stairway, and for Wasley to remain where he was.
Whatever had happened here was bloody and final. Lipton wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know what was upstairs on the balcony, but he figured that McGarvey had probably made his stand here… and lost?
He pointed up, and he and Tyrell started up the stairs at the same time; silently, their weapons at the ready.
The balcony was mostly in darkness now that the flames from the courtyard had died down, so it took Lipton several moments to regain his night vision. When he did he nearly staggered backward off-balance.
McGarvey, blood streaming from several wounds in his neck, face and body, stood in the shadows, the heavy Kalashnikov assault rifle held over his head like a club, ready to smash Lip ton’s head.
Slowly, he lowered the rifle, and managed a slight smile. “Kathleen and Elizabeth?” he asked, his voice barely audible.
“Safe,” Lipton said.
“Then let’s get out of here. I could use a drink.
BOOK FOUR
Chapter 62
Roland Murphy watched from his seventh-floor office at CIA Headquarters as the sun came up on what promised to be a beautiful day. His mood, he decided, should be expansive, instead it was dark with worry.
Unable to sleep, he’d had his driver bring him back at four this morning, and he’d had the overnight supervisor bring him up to speed. The world situation was reasonably calm; no major wars or conflicts involving American interests, no serious threats to any of their in-place networks, no crises needing immediate attention.
Nothing doing, in fact, except for the situation they’d hired McGarvey to investigate.
It had not changed. The threat still existed, but no one had so much as a clue what to do about it.
Murphy’s secretary wasn’t here yet, so he got an outside line himself and called the fifth-floor isolation ward at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.
“This is Roland Murphy. If you need to confirm that, I’m at my office. I’ll instruct the Agency operator to put your call through.”
“I’m Dr. Singh, and that won’t be necessary, Mr. Director, I recognize your voice.”
“How is your patient?”
“We’ve had him here for less than twelve hours,” the doctor said cautiously. “But he is by all appearances a singularly remarkable man. He is already on the mend.”
“How long?”
“For what, General?”
“Until he will be fit to resume his… duties.”
“Under normal circumstances, three months, perhaps four,” Dr. Singh said. “But if his presence is of vital importance, all other considerations secondary, I would say six weeks at the minimum.”
“Is he conscious?” Murphy asked, masking his bitter disappointment. McGarvey was a man after all, not a superman.
“Oh, yes, he is very much conscious. He refuses all pain medications and sedatives.”
“Someone will be along this morning to interview him,” Murphy said.
“Seven days.”
“This morning.”
“General, I could refuse you.”
“I think not,” Murphy said. “But we’ll wait until this afternoon. We’ll give you that much time.”
“Him, General, not me. You need to give him time to heal.”
Murphy called a meeting for his top three at 8:30 a.m. in the small dining room adjacent to his office. Besides the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Lawrence Danielle, the Deputy Director of Intelligence Tommy Doyle and of course the Deputy Director of Operations Phil Carrara, CIA General Consul Howard Ryan was at the breakfast gathering.
Murphy dropped the bombshell.
“I was told earlier this morning that McGarvey will recover from his wounds, but he’ll be out of commission for at least six weeks, perhaps longer.”
“Shit,” Carrara swore crudely, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Ryan had a smug look. “Then whatever did or did not happen on Santorini, K-l was successful.
They wanted him off the case, and that’s what they got.”
“It would seem so,” Murphy answered heavily. “He’s awake and apparently coherent.
Phil, I want you to go over there this afternoon and talk to him. He must have seen or heard something that’ll be of use to us.”
“Yes, sir,” Carrara said. “In the meantime we’ve come up with a tentative identification on the woman that Elizabeth described for us.” He took several black and white glossy photos from a file folder and passed them across the table to Murphy. “Her name is Liese Egk.”
“Former STASI?” Murphy asked, studying the photos, then passing them over to Danielle.
“Yes. Her speciality is assassination.”
Danielle’s eyebrows rose, and Ryan took the photos with interest.
“Still no trace of her or Ernst Spranger?”
“None,” Carrara said. “The Greeks are, needless to say, oversensitive just now. Apparently there were two local businessmen who somehow got involved, and got themselves killed, in addition to the two fishermen whose boat was found abandoned in the port of Thira.”
“The Navy wants to be keyed in to what we’re doing,” Danielle said softly. “Admiral Douglas telephoned yesterday afternoon after you’d already gone for the day. One of their boys was killed on the island.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’d get back to him, but that the young man definitely did not give his life on some fool’s errand.”
“That’ll have to do for now,” Murphy said. “If he presses, invite him over for lunch.
I’ll talk to him then.”
There was a momentary silence that Tommy Doyle finally broke.
“Which brings us back to Tokyo. We’re getting a lot of mixed signals from the Japanese on the official as well as the unofficial level.”
“What about the news media?”
“So far they’ve been relatively silent about the killings, which in itself is spooky.”
They were all looking at Doyle.
“What are you trying to say, Tommy?” Murphy asked.
“It’s my guess that whatever is going on has at least the tacit approval of someone at ministry level or higher.”
“Tough charge,” Ryan suggested, but Murphy ignored the comment.
“It’s time we pulled Kelley Fuller out of there,” the DCI said. “With McGarvey out of commission she’s on her own.”
“You don’t mean to write off our Tokyo station,” Carrara said. “Not now, General.”
“We’ll have to restaff. There’s not much else for it. In the meantime it’s possible that McGarvey’s action on Santorini scared them off, or at least delayed their plans.”
