Pete shared a cab into the city with McGarvey. She had an apartment just off Dupont Circle, and the afternoon work traffic was terrible, as it usually was on a workday, so it took forever to get from Langley, the fare almost sixty dollars.
They didn’t say much to each other on the way in, McGarvey’s thoughts drifting between the new message on panel four, the Alpha Seven mission in Iraq in ’03, and the nature in which the operators were being killed one by one. Only two were left now—Schermerhorn and Alex Unroth—plus the control officer, which narrowed the list of possible killers. But the real clue, Otto had told them, was the murderer’s intel sources.
He or she knew not only the security procedures and routines inside the campus, which allowed them to make the three strikes, but they’d also known how to find Carnes and somehow manage to kill him and track down Coffin to the NIS safe house.
Only someone very well connected could have possibly known all of that. And in such a timely fashion.
“Come up for a minute. We need to talk,” Pete said, breaking him out of his thoughts.
The cabby had pulled up to the curb, and Pete was paying with a credit card.
“It’ll be a while before Otto comes up with anything, and I need to take a shower and get some sleep.”
“Five minutes, God damn it,” she said, her tone brittle.
“Do you want me to wait?” the driver asked.
“No,” McGarvey said. He got his bag out of the trunk and followed Pete up to her second-floor apartment. He had a fair idea what she wanted to say to him, and he didn’t want to hear it. He wasn’t ready, and they were in the middle of something he couldn’t quite grasp. It was just at the edges, but he wasn’t there yet.
“May I fix you a drink?” Pete asked. “Something to eat? You must be starved.”
They hadn’t eaten since the flight from Greece.
“I’m cutting you loose,” McGarvey said.
“Loose? What are you talking about?”
“This is getting too dangerous. It could have been you in Piraeus instead of Coffin. I’m taking this the rest of the way alone.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Don’t forget it was me and Otto who came to you in Serifos in the first place.”
“You’ll be safer staying here.”
“Yeah, like Wager and Fabry and Knight. The story has gotten out, and it’s only a matter of time before the media gets ahold of it, and when that happens, just about anyone on campus will be out of the loop. Everyone will become a suspect. Just getting in and out will mean running the gauntlet. And if there’re any shooters out there, we’ll all be sitting ducks.”
“It can’t be helped.”
Pete was stricken. “Can you at least tell me where the hell you’re going?”
“That depends on Schermerhorn and Alex Unroth, whoever contacts us first. But I suspect I’ll end up in Jerusalem at the government employees bank and then Tel Aviv.”
“You think the Mossad is somehow involved?”
“I think their control officer is or was a Mossad operative.”
“You’ll need someone to cover your back. It’s something I’ve done before.”
“I’m not going to risk it,” McGarvey said. “You’re staying here.”
“What?” Pete shrieked. She put a hand to her mouth and turned away for a moment. “I’m not going to do this, God damn it.” She turned back. “I’m not your dead wife, Kirk. She wasn’t a professional, and from what I read in the case file, she wasn’t even the target—you were.”
All that horrible time came blasting back at him in one ugly piece. He’d been in the car behind the limo in which Katy and their daughter were riding from the funeral of their daughter’s husband when the limo drove over an IED. Right in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. They’d been killed instantly, with absolutely zero chance for survival. Nothing of their bodies had been identifiable, except by their DNA.
Every woman he’d ever allowed to get close to him had died, had been murdered because of him. It was a never-ending nightmare from which he couldn’t escape, not even hiding on Serifos.
“The Company has trained me well. I can take care of myself and you know it, so whatever reason you’re cutting me loose has nothing to do with protecting a helpless female. If I were a man, it would be different.”
“It’s not that,” McGarvey said, knowing damn well what was coming.
“What about Otto, then? He’s still on campus. Don’t you think it’s possible someone will come after him? Or what about Louise, at their safe house? How about her life?”
“They were never Alpha Seven.”
“Neither was I.”
McGarvey picked up his bag from where he had dropped it by the door. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
“I’ve fallen in love with you,” Pete said.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Do you think I need this, or want it?”
“I work alone.”
“Don’t make me beg, Kirk,” Pete cried. “I will, if I have to. I don’t have a shred of self-respect left when it comes to you. I’ll do anything you say. Just don’t tell me to turn my back and let you walk away.”
McGarvey dropped the bag. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said. “It’s as simple as that. People around me tend to become targets.”
“And I don’t want you to get hurt.”
McGarvey was at a loss for words. The situation was surreal, and yet he’d been here, done that before. Too many times before.
She laughed. It was strained. “How many interrogators do you know who’re also good shots?”
It had been wrong for him to come up here, knowing what she was probably going to say to him. And he felt bad for her that she was pleading this way. And yet he wanted to take her into his arms and make love to her. And that was the problem. Once that happened between them, he would never take her into the field with him. Out there, he watched his own back. If he got shot, it was his fault, his problem, no one else’s. And he wanted to keep it that way. Clean and simple.
On the other hand, if he did bring her with him, if he did allow her into his inner circle and they worked together on this thing, and something happened to her, he didn’t know how he would be able to live with himself.
He didn’t know if he could handle such a loss again, because he felt very deep down, in some secret compartment, that he, too, was beginning to fall in love with her. He felt guilty for betraying Katy and yet … and yet …
His cell phone chirped. It was Otto.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at Pete’s apartment. What’s happened?”
“Roy Schermerhorn made contact through the bulletin board. He wants to meet in the next twelve hours.”
“Where?” McGarvey asked. He switched the phone to speaker mode so Pete could hear.
“Anywhere except the campus.”
“How about the Farm?”
“No. Somewhere neutral. He wants an escape route, if from no one else than us.”
“Union Station,” Pete said. “Below the Attic block on the main floor.”
Otto heard her. “Good. Exactly where and when?”
“Prometheus—the statue. Ten tonight.”
“Stand by, he’s online,” Otto said.
Pete looked at McGarvey. “It’s a break,” she said.
“Eight in the morning,” Otto said. “And there’s a potential problem. His live-in was murdered—and he’s the main suspect.”
“Where?” McGarvey asked.
“Milwaukee.”
“Can you confirm it?”
“An APB for Dana Peterson,” Otto said. “I’ve aged the one photo of him we have—I’ll send it. But he could have altered his appearance as well as his name.”