All of them were dead, too. But there were undoubtedly others.
Sleepers, the Russians used to call them. Deep-penetration agents who worked in ordinary jobs in their host countries. Barbers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, even intelligence officers. People who lay low, sometimes for years, until one day they were called into action. People whose loyalty was assured because they were paid well, and because of the promise that when their missions fully developed they would hit the jackpot a big payoff. They crossed the river on 1-495 and a few miles later merged with 1-270, which formed the northern curve of the Beltway around Washington. McGarvey looked up. Yemm was speaking on the phone. He had sped up considerably despite the heavy traffic and the increasingly slippery road. Something was wrong. “What’s going on, Dick?”
“Parker’s not answering. Neither is Janis. I’m trying Peggy’s cell phone now.” Yemm’s replied were curt. McGarvey speed dialed his home number. Kathleen answered on the first ring. “Hello?” McGarvey forced himself to calm down, to keep an upbeat tone in his voice. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m on the way home. What’re the girls fixing for dinner?” “Don’t be mad, Kirk. I just couldn’t stay another night in that hospital. The place was driving me crazy.” “I’m glad you’re home. I missed you,” McGarvey assured her. “You must have just got there. Anyway let me talk to Peggy for just a minute, would you?”
“They’re still out talking to the guys in the van and the chase car,”
Kathleen said lightly. “What chase car’s that?” McGarvey asked. All the gravity suddenly leaked out of the limo. It felt as if the elevator cables had snapped. “It’s a Mercedes. Dark blue.” “Are you sure?” “I’m standing at the front window looking at it.” “Listen to me, Kathleen. I want you to lock the front door, then go upstairs to our bedroom. There’s a pistol in my nightstand. I’ve shown you how to operate the safety.” “Kirk?” Kathleen’s voice was small. “Do it right now, Katy.” “What’s wrong?” “Maybe nothing, but just in case there is, I want you to do that for me right now. Lock the door, then go upstairs and get the gun.” “All right, if you say so,” Kathleen said. McGarvey held his hand over the phone. “My wife’s alone in the house. She says that Janis and Peggy are talking to the guys in the van and in a chase car. Dark blue Mercedes.” “No chase car, boss,”
Yemm said grimly. “I’m alerting Maryland Highway Patrol and our people. Tell her to sit tight, we’ll be there in a flash.” “Okay, Kirk, the front door is locked,” Kathleen said. “Are the girls still out by the van?” “Just a minute,” she said. “Yes, they’re still there.” “Can you see inside the car? How many people there are?
Maybe just the driver?” “I can’t see a thing. I think the windows are tinted or something.”
“Go upstairs now and get the gun. I don’t want you to let anybody in the house. Nobody, do you have that?” “Nobody except for you, Kirk?”
she asked in a tiny voice. McGarvey wanted to reach through the phone and hold her. “Just me, Katy. I’m coming to you as fast as I can.”
“Please hurry, darling.” “Go upstairs, but stay on the phone with me,”
McGarvey said. They came to the Connecticut Avenue exit, and the limo’s rear started to drift out as Yemm took the ramp too fast. But he was an expert driver, and after the car fishtailed twice he had it back under control, blasting through an orange light and heading south, through traffic. “MHP has a unit about ten minutes out,” Yemm said.
“Are you upstairs yet, Katy?” McGarvey asked. He cradled the phone between his cheek and shoulder. “Yes.” McGarvey took out his pistol and checked to make sure that it was ready to fire, then laid it on his lap. “Get the gun.” “I’m getting it.” “I want you to switch the safety off,” McGarvey said, as Yemm raced through a red light. Several cars slid off the side of the street into parked cars. “It’s off.”
“Now I want you to turn off the bedroom lights, and sit down in the corner so you can see the bedroom door.” “I don’t understand ”
“Just do it, Kathleen,” McGarvey ordered. “Then stay there until I get home.
If anyone comes through the door, I don’t care who, besides me, I want you to point the gun at them and pull the trigger. And keep pulling the trigger.” “Hurry,” she said. “I’m frightened.” “We’re only a few blocks away,” McGarvey said. Yemm took the Mac 10 submachine gun from its holder on the transmission hump, took his left hand off the steering wheel long enough to yank back the cocking handle on top of the receiver, then powered down the passenger-side window. “I’ll make one quick pass,” he said. “Concentrate on the Mercedes, I’ll watch the van,” McGarvey said, powering down his window. “Kirk, are you talking to me?” Kathleen asked. “No, sweetheart, I’m talking to Dick. Hang on.”
Yemm slowed down as they passed the golf course, and he turned down Country Club Drive. The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. The van was parked in front, but there was no sign of the Mercedes. Nor was there any sign of the girls or of Parker or Hernandez. “We must have just missed them,” Yemm said. “Katy, are you okay? No one has tried to come into the house?” “I’m okay, Kirk. All the doors are locked.”
“Sit tight, we’re right outside.” Yemm raised the Mac 10 as he drove slowly past the van. There was no movement. The van’s windows were all closed, and they couldn’t see anyone inside. It simply looked like a vehicle parked on the side of the street. They drove around the circle and stopped in the middle of the street just behind and to the left of the van. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the neighborhood. The snowfall was heavier than it had been at Langley, and already whatever tire marks or footprints there might have been had completely filled in. “Stay here, Mr. Director,” Yemm said, getting out of the car. “Yeah, right,” McGarvey replied. He climbed out of the limo on the opposite side from the van, behind Yemm. “Goddammit-“
“I’ll cover your back, Dick,” McGarvey said. “But take it nice and easy.” Yemm decided not to argue. He moved around the front of the limo. McGarvey slid into place behind him so that he had a clear sight line over the long hood. Keeping the Mac 10 trained on the driver’s side window, Yemm gingerly approached the van. He bent down and looked under the vehicle, then studied the area around it before he cautiously looked through the window. For several long seconds he just stood there, but then he lowered his gun and looked over his shoulder.
“They’re all in the back.” The hairs prickled on McGarvey’s neck. He knew what Yemm was going to say next. “There’s a lot of blood. I think they’re all dead.” “Christ.” McGarvey turned and looked at the house. “Wait for the backup,” he shouted, and he sprinted across the street and up the driveway to his house. On the porch he fumbled his keys out of his pocket, hurriedly unlocked the front door and shoved it open with his foot. He slid left, out of the firing line from anyone in the stair hall
There was nothing. No movement. No sound. Not even the alarm.
Kathleen had forgotten to turn it back on. “Katy?” he shouted. He’d left his phone in the car. “Kirk?” she called from upstairs. “It’s me. Are you okay?” “Oh, Kirk, thank God,” Kathleen cried. She appeared at the head of the stairs, the pistol still in her hand, pointed toward the open front door. “Put the gun down, Katy.
Everything’s fine now ” A tremendous explosion shattered the night air, flashing like a strobe light off the thickly blowing snow, the noise hammering off the fronts of the houses in the cul-de-sac. McGarvey fell through the doorway and turned in time to see a huge fireball, blown ragged by the wind, rising into the sky from where the van and Yemm had been.
THIRTY-THREE
MAC HAD GIVEN HIM THE LEGITIMACY THAT HE HAD SEARCHED FOR ALL OF HIS LIFE. RENCKE HAD A PLACE.
FORT A.P. HILL, VIRGINIA
Arkady Aleksandrovich Kurshin was the only man ever to have nearly bested McGarvey. Looking up from the covering file for Operation Countdown, Rencke wondered how he could have forgotten the Russian assassin’s name. Baranov had been the manipulator be
hind Kurshin’s delicate, even balletic, but deadly moves. And yet it was Kurshin who had stolen a nuclear missile from a U.S. storage bunker in what was then West Germany. It was Kurshin who had managed to hijack a U.S. Los Angeles class nuclear submarine and kill its entire crew. It was Kurshin who had nearly embroiled the entire Middle East, including most of the oil-producing nations, in a nuclear confrontation with Israel.
And it had been Kurshin who had finally led McGarvey to his face-to-face confrontation with Baranov. McGarvey had been maneuvered to the meeting with the KGB spymaster in a Soviet safe house outside of East Berlin. But the purpose of the meeting was never made clear. It was possible that Baranov simply wanted to kill McGarvey. It was equally possible, maybe even likely, that Baranov thought he could somehow turn McGarvey as he had turned Yarnell and Evita Perez and Artime Basulto and even John Lyman Trotter, Jr.” McGarvey’s friend in the CIA. It would have been a coup. A triumph of epic proportions.
Like turning Luke Skywalker to the dark side in the Star Wars movies.
It didn’t happen, of course. In fact, Baranov’s wild gamble had turned against him. McGarvey assassinated him, and then back in West Berlin, where Trotter had been waiting for word from Baranov, McGarvey killed his old friend. Trotter had been a Baranov man. Seduced by the Georgian’s delicate touch; by the sheer brilliance of his personality.
Rencke closed his eyes. Baranov’s had been a siren song to just about every one of his targets. Those he could not convert, like Powers and McGarvey, he marked for elimination; Powers when he had become DCI, and McGarvey once in East Germany and again now. On a separate level, McGarvey’s confrontation with Arkady Kurshin came about a year after East Berlin, in the tunnels beneath the ruins of a castle in Portugal.
Rencke had read that chilling report. The two assassins, McGarvey and Kurshin, each at the height of their powers, had come head-to-head in a tunnel filled with Nazi gold and the bodies of some dead Jews. There was an explosion, darkness, the tunnel filling with water. Rencke shook his head. He felt claustrophobic each time he thought about it.
That had been a close call; one that by McGarvey’s own admission, could have gone either way. He’d been lucky. There had been other operations. Baranov was at least fifteen years older than McGarvey.
He’d had fifteen years more experience. Fifteen more years to develop his tradecraft. But it should have been all over in the East Berlin safe house. And in the tunnel in Portugal. Rencke got up and went out to the central corridor. There were forty men and women working here, and yet the vast cavern seemed to be deserted. The answers, if there were any after all these years, were here somewhere. But he still could not make sense of what he knew. There were common threads.
Points of similarity and even contact between all of Baranov’s players.
Between Yarnell and Powers. Between Kurshin and McGarvey. Even between Evita and Basulto. Bridges that linked them together, with Baranov as their center span.
Someone was trying to assassinate McGarvey because he had become boss of the CIA. It was a Baranov operation that had been put in place as long as twenty years ago. One that had recently been triggered.
Nikolayev was one of the keys. One of BaranoVs players. Who else?
Where were the bridges? Someone came out of the main office by the elevators and headed toward him. He caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. He knew. It came to him all at once. Suddenly he saw everything. Or at least most of it. All the clues had been in front of him since August, but he had never looked directly at them like he was looking now directly at the clerk.
Delicate. Simple. Even beautiful. And frightening beyond anything that Rencke had ever imagined. A young air force staff sergeant whose name tag read FEDER MAN came down the corridor in a rush. He was agitated. “Mr. Rencke, the operations officer is trying to reach you, sir. It’s urgent.” Rencke looked at the young man, still amazed at what had been hidden in plain sight in front of him all this time.
“Sir, this has to do with the director.” Rencke slowly focused. “What did you say?” “The OD said that there’s been another attempt.” “Shit.
Shit.” Rencke turned and hurried back into the conference room, where he phoned Langley. “Operations.” “This is Rencke. What’s going on?”
“There’s been an explosion in front of Mr. McGarvey’s home in Chevy Chase. Security is on the way, and the Maryland Highway Patrol is already there.” “Was anyone hurt?” Rencke tried with everything he possessed to stay on track. Not to go crazy. But it wasn’t easy. “We don’t have all the details yet, sir. The director was not hurt, but the security detail might have been involved.” “That’d be Dick Yemm.”
“Yes, sir. He does not respond to his pages. Mr. Whittaker has been informed, and he’s issued the recall for all his officers.” “Send a chopper down here for me. I’ll be waiting by the main parking lot.”
“Sir, that won’t be necessary “
“Do it now,” Rencke said menacingly. “Right now.” He hung up, but sat in front of the phone for a full minute as he came to grips with his emotions, which were jumping all over the place. He knew the why, he had a fair idea of the how and a very short list of the who. But he needed the proof, because nobody, not even Mac, would believe him without it. First, he had to make sure that Mac and Mrs. M. were okay. And Liz. He couldn’t forget about Liz. Rencke bundled up his computer, not bothering to shut it down or log off the repository’s mainframe, and took the elevator to the surface. He was stopped at the security checkpoint in the arrivals hall, and his bag was quickly searched before he was allowed to pass through. The snow had tapered off somewhat, but there were halos around the lights. Rencke ran across the driveway, past the flagpole and the bronze Civil War cannon on the median, and stopped at the edge of the nearly empty parking lot.
He started to hop from one foot to the other. The helicopter wasn’t here yet. He cocked an ear, but he could not hear it approaching.
“Goddammit.” If his ride wasn’t here in five minutes, they’d pay.
Someone would pay with their balls. He took out his cell phone and speed dialed McGarvey’s number. It rang four times, then rolled over to the locator at Langley. Rencke broke the connection. Mac had his hands full right now dealing with the mess. He telephoned the hospital and asked for Kathleen McGarvey’s room. “I’m sorry, sir, Mrs.
McGarvey was discharged from the hospital this afternoon,” the operator informed him. “On whose orders?” “I don’t have that information, sir.
You have to talk with the patient’s doctor.” “Okay. Okay. Connect me with Elizabeth Van Buren’s room, please.” “One moment, sir,” the operator said. She came back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Van Buren was also discharged this afternoon.” Rencke cut the connection and speed dialed Liz and Todd’s home phone. Todd answered on the first ring. “Hello.”
“Is Elizabeth with you?” Rencke blurted. “She checked out of the hospital.” “She’s here, in the tub,” Todd replied. “Is something wrong, Otto?”
Rencke closed his eyes, the cold air suddenly felt good on his hot face. He was relieved. At least Elizabeth was safe for the moment.
“They made another attempt on Mac. There was an explosion in front of his house. But the OD said he was okay.” “What about Mrs. M?” “She checked out of the hospital, and now I can’t reach her.” He heard the helicopter in the distance. It was another cause for relief. “I’m heading over to their house now. Whittaker might recall you, but don’t do it, Todd. Stay there with Liz until we can figure out what we’re going to do next.” “Mac told me that he was opening the safe house in the morning. Told me to stick it out here until then.” “Good idea.”
“Okay, there’s a call on my other line. It’s the Company.” “Take care of Liz.” “Hey, I love her, too, remember?” Rencke speed dialed his own apartment, but there was no answer. He and Louise had agreed that she should return to work at the NRO. She was doing nobody any good by staying home. She wanted
to be with him 24/7, but that wasn’t possible. But he had hoped that she might have come home a little early today. He desperately wanted to talk to her. To hear her voice.
He needed comforting. A navy Seasprite Lamps-I, three-man, multipurpose helicopter came in low from the northeast and touched down in the parking lot in a flurry of blowing snow. The copilot helped Rencke into the empty crew seat, and handed him a crash helmet, which he donned and plugged into the ship’s communications system. “I need to get to the director of Central Intelligence’s house,” Rencke spoke into the mic. “It’s up in Chevy Chase. If you don’t know the way, your operations officer can get it from Langley.” “We know the way, sir,” the pilot said, and the machine lifted into the air with a sickening lurch. Rencke hated all helicopters. In fact he didn’t care much for any kind of transportation except the World Wide Web. He hunched down in his seat and pulled his seat harness a little tighter. His shoulder was hurting him, and for the first time today he realized that he was hungry. It was time to go home, where Louise would have something good waiting for him. She claimed that she was a horrible cook, but he knew better.
The view out the cockpit windows was nothing but swirling snow, with a kaleidoscope of meaningless lights somewhere below. Air pockets caused the helicopter to jump all over the place. But the pilot and copilot seemed unconcerned. Washington was like a powerful magnet from which Rencke could not escape. He’d been lonely as hell in Rio, but happy as a clam in France. Until Mac came calling with his problems. He told himself that he had no choice. Mac was his friend. Mrs. M. and Liz were like family. He had to help them. He had to be here in Washington near them, to keep them out of trouble, to keep them safe from harm. But the truth of the matter was that he’d searched for legitimacy all of his life. When he was fourteen his father started beating him and calling him a queer boy. And that same year his mother, in a drunken rage, told him that she wished that she’d had an abortion rather than giving birth to him. In college he’d been treated with some respect because he was bright, but he’d been kicked out when they found him screwing the dean’s secretary on the dean’s desk. That was at a Jesuit university. They didn’t even ask him to leave. He just packed up that afternoon and got out. And in the air force he’d been treated okay, that is after he’d made it through basic training, because he had a handle on mathematics. But that job had lasted only a couple of years, when he was caught having sex with a supply sergeant.
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