Buren said.
“Good luck tomorrow.” “Thanks.” McGarvey put the phone down and sat for a long time staring at the bare studs in the wall, but not really seeing them. The same nagging at the back of his consciousness had started again; like someone or something gently scratching at the back door in the middle of the night. He went back to the kitchen to get more coffee. Kathleen was just finishing up. She gave him an expectant look. “Liz was in the shower. Todd’s going to have her call when she gets out.” “Is everything okay?” “She saw the doctor this afternoon. Everything’s fine.” Kathleen was relieved, yet she looked like a startled deer caught in the flash of headlights, frozen in place but wanting desperately to run. McGarvey took her in his arms and held her. “It’s going to be okay. Not like the last time.” She looked up at him. “Promise?”
He smiled. “Scout’s honor.” Karhleen had a strong sense of social order and traditions and proper behavior. For her they were the distinguishing marks of civilization. She’d always felt that way in part because she was her father’s daughter. Walter Fairchild, until he killed himself, had been the CEO of a major Richmond investments and mortgage banking company. He’d been a Southern gentleman of the oldest tradition proud, arrogant, even vain. When his wife took off with another man, Kathleen was left in his care. She’d been twelve. For a long time she hated her mother and idolized her father. But those emotions had changed with time, and with her father’s death, left her with an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong; truth and lies; responsibility and commitment, fair play. But then she met Mac at a navy commander’s ball in Washington, D.C. He was a spy working for the Central Intelligence Agency. He was ruggedly handsome. He looked dangerous; there was even a hint of cruelty in his green eyes that she found devastatingly attractive, He was the opposite of the men she’d known in Richmond, the boys she’d dated in college and the men she worked for in the Smith Barney Washington office. In a week they were sleeping together. In a couple of months they were married. And in the first year Elizabeth was born. It was shortly after that when Mac began disappearing without explanation. Sometimes he was gone overnight; sometimes for days; and a couple of times for several weeks.
He would not give her a straight answer, except that it had something to do with the CIA. He would make vague hints that it wouldn’t do for them to develop any close friends. It was nobody’s business what he did for a living. To avoid the lies, you avoided people. She was infuriated. How dare her husband isolate her and keep things from her.
It was like her parents’ marriage, only in reverse. Her husband was secretive, just like her mother had been. He was frequently gone, just like her mother had been. And she was certain that he would leave one day and never come back, just like her mother had. She was well enough connected in Washington because of her father and because of her own work at Smith Barney that she began getting discreet answers to discreet questions. Her husband worked for the CIA. He worked in something called Clandestine Operations. And it was possible that he was a black operations officer. That meant he did things. Spying in Russia and Germany. Sabotage. Blackmail. Maybe even murder.
The Santiago trip had been the last straw, though at the time she had no idea where he had gotten himself off to. When he came home, however, she could tell just by looking at him that he had done something that was over the top even for him. “That’s it,” she’d told him. “No more. I want your word on it. Scout’s honor.” “I can’t,”
he’d told her. “Then it’s going to be either Elizabeth and me, or the CIA. Your choice.” He’d turned without a word and walked out.
Scout’s honor, she thought now. The words were coming back to haunt her.
EIGHT
“WE’RE IN KIND Of A GEOPOLITICAL ROAD RAGE THAT’S HARD TO FIGHT AND ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT.”
McGarvey took the half-dozen situation reports he’d brought home with him from his briefcase, piled them on the corner of his desk and opened the first one. It was titled: Afghanistan: Probable Escalation. The Directorate of Intelligence produced the reports on a weekly basis for every hot spot. They were classified so they were not supposed to leave the building, but that was a rule that McGarvey and a lot of DCIs before him broke. The workload was simply too great to get it all done at Langley. This report was bound in a gray cover with orange diagonal stripes, which meant fighting was going on right now. It had only been a year since he had returned from Afghanistan himself. They had been fighting then, and they were still fighting amongst themselves even though the Taliban had been defeated and bin Laden’s al-Quaida terrorists were all dead, in captivity or on the run. A stupid waste of lives, he thought. Yet for the Afghanis there really wasn’t much in the way of other options. He had seen the apathy in the eyes of the mujahedeen fighters: the hunger, the lack of education, the fear and suspicion of outsiders, especially of the modern world, the West. Even now. McGarvey took his cup into the kitchen, got some coffee and then looked in on Kathleen at the computer in the next room. She was engrossed with her work on the Beaux Arts Ball, the second most important social event of any Washington season behind the presidential inaugural balls. She had raised millions for the Red Cross and for the Special Olympics. A lot of people, including three presidents, had a lot of respect for her. She was something, he thought. He went back to the study with his coffee and picked up his reading. The DDIs Situation Reports, some running to five hundred pages with maps, graphs, photographs, satellite and NSA electronic information as well as on-the-ground eyewitness reports, came out every Monday. They were distributed to the top officials in the U.S. intelligence establishment; the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon and the State Department. The reports were digested, rewritten and updated so that every Thursday a National Intelligence Estimate and Watch Report could be generated. The NIE gave information on everything going on in the world that had a potential to threaten the security of the U.S. The Watch Report was a heads up on situations where fighting was going on or could be about to start. Both reports were sent to the President and his National Security Council, who set policy. It was up to the Director of Central Intelligence to oversee the process and to be called to account on Fridays. Then, on Mondays, like now, it started all over again. But he was having a hard time keeping on track tonight. Something was whispering in the wind around the eaves; in the sighing of the tree branches on the fifteenth fairway behind the house; in the nasty rumor-filled crackle of the plastic pool cover burdened with snow and ice. The pool water had not frozen. It was a death trap, the thought came to his mind. Fall in by accident, become entangled in the blue waffle cover and drown or suffocate. He telephoned Jay Newby on the night desk again. For some reason Mondays almost always seemed to be quiet. It was as if the bad guys had stopped after the hectic weekend to catch their breath. The night duty staff usually played pinochle at a buck a point. It was a ruthless game, and they hated to be interrupted. “Four-seven-eight-seven,” Newby answered sharply.
“Did the Russians mention when Nikolayev went missing?” McGarvey asked. “Ah, Mr. McGarvey, we were just about to call you, but just a minute and I’ll pull up the Moscow station file,” he said, shifting gears. McGarvey could hear several computer printers in action, someone talking and music in the background. “Mid to late August,”
Newby said. “But they don’t say who reported him missing, or why the urgency to find him. But they do want him back.” “Okay, now what were you going to call me about?” “The operation in Mexico City. Tony wants a green light. We expected to pass this to Mr. Whittaker, but he asked not to be disturbed for anything below a grade two.” Antonio Lanzas was the Mexico City COS. “He’s at his daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner.” “Yes, sir. And Mr. Adkins is at Columbia with his wife.” McGarvey had been expecting it. “Any word from the hospital?”
“Nothing yet.” “Keep me posted,” McGarvey said. “Yes, sir. Dick Yemm is coming out with the operational order for your signature.” “Very well.” The CIA hadn’t been run with such a tight rein since the forties and fifties in the days of Allen Dulles and Wild Bill Donovan, who insisted on knowing everything that was going on. Such close control was impossible now because there was far too much information streaming into Langley twenty-four hours a day for any one man to handle. But McGarvey insisted on knowing the details of any action that had the potential to threaten lives or embarrass the U.S. The operation called Night Star was the brainstorm of George Daedo, one of Tony’s field officers. Six months ago he’d gone to a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, alone for once, although he had the reputation of being a ladies’ man. At the first intermission he went to the smoking
