Panagiotopolous was damned if he was going to lose either in a bullshit little blow like this one.
McGarvey was sitting on a table in an examining room at Urgent Care West, a medical clinic just off the parkway in Arlington. He came here whenever he wanted to see a doctor without the CIA knowing about it. The trauma medicine specialist, Mike Mattice, who’d just finished examining him was writing something in McGarvey’s file. “Am I going to live?” McGarvey asked.
Mattice, a large man with very broad shoulders and a pleasant, almost gentle smile, looked up seriously. “If what’s going on inside your skull is what I think it is, you could be in some serious trouble.” They’d developed a friendship over the past ten years, and Mattice had treated him for everything from the flu to gunshot wounds. He told it like it was, never pulling any punches.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Hairline skull fracture, probably a subdural hematoma. It means that you have a little arterial bleeder in there under the left temple. Unequal pupils, occasional blurring of your vision.” Mattice was sitting on a stool next to a table. He was all business. “I’m sending you up to see a friend of mine at University Hospital in Georgetown. You’re going to have a CAT scan and he’s going to read it.”
McGarvey started to object, he didn’t have the time, but Mattice held him off.
“He’ll keep his mouth shut, if that’s what you still want. But this time it’s serious, nothing to fool around with. There could be a lot of bad stuff going on inside of your head, could end up making you permanently blind, maybe paralyzed, probably scramble your brains.” He gave McGarvey a critical look. “Have you had any dizziness?”
“No,” McGarvey lied.
“Darkening of your vision?”
“No, a little blurring, but that’s all.”
“Disconnected thoughts, mood swings, memory loss?”
McGarvey shook his head, and Mattice shrugged skeptically.
“Maybe we’re lucky and I’m wrong. But I want to see the CAT scan.”
“What if you’re not wrong?”
“Your condition will get worse, like I told you.”
“How soon?”
“What the hell aren’t you telling me?” Mattice demanded.
“How long, Mike?”
“From the onset of the first serious symptoms maybe a few days, a week. There’s no way of telling until we get some pictures.”
“Assuming the worse, what then?” McGarvey asked. He’d known that something was seriously wrong with him, but there was too much at stake now for him to simply walk away from his job unless his own situation was desperate.
“We go in, fix the bleeder, drain the blood and put you back together.”
“How long would I be out of commission?”
“Six weeks,” Mattice said evenly. He glanced at the wall clock. “I want you up there by three. Do you have someone who can go with you?”
McGarvey hopped off the table. “Not this afternoon, maybe later in the week.”
“Not good enough—”
“I’m briefing the President on something at three, and there’s no way in hell I can miss it. We’re facing too much shit right now.”
“I could call your boss.”
“And violate doctor-patient confidentiality?”
“Hell, I’m a good Catholic but I’d lie to the Pope to save a patient,” Mattice said with a rueful smile.
“It’s going to have to wait for a couple of days, Mike.”
“Dammit.”
“That’s the way it has to be.”
Mattice got up and helped McGarvey with his jacket. “The first sign of dizziness or darkening of vision, I want you back here. And I want your word on it.”
“I’ll do the best I can.”
Mattice started to object, but McGarvey held him off again.
“If you’re right, it’s my life on the line, and I won’t screw around by taking unnecessary risks. But something bigger than you want to know about is going on right now and I can’t back away from it.”
A mask of professional indifference suddenly dropped over Mattice’s eyes. “It’s your choice,” he said, brusquely. “Do you want something for the headaches?”
“They’re not that bad.”
Mattice picked up McGarvey’s chart. “When you’re ready for the CAT scan, call the desk and they’ll set it up for you. In the meantime take care of yourself.” He shook his head and walked out.
McGarvey managed to get back to CIA headquarters in time to ride with Murphy in the DCI’s limousine to the White House. He’d driven himself over to the clinic and unless he’d been followed no one knew where he’d gone.
“It’s going to be no use pointing fingers or jumping down Dennis Berndt’s throat,” Murphy said tiredly. “The situation is what we have and it’s up to us to deal with it as best we can.”
“I agree,” McGarvey said distantly. In the morning he would sit down with Adkins and Rencke and go over the entire mission to find out how the bomb was getting here and how to stop it. Even if he did have the operation immediately, and was put out of commission for six weeks, he would at least be able to make some decisions during that time, unless his brain was permanently scrambled.
“I was informed that your briefing this morning was a good one.”
“I told them what was coming their way, and what we needed to do to stop it.”
“The President will want nothing less.”
McGarvey looked over at Murphy. “He’s going to get more than that, General, because bin Laden may be going after him specifically. Maybe his family too.”
“The man’s not that crazy,” Murphy said, clearly disturbed.
“We were,” McGarvey said.
“That was different.”
McGarvey held back a sharp reply, the words almost immediately escaping him. The day had gotten dark, and his stomach was turning over. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, a bad feeling under his tongue, and his body suddenly in a cold sweat. He was seeing the dreamy, distant expression on bin Laden’s face in the high mountain cave. The man was ill, and McGarvey could feel the sickness in his own body; the pain, the fear and the frustration that life was even more fragile and fleeting than you ever imagined it was.
“I said, what we did was different,” Murphy repeated, but then he trailed off.
McGarvey was hearing the words through the noise of a waterfall, but for thirty or forty seconds he was unable to respond. He couldn’t even think of what to say, nor could he move. Gradually the noise faded, however, and it seemed as if his thoughts came back into focus by degrees until he could open his eyes and sit up.
They had come to the west gate of the White House and the security people passed them through.
“Are you feeling up to this, Mac?” Murphy asked.
“I’m going to make it short, and then I’m going over to Katy’s house for a stiff drink, some dinner and ten or twelve hours of sleep. I just can’t seem to catch up.”
“I know the feeling,” Murphy said. “And if you want my advice, turn off the phones.”
“I will.”
By the time they pulled up to the west portico, and Murphy’s bodyguard opened the limo door for them, McGarvey had recovered sufficiently to get out of the car and follow the DCI inside. His legs felt like rubber and he was still queasy, but he figured that he would get through this okay.
They were ushered into the Oval Office at three o’clock on the dot. The President was seated at his desk. With him, besides Dennis Berndt, were the Director of the U.S. Secret Service Arthur Ridgeway and the Director of
