David Hagberg - End Game

“Colin Powell,” McGarvey said.

Pete was surprised. “I’m not going to buy anything like that,” she said.

“Not him, but there had to have been people on his staff when he was at the UN who liaised with the White House and the Pentagon. Maybe someone on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or on the security council.”

“You’re talking about a fall guy in case something went wrong,” Pete said. “If that’s the case, he or she has to be pretty nervous by now.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Otto said. “In the meantime, what are you going to tell the DGSE if they show up? And I’m betting they will.”

“Depends on who they send,” McGarvey said.

“But not the truth.”

“Some of it, but not all.”

Charles de Gaulle ground control directed them to a hangar well away from the commercial gates, near an Air France maintenance facility not occupied.

As soon as they were parked and the jet’s engines spooled down, Maggie opened the hatch and lowered the stairs. She stepped aside and ducked into the cockpit as an older man with thick gray hair came aboard.

McGarvey recognized him at once. “Captain Bete,” he said, rising.

“Actually, its colonel now, and no one calls me bête noire any longer.” Bete was French for a “beast” or an “animal,” and a bête noire was a bugbear. Twenty years ago he’d resented the play on his name.

McGarvey introduced him to Pete, and they shook hands and sat down across from each other.

“I will come directly to the point, Monsieur le Directeur. Why have you come back to France? Your presence is making a number of people nervous, as you can well imagine.”

“Your service might be aware of a disturbance at the CIA.”

“There have been rumors.”

“We have a serial killer on the campus who has already murdered four people at Langley and another two in Athens. We’ve followed a woman we think may know something about it.”

Colonel Bete sat back in his seat. “You are a dangerous man, and violence seems to find you. But you have never been a liar. Is yours an official service-to-service request for assistance?”

“No.”

“I thought not,” Bete said. “Who is this woman?”

“Her actual name is Alex Unroth, though she’s traveling under the name Lois Wheeler, coming in on an Air France flight from Dulles in an hour or so.”

“Who is she, exactly? Dangerous?”

“Extremely. She was an NOC, and very good at killing.”

“Do you want us to arrest her?”

“No. She’s come here to meet someone. I want to know who it is. And when the meeting actually takes place, I’ll make the decision either to take her into custody or continue to follow her.”

“An action she will resist.”

“Yes.”

“With force.”

“Yes,” McGarvey said.

Air France 9039 pulled up to the gate ten minutes early, and Alex was among the first off. She’d been exhausted, and had slept in the wide first-class seat that converted into a flat bed, not staying awake for the afternoon meal or complimentary champagne.

At this point she was awake if not refreshed, and she took care with her tradecraft after she was passed through immigration and had picked up her overnight bag and attaché case. Making her way through the main concourse, which was busy, she kept within groups of passengers so far as it was possible.

Twice she darted into a ladies’ room, the first time lingering in one of the stalls to see if anyone suspicious came in — but no one did. And the second time, walking in, turning around immediately, and heading back to the gate she had landed at.

A number of the passengers seemed somewhat suspicious to her, but then they either passed by or went to the ticket agent at a gate.

Airport cops were everywhere, mostly traveling in pairs, but in this day and age their presence wasn’t unusual, and not one of them paid her the slightest attention.

As she headed down the escalator to the ground transportation exits, she paused for a moment to wonder if no one paying her any attention was in itself significant. She was still an attractive woman, and just about everywhere she went she turned male heads. But then this was Paris — the city of well-put-together women.

The only things she could not gauge were the overhead cameras, but she kept her head lowered as much as possible.

Outside, she got a cab and asked the driver, in French, to take her to the InterContinental. “The one on Avenue Marceau.”

By the time they left the airport and got on the ring road traffic was heavy and until she got to the hotel, it would be impossible for her to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d considered taking the cab to the vicinity of a train station, and from there another cab to a metro entrance, and from there eventually back to the hotel. But she had decided against it. It wasn’t likely she had been followed this far this soon.

She had picked the InterContinental as a sort of a message to McGarvey: Here I am. Do you want to talk on neutral ground?

Of course he would not, and in fact, he would probably try to take her into custody. But she had read enough about him in his Agency files that although he was a dangerous man, he was principled. He was a man of high morals for whom collateral damage of any sort was completely out of the question.

If it came to a stand-up fight in the hotel, or on a crowed street — the Champs-Élysées was just around the corner — he would hesitate. It would be enough for her to escape.

The only dark cloud was the poor bastard she’d killed in Georgetown. She had no idea why she had done it, except that it had been a release for all the tension she had been under since Walt and the others had been murdered on campus. She knew George was coming after all of them, her included, to keep them quiet. It had only been their superinflated egos concerning their abilities that had stopped them from coming forward with what they knew. That, and the likelihood that if they were to blow the whistle, they could very well be signing their own death warrants.

Either George was going to kill them, or someone else would — so it was up to them to go deep.

But it had not worked for Walt and the others on campus. Or for Joseph or even Larry in Athens. Nor for her in the DCI’s office.

All that was left was coming face-to-face one last time with George and hopefully leading McGarvey to him. If George told what he knew, she figured she would have a shot at guaranteeing her own life and maybe her freedom.

Except for the guy in Georgetown.

The cabby dropped her off at the hotel, and a liveried doorman in a blue morning coat came out to help her with her bags.

“Bonjour, Madame,” he said, and followed her to the front desk, where the night manager stood.

“Madame Wheeler?”

“Mademoiselle,” Alex said, graciously smiling. She handed over her credit card and passport.

The manager was a younger man with a short haircut. He was impeccably dressed in a tasteful blue blazer and vest, white shirt, correctly knotted tie. The InterContinental under new management had transformed from the iconic former mansion of the Comte de Breteuil, used as a stuffy hotel, into a hip boutique hotel. She had to wonder if McGarvey had been back since the change.

She signed the card. “Have my things brought up, and in two hours have my bed turned down and draw me a very hot bath. First I’m going to take a walk.”

“Of course.”

Alex smiled again. “Thank you.”

“May I suggest that if you walk, stay away from the Jardin. It is sometimes dangerous at this hour of the morning.”