shoulders were hunched forward. He was aware of the aches and pains from his accident; he wasn’t taking the pills the doctor had given him. He wanted his head screwed on as straight as possible under the circumstances. For the first time ever he didn’t know what to say to Mac. Something terrible was about to happen, and he had no idea how to explain it to anyone. Even his own thoughts were so compartmentalized that his brain was a jumble; a jagged mishmash of garishly colored shards of glass. He remembered when Mac had come to him the first time here in Washington, in Georgetown, at the Holy Rood house. The CIA had dumped them both. Mac had gone to ground in Switzerland, and Otto had hidden out in the open at home. Neither one of them had been doing much of any significance.
But then Mac had come calling with a little problem that had wound up with the deaths of Baranov and the Company’s DDO, John Lyman Trotter, Jr. But more than that, Mac’s coming back had legitimized Otto. Given him a fresh purpose for his life. It was a gift that he could never repay. Not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand million years of trying. He could see McGarvey’s reflection in the blank screen of his monitor. “I’m busy, what do you want?”
“I want to know what’s going on?” “What do you mean?” “Louise called.
She’s worried. You should be at home.” Rencke shrugged. “How about that.” He spoke to the computer screen. “My girlfriend calls, and the DCI comes running. What are you really doing down here?” “The Russians have been looking for one of their people from the old days.
They’ve asked Interpol and the DGSE for help. He disappeared in August, and you requested his file not too long after that. You’ve got Liz involved now, and Karl is worried that you’re going to fry his entire system. Put all of us out of work.” Rencke had been holding a pent-up breath. He blew it out all at once as if he was trying to fog up his monitor. His fingers flew over the keyboard, burying the program he’d been working with to a place where it could not be retrieved by anyone but himself. “It’s lavender, didn’t I tell you?”
He glanced at the extremely high-altitude Moscow photos on the wall, then turned to McGarvey. “I’m down here in my lair doing my job, just like you hired me to do, ya know,” he grumbled. “But I can’t do it like this. People coming and going, screwing with me.” Some of the files on the table lay open, some of them displayed the old KGB’s sword-and-shield logo. Post-it notes were stuck to some of the pages.
“The hospital was boring,” he said, looking away again. “Nothing to do. The nurses were as bad as Louise. She’s trying, ya know, but trying too hard. Sometimes it drives you crazy, ya know?” He grinned and shook his head. It was the best he could do, but he was bleeding inside. Hemorrhaging. “She should be at work. We should all be at work. Twenty-four, seven.” McGarvey cleared a spot on the table and perched on the edge. Otto kept trying to avoid eye contact, but McGarvey was patient. As if he had all the time in the world.
“Sometimes it’s easier to see than other times. Then Zimmerman comes in here and wipes out everything I was trying to do. Tossed some of it, cause I can’t find a whole bunch of stuff. Shelved the rest. I lost good time here.” His left hand rested on the keyboard, as if he were making reassuring contact with an old, troubled friend. “His name is Nikolayev,” McGarvey said. “The Russians haven’t been able to find him, and neither has Interpol. He was one of Baranov’s Department Viktor experts. I think maybe you’ve found him.” Rencke shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You requested his file.” “No.” “Jay Newby said you did,” McGarvey said, suddenly angry. His patience was wearing thin. “What the hell are you playing at, Otto?” Rencke’s eyes were wide. “If I pulled his file, it had to be something routine. Probably the Interpol request.
But I don’t remember, Mac. Honest injun.” He waved his arms. “Circle the wagons, but I’m on the inside, kimo sabe, not on the outside.”
“You’re lying-” “No!” Rencke cried. “Liz is just looking down your track to write the history. She wants to be her father’s biographer.
But it’s hard on her, too, ya know?” “What are you talking about?”
Rencke was frightened. His eyes were filling. He couldn’t control his hands. “It was the pictures of your folks. The accident. She saw the file. I tried to stop her.” McGarvey’s parents had been engineers at Los Alamos toward the end of the Manhattan Project. For a few years they were suspected of being spies for the Russians. The taint had carried over to their only son. But it wasn’t true, of course. The whole thing had been a complicated Baranov plot to discredit McGarvey before he rose to become a power in the CIA. They had been killed in an automobile accident that had probably been engineered by the Russians. The Kansas Highway Patrol accident scene photographs had been explicitly grisly. Elizabeth had a chip on her shoulder. Maybe she was angry at her father for not sharing the details about her grandparents’ deaths. Seeing those pictures now had to have been a terrible shock. “What are you doing rummaging around inside the old KGB files?” “It’s for Liz.” “She can run a computer,” McGarvey said.
“You were supposed to be working up the NIE in-depths on Pakistan’s and India’s technical capabilities.” “I transferred the file to your machine two days ago,” Rencke said. He was defensive, like a cornered animal. McGarvey glanced at the Moscow photos. They were date-and time-stamped for sometime in August. “You’re lying to me, Otto. You’re into something down here that you’re not telling anybody. Lavender, you said. What’s lavender?” “Maybe it’s you who are lying,” Rencke shot back. There was a cold, distant edge in his voice. “Maybe you don’t want to be DCI after all.”
The remark took McGarvey’s breath away. It was so unlike Rencke. He was practically family. It was as if a favored son had turned on his father for no reason.
“You’re right, it is lavender, and it’s getting worse,” Rencke said.
“Two weeks, maybe less, then I’ll tell you.”
“Now-“
Rencke shook his head. “You can’t be boss of everything. You lost that right the first time you pulled a trigger.” Rencke suddenly clasped his hands in his lap, and his jaw tightened. He was on the verge of something terrible.
McGarvey nodded. “Get out of here, Otto. Go home and get some rest.”
“Are you firing me?”
“Go home and get some sleep. We’ll talk later.” McGarvey walked out without looking back.
Rencke closed his eyes and saw bright flashes of color: spikes of blue, circles of orange, shards of red; violets, purples, lavender.
The dark beast was coming, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He was sure that he was finally going crazy.
McGarvey went downstairs to the indoor pistol range in the basement more than a little confused. Otto was an odd duck, but he was a friend. He’d never thrown a tantrum like this before. Something was eating at him; something serious enough to change him. He’d had a maniacal look in his eyes that McGarvey had never seen. He was on the verge of fragmenting into a billion pieces. McGarvey was afraid that if Otto fell apart, there’d be no one strong enough or bright enough to put him back together. And the CIA needed Otto. McGarvey had always used the compact Walther PPK autoloader in its 7.65mm version. But recently he’d been convinced to upgrade to the 9mm version, and he was still having a little trouble with the placement of his second and third shots. The more powerful ammunition tended to raise his pattern.
But he was quickly getting a handle on the problem. Yemm went with him, and they each fired two hundred rounds. Afterward McGarvey went back to his office. He had to get some help for Otto before it was too late. Dr. Norman Stenzel, chief of the CIA’s Office of Medical Services Psychology Clinic, came right up. Ms. Swanfeld was gone for the day, and Yemm waited in the outer office, the door to McGarvey’s office open.
It was snowing again. McGarvey watched how it blew around the lights, and he shivered. Every man belonged to his own age. It was a snatch of something he’d picked up somewhere. Voltaire would not have liked the twenty-first century. Nobody these days cared about the primacy of the Catholic Church. Religion was not such a big part of most people’s lives as it had been in the eighteenth century, though Voltaire would have perfectly understood the current struggle between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. McGarvey turned when he heard the Company psychologist come in. Dr. Stenzel looked like an academic, as did a lot of the people in the CIA. Beard, longish hair, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, even corduroy trousers and a serious, studious demeanor; all of it was right out of the sixties. He reminded McGarvey of the actor Robin Williams, with his boyish, off-center smile. “Have a seat, Doc,” McGarvey said. “It’s not me who needs you, I’m asking for a friend.” Dr. Stenzel’s grin widened. “That’s what they all say.” “It’s Otto Rencke.” Stenzel had started to sit down, but he stopped, his good cheer instantly evaporating. “I see.” He sat down.
