David Hagberg - End Game

She walked in and the mechanic came over. “Good morning. You have a problem?”

“Might be leaking a little oil. Wonder if you could put it on the lift and check it out.”

“That’s a Hertz rental. Have them come out and switch cars.”

“I don’t have time to screw around with them this morning unless there’s problem. I’m driving up to New York.”

“Sure, bring it in,” the mechanic said.

She drove slowly into the bay, and the mechanic raised it on the lift. She started her own inspection of the undercarriage and wheel wells from the rear as he checked under the engine for leaks.

“Technically, you’re not supposed to be in here. Insurance.”

“How does it look?” Alex asked, moving forward.

“I don’t see anything wrong. What makes you think there’s an oil leak?”

“Just a feeling. My dad was a wrench, and he checked our cars every time we took a trip. Guess it just rubbed off.”

The mechanic stepped aside as she checked under the engine and in the front wheel wells, again finding nothing suspicious.

She gave him a smile. “The brakes look good too. What do I owe you?”

“Make it a twenty and we’re even.”

When the car was down, she paid him and drove off. The inspection only proved that the Company wasn’t using obvious bugs. The ones the size of a book of matches. But with the right satellite overhead, something as small as the end of a pencil would work, and no casual inspection would have found it.

Still, she didn’t think the car had been traced to her.

Instead of driving back to I-495, she took the Leesburg Pike a couple of miles north, where it connected with the Dulles Access Road, traffic definitely picking up as people headed to the airport for their early morning flights.

She continued to watch her tradecraft, but with the increased traffic she had no need for such drastic action as before. But each time she changed lanes to pass, she watched behind her to make sure the same car behind her wasn’t doing the same thing.

If someone was following her, she decided they were a lot better than she was.

It was just six when she pulled into the Hertz return lanes, and a man with a clipboard came out, checked the car over, entered the odometer and date and time into a handheld unit, and printed the receipt for her.

She got her bags from the trunk as another car drove up, and the attendant went to check it in. While no one was paying attention to her, she opened the attaché case and pulled out a passport, Gold Amex card, a few hundred in American dollars, and other items of identification under the name Lois Wheeler, and stashed her Unroth and Alice Walker papers inside.

The airport was the weakest link in her flight plan. Once they knew she was gone, they would expect her to run. But Dulles and Reagan National were obvious, especially since very few flights to Europe took off until later in the afternoon — most of them between four thirty and seven. It would leave her exposed her at the airport for nearly twelve hours, during which an even casual sweep would pick her up.

Except for Air France flight 9039 if she could book a last-minute seat.

She went into the main terminal, where she found a seat by a window and connected on her cell phone with the Air France website. Picking up reservations, she went to 9039 for this morning’s 11:45 A.M. flight to Paris. All but four seats were filled, one of them in tourist and the other three in first class. She booked a first-class flight, paying for it with her American Express card.

Next she called the Hotel InterContinental and booked a suite for five days, beginning this evening, so that when she arrived, she would have a room.

It was a bit of irony. The InterContinental was the hotel McGarvey often stayed at.

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.