The Expediter by David Hagberg

you going over there?”
    “I don’t know,” McGarvey said. He handed the manila envelope to Rencke. “This is what Colonel Pak brought out for me.”
    Rencke’s eyes widened. “He actually came to Casey Key, to your house?”
    “Yup,” McGarvey said. “I’ll come down to see you when I’m finished upstairs.”

 
     
     
TWENTY

     
    The DCI’s secretary, Dhalia Swanfeld, a pleasant-looking but formal older woman, looked up with a little smile as Kirk McGarvey entered Adkins’s outer office. She’d been McGarvey’s secretary when he was the director of operations, and had advanced with him during his short tenure as director of the CIA.
    “Good evening, Mr. Director,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”
    “How are you?” McGarvey asked.
    “Just fine, sir. They’re waiting for you inside.”
    McGarvey glanced at the door. “What’s their mood?”
    “Curious why you’re here now of all times,” she said. “But a little relieved, I think.” She picked up the phone and announced him.
    Dick Adkins, reading glasses perched on the end of his narrow nose, was seated at his desk, facing the DDO Howard McCann and Carleton Patterson, the former New York corporate attorney who’d been the CIA’s general counsel on a temporary basis for ten years.
    They all looked up when McGarvey walked in.
    “Good to see you, Kirk,” Adkins said, rising. He was a slightly built man a few years older than McGarvey with a pale complexion and light blue eyes that showed he was under a lot of tension.
    McGarvey waved him back. “I’m not so sure you’re going to be so glad after I tell you why I’m here.” He sat down. “Carleton.”
    Patterson nodded. “How’re you enjoying retirement? Bored yet?”
    “Sometimes,” McGarvey admitted.
    “You picked a hell of a time to show up,” McCann said, glaring. He counted himself a modern spymaster, and he’d never liked McGarvey or any man of action. Finesse was the new motto of the directorate, which had even been renamed the National Clandestine Service.
    “Why’s that, Howard?” McGarvey asked. “Because of the North Korean thing, or have you gotten yourself worked up about something else?” He didn’t much care for McCann either.
    “Christ,” McCann swore. “You’re out. Go home.”
    Adkins held up a hand. “Wait a minute, Howard,” he said. “Okay, Kirk, what did you bring for us?”
    “I assume that the president is talking to the Chinese in greater depth than we’re hearing on the news.”
    Adkins nodded. “He’s buying some time for us to figure out what the hell Kim Jong Il is playing at. We know the guy’s stark raving mad, but this makes no sense.”
    “It doesn’t to them either,” McGarvey said. “North Korean intelligence contacted me this morning. Said they didn’t order the assassination. It was done by a pair of South Korean ex-NIS shooters working for us.”
    McCann was furious. “Goddamnit, Dick, I told you the shit would start raining down around our heads unless you convinced the president that we need to take the son of a bitch down before the region goes nuclear.”
    “It wasn’t us,” Adkins told McGarvey. “But if Kim Jong Il’s people believe it, why’d they come to you?”
    “They want me to come over to Pyongyang and prove they didn’t do it.”
    McCann was struck speechless for the moment.
    “Moderates?” Patterson asked.
    McGarvey nodded. “They don’t like Kim Jong Il either. And they’re desperate to somehow convince Beijing that someone else was behind the kill. They think I’m the one for the job.”
    “That’s quite impossible, of course,” Patterson said. “You do understand that if you tried to help them it would be construed as an act of treason against our government. Even if they’re telling the truth, and Kim Jong Il wasn’t behind it, you couldn’t get yourself involved.”
    “He’s already involved,” McCann said sharply. “He’s listened to the bastards, and he’s