David Hagberg - End Game

A security officer was waiting at the DCI’s door, which he opened for Otto, who paused just long enough to glance down the long corridor. All doors on this floor were closed this morning. But by tradition over the past fifteen or twenty years, they had been left open. Directors liked to wander out of their offices to visit, especially with the people down the hall on the left in the long narrow room called the Watch. Five officers manned the place 24/7; there they could monitor everything happening in the world on a real-time basis. Connected by satellites and other electronic means, and by constantly updated human intelligence, they were able to keep tabs on developing operations, as well as come up with alerts on hot spots that had the potential to blow up.

All the people working there loved their jobs, because as one of them once said: we get to know everything.

“Good morning, sir,” the security man said to Otto. He looked a little nervous.

“Too bad about Wager and Fabry.”

“Yes, sir, hard to believe.”

Page’s secretary wasn’t here yet, so Otto went straight through to the director’s big office. Page was seated in an easy chair across a coffee table from Bambridge and Blankenship, who were sitting on the blue Queen Anne couch. Bambridge looked perplexed, as usual. Blankenship looked angry. But Page seemed worried, which was unusual.

“Thanks for coming at this hour,” Page said.

Otto took the chair opposite Page. “Have the families been notified?”

“Families?” Bambridge asked.

“Yeah, Wager’s and Fabry’s. When officers lose their lives, their families are told straightaway.”

Bambridge blustered. But Page held him off. “Not yet,” he said. “How did you find out?”

“Lucky guess. So, what happened?”

“We have a serial killer on campus,” Blankenship said.

“The extra security won’t help.”

“Why’s that?” the chief of security asked. He wasn’t angry, just earnest.

“Whoever’s done it is one of us. He knows the system, and since he’s killed two people in one night, he thinks he’ll get away with it.”

“The son of a bitch is nuts,” Bambridge said.

“Doesn’t mean he’s stupid,” Otto said. “Someone want to fill me in?”

Page nodded, and Blankenship brought Rencke up to speed with everything they’d learned tonight, everything Bambridge had suggested they do and the results so far.

Otto took out his highly modified iPad and connected with his search programs — his “darlings,” as he called them.

“Your machine won’t work on this floor,” Bambridge said, but Otto ignored him.

In twenty seconds he had the start of what he was looking for, and he was surprised. He looked up. “Besides Wager and Fabry, there are eighteen other NOCs working the night shift. A bigger number than I would have suspected.”

“We tend to keep them at the Farm or on this shift,” Page said. “Why an NOC?”

“Savagery.”

Page cocked a shoulder.

“These folks — three of them on this shift are women, by the way — have been trained to live by their wits in badland. The mission comes first, all other considerations off the table. A lot of them have been alone in places I wouldn’t send an armored column to. They’ve killed to save their own lives — didn’t matter who they killed — men or women or children if need be. A lot of the time they’ve had to improvise, like a lot of our guys in early Vietnam did. Kill to send a message. Kill like an animal, so that the opposition thinks twice about pursuit. No one wants to go into a lion’s den.”

“We’re checking possible connections,” Blankenship said.

“That’s a start, but there might not be any. This could be something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like Marty suggested, someone who’s a psycho. And not necessarily someone who works this shift.”

“We have the records of everyone coming through security,” Blankenship said.

“Yeah,” Otto said, nodding. “But you know, every now and then I forget to scan my badge when I walk out the door. The computer thinks I’m still in the building, or somewhere on campus. A flag doesn’t go up. Or, just maybe one day I’d scan my badge but then come through another entrance, maybe with someone else’s badge I’d lifted. The system isn’t perfect. You guys oughta know it. We need entry strictly by personal recognition.”

“Impossible,” Bambridge said.

“Of course it is, and what’s happened tonight — and may still be happening — is a result.”

“We’ve doubled up everyone,” Blankenship said. “Told them it was a security drill.”

“Come on, Bob. This isn’t a box of dummies you’re dealing with, ya know. We’ve got more PhDs per capita here than there are at Harvard. Pretty soon I suspect you’re going to have a panic on your hands.”

Blankenship’s cell phone buzzed, and he answered it. “No reason to hold them,” he said, and hung up. “That was the back gate. It’s already started. Just a handful so far.”

“One of whom could be the killer,” Bambridge said.

“I doubt it,” Otto said.

“He’s not going to break his routine. He’ll leave at the end of his shift. He thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us,” Blankenship said.

“But he isn’t,” Otto said.

“What do you suggest?”

“I’m going to talk to Mac. He knows more about the NOC mentality than anyone.”

“Christ,” Bambridge said. “Send a killer to find a killer.”

Over a thirty-plus-year career Kirk McGarvey had developed a sixth sense about his surroundings, and something possibly coming at him out of the blue. And the feeling had been niggling at the back of his head now for the past couple of days.

He was a man in his early fifties, husky, with a square but pleasant face, and gray-green eyes that saw things most other people missed. Running now along a path in the hills above the port city of Livadi on the Greek island of Serifos, he noticed an Aegean Airlines charters helicopter touching down in front of the Serifos Beach Hotel. It was an unscheduled flight from Athens and at the wrong end of the tourist season, so it caught his attention.

The distance was too great for him to make out anything except that only two passengers got out and walked up to the hotel. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man and a woman, yet something about them, about the timing, about everything, wasn’t right — or a real surprise, for that matter.

High overhead, the morning jet to Tel Aviv made a bright contrail in the perfectly clear blue sky, and McGarvey turned and headed back to walk the three miles to the decommissioned lighthouse he’d used as his refuge from time to time. He’d worked practically all his adult life first for air force intelligence, then the CIA had picked him up, trained him as a field officer, and he’d gone to work doing black ops for the national clandestine service. He’d become a killer for his country — an assassin, a soldier who didn’t march in a platoon but one who worked alone. His kills were face-to-face and very personal.

But then they’d promoted him to run the clandestine service, and by happenstance — the right president at the right time — he’d been appointed and confirmed by Congress as the director of the CIA. But that job hadn’t lasted long; he wasn’t an administrator. He’d respected most of the people, but he’d hated the job, so he had retired.

After that it seemed like every few months someone came to him to do something about a situation that the Company simply could not handle on its own. Something extrajudicial. Something strictly forbidden in the U.S. and almost everywhere else by international law. But something that needed to be done. In Russia, in Japan, in Israel and Mexico and Cuba, and even one job in North Korea, possibly the strangest of his career. He had stopped a missile attack on Israel’s nuclear weapons storage depot; had stopped an outright invasion of Texas and New Mexico by drug cartels; and even came face-to-face on two occasions with Osama bin Laden before 9/11.