Gambit by David Hagberg (manga ereader .txt) 📗

of the specific details except that it had promise. Are you suggesting there may have been a connection?”

“It’s too early to say.”

Hammond looked away for a moment as if he were gathering his thoughts. Susan sat straight-faced.

“I have to say that Arturo’s death came as a shock to us all.”

“Is that why you closed your office in the middle of the night?” Sherman asked.

“The place was hemorrhaging money without producing anything concrete. Actually, I decided several months ago to move those liaison duties to my main office in LA.”

“Why move out so abruptly?”

“It’s the way that I do business.”

Sherman started to say something else, but Bender held her off.

“Would you have any idea why Mr. Rodriguez may have been murdered?”

“If it was murder and not an accident, I can think of a dozen possible motives and suspects,” Hammond said. “Starting with the Chile’s ANI—that’s their intelligence agency. And of course North Korea, Pakistan, and, believe it or not, Russia. Someone in Moscow might have thought we were stirring up a hornet’s nest with the cell phone deal.”

Again, Sherman started to say something, but again Bender held her off and stood up. “Thank you for your cooperation, sir,” he said.

“Anytime,” Hammond said.

The FBI officers went to the door, where they paused and Bender turned back. “Does the name Kirk McGarvey ring a bell?”

It was the one question Hammond had expected. “Yes. The son of a bitch screwed me out of a significant amount of money a couple of years ago. And it pissed me off.”

On the way down in the elevator, Sherman was the first to speak. “What do you think?”

“He’s involved, I’d bet my retirement account on it,” Bender said. “Now let’s go talk to Mr. McGarvey.”

SIXTY-ONE

The afternoon was getting on, and Vetrov stood looking out the small window to the left of the aircraft access door at the comings and goings of the airport, normal for a capital city, though nothing had taken off or landed during the long night.

His people were well trained and patient, and he was proud of them. His worries that they might lose their edge over a twenty-four-hour delay, after the emotional upheaval on base, had been unfounded, and he was glad.

They’d thrown themselves into the calisthenics through the day and played poker almost straight through the last twelve hours, showing absolutely no signs of being keyed up for the coming op. If they had any remorse over agreeing to dishonorable discharges, none of them had showed any signs of it so far.

The provisions aboard were either microwave meals or reconstituted items of the same variety cosmonauts still took into space, including powdered eggs, but again, none of the men had complained.

Ilich Silin came across from the aircraft with a bottle in hand.

“Where’d you find that?” Vetrov asked.

“In one of the secured lockers,” Selin said, grinning. “It’s not vodka, but it’s a credible French cognac.”

He passed the half-empty bottle to Vetrov, who took a deep draft. It was good.

“How much have the men had to drink?”

“This was the only bottle.”

“Dawbruhy”—Good—Vetrov said. He took another draft, then tossed the bottle end over end toward the corner, where it smashed on the concrete floor.

“Yeb vas,” Silin said, but he shrugged. “Just as well if this American son of a bitch is as good as you say he is.”

“His wife is also a trained CIA agent, and by all accounts, she’s pretty good herself.”

“Is our brief to take her out, too?” Silin asked, the dour look back on his face.

“No, but I think it will be inevitable.”

“What are our orders concerning civilians who might get in the way?”

“We’ll be jumping at 0200, so I suspect there won’t be many out and about at that hour.”

“I meant afterward, when we’ve changed clothes and show up in Livadi for our reservations on the morning ferry?”

“We’re leaving without weapons,” Vetrov said.

Silin started to object, but Vetrov held him off.

“If we have to kill the crew and passengers and hijack the ferry for whatever reason, we won’t need force of arms.”

“True,” Silin said.

“I want a total equipment check in thirty minutes, after which we’ll have something to eat and then hit the rack. The crew will be back around 2400 to prep, and we should be wheels up at 0100.”

“Yes, sir,” Silin said, saluting. He did an about-face and went back to the Gulfstream.

Vetrov turned inward. Not everyone would survive the mission if McGarvey actually lived up to his rep. The former DCI was fifty, about the age when a man began to lose his edge, but they couldn’t count on him being slow.

Vetrov had given a lot of thought to having his wife join him wherever he ended up. Finland, he thought, or perhaps Norway or Sweden. Even Ukraine, where he could offer his services.

Pete had found some canned oysters in a lemon-and-olive-oil sauce, along with a Spanish potato salad, a package of pita bread in the freezer, and a jar of tzatziki sauce in the pantry. It was late afternoon, the day still warm, but with a pleasant breeze off the Aegean that reached all the way up the hill to them. And they sat outside by the saltwater pool enjoying their scratch supper with a bottle of Retsina wine.

“We’ll need to restock the fridge and pantry pretty soon,” Pete said. “I could take the Mini Cooper into town and be back in a jiffy.”

McGarvey had been thinking about the next attack, which was why he had decamped here, where any collateral damage would be minimal. The islanders—and there were only around fifteen hundred of them, a lot of them spread out in hillside homes, with almost no one in the hot, dry interior—had no idea that anything bad was about to happen. Because nothing bad ever did happen since the Romans used it as an island for exiles.

The lighthouse was at the end of the peninsula that jutted out into the city and looked down over the deep, almost unreal blue water of the