End Game by David Hagberg

Howard Carter supposedly said when he looked inside the tomb of King Tut for the first time.”
    â€œWhich leaves four. Maybe you should have Mr. Rencke try his hand at translating it before someone else is killed.”
    â€œYou’re saying whatever’s on panel four makes sense of what’s buried in the hills above Kirkuk.”
    â€œThat’s what George told us in the end, when he swore us to secrecy. ‘The truth will come out sooner or later,’ he said. ‘When it does you’ll understand. The entire world will understand the empirical necessity.’”
    â€œSo what’s buried up there?” Pete asked.
    Coffin got up and handed his empty glass to her. “Another one, please,” he said. He moved around the table to one of the open portholes.
    â€œSit down,” McGarvey said.
    â€œI need some air,” Coffin said, looking back. “The rain smells good.”
    â€œSit down, God damn it.”
    Coffin was suddenly flung forward off his feet, a small red hole in the back of his head and his entire face exploding in a spray of blood, bones, and brain matter.

 
    SEVENTEEN
    Thomas Knight arrived at the CIA’s ground-maintenance building just after six thirty in the morning. He was short, something under five ten, with a stocky build that had turned a little soft over the years. His eyes were wide and deep blue—his best feature, his wife, Stephanie, told him. The worst, the back of his head, where a bald spot was growing bigger every year.
    This was his favorite time of the day, just before dawn, when everything was cool and peaceful. The campus always looked the prettiest to him at this hour. The lights of the OHB in the distance—American’s bastion against the real world—safe and secure, reassuring.
    He parked around the side, unlocked the service door, and powered up the three garage doors, behind which were the riding mowers, tree-trimmer buckets, and other grounds equipment.
    He lit a cigarette and then brought the Starbucks he’d picked up on the way in from Garrett Park, across the river, to the open door, where he breathed deeply of the woodland scents.
    He was wearing his usual white coveralls, the CIA’s logo on the breast pocket, totally spotless. How his wife got the grass and mud stains out was the big mystery to the crew.
    â€œShe’s a magician,” one of the guys had said.
    Knight had to smile, thinking about it. No, that had been Joseph, but he was dead now, like Walt and Istvan. And maybe the others, because none of them had stayed in contact once the op was finished and they’d been debriefed.
    Larry Coffin had suggested they go deep and never make contact with one another.
    They’d met at a McDonald’s in Williamsburg just a few miles from the front gate at Camp Peary—the Farm. Even Alex had shown up, and she’d told them she’d never eaten at a McDonald’s in her life.
    â€œYeah, right,” Fabry said. “Even in Paris, on the Champs-Élysées, there is a McDonald’s where you may have le hamburger and a glass of wine. And you have been to Paris.”
    â€œ Oui , but lunch at Le Jules Verne,” she’d said. It was the restaurant on the first level of the Eiffel Tower.
    They’d all laughed, but the tension had run high that day, because once they left the restaurant, they would be on the run. And there was no telling how long it would be, if ever, before they could resurface.
    â€œHide the thimble,” Carnes had said. It was the children’s game in which a thimble used for sewing something by hand was placed out in the open when all the contestants were out of the room. When they came in, they were supposed to find it. But it was a frustrating game, because even though the tiny thimble—it was small enough to fit over the tip of someone’s thumb—was in plain sight, almost everyone had a hard time seeing it.
    Carnes was going