A young ensign in desert tan Crye Precision battle dress was waiting for McGarvey at the front gate of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group—DEVGRU—at Virginia Beach. He wore no name tag, only his insignia of rank and the SEAL Team Six patch. Slight of build, with long hair tied in a ponytail, he had the thousand-yard stare of the warrior who has seen close-quarters battle.
“Mr. Director, welcome to DEVGRU, I’m Ensign Mader. Captain Cole asked that I bring you up to his office.”
McGarvey parked his car in the visitor’s lot outside the main gate and then got into a navy Hummer, with Mader at the wheel.
On the way up, the windows were down. Mac heard two sharp explosions and then a lot of small-arms fire in the distance through the woods, “Busy day.”
“Yes, sir.”
They stopped at an intersection to allow a pair of armored personnel carriers to pass. Seconds later a Black Hawk helicopter roared low overhead and disappeared toward the sound of the shooting to the east.
A few blocks later they passed the post exchange and the cluster of buildings normally associated with a military installation, finally pulling up and parking in front of a three-story building with a small signboard and an American flag in a grassy area.
“I’m surprised that your flag isn’t at half mast because of the two operators you lost,” McGarvey said.
“That takes a presidential directive and we’ve received none,” Mader said sharply.
Inside they bypassed the elevator and took the stairs up to an office on the third floor, where a young clerk, also dressed in Cryes, picked up the phone. “The gentleman from Washington is here, sir.” He hung up. “Captain Cole will see you now, sir,” he said.
Cole’s corner office looked down a long grassy slope to what appeared to be an urban setting of several two- and three-story concrete block buildings. Several battered cars and a couple of pickup trucks were parked on the street. Two men were spraying foam on one of the cars, which was on fire.
The captain, dressed in Cryes like everyone else McGarvey had seen this afternoon, got up from behind his desk. “Glad to finally meet you, Mr. Director,” he said, though his attitude and inflection said differently.
“I won’t take up much of your time. I expect you’re a busy man.”
“That I am,” Cole said, motioning to a seat. He was half a head shorter than McGarvey and lean, with a scar that ran down the left side of his weather-beaten face from just below his ear to the bottom of his chin. His eyes were narrow, as if he was getting ready either for bad news or for an attack.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No. I’ll get directly to my reason for wanting to see you. It’s about your ex-wife, Pamela Schlueter. Have you had any contact with her in the past few months?”
Cole got to his feet, furious. “Get the hell out of my office.”
“If need be I’ll have you ordered to Washington, and we can conduct this in an ONI facility.”
Cole reached for the phone.
“I don’t much care for men who beat up on their wives. Especially a man with your training.”
“Unproven allegations.”
“But not your presence on any number of porn sites,” McGarvey said. Otto had dug that up last night. “At least you have the good sense never to use government computers.”
“You can’t prove a thing,” Cole said, no longer so sure of himself.
“I think you know I can.”
Cole sat down.
“Thing is, you’re doing a damned good job down here. Five to go for your thirty years, though you’ve been passed up twice for your star. It’s possible that a recommendation from the CIA might help the next time around. Especially if we prove that your ex is involved with the people who murdered the two SEAL Team Six operators.”
“Can’t be her,” Cole said.
“Why not?”
“She was from Bad Aibling, a small town outside of Munich. She was a village girl when I met her and still a village girl when I brought her back to the States. I had a job at the Pentagon and she never fit in. Bitched all the time about the weather, the food, the traffic, the people. Nothing was right for her.”
“Including you?”
“Especially me.”
“Which is why you got rough with her?”
“Actually it was the other way around. She was a farm girl, no sisters, only four older brothers who she roughhoused with from the time she could walk. At least that’s how she explained it to me.”
“The SPs were called to your quarters more than once.”
“Believe me, McGarvey, I could have killed her, so I was very careful not to let her take things too far. In the end in Washington she’d gotten so aggressive that one night I had to let her break my arm. The next day I moved over to the BOQ on Andrews and sent her home. She filed for a divorce from Germany.”
“Was watching porn her idea too?”
“It was mine, something we did together. And that’s as far as I’ll take that issue. But if you think that Pam was somehow behind the murders of those two DEVGRU operators and their families, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“You say she was aggressive. Was she crazy?”
“Clinically nuts?” Cole asked. He shook his head. “I’m no shrink, but at the end she was having some pretty big mood swings. I put it down to her being pissed off living in the States. She never made friends, not one, never even tried.”
“Would you know if she might have played around, maybe had an affair?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Wasn’t her style.”
“While you were married, did she ever go home, visit old friends or family?”
“Twice.”
“Has she still got people in Bad Aibling?”
“Her parents and one of her brothers are dead. The other three are married, living in Munich I think, but I’m not sure,” Cole said. He sat forward. “I’m more motivated than you to figure out who killed two of our people, but my hands are tied. If they’d been on active duty it would have been different.”
“Were you given direct orders not to try to find out what happened?”
“No,” Cole said, and McGarvey thought he was lying.
“Of the other twenty-two operators, only three are still on active duty, and all of them are stationed here.”
“What twenty-two?”
“The others on the Neptune Spear raid. I think that all of them have been targeted by a group led by your ex-wife and financed by the government of Pakistan.”
“What brought you to that conclusion?”
“The guy and his wife in Florida were murdered by a German, who was being followed by a BND officer. They got into a shootout, and the BND officer killed the assassin. When I went to Germany to talk to the BND, someone tried to take me down. I think that it was a Pakistani who arranged it.”
“What’s the connection with Pam?”
“The BND believes she’s the head of an organization that hires out as assassins.”
“Bullshit,” Cole said, getting to his feet. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Would you know how to reach her if need be? A phone number, an e-mail address, something like that?”
“With all due respect, Mr. Director, you don’t work for the CIA any longer, so whatever the hell you’re doing here has no official sanction.”
McGarvey got up. At the door he turned back. “It’d be too bad if I found out that you were still in contact with your ex-wife.”
“If that’s a threat, I would suggest that you tread with care. I’ve recorded this conversation.”
Otto had warned about that as well. He had given McGarvey a device that looked like an ordinary cell phone, but one that broadcast the equivalent of a white noise signal, which made recordings impossible. “Keep him guessing after you leave and he tries to play it back,” Otto had said.
“We’ll keep in touch,” McGarvey said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Count on it.”