“The news from Bern,” she said sweetly. “It has finally come.”
“I see,” Spranger said, grinning. It was as if a giant weight had been taken off his shoulders.
Chapter 31
Traffic on the Washington Memorial Parkway was heavy, though most of it was headed toward the city, and not north, along the river. Already the morning was hot, humid and hazy, and only when the Mercedes convertible turned off the main highway up the Bureau of Public Roads’ treelined entry road, was there any relief.
“I’m here to speak with Phil Carrara,” Kathleen McGarvey told the gate guard. “I didn’t make an appointment, but if you’ll just tell him who it is, he’ll see me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the guard said, and went back into the glass-fronted hut.
During the few minutes it took him, there was a steady stream of traffic into the CIA Headquarters. Most spies, Kath
leen reflected, were nine-to-fivers like the rest of official Washington. She’d had the misfortune of picking one who wasn’t.
“Someone will meet you in the lobby, Mrs. McGarvey,” the guard said, giving her her visitor’s passes. “Just to the right after the clearing.”
“I know the way,” Kathleen said, and she drove up the hill. It’d been years since her one visit here, and she’d vowed then never to come back. Now she was frightened.
The same old fear as in the early days. This time it was the call.
She signed in with the guards in the lobby, and after her purse was searched, a young man who said his name was Chilton escorted her up to the DDO’s office on the third floor.
Carrara was waiting for her at the door to the office. “This is certainly a surprise, Mrs. McGarvey.”
“Not a pleasant one, I’m sure,” Kathleen said, preceding him into his office and taking a seat in front of his desk. She wore a crisply tailored off-white linen suit, and a pastel green blouse with matching shoes and broad- brimmed hat.
“The Agency regrets the intrusion of your house the other day,” Carrara said going around behind his desk. “But if there’s anything I can do personally…?
“I want to know where Kirk has gone off to this time,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. McGarvey but I don’t know anything…?
“Short of that I want to get a message to him.” She crossed her legs. “I won’t leave here until I get what I’ve come for. And if need be, I’ll speak with the general.”
“I don’t know if that will be possible, this morning,” he replied, and for the first time Kathleen noticed that something was wrong. It looked as if he hadn’t slept or shaved in a week. His complexion was pale, and his eyes bloodshot.
“I’ll wait right here if I have to,” she said. “Kirk is on another assignment for you, and I must get word to him.”
“He told you that, Mrs. McGarvey?” Carrara asked sharply.
“Not in so many words. But I know him. One day he is here, and the next day, after your people show up at my front door, he disappears. I merely put two and two together.”
“I’m sorry,” Carrara said tiredly. “I don’t know where he is. And even if I did I could not tell you. I’ll have you escorted back downstairs to your car.”
“You’re lying! You’re hiding something. And believe me, I mean to have it out today.
I won’t take no for an answer.”
Carrara stared at her for a long moment or two. “What’s so important that you need to get a message to him at this moment? Can’t it wait?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Carrara shrugged. “We won’t deliver secret messages, Mrs. McGarvey.”
“That’s ludicrous coming from a man like you in a place like this.”
“Nevertheless.”
“The last time we saw each other I kicked him out of my house. I want to tell him that I was… wrong. That I’m sorry.”
Carrara said nothing. It was obvious he didn’t believe her.
“If he gets killed it’ll be too late,” she said, raising her voice.
“I repeat, Mrs. McGarvey, what makes you believe that your husband is working for us?”
Kathleen looked away. It was probably a mistake coming here like this. Something important was apparently going on. Something that was worrying the Deputy Director of Operations. And whatever that was, it had to be big. But now that she was here, now that she had come this far, she was determined to see it through. She owed that much to Kirk, and to herself.
“Are you going to allow me to get a message to him?” she asked, looking back.
“Not without more information. I’m sorry, but no.”
“Then I want to speak with General Murphy.”
“The Director is not available today.”
“I don’t believe you,” Kathleen said. “If need be I’ll march directly over to the Hill and raise such a stink with the Joint Intelligence Committee, several members of which are regulars at my home, that all of Washington will hear about it.”
Carrara sighed. “Very well,” he said, and he picked up his phone. “Ask the director if I may bring Mrs. McGarvey upstairs this morning to have a word with him.”
The Asia Center of Japan Hotel was near the center of Tokyo and barely fifteen minutes on foot from the Roppongi District and the American Embassy. McGarvey stood at the window of their tiny third-floor room, watching the late night traffic below on the street as he waited for his call to the States to go through.
He’d picked up Kelly Fuller in the lobby of the ANA Tokyo Hotel, and then checked in there to leave a track. Later they’d come over to this smaller and far less conspicuous hotel that she had assured him catered to foreigners. No one would notice him here, nor had he been required to show his passport or any identification when he’d registered under the German workname Rolf Eiger.
For the time being at least he figured that he and Kelly would be safe here. Sooner or later he was going to have to get word to Carrara about what happened. But first he wanted to make sure that their backs were covered.
“Anything?” she asked, coming out of the postage-stamp bathroom.
He turned away from the window and shook his head. “I think we’ll be all right here for a day or so. But we’ll have to keep on the move, or find a better place.”
“Until when?”
“Until I finish what I was sent here to do.”
“Which is?” she asked, her voice brittle.
“Find out who killed Shirley, and Mowry, and why,” McGarvey answered. “If you want out, I can arrange it.”
She looked at him, a wistful set to her mouth, but then she turned away. “I’ll stay.
Besides, there’s no place I could go where they wouldn’t find me eventually now that they know my face.”
The telephone on the bedstand rang, and McGarvey answered it. “Yes?”
“I have your party,” the operator said, and the connection was made.
“Otto, have you made any progress yet?” McGarvey asked. It was 9:00 in the morning, Washington time.
“I tried to find you. But no one knows were you are, or they’re not admitting it,”
Rencke said. “This is getting really weird.”
McGarvey’s gut tightened. “Who’d you call?” he asked, keeping his voice normal.
“Not actually call, except for your ex. But you’re on the computer across the river.”
