Louise turned on the oven and got a pizza from the freezer as Pete got out the plates.
“Didenko is alive, and he has a minder by the name of Nikita Tomanov, assigned from what used to be the Second Chief Directorate,” Otto said. “Looks like he’s been with the general for eight years.”
“Have you got a current address?” McGarvey asked.
“Didenko’s old dacha outside of Moscow.”
Pete put the plates on the counter and came around so that she could see the monitor, on which a map of the countryside northwest of Moscow was displayed. A spot outside of the town of Petushki was highlighted, GPS coordinates next to it.
“Ed Voight is our new chief of Moscow Station,” Otto said. “I hacked the laptop of one of Putin’s aides for him, so he owes me a little something in return. I can give him a call and ask that he send one of his people out there to take a look.”
“Why not just hack Didenko’s computer?” Pete asked.
“I already tried that, but he’s old school. Neither he nor Tomanov have online accounts.”
“What do you think, Kirk?” Pete asked. “It’s a long shot at best that this guy knows anything or would even be willing to talk to one of Ed’s people.”
“But he’s a link back to Kurshin,” Otto said. “Certainly the FSB wouldn’t be interested in settling old scores; they have their hands full with a lot bigger issues. Ed can use the excuse that he’s been asked to set the record straight. Kurshin’s operations were fringe even for those days — could be that we’re just talking history here.”
“To find out what, exactly?” Louise asked.
“If anybody from his past been out to see him lately,” Pete said. “Could be another lead.”
Otto looked up. “Another lead?”
“I’ll do it,” Pete said. “Didenko and his minder would be a lot more receptive to someone like me than one of Ed’s people. I’m writing a book on Mac.”
“Too coincidental,” Louise said.
“An unauthorized biography. One that’ll seriously piss him off because of some of the tradecraft I’m writing about.”
“You’d be under contract with Forge,” Otto said. “I know Bob Gleason, an editor over there who’ll verify it.”
“Better than going in guns blazing,” Pete said. “I can leave first thing in the morning, and as soon as I find out anything, I’ll get word to Kirk in France and try to join him.”
McGarvey had wanted to find an excuse not to take her along, because he was convinced that the shooter planned on using her as bait, just like he had at Arlington. He had shot up her car hoping that Mac would come to the rescue, not expecting Pete to return fire. By the time she got to Moscow and then to Didenko and his minder, the situation in France would be finished, though McGarvey didn’t think it would be resolved. This guy wanted to play for some reason.
“All right,” he said.
For just a moment, Pete’s face brightened, but then her eyes narrowed. “Do you think I’m going on a fool’s errand?”
“I don’t know if Didenko will even talk to you.”
“But it’ll get me out of your hair long enough.”
“For what?” Otto demanded.
“The cleanup crew found something mixed in with the shell casings at the top of the hill. His calling card, telling Kirk where he’ll be next.”
McGarvey took a plastic plaque about the size of a playing card out of his pocket and handed it to Otto. “A one thousand — euro baccarat chip from the Casino de Monte-Carlo.”
7
McGarvey stood at the front window of his apartment looking toward Rock Creek Park and the almost nonexistent 3:00 A.M. traffic on the parkway like he had done often just before he was off to the badlands somewhere. A time to reflect, to consider his options and even his reasons for going.
He’d never considered himself to be a Don Quixote, and yet at times, he knew that was exactly the figure he cut for some people, like the current deputy director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and a few deputy directors before him.
One had called Mac an anachronism, a man whom time had passed by. Another said he was a criminal. A president a few years back had charged him with treason.
“If it wasn’t that people have a tendency of turning up dead, you’d almost be a clown,” a national security adviser to that president had told him.
“You called me,” Mac had countered.
“Why?” someone else had asked.
“It’s who I am,” Mac had told him, and that answer hadn’t set right even in his own ears. Yet it was probably the nearest thing to the truth that was possible to know.
Of all the women in his life who to his way of thinking had died because of him, he missed Katy the most. Her loss was all the more poignant to him at this moment, because her headstone had been desecrated — an act of no other significance than to let him know that the shooter knew exactly how he would react. The act had not hurt Katy, of course, but it had cut him so deeply that no force in the world could stop him from going after the bastard.
And the other problem that weighed heavily was Pete. He was falling in love with her, he was afraid for her safety, and he knew that he couldn’t keep her out of harm’s way down at the Farm, where his granddaughter had been sent again. He felt a tremendous guilt that he had no idea how to handle the situation other than charge forward as best he could.
They’d left Otto and Louise late and drove over to Pete’s apartment, where she packed for her trip to see Didenko. Their flights left from Dulles in the afternoon — his to Paris around four and hers to Moscow an hour later. She didn’t want to spend the night alone, so she’d come with McGarvey to his apartment, where he packed the extra things he’d need for the casino.
He’d given her the bed, and he’d taken the couch.
“Brooding won’t do any good,” she said. She was at the bedroom door, dressed in a short nightshirt, her hair tousled.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’ve been listening to you thinking for the past hour. What he did was get your attention; it had nothing to do with Kathleen. He wanted to put you off balance.”
“You’re right.”
“Come to bed, Kirk. I just need someone to hold me for a little while, nothing more, I promise.”
Some years ago, he’d lost one of his kidneys in a firefight, and just last year, he’d lost his remaining kidney, and Pete — who, as it turned out, was a good match — had donated one of hers without question. And he’d been there for her a couple of times, hauling her out of harm’s way without regard for his own safety. They’d become a team, something he’d worried about, something he’d fought against admitting to himself. But looking at her now, he understood how wrong he’d been to hold her at arm’s length.
Otto called around nine when they were having breakfast. He had arranged their flights, and he had booked Mac into the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo and Pete into Moscow’s Sheraton near the airport.
“Marty wants to see both of you right away. He got the cleanup crew’s action report, and he wants to know what you guys are up to this time.”
It was about what McGarvey had expected. “Did he mention the baccarat plaque?”
“I haven’t seen the report, but if those guys found it, Marty knows about it.”
“Stall him till we get out of here.”
“He’s talked to Buchanan.” Ted Buchanan was the FBI’s liaison with the CIA, and he and Bambridge were generally cut out of the same cloth.
McGarvey had figured that would happen too. The bureau had sent two agents out to Arlington because of the shooting, and McGarvey had told them that the incident had been a random attack. They hadn’t believed it, but McGarvey had once been the DCI, and that still carried a lot of weight, so they had let it go.