David Hagberg - End Game

“You talked your way through the door without any help; you’ll go a long way with ours,” the final recruiter told him.

All that time from the streets of Detroit, to Lansing and to casinos around the country, he’d been alone. But in the CIA he’d finally found a place where he could be respected and even liked for who and what he was.

A few minutes before eight, Coffin went back into the house, rinsed out and dried his wineglass, and, checking out the window, let himself out of the house. At the corner he took a bus to the metro station. From there he boarded a train for Piraeus — Athens’s port town twelve kilometers to the southwest.

He was due back in his cell at the Korydallos Prison Complex no later than ten. He was scheduled to interview a female prisoner first thing in the morning at the psych ward where he worked. She had delusions she was someone else, though she couldn’t say exactly who it was. It was a condition he knew very well.

McGarvey packed a few things, then flew up to Athens with Otto and Pete in the Aegean Airlines charters helicopter. The noise over the eighty-mile flight was too great to talk out loud without shouting, and he didn’t want to use the intercom and headphones. What he had to say wasn’t for the pilot’s ears. In any event, Otto had brought up the dossiers on all seven of the Alpha team, and he’d read them.

Nor was it for the ears of their taxi driver on the way to the Athens Hilton near the U.S. embassy. And it wasn’t until they’d checked in, three separate suites on the eighth floor that looked down across the city toward Syntagma Square, and agreed to meet at the Galaxy, the hotel’s rooftop bar, that he shared his plan.

“I’m betting Larry Coffin has a setup here in Athens. If we can find him and prove he went to the U.S. in the past few days or week, then he’ll become a likely suspect.”

“We need a motive,” Pete said, but Otto held her off.

“What if he’s here and never left?”

“The connection between Wager, Fabry, Carnes, and Coffin was Alpha Seven. And I’m guessing something happened in the mountains above Kirkuk that not only bound those guys together but is the reason three of them were killed.”

“You’re saying Carnes didn’t die in a traffic accident?” Pete asked.

“He died, but it probably wasn’t an accident. The question in my mind is why now? Why go through the trouble and risk of penetrating campus security to kill two of the team?”

“Doesn’t have to be a reason that’d make sense to us,” Pete said. “The killer is obviously a psychopath.”

“That’s too easy,” McGarvey said. “We need a trigger. Something recent.”

“What’s going on in the region that has a bearing?” Pete asked. “Iran’s nuclear program for one. Their ballistic missile tests for another ISIS.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be that pat. I mean, I don’t think we’re looking for a threat to the U.S. It has to be something that benefited the team.”

“Not another treasure hunt.”

“No.”

“What then?” Pete asked. “You’re not making any sense, Mac. Anyway, we’re back to a motive, because if we can’t come up with that, then the killings, and the way they happened, make no sense.”

“First we need to find Larry Coffin,” McGarvey said.

“Maybe not so easy,” Otto said. “If this guy was as good an NOC as his reputation had him, he won’t be found if he doesn’t want to be found.”

“He’s either the killer or if he isn’t, he’s heard about the funerals, and he’ll want to know what’s happening.”

“You’re betting the latter.”

“Because it’s going to be the easiest,” McGarvey said.

“If you’re right, he’ll have to guess someone has made the Alpha Seven connection and will be coming after him,” Pete said. “Either the killer or someone from the Company.”

On the way up from Serifos, McGarvey had thought about the easiest, most direct approach. Something to dig the guy out of hiding. Coffin had been an NOC, which meant in order to survive as long as he had, not only in the field but in hiding from his own people, he had to maintain at least minimal contact with the Company. It didn’t have to be a personal contact. Someone on the inside but maybe an electronic contact.

“The CIA retirees’ newsletter is online these days, right?”

Otto nodded. He was grinning. “Why sneak in the back way when you can ring the front doorbell?” he said. “How do you want it to read?”

“Alpha Seven reunion. Give him your e-mail address.”

Pete got it. “He’d be a fool to answer.”

“Either that, or he thinks he’s smarter than we are,” Otto said.

“Or desperate,” Pete said.

“Smarter,” McGarvey said. “But curious.”

Otto posted the announcement online and took the CIA’s Gulfstream home. But Pete had refused to go with him. “At the very least, Coffin is a psycho himself — a very smart and successful psycho. I’m going to stick around to watch your back.”

“You’d better move in here with me so I can watch yours,” McGarvey said reluctantly. He didn’t want any sort of entanglement, especially not just now. Whoever this guy was who’d killed Wager and Fabry and then had chewed off their faces was crazy, but he was also a professional field officer, which made him doubly dangerous.

Pete moved her things over, then went downstairs and checked out of her room and into his. She was back for just a minute when someone knocked at the door, and McGarvey went to answer it.

An older man with a very thick shock of white hair who was dressed in a ratty old sports coat and slacks that hadn’t seen an iron in a month held out his Athens metro police badge. “Spiros Moshonas,” he said. “Mr. McGarvey, I presume?”

McGarvey let him in. “What can I do for you?”

Pete came to the bedroom door, and the detective smiled and nodded. “I followed you up,” he apologized. “The hotel won’t reveal anything about their guests, not even to the police.”

They had checked in under their real names — no reason at this point for them to have used work names and false papers.

“Actually, the NIS asked my department to send someone over to have a little chat,” Moshonas said. The NIS was the Greek intelligence service headquartered here in Athens.

“Good,” McGarvey said. “Maybe you can help us.” He got the tablet Otto had left with them and pulled up Coffin’s dossier, which included a half dozen photos, and showed them to the cop.

“You’re looking for this man?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?” Moshonas smiled. “What I mean to say is that it’s highly unusual for a former director of the CIA to come here so openly, and then apparently in pursuit of someone. Is this business for you?”

“We want to have a little chat with him,” McGarvey said.

“May I know what you wish to discuss with him?”

“He used to work for us, and something has come up we’d like to ask him about.”

“The service would want a more detailed answer.”

Pete came the rest of the way into the sitting room. “Do you know where this man is?”

“Of course. I was the one responsible for putting him there,” Moshonas said. “If you’ll give me something I can report, any little thing, I’ll take you to him.”

“He’s wanted for questioning in the murders of two CIA employees a few days ago.”

“That would be impossible,” Moshonas said. “Mr. Cooke was convicted of trafficking in stolen artifacts last year. At the moment he’s serving time at Korydallos prison in Piraeus.”

For just a moment McGarvey allowed himself to be surprised, until he realized what was wrong. Coffin would never have allowed himself to be caught doing something so simple. “Did he plead guilty?”