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

at this time of the year.” Taio smiled, and Li nodded.

“I’ll make our travel arrangements and pack while you do our research on the Glory, on Taiwan’s film industry, and our cover stories.”

Taio went back to the spare bedroom, which they used as an office, and powered up the laptop, which was connected through a remailer in Amsterdam that couldn’t be traced to Hong Kong. He pulled up Google and entered the ship’s name, coming up with a half-dozen vessels, most of them general cargo or bulk carriers and one tanker, but the sixth was a yacht owned by Thomas Hammond.

Hammond’s name came up with more than one million hits, most of them for the American billionaire who’d made the bulk of his fortune in the dot-com boom, especially in California among the start-up high-tech companies that he acquired through hostile takeovers and then sold when their values soared through the roof.

According to many of the news stories in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, and other business and human interest outlets, the man was classified as a modern-era robber baron who didn’t care who he ruined on his way to the top.

Now only in his forties, he was part of the elite jet set. A playboy according to the LA Times, who’d been born of simple working-class parents in Philadelphia, and had never attended college but had begun his career by working as a runner on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, where he’d earned his first million by the age of sixteen.

The many photographs showed him with a variety of wealthy people from all over the world. But the most recent photographs from the last few years showed him almost always in the company of the American movie star and movie theater owner Susan Patterson, herself a multibillionaire. The woman was beautiful, and Hammond was handsome in the role as a laid-back California surfer.

Li came in and looked over Taio’s shoulder. “Who’s the woman?”

“A former American movie star. Her boyfriend is a billionaire named Tom Hammond. He owns the Glory.”

Li laughed. “What the hell are they doing in Skagway?” she asked. “I looked it up. That’s where half the world looking for fame and fortune showed up to get aboard the Klondike Gold Rush.”

“A fitting place to meet a billionaire and his rich girlfriend.”

“No question they can afford us, but I wonder who it is they want us to deal with.”

“And why?” Taio asked.

TWENTY-SIX

McGarvey drove out to Langley with Pete, Otto, and Mary for an appointment with Taft and Thomas Waksberg, the DDO. The DCI’s secretary had called earlier that morning and asked for the one-on-one meeting. Pete went with Otto to his third-floor office, while Mary escorted Mac upstairs.

“Don’t try to rile the man too badly,” she said when the elevator opened on the seventh floor.

“He won’t like what I’m going to have to tell him,” McGarvey said.

Mary smiled. “Mostly nobody does,” she said. “But it drives everybody nuts when you start pointing fingers at the Pentagon and especially the White House.”

“Then I suggest you guys stay out of it, especially you.”

“You’re on your own up here. I’m going back to my office next door and point my crew in the right direction to help out.”

“And what direction is that?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t a clue, but I’ll figure out something by the time I get there.”

Taft was waiting with the portly Waksberg in the DCI’s small conference room. And Carleton Patterson, the Company’s general counsel, showed up from the elevator at the far end of the corridor at the same time McGarvey came down the hall.

“Wait up,” Patterson said. He was a tall, thin, patrician man with white hair, who’d been the CIA chief legal beagle for more years than anyone wanted to count. And he dressed the part of the venerable old lawyer in three-piece suits, the bottom button of his vest undone, his shoes always highly polished, his bow tie correctly knotted.

No DCI had seen fit to replace him, and it was said that he’d heard more gossip than even the walls in the OHB, or anywhere else on campus, had.

McGarvey always had a great deal of affection for the man, and the feeling was mutual.

“I haven’t see you in forever, my boy,” Patterson said as they shook hands. “And congratulations on your nuptials. Pete is well?”

“Thanks. Yes, she is. And you look good.”

“I’m thinking about going to pasture one of these days.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

They were opposite the conference room door, and no one else was in the corridor.

“The general’s a good man.”

“Most everyone who sat in that office was,” Mac said.

“But he’s vexed. Some of his friends on this side of the river are starting to complain about you.”

“Why?”

“News gets out, Mac. You’re in town, someone has taken a couple of potshots at you, and already you’re sniffing around the Pentagon and the White House again. Makes some of these people nervous.”

“I get a little nervous myself when someone starts shooting at me.”

“Trouble does have a habit of following you around,” Patterson said. “Do you have any leads?”

“None. But both guys were ex–Special Forces—one from Canada the other from South Africa—which means they were hired guns.”

“There are a lot of people who’d like to see you dead. The list isn’t endless, but it’s large.”

“I understand that, but the money for the two guns who came after me was big.”

“Governmentally big?”

“Yes. And curiously enough, the amount the second man was paid was twice as much as the first.”

“Which means?”

“Whoever hired the first guy didn’t think he would get the job done. So they hired someone better.”

“Who also failed, and you think there’ll be a third?”

“I’m betting on it.”

Patterson nodded. “I thought you would say something like that,” he said. He knocked on the door, and they went in.

“Here you are, then,” Taft said. He was at the head of the table, Waksberg at his left. “Have a seat,” he said,