entrance to the cul-de-sac. As he passed the Taurus, he beeped the horn, and as the woman turned around to look out the rear window he snapped a picture of her face and the license plate.

Circling around the next block, he pulled up again at the gas station, and called his handler. “I managed to get a photo not only of the license plate but of her face. I’m sending it to you.”

Franelli said something that Dorestos couldn’t quite catch, but then he was back. “Give me a minute while I check something. In the meantime are you in a secure position?”

“Yes,” Dorestos said. He’d heard excitement in the monsignor’s voice. It was out of the ordinary, and his heart sped up a pace.

Traffic was beginning to build, and three cars were getting gas. A McLean police car passed, but did not slow down. Finally the monsignor was back.

“The situation has changed. I have identified the woman, and I believe I know why she is there, though it is extremely dangerous for her. She must know it, which means she is in a position to help in the search.”

“For the diary?”

“For the treasure.”

“What are my orders?” Dorestos asked, and he had a feeling that he knew the answer. But ultimately it’s why he’d been sent here; it was what he’d believed would come to pass.

“If the woman tries to make contact with McGarvey, I want you to kill her.”

“It could create a problem in broad daylight.”

“She’ll wait until after dark, on the off chance that McGarvey will come out alone.”

“And if he does?”

“I’ll make that decision then.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

McGarvey was watching the woods out one of the rear windows when Otto brought down one of his laptops and set it up on the kitchen counter as Louise was phoning their pizza order. He connected with one of his powerful search engines on the mainframe at the Original Headquarters Building, and within a few keystrokes he was inside the FBI’s Tampa Office.

“What’s on the other side of the woods?” McGarvey asked. They were vulnerable here to someone coming up that way. Especially after dark.

Louise hung up and came over. “A road about fifty meters away, a park there for kids, hardly ever used so far as I know.”

“Have you guys set up motion detectors back there?”

Otto looked up. “I didn’t think we needed it. This location is secure. No way someone is going to trace ownership back to us.”

“Unless someone followed me here,” McGarvey said. He’d been having the same feeling ever since he’d left Andrews, and especially after smelling the perfume in his apartment.

“Do you want me to call for some muscle?”

“I don’t want to get the Company involved yet. There’re too many legitimate questions that I don’t have the answers for. And I don’t want them looking over my shoulder.”

“Anyway, Audie’s safe,” Louise said softly. “Thanks to your hunches.”

McGarvey nodded. Every time he thought about her, he was afraid. But going to ground again like he had in the beginning in Switzerland, and most recently in Greece on the island of Serifos, had done nothing to stop the violence that had been inflicted on his family, and the danger that he’d placed Audie in by coming here today. With Otto and Louise it was different. They were trained intelligence officers who’d known the risks when they’d raised their right hands.

“Look,” Otto said turning his laptop around. “FBI Tampa reports a body of a fourth CNI agent in a rental on Siesta Key just a few miles north of the surveillance house on Casey. Your doing?”

McGarvey looked at the preliminary crime scene report and the photos of the body of a man shot to death, lying in a pool of blood. “No.”

“Who then? Your Olympian able to leap walls at a single bound?”

“That’s exactly who I think it was. I heard a boat heading north.”

“But why was this guy protecting you?” Louise asked. “He has a reason.”