Gambit, David Hagberg [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

They were silent for a while. Out on the lake, a speedboat towing a skier made brutally tight figure eights to the east, and farther up the lake, a pair of sailboats were apparently in a race. All life was a competition, Hammond thought. And he loved it. At this moment, he felt as if he were Sherlock Holmes in reverse; he knew the ending, just not the details of getting there. “The game’s afoot,” he said.

She was watching him. “It’s just a game to you?”

“Why not?”

She put down her glass. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tom, wake up and smell the roses or something. This game, as you want to call it, could end up costing some serious money. And if we fuck up, we could become the game. Have you considered that possibility?”

“Yes, and that’s the entire point. You had a good time in Athens.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

Hammond made no reply, and after a moment, Susan cracked a narrow smile and nodded.

“It was real,” she said. “But there could have been witnesses. I could have ended up in jail for the rest of my life, a prospect I don’t relish.” She held out her glass, and Hammond filled it.

“The Most Dangerous Game,” he said. “Ring a bell?”

“Sure, back in the early thirties. Joel McCrea, a big-game hunter, falls off a ship and ends up on an island with another big-game hunter—Leslie Banks, I think—who wants to hunt McCrea. A man hunting a man. The ultimate sport.” It suddenly struck her. “Son of a bitch, is this what we’re up to?”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not talking about a movie here. Revenge I understand. Or maybe there’s something else going on—something you haven’t told me about—maybe getting back in the bitcoin game. But this isn’t a fucking movie.”

“No.”

“McGarvey’s a CIA-trained assassin with a whole hell of a lot more experience than the guy we hired to take him out. He finds out that we hired Slatkin, he could come after us.”

“That’s the point.”

“What point? Are you out of your mind?”

“He’s being hunted, and if he hasn’t figured it out yet, he will. And when he does, he’ll hunt back. The game’s afoot.”

Susan shook her head, but her breath quickened a little, and some color came to her cheeks.

Hammond sat forward. “For all practical purposes, between us, we have unlimited resources. Just about all the money in the world. More than we could possibly spend in ten lifetimes. How many yachts, how many airplanes, or cars or houses, can we buy?”

“Boring sometimes.”

“Boring almost all the time lately. But my question stands: Can one man, no matter how good, stand up to unlimited resources against him?”

ELEVEN

Dr. Stephen Held, the CIA’s justice of the peace, came out to the McLean house to perform the ceremony at eight in the morning. Mary had originally wanted to use the chapel on campus and invite some of their friends and coworkers, but under the present circumstances, she’d made the unilateral decision that it would be better if they circled the wagons.

“We need a plan of action,” she said, and no one argued with her.

This morning, Otto wore boat shoes, starched and pressed jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a European-cut blue blazer Mary had bought for him. His hair was brushed, the ponytail that just reached his collar tied neatly.

Mary wore a knee-length white dress with a modern art slash of red from bodice to hip as if she were a painting. She’d done her hair with Pete’s help and was even wearing makeup, something she seldom did.

Mac and Pete remained standing behind them in the lanai all through the service, and when Held said, “You may kiss the bride,” Otto took Mary in his arms, enveloping her much smaller body, and they kissed for a very long time.

When they parted, she was grinning ear to ear. “Wow, that’s the best one ever,” she gushed.

“Champagne,” McGarvey said.

Mary laughed. “It’s first thing in the morning and we have work to do?”

“That’s why we got the Cristal, same brew we had when we got married,” Pete told her.

McGarvey opened the bottle and poured five glasses for the toast.

“Live long and prosper,” Held said, grinning.

“That’s Star Trek,” Mary said.

“The ten-to-one consensus on campus among everyone who knows you two thought it would be the most appropriate blessing,” the minister said, finishing his drink. He put his glass down. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get out to Arlington.”

“Honeymoon?” Pete asked after Held had left.

“Later,” Mary said. “Right now, we have work to do—finding out who’s gunning for Mac and why.”

“And making sure they don’t succeed,” Pete said.

McGarvey had been trying to work out some of the details from the moment he and Slatkin had shot it out on the third-floor landing, and the only decent clue they had for now. The shooter had said that his contact had made a mistake about the expediter, who was a woman and who was rich.

The problem he was running into was that the profiles of assassins and their handlers were almost always men.

“If he was telling the truth, the list of people we’re looking for is a hell of a lot smaller than it could be,” Otto suggested. “Our advantage.”

They were sitting on the lanai off the kitchen, drinking the last of the champagne.

“So where do we start?” Mary asked.

“Female staffers at the White House, and ladybirds up at the Pentagon,” McGarvey said, though the niggling at the back of his head was telling him that it wouldn’t be so simple.

Otto read something of that from his expression. “But what? Talk to me.”

“We need the why of it first.”

“Lou,” Otto said.

“Yes, dear. And congratulations to you and Mary.”

“Thank you. Have you been listening to our conversation?”

“Of course.”

“Crossmatch all the current White House and Pentagon females who have had any connection, however slight, with Mac.”

“Do we have a time frame?”

“No, simply among the current personnel roster.”

Lou was back almost immediately. “Seven at the White House, including