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

to the CIA from the National Security Agency, where she’d been a chief satellite product analyst. From the moment she and Otto had met and begun working together, it was as if they’d always been a couple; almost clones of each other.

As a long-term bachelor, Otto had been a slob; his clothes usually a mess, his long, red, out-of-control hair reminiscent of an Einstein, his sneakers unlaced, his sweatshirts and ball caps with the logos of the old KGB or CCCP, dirty. His only real vice—not alcohol—were Twinkies and heavy cream or half-and-half, which he never seemed to be without. As a result, he’d been overweight and out of shape for most of his life.

Lou had changed all of that. And the people in the intel community in and around Washington who’d always been afraid of his genius coming unglued and sending just about every mainframe inside and out of the beltway crashing down around their ears had breathed a collective sigh of relief.

When she had been shot to death during an assignment last year that had gone bad, Otto’s world had come crashing down around him. Pete had been with her and had taken her death very hard, blaming herself for not preventing it. Not doing something.

“Not throwing yourself in front of the bullet?” Mac had asked her at one point.

“Something like that,” she admitted, scarcely able to choke out the words.

And then Mary had come into their lives. She was an IT genius in her own right, in some ways even smarter than Otto with a higher IQ but without the oddities. She could have been a middle-grade schoolteacher in a small midwestern town; quiet, even meek. But when she spoke, softly, everyone listened, because what she had to say was always brilliant and spot-on.

For the past eight years, she had been considered the ranking genius in what had been the Company’s Directorate of Science and Technology, so when she and Otto had found each other, no one was the least bit surprised. Lou had reined him in; now it was Mary’s turn.

“What’s got your dander?” Otto asked. “Someone on your six?”

“Probably not. Just a feeling.”

“A premo?”

“Not that much,” McGarvey said, glancing over his shoulder up Dumbarton as a cab turned the corner and passed his apartment building.

“But?”

McGarvey shook himself out of his funk. “Where you going on your honeymoon?”

“Honeymoon?” Otto asked after a brief hesitation, and Mac had to laugh.

Slatkin had been a loner all of his life, which had been a plus point when he had applied out of the South African Air Force Intelligence Division for a position with the Special Forces Brigade, known informally as the Recces.

The small, tightly knit counterinsurgency unit had seen combat in Rhodesia, Mozambique, and along their own border. Slatkin had been extensively trained in everything from weapons and explosives to infiltration, exfiltration, and especially hand-to-hand combat and was assigned to the Fifth Special Forces Regiment based at Phalaborwa in northern Limpopo. His specific assignment was as an assassin, a job at which he excelled, especially when he was given a target and was left to his own devices. All he’d ever required was intel. He took care of the rest.

His one weakness was money. He’d been born and raised poor in the white slums of Jo’burg, and within three years of joining the Recces and after four successful hits, he’d resigned and had gone freelance.

He’d never regretted the decision, because he was good and he knew it.

One of his burner phones buzzed, and he answered it. “Yes.”

“Your subject is one hundred fifty meters away.”

“What is he doing?”

“Watching traffic on the parkway. He may suspect something.”

A specialty of Slatkin’s had been reading people from their voices. Their inflections, the stress levels, the hesitations, the oftentimes outright lies or exaggerations. Most people in the hiring side of the murder-for-hire business were terrible actors. They were the moneymen accustomed to never being questioned.

But this man, an American, was a puzzle. He wasn’t money, but he spoke for it. A lieutenant who had connections. Maybe an ex-cop. But he had good sources of information.

“Is he armed?”

“We don’t think so.”

“Is his woman with him?”

“He’s alone.”

“Is he aware that he is being watched?”

The man hesitated for just a fraction.

“Do not lie to me,” Slatkin broke in.

“It’s possible.”

“Possible or likely?”

“Likely.”

“Thank you.”

“What will you do?”

Slatkin thought the question was odd. “Watch for him.”

“And then?”

“What I was hired to do.”

The man did not reply.

Slatkin switched off the phone and took out the battery and SIM card and laid them aside.

He checked the sight picture in the M16’s scope, steady on the third-floor living room window across the street. Then, without taking his eyes off the street below, unholstered his Glock 23 compact pistol, checked the load and action against the possibility that the situation this afternoon would devolve into a close-quarters combat op, and laid it on a side table close at hand.

TWO

Otto’s house in McLean was a two-story colonial near the end of a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood of similar single-family dwellings. He had mostly kept to himself, so he’d never gotten to know his neighbors, though they used to wave whenever he drove by.

Until last year when there had been a brief incident of gun violence that had been officially listed as a random shooting. Now the neighbors didn’t wave so often.

Mary’s blue Honda Civic was parked in the driveway when Pete’s cab dropped her off. She paid the fare and walked up to the door.

“Good morning, Pete,” Lou’s AI-constructed voice from one of Otto’s darlings came from midair about face level.

It was always startling. “Good morning,” Pete said.

The door opened. “Otto and Mary are in the kitchen.”

Pete went inside, put her overnight bag down, and walked straight back to the kitchen, where Mary—all five feet two of her—was cooking something at the stove, and Otto was sitting at the counter speaking softly as if to himself, a bottle of Dom Pérignon in an ice bucket beside him, an empty flute next to