Blood Pact (McGarvey) Read Online Free Page B

two-year-old child, an orphan, Otto and Louise had adopted her, which in McGarvey’s estimation was a perfect fit. They were odd people—always had been—but they were loving and kind.
    Nowadays Otto, whose specialty was computer operations, was the CIA’s chief of Special Projects, and Louise, who had been a chief photo analyst for the National Security Agency and now did freelance work for the CIA, lived in a two-story colonial in an all-American suburb outside of Washington, where the chief purpose in their lives had become McGarvey’s granddaughter.
    Rencke picked up on the second ring, his long, almost always out-of-control frizzy red hair tied up in a neat ponytail, which was Louise’s doing. Her project after they’d gotten married a couple of years ago was to clean up her husband’s act. Now his jeans and sweatshirts were usually clean, he wore boat shoes instead of unlaced sneakers, and he’d stopped eating Twinkies and drinking heavy cream. Lately he’d seemed happier than McGarvey had ever known him, though he’d lost none of his genius, or his almost preternatural ability to see and understand things. Nor had he lost his almost constant boyish enthusiasm.
    “Oh, wow, Mac, you weren’t hurt? You’re okay?”
    “You heard about the car bomb on campus?” McGarvey asked, though he wasn’t surprised. A number of years ago, Rencke had put a tag on him. As long as he knew where McGarvey was, his computers would sift through every available bit of real-time information on that location.
    “Of course. But you weren’t just a bystander.”
    “No.”
    “Didn’t think so. What do we have coming our way this time?”
    McGarvey hesitated for just a moment. Early in his career he’d tried to distance himself from everyone he loved—even going so far as to leave his wife and child. He wanted to protect them from the bad people he’d had to deal with. He’d lived with the constant worry that someone, someday would retaliate against him by hurting his family. Which had happened, but not for the reasons he’d worried about. The bomb at the Arlington cemetery had been meant for him; their deaths had been an accident. In any event, Otto was a CIA employee, and he and Louise had always understood the risks.
    “The guy in the Lexus that took the hit was Giscarde Petain. And he’d come to ask for my help with something having to do with a group called the Voltaire Society.”
    “Just a sec,” Rencke said, and less than a minute later, he was back. “Okay, I’m getting thirteen million plus hits—everything from the Voltaire Society of America, which promotes what they call the spirit of enlightenment, to the University of Denver student honors organization. Lots of French philosophic and scientific groups, and even a Bible study organization in Geneva. None of them sounds like anything someone would be murdered for.”
    “Anything on Petain? He gave me a business card that lists him as a vice president of special accounts with the International Bank of Paris.”
    Rencke chuckled a half minute later. “Your reach is getting wider. I have more than forty-four million hits, but nothing that specific. There’s the ABC International Bank of Paris, and the International Bank of Paris and Shanghai. Is there an address?”
    “Just a phone number that I haven’t tried yet.”
    “Checking,” Rencke said, and he was back almost immediately. “The phone is an accommodations number, with an automatic message to leave a name and contact information. No e-mail address?”
    “Just the number.”
    “Give me a minute,” Rencke said, and this time his fingers flew over the keyboard and when he looked up he shook his head. “Lots of Giscarde Petains in Paris, but none associated with any bank whose name is even close to the International Bank of Paris. Nor am I coming up with that name in connection with any of the thirteen million Voltaire Societies.”
    “How about the Company’s database?”
    “I checked