“Six weeks is a long time,” Doyle said.
“Send someone else,” Ryan suggested.
“Who?” Murphy asked bluntly.
“I don’t know. We must have a Japanese expert on staff somewhere who could make some quiet inquiries for us.”
No one said a thing.
“We don’t have to send a maniac whose solution to every problem seems to be shooting up the local citizenry.”
“Right,” Murphy said. He turned back to Carrara. “As soon as you talk to McGarvey get back to me, would you, Phil?”
“Yes, sir,” Carrara said. “Maybe we’ll have something by then.”
Chapter 63
The morning was beautiful. McGarvey stood at the window, his body cocked at an odd angle, his neck, right arm and shoulder and his right leg swathed in bandages. He’d gone from night into day; from danger to safety, but the assignment wasn’t over.
A CIA psychiatrist who’d examined McGarvey after a particularly harrowing operation early in his career had come to the conclusion that though McGarvey had a low physical threshold of pain response, he had an extremely high psychological threshold. He felt pain easily, but he was able to let it flow through and around him without it affecting his ability to function.
He was in pain now, but he continued to refuse any medication, preferring to keep his head straight. Spranger and the woman with him were gone. Lipton had admitted it before they’d left Santorini. And as long as that monster was still on the loose none of them would be truly safe.
McGarvey’s right shoulder had stiffened up and his burns still hurt, but his biggest problem was the flesh wound in his right thigh. Walking was difficult at best. If he found himself in a situation where he had to move quickly to save his life, he might not make it.
But lying in a hospital bed fretting wouldn’t help despite what the doctors told him. They’d backed up their warnings by posting a guard at the door. At least he hoped the hospital had ordered the security and that it hadn’t been done at the Agency’s request.
Someone knocked at the door and he turned around as Kathleen came in. Her left eyebrow arched when she saw him standing at the window, but she said nothing, closing the door.
“Good morning,” McGarvey said. He decided that she didn’t look any the worse for wear, except in her eyes, which seemed to have lost their usual haughtiness. She was dressed in street clothes, a blue scarf on her head.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’ll live. You?”
“I’m all right.”
“Elizabeth?”
“She wants to see you.”
McGarvey tried to read something from his ex-wife’s expression, her tone of voice, but he couldn’t. He’d never been able to predict her.
“How is she holding up?”
Kathleen shook her head, but she made no move toward him. “I honestly don’t know, Kirk. She’s definitely your daughter. She stood up to them, and probably saved my life in the doing despite what they… did to her. But she won’t talk to me about it. She just sidesteps the questions. Says she’ll live, whatever that means.”
“What now?”
“You tell me,” she said. “The FBI is guarding us. They said something about temporarily placing us in the Witness Protection Program. Either that or taking us into protective custody.”
“Not such a bad idea…?
“For how long, Kirk?” Kathleen cried. “From the day I met you this has been going on. How much longer must I endure it?”
“I’m sorry…?
“We’re divorced. Stay away from me and Elizabeth! Please! If you love your daughter, as you profess you do, then leave us alone!”
He felt badly for her, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to alleviate her pain and fear except do as she was asking: Stay away from her, and in the meantime go after Spranger and what remained of his organization.
“If you think it’s for the best.”
“I do,” she replied.
McGarvey nodded. “Will you let me talk to her now, for just a minute?”
Kathleen stared at him for a long second or two, her rigid expression softening a little. “I don’t think I could stop her,” she said. “The doctor certainly could not.”
“Get out of Washington, Katy. Let the Bureau take care of you.”
“My name is Kathleen,” she corrected automatically. “And Elizabeth and I are going to do just that. No one will know where we are. No one.”
She turned and left the room, giving McGarvey a brief glimpse of Dr. Singh in the corridor before the door closed again. He hobbled back to the bed and got in. A moment later Elizabeth, wearing faded jeans, a pink V-neck sweater, and a head scarf, came in.
For a long time she stood stock-still, looking at her father, the expression on her face even less readable than her mother’s, except that she was frightened.
“Liz?” McGarvey prompted.
“Daddy,” she cried and she came into his arms, a sharp stab of pain hammering his right side.
He grunted involuntarily, and Elizabeth immediately reared back.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she apologized, her hands going to her mouth.
“It’s okay, Liz,” he said. “It’s okay.” He held out his hand to her.
She hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. Now come over here and sit down. I want to hear everything that happened to you and your mother, and then I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything,” Elizabeth said, gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I’m going to need some clothes.”
She looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m getting out of here.”
“But you can’t. You’re hurt.”
“It’s all right,” he said, patting her hand. “Believe me. But first I want to know about Ernst Spranger and the woman with him.”
A dark cloud passed over Elizabeth’s features and she flinched. “Her name is Liese.
The others are murderers, but she’s worse. Much worse.”
“What happened?”
Elizabeth turned away. “I can’t…?
“Your mother said you won’t tell her.”
“I’m afraid.”
“You’re safe here.”
She turned back to her father. “Not for me,” she said. “For you.”
Suddenly McGarvey was cold. He’d been told what condition Kathleen and Elizabeth were in when Lipton’s team had found them but he’d not seen either of them until this morning. They both wore wigs beneath their scarves, and although they seemed pale they appeared to be uninjured. Yet he wondered, his mind going down a lot
