The Kill Zone

THIRTEEN

They arrived at the committee hearing room a couple of minutes before 10:00 A.M. McGarvey hadn’t slept well last night, and he looked forward to being here with a sense of despair, of uselessness, of wasted effort. The same media crowd waited on the steps and in the broad marble corridor, but civilian guards at the chamber doors barred their entry. Only those with the proper passes were allowed inside. This morning’s session was to be held in camera. Dark secrets were to be revealed, senators exercising their oversight duties. All patriotic and necessary. But it was a horrible joke as far as McGarvey was concerned. DCIs had been testifying before Congress in secret sessions since before Colby, and reading their exact words the very next morning in the Washington Post or New Tork Times. There were more people in attendance than McGarvey had expected He didn’t know most of them, but the senators had the right to invite anybody they chose. A Senate page brought over a manila envelope to Carleton Paterson. “Senator Clawson sends this to you with his compliments, sir,” the young girl said. The envelope contained lists of everyone who’d attended the hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as a list of those expected to be here this morning. Dmitri Runkov, the Russian intelligence service Washington rezidenrt name wasn’t on either of the first two days’ lists. Neither were any Russian embassy representatives. Their absence struck McGarvey as ominous. Something was happening.

Something just beyond his grasp. Otto knew about it and was lying.

The Russians not being here meant something. “Problem?” Paterson asked. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s nothing urgent.” “Wouldn’t do me any good to press you, I suppose,” Paterson said. He handed another list to McGarvey. This one contained a couple of lines on each of ten supersensitive Track III operations that McGarvey had been involved with during his twenty-five-plus-year career with the CIA. Track I operations were intelligence-gathering missions. Track II, which were more sensitive, involved some type of covert action. Track III actions, the most secret and most sensitive, involved the use of deadly force. In each of the cases on McGarvey’s list there had been a death.

In some cases many deaths. The list brought back a lot of very bad memories for Mac. Too late to erase them now, he thought. Too late to go back and undo what had already been done. We can only hope to change the future, and even that hope is a slim possibility. “Those are the problem areas we discussed,” Paterson explained. “Whatever you do, don’t volunteer information. But if Hammond or Madden has this same list, or even a part of it, we’re in a fair bit of trouble.”

Former CIA director Bill Colby called such operations the CIA’s family jewels. They had to be protected at all costs. McGarvey pulled himself out of his funk, and smiled. “Not too late to pull out, Counselor.”

Paterson shook his head. “I wouldn’t miss this brouhaha for all the world, Mr. Director.” The clerk came in, called the chamber to order and the senators, led by Hammond, filed in and took their places. “I remind Mr. McGarvey that he is still under oath as far as concerns these proceedings,” Senator Hammond said. He looked as if he hadn’t slept well last night either. It was well-known that the senator was a big drinker. Yesterday’s contentious session could not have done much for his stress level. “Yes, Senator, I understand,” McGarvey said, thinking suddenly about Katy. At least she would be spared most of the ugly details today. Paterson sat forward. “Do we have this committee’s assurances that the members of the audience have the proper clearances and have been briefed on the necessary security procedures?”

“That goes without saying,” Senator Hammond sputtered. “Excuse me, Senator, but I’d like to ask a question before we get started this morning,” New York senator Gerald Pilcher said. Hammond motioned for him to go ahead. “Mr. McGarvey, on Tuesday you were asked if you wanted this appointment, and you told us no, that you did not. But that you would accept the job because President Haynes asked you to.”

“That’s correct, Senator.” “Then let me ask you a related question.

Why did you join the CIA in the first place: What was it, twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago? And two follow-up questions: Who recruited you and how was it done?” McGarvey went back. He’d been young, cocky, brash, certainly arrogant. He was doing something that counted, something that his father and mother could be proud of. He caught Brenda Madden’s eye. She was sitting back in her tall leather chair, fingers to her lips, a scowl on her face, her eyes narrowed. She looked like an animal ready to pounce. “The CIA recruiters were on campus in my senior year. I talked to them. But Vietnam was chewing up our people, and I thought that I could do some good in the military rather than dodging the draft. By the time I finished OCS and Intelligence Officers School it was the spring of 1972, and I was sent to Saigon. I did my two tours, came back to the States and resigned my commission in June of 1974.” “Our troops were being brought home by then,” Senator Pilcher said. “That’s correct, Senator. The drawdown began in 1973.” McGarvey was back in full force; all of his memories intact and vivid. “I’d been given a telephone number by the CIA recruiters, so I called it, and the next morning I met with Lawrence Danielle who was the deputy director of Operations. He knew my parents, or knew of them, and he told me that I could do just as important a job, maybe even more important than I had in the air force or than my parents were doing down at Los Alamos. I thought about it and agreed.”

“How long did you think about it?” Brenda Madden mumbled. But everyone heard her. “About five seconds, Senator. I believed in my country just as strongly then as I do now.” “What happened next?”

Pilcher asked. “I went through the CIA’s training program and worked on the Vietnam desk at headquarters until late 1975, when I was assigned back in-country.” Pilcher was startled. “Saigon had already fallen by then, hadn’t it?” “Yes, it had. But besides our POWs who were being repatriated, there were Vietnamese nationals who had worked for us who were marked for arrest and execution. I was sent in to help find them and then get them into Laos and eventually to Thailand.”

“Who were those people?” Brenda Madden asked. “The program was called CORDS. Civilian Operations Revolutionary Development Staff. They were part of what was being called the Hamlet Pacification Program to identify Viet Cong infiltrators at the village level.” “And mark them for assassination?” “No. The VC were being offered amnesty. If they didn’t want to switch allegiance to the south, they were treated as POWs for the duration.” “None of them were killed?” “Some of them were killed, yes, Senator.” “Then the real reason that you joined the CIA and went back to Vietnam was exactly as I suggested yesterday.

Because you wanted to involve yourself in the action by rescuing fellow assassins.” “By saving the lives of men and women who gave loyal service to the United States,” McGarvey countered. “If we could move along now,” Senator Hammond prompted. “We have a lot of material to get through ”

“Were your rescue efforts effective, Mr. McGarvey?”

Brenda Madden pressed. “Not very.” She glanced at her fellow committee members. “Don’t be modest. How many of the CORDS people, as you call them, did you actually rescue? I mean get across Laos to freedom in Thailand and then here to the United States. One hundred?

Two dozen? Five or ten?” “No.” “One?” Brenda Madden demanded.

“Isn’t it true that not a single one of those people was brought here?”

“There were some, I think,” McGarvey said. “But not by me.”

“Why?” All the frustration came back to him. He shook his head.

“They were not issued visas for one reason or another.” “You have no idea why not?” “It was political. The war was unpopular, and it was over. We lost. Nobody wanted to deal with it anymore.” “Which made you angry,” Brenda Madden said. She didn’t wait for his answer. “That was simply the first step in Mr. McGarvey’s disillusionment with his country, with the CIA, with power in general. With following orders.”

She glanced at the other senators while gesturing toward McGarvey. “It was the same in Berlin and Hong Kong and France. Every assignment ended up a disaster for one reason or another. But always it was Kirk McGarvey in the middle of it. Not following orders. Working outside of his charter. Taking matters into his own hands. Charging in, guns blazing.” McGarvey sat back in his chair to let her rant. She was right in more than one way. The CORDS rescue operation had been a total disaster. Not as a field exercise, but in the political arena at home. And she wasn’t far off the mark when she accused that the aftermath of the Vietnam War had started him on the path of disillusionment. But then she hadn’t brought up the sorry episode of James Jesus Angleton, who looked so hard for moles inside the CIA that he all but brought the Agency down. And she wasn’t aware of John Lyman Trotter, Jr.” McGarvey’s friend since the CORDS days, who turned out to be the mole that Angleton had sought. But that was much later, after McGarvey had been fired. Brenda Madden stopped to take a breath, and McGarvey stepped into the breach. “Was there a question in there, Senator?” Even Hammond seemed to be fascinated by the California senator’s hatred for McGarvey. But he was content for the moment to allow her to continue. His agenda in the hearings was a purely political one. He wanted to be president, and he wanted to cut President Haynes down to size at every possible opportunity. But Madden, who’d moved to San Francisco as a young woman, had shaped her political career as an activist. She was anti-nuclear power plants, anti-free world trade, and virulently anti-Republican and the party’s fiscal conservatism. In her estimation the only reason the social welfare programs of the last half century had failed was because not enough money had been spent on them. Instead of squandering our taxes on the B-2 bomber and stealth fighters, or nuclear submarines and fabulously expensive aircraft car tiers, the money could have been much better spent on educating young, black, single mothers. President Haynes and the Central Intelligence Agency were prime examples of the people and Beltway “old boys” clubs that she most despised. And McGarvey, who’d once inadvertently wondered out loud at a Washington cocktail party why Madden had never married, epitomized both. He was a friend of Haynes, and he was running the CIA. “Let’s cut to the chase,” she said. “Actually you weren’t in the CIA for very long. At least not as a card-carrying employee with a desk, a regular paycheck and benefits. Saigon, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Paris with stints at Langley, and then you were fired. Everything that you did afterward for the CIA was freelance. Isn’t that so?” “That’s correct, Senator.”

“Good. Let’s talk about Santiago, Chile. Operation Title Card.” She smiled. “You people at Langley come up with the most interesting code names.” “A machine picks them,” McGarvey said. “Yes, I know,” she said. “It’s too bad that the entire Agency couldn’t be run with such imagination.” Tide Card was not on Paterson’s list. It was a Track III ops, but tame by comparison with some of the other operations McGarvey had been involved with. But she would milk it for all it was worth.

Sensationalizing a dismal mission that had satisfied no one. Hopefully she was so blinded by her own agenda that she would miss the connection between Santiago and two other operations that sprung out of it. One involved a director of the CIA and a former U.S. senator. The other involved a president of the United States. “What would you like to know?” McGarvey asked. “Tell us about the operation, in your own words,” Brenda Madden said. “I was sent to assassinate Army general August Pifiar, who had been indicted by a U.S. court for ordering the deaths of more than two thousand civilians, most of them dissident students, some of them the wives and mothers of the opposition party, and several of them Americans.” No one stirred. This was the first time in history that such a high-ranking officer of the CIA had made such an open admission. “Actually I didn’t catch up with him until three days after I got to Santiago and checked in with the chief of station. The general suspected that he was being targeted by us and barricaded himself with his wife and three children in their compound in San Antonio, about sixty miles outside the capital on the coast. “I had seen the documentation, the pictures of the bodies lined up inside the Estadio Chile, audio recordings of torture sessions, and three film clips of three groups of women and some children lined up on their knees in front of a long trench. Officers walked down the line firing their pistols into the backs of the prisoners’ heads. The bodies fell or were pushed into mass graves. Some of them were still alive, raising their arms for mercy. “General Pifiar was in all three of the film clips. He personally shot at least a dozen women, and when it was over he refused to order his soldiers to fire the coups de grace into those still alive. Instead he ordered the bulldozers to bury them alive.” The picture had been so vivid in McGarvey’s mind that when he arrived in Santiago he was sure that he could smell the stench of the rotting corpses. He shuddered. All eyes were on him. Even Brenda Madden had nothing to say for the moment. Paterson looked at him with an expression of sorrow mixed with a horrified fascination. “I am what I am,” Mac had once admitted to Larry Danielle. “An assassin.” The acting DCI had been an old man then, with his own memories starting as a senior member of the OSS during the war, and participating in the formation of the CIA. The motto in the early days at the Agency had been Bigger than State by ‘48. They’d gotten their wish and then some.

“What you are is a product of this business, dear boy,” Danielle told him in his fatherly way. “Get out while you still can.” Turn away now and run, run, run. Don’t look back. Get out while there’s still time to save Katy and Liz and the baby. Hide. Jump out of the light, and pull the shadows back in around you. “I got to him by subduing one of his guards, dressing in the man’s uniform and entering the compound. He was in bed asleep with his wife. I shot him once in the head with a silenced pistol, and then got out of there, back to Santiago. The next morning I flew home.” “Did you harm his wife or children?” Senator Clawson asked. “No.” Brenda Madden roused herself. But for the moment even she was subdued. “His wife had to have been damaged psychologically.” “I’m sure that she was,” McGarvey admitted. What he hadn’t told the committee, or anyone else for that matter, was that the general was not asleep. He and his wife had been in the act of lovemaking. His wife spotted Me Garvey and was about to cry out, alerting the guards just outside, so McGarvey had killed her. “Who issued the orders?” Clawson asked. “Mr. Danielle. He was acting DCI at the time.” “That’s very convenient. He is now deceased,” Brenda Madden said. “But your orders were changed. A Senate intelligence oversight committee voted to reject the assassination, and you were ordered not to go through with it. Yet you ignored those orders and went ahead on your own. Isn’t that so?” “I wasn’t informed of the new orders until after I had returned to Washington.” “According to you.”

“Yes, Senator, according to my sworn testimony, then and now.” “But you were sacked anyway, weren’t you?” she continued to hammer. “Yes.”

Senator Clawson interrupted. “Knowing what you know now, would you have gone ahead with the assassination?” McGarvey had agonized over that question for a very long time. He could never forget the horrifed look on the woman’s face, knowing that she was about to die. It wasn’t until years later that he had learned that Christina Pinar had styled herself as a female Mengele. She had tortured many of the prisoners, and had even ordered the harvesting of their hair and gold fillings, the money going directly to her. Knowing that she was a monster just like her husband did not erase his memories, however. Nor did they ease his pain. He had murdered two defenseless people. He nodded.

“Yes. General Pinar was a bad man. He would almost certainly have continued killing innocent people. The CIA thought that there was a real possiblity that he would take over the military government.” “Why were you fired?” Clawson asked. “Political expediency,” McGarvey answered without hesitation. “The CIA is an executive branch agency.

The Senate was trying take control, as it has on several occasions since.” “Oversight ” Hammond blustered. “Yes, Senator, I agree that the CIA needs oversight. But responsible oversight.” He looked directly at Brenda Madden. “I have no doubt that I’ll read about my testimony in tomorrow’s Washington Post.”” There was an angry stir from the senators as well as from the audience. Hammond banged his gavel for order. “You’re not doing yourself much good here,” Senator Clawson said, not unkindly.

“You’ll either recommend to confirm me or you won’t. But for the sake of the men and women working for me I want you to understand that you’re putting their lives at risk by criminally sloppy security measures. If you want answers, then understand that the information you’re looking for could cause the United States a great deal of damage if it becomes public.” “Like everything you’ve ever been involved with, the outcomes have always been the same,” Brenda Madden interjected. “Bodies stacked like cord-wood. Yet you have the gall to sit there and point a finger at us?” Hammond was again banging his gavel for order. “I have just one further question for Mr. McGarvey,”

Brenda Madden said. Hammond stopped his gavel in mid swing and Brenda Madden turned back to McGarvey. Her voice was calm now, soft, even reasonable. “Do you know how many men, and probably some women, whom you have murdered in your career, Mr. McGarvey?” she asked. “Do you even care?” “I know the number,” McGarvey replied softly. It was etched on his soul. “And yes, I do care.” They were coming for him now. Back from the grave. From a past that he could not change. This time he could not stand up and face them because he didn’t know who they were, or from what direction they were coming.

FOURTEEN

Early in the afternoon McGarvey and Paterson rode back to CIA headquarters. The hearing had dragged on for nearly five hours without letup and Mac was bone weary. “Reading the records and hearing about those kinds of things in person are two wholly different experiences,”

Paterson said. “Living through them is even worse,” McGarvey replied.

He managed a tired smile. “Still with me, Counselor? Still think that I’d make a good DCI?” Paterson nodded. “My friends call me Pat. If anything I know for sure now that you’ll make a damned fine DCI.” His lips compressed. “People like Senator Madden have their circles of friends. But they’re usually very isolated and they know it. Makes them bitter. Most Americans are reasonable people. That includes politicians.” McGarvey had to laugh. “You’re becoming more convinced, and I’m becoming less convinced.”

“Come on, Mac, you can’t believe that the direction they’ve taken will hold up in the full Senate. It’s primarily Hammond and Madden who want to dump you. The others are, at worst, neutral.” McGarvey pulled himself out of his downward slide. “You’re right, Pat.” He glanced out the window at the snow piled along the road up to the headquarters building. Already it was dirty; mixed with salt, oil, dust. The next snowfall would cover it, but a day later it would be grungy again. He turned back to Paterson. “Postpone tomorrow’s hearing until Monday. I need a couple of days off. Can you do that without creating a firestorm?” “Sure. I don’t blame you; we all could use a break.”

“I’m taking Katy out of town for a long weekend.” He caught Yemm’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Good. Don’t even think about this place while you’re gone,” Paterson said. They went through security together at the executive entrance. Paterson headed off to his office, leaving McGarvey to ride up with Yemm. “Do you want me to have travel section work out something?” Yemm asked. “Yeah. Let’s go down to JefFHamil’s place.” Harml had been the deputy director of Operations during planning stages for the Bay of Pigs. He had set up a CIA-owned compound on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands to train some of the top Cuban officers. In addition to the old sugar plantation great house with its long verandas, there were a half-dozen outbuildings, some of them barracks, that the National Park Service sometimes used for ranger training. Most of the island was national park land.

McGarvey had been down there a couple of times with Roland Murphy, but Katy had never been. He expected that she would fall in love with the place, as he had. It was an idyllic tropical paradise. “When do we leave?” “I have to take care of a few things in the morning. Let’s say we leave at noon, and come back Sunday afternoon.” “Just you and Mrs. M.?” Yemm asked. “I’ll ask the kids if they want to tag along.”

“Safety in numbers,” Yemm murmured. McGarvey turned. Yemm had an odd, hooded look on his face, as if he was hiding something. “What are you talking about?” “In case somebody wants to take a potshot at you, boss. The more people that are around you, the tougher it becomes for an assassin to get close.” “I didn’t know that anyone was after me.”

Yemrn shrugged. “You’re the DCI. Somebody’s always after the DCI.

It’s why you have bodyguards and ride around in an armored limo.” Dick Adkins agreed to take care of the President’s Friday briefing. Mac would come in for a couple of hours to help put it together. There was nothing urgently pressing on the horizon. Even the Watch Report, which covered hot spots where fighting was taking place or was about to erupt, was mostly clear. “How’d it go on the Hill today?” he asked.

“About how you’d suspect,” McGarvey said. Adkins shook his head. “I don’t know why the hell you put up with it. If it was me, I’d tell them to take the job and shove it where the light never shines.” He was bitter. “Murphy finally did, but at least he had a few friends up on the Hill. You don’t have anybody. They all want to see you dead.”

“Is that the consensus around here?” McGarvey shot back. He was getting irascible. His confrontation with Otto yesterday afternoon still weighed on his mind. Last night Katy had been in one of her dark moods because Liz hadn’t called her. Senator Madden had gotten under his skin. Even Yemm had sounded a bleak note of discord. And now, Adkins. “You know what I mean, Mac,” Adkins said, not backing down.

He looked like he wanted to hit something. “No, I don’t.” Adkins finally turned away. “Ah, hell. What’s the use anyway?” “What’s the matter? Is it Ruth?” “She’s made up her mind to go the radiation and chemo route, rather than a mastectomy. She’ll be sick as hell for months, but she wants to stay… intact for as long as possible, even though it might kill her.” “I’m sorry, Dick.” “Yeah.” “Do you want me to stick around for the weekend? Katy and I can go later.” Adkins shook his head. “You need the break worse than I do. I gotta keep busy, and you need to recharge your batteries for the big fight coming up.” “Do you think that the Senate is going to bounce me?” “Of course not. I meant keeping you alive once you’re sworn in. There’re a lot of people out there who could come gunning for you and feel like they were doing the world a big favor.” Sitting alone at his desk, McGarvey asked himself the same question that Adkins had posed: Why the hell was he putting up with the pressure? He had an inkling of what a newly sworn in president felt on his first day in the White House. Despite all the Secret Service protection he was given, he was still vulnerable to some nut with voices in his head.

But if someone decided to come after the Director of Central Intelligence, it would most likely be a professional. The kind of man McGarvey had been. Still was.

He turned and looked out the windows at the snowy countryside. If someone was coming, it would be a person out of his past. Someone with a grudge? he wondered. Or someone with a darker purpose?

It would have to be someone who knew about his habits, about his comings and goings. Somebody who even now was watching him. Waiting for him to make a mistake. Waiting for him to slip up; one lapse of caution; the one time he left the house without his bodyguard, or without a weapon.

He shook his head. Or most likely no one was coming. Paranoia was not just a field officer’s malady.

In the meantime the CIA needed help. A top-to-bottom reorganization that several directors before him had tried to do but failed. He was just egotistical enough to think that he could do it.

The President called on the direct line. “I think I’m going to recommend some remedial reading for you. Political science. You need it.”

“I’m not going to give them the answers they want, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. “And without that I’ll never get confirmed.”

The President chuckled. “You let me worry about that part. The budget bill is coming up, which gives me some wiggle room. So long as you stick to the facts, you’ll come out okay. But when you try to play their game, they’ll eat you alive.”

“I’m not a politician “

“Nobody expects you are. But as DCI you’re going to have to deal with the bastards whether you like it or not. So you might as well start practicing right now.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” the President said. “You can start by getting back on track with Hammond and especially with Madden. And before you jump up and down, hear me out. Those two are going to be on your back for as long as you’re the DCI. That’s a fact of political life. But Hammond wants to be president, so that’s something I can use against him. And Brenda Madden has a deep dark secret that causes her to be afraid of me and be pissed off at the same time. She’s dangerous, but she can be reasoned with, as long as you don’t try to score points off her. Go along with whatever she says. Answer her questions with direct answers. Eventually she’ll stick her foot in her mouth enough times so that Hammond will be forced to put a lid on her.” “Are you going to share the secret with me, Mr. President?” “Nope. Just take it a step at a time, and we’ll get through this.” I’ll do my best.”

“If I didn’t need you, if the Agency and your country didn’t need you, again, I wouldn’t have asked you to take the job. The CIA is in a mess. Fix it, Mac, or we’re going to find ourselves dead in the water as a nation.” “Does that mean I can’t shoot her?” McGarvey asked. The President laughed. “Anything but.” McGarvey had his secretary telephone his son-in-law. She got him on his cell phone. He and Elizabeth were on their way back from the Farm in Williamsburg. “How are the roads?” “Slippery,” Van Buren replied. “But we’re just a couple of miles from 495.” They lived in Falls Church, so they were less than ten miles from home. “If it doesn’t get any worse, how about coming over for dinner tonight?” “Good idea,” Van Buren agreed immediately. “Liz wants to talk to her mother, and she wants to get her skis. We’re going out to Vail for a long I weekend unless you need us in town.” “What’s the doc say?” McGarvey asked, alarmed. “He told her to take it easy, that’s all.” “We’ll see you in a few hours then.”

“Right,” Van Buren said. McGarvey phoned Yemm to tell him that Todd and Elizabeth were skiiing at Vail this weekend, so it would be just the two of them going down | to St. John. Next he tried to reach Otto, but Ms. Swanfeld found out that he was still in conference with Dr. Stenzel. McGarvey went downstairs and used his security card to gain access to the observation room. They no longer used | one-way mirrors; they were too obvious. Instead, they employed hidden cameras.

Rencke’s image was projected on the high-definition large-screen |

closed-circuit television monitor on the wall. Two of Dr. Stenzel’s assistants were monitoring the interview and taking notes. They started to get up, but McGarvey waved them back. “I just came in for a quick look. I thought the interview was supposed | to start at ten.”

“It did,” one of the assistant psychiatrists answered. “They’ve been at it ever since.” He shrugged. “For all the good it’s doing us.”

“Isn’t he cooperating?” “Oh, he’s cooperating all right, Mr.

Director. Trouble is we can’t make any sense out of what he’s telling us.” Dr. Stenzel sat back and lit a cigarette. His jacket was off, his tie loose, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows. He and Otto sat across from each other in easy chairs, a large coffee table strewn with files, computer printouts and coffee cups between them. They were in Stenzel’s office, a large book-lined room with a big window. Otto was sitting back, his legs crossed, his Nikes untied, a dark, but mildly condescending expression on his face. McGarvey had a momentary doubt that the man with Stenzel was Otto Rencke. Yet it was Otto. He knew it was Otto. “So, you’ve been fucking with me all day,” Stenzel said.

“What else did I expect?” He didn’t seem bitter, just resigned.

Rencke shrugged. “There are a lot of people in this building who are worried about you. Mr. McGarvey asked me to find out what’s going on in your head. But it looks as if that’s not going to be possible.

Leastways not today.” “Do you want me to take another test?” Rencke’s voice was flat, with only the vaguest hint of contempt. “You’ve taken them all.” Stenzel glanced at the papers on the coffee table. “I suppose that I could certify that you’re unfit for service. But hell, you’re probably just as sane, or insane, as the rest of us here.” “We all have our crosses to bear, Stenzel. Even me. Only I have a lot of work to do.” “So do I,” Stenzel said. “But if you go off the deep end on us, you could do a lot of damage.” Rencke laughed. “If you mean to the Company’s computers, you’re right. But I wouldn’t have to be here in the building to do it.” “The one thing that’s clear in the mess that you’ve created for me is that you’re depressed. Whether it’s clinical depression or just the garden-variety blues, I can’t tell.

But I’ll give you a piece of advice, the only advice I intend giving you. Keep up whatever it is that you’re doing and you will have a nervous breakdown. Guaranteed.” Stenzel got up, rolled down his sleeves, snugged up his tie and put on his jacket. Rencke got languidly to his feet. “What are you going to tell Mac?” “The same thing I told you. That, and the fact I don’t like being toyed with.

You’re a very bright man, but from where I sit I don’t see anyone who is very nice. In fact, you’re an asshole.” Stenzel smiled and shook his head. “Now get out of here, please.”

Rencke stared at the doctor for a long beat; hesitating as if he wanted to say something. But then he turned and left.

McGarvey knocked once and went into StenzeFs office. The psychiatrist glanced over McGarvey’s shoulder to the open door into the observation room. “How long were you watching?” “Long enough to wonder who the hell you were talking to. That wasn’t Otto Rencke. Or at least not the Otto Rencke I know. I thought I was watching a complete stranger.”

“Unless he faked his eye prints he was the real McCoy,” Stenzel said.

“And not very nice. But I suppose nobody likes a company shrink poking into his head. Their jobs are usually on the line. You’d be amazed at some of the stories I’ve heard.” One of his assistants came to the door. “Do you want an inventory made up?” “Don’t bother,” Dr.

Stenzel said. “We’ll append our notes to the file.” Stenzel motioned McGarvey to have a seat, and he went around behind his desk and looked out the window. “I administered every test that I knew. MMPI, Rorschach, TAT, Edwards Personal Preference, Cattell, the works.” He shook his head. “They were loaded with all the control keys. No way that he could have defeated them.” Stenzel turned to face McGarvey.

“And in the end I couldn’t have told you for sure that Rencke wasn’t, in fact, a ten-year-old black girl with schizophrenia, or a sexless alien from Antares.” I “You said that he was depressed.” “That came out loud and clear, especially in the TAT.” McGarvey raised an eyebrow. “Thematic Apperception Test. It’s a series of twenty pictures showing ambiguous scenes. Like a man coming into what might be an old-fashioned sitting room or living room, with an odd look on his face. We ask the subject to tell us what he sees. Like what led up to the event in the picture. Or, what’s happening, and how does the man feel, and what’s going to happen in the end.

“Picking out Rencke’s depression from his answers was fairly straightforward. But the test is usually invalid if the subject has no respect for the test or the person administering it.”

“He had a tough childhood,” McGarvey said.

“I’ll bet he did,” Dr. Stenzel replied. “I tried to work out a Maslow Hierarchy to see where he was going wrong, but even that didn’t work out.”

“What’s that?”

“About fifty years ago a shrink named Maslow figured out that people have five basic needs, starting with the physical stuff, like food and clothing and shelter. Without those nothing else is possible.

“Next up the chart is security, which is our safety margin. We do whatever it takes to make sure that next week, next month or next year we’ll have everything we need to maintain our physical needs. So we buy food and put it in the fridge; we save money; we try not to piss off someone who’ll someday come back at us with a gun.

“After that is love, then respect, and finally what we call self-actualization. We want to be the best we can, self-improvement.

Going to bed at night and being able to think that we’re okay, that we’re not doing so badly.”

“What about Otto?”

“Well, for one he has some serious security issues. It’s the same with DO people out in the field. They don’t know when they’ll be burned.

Maybe they’ll get shot, maybe they’ll be imprisoned. Tortured. It’s why they have a problem with divorce; love is next up on the scale.”

“Should I force him to take a leave?” McGarvey asked. “We need him here, but if he’s on the verge of exploding, it wouldn’t do anybody any good to keep him. The man you talked to today was not the real Otto Rencke.”

“Yeah, I know. I think he has another even bigger problem he’s trying to deal with,” Stenzel said. “He’s hiding something, maybe even from himself.”

“What is it?”

Stenzel spread his hands. “I don’t know. But whatever it is could be tearing him apart worse than his depression. It’s certainly feeding into his mood swings.” Stenzel shook his head. “He’s in denial, I caught that from the test, too. But beyond that it’s anybody’s guess.

Leave him in place, and he might do fine. On the other hand, if you pull him away from his job, you’ll be interfering with his esteem needs. Self-respect.”

“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

“Sorry, Mr. Director, but it’s the best I can do without his cooperation,” Stenzel said. “The ball’s back in your court.”

FOURTEEN

McGarvey got home a few minutes after seven. Something that he had forgotten to do; something that had nagged at him all afternoon, even during his swim with Yemm and laps around the gym, came to him the instant he opened the door and smelled something good from the kitchen.

He had forgotten to let Katy know that Liz and Todd were coming over for dinner. The workmen were almost finished with his study already.

Only some trim pieces had to be installed, along with the track lighting and carpeting. He put his briefcase on his desk, hung up his coat in the hall closet and went into the kitchen. She had a brandy waiting for him. The dining room table was set for four. “Liz must have called,” McGarvey said, giving his wife a kiss. “Good thing she did; otherwise, you and Todd would have been taking us out to dinner.” Kathleen gave him a warm smile. “How did it go today?”

“They didn’t quite shoot at me, but it was close.” “Posturing peacocks,” she said. “Hammond and Madden, preening for each other. I wonder if they’re sleeping together?” McGarvey had to laugh. “Good thing you weren’t up there with me. There probably would have been gunfire.” “You have just enough time to shower and change clothes before the children arrive. I told them to come early because of the weather.” “Did Elizabeth tell you that they were going skiing in Vail this weekend?” Kathleen gave him a sharp look. “No,” she said tightly. “Go change.” McGarvey took his drink, but stopped at the hall door. “We’ll have to cancel the party this weekend.” “It’s already been taken care of. And I’ll finish packing in the morning.” She gave him another warm smile. “Close your mouth, sweetheart. Your secretary called me.” “I thought we needed to get away.” “I know. But what about Otto? Is he back at work?” “I sent him home for a couple of days. I think he might fall apart if we push him.” “I know.” “What do you mean?” “Oh, I talked to Louise this morning. She was worried about getting Otto to see Dr. Stenzel. I had her put him on and explained to him that this was for his own good. He should grow up and get on with life.” Kathleen pursed her lips. “He’s needed someone like Louise for a long time. I’m glad he finally has her.” McGarvey studied his wife for several beats. She was an amazing woman. And she had changed again from earlier this week, and from last night. She was calmer, even serene; more like the old Kathleen; self-assured, happy, content. He didn’t know if her anxiety had simply worn away of its own accord, or if it was because they were getting away for the weekend.

Either way he was happy for her, and more than a little relieved.

“What?” she asked self-consciously. “You’re beautiful.” This time she smiled with her eyes. “Thank you.” McGarvey left the kitchen and went upstairs. He finished his brandy, then took a shower and changed into a pair of khakis and a comfortable old flannel shirt. It was snowing lightly. Since Sunday the Washington-Baltimore area had received more than thirteen inches; probably a record, McGarvey figured. Some schools in the outlying districts had been closed yesterday, although downtown and all the way out to the Beltway, plows were keeping up with the snowfall for now. Playing in the snow while on vacation was entirely different from having to go to work in it every day. He was ready for the Caribbean. When he got downstairs Katy and Liz were going into his study. His daughter stopped to give her father a peck on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy,” she greeted him brightly.

At twenty-five she looked just like her mother had at that age: she was slender, with a pretty, oval face, high, round cheekbones, sparkling green eyes and medium blond hair that always looked a little tousled. Ordinarily her figure was boyish, but she had blossomed with her pregnancy. Her figure was fuller now, though unless you knew her well it would be difficult to tell that she was more than four months along. McGarvey thought that she’d never looked more beautiful. In fact, in his estimation, all pregnant women were stunning. “Hi, sweetheart. How are you feeling?” “Fat, grouchy and mean,” she replied. She nodded toward the kitchen. “Go in and have a beer with Todd, would you? Convince him that I don’t hate him. Mom and I have to talk.” Kathleen gave him a look that nothing was wrong. Girl talk.

Men need not be present. He smiled. “Will he believe me?” “He’d better, or I’ll pop him.” “Dinner’s in a half hour,” Kathleen told him, and she and Elizabeth went into the study and closed the door.

Todd had a beer. He was perched on the fireplace hearth in the family room, a glum expression on his broad, pleasant face. McGarvey got a beer and joined him. “She told me to tell you that she doesn’t really hate you.” Todd looked up and shook his head ruefully. “One minute she’s as sweet as Mother Teresa, and the next she’s as mean as a junkyard dog.” He was broad-shouldered and solidly built, like an athlete. When he got older he would probably be chunky, but for now he was formidable. His eyes were as bright a blue as Liz’s were green.

McGarvey couldn’t wait to see what color the baby’s eyes would be.

“Besides being mean, what’s her latest project?” “Just before we came over here tonight, she tried to move the refrigerator because she was convinced that there were bugs and mice nesting in the dirt behind it.”

“If it’s any consolation, her mother did the same thing,” he assured his son-in-law. “Has she said anything else about the conspiracy theory that she and Otto were working on?” “That was before the accident. She’s into her super clean and super fit mode now. By the time we leave for Vail tomorrow, the apartment will be spotless, and she’ll be itching to ski me into the ground.” “Her doctor said that’s okay?” “I talked to him myself. He wants her to stay off the black diamond runs. No booze and lots of rest. But he told her that this would be her last fling. Starting Monday she can’t even go back to the Farm.” “Take it a little easy on her, Todd. And I’m not saying that just because she’s my daughter,” McGarvey advised. “Right now she feels fat, ugly and useless.” “Tell me about it.” “You need to assure her that in your eyes she’s beautiful, that you still love her, and that you won’t abandon her.” “She knows better ” Todd protested, but McGarvey held him off. “Doesn’t matter what you think she knows. It’s what she wants to hear. What every woman going to have a baby wants to hear. That her partner is going to be there for her, no matter what.”

“She’s so god dammed stubborn.” “And you aren’t?” Todd flared, but then grinned ruefully. “If she could just relax once in a while.” “Is the honeymoon over?” “I don’t know if it ever began.” McGarvey knew that they argued, but this sounded like trouble. They were practically clones of each other, but they couldn’t see it. “Maybe you should get a divorce,” McGarvey suggested. Todd’s grip tightened on the beer bottle. “That’s not an option,” he answered. “Then do something about the situation.” “What?” “Either roll over and play dead, or finesse her.” Todd shook his head. “She’d hate me either way.” McGarvey almost hated maneuvering his son-in-law so blatantly. But not quite.

“Do you love her?” “What?” Todd sputtered. “Of course I do.” “Then you have the magic bullet. Whenever she gives you some shit, tell her that you love her. It’ll stop her in her tracks every time, provided she can see that you mean it.” “Oh, yeah?” McGarvey nodded. “But it won’t work unless you ease up on her, too.” Todd looked away. “I’ll try anything.” “That’s good,” McGarvey said. He turned around as Elizabeth and her mother came in. Katy had a glass of white wine, and Liz was drinking what looked like a plain soda water on the rocks with a twist. “Just in time. We’re starving,” he said. “If Todd missed a meal now and then, it wouldn’t hurt him,” Liz said crossly. Todd pursed his lips and nodded. “You’re right. You’re beautiful, Liz. I love you.” Elizabeth started to make a sharp retort, but something in his eyes got to her. She softened and grinned at her father. “If you’re his chief adviser, keep it up.” She looked at her husband.

“Flattery will get you anything you want.” He brightened. “Anything?”

Elizabeth glanced at her parents. “Well, you might have to wait until later for some things.” The moment remained in tableau, Todd and Elizabeth grinning at each other, until Kathleen motioned for Kirk to go out to the kitchen with her. She had him take the roast out of the oven and put it on the carving board. “Ten minutes and you can start cutting it,” she told him. She glanced toward the family room.

“Something’s wrong with her. She’s hiding something.” McGarvey nodded.

“I think it has something to do with work.” “This is starting to get ridiculous, Kirk,” she said sharply. “She’s pregnant. She has no business working in the field. She’s your daughter, fire her.” “Do you think she’d stand still for it if I tried?” “It would put her nose out of joint, but I’d rather see that than have something happen to her or the baby.” Kathleen gripped McGarvey’s arm. “Dave Whittaker can do it. You can make him understand.” “I can pull her from Williamsburg and put her on the Russian desk, but I’d have to give her and her section heads a good reason.” “She’s pregnant, for God’s sake.”

“She’s not in the field, she’s not running the Course at the Farm, no combat sims, nothing but lectures and paperwork.”

Kathleen gave her husband a critical look. “There’s even more. You’re hiding something, too. I can see it in your eyes.” McGarvey nodded.

“She and Otto are working on something. All he tells me is that Liz is looking through some of my old files, maybe to do an in-house biography. She may have seen the file on my parents, including the accident pictures.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Do you see what I mean?” McGarvey was confused. “No, I don’t.” “Otto and Elizabeth are working on something together. And now you’re sending Otto home because he’s falling apart.” She spread her hands. “Do you think that it’s a coincidence that our daughter is lying to us?”

“There’s not much we can do for her if she doesn’t want us to get involved with her pregnancy. At least not for now. And the other thing, with her and Otto, will be resolved in the next couple of days.

I’ll make sure of it.” Kathleen nodded after a moment, then busied herself with the rest of the dinner while McGarvey carved the roast.

They all had wine except for Elizabeth, who stuck with Perrier. She and Todd seemed relaxed with each other, but there was an underlying tension around the table. “I’ve relieved Otto from duty for a couple of days,” McGarvey said when they were finished. Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed slightly. “That’s probably a good idea. He came back too soon after the accident. But if he wants to keep working, he can do it from his apartment.” “What are you two working on that’s got him so heated up, and you climbing down everyone’s throats?” McGarvey asked his daughter. “Otto and I aren’t working on anything.” “Come on, Liz.

You’re putting together my bio, everybody knows that. Otto’s got you digging through some of the old records at Fort Hill. But he’s been working on something else, too. He won’t tell me what it is yet, but it’s got something to do with KGB files and with an old Department Viktor psychologist by the name of Nikolayev. Does any of that ring a bell?” “No.” Elizabeth said it with a straight face, but this time McGarvey knew damned well that she was lying to him. “Maybe I should relieve you of duty, too.” “Come on, Dad. I have a job to do. But if I’m going to be treated like the director’s daughter, I won’t be able to get anything done. I’ll never know if people are telling me the truth or just something that they think I want to hear. Let me get on with it.” “On with what?” Something flashed across her face. “My job.” “You’re four months pregnant, Elizabeth,” her mother said. “In the old days women went to bed for the entire nine months, Mother.

This is the twenty-first century. Not only am I going to keep working, but Todd and I are going skiing this weekend. With my doctor’s permission.” “Okay, sweetheart, if you want to be treated like an ordinary intelligence officer, so be it,” McGarvey said. “That’s exactly what I want,” Liz responded defiantly. “You and Todd are relieved from duty at the Farm as of right now. I’ll talk to Dave Whittaker and Tommy Doyle about your transfers. Starting Monday you’ll be assigned to the Russian desk, and Todd will work for Jay Newby in the Operations Center.” “Dad-” “Since you’re going away for the weekend, I’ll cut you some slack. But no later than Tuesday noon I want a full report on what you’ve been doing for the past ninety days.

That includes all your day sheets and contact logs.” “What if I don’t?” Elizabeth flared. “Then I’ll fire you.” Elizabeth started to protest, but Todd put a hand over hers. “Shut up, Liz,” he told her.

“The transfer is just until after the baby is born, right?” he asked McGarvey. “We’ll see. Once the baby comes your job specs will have to be reevaluated anyway.” Todd nodded after an awkward silence. “Liz’s day sheet will be on your desk Tuesday morning.” “What time are you leaving for Colorado?” Kathleen asked. She was brittle. Elizabeth turned to her mother. Sensing trouble, her lips tightened. “Eight in the morning.” She glanced up at the clock. It was coming up on 9:00.

“In fact we should get going now. We still have to get our ski stuff together, and I need to get some sleep. It’s been a long week.” “Did your doctor consider the risk you’re taking, going out to Colorado, considering what happened… last time,” Kathleen asked. “It’s still snowing, Mrs. M.,” Todd said. “The Beltway is going to be a mess. We have to go.”

“I asked a question.”

Elizabeth held herself tightly. “Yes my doctor considered the risk to me and my baby, and he gave me permission to go skiing if I was careful.”

Kathleen turned to her husband. “What do you think, Kirk?”

“If they don’t get going right now they’ll have to stay the night and they’ll miss their flight. The roads won’t be any better by morning.”

Kathleen clenched her hands. “Be careful, Elizabeth. Would you do at least that much for me?” she said. “I’ll worry all weekend about you and the baby. I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”

Elizabeth softened. “It’ll be okay, mother. I want you and daddy to have some fun too. Soak up some sun. Washington will be here when we all get back.”

“I’ll get your skis out of the garage,” Todd told Elizabeth. “Great dinner, Mrs. M.” He got up and McGarvey went with him.

Elizabeth’s skis, in their hard shell traveling case, had already been taken down from the rack on the back wall. Todd carried them out to his Land Cruiser SUV and attached them to the roof rack with bungee cords.

McGarvey glanced back at the house. He could see through the hall window that Kathleen was helping Elizabeth with her jacket.

“Watch yourself out there,” McGarvey told his son-in-law.

“I’ll make her take it easy.”

“I don’t mean just that,” McGarvey said. “You and Elizabeth are field officers and I’m the acting DCI. We’re targets. All of us, all the time.”

A flat, professional look came into Van Buren’s eyes. He nodded.

“There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about it. Especially now with the baby coming.”

McGarvey clapped him on the shoulder. “You know what to do. Both of you do. Watch your backs.”

McGarvey helped his wife clean up, and afterward they went up to bed.

He made sure that the house was locked up and the security system was up and running first. At the head of the stairs he stopped and looked down at the front door in the gloom of the front hall. The scratching was coming again. It was like an animal in trouble trying to gain entry to the house. A rough beast, or merely a stray, he couldn’t tell. But something was coming. Gaining on them. Skulking in the night. Waiting to pounce. “Paradise is where I am,” Voltaire wrote in Le Mondain. Life was what you made of it. Either a paradise or a hell. McGarvey wasn’t sure which life he had created for himself and his family, though he was certain that he wanted paradise, or at least a little peace. By the time he got undressed, washed up and climbed into bed, Kathleen was already half-asleep. “Good night, Katy,” he said. “I wonder what we’ll come back to,” she mumbled. She rolled over, and within a minute her breathing deepened. She was asleep.

McGarvey turned off the lights, and for a long time he listened to the winter wind whipping around the eaves; the scratching, nagging feeling rising again at the edges of his consciousness. In the old days he would have run first and looked back later. But he couldn’t do that now. Not now, he thought as he drifted off to sleep.