The Kill Zone km-9

by David Hagberg

  “They had the bomb, everyone was afraid that they might actually use it. Remember the nuclear countdown clock? Missiles over the pole; Vladivostok to Washington, D.C.; Moscow to Seattle, equidistant. Or, tactical nukes across the Polish plains into Germany.

  Or missiles in Cuba.” “They held our attention there for a while,”

  Yemm said. “That they did. But since 9-11 all bets are off. The bad guys are everywhere.” “Like I said, boss, time to get out.” McGarvey shook his head. “Not yet, Dick. I’m going to need you for the next two or three years.” “You’re taking the job then?” “If I can get past the hearings. There’s a lot of truth to what Hammond’s saying.”

  “Bullshit,” Yemm said. “I’ll try,” McGarvey promised, his eyes straying to the fireplace. “It’s like road rage; people jumping out of their cars and shooting each other because someone pissed them off by doing something stupid. Minor shit. Only now everybody’s been infected, even entire governments. We’re in a kind of a geopolitical road rage that’s hard to fight, and almost impossible to predict.” He looked back at Yemm. “That’s our job now. Figuring out who’s going to go crazy next.” “That include us?” Yemm asked softly. McGarvey nodded. “Yes.” How to get that across to Senator Hammond and the others tomorrow, he wondered. He was guilty of a mild form of treason.

  He had a feeling that he’d always been guilty of that crime. He’d always seen both sides of every issue. Yemm pocketed his pen and put the authorization form back into his dispatch case. He finished his drink. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “For what?” “I came over to cheer you up for tomorrow. Guess I didn’t do such a hot job of it.” “It’s the weather. It’s got everybody down.” At the door Yemm buttoned his coat.

  “I used to like the snow when I was a kid. Now I hate it.” “Yeah, me too,” McGarvey said. “You need a security detail out here around the clock.” “I’ll think about it,” McGarvey said. Yemm nodded glumly.

  “See you in the morning, then,” he said. He went down to the driveway, got in his Explorer and drove off. McGarvey stood at the open door for a bit, feeling the bite of the cold wind and smelling the snow and the smoke whipping around from a half-dozen fireplace chimneys in the neighborhood. When it snowed, city kids went out to play, but ranchers’ sons, like he had been, went out to work. Snow meant feeding and watering animals. Blizzards meant staying out until lost cattle were rounded up before they froze to death. When he went back inside he locked the door and reset the alarm. He glanced up to the head of the stairs. Kathleen stood there hugging her arms to her chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks. His stomach did a flop, and he hurried upstairs to her. “What’s wrong?” “She told me to mind my own business.” McGarvey took her into his arms, She was shivering and crying, and she clutched the material of his shirt as if she were trying to rip it off his body. “You can’t press her. Remember how she was the last time?” “But I’m her mother, I just want to help.” “I know, but she wants to do this herself. She’s trying to prove that she’s all grown-up now, and not as worried about everything like she was last year.” Kathleen looked into his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t patronizing her. “When she gets herself figured out she’ll come back to you for help. Especially when she realizes that Todd and I are hopeless.” Kathleen smiled hesitantly. “It’s just me,” she said. “I think that I’m more frightened for the baby than she is.”

  “So am I,” McGarvey admitted. “But it’s their turn, their baby. All we can do is stand by if they need us.” She lowered her eyes. “It hurts.” “It shouldn’t.” “But it does,” she said. McGarvey held her close again. “I’ll talk to her,” he promised. After a moment Kathleen shook her head. “You’re right, Kirk,” she said. “Elizabeth needs her space. Let her be for the moment.” “You sure?” “Yeah,” Kathleen said, and she started to cry again, but this time without any urgency or tension merely a safety valve for her emotions. “Are you okay?” he asked after a bit. “Just a little tired. It was a tough day. Maybe I’ll take a bath.” “I’m done for the night, too. How about a cup of tea or a glass of wine?” “Some wine.” She brushed her fingers across his lips. “I do so love you.” McGarvey smiled. “I’m glad.” She turned and went down the hall to their bedroom, McGarvey went downstairs, rechecked the alarm setting and the front door, then shut off the lights in his study after locking up the DI reports. He stood in the dark for a few minutes listening again, as he had been doing for the past several days, for something the sounds of the house, the sounds of the wind, the sounds of his own heart, the sounds that the gavel would make tomorrow. “Fuck it,” he said. He went back to the kitchen, where he checked the patio doors. He opened a bottle of pi not grig io from the cooler, got a couple of glasses and went upstairs.

  The big tub on a raised step was only one-third full and the water was still running, but Kathleen had already disrobed and gotten in. She was lying back, her eyes closed, a look of contentment on her finely defined oval face. McGarvey sat down on the toilet lid, careful not to clink the glasses or make any noise to disturb her, but she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “If you only knew how good this feels,” she murmured luxuriously. He poured her a glass of wine and set it on the broad, flat edge of the tub. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, starting to get up. “Don’t go.” “Don’t you want some peace and quiet?” “I had twenty years of that; now I want you.” She ran a hand across the top of her chest, letting droplets of water run down between her breasts. “Even if we were in the same room for the next twenty, it wouldn’t make up for what we lost.” She shook her head thinking back.

  “Such a stupid waste, actually. My fault.” “Our fault,” McGarvey corrected. “I had a habit of running away, remember?” “At least you had a reason,” she flared mildly. “I was just… arrogant. Young, dumb, ambitious. I wanted to be a perfect mother, I really did. I loved Elizabeth with everything in my soul, but I wanted my freedom, too.” She absently touched the base of her neck, her collarbones and shoulders. “I tried Valium, because I felt guilty, but it didn’t work for me. Made me sick at my stomach.” She laughed. “The doctor said that I was tense.” “It wasn’t much better for anyone else. It’s time to stop beating yourself up. You were hiding out in the open, and I was hiding underground. You had the tougher assignment.” “Everybody hated the CIA. My friends used to tell me that kicking you out was the best decision that I’d ever made. But they were jerks. The kind of people you and I always hated. I would look at our daughter and wonder why they weren’t seeing what I was seeing; a perfect little girl who was half you.” She closed her eyes and laid the cool wineglass against her forehead. “I wanted to tell them, but I didn’t.” “We spent a lot of time being mad at each other,” McGarvey said sadly. “We both made some dumb decisions.” “When you came back to Washington out of the clear blue sky I thought that you’d come for me. When I found out that the CIA had hired you to dig out Darby and his crowd, I was mad at you all over again.” She was looking inward, regret all over her face. “I threatened to sue you for money, I flaunted myself all over Washington and New York, and I even got word to you that I was thinking about getting married, but nothing worked. Then the CIA comes to see you in Switzerland to offer you a job, and you come running. It wasn’t fair.”

  McGarvey didn’t know what to say. It was a time for going back, and the memories were just as painful for him as they were for her. But maybe necessary, he thought. She opened her eyes wide to look at him.

  “Do you know the worst part?” she asked. “When I saw you walking down the street it was like someone had driven a stake into my heart. I made a mistake, pushing you away, and here you were back in Georgetown even more inaccessible to me than ever. I had become the kind of person we hated; I had become one of my friends, a pretentious bore.”

  “But here we are, Katy,” he said softly. She smiled, some of the trouble melting from her face. “It’s going to be okay, isn’t it, Kirk?” “Guaranteed.”

  TUESDAY

&nbs
p; NINE

  IF KIRK MCGARVEY WERE CONFIRMED AS DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE HE WOULD BE ASSASSINATED.

  MONTOIRE-SUR-LE-LOIR, FRANCE

  Nikolayev walked along the country road into town as the sun reached over the distant line of poplars marking the edge of the wheat field He encountered no one this morning. Loneliness, he decided, was a subject on which he could write a very long book. Now there wasn’t even a routine to look forward to as he grew older. He could not return to Moscow, nor would he be able to remain here much longer. Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, Washington Post and Le Monde, carried the same story. Each newspaper had given the facts its own spin: the liberal press was against McGarvey’s appointment; the conservative was for it; and the French press was confused but angry. It was always anger that seemed to fuel the public debate; especially the international dialogue. Nikolayev could have refused to read the newspapers. Not listen to the radio, or watch television, especially not CNN. But the facts would have been there all the same, and he would know it. Like the feral cat crouched in front of the rabbit; the predator did not need to read a book to smell the fear. The ability to sense the real world was built in, and perfected by years of experience. Nikolayev heard the church bell tolling the hour in town.

  Turn away. Now, before it’s too late. In the night he felt them at his back. Coming for him. There would be no arrest for him, though; no cell at Lefortovo, no torture, no drugs, no sewing his eyelids open, rubber hoses up his anus, glass rods shattered inside his penis. They were coming with Russian insurance his nine ounces a nine-millimeter bullet to the base of his skull. “Comrade Nikolayev?” He stopped and turned, but no one was there. Only the farm fields, the trees, the white clouds in the blue sky, the empty road and the church bell. The voice had been Baranov’s. He recognized it. But the general was long dead. Killed by Kirk McGarvey outside East Berlin. He walked the rest of the way into town where he stopped first at the boulangerie for his baguette and his morning raisin buns, then around the corner in the square to the little shop selling tobacco, chewing gum, stamps, magazines and newspapers. The old woman had his three newspapers waiting for him. “Bonjour, monsieur” she said pleasantly. “Ca va?”

  “Bonjour, madame. Ca va, et vousY’ Nikolayev responded with a genuine smile. “Je vais bien” she said brightly, inclining her head coquettishly. It took him a second to realize that the old woman was flirting with him. He paid her, accepted his change, got his newspapers and fled the dark shop into the bright morning sun. He thought he could hear her laughing as he hurried down the street. He folded the newspapers under his arm, refusing the temptation to look at the headlines, and after twenty minutes he was back at the small farmhouse he’d rented at the agency in Paris. It had become a familiar haven for him. He put on the water for his tea, put the baguette away and brought the newspapers and buns to the table at the edge of his small vegetable garden in back. From here he could look across the wheat field stubble now, to the intersection of the farm road and the main highway D917 across the narrow Loir River. It was the only way here from the outside. The tiny window in his bedroom under the eaves also faced the river and the highway. Basic tradecraft. Habit is Heaven’s own redress, Alexander Pushkin had written in Eugene Onegin.

  It takes the place of happiness. There was the occasional car and a few trucks on the highway. The bus from Le Mans passed a few minutes after nine in the morning, and returned from Orleans in the afternoon around two. Six weeks ago a police car passed by, its blue lights flashing, its siren shrieking. Nikolayev had leaped up from the table and had nearly headed off across the fields in a dead run until he realized that they were not coming for him. If Moscow was searching for him, they were not looking here. When his tea was ready he took the pot and a cup out to the table, put on his reading glasses and settled down with the newspapers. He started with Le Monde to see if the French were reporting anything new and because it was today’s newspaper. The Times and the Post were Monday’s and probably contained only rewritten versions of Sunday’s accounts. McGarvey’s Senate committee hearings were scheduled to begin today. The Paris newspaper wondered if the senators would consider the French government’s position that McGarvey was no longer welcome here. A highly placed source inside the DGSE (the French secret intelligence service) had agreed to answer questions provided his anonymity could be protected.

  On the surface of it, Nikolayev thought that the request was stupid.

  By definition spies were supposed to be anonymous figures; once they opened their mouths they forfeited that right. It was a plant. But he read the article anyway.

  “Despite M. McGarvey’s background in the CIA, he was generously given a resident alien visa as early as 1992. Of course he had to agree never to conduct an operation on French soil or against a citizen of France. We sent people to watch him, to make certain that he complied with those conditions. This of course cost the French people a certain amount of money. But in the past M. McGarvey had provided us with a valuable service, so we were willing, even happy, to allow him a pleasant retirement, providing he remained retired.”

  Q: “Did he stay retired?”

  R: “Non.”

  Q: “What happened?”

  R: “We are getting into an area now in which I cannot delve too deeply.

  Let’s just say that there were some unpleasant circumstances which ultimately resulted in a death.”

  Q: “Of a French citizen?”

  R: “Oui.”

  Q: “Are you able to give us a name?”

  R: “Now.”

  Her name was Jaqueline Belleau. Nikolayev had gleaned most of the details from his computer searches here. What the gentleman from the DGSE did not tell the journalist was that Mademoiselle Belleau was a French spy sent to McGarvey’s bed in order to keep a close eye on him. When he returned to the States she followed him, instead of remaining in Paris where she belonged. The mistake had killed her, though it was not McGarvey’s fault. She had been caught in the middle of a terrorist bombing of a Georgetown restaurant. Unlike the American newspapers, Le Monde drew no conclusions, leaving the story with vague references to perhaps as many as a half-dozen illegal operations that McGarvey had been involved with on French soil. Neither the anonymous man from the DGSE nor the journalist from the newspaper raised any questions about why McGarvey was not currently serving hard time in a French penitentiary, or, if he were to be appointed DCI, would the French secret service be willing to work with him. McGarvey’s wasn’t the only name in the Network Martyrs file. Just the first to come into the media spotlight. Baranov had known what was going to happen. He’d tried several times to destroy McGarvey’s career, even planting false evidence in CIA archives that his parents had been spies for the Soviet Union. Mightn’t it pass down to the son? He’d tried to have McGarvey killed without success. Tried to drive him to ground. If Baranov couldn’t kill him, perhaps he could render the man ineffectual. None of that had happened. Now it had come to Baranov’s end game Martyrs. Nikolayev drank his tea and ate his raisin buns, appreciating what he had here, all the more so because he knew that he would be leaving France soon. If Kirk McGarvey were confirmed as Director of Central Intelligence, he would be assassinated. In fact the assassin was almost certainly already making his opening moves; preparing for the strike. The Martyrs file had listed the targets, among them President Jimmy Carter, several admirals and army generals, a half-dozen U.S. senators and congressmen, none of whose names Nikolayev recognized. And McGarvey. But the names of the assassins had been left out, either because they had not been selected when the original documents had been drafted, or because Baranov wanted the extra layer of security.

  When he was finished with his breakfast, he took his things back into the kitchen and went upstairs to pack a bag for Paris. He needed more information than he could get here, and he needed a safe city from which to mail his letter. The assassin would be making the opening moves now. It was time for Nikolayev to make his next move. The jackals were snap
ping at his heels. He had only three choices. Go back and be shot to death for what he had uncovered. Try to disappear and hide for the remainder of his life. Or go forward and try to put a stop to Martyrs. Some old men got religion, while others filled the end game by trying to make amends for a lifetime of sin. Martyrs had been his sin just as much as it had been BaranoVs. No choice, really, he told himself. No choice at all.

  TEN

  THE IMAGE THAT REMAINED… WAS OF A HELL IN WHICH DOZENS OF PEOPLE WERE FALLING BACK IN SLOW MOTION; BLOOD SPLASHING IN EVERY DIRECTION…

  CHEVY CHASE

  McGarvey slept very hard and dreamless; nevertheless, when the telephone rang at 4:00 A.M. he answered it on the first ring as if he had been lying there waiting for the call. “Yes.” He glanced at the clock. “Mr. McGarvey, this is Ken Marks on the night desk. One of our personnel has been involved in an automobile accident that could have compromised security.” “Hang on a minute,” McGarvey said.

  Kathleen stirred as he got out of bed. “What is it, Kirk?” “One of our people was in an accident.” She sat bolt upright. “Was it Elizabeth?” she demanded. “I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. He was going to take the phone into the bathroom so he wouldn’t wake her, but it was too late. “Who was it?” he asked the OD.