turned and went down the hall to their bedroom, McGarvey went downstairs, rechecked the alarm setting and the front door, then shut off the lights in his study after locking up the DI reports. He stood in the dark for a few minutes listening again, as he had been doing for the past several days, for something the sounds of the house, the sounds of the wind, the sounds of his own heart, the sounds that the gavel would make tomorrow. “Fuck it,” he said. He went back to the kitchen, where he checked the patio doors. He opened a bottle of pi not grig io from the cooler, got a couple of glasses and went upstairs.
The big tub on a raised step was only one-third full and the water was still running, but Kathleen had already disrobed and gotten in. She was lying back, her eyes closed, a look of contentment on her finely defined oval face. McGarvey sat down on the toilet lid, careful not to clink the glasses or make any noise to disturb her, but she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “If you only knew how good this feels,” she murmured luxuriously. He poured her a glass of wine and set it on the broad, flat edge of the tub. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, starting to get up. “Don’t go.” “Don’t you want some peace and quiet?” “I had twenty years of that; now I want you.” She ran a hand across the top of her chest, letting droplets of water run down between her breasts. “Even if we were in the same room for the next twenty, it wouldn’t make up for what we lost.” She shook her head thinking back.
“Such a stupid waste, actually. My fault.” “Our fault,” McGarvey corrected. “I had a habit of running away, remember?” “At least you had a reason,” she flared mildly. “I was just… arrogant. Young, dumb, ambitious. I wanted to be a perfect mother, I really did. I loved Elizabeth with everything in my soul, but I wanted my freedom, too.” She absently touched the base of her neck, her collarbones and shoulders. “I tried Valium, because I felt guilty, but it didn’t work for me. Made me sick at my stomach.” She laughed. “The doctor said that I was tense.” “It wasn’t much better for anyone else. It’s time to stop beating yourself up. You were hiding out in the open, and I was hiding underground. You had the tougher assignment.” “Everybody hated the CIA. My friends used to tell me that kicking you out was the best decision that I’d ever made. But they were jerks. The kind of people you and I always hated. I would look at our daughter and wonder why they weren’t seeing what I was seeing; a perfect little girl who was half you.” She closed her eyes and laid the cool wineglass against her forehead. “I wanted to tell them, but I didn’t.” “We spent a lot of time being mad at each other,” McGarvey said sadly. “We both made some dumb decisions.” “When you came back to Washington out of the clear blue sky I thought that you’d come for me. When I found out that the CIA had hired you to dig out Darby and his crowd, I was mad at you all over again.” She was looking inward, regret all over her face. “I threatened to sue you for money, I flaunted myself all over Washington and New York, and I even got word to you that I was thinking about getting married, but nothing worked. Then the CIA comes to see you in Switzerland to offer you a job, and you come running. It wasn’t fair.”
McGarvey didn’t know what to say. It was a time for going back, and the memories were just as painful for him as they were for her. But maybe necessary, he thought. She opened her eyes wide to look at him.
“Do you know the worst part?” she asked. “When I saw you walking down the street it was like someone had driven a stake into my heart. I made a mistake, pushing you away, and here you were back in Georgetown even more inaccessible to me than ever. I had become the kind of person we hated; I had become one of my friends, a pretentious bore.”
“But here we are, Katy,” he said softly. She smiled, some of the trouble melting from her face. “It’s going to be okay, isn’t it, Kirk?” “Guaranteed.”
TUESDAY
NINE
IF KIRK MCGARVEY WERE CONFIRMED AS DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE HE WOULD BE ASSASSINATED.
Nikolayev walked along the country road into town as the sun reached over the distant line of poplars marking the edge of the wheat field He encountered no one this morning. Loneliness, he decided, was a subject on which he could write a very long book. Now there wasn’t even a routine to look forward to as he grew older. He could not return to Moscow, nor would he be able to remain here much longer. Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, Washington Post and Le Monde, carried the same story. Each newspaper had given the facts its own spin: the liberal press was against McGarvey’s appointment; the conservative was for it; and the French press was confused but angry. It was always anger that seemed to fuel the public debate; especially the international dialogue. Nikolayev could have refused to read the newspapers. Not listen to the radio, or watch television, especially not CNN. But the facts would have been there all the same, and he would know it. Like the feral cat crouched in front of the rabbit; the predator did not need to read a book to smell the fear. The ability to sense the real world was built in, and perfected by years of experience. Nikolayev heard the church bell tolling the hour in town.
Turn away. Now, before it’s too late. In the night he felt them at his back. Coming for him. There would be no arrest for him, though; no cell at Lefortovo, no torture, no drugs, no sewing his eyelids open, rubber hoses up his anus, glass rods shattered inside his penis. They were coming with Russian insurance his nine ounces a nine- millimeter bullet to the base of his skull. “Comrade Nikolayev?” He stopped and turned, but no one was there. Only the farm fields, the trees, the white clouds in the blue sky, the empty road and the church bell. The voice had been Baranov’s. He recognized it. But the general was long dead. Killed by Kirk McGarvey outside East Berlin. He walked the rest of the way into town where he stopped first at the boulangerie for his baguette and his morning raisin buns, then around the corner in the square to the little shop selling tobacco, chewing gum, stamps, magazines and newspapers. The old woman had his three newspapers waiting for him. “Bonjour, monsieur” she said pleasantly. “Ca va?”
“Bonjour, madame. Ca va, et vousY’ Nikolayev responded with a genuine smile. “Je vais bien” she said brightly, inclining her head coquettishly. It took him a second to realize that the old woman was flirting with him. He paid her, accepted his change, got his newspapers and fled the dark shop into the bright morning sun. He thought he could hear her laughing as he hurried down the street. He folded the newspapers under his arm, refusing the temptation to look at the headlines, and after twenty minutes he was back at the small farmhouse he’d rented at the agency in Paris. It had become a familiar haven for him. He put on the water for his tea, put the baguette away and brought the newspapers and buns to the table at the edge of his small vegetable garden in back. From here he could look across the wheat field stubble now, to the intersection of the farm road and the main highway D917 across the narrow Loir River. It was the only way here from the outside. The tiny window in his bedroom under the eaves also faced the river and the highway. Basic tradecraft. Habit is Heaven’s own redress, Alexander Pushkin had written in Eugene Onegin.
It takes the place of happiness. There was the occasional car and a few trucks on the highway. The bus from Le Mans passed a few minutes after nine in the morning, and returned from Orleans in the afternoon around two. Six weeks ago a police car passed by, its blue lights flashing, its siren shrieking. Nikolayev had leaped up from the table and had nearly headed off across the fields in a dead run until he realized that they were not coming for him. If Moscow was searching for him, they were not looking here. When his tea was ready he took the pot and a cup out to the table, put on his reading glasses and settled down with the newspapers. He started with Le Monde to see if the French were reporting anything new and because it was today’s newspaper. The Times and the Post were Monday’s and probably contained only rewritten versions of Sunday’s accounts. McGarvey’s Senate committee hearings were scheduled to begin today. The Paris newspaper wondered if the senators would consider the French government’s position that McGarvey was no longer welcome here. A highly placed source inside the DGSE (the French secret intelligence service) had agreed to answer questions provided his anonymity could be protected.
On the surface of it, Nikolayev thought that the request was stupid.
