McGarvey pulled up just off Colonial Farm Road, where tire tracks led off into the woods to the west, took out his pistol, and got out of the car. The morning was bright and sunny.
In the distance to the south he could hear at least two sirens, possibly more, probably the Virginia state police setting up roadblocks.
“God damn it, I want a gun,” Schermerhorn said.
“In the glove compartment,” McGarvey told him. “But if you shoot at her for anything other than self-defense, I’ll shoot you myself.”
McGarvey started along the tire tracks, not believing for one minute she would try to kill him. She had had the chance, once she was armed, to walk back into Page’s office and kill them all, because she knew they hadn’t been allowed to pass through security while carrying their firearms.
She’d also had the chance, and the cause, to kill the security officer who’d confronted her in the parking garage. But she had merely disarmed him and let him walk away, knowing he would report the contact once he reached a phone.
Schermerhorn came after him, the Beretta 92F in his left hand.
McGarvey looked at him. “Are you ambidextrous?”
“No, always been a lefty.”
“What about Alex and George?”
“George is right-handed. Alex is a lefty just like me,” Schermerhorn said. “We were the only two.” He suddenly caught on. “The killer is right-handed?”
“The autopsies on the three killed here on campus showed they were murdered by someone right-handed. The CSI people confirmed it.”
“Lets me off the hook,” Schermerhorn said. “And Alex.”
“Leaves only George,” McGarvey said.
Schermerhorn stopped and scanned the woods ahead and to the left and right. “Then why the hell did she run?”
“Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”
“Great,” Schermerhorn said. “I will defend myself.”
They followed the tire marks another fifty yards or so through the woods until they came to the clearing, across which the green BMW convertible was crashed halfway through the fence. On the other side was a matching clearing that bordered the thick woods. Highway 193 was a mile or so off to the left, on the other side of the playing fields.
McGarvey walked to the car and looked inside. No blood, no purse.
In order to make it past the car to the other side of the fence, Alex would have needed to have gotten up on the hood and slid across. The car didn’t look as if it had been washed in the past week or so, and was a little dusty. But there were no marks on the hood.
He looked in the car again, but the radio was not there. She hadn’t left it on the passenger seat, or tossed it onto the floor or in the back. But once off campus, it would be out of range, so there was no reason for her to have taken it.
“She’s on foot. Shouldn’t be hard for the cops to round her up,” Schermerhorn said. “But they should be given the heads-up that she’s armed and she knows how to use a gun.”
McGarvey holstered his pistol and headed back to where he’d left his car. He phoned Pete.
“Did you get her?” she asked.
“We found where she crashed her car through the fence and then abandoned it. But she didn’t try for the highway. She’s still somewhere on campus.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“She’s not the killer, neither is Roy, so it has to be George. It’s why she came back to work for Page, and why she changed her mind this morning. She wants to find him to save her own life.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Set up a place where we can talk to her.”
“I’m on it now. The maintenance people are on their way over to the Scattergood-Thorne house, and I’m just leaving Bob Blankenship’s office. He’s sending four of his top people. But if she’s not the killer, this is mostly meaningless.”
“She knows who it is, but I think she also knows why.”
“What about you and Schermerhorn?”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes. In the meantime, tell Blankenship to cancel the lockdown and have all his people except the four stand down. And bring one of their radios with you. I want to talk to her.”
* * *
Alex was about to cross the road to the maintenance garage when McGarvey’s Porsche SUV passed, and she quickly ducked back into the woods. She’d only gotten a brief glimpse, but it was enough for her to recognize Roy in the passenger seat.
When the way was clear, she went across. Several pickup trucks with the CIA logo were parked in back, but no one was out and about. After ducking into the big six-bay garage, she held up in the shadows behind a stack of boxes marked MOTOR OIL in various weights.
Someone was talking inside what appeared from her vantage point to be a break room to her left. She could see a fridge and cabinets, and a coffee maker on the counter. Whoever it was sounded agitated, though she couldn’t make out the words.
To the right was a locker room with low benches and a dozen lockers adjacent to the showers and toilets.
She slipped inside then stopped again to listen, but the showers weren’t running. Everyone on duty was apparently either out on the job, mowing lawns, or in the break room. She opened six lockers in quick succession, finally finding a pair of coveralls and a ball cap that weren’t vastly too big for her, and put them on.
Whoever was in the break room was still arguing about something, and no one came out to see her slip through the rear door and get into one of the pickup trucks, start it with her universal electronic key, and drive off.
The questions in her head at this moment were the same as they had been from the day she had come back to the Company for a job inside: What the hell happened in Iraq, and what she should do about it, if anything?
Last year, when Carnes was killed in Athens, she’d damned well known it had been no accident. Joseph and no one else on the team, would have been so sloppy to allow something like that to happen.
She’d become ultracautious with her movements. It was when she had rented the second apartment in Tysons Corner and put the pistol in her desk.
And when Walt and Isty and then Tom had bought the farm—one, two, three—she knew she was somewhere near the top of the list, and her radar had risen. Someone was coming for her; it was just a matter of time, and just a matter of being prepared.
Coffin’s assassination in Piraeus had not come as a surprise, though he had danced all the proper steps to stay safe, ingeniously hiding himself in prison. But when McGarvey got involved, she’d known it was a foregone conclusion the rest of them would be killed. They had to be silenced.
The trouble was, she didn’t really know the entire why of it.
She drove past the large cluster of buildings on the main campus and headed the rest of the way up to the Scattergood-Thorne house, where she figured she would make her stand. She would see to it McGarvey came to her.
He was the one man other than Page who she felt she could trust her life with. But Page was an administrator on his way out the door, while McGarvey was a force within the intelligence community. A tough man, but she’d always heard, a fair one.