The Expediter (44 page)

“Who?” the colonel asked.

McGarvey was walking on shaky ground now. “I don’t know,” he said, and Ma started to turn away. “But I’m going to ask the Russian. It’s a question of money.”

“And motivation.”

“Yes. I’ll ask him that too.”

Ma chose his words with obvious care. “From where we sit, Mr. Director, only one country would benefit from creating trouble for us with North Korea—other than the insanity of Kim Jong Il.”

“That would seem to be the case,” McGarvey said. He opened the drawer next to Kim’s and unzipped the top part of the bag to reveal McCann’s face. “He hired the Russian, and he was one of the raiding party last night who tried to kill Kim to keep her from talking.”

Ma was impressed, and then angry. “I know this man,” he said. “And if what you are telling me is true my government will have to immediately reevaluate who its real enemy is.”

“You may take the woman’s body with you, but his stays here,” McGavey said. He rezipped the bag and closed the drawer. “I only showed you because I want you to believe that I’m telling the truth. Like the Russian he was only a middleman. He was getting money from someone other than us.”

“Convenient for you to say so—”

“Bullshit, Colonel. I wouldn’t have brought you here to blow smoke up your ass. My government did not engineer the assassination. We may have done some stupid things, but this wasn’t one of them.”

Ma took his time replying. “It’s only your reputation that compels me to listen to you, Mr. Director. What do you want?”

“Time.”

“To do what?”

“Prove that neither Pyongyang nor my government was behind the assassination.”

“How much time?” Ma asked.

“As much as you can give me.”

Ma nodded after a beat. “Forty-eight hours,” he said. “I think that I can convince my superiors of that much.” He shook his head. “Beyond that I don’t know.”

“Do you want the woman’s body?”

“No,” Ma said, and he glanced at the other drawer. “But I would take that one.”

McGarvey shook his head. “I’ll call you direct when I have something.”

“Yes, do that.”

Todd was waiting in the Hummer just outside the ambulance entrance when McGarvey emerged from the meeting with the Chinese intelligence chief of station, tossed his bag in the backseat, and got in.

“How’s Liz?”

“Tired, but she’s okay. How’s Otto?”

“We brought him some Twinkies.”

Todd laughed, but then he got serious. “I brought everything we’ll need for Tokyo. What’s the drill?”

“I’ve got one of our Lears and a crew, who’ll fly us over to Okinawa and from there the Navy will get us to Yokosuka. But it’s not going to be easy getting to Turov.”

“Do you have a plan?”

McGarvey nodded. “You’re going to provide a diversion and I’m going over the wall. Not very elegant, but we don’t have much time for anything more sophisticated, and we certainly couldn’t show up in Tokyo with a big crew. The Japanese authorities would be all over us before we took two steps.”

“Well, first we’ve got another problem right here,” Todd said. “Dick called and asked me to bring you in. He wants to talk.”

McGarvey had been hoping to avoid Adkins until after Tokyo. But no doubt the housekeeping team leader from last night had filed his report to cover his own ass. He had stuck his neck out taking orders from a retired DCI.

“Did he mention anything about McCann?”

They were in traffic on Wisconsin Avenue heading toward the Key Bridge across the river. Todd glanced at him and shook his head. “And I didn’t mention it.”

“Thanks, Todd, but you’re going to have to start watching your ass if you want to stay in the business.”

Todd hesitated a moment. “Liz and I were going to talk to you about that,” he said. “We’re thinking about pulling the pin. Starting up our own security consulting firm. We’d make ten times the money, and maybe we’d get into a position where people stopped shooting at us.”

“You might give it a second thought, son. They need people like you and Liz. Badly.”

Todd smiled wanly. “She predicted you’d say something like that.”

“Okay, let’s go pay Dick a visit.”

Adkins was waiting for them in his seventh-floor office in the Old Headquarters Building, along with the Deputy DCI David Whittaker and the Agency’s general counsel Carlton Patterson. None of them looked particularly happy, especially not Adkins.

“I understand that Howard McCann was shot to death last night at the Cabin John safe house,” Adkins said, getting right to it. His eyes
were tired, his narrow face lined and sallow as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

“That’s right. Houseeeping took his body to All Saints,” McGarvey said.

“You were there too?” Adkins asked Todd.

“Yes, sir. Along with my wife, and Otto.”

“Both of them wounded, Rencke seriously.”

“Well, Jesus H. Christ, Mac, would you mind explaining what the fuck is going on?” Whittaker demanded. He was a tall, lean man, who had served under McGarvey as assistant deputy director of operations, and again under McGarvey in the same number two position he held now. McGarvey had never known him to have such a short temper.

“Howard was the traitor here who directed and paid the Russian in Tokyo to expedite the hit in Pyongyang and at least two others, probably more.”

All the animation seemed to leave Adkins’s face and he was struck dumb for the moment, as was Whittaker.

“Do you have proof of this?” Patterson asked.

“I suspected someone within the Company was calling the shots with this Russian. Otto discovered that Howard’s duty stations corresponded—same cities, same dates—and when he found out that I had brought one of the South Korean shooters back with me from Pyongang I knew whoever it was would come out and try to eliminate her.”

“The duty stations could have been coincidences,” Patterson said. “And him coming out to the safe house could have been a gesture of goodwill. He came to offer his help.”

“He confessed.”

“Do you have that on tape, or in his own handwriting, maybe his signature?”

“Just my word, Carleton.”

Patterson started to object, the lawyer in him wanting to argue the point, but Adkins held him off.

“What next, Mac?” he asked. “What do we tell his wife?”

“Killed in the line of duty. Give him his star downstairs, and his pension. Ballinger and his people can work up something that’ll satisfy the press corps.” Logan Ballinger was the Agency’s chief press officer.

Whittaker was incredulous. “We’re making him a hero?” he demanded.

“The country needs a hero right now, and so does the Company.”

“What about us?” Adkins asked. “What next?”

“You’ll need a new DDO,” McGarvey said.

“I meant the situation.”

“I have one more thing to take care of.”

No one said a thing for a beat.

McGarvey got out of his chair across from Adkins and glanced out the window at the rolling hills and woods, pretty at this time of the year. “Hang onto your ass, Dick, because if I don’t make it and the shit hits the fan, you’re going to take a lot of the heat.”

“Will you come in for a debriefing?” Patterson asked. “We can’t just sweep what happened out at Cabin John under the rug.”

McGarvey nodded. “But that might be what you’ll have to do in the end.”

Turov’s Gulfstream touched down at Tokyo’s Narita Airport just before dawn and taxied over to the Russian’s personal hanger beyond the VIP terminal. As the engines spooled down Minoru thanked the pretty attendant and the pilot and copilot.

Out front he got into a cab and ordered the driver to take him up to Ueno, and he sat back with his thoughts. He considered himself
lucky to have walked away from the Cabin John operation in one piece. Rather than cower in the house after the attack had begun, McGarvey had counterattacked. It was the last thing any of them had expected to happen.

All but one of the mision’s goals had been accomplished. The woman was dead as was Daniel, leaving the American authorities with no proof.

He hoped it was enough to satisfy the colonel, but he had his doubts.

Turov, dressed in a deep scarlet kimono, waited on the teak deck overlooking the garden, a samauri short sword lying at his side, his expression one of Bushido serenity. The morning was absolutely flawless, the sky cloudless, the sounds of the city very distant, muted by the compound’s high walls and the parkland’s woods on the low side of the road, the tinkling water in the fountain soothing, and the occasional splash of a golden carp in the pond gentling.

He didn’t look up when Minoru came to the doorway, but his posture stiffened slightly. “Welcome home,” he said softly.

Minoru remained where he stood, not moving a muscle. The colonel was in his transition state—a zen time between deep contemplation and total wakefulness—which was extremely dangerous. His actions could be unpredictably dangerous if he were disturbed. Minoru had personally witnessed the decaptitation of a
yakuza
foot soldier who walked up behind the colonel at just a time as this.

Finally Turov turned and looked over his shoulder. “Come, sit with me and tell me everything.”

Minoru went and sat down cross-legged and listened to the sounds of the flowing water for a few sconds before he began to speak, going over in detail everything that had happened from the moment he’d left the compound and flown to Washington aboard the Gulfstream.

“He will come here to finish this business,” Turov said.

“But why? Your death will serve no purpose toward stopping China from making its attack.”

“He is of a different opinion, and we must respect him for it. I’ve set someone to keep watch for him at Dulles and let us know the moment he departs, and someone at Narita to watch for his arrival.”

“He could be eliminated in the crowds at the airport, or on the highway,” Minoru suggested. “An accident.”

“We don’t have the time or manpower. It’ll have to be done here.”

“
Hai,
Colonel.”

“When it’s over we’ll destroy his body in the usual manner and scatter his ashes in Tokyo Bay before we leave for Melbourne. It will be a just ending for a fitting adversary.”

The dawn was beginning to brighten the horizon behind them as the CIA’s Learjet en route to Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base began to lose altitude. McGarvey had awakened forty-five minutes ago after a reasonable night’s sleep in one of the soft leather reclining seats. He was having coffee that their flight attendant had laid out when Todd woke up and looked out the windows.

“We’re on the way down. How far out are we?”

“About an hour, I expect. From there the Navy is giving us a lift up to Yokosuka. The
George H.W. Bush
is in port so they’re landing us aboard. Less questions that way.” The
Bush
was the CVN-77, the latest Nimitz-class carrier, and it had been deployed to Yokosuka a couple of months ago.

Todd poured a cup of coffee. “Do you think they’ll go along with us?”