David Hagberg - End Game

They’d gone along with him at first, but when a few of them had balked because of the savagery of their attacks — Schermerhorn among them — George had taken them to the cache, which was a couple of miles away and a thousand feet lower.

Schermerhorn had remembered his exact feeling the moment he’d understood what was buried there. It was slick. The entire thing was uptown. And he and Alex and maybe Larry had started to laugh, until it dawned on all of them that from that moment, their lives were all but forfeit unless the thing stayed where it was buried for all time, or unless it was found in just the right way, by just the right people. Any other circumstances would have been a disaster.

Still could be a disaster for them.

And it was exactly that, only in a way none of them had foreseen.

A bright flash followed by a small explosion went off somewhere a hundred yards or so into the woods. It was a flash bang grenade.

A diversion. It came into Schermerhorn’s head at the same moment: someone was right there behind him, and before he could move or even call out, a terrible pain ripped at his neck, and blood poured into his trachea, drowning him even as he began to bleed to death.

George had come back, or had never left in the first place. That thought crystallized in his head as he managed to half turn so he could face his attacker.

“I’m not who you expected, Roy?” the man asked.

His voice was vaguely familiar, but Schermerhorn wasn’t sure who it was, though in the back of his dying brain, he thought he should know.

“It was clever of Alex to get out while she could. But then she always was the cleverest of the lot.”

He sounded a lot like the Cynic to Schermerhorn’s ear.

Schermerhorn reared back and tried to put his shoulder through the window to alert the security guys outside, but the pane was Lexan, not glass, and he was rapidly losing his strength as he fought to clear his throat so he could take a breath of air.

“It’s too late for that,” the Cynic said. “Anyway, they’re all running after the first of the flash bangs I planted. They’ll be kept busy for a bit. Long enough.”

Schermerhorn heard music. Organ music, but more complicated than the hymns in church. And he thought he’d heard it somewhere before, though in his befuddled state, he couldn’t quite place where or when.

“None of you ever had any culture. Too bad for you. But then you were bred and trained to be liars, charlatans, and thieves. Killers without conscience if the need arose.”

Schermerhorn’s knees began to buckle, and the Cynic held him up, blood soaking the front of his white pullover.

“You want to know why. They all did. Even Joe when he lay dying on the pavement in Athens. I could feel that at the moment of impact, when he knew in a flash he was a dead man, that he wanted to know why.”

The music was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. It came to Schermerhorn all of a sudden, and he knew who the Cynic was. But like the others, he didn’t know why. And he couldn’t understand how this was happening in broad daylight.

“Despite your faults, all of you were so lovely. Maybe not so young, some of you, but naive.”

The day they’d all feared had finally come.

“In the end you guys were extra clever: you illuminated the new cache, and I wanted to know the GPS coordinates and the password, but that will have to wait for Alex.”

Schermerhorn was weak. He couldn’t exactly make out what the Cynic was saying to him, but he could still hear the music, maybe coming from a small player in the man’s breast pocket.

And then the Cynic began to eat his face, starting with his lips, and though Schermerhorn could still feel pain, he couldn’t cry out, nor could he even try to push back away from the horror of it.

And God said, lwet trher be light.…

It was early evening, Washington time, and Maggie Jones, their flight attendant, came back and touched McGarvey on the shoulder. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep.

He looked up. “Yes?”

Pete was curled up in one of the wide leather seats near the back of the cabin, wrapped in a blanket, a pillow under her head.

“There is a call for you. The captain says you may use the aircraft’s phone system; it’s in your console.”

“Thanks.”

“May I get you something, Mr. Director?”

“How far are we from landing?”

“One hour.”

“You might wake Ms. Boylan and see if you can come up with something to eat — I suppose breakfast would be best.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was Otto on the phone, and as soon as McGarvey picked up, he switched on his backscatter encryption program.

“Schermerhorn was killed less than two hours ago. I just got off the phone with Blankenship. The entire campus is in a serious uproar this time. Somehow the White House finally got wind of what’s been happening, and the president has sent for Walt.”

“Tell me,” McGarvey said.

Pete had been awakened by the tone of McGarvey’s voice. She came forward and sat down across from him.

McGarvey put the call on speakerphone.

Otto relayed everything Blankenship had told him, including the business with the three flash bang grenades hidden in the woods, either timed to go off at three-minute intervals or remotely detonated.

“Could be the bastard set the grenades and got into the house hours ago — maybe right after Alex left and you and Pete went after her.”

“She didn’t double back, so it wasn’t her,” McGarvey said.

“George?” Pete suggested. “Could be she’s led us on a wild goose chase so George would have an open field.”

“Blankenship said he had four of his guys on the outside and another two in the house,” Otto said. “Makes him damned good.”

“And when the first grenade went off, no one thought to go upstairs to check on Schermerhorn,” McGarvey said.

“They were focused outside,” Otto said. “And after he made the kill — there was blood everywhere — he apparently took a shower and changed clothes.”

“Find out who passed through the gate after that time; maybe something will pop out.”

“Already did it. Nada. The bastard could still be on campus.”

McGarvey glanced at Pete. She shrugged.

“She could have run to save her own life because she knew George would be coming after her and Schermerhorn,” he said. “But why specifically Paris?”

“Good city to get lost in,” Otto said. “Obviously, she wanted to draw you out. Maybe she knew your background in France and counted on the DGSE to slow you down.”

“But not to meet George, unless she knew he was going to kill Schermerhorn and she was going to Paris to wait for him to join her. Drawing me and Pete off helped.”

“Or unless it was someone else,” Otto said. “Someone we don’t know about. Another Alpha Seven member. Someone connected with the mission. Someone who is desperate enough to make sure that whatever was buried in Iraq stays hidden.”

“Back where we started from,” Pete said.

“We still have Alex,” McGarvey said. “And if there is a third person, we also have George.”

“A Frenchman?”

“At this point I’m betting Mossad.”

“It would fit with what I’m thinking,” Otto said. “But at this point, only Alex and George know what’s buried out there and where it’s buried.”

“Schermerhorn knew,” Pete said.

“So did everyone else on the team. It’s what got them killed. Someone wants to keep it a secret at all costs.”

“Who’s directing it?” Pete asked. “Who’s pulling the strings? Because if you guys are suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, it has to be someone who was either in the White House during that time period, or someone very high in the Pentagon.”