End Game (16 page)

Schermerhorn shrugged. “I had a little help with my laptop, but my specialty was cryptography, and I just needed to come up with a modified one-time cipher. It's completely random like the original, which is why no one was able to break the thing in the first place.”

“But you did.”

“You have to learn to think in random.”

“What's on panel four?” Pete asked. “What did you try to tell us?”

“Something you wouldn't believe if I just sat here and mapped it out for you. Plus, I don't have all the answers—none of us ever did—except for maybe George. Listen, I'm just one guy on the run, a liar, con man, thief, killer by trade. And there's only me and Alex left from Alpha Seven.”

“Plus George.”

“Yeah, but my guess is he's never been on campus. Most NOCs never go near the place.”

“Except for Wager, Fabry, and Knight.”

“But someone on the inside, someone with access to real-time intelligence information has to be,” Schermerhorn. “Surely, you guys have figured that out by now.”

“Security has turned the entire campus upside down,” Pete said. She was clearly frustrated.

“Tell Otto what I said about four, and he'll decrypt it in no time at all if he's as smart as everyone says he is.”

“The only one left from your team is Alex Unroth,” McGarvey said.

“The Working Girl.”

“So you're saying it's she who killed the three on campus? What about Carnes and Coffin in Athens?”

“She moved around a lot. One day here, the next day somewhere else. Did it during our training at the Farm—sometimes she'd bug out for a day or two, and no one could get anything out of her. She did it in Germany, and of course in Iraq with George. We should have called her the Ghost, because she was damned good at disappearing right while you were looking directly at her.”

“She's on campus in plain sight?” Pete said.

“Ever play Hide the Thimble?” Schermerhorn asked. “She's there.”

“And you're going to help us find her,” McGarvey said.

 

TWENTY-SIX

Otto showed up at Page's office twenty minutes behind Bambridge, and fifteen minutes behind Carleton Patterson. He was distracted and didn't wait for the DCI's secretary to announce him; instead he just barged in.

“You're late,” Bambridge said.

Page was behind his desk, Marty and Carleton seated across from him. The office was large, bookcases on the west wall, big—surveillance-proof—windows looking out over the Virginia countryside on the south, and a couple of good Wyeth paintings on the east.

Otto went to Page's desk and wrote a note on a memo pad:
When's the last time this office has been security scanned?

Five days ago,
Page wrote.

Otto motioned him to silence, and he used his cell phone to call a friend of his in the directorate of science and technology's office of electronics. “Come up here now, would you?”

He hung up and again motioned for Page and the others to remain silent as he went to the director's desk, picked up the phone console, and turned it over to look for any obvious signs of tampering.

“I just talked to Mac, and he and Pete are at a dead end,” he said. He got on his hands and knees and followed the phone cord to the jack in the floor.

“I didn't think this was going to be all that easy,” Carleton said, picking up on Otto's ruse.

“This kinda stuff never is,” Otto said, getting to his feet. “Toni Borman is on her way up with the old tapes of the preliminary interviews we did with Wager, Fabry, and Knight. Might be something we missed. Mac suggested it.”

He removed the battery and SIM card from his cell phone and laid them on Page's desk, and then motioned for the others to give him their phones, which he dismantled as he talked.

“Thing is, we think whoever whacked our guys is long gone. I don't know how the hell they got off campus, but there's no way in hell they're still here. Not with all the extra security we've put in place in the last thirty-six hours.”

Bambridge was frustrated, but Page had gotten it, and he motioned for his DDO to stand down. “So, what's Mac suggesting?”

“If we can find something linking the three of them to someone else, a fourth party, it'd be our best lead. But it's a long shot.”

“Nothing else we can do at this point, I suppose,” Patterson said.

Toni Borman, lanky, pleasant smile, and almost as tall as Louise was announced by Alex, and she went to work following Otto's lead.

“Did you bring the interview tapes with you?” he asked.

“Actually, a thumb drive, encrypted of course,” Borman said. She took an electronic device about the size of a smartphone out of her pocket and methodically started on the room. High across the ceiling first.

“Did you listen to the interviews?” Otto asked.

“Some,” Borman said. “Mostly boring.” She worked her way across the walls, top to bottom, especially the light fixtures and electrical sockets, and the wall-mounted flat-screen television.

“Anything stand out in your mind?”

Borman shrugged and Otto shook his head.

“No, not really,” she said. She lingered at Page's desk and his computer, and when she was done, she looked up. “You have the thumb drive—you listen. Maybe you'll hear something I didn't. But I didn't pick up anything.”

“Thanks for your help,” Otto said, and went with her to the door.

“The director asks, we're not to be disturbed for just a bit,” he told Page's secretary.

“Of course,” Alex said.

Otto closed the door and sat down with the others.

“What the hell was that all about?” Bambridge fumed. “Security sweeps every key office on the entire campus every week.”

“On a schedule I know and we think someone else probably knows. We need to randomize the sweeps and notify no one of the time or office. The security people will just show up, and everyone will have to accommodate them.”

“Obviously, you believe there's leak somewhere that whoever the killer is has access to,” Page said.

“Mac thinks there might be two of them, one still on campus and another free to travel around. Whoever the second one is was in Athens last year to do Joe Carnes, then again a few days ago to kill Coffin, and yesterday in Milwaukee to try for Schermerhorn. But they missed and killed his girlfriend instead.”

“Has he surfaced yet?” Bambridge asked.

“He showed up this morning, and he's with Mac and Pete, plus with something else we'd already guessed. Or at least partially guessed.”

“How do we know he's not the second killer?” Patterson said. “He kills his girlfriend, and his informant here on campus tells him we're closing in on them, so he comes to us to ask for what? Protection?”

“He said he came to help find the killers. He doesn't want to be next.”

“Does he know who they are?”

“Could be Alex Unroth, who's the only other Alpha Seven operator still alive, or their supposed control officer, who they only ever knew as George. Trouble is, the team's actual control officer was Bertie Russell—I checked—but he was killed in Iraq in oh four. There's no record anywhere of a control officer with the work name of George who joined them on their mission three months before the war started.”

“What about when they came home?” Bambridge asked. “They must have been debriefed.”

“He didn't come back with them, and apparently, the man was never missed.”

“None of them said anything? They didn't ask their debriefers what happened to George?”

“No.”

“Why?” Patterson asked.

“Because of what George showed them was buried in the foothills above Kirkuk,” Otto said, and hesitated just as Kirk had told him to do.

“Well, come on, dear boy. Don't keep us in suspense,” Patterson prompted. “What was buried?”

“He refuses to say.”

“This is bullshit, Walt,” Bambridge said. “Let's get the guy in here right now. We have people who'll find out whether he's lying.”

“He's already given us the answer,” Otto said. “He worked here for a couple of years as a maintenance man, and one of his jobs was to take care of the grounds, especially the statues and sculptures.”

“Including
Kryptos
,” Page said. “He has the solution to panel four.”

“Yes, but it's not the original cipher, and he won't give us the solution to the new one. But my darlings are already chewing on it, and I suspect it'll only be a matter of a few days before they come up with the solution.”

“And?” Page asked.

“He changed the cipher on four,” Otto said, and before Bambridge could object again, he told them how Schermerhorn said he had done it. “I took a photo of panel four yesterday and compared it with the original. They're different, all right.”

“Then he knows the answer,” Page said.

“Yes, he does. But Mac says he won't tell us, because no one on the Hill or in the White House would believe him. They'll have to see it with their own eyes when four has been decrypted.”

“This has gone from stupid to ridiculous,” Bambridge appealed to Page. “I say we bring him in immediately and end this right now.”

“They are bringing him in,” Otto said. “As soon as I finish my homework. It's either Alex or George. I have their general descriptions, from which we can probably eliminate ninety percent of the personnel on campus. My darlings are working on that, too.”

“That's something,” Patterson said. “But explain to me why he came to us either for our help, or to help us, and yet he refuses to tell Mac the message he put on the panel for everyone to see. What does he want? What's his game?”

“He says he wants to help prevent world war three.”

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

Schermerhorn had told his story, and he was agitating to leave. No way in hell was he sticking around to see how things turned out, and he sure in hell wasn't going out to Langley to look at faces.

“I don't care what Alex or George did to change their identities; it's the eyes. I never forget the shape, and especially not the expression,” he'd told them.

McGarvey phoned Louise at two in the afternoon, after Schermerhorn had promised to at least give them until dark.

“I want to bring our guy over to your place, just for the night,” he said.

“We have the third bedroom upstairs. Anyway, Audie's safe.”

“I didn't ask Otto yet, because he'd say yes no matter what.”

“Will Pete be with you?”

“Yes.”

“Then if he gets out of line, there'll be three of us to shoot him. See you in a half hour.”

McGarvey had phoned from the bedroom of Pete's apartment, and when he came back to the living room, Schermerhorn was again staring out the window at the parking lot and street that led up to Dupont Circle. He was looking for someone to show up, and he turned around with a start.

“Who'd you call, some minders?” he asked. Minders were security officers. Like babysitters with guns.

“A friend at another safe house. We're moving you there immediately.”

Schermerhorn was alarmed. “I said I'd give you until dark, but then I'm out of here. If you want to ask me some more questions, go ahead. But then that's it.”

“We've already told your story to the DCI and the director of clandestine services, plus the Company's general counsel. They know about the fourth panel, and they know you're here.”

“Shit,” Schermerhorn said, and made for the door.

Pete pulled out her gun and pointed it at him. “I will shoot you, Roy,” she said.

Schermerhorn pulled up short and turned to her. “And then what?” he asked. Suddenly he didn't seem so concerned.

“There'll be a good chance you'll be dead before we can get an ambulance over here.”

“I meant, I'm going with you to another safe house. But then what?”

McGarvey motioned for Pete to put down her gun. “We're getting out of here just in case the leak at Langley also knows where you are. Could be we're saving your life.”

“Noble of you.”

“Just protecting our investment. And when we're done, you'll be free to walk.”

“Providing I give you what you want.”

“The killer.”

*   *   *

Schermerhorn had brought nothing with him. He'd stashed what he'd taken from Milwaukee somewhere safe nearby, and when it was time to leave, he'd get out of Washington clean.

“To go where?” Pete asked on the way over to the Renckes' safe house in Georgetown.

“Someplace safe.”

“That's what Carnes and Coffin thought,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn fell silent, but he glanced over his shoulder out the rear window every ten seconds or so.

Pete was driving. “We haven't picked up a tail,” she said.

“What about the gray Caddy Escalade? Been with us since we crossed Rock Creek.”

“It's not one of ours,” Pete said. She turned left on Twenty-Seventh Street NW, and one block later right on O Street. The Escalade was no longer behind them. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Schermerhorn said.

McGarvey called ahead, and Louise opened the iron gate to the parking area behind the brownstone. She was waiting at the door for them as the gate swung shut.

“So who's the mystery guest? One of the Alpha Seven crowd?”

Schermerhorn introduced himself and held out his hand, but Louise just looked at him for a moment then stepped aside so they could come in.

“Otto should be back any minute,” she said, leading them through the rear hall to the kitchen. “Said he'd finished with the meeting.”

“How'd it go?” McGarvey asked.

“Just about the way you said it would,” Louise said. “Anyone want a beer?”