Gambit by David Hagberg (fantasy novels to read txt) 📕

“By letting him run around shooting up neighborhoods and terrorizing the locals?”

“Not of his doing,” Taft said. Everyone at the table turned to him. It was the first he’d spoken. “Mr. McGarvey was attacked at his apartment in Georgetown. When he went to All Saints, he was attacked there. When he and his wife went to their home in Florida, they were attacked there. Someone is tracking his movements. I think that we all should be finding out who and why.”

“We can start with the woman brought up from Florida,” Bender said. “I believe she’s at your hospital. I’ll send a team over to question her.”

“It won’t work,” Pete said.

Bender smiled condescendingly. “My people are quite good, Mrs. McGarvey. I can assure you they will get results.”

“She killed herself last night.”

“Wasn’t there security?”

“She went into the bathroom, blocked the door, and killed herself before we could get in.”

“Where did she get the weapon?”

“She bit her tongue in two and drowned in her own blood,” Pete said. She sat forward. “You have no idea how dedicated to the mission these people are. You put your agents between us and them, and your people will lose.”

“Spare me,” Bender said.

“She’s right,” McGarvey said. He motioned to Pete, and they got up. “Thank you, gentlemen, but we’re out of here.”

“Where to?” Taft asked.

“Do you really want me to tell you?” McGarvey asked.

“Why not?”

“The leak could be in this room.”

“Christ,” Bender said. “I’m going to get a warrant for your arrest.”

“Don’t try it,” McGarvey said. He turned back to Taft. “I have a lighthouse in the hills on Serifos. We’re going there.” He looked again at Bender. “That’s a Greek island in the Aegean.”

McGarvey and Pete took the elevator down to the third floor and headed to Otto’s office. “Do you think Bender will try to arrest us?” she asked.

“He might try, but Kallek is no fool; he’ll put a stop to it, especially if Taft doesn’t want it to happen.”

“But they’re not going to sit on their thumbs.”

“No, and that’s what worries me almost as much as the next attack. I think they’ll send some people out to the island, maybe put up a drone or two, and some of the good guys will most likely get hurt.”

“Then why did you tell them where we’re going?” Pete asked.

“Testing the waters for a leak,” McGarvey said.

Pete looked at him. “My God, you are a cynic, aren’t you?”

“Is there any other way in this business?”

Lou let them in, and they walked back to the rear office in the three-room suite, where Otto, his eyes closed, his feet up on the desk, was listening to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major. His darlings were displaying a rapidly shifting series of alphanumeric codes above him on one of the eight wide-screen monitors on the walls. The background was lavender, which meant trouble.

“The two shooters were freelancers,” Otto said. “Ex–Chinese special ops. Chan Taio and Zhang Li. Married, but they didn’t change their surnames, which is sometimes the Chinese custom. We got it from their DNA but through a back door.”

Pete perched on the edge of an adjacent desk. “Back door?” she asked.

“Yeah. Banes came up with the name of a forger in Geneva by the name of Wolfhardt Buerger, who he figured did the Schilling passports and driver’s licenses,” Otto said. “He was about the best in the world, and he knew it and wanted to brag. He left behind a flaw in just about every document he ever made. The number six in the sixth position.”

“Is someone on the way to talk to Buerger?” Pete asked.

But McGarvey knew what the answer would be. “No need. He was murdered.”

“Broke his neck,” Otto said. “But the thing is, the good doctor kept records on all of his clients. I have a friend in the NBD—the Swiss intel service—who promised me a copy. Anyway, your Chinese friends were on the list.”

“How about bank account numbers?” McGarvey asked.

Otto opened his eyes and grinned. “They didn’t pay him this time, but they did for their previous passports and several other IDs. A draft on the International Bank of Geneva. It’s a numbered account with a very good encryption algorithm that Lou has been working on for a couple of hours now.” He looked up. “Any luck yet, sweetheart?”

“I may be getting close, but I have found something else that probably has no bearing but might be of interest.”

“Yes, go on.”

“Mac has had a previous relationship with the billionaire Thomas Hammond. Mr. Hammond maintains bank accounts all over the world, but recently, he may have had a transaction, in gold at that bank, to a blind account. Plus, Mr. Hammond owns a villa on Lake Geneva.”

FIFTY-THREE

The dacha in the Zvenigorod district, just northwest of Moscow, was a refurbished summer palace of some prince in the last days of the czars. Set in the middle of a birch forest, the fifty-acre property was bounded by a wide creek and was only accessible by a narrow, blacktopped road ten miles off the M10 or by helicopter.

It was owned by Lieutenant General Oleg Kanayev, who was the main directorate general staff officer in charge of Russia’s Special Forces that was also known as the Spetsnaz.

Tarasov arrived shortly after six in the evening aboard his Sikorsky S-92 helicopter and was met by a junior lieutenant driving an old Gazik—the Russian jeep. “The general is expecting you in the kitchen, sir,” the lieutenant said.

Kanayev, in civilian clothes, was a surprisingly young-looking man in his early sixties, with thick pitch-black hair, a curving walrus mustache, and a broad Russian peasant’s face with a stocky frame to match. He was seated at a long wooden table, eating pickles, slices of frozen raw bacon, and drinking vodka.

He looked up when Tarasov came in and waved him to sit down. “Close the door when you leave, Sergei, and see that we