End Game (6 page)

After a brief hearing before a judge five months ago, during which he'd pleaded guilty, he'd been fined one hundred thousand euros or one year in prison. He refused to pay the fine.

The house was quiet, the same blinds in two of the upstairs windows half drawn, as he'd left them. No suspicious car with its left wheels up on the sidewalk, no telltale glitter from the lenses of binoculars, no radio antenna, no small satellite dish of the kind often used as a television receiver but could also be used for burst transmissions to and from a satellite—the same sort he and the others on Alpha Seven had used.

A taxi rattled past. Tossing his cigarette aside, he crossed the street and let himself inside using the code on the keypad. He was dressed in tight jeans and a plain red muscle T-shirt rather than the sport coats or suits he'd worn as an arts dealer.

In the past he'd hinted he was gay, and his neighbors—most of them married couples—left him alone. Coming here like this, as he had for the past four months, raised no suspicions. It was just one of his gay friends stopping by from time to time to check on things. He sometimes stayed for several hours, but he always left before eight in the evening.

The downstairs hall was deathly silent. He took the SIG Sauer pistol from the hall table, held his breath, and cocked an ear to listen for a sound. Any sound that would indicate someone was here.

No out-of-place scents were on the air; the slight layer of dust on the table and on the cap of the newel post and the stair rail had not been disturbed since the last time he'd been here. Nevertheless, he methodically checked the hall closet, reception area, guest bathroom, dining room, kitchen, and pantry, as well as the breakfast nook, which looked out over a pretty courtyard with a small fountain at the rear of the house.

Upstairs he checked the three bedrooms and attached bathrooms and closets before he went into the sitting room he had used as his office. Before he'd left for prison, he'd destroyed anything that tied him in any way to the CIA, but left everything else. Since the police raid and investigation, nothing else had been disturbed.

He checked the street from a window, but no one had shown up since he'd come inside, and he breathed a small sigh of relief.

Downstairs, he opened a good bottle of Valpolicella and took it out to the small iron table in the courtyard, where he sat listening not only to the sounds of the neighborhood but to his inner voices—the ones he'd very often had trouble understanding.

He'd been a man alone for most of his life. Growing up as a child in Detroit, mostly on the streets and later at the community college in Lansing, where he'd studied psychology, running out of money six months before graduation. Afterward he'd learned to count cards, and he went to Atlantic City, where he made twenty thousand before he had to run to avoid getting arrested or, at the very least, beaten up.

For the next years, he'd taught himself disguises—simple hair dyes, glasses, fake mustaches, clothing—and most of all: attitudes, mostly meek to blend in, or sometimes as an expert on some subject. He'd supported himself primarily by gambling, and a few con games involving illegal guns or drugs. And he'd never been caught, because he was good.

For two years he studied psychiatry, learning enough to understand even more about the manifestations of personalities, which made his job of blending in easier. And finally he'd applied to the CIA, using a fake degree in psychology and a line of bullshit that went right over the heads of interviewers and didn't come to light until his deep background investigation.

They'd actually admired him. Told him he was perfect for what they had in mind. After all, they'd explained, the best man for the job as an NOC was a con artist.

“You talked your way through the door without any help; you'll go a long way with ours,” the final recruiter told him.

All that time from the streets of Detroit, to Lansing and to casinos around the country, he'd been alone. But in the CIA he'd finally found a place where he could be respected and even liked for who and what he was.

A few minutes before eight, Coffin went back into the house, rinsed out and dried his wineglass, and, checking out the window, let himself out of the house. At the corner he took a bus to the metro station. From there he boarded a train for Piraeus—Athens's port town twelve kilometers to the southwest.

He was due back in his cell at the Korydallos Prison Complex no later than ten. He was scheduled to interview a female prisoner first thing in the morning at the psych ward where he worked. She had delusions she was someone else, though she couldn't say exactly who it was. It was a condition he knew very well.

 

NINE

McGarvey packed a few things, then flew up to Athens with Otto and Pete in the Aegean Airlines charters helicopter. The noise over the eighty-mile flight was too great to talk out loud without shouting, and he didn't want to use the intercom and headphones. What he had to say wasn't for the pilot's ears. In any event, Otto had brought up the dossiers on all seven of the Alpha team, and he'd read them.

Nor was it for the ears of their taxi driver on the way to the Athens Hilton near the U.S. embassy. And it wasn't until they'd checked in, three separate suites on the eighth floor that looked down across the city toward Syntagma Square, and agreed to meet at the Galaxy, the hotel's rooftop bar, that he shared his plan.

“I'm betting Larry Coffin has a setup here in Athens. If we can find him and prove he went to the U.S. in the past few days or week, then he'll become a likely suspect.”

“We need a motive,” Pete said, but Otto held her off.

“What if he's here and never left?”

“The connection between Wager, Fabry, Carnes, and Coffin was Alpha Seven. And I'm guessing something happened in the mountains above Kirkuk that not only bound those guys together but is the reason three of them were killed.”

“You're saying Carnes didn't die in a traffic accident?” Pete asked.

“He died, but it probably wasn't an accident. The question in my mind is why now? Why go through the trouble and risk of penetrating campus security to kill two of the team?”

“Doesn't have to be a reason that'd make sense to us,” Pete said. “The killer is obviously a psychopath.”

“That's too easy,” McGarvey said. “We need a trigger. Something recent.”

“What's going on in the region that has a bearing?” Pete asked. “Iran's nuclear program for one. Their ballistic missile tests for another ISIS.”

“I don't think it's going to be that pat. I mean, I don't think we're looking for a threat to the U.S. It has to be something that benefited the team.”

“Not another treasure hunt.”

“No.”

“What then?” Pete asked. “You're not making any sense, Mac. Anyway, we're back to a motive, because if we can't come up with that, then the killings, and the way they happened, make no sense.”

“First we need to find Larry Coffin,” McGarvey said.

“Maybe not so easy,” Otto said. “If this guy was as good an NOC as his reputation had him, he won't be found if he doesn't want to be found.”

“He's either the killer or if he isn't, he's heard about the funerals, and he'll want to know what's happening.”

“You're betting the latter.”

“Because it's going to be the easiest,” McGarvey said.

“If you're right, he'll have to guess someone has made the Alpha Seven connection and will be coming after him,” Pete said. “Either the killer or someone from the Company.”

On the way up from Serifos, McGarvey had thought about the easiest, most direct approach. Something to dig the guy out of hiding. Coffin had been an NOC, which meant in order to survive as long as he had, not only in the field but in hiding from his own people, he had to maintain at least minimal contact with the Company. It didn't have to be a personal contact. Someone on the inside but maybe an electronic contact.

“The CIA retirees' newsletter is online these days, right?”

Otto nodded. He was grinning. “Why sneak in the back way when you can ring the front doorbell?” he said. “How do you want it to read?”

“Alpha Seven reunion. Give him your e-mail address.”

Pete got it. “He'd be a fool to answer.”

“Either that, or he thinks he's smarter than we are,” Otto said.

“Or desperate,” Pete said.

“Smarter,” McGarvey said. “But curious.”

*   *   *

Otto posted the announcement online and took the CIA's Gulfstream home. But Pete had refused to go with him. “At the very least, Coffin is a psycho himself—a very smart and successful psycho. I'm going to stick around to watch your back.”

“You'd better move in here with me so I can watch yours,” McGarvey said reluctantly. He didn't want any sort of entanglement, especially not just now. Whoever this guy was who'd killed Wager and Fabry and then had chewed off their faces was crazy, but he was also a professional field officer, which made him doubly dangerous.

Pete moved her things over, then went downstairs and checked out of her room and into his. She was back for just a minute when someone knocked at the door, and McGarvey went to answer it.

An older man with a very thick shock of white hair who was dressed in a ratty old sports coat and slacks that hadn't seen an iron in a month held out his Athens metro police badge. “Spiros Moshonas,” he said. “Mr. McGarvey, I presume?”

McGarvey let him in. “What can I do for you?”

Pete came to the bedroom door, and the detective smiled and nodded. “I followed you up,” he apologized. “The hotel won't reveal anything about their guests, not even to the police.”

They had checked in under their real names—no reason at this point for them to have used work names and false papers.

“Actually, the NIS asked my department to send someone over to have a little chat,” Moshonas said. The NIS was the Greek intelligence service headquartered here in Athens.

“Good,” McGarvey said. “Maybe you can help us.” He got the tablet Otto had left with them and pulled up Coffin's dossier, which included a half dozen photos, and showed them to the cop.

“You're looking for this man?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?” Moshonas smiled. “What I mean to say is that it's highly unusual for a former director of the CIA to come here so openly, and then apparently in pursuit of someone. Is this business for you?”

“We want to have a little chat with him,” McGarvey said.

“May I know what you wish to discuss with him?”

“He used to work for us, and something has come up we'd like to ask him about.”

“The service would want a more detailed answer.”

Pete came the rest of the way into the sitting room. “Do you know where this man is?”

“Of course. I was the one responsible for putting him there,” Moshonas said. “If you'll give me something I can report, any little thing, I'll take you to him.”

“He's wanted for questioning in the murders of two CIA employees a few days ago.”

“That would be impossible,” Moshonas said. “Mr. Cooke was convicted of trafficking in stolen artifacts last year. At the moment he's serving time at Korydallos prison in Piraeus.”

For just a moment McGarvey allowed himself to be surprised, until he realized what was wrong. Coffin would never have allowed himself to be caught doing something so simple. “Did he plead guilty?”

Moshonas's eyes narrowed. “In fact, he did.”

“Was he offered a plea bargain, maybe if he named his sources?”

“He turned it down.”

“Maybe a fine instead of a prison sentence?”

“He turned that down as well, though he was living in a very expensive home, without a mortgage. He wanted to go to prison, which none of us understood.”

“Let's go talk to him, and I'll tell you what I can on the way down.”

“Would you like to see his house?”

“No,” McGarvey said. “There'd be nothing there of any interest to us.”

Moshonas nodded. “I'll bring you to him, but I want to sit in on the interview, and there are a few questions I'll have to ask you afterward.”

 

TEN

Coffin, wearing gray scrubs of the sort used by doctors in hospitals, walked down the corridor of the maximum-security section for men, his eyes lowered, a slight scowl on his face. No guard accompanied him; he was treated more or less as a special guest because of his generous contributions to the warden's pension fund, and funds for the families of guards who were out of work because of injuries or illness. He was well liked here and practically had the run of the place.

He'd been convicted and sentenced as an antiquities thief, but he'd presented himself, complete with diplomas, as a clinical psychiatrist specializing in the mental disorders of habitual offenders—especially females, of which there were still a few in Korydallos.

The prison, which was infamous with Amnesty International for its horrible conditions, maintained a vastly out-of-date and underequipped hospital and mental clinic. Always short of money and personnel, the medical director was initially overjoyed to have Coffin's help. And no one ever bothered to question his credentials, even though some of the staff had their suspicions.

At the end of the long corridor, he was admitted through a steel door into the medical section that divided the women's cellblock from the rest of the complex.

“Good morning, Doc,” the guard said in Greek, a language Coffin had managed to become reasonably proficient in over the past couple of years.

“How is your child?”

“It was very close. Without your help, his appendix would have burst and he would have died.”

“Is he out of hospital?”

“Two days ago, and he'll start back to school on Monday.”