The farm seemed to be deserted except that he could make out the faint sounds of machinery running, and the area immediately to the south of the house contained a compact array of solar electric panels that looked new.
McGarvey had been thinking about Otto Rencke a lot over the past few weeks, a sort of summing up, he supposed. It was something he’d been doing lately, dredging up old memories, old places and friends as well as enemies. Put them all in perspective. Writing the Voltaire book had got him started on that line of thinking, as history always did.
The last time McGarvey had used him, Rencke had been living in an ancient brick house that had been the caretaker’s quarters for Holy Rood Cemetery in Georgetown. Rencke was working on a freelance basis as a computer systems consultant for the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. He had the almost superhuman ability to visualize entire complex networks of systems — supercomputers, satellite links, data encryption devices and all the peripheral equipment that tied them together.
Trained as a Jesuit priest, he’d been at twenty-one one of the youngest professors of mathematics ever to teach at Georgetown University. But he’d been defrocked and fired on the day they’d caught him in the computer lab having sex with the dean’s secretary.
He’d enlisted in the army as a computer specialist but was kicked out nine months later for having sex with a young staff sergeant — a male. It didn’t make any difference to Otto, he was satisfied with whatever came his way.
A year later he’d shown up on the CIA’s payroll, his past record wiped completely clean.
McGarvey had first run into him when Rencke was revamping the Company’s archival section, bringing it into the computer age. They’d worked together from time to time after that in Germany, South America and a few other places where Rencke had been sent to straighten out computer systems, sometimes for the Company, at other times for a friendly government.
McGarvey and he had formed a loose friendship, each admiring the other man for his intelligence, dedication and sometimes easy humor.
During his tenure at Langley Rencke had updated the CIA’s entire communications system, standardized their spy satellite input and analysis systems so that Agency machines could crosstalk, thus share information with the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office on a realtime basis. He’d also devised a field officer’s briefing system whereby up to date information could be funneled directly to the officer on assignment by satellite when and as he needed it.
But his past had finally caught up with him, and like McGarvey he’d been dumped. He’d moved to France a couple of years ago, and McGarvey came out from time to time to have lunch and a few drinks.
McGarvey went back to the car and drove the rest of the way down to the farmhouse, parking in the shade of a big tree in the front yard. He took the package from the imported food shop and went around back where Rencke was sitting cross-legged on a table in the courtyard.
“Hi ya, Mac,” Rencke said brightly. He still looked like a twenty-year-old kid, with long out-of-control frizzy red hair, wild eyebrows and a gaunt frame, though at forty-one he’d finally begun to develop a potbelly.
McGarvey tossed bin the package. “I thought you might be getting hungry out here all by yourself.”
“I’m always hungry, you know that,” Rencke said. He tore open the bundle, which contained a half-dozen packets of Twinkies, which in the States were cheap, but in Paris cost six dollars each. Rencke was a self-admitted Twinkie freak, and McGarvey had never seen him eat anything else. “Oh boy, but you’ve got the look on you again,” he said, opening one of the packets and stuffing his mouth. “Good. Bad for me, but good.”
McGarvey pulled a chair over and sat down. “Are you staying out of trouble?”
Rencke shrugged and spread his hands out, scattering crumbs. He was dressed in filthy cutoffs and a tattered, gray T-shirt. “I try, honest I do. But this is a land of farmers’ daughters. What can I say? But you’re in trouble. It’s a mile wide on your sour mug. Bad guys coming out of the woodwork again. That it? Thinking about tossing your hat back in the ring. Oiling your peashooter? Going hunting, Mac?”
“Those farmers’ daughters have fathers.” McGarvey smiled. “And one of these days you’re going to get your ass shot off.”
“The big question would be answered.”
“What question is that, Otto?”
Rencke’s face lit up. “The God thing, you know Jesu Cristo, Mohammed, and Harry Krishnakov. All that stuff. Aren’t you just dying to know?” Rencke laughed out loud.
“You’re nuts,” McGarvey said laughing.
“Exactamundo, Mac. But I’m the best friggin’ genius in town. Like a willing virgin, I’m ready and able.”
“Troubles…” ‘
“The Russian thing, isn’t it,” Rencke bubbled, and when McGarvey tried to speak, Rencke held him off. “Don’t tell me yet. The Russians are up and at it. The Tarantula knocks out a nuke plant. Did them all a favor, if you ask me. Next thing you know old Boris gets himself popped off. His guys don’t carry bombs in their cars. Maybe a shock grenade or two, but not the muscle to blow a car apart. So Tarankov did it because Boris wanted to take him down. Am I right, or what?”
McGarvey nodded.
“Oh, boy, I still have the magic!” Rencke opened another packet of Twinkies and stuffed them in his mouth. “So Tarankov means to take over, probably before the June elections. He’s got the balls. From what I read, half the country is behind him. Sorta like a cross between Willie Sutton and Marie Antoinette. If they don’t have bread let ‘em cut cake they can buy with money heisted from the banks! But Kabatov’s people think the way to go is arresting the bugger and putting him on trial. Right? Right?”
“That’s what I was told.”
Rencke jumped down from the table, and hopped from one foot to the other, his face lit up like a kid’s at Christmas. “They do that… If they could pull it off, the whole country would go down the dumper. Be a two flusher at least. But if they keep their mitts off he’ll take over anyway, and maybe the whole world will take a crap.” Rencke stopped, his face suddenly serious. “He’s a bad man, Mac. The worse. If he gets into power he’ll make Stalin and old Adolph look like pikers. Amateurs, know what I mean?”
“It’s their problem, Otto. I’m not shedding any tears. They did everything in their power over the past seventy-five years to get to this point.”
“Bzzz. Wrong answer recruit. He gets in and it becomes our problem,” Rencke said. A sad, wistful expression came over his face, and he smiled. “The only solution is for someone to assassinate the bastard before it’s too late. Someone has come to ask you to do it. Friend or foe?”
“Former foe.”
“Yemlin. As in Viktor Pavlovich. He did you a favor with his Tokyo Abunai network, and now he’s calling in the chips. He’s a born again democratic reformer, is that it?”
“I’m out of the business,” McGarvey said for his own benefit as well as Rencke’s.
“How’d you manage to sidestep your little Spock?”
“You’re a bastard.”
“You called me that once before, Mac. Just not true. My mother was a good woman. But I am a real shit, and I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But the question is valid.”
“I managed.”
“Does she suspect?”
“Probably.”
“Not so good to have the French on your back,” Rencke said, looking away momentarily. “What’d you tell him, Mac?” he asked dreamily.
“I told him no.”
Rencke turned his wild eyes back to McGarvey. “Then what’re you doing out here? Looking for a conscience, because if, that all it is, forget it. Tarankov is a bad, bad dog. I could show you things, Mac. Real things that’d curl even your gray hair.”
“That’s what I came out here for,” McGarvey said.
“Research or justification?”
“Just research …”
Rencke wagged his finger at McGarvey. “As you’re fond of saying, Mac, don’t shit the troops. If you want my
