When he had called this morning and left a message on Todd’s voice mail, he sounded frantic, almost frightened.
At twenty-nine, Todd was the youngest person ever to run the CIA’s training facility, known unofficially as the Farm, with his wife, Elizabeth, at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, 140 miles south of Washington on the York River. His father-in-law was Kirk McGarvey, former director of the agency. He and Liz both had a fair amount of field experience, much of it alongside Liz’s father, who’d arguably been the Company’s finest field agent, bar none. They’d practically gone to school on his tradecraft, and once their covers had been blown they’d been recruited to run the training facility. Something they’d been doing with a great deal of success for the past three years. And after the first three months no one ever questioned their ages.
Givens knew that Todd worked for the CIA, just as he knew who Todd’s father-in-law was, which made his message this morning all the more cryptic.
“Trust me on this one, Todd,” Givens had said. “Don’t tell anyone we’re meeting. No one. Not your wife, and especially not her father.”
Noon at the George, it was ten after that now, and Todd was beginning to regret driving all the way up from the Farm, and lying to his wife in the bargain, though that had been easy because she was spending the day on an exfiltration exercise with the new class. Tomorrow would be his turn, pushing the twelve field officer trainees as close to the breaking point as he could. He and Liz were hands-on administrators.
He would explain to her where he’d been when he got back. They’d been spies, but they had never lied to each other. She’d made him promise before they got married. She loved her father, but he’d been gone for almost all of her childhood because he had not been able to tell the truth to his wife, and she’d kicked him out of the house. Todd’s relationship with Liz was the most important thing in his life, not just because he loved her but because of their two-year-old daughter, Audrey. He owed both of them at least that much.
Givens appeared in the doorway from the hotel’s lobby, spotted Todd sitting upstairs, and came up. He looked out of breath and flushed, as if he had run all the way in from the Post. Unlike Todd, who was tall, solidly built with a broad, pleasant face, Givens was short and whip thin, his movements quick, almost birdlike. In college Todd had lettered two years as a running back on the football team, while Givens had lettered all four years in cross-country. He’d been incredibly fast with the endurance of an iron man, and it didn’t look as if he’d changed much.
“Thanks for coming,” Givens said, sitting down across from Todd. He laid a computer disk in a jewel case on the table and slid it across. “Don’t hold it up, don’t look at it, just put it in your pocket.”
“Okay,” Todd said. He slipped it into his jacket pocket as their waitress came over.
“Iced tea, with lemon,” Givens said. “I’m not staying for lunch.”
“So, here I am,” Todd said. “And I’m curious as hell.”
Givens glanced down at the entryway, and then at the other diners on the lower level, before he turned back. “Listen, for the past five months I’ve been investigating a power broker group called the Friday Club. And what I’m finding out is scaring the crap out of me. Everything I’ve come up with so far is on the disk.”
“Robert Foster,” Todd replied. Everyone in Washington knew of the so-called club whose ultra-conservative members called themselves American Firsters. Lobbyists, a number of high-ranking aides and advisers to some key senators and congressmen as well as at least one White House insider, and others. All men, all of them with power.
“He’s the top dog,” Givens said. “And when I started looking it didn’t take me long to find out that some of his lobbyist pals represented people like the Saudi royal family, the Venezuelan oil minister, the deputy director of Mexico’s intelligence service.”
“What were you looking for?”
Givens hesitated. “This is going to sound far-fetched. But one of the guys on the list was your deputy director of operations, Howard McCann, who got my attention when he turned up dead in the line of duty.”
Todd kept any hint of emotion from his face, but alarm bells were jangling all over the place. McCann