The Kill Zone

FIVE

The snow stopped sometime in the middle of the night. McGarvey got up twice to go to the bathroom and then take a turn around the house checking doors, windows, the alarm system. As acting DCI he rated a full-time bodyguard, but he had refused for no other reason than he didn’t want the formality that went with a job he wasn’t sure that he was going to keep. Foolish, as were some of his other habits. He stood for a long time looking out the kitchen window across the golf course. It was two in the morning, and he wanted a cigarette for the first time since he had quit several months ago. The stars were ultrabright hard points in the moonless sky; cold and very distant.

This time when McGarvey went back to bed he slept without dreams, as if he had been drugged; hammered into something like a deep coma. When he awoke a minute or two before the six o’clock alarm he felt more refreshed than he had for months, but the same nagging whispers that something was about to go wrong were back in full force. Kathleen was already up, had the coffee on and was out for her 5-K run. He splashed some water on his face, then put on a tee shirt, a pair of shorts and gym shoes. He turned the television to CNN and started on the treadmill; slowly at first, with a moderate resistance, the machine automatically building to its maximum within a few minutes. It was a mindless physical routine that felt good. His body was even leaner and harder with more stamina than a few months ago when he still smoked, and he was tromping across the mountains in Afghanistan. But his mind wandered away from the television and he was back in the tunnels beneath the ruins of a sixteenth-century castle in Portugal. No lights, water running because the pumps had failed, explosive charges ready to go off, trapping him in a permanent coffin beneath millions of tons of rock. Somewhere in the blackness Arkady Kurshin was waiting to kill him. I won’t die here. Not now, not like this. Panic rising like a secret monster; jaws agape, claws coming to reach. Christ He came back to the present, forty minutes later, his shirt plastered to his body, the muscles in his legs beginning to bunch up, his gut hollow. He switched the treadmill to the cool down mode and looked at the television. Nothing new happening. Still trouble in Afghanistan; an American tourist murdered in Havana; Pakistan reneging on its promises to hunt down al-Quaida terrorists, Iran, Iraq, North Korea.

The treadmill was slowing down. Why had the business with the Russian assassin Arkady Kurshin come to mind now, of all times? He touched the scar on his side, where he had lost a kidney and nearly his life.

Kurshin was dead. The era was gone. He took a long, hot shower and when he had shaved he came back to the bedroom, where Kathleen had laid out a pair of gray slacks, blue blazer, white shirt and club tie.

Old-fashioned, but utilitarian; the clothes had become his new uniform.

Downstairs Kathleen was seated at the kitchen counter, the television on Good Morning America, reading the morning paper with her coffee.

Her cheeks were rosy from outside, and without makeup, her hair undone she looked fresh. “Good morning, darling,” she said, looking up.

“Sleep well?” “Like I was hit over the head.” McGarvey poured a cup of coffee and, standing on the opposite side of the counter from his wife, reached over and gave her a kiss. “How about you?” “Must have been something in the water. I slept like I was dead.” She smiled warmly.

“But then making love with you always does that to me.” “Maybe I should get a patent.” She chuckled at the back of her throat. “Do you want some breakfast?” McGarvey glanced at his watch. It was already coming up on eight. He shook his head. “Dick will be here in a couple of minutes, and it’s going to be a heavy day.” He shrugged. “Mondays.

How about you?” “I have some shopping to do, and Elizabeth and I are having lunch somewhere downtown, if she can get free. She’s supposed to call. At two I have a Red Cross executive board meeting, and I’m supposed to call Sally about the Beaux Arts Ball. Oh, and I’m interviewing two housekeepers, and the carpenters are supposed to start on your study this morning.” He’d forgotten about that. Before he’d moved back the room had been a catchall, a place to iron, and sew on a button, a place for the odd cardboard box. With his Voltaire studies, the room had become a serious workplace. Katy had ordered built-in bookcases, recessed lighting, a new desk and computer station, and a cabinet with long shallow drawers to store maps and large manuscripts flat. “How long’s that going to take?” “A few days. They promised they’d be done by Friday at the latest.” “No chintz.” “No chintz,” she agreed. “Saturday night we’re having the party, so don’t forget.”

They were having the former DCI Roland Murphy and his wife over for cocktails and a buffet supper. It was supposed to be a surprise party for him. She’d invited some of his old friends from the other law enforcement and intelligence agencies in town, a couple of generals from the Pentagon and a few congressmen from the Hill. Inappropriate because of the upcoming hearings? He’d wondered about it, but she didn’t think that it was a problem, and she knew about things like that. “You worry too much,” she said, reading his mind. “Anyway, is there anything you should lock up in your study?” “Voltaire is in the safe, and there’re no Agency files.” “Guns, bombs, missiles?” He laughed and shook his head. Her sense of humor had come back since they were remarried. She wasn’t so desperate to be formal and proper like she used to be. “Seriously, where’s your pistol?” “One is upstairs under my side of the bed, one’s out in the garage ” He opened his coat and turned to reveal the quick draw holster at the small of his back. “And this one.”

“Sorry I asked.” She was suddenly serious. But it was something that she had to deal with if they were going to be together. They had discussed the situation more than once. It’s what I do, he’d told her, and she’d given him the same uncertain look then as she was giving him now. But she was trying. The doorbell rang. “You okay, Katy?” “I’m fine. Something light for supper tonight?” “Sounds good.” He kissed her on the cheek, got his topcoat from the closet and went outside.

His driver bodyguard Dick Yemm was waiting with the armored Cadillac limousine, his eyes constantly scanning the neighborhood. “Mornin’, boss.” He opened the rear door. He was an ex-SEAL, smart, competent, alert and very tough, hard as bar steel and just as compact. “Good morning, Dick. Good weekend?” “Not bad.” McGarvey climbed into the car, and Yemm went around to the driver’s side. “I went down to the Farm to do a little shooting with Todd.” Yemm chuckled. “Either I’m slipping or your son-in-law has gotten a whole hell of a lot better since he married Liz.” “They’re competing with each other.” Yemm pulled out of the driveway and got on the radio. “Hammerhead in route.

ETA twenty-five.” “Roger, one.” “Anything interesting in the over nights McGarvey asked. He unlocked the slender steel case that Yemm had brought out from Operations and withdrew the leather-bound folder that contained the highlights of what the Agency had taken in and analyzed over the weekend. “Pretty quiet for now, knock on wood.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” McGarvey said absently. He started to read and was back on the job, unaware that Yemm was watching him in the rearview mirror. Pakistan and India were rattling their nuclear sabers again, no surprise. Tribal wars continued to erupt all over Afghanistan, but there wasn’t much we could really do about that situation either, except provide support to our peacekeeping forces there. The international hunt for terrorists went on, amidst sharp protests from Iran and North Korea and bombast from Baghdad. The murdered American in Havana hadn’t been a tourist, he was a military intelligence officer from Guantanamo Bay. McGarvey made a mental note to have his acting deputy director Dick Adkins find out what the hell was going on and why this joker had been in Havana in the first place.

Mexico was being besieged by an independent group of wealthy businessmen to destabilize the peso in favor of the American dollar.

Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Russian nuclear stockpiles, the rusting sub fleet in Vladivostok, another attempt on the Pope’s life in Rome and riots in Brazil, where a hard liner faction of military generals were again gaining power. A dozen other trouble spots around the world to absorb his thoughts so that by the time they arrived at CIA headquarters and drove around to the DCI’s private entrance, he was up to speed and ready for Monday morning, the nagging worries of the weekend gone now that he was in the middle of the real world. He had been coming to this place in the woods outside of Washington for a quarter century; he had seen a lot of changes, including the addition of the two annexes behind the main seven-story building of glass and steel. An air of mystery here; of men and women scurrying about with dedicated purpose; rooftops bristling with antennae and satellite dishes; armed guards, closed-circuit lo-lux television monitors, infrared and motion detectors; metal detectors and watchful serious people on every floor; a dark, cathedral hush once you were admitted to the inner sanctum sancto rum of America’s intelligence establishment.

He wanted to hate it, hate its necessity, but each time he came back something stirred in his blood. He glanced toward the main parking lot. It was already filling with a steady stream of traffic off the Parkway; by nine, a half hour from now, more than eight thousand people would be at work here. Monday morning. Some of them excited at the prospects for the new week; some hating it, but for most the same weary acceptance of a job that everyone felt. He and Yemm took the elevator up to the seventh floor, the broad corridor carpeted in soft gray, reasonably good art, including an eclectic mixture of Wyeth, Picasso and Warhol prints on the walls, his suite of offices straight ahead through double glass doors, the offices of the deputy directors of Intelligence and Operations in the corners. The guard at the main elevator down the corridor was on his feet. He’d seen them on the television monitor. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “Mornin’ Charlie.”

“Will you be needing me this morning, boss?” Yemm asked. “I don’t think so.” “I’ll be in the ready room. We’re trying to straighten out the security schedules. You’re not making it any easier going it alone at the house, you know.” “I may not be working here next week.”

Yemm’s eyes narrowed with good humor. “Right, I’ll believe that when I see it.” Yemm took the elevator back down, and McGarvey went into his office. His secretary Dahlia Swanfeld, had his safe opened and was laying out classified material on his desk, along with his schedule for the day and the remainder of the week, his telephone appointments, speeches, staff briefings and meetings, awards ceremonies for outstanding officers, visiting dignitaries and the heads of friendly foreign intelligence services, plus the new ambassador to India, who was coming in for his CIA briefing. A highly competent woman in her early sixties, Ms. Swanfeld had worked for the Agency longer than McGarvey had. Never married, no children, no siblings, no real life that anyone knew about beyond the job, everyone who met her for the first time fell immediately under her spell of good cheer and kindness.

Her gray hair in a bun, her suits always proper, she came from another era; even her voice and diction were those of Miss Manners. “Good morning, Mr. Director,” she said. “I trust that you and Mrs. McGarvey spent a pleasant weekend.” “Relaxing. How about you?” “A very quiet weekend, thank you.” It was the same answer she always gave. She took his coat, and while he flipped through his schedules she went for his coffee. At nine the first meeting of the day with the top officers in the CIA was held in the main conference room. This morning’s agenda covered his Senate subcommittee hearings, a request by the NRO for increased funding to upgrade the present Jupiter satellite system that watched over India and Pakistan; a request by the Directorate of Science and Technology for an expansion of its system QK, which monitored every officer in the field from every foreign station on a twenty-four-hour-per-day basis, comparing each individual’s work with everyone else’s. They would also go over the draft of a brief that McGarvey was scheduled to give the National Security Council on the nuclear situation between Pakistan and India, a half-dozen requests from the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and the television networks for interviews on his appointment as DCI, as well as requests for back grounders on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cuba and Chechnya. At ten he was to meet with the U.S. Intelligence Board, which consisted of the heads of all the U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies, over the Pakistan issue. There was a possibility that Pakistan and India would soon be going thermonuclear. The President and his National Security Council were going to want a very tight estimate on the situation, and soon. At noon he was scheduled to award four medals to two of Dave Whittaker’s clandestine ops people for work they’d done in Tajikistan uncovering the links between four Russian officers who’d stolen a small nuclear device from a military depot in Dushanbe and Osama bin Laden.

Afterward he was having lunch with four post docs from Harvard who were working on research papers dealing with the economic impact that the CIA’s presence in some third world countries was having. His job was to help them as much as possible to find the right answers and point them in directions that would do the least harm to the Company. At one he would be returning phone calls and working on the draft of his opening statement to the Senate Armed Forces Subcommittee on Intelligence. At two he would be meeting with the CIA’s general counsel, Carleton Paterson, about the hearings. At four he had a series of meetings with various department heads in the Directorates of Operations and Intelligence on specific issues and concerns, many of them about personnel, committee appointments, mission emphasis and, as usual, funding. Sometime after that he had to fit in the new ambassador to India. By six he would do his laps in the CIA’s basement swimming pool, and hopefully by seven he could leave for the day.

Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the snow-covered woods, and for a moment McGarvey stopped to think how many decisions had been made from this room some of them good, even brilliant, others incredibly stupid all of them affecting the lives of someone somewhere in the world. Now it was his turn if he wanted to run the gauntlet in the Senate. Something he still wasn’t sure that he wanted to do. There were a couple of Wyeth prints on the walls, bookcases along one, couch, leather chairs and a coffee table along another; a private bathroom and, directly off his office, a small private dining room that he often used for small conferences. A door connected directly with the office of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Underlined in red was the meeting with Carleton Paterson. The patrician former New York corporate attorney had a respect for McGarvey that just bordered on the grudging, but he had done his best to pave the way for the hearings.

“Hammond will try to embarrass you and the Agency at every possible turn,” Paterson kept warning. “His aim is to get you to withdraw of your own accord; short of that he’ll want to prejudice public opinion so badly against you that the President will be forced to pull your nomination. It’s happened before.”

“Maybe Hammond is right,” McGarvey told him. “About you being the wrong man for the job?” Paterson asked. He shook his head, took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his handkerchief. “The CIA has been run by political animals for too long.” McGarvey started to object, but Paterson held him off. “In the end the general became your friend, I understand your feelings. But Murphy was primarily a politician. Something you are not.” Paterson put his glasses back on.

“When someone cuts open my chest I don’t want it to be the president of the hospital board. I want it to be the surgeon who’s gotten his hands bloody; someone who’s done a thousand heart transplants, the last dozen of which he did just last week.” He inclined his head. “You, my scholar with a gun, are just that man.” He chuckled. “The problem will be getting you confirmed. Hammond’s not your worst enemy. You are.” Ms. Swanfeld set his coffee down. “You’re free after lunch, the four professors from Harvard canceled, and the pool is yours at six.” “Where’s my daughter?” “She and Mr. Van Buren are still at the Farm. They’re scheduled to come back later this morning.” McGarvey took off his jacket and loosened his tie. “Have Carleton up here at two sharp, I think I can give him two hours.” “Yes, sir.” Dick Adkins, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence came from his adjoining office with a newspaper. “You’ll need every bit of those two hours, and then some,” he said. He nodded to Miss Swanfeld. “Will that be all, sir?” she asked. “Let’s do letters after lunch.” “Yes, sir.” Miss Swanfeld turned and left the office, softly closing the door behind her. “She’s priceless.” “I’d be lost without her.” “Have you seen the Port?” “Not yet.” Adkins laid the Washington Post in front of McGarvey. “Apparently we tried to recruit the good senator right out of college in ‘69, but he couldn’t make it through the confidence course. He ended up getting himself drafted and sent to “Nam.” The headline read: CIA WANNA-BE GUNNING FOR NATION’S TOP SPOOK.

“Maybe this will quiet him down.”

“Not likely. Nobody likes us right now, and Hammond didn’t dodge the draft. There’s talk about putting him up for President in three years.” McGarvey sat back. “We’ve survived worse.” “Name one,”

Adkins shot back. He was a little irascible this morning, his eyes red. He was a short man, a little paunchy and usually diffident; this morning his cheeks were hollow, and he looked like he wanted to bite something. “Bad weekend?” “Ruth is sick again.” His eyes narrowed.

“Every god dammed doctor we’ve taken her to says the same thing; it’s in her head. There’s nothing physically wrong with her.” His jaw tightened. “But they don’t have to hold her shoulders while she’s heaving her guts out in the toilet bowl at three in the morning for the fifth time that night.” “What about a psychologist?” “She won’t see one,” he replied bitterly. He had changed over the past months. They had two girls, but they were away at school. It was for the best, but it left Dick alone to handle the tough situation. “Maybe you should get out of here for a couple of weeks,” McGarvey suggested. “Take her someplace warm. Hawaii.” “After the hearings.” Adkins cracked a smile. “God only knows what I’d come back to if I left now.”

“Seriously, Dick, there’s no job in the world worth your wife. Anytime you want to pull the pin, say the word and you’re out of here.” Adkins nodded tiredly. “I appreciate it. But for now she doesn’t seem to be getting any worse same old same old. We’ll go after the hearings.” “I was thinking about that over the weekend.” “I know, I talked to Carleton on Friday. He’s worried that you’re going to tell the President no thanks, and hang on here only until someone else can be confirmed.” “It wouldn’t be the end of the world.” “True. But the general picked you for the job, and he’s a pretty good judge of character. At least stick it out for a couple of years. This place has never been run so well.” “Did you read the over nights An idiot could do this job.” “And some have,” Adkins said. “Lots of grass fires out there, any one of which could start a forest fire.” “Haynes has other people he can name who’d get past Hammond without a problem.”

“Need we say more?” Adkins asked. “This place would go back to being run like a Fortune 500 company, or worse, like a political constituency. I for one don’t think that would do the country any good. And I’m not alone in that opinion. But it’s your call. Take your own advice; if you want to pull the pin, just say the word. But don’t screw around, Mac. Don’t bullshit the troops. Either do the job, or get the hell out right now and save us all a lot of trouble.”

Adkins was right, of course. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said THE BUCK STOPS HERE. The sign on McGarvey’s desk could have read, THE BULLSHIT STOPS HERE. He had a hell of a staff; the right people at the right time; professionals who were willing, like Adkins was this morning, to tell the boss the way it really was without fear of repercussions. The CIA had not been run that way for years, if it ever had. He looked up. “I want to see the in-depths on the over nights especially the India-Pakistan situation. I think it’s going to heat up even faster than anyone believes, and we’ll have to play catch up over there.”

“I’ll set up an Intelligence Operations briefing this afternoon.”

“Let’s put it on the nine o’clock agenda. I want something for USIB at ten. But first I want to see a file summary of everything we know.”

“Will do.” “Now, what do we have on the situation in Havana? Do you know who the guy was?” “Navy lieutenant commander Paul Andersen, stationed at the Naval Intelligence unit at Guantanamo Bay. He flew up to Miami on Thursday, picked up a new identity, and Friday flew to Havana with a delegation of travel agents and cruise ship reps. He’d apparently set up a meeting with Hector Sanchez, the second-in-command in Cuban Military Intelligence Internal Affairs. Something is supposedly going on in Castro’s private security detail. Sanchez was going to talk to Andersen in trade for asylum and presumably a stack of cash.” “Was it a setup?” “Naval Intelligence is still working the problem. Havana police found his naked body in the alley behind his hotel. He’d been beaten up and then took a dive, or was thrown, out his tenth-floor window. That was about ten minutes after the prostitute he’d hired left the room.” “What about our people on the ground?” “They’re working on it. But they’ll have to burn a couple of assets to get anywhere.” “Do it,” McGarvey said.

“All right,” Adkins replied. “No one is safe anymore. But that has to change.” “We’ll give it a try.” When Adkins was gone, McGarvey called Otto Rencke’s extension in the computer center on the third floor. Back like this he was having trouble with people depending on him. Part of the job. But trust gave him an odd feeling between his shoulder blades, as if someone with a high-power rifle was taking a bead on him.

Otto answered on the first ring, his voice sharp, even shrill. “What do you want?” “Good morning, what’s eating your ass?” “I’m busy. What do you want?” “I want to know what you were doing at my house yesterday, and why you just sat in the driveway without ringing the bell.” “Somebody else.” “What?” “Somebody else. I wasn’t out there.

Louise and I spent the entire weekend painting the apartment. And each other.” Otto’s tone of voice softened a little; more like his old self. “Maybe you oughta get security out there, ya know. Don’t want it purple. That’s the color for a shroud. Bad. Bad. Bad dog.

Something might be gainin’ on you, ya know.” “What are you talking about?” “Not ready yet,” Otto replied distantly, as if his mind had suddenly gone elsewhere. “Difficult, delicate. Still pastels, but I don’t know, can’t say. Just look up, Mac; we all gotta keep our eyes really open, ya know. All the time, not just in the night.” Rencke broke the connection, something chiming in the background noises of his office, and McGarvey was mystified. When Otto was in the middle of something he tended to go off to his own little world. But this was different. He had never had this harsh an edge before.

SIX

The U.S. Intelligence Board meeting ran ten minutes past the lunch hour, but nobody grumbled. There was a sense of accomplishment now that a new DCI was at the helm. McGarvey presented the distinguished service intelligence medals to Whittaker’s people, grabbed a quick sandwich at his desk while dictating letters to Ms. Swanfeld, then returned a few phone calls and did some work on the draft of his opening statement. He spent a couple of contentious hours with Carleton Paterson, who insisted on playing devil’s advocate; acting as he thought Senator Hammond might act, working at every turn to provoke McGarvey into making an angry outburst; say something impolitic. “If it gets too bad, I’ll keep my mouth shut,” McGarvey promised. “I might throttle the senator, but I won’t say a thing.” “Hammond’s not a bad man like Joe McCarthy was,” Paterson said seriously. “He really believes that what he is doing is for the good of the country.” “I know, and I won’t actually choke him to death,” McGarvey said, smiling.

“Not unless I snap.” Paterson gathered his papers and stuffed them into his attache case. “I used to wonder if there was anything behind that super efficient cool, macho exterior of yours. Like maybe a sense of humor.” He shook his head. “I guess I just found out. I suggest you don’t take your wry wit into the hearing chambers. You won’t have a lot of understanding friends there.” “No DCI has.” “True.” After his directorate meetings and his talk with the ambassador to India, he went down to the competition-size pool in the basement gym to do his laps. It was 6:00 P.M. Yemm swam with him, as usual. DCIs were not allowed to drown themselves, even accidentally, especially not on Yemm’s watch. And anyway, Yemm needed the exercise, too. The act of swimming was mindless, just like the treadmill in the mornings, freeing McGarvey’s mind to drift to Otto Rencke, who, despite his eccentricities, or perhaps because of them, was possibly the most valuable man in the Agency. He was able to see things that no one else could. He’d once explained to McGarvey that he had worked on the problem of describing color to a blind Indian mathematician. “Toughest thing I ever did, ya know. Oh, wow, but it was cool.” Using a complicated series of tensor calculus matrices, he was able to first establish neutrality white. Then he separated the equations into their constituent parts; the way white light separates into a rainbow of colors through a prism. “The eighth-order equations were my prism, and in the end Ravi kissed me, and said, “I see. Thank you very much.” “

The same concept in reverse, representing very difficult mathematics by colors, was Otto’s breakthrough. He’d already quantified millions of pieces of seemingly random data and intelligence information into the form of mathematical equations, so now he could reduce the complicated decisions that an intelligence officer had to make into colors.

Pastels were at the edge of his understanding; not strong, not clear.

But lavender, and especially purple stood for very bad situations acts of terrorism, assassinations, even wars. To this point Rencke had never been wrong, not once. When a color showed up he could predict what was coming. They got dressed at seven. On the way down to the car they stopped at the third-floor computer center. This was where Otto usually worked, in the midst of the Agency’s mainframe and three interconnected Cray supercomputers. The huge, dimly lit blue room was kept cooler than the rest of the building. It smelled strongly of electronic equipment, and no one ever wanted to speak above a whisper.

Mysterious forces beyond human ken were in operation here. The computer was like the tabernacle that held the host on a Catholic Church altar; holy of holies. There were niches and alcoves scattered throughout the room, nestled amidst the equipment, where the human operators worked. They hadn’t seen Otto for most of the afternoon, though no one could say exactly when he had left. It was like that down here; he was an elusive figure, like the shadows beneath a shifting pattern of clouds. The niche where he usually worked was a filthy mess of computer printouts, paper cups, milk cartons and McDonald’s wrappers strewn on the floor and on a long worktable; wastepaper baskets overflowing, shredder baskets filled, classified satellite downloads lying everywhere. The infrared and visible light images appeared to be mostly of Eastern Europe and Russia. McGarvey recognized the Baltic coastlines of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia up to Finland, and then the cities of Helsinki, Leningrad and as far east as Moscow. One of the monitors displayed the sword-and-shield logo of the old KGB against a pastel pink background. McGarvey touched enter, and the screen immediately went blank. “Doesn’t look like he wants anyone snooping around,” Yemm said. “Apparently not,” McGarvey replied absently. He stared at the blank screen. He was concerned. There was nothing currently on the front burner about the KGB. But Otto was in the middle of something. What? Time to talk to the Company shrink?

He looked at the piles of classified photographs littering the area.

He didn’t want to lose Otto. Or even worse, he didn’t want Otto to run amok; the entire CIA could suffer. The damage could ultimately be worse than what Aldrich Ames had done to them. He telephoned the computer center night duty supervisor and asked him to clean up the monitor area that Rencke had been using and secure any classified documents he found. “He won’t be happy, Mr. McGarvey.” I’ll talk to him.” On the way home he stared at the heavy traffic on the Parkway, suddenly depressed. It was dark already, and it was supposed to snow again. He shivered even though it was warm in the car. “Do you ever think about getting out of the business, Dick?” he asked. “Every day, boss,” Yemm replied. “Every day.” The answer seemed particularly bitter to McGarvey. But then everyone was in a screwed-up mood lately.

It had to be the weather. And for him it had to be that he had no real idea why he had accepted the President’s appointment. Time to step down. He’d done his bit. He’d fought the wars, though very often he had to wonder if what he had accomplished had really mattered at all, or if his career had been nothing but a wasted effort. And here he was now at the helm. It was a job he’d never wanted. Yet almost every DCI whom he’d served under had been in his estimation primarily a politician. Not a career intelligence officer, like in Britain. The CIA was falling apart. Had been for years. The Agency had become nothing more than a glorified extension of the White House; DCIs told the administration nothing more than it wanted to hear, when it wanted to hear it. Time for the truth. Trouble was that McGarvey didn’t know if he was up to the job.

SEVEN

He let himself in with his key, and his spirits lifted. It was good to be home, another Monday behind him. He entered the alarm code on the touch pad put his briefcase on the hall table, hung his coat in the closet and went back to the kitchen. Kathleen was putting a pan in the oven, and something on the stove smelled wonderful. “Hi, Katy, how was your day?” She gave a sudden start and turned around. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and blue jeans, and wore a pair of his white socks. On her the clothes looked like something out of a fashion magazine. “You startled me.” She looked like she had been pulled back from a mill on miles away against her will, and she resented it. But then she shook her head ruefully. “Sorry, darling. I guess I was daydreaming.” “I know the feeling.” He went around the counter and gave her a kiss. “Do I get to see what’s cooking?”

“Don’t push your luck, I don’t do this for just anybody.” She gave him a stern look, but she couldn’t hold it. She smiled. “Chili, corn bread and a salad. Down-home.” “Sounds good,” McGarvey said. “So, how was your day?” “Busy. How about you?” “It was definitely a Monday.” “Go change. I’ll make you a drink.” “You’ve got a deal,” he said, suddenly weary. He went upstairs, changed into a flannel shirt, jeans and moccasins. His eyes were bloodshot from the pool water, and his muscles were sore. Each year it seemed to get a little bit tougher to come back from a strong workout. He stopped and looked out the window. The wind had risen, and the snow had a definite slant. Bad night to be out. He shivered, for some reason thinking about bad nights like this one, and some a lot worse, when he’d been out; stalking his prey someone unexpected, some monster coming out of the blizzard and darkness. What other monsters were lurking out there now, coming toward them? He couldn’t shake the feeling of foreboding, of menace that had been hanging over him like a dark cloud for the past several days. Time to get out, the thought once again flashed across his mind. Go. Run. Run. Run. Find a hole and jump in like he had done before. For the sake of Katy and Liz. Or for self-preservation?

He’d never had the guts to ask himself that question. Maybe it was time to start. Self-doubt settled heavy on his shoulders, pushing him down; a nearly impossible burden to bear. He walked out of the bedroom and went downstairs, pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, grasping for a lightness that he didn’t feel because he owed it to his wife to try at least as hard as she was trying. She had poured him a cognac neat, and she was laying out the place settings at the counter.

“I thought we’d eat in here. That okay with you?” She had turned on the gas logs in the French fireplace that separated the kitchen from the family room. McGarvey nodded. “How was your day, Katy?” She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Nothing unusual.” “You look a little frazzled.” She was on the other side of the counter, and she cocked her head as if she was listening for something. “The confirmation hearings start tomorrow, don’t they?” “Is that what’s getting to you?”

“I saw the Post this morning. They think that you’re going to have a bad time of it. Are they going to stop you?”

He was relieved that that’s all that was bothering her. They’d not talked very much about the Senate hearings except that their lives, hers included, would be under a microscope for a week or two. It was an inevitable part of the process. Worse than running for elected office because you couldn’t campaign. No one was supposed to want this job. If you did, you were automatically suspect. “They might. Would that bother you?” She thought about it. “What if you are confirmed as DCI, Kirk? How long will you keep the job?” “I don’t know. Maybe I won’t take it in the first place. Look, Katy, if ”

“I’m serious. Would you make a career of it like Roland did? Peggy told me that it almost killed him.” She was stressed out. “Now that we’ve come this far I want some time with you.” “I’ll call the President in the morning and tell him I’m out.” “No,” Kathleen replied sharply. “It’s not worth it, what it’s doing to you. I’ll stick it out until they get someone else.” She shook her head as he was talking. “That’s not what I meant. I simply want to know how long you’ll stay.” McGarvey didn’t know what to say. He felt that whatever answer he gave her would be the wrong one. “Three or four years,” he finally said. “I owe them that much.” Kathleen stared wide-eyed at him for a moment or two, then nodded. “I can deal with that,” she said, simply. “I haven’t been confirmed yet.” “You will be,” she said, her mood a lot lighter now.

She laughed. “They’d be fools to let you go. You’re what the Agency needs right now, and everybody knows it.” “Is that the scuttlebutt in town?” McGarvey asked. Katy had always been well connected in Washington. She knew people, heard things, noticed things. “What an ugly word,” she said, amused. “But that’s the consensus.” She turned and got the plates and bowls from the cabinet. “I’m not going to watch on television. Hammond is a pompous ass, and he’ll try to score points off you.” She got the silverware and napkins. “But if you push back, he’ll quit. He’s all bluster.” “That’s about what Carleton said,”

McGarvey replied. “How long before dinner?” “Twenty minutes.”

“Right, I have to make a phone call.” McGarvey took his drink, got his briefcase from the hall table and went into his study. The room was a mess. His desk and chair had been moved to the middle and covered with plastic, but the couch and everything else had been moved out somewhere. Sections of two walls had been stripped to the bare studs beneath the drywall, wires dangled loosely from a hole in the center of the ceiling, plaster dust and sawdust covered every surface, and the blinds had been removed from the big window. The carpenters had left their toolboxes and a portable radio in a corner. He uncovered his desk, found the telephone and called the night duty officer in the Directorate of Operations on the encrypted line. He had thought about this all the way home after seeing the logo on Otto’s computer.

“Four-seven-eight-seven, Newby.” “This is McGarvey. Ho wYe things shaping up?” It was after midnight, Greenwich Mean Time and the twenty-four-hour summaries were starting to arrive at Langley from the foreign stations and posts. “Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” Jay Newby said. He was one of the old reliable hands who’d cut his teeth in Eastern Europe during the Cold War years. At one time he had been a hell-raiser. But he was on his third marriage now and he had become a stay-at-home, though he didn’t mind night duty. “Nothing significant.”

“How about Moscow station?” “Nothing above a grade three,” Newby said.

“I’m scanning. Are you looking for anything in particular, Mr.

Director?” “Just fishing.” “The SVR is asking Interpol for some help,” Newby said. The SVR was the renamed and slightly reorganized foreign section of the old KGB. “Evidently they lost track of one of their people, and they want him back. Probably cleaned out someone’s bank account and skipped the country.” “Do we have a name?”

“Nikolayev. Dr. Anatoli Nikolaevich. Would you like me to send his file over to you tonight?” “Not right now. But you can include it in the morning report. Anything else?” “Not from Moscow. The navy is asking for help in Havana, that just came over. And we’ve got the heads up on a possible operation in Mexico City. We’re passing both items to Mr. Whittaker right now.” Dave Whittaker was the DDO, and nothing escaped his attention. “Quiet night.” “Yes, sir.”

McGarvey was about to hang up, but another thought struck him.

“Have you already pulled Nikolayev’s file?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Rencke asked for it yesterday.”

“Thanks, Jay. Have a good one.” McGarvey hung up and stood there, lost in thought for a few moments. Nikolayev was a name he hadn’t heard in a lot of years. If he had to guess he would have thought that the old man was dead, along with just about the entire Baranov crowd.

He had been the chief psychologist for Department Viktor. One of the handpicked few. A golden boy.

Now he was missing, and Otto was looking for him.

He went back to the kitchen as Kathleen was about to call him. She had put some soft jazz on the stereo, and they sat together at the counter.

She’d always been an elegant woman but something of an indifferent cook. Once they hired a new housekeeper the woman would cover that task. In the meantime Katys cooking had improved, though he figured that if he told her as much she’d probably quit and they would end up eating out every night or making do with TV dinners. The other problem was that before they hired any house staff the CIA would first have to do a background check, and that could take time. Her old housekeeper had been a good cook, however, and the chili and corn bread were her recipes. “Just what the doctor ordered,” he said when he was finished.

Katy got up to pour them coffee, and he thought that a cigarette would be good right now. A Company shrink had told him once that among other things he was an obsessive compulsive “Do you want anything else?” she asked. McGarvey looked up at her, and at that moment he thought that he had never been so lucky in all of his life that they had come back to each other. All the wasted, terrible years they had spent apart, mad at each other, could never be regained. But that didn’t matter as long as they had here and now. She gave him a quizzical look. “A penny.” “I was thinking how lucky we are.” She smiled but then looked away. “I’m getting worried about Elizabeth. I think that something might be wrong.” “Physically? Mentally?” “With her pregnancy. But she won’t tell me anything.”

“She and Todd probably had a fight.” Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that.”: “I’ll talk to her in the morning ”

“Tonight, Kirk. Please.”

Kathleen refused his help with the cleanup so McGarvey took his coffee into the study to call their son-in-law. Van Buren had been a hand-to-hand and exotic weapons instructor at the CIA’s training facility outside Williamsburg when Elizabeth took the course. She was a few years younger than Todd, but every bit as stubborn and willful.

They were madly in love with each other, but their relationship was complex and extremely competitive. No rookie field officer, especially not a woman, not even if she was the boss’s daughter, was going to tell him how to do his job. And no bullshit testosterone factory was going to hold doors and fight off the gremlins to protect the little woman tending the home fires for her. She had gotten pregnant last year, but lost the baby in the third month. The miscarriage devastated both of them until she got pregnant again. But more than that the ordeal had bonded them even closer than before. They were a single unit as flexible as a willow tree and yet as strong as bar titanium. But they still fought like cats and dogs. They lived down in Falls Church in a carriage house that belonged to the estate his parents owned. He answered after a couple of rings. It was an unsecured line so McGarvey’s number showed up on Van Buren’s caller ID. “Hi, Mac, you all set for tomorrow?” “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” McGarvey pulled the cover off his chair and sat down. There was classical guitar music in the background, and Todd sounded relaxed, even mellow.

“But at least it’ll be interesting.” Van Buren chuckled. “That it will be. Did you know that the pool is up to eight hundred bucks?” “I almost hate to ask: What pool?” “The exact hour and minute you take a shot at Hammond and he goes down in flames.” Th atM be about three minutes before Carleton Paterson has a heart attack.” “Two for one,”

Van Burean said. “How’s Mrs. M.?” “She’s a little worried about Liz,” McGarvey told him. “Is everything okay?” “If you mean her pregnancy, she’s healthy as a horse. She saw the doctor this afternoon and he gave her the thumbs-up. But I think that she’s going crazy on me.” “Pickles and ice cream?” “I wish it was that easy. She’s into conspiracies. It’s bad enough when a civilian goes looking for monsters under the bed, but it’s ten times worse when a CIA field officer does it, especially a pregnant one.” “Are you serious?”

“She’s got Otto convinced. They’ve been working on something for the past week or two. I can’t get it out of her, maybe you can.” McGarvey tried to decide how he should be taking this. His daughter was a trained CIA field officer, who, along with her husband, worked special projects for the Directorate of Operations. If she was working on a legitimate operation, there were certain procedures she was required to follow that would eventually come to his attention. He’d seen or heard nothing until now. On the other hand, McGarvey encouraged all of his people to take the initiative. Nobody would get cut off at the knees for following up on a hunch even if it led nowhere. “Keep an eye on her, Todd. I don’t want her going too crazy on us. But don’t tell her I said so.” Van Buren chuckled again. “I’m just her husband. What am I supposed to do if her own father is afraid of her? Do you want to talk to her? She’s in the shower now, but when she gets out I’ll have her call.” “Tell her to call her mother.” “Will do,” Van Buren said.

“Good luck tomorrow.” “Thanks.” McGarvey put the phone down and sat for a long time staring at the bare studs in the wall, but not really seeing them. The same nagging at the back of his consciousness had started again; like someone or something gently scratching at the back door in the middle of the night. He went back to the kitchen to get more coffee. Kathleen was just finishing up. She gave him an expectant look. “Liz was in the shower. Todd’s going to have her call when she gets out.” “Is everything okay?” “She saw the doctor this afternoon. Everything’s fine.” Kathleen was relieved, yet she looked like a startled deer caught in the flash of headlights, frozen in place but wanting desperately to run. McGarvey took her in his arms and held her. “It’s going to be okay. Not like the last time.” She looked up at him. “Promise?”

He smiled. “Scout’s honor.” Karhleen had a strong sense of social order and traditions and proper behavior. For her they were the distinguishing marks of civilization. She’d always felt that way in part because she was her father’s daughter. Walter Fairchild, until he killed himself, had been the CEO of a major Richmond investments and mortgage banking company. He’d been a Southern gentleman of the oldest tradition proud, arrogant, even vain. When his wife took off with another man, Kathleen was left in his care. She’d been twelve. For a long time she hated her mother and idolized her father. But those emotions had changed with time, and with her father’s death, left her with an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong; truth and lies; responsibility and commitment, fair play. But then she met Mac at a navy commander’s ball in Washington, D.C. He was a spy working for the Central Intelligence Agency. He was ruggedly handsome. He looked dangerous; there was even a hint of cruelty in his green eyes that she found devastatingly attractive, He was the opposite of the men she’d known in Richmond, the boys she’d dated in college and the men she worked for in the Smith Barney Washington office. In a week they were sleeping together. In a couple of months they were married. And in the first year Elizabeth was born. It was shortly after that when Mac began disappearing without explanation. Sometimes he was gone overnight; sometimes for days; and a couple of times for several weeks.

He would not give her a straight answer, except that it had something to do with the CIA. He would make vague hints that it wouldn’t do for them to develop any close friends. It was nobody’s business what he did for a living. To avoid the lies, you avoided people. She was infuriated. How dare her husband isolate her and keep things from her.

It was like her parents’ marriage, only in reverse. Her husband was secretive, just like her mother had been. He was frequently gone, just like her mother had been. And she was certain that he would leave one day and never come back, just like her mother had. She was well enough connected in Washington because of her father and because of her own work at Smith Barney that she began getting discreet answers to discreet questions. Her husband worked for the CIA. He worked in something called Clandestine Operations. And it was possible that he was a black operations officer. That meant he did things. Spying in Russia and Germany. Sabotage. Blackmail. Maybe even murder.

The Santiago trip had been the last straw, though at the time she had no idea where he had gotten himself off to. When he came home, however, she could tell just by looking at him that he had done something that was over the top even for him. “That’s it,” she’d told him. “No more. I want your word on it. Scout’s honor.” “I can’t,”

he’d told her. “Then it’s going to be either Elizabeth and me, or the CIA. Your choice.” He’d turned without a word and walked out.

Scout’s honor, she thought now. The words were coming back to haunt her.

EIGHT

McGarvey took the half-dozen situation reports he’d brought home with him from his briefcase, piled them on the corner of his desk and opened the first one. It was titled: Afghanistan: Probable Escalation. The Directorate of Intelligence produced the reports on a weekly basis for every hot spot. They were classified so they were not supposed to leave the building, but that was a rule that McGarvey and a lot of DCIs before him broke. The workload was simply too great to get it all done at Langley. This report was bound in a gray cover with orange diagonal stripes, which meant fighting was going on right now. It had only been a year since he had returned from Afghanistan himself. They had been fighting then, and they were still fighting amongst themselves even though the Taliban had been defeated and bin Laden’s al-Quaida terrorists were all dead, in captivity or on the run. A stupid waste of lives, he thought. Yet for the Afghanis there really wasn’t much in the way of other options. He had seen the apathy in the eyes of the mujahedeen fighters: the hunger, the lack of education, the fear and suspicion of outsiders, especially of the modern world, the West. Even now. McGarvey took his cup into the kitchen, got some coffee and then looked in on Kathleen at the computer in the next room. She was engrossed with her work on the Beaux Arts Ball, the second most important social event of any Washington season behind the presidential inaugural balls. She had raised millions for the Red Cross and for the Special Olympics. A lot of people, including three presidents, had a lot of respect for her. She was something, he thought. He went back to the study with his coffee and picked up his reading. The DDIs Situation Reports, some running to five hundred pages with maps, graphs, photographs, satellite and NSA electronic information as well as on-the-ground eyewitness reports, came out every Monday. They were distributed to the top officials in the U.S. intelligence establishment; the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon and the State Department. The reports were digested, rewritten and updated so that every Thursday a National Intelligence Estimate and Watch Report could be generated. The NIE gave information on everything going on in the world that had a potential to threaten the security of the U.S. The Watch Report was a heads up on situations where fighting was going on or could be about to start. Both reports were sent to the President and his National Security Council, who set policy. It was up to the Director of Central Intelligence to oversee the process and to be called to account on Fridays. Then, on Mondays, like now, it started all over again. But he was having a hard time keeping on track tonight. Something was whispering in the wind around the eaves; in the sighing of the tree branches on the fifteenth fairway behind the house; in the nasty rumor-filled crackle of the plastic pool cover burdened with snow and ice. The pool water had not frozen. It was a death trap, the thought came to his mind. Fall in by accident, become entangled in the blue waffle cover and drown or suffocate. He telephoned Jay Newby on the night desk again. For some reason Mondays almost always seemed to be quiet. It was as if the bad guys had stopped after the hectic weekend to catch their breath. The night duty staff usually played pinochle at a buck a point. It was a ruthless game, and they hated to be interrupted. “Four-seven-eight-seven,” Newby answered sharply.

“Did the Russians mention when Nikolayev went missing?” McGarvey asked. “Ah, Mr. McGarvey, we were just about to call you, but just a minute and I’ll pull up the Moscow station file,” he said, shifting gears. McGarvey could hear several computer printers in action, someone talking and music in the background. “Mid to late August,”

Newby said. “But they don’t say who reported him missing, or why the urgency to find him. But they do want him back.” “Okay, now what were you going to call me about?” “The operation in Mexico City. Tony wants a green light. We expected to pass this to Mr. Whittaker, but he asked not to be disturbed for anything below a grade two.” Antonio Lanzas was the Mexico City COS. “He’s at his daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner.” “Yes, sir. And Mr. Adkins is at Columbia with his wife.” McGarvey had been expecting it. “Any word from the hospital?”

“Nothing yet.” “Keep me posted,” McGarvey said. “Yes, sir. Dick Yemm is coming out with the operational order for your signature.” “Very well.” The CIA hadn’t been run with such a tight rein since the forties and fifties in the days of Allen Dulles and Wild Bill Donovan, who insisted on knowing everything that was going on. Such close control was impossible now because there was far too much information streaming into Langley twenty-four hours a day for any one man to handle. But McGarvey insisted on knowing the details of any action that had the potential to threaten lives or embarrass the U.S. The operation called Night Star was the brainstorm of George Daedo, one of Tony’s field officers. Six months ago he’d gone to a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, alone for once, although he had the reputation of being a ladies’ man. At the first intermission he went to the smoking courtyard where he stumbled on a terrific argument between Fulvio Martinez, who was a vice counsel in the Mexican Intelligence Service, and his horse-faced wife, Idalia. As far as Daedo was concerned it was a gold seam; an opportunity not to be missed. Over the signature of his COS, Daedo began his careful and very delicate seduction of the intelligence officer’s unhappy wife.

The affair had caused some heated discussion in the DO which was headed by a very moral David Whittaker, who thought that such operations were fundamentally wrong. McGarvey agreed with his DDO in principle.

But in the real world the righteous way wasn’t always the right way.

Even though he had been overridden, Whittaker insisted on being included in the loop every step of the way. The entire DO had taken an interest in the case; in fact; it had become like a soap opera. Will she or won’t she? What was at stake was nothing less than the inside track to Mexican intelligence. At risk, of course, was the acute embarrassment to the U.S.” as well as the final destruction of a troubled marriage, but a marriage for all of that. The request for the go/no go decision tonight meant that Daedo was asking permission for the final action; that of taking Mrs. Martinez to bed. McGarvey went into the hall and switched on the outside lights, then went back to the kitchen. Kathleen stood, her hip against the counter, cradling a cup of tea in both hands and staring at the telephone. “I’m not sneaking up on you, and I’m not scaring you, so don’t jump out of your skin this time.” She turned and smiled. “I was just thinking that after the hearings maybe we should take a few days and get away from here. Does that sound good to you?” “Someplace warm.” “Absolutely,” Kathleen said enthusiastically. She nodded toward the study. “Are you getting anything done in that mess?” “Some reading. Most of it pretty boring.

But it’d be easier without the plaster dust.” “Just a few days.”

“Dick Yemm is on his way over with something for me to sign.” “Use the family room,” she said automatically. “The two of you can’t get anything done in the study.” “How’re the invitations coming?” “Pretty good. But the final list is going to depend on whether or not you’re confirmed as DCI.” “You don’t want to know which list I’d prefer.”

She laughed lightly. “I wouldn’t even have to guess. But there are obligations that come with the job.” “I know-” “Social obligations, my darling husband,” she stressed. “That means a tuxedo and no smart-alec ky comments to get a rise out of our guests.” “Throw a stick at a pack of dogs, and the one that yelps is the one that got hit.” She gave him a sharp look.

He spread his hands. “I’ll behave myself.” He came around the counter, rinsed his cup in the sink and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Really.” “I’m going to hold you to it,” she said sternly. The doorbell rang. “Has Liz called yet?” Kathleen’s lips compressed. She shook her head. “I’m going to have to call her since she’s obviously too busy to pick up a telephone and call me.” “She’s a little shit,”

McGarvey said, trying to keep it light. “It runs in the family.” “I’m going upstairs. Say hi to Dick,” Katy said, and she took her cup and the guest list and left the kitchen as McGarvey went to answer the door. The fact that Kathleen was having her own tough time because of the hearings right in the middle of their daughter’s pregnancy made it difficult all around. But this, too, will pass, he thought. And the sooner the better. Dick Yemm, a leather dispatch case in hand, his coat collar hunched up against the cold, his dark hair speckled with snow, was grinning crookedly. “No rest for the wicked,” he said.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” McGarvey asked, letting him in. “About as much as anyone else in the business, boss.” He followed McGarvey down the hall into the family room, where McGarvey motioned him to a bar stool.

“Want a beer?” Yemm hesitated. “How about a cognac?” “That sounds good,” Yemm said. He unlocked the dispatch case and withdrew the thin file folder with the mission authorization form. McGarvey gave him his drink and took the folder. “Used to be in the old days that everybody was screwing everybody else, and no one took any notice,” Yemm said gloomily. “Now it’s different, and I don’t know if we’re better off for it.” “These days we think twice before we do something. That’s a change for the better.” “She was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” “Yeah,” McGarvey said. He took a pen from Yemm, signed the form and handed them back. “Sometimes we’re not very honorable men.

Expediency without integrity.” “At least we’re fighting on the right side,” Yemm conceded. “Sometimes I wonder.” Yemm gave him a critical look. “Problems, boss?”

McGarvey took a drink. “I wasn’t kidding when I asked you this afternoon if you ever thought about getting out of the business.” “I wasn’t kidding when I said every day.” Yemm took a pull at his drink.

“But it’s too late for us.” “What do you mean?” “What else could we do?” Yemm answered morosely. “What else are we trained for except opening other people’s mail, eavesdropping and shooting people who don’t agree with us?” McGarvey shrugged. “We do the best we can,” he said. He swirled the liquor around in the snifter and took another drink as if he needed it to buck himself up. “When the Soviet Union packed it in we lost the bad guys. The evil empire. An idea that we could rally around the flag against. They were worse than the Nazis and five times as deadly, because they had the bomb.” “You almost sound nostalgic ”

“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.”