“Oh, wow,” Otto said when he’d buzzed them in. As usual, he was dressed in faded jeans, sneakers — the laces untied — and a ratty old sweatshirt with the shield-and-dagger logo of the old KGB. His long hair, now a little bit gray, was contained in a ponytail, and since he and Louise were married several years ago, he’d dropped twenty-five pounds and had kept it off. Almost from the start, she’d broken him of most of his bad habits, including eating Twinkies and washing them down with heavy cream or at least half-and-half.
It had only been a couple of months since Mac had gone out to Serifos to work on his book, but Otto wore his feelings on his sleeve. Every meeting was a reunion.
“How’re Louise and Audie?” Mac asked.
“Missing you,” Otto told him. “Did Pete brief you?”
“On the way back. Have you come up with anything new in the meantime?”
“Nada. I sent one of our forensics teams out there to see if the creep might have left some DNA traces. I was hoping he might have cut himself with the chisel or maybe smashed a thumb. But no such luck.”
“Let me see it.”
Otto nodded. “Bring up the recent Arlington file on three, please.”
A sweeping 3-D image of a gently sloping hillside mostly filled with neat rows and columns of white headstones came up on one of the large monitors.
“I thought that he might have left footprints or maybe dropped something from a pocket,” Otto said. “Advance, please.”
The image moved slowly up the hill where near the top it slid left along one of the rows of grave sites.
“I left the headstone as it was but had it covered.”
The view stopped at Katy’s marker, a black plastic bag duct-taped to it.
“Clear, please,” Otto said.
The bag disappeared, and a dozen emotions and countless memories tumbled over each other in McGarvey’s head. He’d come back from his blackest op, the one in Chile, and Katy, sick with worry, had given him an ultimatum: Her and their infant daughter, Liz, or the CIA. He’d been young then and stupidly headstrong, so he’d not taken either. He’d turned his back on her, quit the CIA, and moved to Switzerland. Years lost that could never be regained, though he’d gotten them back finally when Liz had grown to be a young woman.
Kathleen’s name had been left intact, but her married name had been chiseled off, as had the inscription LOVING WIFE OF KIRK MCGARVEY.
“He used a two-inch chisel, almost certainly brand new, because the chips showed sharp edges,” Otto said.
“Can we be sure that a man did this?” Pete asked. “Why not a woman?”
“A woman would have erased Katy’s name too,” McGarvey said. He wasn’t sure how he knew such a thing; he just did. “Did he touch Liz’s stone or Todd’s?”
“No.”
“I’ll have another one made.”
“Already done.”
McGarvey stared at the image for a long time. It didn’t matter who did the thing or why, but the message was clear: I am coming after you; I just wanted you know.
“I have to go out there to take a look first.”
“Could be it’s exactly what he wants you to do,” Otto said.
“I hope so.”
“You didn’t bring a gun,” Pete said.
“I’m doing this alone,” McGarvey told her.
“The hell you are. Someone needs to cover your back, and anyway, by your own admission, you think that I could be next, so I have two vested interests.”
4
They stopped at McGarvey’s apartment in Georgetown, where he picked up his Walther PPK and three magazines of 9×18mm Ultra rounds. They had approached the building with a great deal of care, and at the door to his place, he checked his fail-safes before he went inside. Pete remained in the narrow corridor, her Glock in hand.
For a longish moment, he stood in the middle of the tiny living room trying to sense anything, any little out-of-place bit that might indicate someone had been here. But nothing came to his attention.
Otto had suggested they send a decent second-story team to make a quick pass, but McGarvey had turned the offer down.
“Whoever went through the effort is probably watching me. I want to go in relatively clean.”
Pete had bridled, but she’d said nothing.
“He could be double-teaming you.”
“He’s made this personal; I don’t think he brought the cavalry with him.”
“Question is from where,” Otto said. “If we knew that much, we’d have a start. But the chisel could have been picked up at any hardware store just about anywhere. And no one at Arlington saw a thing.”
“Then for now, I’ll do what he wants,” McGarvey said.
But standing here in the middle of his living room, he got the feeling that he might not be coming back soon. The FO — or Foreign Operator, as Otto had named the assailant — was playing a game of cat and mouse. He was going to play for a while.
“Kirk?” Pete said from the corridor.
“Just a minute,” McGarvey said. He went into his bedroom where from a small wall safe he took out his go-to-hell kit contained in a manila envelope: ten thousand dollars in cash in several currencies and three passports and a few pieces of identification to match each, plus air marshal credentials that would allow him to fly armed. He’d brought a few things from Serifos that, along with the cash and papers, gave him the autonomy to instantly jump in any direction at a moment’s notice.
Pete knew exactly what was in the envelope, but she said nothing until they were back downstairs and driving out to Arlington. “You don’t think he’ll try to take you out when you show up at the cemetery?”
“He might, but I don’t think he wants to make it that simple.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”
She thought about it for a minute. “At least we know four things about him. He’s a he. He’s aware of who you are. And he’s probably someone out of your past, because he has a grudge against you.”
“What’s number four?”
“He has a big ego.”
It was a weekday late afternoon and already starting to get dark by the time they got out to Arlington. Washington’s spring weather was not as mild as Greece’s had been, but it was pleasant.
Very few cars were parked along the driveways, the families or friends somewhere amid the graves, paying their respects. McGarvey had come out here every time he was in town to visit Katy and Liz and Todd. They were buried side by side, so it was easy for him to speak to them together, as they had done in the past over pizza and beers. But each time, it was harder for him to focus, harder for him to keep his anger in check for the senselessness of their deaths.
Pete knew something of what he was thinking, because when she parked, she reached out and touched his cheek. “I’m sorry, Kirk.”
“I know.”
She glanced toward a copse of trees along the sloping ridge. “I’d feel a lot better about this if we came back in the morning.”
“I want you to drive around to the other side of the hill.”
“You think he might be up there?” she asked.
“It’s where’d I’d be.”
“Go easy.”
“You too,” McGarvey said. He got out of the car and started up the grassy slope to the first row of markers as Pete took off.
Something pinged off a headstone just a couple of feet from him. He dove to the left and hit the ground behind one of them as a second silenced shot pinged off another marker, this one closer to him.