At Dulles, McGarvey watched as Alex passed through security into the international terminal and disappeared down the long walkway into the concourse. So far as he had been able to determine, she had not spotted him behind her from Turkey Run Park down to the Tysons Corner storage facility, over to the apartment building where she’d left the Caddy and had picked up the Impala, or out here to the airport.
But a couple of times it had been close. She was a damned good field operator, and paranoid as hell now. Rightly so.
A forensics team had been dispatched to the storage facility and to the Caddy, but those moves were only a moot point designed to appease Blankenship, who was beside himself with anger.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Director, but if you had allowed me to leave four of my people there in the first place, none of this would have happened. As it was, Lloyd could have been shot to death. There’s no telling what this woman is capable of.”
“She is not the serial killer,” McGarvey had said, trying to calm him down.
“You bet the life of one of my people on that opinion, you know.”
“Yes.”
He phoned Pete next and brought her up to speed. “She made a couple of phone calls in the main terminal here at Dulles, and ten minutes later went to the Air France ticketing counter, where she got her boarding pass. She just now went across to the international terminal.”
“She’s getting out of Dodge. Paris?”
“Possibly, but most of those flights don’t leave until later in the afternoon or even early evening.”
“She won’t want to hang around there that long,” Pete said. “Maybe she’s leading you on a merry chase and plans on going out the back door.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just a hunch?”
“Something like that.”
“Then my question stands: What about Schermerhorn? Do we cut him loose, let him walk away?”
“Hold him until I find out where Alex is off to. We still might need his help.”
“Are you going after her?”
“Don’t have any choice,” McGarvey said.
He phoned Otto, who sounded excited. “Oh wow, Mac, the decryption is really close. I got Berlin, but it’s just a key, not the real part of Schermerhorn’s message.”
McGarvey explained where he was and what Alex had done.
“Give me a sec,” Otto said. He was back in less than fifteen seconds. “Air France flight 9039 leaves for de Gaulle at quarter to twelve this morning. Gets to Paris at noon.”
“It’d be a last-minute booking, within the past fifteen minutes.”
Otto was back again in under fifteen seconds. “Lois Wheeler, first-class, five A. Hang on.” Ten seconds later he came back. “I ran the passport number she used—it’s valid—and her Gold Amex just came up also as valid.”
“Arrange a jet for me at Andrews. I want to be waiting for her.”
“What about clothes, your passport?”
“I’ll stop at my apartment on the way.”
“That’ll take too long with traffic on the Beltway. I’ll send someone over to pack your things and meet you at the plane.”
“You’ll want to know my fail-safes.”
Otto chuckled. “This is me you’re talking to, kemo sabe.”
“Right,” McGarvey said, and started back to where he’d parked his car a few rows from the Hertz return lanes.
“I know it’s redundant to say, but watch yourself, Mac. If she joins up with George, there’s no telling what they’d be capable of doing. To you or anyone who gets in their way.”
* * *
Morning rush-hour traffic was in full swing when McGarvey got back on the Beltway. Joint Base Andrews was just over forty miles away, skirting to the south of Alexandria and across the river. Near Annandale an eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed and crashed on its side, blocking all but one of the eastbound lanes. Traffic slowed to a crawl for nearly forty-five minutes.
Otto called him. “Are you caught in that mess?”
“Right in the middle of it.”
“I have a Gulfstream standing by with its crew, and your things are already on board. Do you want to get off the highway somewhere? I can send a chopper for you.”
“How soon do we need to be airborne to beat the Air France flight?”
“We have all morning, but you might run into some trouble with the DGSE. It’s possible they won’t let you off the plane.” It was France’s primary intelligence agency.
McGarvey and Otto—but especially McGarvey—had a sometimes bloody history in France. The French intelligence people had long memories. Although he had been of some service to them at one point or another, trouble always seemed to develop around him.
“That’s something I’ll have to deal with when I get there.”
“Do you want me to call Walt, see if he can pull a few strings?”
McGarvey thought about it. “No,” he said.
“Okay, are you trying to tell me something?”
“I don’t know. But she and Schermerhorn said that whatever is going on—has been going on since oh two—is bigger than we can imagine, and they’re both frightened out of their wits. Five people have already lost their lives over this thing. Alex has gone runner, and Schermerhorn took the huge risk to change the inscription on panel four. And yet they won’t come out and say what the hell they saw buried in Iraq.”
“I can think of a lot of possibilities,” Otto said after a beat. “None of them pretty and at least one so political, the fallout would be more than bad.”
“Bad enough to kill for to keep it quiet,” McGarvey said. He knew exactly what Otto was talking about. He had thought about it since he and Pete had gone to Athens to talk to Larry Coffin.
His biggest problem was reconciling what he thought with what he thought he should do about it.
Traffic finally began to move, and a half hour later he was at the Andrews main gate, where he was expected and waved through.
He drove across the field to where the Navy’s C-20H Gulfstream, which the CIA borrowed from time to time, was waiting in its hangar, the forward hatch open, the boarding stairs down.
A chief petty officer directed him to park his Porsche off to the side, at the back of the hangar, and the jet’s engines spooled up.
“Your partner is aboard with your things, Mr. Director!” the chief had to shout.
“Thanks!” McGarvey said, knowing exactly who it was and why.
The pilot turned in his seat when he came aboard. “Soon as you’re strapped in, we’ll get out of here. We have immediate clearance.”
“Give me a minute,” McGarvey said, and went back to where Pete was seated, sipping from a bottle of mineral water.
“Before you start bitching at me, Blankenship assured me Schermerhorn was secure,” she said.
He supposed he was happy to see her, but he was vexed. He worked alone; it’s the way he liked it. But Otto had helped him almost from the start. And so had Louise, and his daughter and his son-in-law. And Pete had helped him a while ago in an operation that had gotten her shot. And here she was again, in love with him.
The flight attendant, a young petty officer, first-class, came back. “Sir?” she asked.
“Button up and let’s get out of here. And as soon as possible I want a very large cognac.”