End Game (19 page)

Phyllis, working under a new identity, had landed a job gathering intel for another international lobbying firm, this one dealing in the secrets of big banks.

They kept in touch from time to time to share gossip, the only people in the world with whom they could be totally open. Or nearly so, in Alex's case.

Around the corner, Alex used a universal electronic key to open the door of a Ford Fusion, started it, and drove the two blocks to the Renckes' safe house, where she parked across the street and a few doors down from the electric gate.

A few lights were on in the house. While driving past, she had spotted two old cars parked in back—one a Mercedes, the other a Volvo station wagon. One belonged to Otto, the other to his wife, who still used her maiden name of Horn.

It actually meant nothing that both cars were there. Nor did it make much sense to her to stay here very long, in case the car was reported missing and the police sent out a stolen vehicle notice on the net.

She thought there might be some obvious sign that Schermerhorn was here, but then she knew she was being foolish to hope for such luck. After twenty minutes she turned around and returned the car to where it had been parked.

After wiping down the steering wheel and door handle, she walked a few blocks to M Street, where she had a drink at Clyde's in the Shops at Georgetown Park, which backed up on the old C&O Canal. The place was busy with the late after-work crowd.

The problem was timing her disappearance. If she went back to work in the morning, and McGarvey brought Roy over to look at the thirty-six suspects, it was possible they would end up on the seventh floor. She had altered her appearance enough that she was pretty sure she would never be picked out of a police lineup. But she and Roy had been a thing in bed for a short while and had lived in close quarters in Germany and again in Iraq. He might pick up on something if he saw her. Escaping at that point would be problematic.

On the other hand, she wanted to know how close they were to solving the mystery. The only way she could get that information was by sitting in her office and listening in on what was said in the director's office via the direct wire link between her phone console and his.

She'd removed the light in the director's console that showed when she was connected. Simple but effective.

The key was if someone had shown up at the Chevy Chase apartment, looking for her. But if they'd come that far, it meant they'd put her file back on the list despite Page's removing it. It meant she was a suspect. But only Schermerhorn could possibly make that determination, and then only if he could meet her face-to-face.

Another possibility she'd considered, and the reason she'd packed an overnight bag, was her Tysons Corner apartment. There was a possibility, no matter how slight, that they had found the place. That in turn would mean they had discovered her Monica Wrigley persona. All her background preparations would unravel from that point.

But she couldn't take the risk of phoning Phyllis again in case they'd requested an NSA look and listen. Nor could she avoid the risk of going to the office in the morning as normal to find out what was coming her way, if anything.

A reasonably well-put-together man in a business suit, tie loose, collar open, came over to her. He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe forty, and he had a wedding ring. He smiled.

“No line, but you're an attractive woman,” he said. “My name is Jeff. May I buy you a drink?”

“Why not?” she said, and motioned for the bartender. “Your wife out of town?”

“She works for a senator who likes to go on junkets. They're probably sleeping together.”

The bartender came and refilled her glass with a Pinot Grigio.

“Kids?”

“No time.”

“Never too late. Leave Washington, get a new life,” Alex said, her problem of staying away from her Tysons Corner apartment for the night solved. But she almost felt sorry for the guy, and she guessed she wanted to give him a chance. “Call her right now, wherever she is, tell her you love her, and ask her to come home.”

“She's an ambitious girl. It's one of the reasons we got married. But she won't leave the senator.”

“When will she be back?”

“Not till Wednesday.”

“Five days,” she said. She took a drink of her wine and then smiled up at him. “Okay, Jeff, your place, or would you rather go to a hotel?”

He returned her smile, only the slight hint of guilt at the corners of his eyes. “I have a small place just up Potomac Street. It's walking distance.”

“You've done this before.”

“Like I said, she's gone all the time. And we have snoopy neighbors where we live.”

*   *   *

It was nearly ten by the time they'd finished at the bar and walked across the street and up Potomac, to a corner building on N Street NW. His tiny apartment was up on the fourth floor, in what had once been an attic. The ceilings, especially in the tiny bedroom and kitchen, were sloped, and the place was sparsely furnished. It didn't look lived-in.

Alex dropped her bag beside the couch in the living room and went into the kitchen, where she found a half bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter.

He carried a briefcase, which he dropped on a chair in the living room, along with his jacket. He slipped out of his shoes and took off his tie as he came to her.

Alex opened the Jack and took a deep draught before she handed it to him. “Do you have to go into the office in the morning?”

“I'm giving myself a long weekend,” he said, taking a pull on the bottle. He handed it back to her, and she took another drink.

“Sounds good,” she said. “We have the weekend. So why not get drunk and screw? If you're up to it.”

He laughed and then took the bottle back. “I've been told I'm not half bad.”

They went into the bedroom, where she took off all her clothes first and then turned the covers down on the small double as he pulled off his.

“You like it a little rough?” she asked, facing him.

“I don't know.”

She shoved him down on the bed and straddled him. “I'll show you how we did it in Vegas.”

She bent down and kissed him at the same time she caressed both sides of his neck with her long delicate fingers. He slipped inside her, and after that it was easy.

Lightly at first, as she was fucking him, she applied pressure to his carotid arteries, and within ninety seconds he was passing in and out of consciousness, until he stopped breathing.

She held on for another three minutes, then reached down and felt for a pulse. But his heart had stopped. He was dead.

In the shower she vigorously washed her body, and after she had dried off, she rolled Jeff's body onto the floor, then lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up. She was bone-tired. It had been a long, trying day for her. And the next few could very well be worse.

 

THIRTY-TWO

Schermerhorn stood at one of the bedroom windows on the second floor of the Renckes' safe house, staring down at the quiet residential street. It was something he'd done a lot of since they'd picked him up. It was midnight, and nothing moved.

Otto was down the hall at his computer, trying to get some background on Dorothy Givens's friend at the Chevy Chase apartment and trying without any luck to find the George needle in the Georgetown haystack.

Dotty or Alex—whoever the hell she was—had been lying, of course.

“The woman has a sense of humor,” Louise said.

“And she thinks we're on to her,” Otto said. “The point is, will she show up at the office in the morning?”

“Absolutely,” Schermerhorn had said with conviction. “She wants to know who's coming after her.”

“If she knows we're breathing down her back, she'd be a fool not to run,” Louise said.

“Not Alex. Never been her style. She figures she can win with whatever hand she's dealt.”

“Beer?” McGarvey asked.

Startled, Schermerhorn turned from the window. “Why not?”

McGarvey had brought up two bottles of Heineken. He gave one to Schermerhorn. “Why do you suppose she let us know it was her, with the George joke?”

“It's always been her way. Whenever she walks into a room, she thinks she's the smartest person there, and she needs to prove it.”

“Louise thinks we should just arrest her at the gate if she shows up in the morning.”

“On what charge? Thumbing her nose at us?”

“Suspicion of murder.”

“Look, McGarvey, there's something you guys don't understand. Even if Dorothy Givens is really Alex Unroth—and I couldn't even tell you if that's her real name—you have no proof she murdered Walt or the others.”

“She was gone from the office on the same weekend Joe Carnes was murdered in Athens last year, and again when Coffin was hit.”

“Check all the records, and I have a hunch you'll find she was gone other times. Whenever the DCI was out of town and she had no work on her desk, she was free to go. Wasn't it the same for your secretary when you were DCI?”

“Yes.”

“So that part is coincidental.”

“What about the killing of her stepfather? You said she admitted to doing it, and that she was perfectly capable of doing the same thing to Walt and the others. She and George did the same thing in Iraq.”

“Just because she was capable, doesn't mean she killed our guys.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?” McGarvey asked. “This morning you were convinced she was the killer, but now you're not so sure.”

“I've had time to think about it,” Schermerhorn said. He looked out the window again, half expecting to see her walking by or sitting in a car across the street. She was privy to everything the DCI knew, and probably a lot more than that. She would have made friends all over the place. The kind of people who fill in the blanks, the guys who tend to the details—the bits and pieces the bosses never have to deal with.

“You were in love with her.”

“We all were.”

“Still are.”

Schermerhorn focused on his reflection in the window glass, and he shrugged. “Yes. No. Hell, I don't know.” He turned back. “But I can tell you I admire her, even if it turns out she did kill those guys.”

“Christ,” McGarvey said.

“You were out in the field. You know how it was.”

“Never as an NOC. I wasn't that good of a liar.”

“Maybe not, but you were a damned good assassin.”

“Point?”

“The point is, if Dorothy Givens is Alex and we can prove she killed our guys, she won't allow herself to be taken in. Could be you who'd have to track her down and kill her.”

“If need be.”

“But you'd need the proof first.”

“Yes.”

“Hold her down long enough to maybe take a cheek swab or maybe grab a glass or a cup she drank out of. Toss her apartment—toothbrushes, hairbrushes, lipstick, makeup. Lots of places to come up with a sample of her DNA, because I can guarantee the one that's in her Company file won't be the real one.”

“Again, what's your point?”

“Have you seen the autopsy reports on Walt and Isty?”

“No.”

“But you know how they were killed. Their throats were sliced, their faces removed.”

“There were human teeth marks. The killer chewed open the arteries and then bit off their lips and nose and eyebrows,” McGarvey said.

“Right. But did you check the autopsies for DNA?”

“There was none. Apparently scrubbed away with alcohol.”

Schermerhorn nodded. “And it's driving your forensics people nuts. You have a psycho killer running around loose inside the campus. But they're smart enough to leave absolutely no physical evidence tying them to the crimes. So prove it's Alex.”

“First we have to find her.”

“That'll be the relatively easy part. If it is she who is doing the killing, then I'm next. She'll come to me. But unless you catch her in the act, how will you prove it's her?”

“I'll ask her,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn was at a loss for words. Looking at McGarvey, he suddenly had a very clear understanding that everything ever said of the former DCI and more was true. And for a moment he was just as frightened for Alex that she was the killer after all, as he was frightened she wasn't—and that the killer was George and they were all playing with fire.

Just the message he'd carved into the fourth
Kryptos
panel, and now he didn't know why he had done it. What was the point? He had the urge to tell McGarvey what he had written, but it wouldn't make any difference. Alex was front and center for now.

 

THIRTY-THREE

Alex walked back down to M Street before six in the morning, where she got a cab over to Reagan National. She rented a Chevy Impala from Hertz, using the work name documents for Alice Walker and paying for the car with a clean Capital One Platinum credit card.

Traffic was beginning to pick up, and she was careful with her tradecraft to make sure she wasn't being followed. She took I-395 up past the Pentagon—where she'd thought George had been some sort of a liaison officer, but she had never been able to prove it—and then past Arlington National Cemetery and finally I-66.

Her primary instinct was to run, go deep, because there was no way in hell she was going to spend the remainder of her life in some jail cell. At the very least, sooner or later Jeff's body would be found in his love nest, and someone at Clyde's would remember her leaving with him.

It'd all be circumstantial, of course—she'd always made sure that any evidence tying her to any crime was weak. But if the Company's investigators caught a break or two, there'd be enough to convict her.

And the thing of it was that she didn't know why she had killed the poor bastard who'd just wanted a one-night stand while his wife was probably fucking her senator. Ever since she was a child, before she murdered her stepfather, she would blank out from time to time; she'd do things that later she couldn't understand.