The Cabal (7 page)

“Find out if he has any connection with the Friday Club. I’m betting he does,” McGarvey said. “Could be one of his sources for contracts.”

“That shouldn’t be too tough to find out,” Rencke said.

“And I want a running tab on his itinerary. I want to know where he is right now, and where he’s going, when he’s going, and who he’s going with or to meet. Tap his phones, hack into his computer, whatever it takes. When I go after him I want to know what I’m up against.”

Rencke nodded uncertainly.

“I especially want to know when he’s out of the country.”

“Shit,” Rencke said softly.

It was just getting light when McGarvey went downstairs and got into the car with Tomlinson and the driver who had brought him in from Andrews. Work traffic had started up across the Key Bridge, then south down the Jefferson Davis Highway where, past the Pentagon, they picked up I-395.

Already it had been a long day and even longer night, and McGarvey laid his head back with his dark thoughts, unable to close his eyes let alone get some sleep. He kept seeing Todd’s body. His death—the
manner of his death—had been more than an assassination, it had been a message: Don’t fuck with us; we’re capable of and willing to strike back to protect our interests.

Administrative Solutions certainly had the manpower and the expertise for a hit like that. It wasn’t clear if they had the motive, the name of the contracting firm’s founder and president had been in Turov’s computer, and that was a start.

It was certainly possible that the Friday Club had hired Admin; there had been a link between Howard McCann and the club, and McCann, through Turov, with the company. But it did not mean that the Friday Club had ordered Todd’s assassination and the murders of Givens and his family. The links were there, but they weren’t strong enough to take to the Bureau or for McGarvey to take any action.

Yet.

“Have my wife and daughter reached the Farm?” he asked.

“They’re about five miles out,” Tomlinson said.

“No troubles?”

“No, sir. Would you like to talk to Mrs. McGarvey?”

“That’s not necessary,” McGarvey said. “Just make damn sure that the perimeter is clear and stays that way.”

“Yes, sir,” the Company security officer said, and he began relaying the orders via his comms unit.

The interstate south was in fairly good shape, most traffic was heading into the city, not out, and by the time they reached the large wooded reserve of Quantico that was home to a Marine Corps Unit, a cemetery, and the FBI’s training center, McGarvey had finally been able to shut down enough to close his eyes and drift into a restless sleep.

His cell phone vibrated against his hip, waking him instantly. He sat up and looked out the window not immediately recognizing where they were, except traffic had increased and they were obviously on the outskirts of a fairly big city. Probably Richmond, he thought, which was only a half-hour from the Farm.

He answered on the second ring. “Yes.”

“Mrs. M and Liz got there okay,” Rencke said. “Where are you?”

“Outside Richmond, I think,” McGarvey said, the cobwebs clearing. “What do you have for me?”

“Foster and his Friday Club are big, kemo sabe. I mean really big. The White House has been using the group to float new policy issues. Don Hestern, he’s Frank Shapiro’s assistant, is one of the regulars.” Shapiro was the president’s new adviser on national security affairs.

“Anyone from the Company since McCann?”

“Not that I’ve found out so far, except I’m sure it’s not Dick. I’ve got his Fridays covered since McCann went south. But considering Foster’s reach I wouldn’t be surprised if we had somebody over there.”

“Give it to security, see what they can find out.”

“I don’t think that’s such a hot idea, Mac,” Rencke said. “Look, if Adkins or Whittaker or someone else upstairs gets wind that we’ve started an internal investigation—a rogue investigation—a lot of shit’s going to hit the fan. And it’ll point toward you, something I don’t think you want right now.”

Rencke was correct. “Then you’ll have to look down everyone’s track on your own. But if someone stepped in for McCann, it’ll have to be one of the top people in either Operations or Intelligence.”

“Or someone on Dick’s staff,” Rencke said. “Someone close enough to the DCI’s office to know policy developments.” Rencke was silent for a moment. “And you know what that would mean.”

“That McCann had the cooperation of someone else inside the Company,” McGarvey said. “The point is what the hell do they want?” McGarvey said.

“Foster is pushing the conservative movement. After Bush it’s become an uphill battle. So these guys are serious.”

“Yeah, but to what end?” Mac said. “What the hell are they after that’s so important they’d gun down a CIA officer in broad daylight on a major highway? And what about Mexico City and the polonium, and the Pyongyang assassination? Because if there’s a pattern in there I don’t see it.”

“Neither do I,” Rencke said heavily. “Neither does anyone else. But killing Todd for whatever was on the real disk Givens gave him is connected.”

“Who else is involved with Foster?”

“Everyone, Mac, honest injun. Their fingers are in just about every pie—Treasury, Justice, DoD, Interior, Homeland Security, you name it. Not only that, but some of those guys have been accused of illegal shit, like fund-raising, influence peddling, even tampering with elections all the way down to the county and local levels in some of the key states.”

“Garden variety Beltway white-collar crooks,” McGarvey said, even more bothered than before Rencke had called. “But not terrorists. Not assassins. Which leaves us with Administrative Solutions and Roland Sandberger. Where is he right now?”

“Baghdad, I think. Admin has a big contract bid coming up, personal security for our embassy people and other civilians, Halliburton and the like, and I suspect he’d want to be on the ground over there.”

“Find out,” McGarvey said, unable to keep a hard edge from his voice. “Who’s running the offices stateside?”

“His VP and chief of operations. A Brit by the name of S. Gordon Remington. I’ve dug out a few basic facts on him, and so far he comes up clean. I’ll keep digging, but something curious is going on with everyone in the company—contractors in the field as well as the front-office people. I’ve had no problem getting names and addresses, dates and places of birth, marriages, kids, that kind of stuff. Even social security and passport numbers, but if I had to write a résumé for Sandberger or Remington I’d draw a blank. Both of them served in the military—Sandberger in our Delta Forces; Remington in the British SAS—but I can’t come up with their service records.”

“Encrypted?”

“No, just blank,” Rencke said. “I mean, SAS has a record that Remington served for fourteen years, and was honorably discharged as a lieutenant colonel two years ago, but there’s nothing on where he served, or even what he did for them. And it’s the same with Sandberger. Someone erased their pasts.”

“Convenient,” McGarvey said. “But you’re talking about computer records, right?”

“Right.”

“Find somebody they served with and see if they can tell us anything.”

“That’s my next step. And I’m also looking a little closer at Admin’s personnel. There has to be somebody who’s got a grudge about something. A pissed-off contractor who quit or got fired, who might be willing to talk.”

“How’re you going to find them?”

“Tax records. One year’s return shows an income from Administrative Solutions, and the next year it doesn’t. Easy.”

“Let me know if you come up with something,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime, have there been any rumbles from the seventh floor?”

“Not a word,” Rencke said. “I think they’re waiting to see how it goes with the debriefers, and what you’ll do next.”

“Who are they sending?”

“Dan Green and Pete Boylan.”

McGarvey knew them both. “Good people,” he said.

“They’ll be fair.”

Rock Creek Park cut a broad diagonal across the northwestern section of Washington, separating Georgetown from the rest of the capital city. Joggers, hikers, Rollerbladers, and bicyclers were almost always present, lending the area an anonymity. It was Washington’s Central Park, with trails, a golf course, an amphitheater, a nature center, and
picnic areas with tables and grills dotted here and there, a lot of them along Beach Drive, which more or less followed the winding course of the creek until it emptied into the Potomac.

The dark blue Toyota SUV pulled off to the side of the road just after it crossed to the east bank of the creek above the golf course and Kangas cut the engine. It was seven and still fairly early, but the park was unusually empty, though two young women in jogging outfits passed by; a few moments later, a deep blue Bentley Arnage pulled up and parked a few yards away.

“We play it straight. Money’s still good,” Kangas said to Mustapha. “Agreed?”

“For now,” Mustapha conceded, but he was of the same temperament as Kangas. Neither man liked taking orders, especially orders they thought were stupid, which was one of the many reasons both men were single. Women were for screwing not for living with. And while they both had a great deal of respect for Remington, they also agreed that something was going on with Admin that did not bode well. The center was beginning to fall apart.

The two men got out of the SUV, Kangas carrying a small canvas bag with Givens’s laptop and BlackBerry from the apartment, and the disk and cell phone Mustapha had taken from Van Buren’s car, plus the recording of the conversation in the George restaurant, and they walked over to the Bentley and got in the backseat.

S. Gordon Remington, solidly built, rugged shoulders, a refined but bulldog face with thick bushy eyebrows and a Sandhurst drill-sergeant mustache, sat in the far corner of the car, up against the driver’s side rear door, an unreadable expression in his slate gray eyes. The smoked glass partition over the rear of the front seat was closed and nothing could be seen of the driver/bodyguard.

“Good morning, sir,” Kangas said, laying the things on the floor between them.

Mustapha closed the door. “Sir,” he said.

“Tell me,” Remington said without preamble.

“The situation has been sanitized but at some risk,” Kangas began.
“Van Buren is dead and the disk was replaced with the one you supplied us. We took it and his cell phone from the BMW.”

Remington said nothing, and Kangas held his temper in check. Push came to shove they would go over to Executive Services no matter what confidentiality agreement they’d signed. The money might not be as good, but word in the industry was that Tony Hawkins ran a tight ship and protected his people. Of course they would first have to do a little cleanup work on their background jackets, but that wouldn’t be impossible.

“The disk wasn’t a problem, sir,” Mustapha said. “But Van Buren’s cell phone might be. He made a call just before our hit. To Casey Key, Florida. To Kirk McGarvey, his father-in-law.”

“Was there a record device on the phone?” Remington asked, a flicker of interest in his eyes, his voice soft, refined, upper-class British.

“No, sir,” Mustapha said. “There is no way we can know the substance of their conversation, but considering Mr. McGarvey’s background it’s a safe bet they discussed the meeting with Givens and the fact he’d been given a disk.”